Our First Guest Blog: Clarity, Skepticism, and Disagreement

*Note to my readers: The following article has been written by a friend that studies philosophy and is also familiar with the Gangadeanian worldview. I think he raises some interesting challenges against some of the things that Anderson as argued in print. It's nice to see a different perspective or angle highlighted. Perhaps I'll add my reaction to this piece in the comments or with a followup post. 

Clarity, Skepticism, and Disagreement

I recently found myself looking over Anderson’s book The Clarity of God’s Existence wherein he tries to defend the audacious claim that God’s existence must be maximally clear if, as Historic Christianity teaches, persons are maximally responsible for belief in God. Anderson entertains several attempts to avoid the need for clarity – skepticism, fideism, probability/plausibility, mysticism, etc. – in order to undermine these positions. In my perusal of the book, Anderson’s discussion of skepticism seemed particularly inadequate.

He points out that many think that knowledge of God isn’t possible given widespread and intractable disagreement over the question of whether God exists. I interpret Anderson’s construal of this particular kind of skepticism to be this: Given that there is irresolvable disagreement over whether God exists, this fact is evidence that God can’t be known (i.e., God’s existence is unclear). Alternatively, Anderson argues that the mere fact that there is irresolvable disagreement over the question of whether God exists doesn’t show that God can’t be known; rather, he proposes, it shows that not all seek to know God. I take Anderson to be saying that irresolvable disagreement over God’s existence is better explained by the possibility that not all seek to know God rather than the possibility that God’s existence is unclear.  

I have several concerns about Anderson’s critique of skepticism vis-à-vis clarity. For example, he merely proposes the possibility that not all seek to know God without explaining what he means by ‘seek.’ This seems to be another manifestation of the Gangadeanian tendency to confidently assert terms without providing any corresponding analysis (something the administrator of this blog has routinely criticized: http://reasontodoubt.blogspot.com/2015/06/objectivity-in-art-another-symptom-of.html). Further, he seems to employ an inference to the best explanation (IBE), but it’s not clear how an IBE – a form of probabilistic reasoning – comports with Anderson’s commitment to a strong sense of knowledge in which one can be epistemically certain that God exists (See http://reasontodoubt.blogspot.com/2015/04/anderson-on-knowledge-vs-knowledge.html). In addition, Anderson fails to inform the reader how the possibility that not all seek to know God explains why there is intractable disagreement concerning God’s existence. Without any elucidation on this mark, the reader is at a loss as to how to judge the probabilistic strength of Anderson’s IBE in comparison with competing explanations.

Despite these concerns, I wish to raise a more serious skeptical problem for Anderson. He cites the fact of irresolvable disagreement over the question of whether God exists as a reason why the skeptic thinks that God’s existence is epistemically unclear. However, note that disagreement considerations with respect to some question can be divided into two different kinds of worries:

First-order worries: disagreement over some proposition, P, directly undermines the evidence for P.

Higher-order worries: disagreement over some proposition, P, directly undermines the claim that one has rationally assessed the evidence for P.

My reading of Anderson’s discussion of skepticism inclines me to think that he is primarily preoccupied with first-order worry with respect to disagreement over God’s existence. Yet, the more pressing challenge for clarity arises from the higher-order worry, which has been called within the philosophical literature the epistemological problem of peer disagreement. The problem of peer disagreement can be put as follows: how ought one to treat the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties with respect to some question (in our case, the question of whether God exists) when one finds oneself in a disagreement with a peer (an individual who is seemingly equally qualified, informed, and intellectually virtuous)? Philosophers who work on this problem argue over whether one is issued a higher-order worry when one finds that a peer has reached a conclusion that contradicts one’s own. That is, philosophers argue over whether one ought to give one’s disputant equal-weight and conciliate or whether one should remain steadfast in one’s conclusion despite the fact that one’s peer believes differently from oneself. Regardless of whether one thinks that one ought to conciliate or remain steadfast in these situations, it must be granted that the higher-order challenge that disagreement presents is the more pressing worry for any commitment to clarity. If it turns out that conciliation is a more rational response in these situations, then one ought to lower one’s confidence in the proposition that God exists. And if one ought to lower one’s confidence in the proposition that God exists, then irresolvable disagreement among peers entails that one can’t be certain that God exists (i.e. God’s existence is not clear).

With the more challenging skeptical problem for clarity vis-à-vis peer disagreement before us, how should one in fact respond when one finds oneself in these situations? I assume that Anderson will hold that it is rational to remain steadfast in circumstances of peer disagreement, and so in the remaining portion of this post, I will try to persuade Anderson (and his followers) that there is something rationally untenable about a steadfast response and that a position more akin to conciliation (i.e. reducing one’s confidence in one’s position) is more rationally acceptable.  

To get a sense of the problem with a full-blown steadfast position, consider the following example from David Christensen (‘Disagreement, Question-Begging and Epistemic Self-Criticism’).

Mental Math: After a nice restaurant meal, my friend and I decide to tip 20% and split the check, rounding up to the nearest dollar. As we have done many times, we do the math in our heads. We have a long and equally good track record at this (in the cases where we’ve disagreed, checking with a calculator has shown us right equally frequently); and I have no reason (such as those involving alertness or tiredness or differential consumption of coffee or wine) for suspecting one of us to be especially good, or bad, at the current reasoning task. I come up with $43; but then my friend announces that she got $45.   

In the Mental Math case, many philosophers argue that I should become significantly less confident that my portion of the bill is $43. This is because I am not able to adduce any reasons that are independent of my disputed reasoning for thinking that I am right about my share of the bill. Christensen contends that there would be something unacceptably question-begging if I were to maintain confidence that my portion of the bill is $43 by arguing as follows: “Since my friend fails to see that the facts support an answer of $43, I have good reason for thinking that, contrary to my expectation, she is not (at least at this moment) a reliable judge of the question we are disputing; therefore, her disagreement gives me no reason at all to question my answer.” To argue like this would be circular since I would be assuming the reliability of my reasoning even though my reasoning is the very thing the disagreement with my friend is calling into question. To avoid circularity, I need to provide reasons independent of my disputed reasoning that show me to be a more superior calculator than my friend. If I can’t provide any dispute-independent reasons, then, Christensen holds, I ought to lower confidence in my position.

These considerations from Christensen ought to show Anderson what would be rationally unacceptable about preserving his high level of confidence in the question of whether God exists when engaged in peer disagreement. When Anderson disagrees with a peer over God’s existence  (that is, when he disagrees with someone who is aware of all of the same arguments, inferences, and evidence), how ought he to respond? In order to remain steadfast, Anderson needs to provide a dispute-independent reason to think that he has more rationally assessed the evidence concerning the question at hand. However, it’s hard to see what kind of independent reason Anderson could proffer given that his disputant is in possession of all of the same arguments, inferences, and evidence. Unless Anderson can provide a dispute-independent reason, he ought to conciliate by reducing his confidence that God’s existence is as clear as he thinks.

There have been many proposed strategies to avoid the conciliatory pressure that disagreement presents, none of which Anderson will find appealing. In order to avoid full-blown skepticism, some argue that question-begging responses are rationally acceptable in cases where a dispute-independent evaluation fails to give one a reason to think that one’s disputant is equally credentialed (Christensen, op. cit., 15). Anderson needs to determine, however, whether he is comfortable with using circular reasoning in order to avoid the skeptical threat. Others have attempted to deflect skeptical pressure by appealing to externalist considerations (Plantinga, ‘‘Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exlusivism’). Plantinga argues that, although there may be parity among internal epistemic factors between two disputants (i.e. symmetry among argument, inference, and evidence), this need not mean that there is parity among external epistemic factors (e.g. properly functioning cognitive faculties within environment aimed at truth). Yet, I doubt that Anderson will find this strategy attractive given his commitment to an internalist conceptualization of knowledge and justification (See http://reasontodoubt.blogspot.com/2014/12/anderson-on-externalism-vs-internalism.html). Others have tried to avoid skeptical pressure by appealing to more Bayesian theories of rationality. Pittard articulates a particular way of probabilistically conditionalizing on disagreement (he calls it ‘instrumentalism’) and argues that, since religious disagreements involve one’s most fundamental rational starting points, it is not possible to take up a position antecedent to them in order to employ Bayes’ theorem. Therefore, any response to disagreement will have to make use of those fundamental rational starting points, which will result in a readout that is inevitably self-favoring (Pittard, ‘Fundamental Disagreements and the Limits of Instrumentalism,’ MSS).  However, Anderson probably won’t find appeals to Bayesian rationality and probabilistic reasoning helpful (See Clarity, pp. 28-9, where he criticizes probability/plausibility to avoid clarity). And others have tried to avoid the skeptical pressure of disagreement by appealing to ‘permissive’ theories of rationality, which says that, in some cases, a body of evidence can warrant more than one rational conclusion. For example, subject A can rationally believe p given E and subject B can rationally believe ~p given E, and disagreement between A and B need not require conciliation because both A and B have rationally responded to E (See Schoenfield, ‘Permission to Believe’).  

These strategies of avoiding global skepticism with respect to disagreement-related concerns are by no means exhaustive. My intention in citing these various proposals is only to show that (1) there have been some novel ways of avoiding full-blown skepticism, and (2) that Anderson has his work cut out for him since I take it he won’t find any of these proposals compelling. However, lest clarity be threatened by disagreement, it is incumbent on Anderson to articulate a theory of how one ought to respond to disagreement that avoids extreme conciliation. Yet, if it’s true that Anderson is committed to internalism, and if the problem of disagreement assumes symmetry prevails among disputants with respect to internal epistemic factors (argument, inference, evidence), I’m not sure how Anderson can advocate for steadfastness without having to accept the viability of some kind of benign circularity. I will leave it to Anderson to decide whether circularity is an appropriate response to disagreement.

What I hope to have modestly shown is that skepticism is by no means easily defeated. Anderson unfortunately characterized a weak form of skepticism, but I’ve tried to demonstrate that a more threatening form is to be found in terms of the higher-order worry of peer disagreement. Although I don’t think that disagreement needs to force one to be skeptical of all of one’s beliefs, I think that we need to consider seriously how widespread disagreement with equally qualified individuals might negatively bear on the reliability of our reasoning on various theoretical issues. Such an evaluation of our cognitive abilities will divulge, I think, that our epistemic lives are far more messier and fallible than Anderson would have us believe, which might imply that God isn’t as clear to our reasoning abilities as Anderson unreservedly holds.