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Epistemic Belief vs. Functional Belief (Attitude)
In discussing belief, a distinction must be drawn between belief and attitude. If a baseball player with a
.300 batting average is about to go to bat, and if he is asked if he will get a hit, he might very well say, "Yes! You bet
I'm going to get a hit! Just watch me!" He might positively assert that he will get a hit, even though his batting average
shows that he gets a hit only three times out of every ten at-bats (which I'll note, in case you're not a baseball fan, is
excellent). It might seem that he believes that he will get a hit. And, indeed, it might help his hitting to go up to
bat with such a positive attitude, apparently believing that he will get a hit.
But if you sit him down and ask him, for a moment, to forget that he is about to go to bat and instead give his
rational assessment of his chances of getting a hit, he should say, "About three in ten." He should say, "No, I probably
won't get a hit, as I only do so three times out of every ten at-bats." It is all very well for him to functionally
believe that he will definitely get a hit, while he's making the attempt--to have the attitude that he definitely will, in the
belief that it will help him get a hit; it would be quite another for him to epistemically believe that he would
definitely get a hit--to rationally assess his chances at significantly better than three in ten. If you sat him down a week
before the game and made a bet with him about whether or not he'd get a hit in his first at-bat of the game, he'd be
foolish to bet any significant sum that he would. While he's going about his business of trying to get a hit, it might serve
him well to hold the irrational belief that he will get a hit; but when he is not batting but is instead attempting to make true
knowledge claims about the world, he should hold the more rational belief that he is unlikely to get a hit. (Nothing
guarantees that he will be rational, of course!)
This kind of suspension-of-rational-belief-while-going-about-one's-life is really an attitude, not a belief; or, to put it in
different terms, it is functional belief rather than epistemic belief. Epistemic belief has to do with what is true;
functional belief has to do with what the believer finds useful at a given time. A religious believer who is also
a rational person might find himself faced with a dilemma: He might know that a particular religious belief is unlikely
to be true, and yet also find it useful to believe it (he might find it useful merely to act as though he believed it--to
feign belief--but I am here speaking of the sincere believer, who may believe that a particular tenet of his
religion is highly unlikely to actually be true but who chooses nevertheless to believe it). The willing suspension of
disbelief is part of the baseball player's going to the plate with the belief that he will definitely get a hit, and it may also
be part of a religious believer's holding some of his religious beliefs.
Whether or not it is useful for the religious believer to believe, and to rear his children to believe, that his consciousness
will survive his death, despite the clear correlation of mental states with brain states (see
here) that makes it reasonable to think it likely that mental states end when brain
states do (although, to be fair, one can construct a metaphysics according to which mental states needn't end when brain
states do); whether or not it is useful for the
religious believer to believe in miracles (see here); whether or not it is ever
useful for the religious believer to hold any poorly-supported metaphysical belief at all--I cannot say.
Whether or not it is useful for religious believers to adopt their attitude of belief, in their daily lives, despite their beliefs'
prima facie absurdity as knowledge claims, I cannot say.
However, when an untrue belief is purportedly held because of its usefulness but then defended on grounds of its truth--of
its conformity to reality--an epistemic mistake is made. When the baseball player is asked, when he's about to go to bat,
whether or not he'll get a hit, he says, "Yes!" But that is merely an attitude he takes toward batting; if he seriously thinks
that he is more likely than not to get a hit, despite his .300 average, we will recognize his irrationality. The difficulty some
believers face is that although they might want to defend their beliefs on grounds of their usefulness, they end up
defending those selfsame beliefs on grounds of their truth--and we should recognize their irrationality. (It also seems
obvious that if a believer holds an apparently untrue belief merely because he must in order to maintain the coherence of
his belief system or in order to maintain conformity with other believers rather than with truth, his belief system merits an
overhaul.)
Epistemic belief is always concerned with truth. Epistemic belief is always concerned with
accurately reflecting the way the world is. If truth lies in conformity to reality, then I must find the idea of holding beliefs
about the way the world is without regard to their truth bizarre; epistemically speaking, truth--conformity to reality--is
the yardstick by which one measures the legitimacy of a belief that is itself about reality. When a believer holds an
apparently untrue belief because it serves a particular purpose, like the baseball player going to the plate positive he will
get a hit, his belief is worthless as an expression of fact; it is not even really a belief about reality, but rather a way of
approaching reality--a way of dealing with reality. Epistemic belief, on the other hand, is about reality; its
value stems from its conformity to the reality it seeks to describe--its value comes from its truth. The problem
the religious believer may face is that the belief whose holding he defends on the grounds of its usefulness is not simply an
attitude toward his own actions or abilities, like the baseball player's, but is itself a statement about the nature of reality--
and statements about the nature of reality are legitimized not by their believers' getting a hit or performing some other
action but by their truth--by their conformity to reality. That's the difficulty the religious believer who wishes to defend
his belief on the basis of its usefulness faces: His belief is a belief about reality, and such beliefs have worth only if they
are true. It's one thing to defend "I'm going to get a hit" as an attitude toward a situation; it's quite another to defend it
as a truth about reality.
(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)
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