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Respect for Believers vs. Respect for Belief



As I indicated here, there are two forms of respect: Unearned and earned. Respect for a person may be either unearned or earned; respect for a belief is always earned.

I will always respect a believer as a human being; as another person; as another aware, self-aware, experiencing entity to whom things matter. I can never directly know what another person experiences, short of becoming telepathic; I cannot even directly know that another person does experience at all, short of becoming telepathic; but, having made the metaphysical assumption that objective correlates of some of my sensations do exist--i.e., having made the metaphysical assumption that there really are tables and chairs and apples, and that although some of my mental images are just dream-images, others really are perceptions of an objectively existing reality; and having made the epistemic assumption that I can gain reasonably reliable information about that objectively existing reality via my senses--i.e., having made the epistemic assumption that I can learn about objectively existing objects by looking at them, touching them, and so on; and having observed that other people appear to be similar to me, and having made the metaphysical assumption, on the basis of that similarity, that other people have mental lives, too--that they think and feel and desire and remember, just as I do, or much as I do; then I automatically grant them respect as aware, self-aware, experiencing entities to whom things matter--as thinking, feeling entities--as fellow persons. And knowing the importance of my own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to myself, I accept the importance of their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to them, and grant their thinking, feeling, and believing the same unearned respect that I would like them to grant mine, whether I agree with them and whether I think they are mistaken or not.

Moreover, I assume that people do not usually go around thinking, "This is a silly idea; I think I'll believe it." I assume that people do not usually go around thinking, "My, this is an absurd notion; I think I'll believe it." I assume that people do not usually go around thinking, "Gee, this is obviously false; I think I'll believe it." Rather, I assume that people try to believe true propositions; I assume that people sincerely and genuinely believe what they believe, and I assume that people who sincerely and genuinely believe what they believe also sincerely and genuinely think that what they believe is true (or that it is more likely to be true than untrue). We are all doing our best to get along in a world not of our making; we are all doing our best to cope with circumstances not of our creation. We are all doing our best to deal with our mortality, and with our human limitations, and with a world much vaster than ourselves; and when we are confronted with the Big Questions and the Great Mysteries, we all do our best to sort truth from untruth and to believe what is true rather than what is untrue. This much, I assume.

And when human beings genuinely and sincerely attempt to work out what is true, and when human beings genuinely and sincerely attempt to believe what is true rather than what is untrue, then their genuineness, their sincerity, and even their willingness to make the effort, all deserve our respect. People might wind up believing what is true, or they might, instead, wind up accepting falsehoods as true. But whatever attempt they make--whether it is a spiritual quest or a scientific experiment; whether it is the casting of a horoscope or the making of a careful, controlled observation under replicable conditions--no matter what the attempt is, a person merits respect simply for trying to find out and to believe that which is true.

However, although all believers get our unearned respect simply as persons; and although all genuine, sincere seekers after truth merit our earned respect because the genuine, sincere search for truth is admirable; beliefs must earn our respect on their own merits, and not all of them do. Someone might earnestly believe in astrology, and I will respect him--but not his belief. Someone might earnestly believe in phrenology, and I will respect him--but not his belief. Someone might earnestly believe in an imperceptible leprechaun named "Percival," and I will respect him--but not his belief. And someone might earnestly believe in a particular religion, and I will respect him--but not, in all likelihood, his belief.

This distinction is easy to miss; if I cast aspersions upon the casting of a horoscope because I think that it is an unreliable method for finding out what is true, it will be easy for me to seem to cast aspersions on the person casting the horoscope instead. If I criticize Filbert P. Finnegan's dependence upon the pronouncements of Percival the imperceptible leprechaun for truths about the world, it will be easy for me to seem to be criticizing Filbert himself, because to criticize his chosen method of seeking truth seems to be to criticize his judgment. And it's true that I sometimes wonder, about some person and some belief, "How can he believe that?" Yes, I confess that that is true. (There seem to be people who wonder how we nonreligious people can hold our nontheistic worldviews, or how we can accept the theory of evolution. This feeling of incredulity about certain unshared beliefs is not unique to me.)

Yet what is also true is that each human being judges what is true or false, and what to believe and why to believe it, on the basis of his own knowledge, his own experience in life, his own background; and each human being has his own information and his own areas of expertise--and his own areas of ignorance. Each human being is aware of some facts but ignorant of others. We can hardly criticize people for being unaware of facts, although we might criticize them for not having taken the trouble to familiarize themselves with a particular fact, or for their refusal to accept a particular fact in the face of overwhelming evidence therefor. But a belief may be held that is contrary to fact, and such a belief will not merit our respect, no matter how many people hold that belief.

Beyond this, each person judges what counts as good reason for belief at all. What is a good reason for thinking a belief is true? The evidence of one's own senses? A well-reasoned argument? The scientific consensus? The results of a series of carefully-controlled experiments yielding similar results? Or.... The judgment of a single scientist in opposition to his peers? The opinion of a friend? The teaching of a religious guru? The statements of a holy book? A particular interpretation of a holy book? The views of one's family? Or.... A feeling? A dream? A drug-induced vision? A séance? A near-death experience? Or.... The desire that it be true? Fear that it might not be true? Its claimed social benefits? Its claimed psychological benefits? What counts as good reason for thinking a belief is true? What counts as good reason for thinking a belief has merit?

This, I think, is where a lot of the "How could he believe that?" feeling comes from: Not from a difference in belief itself, but a difference in judgment of what counts as good reason for belief. Each person belongs to an epistemic community composed of individuals whose sense of what kind of thing counts as good reason for belief, and of how strong evidence has to be before a belief is to be accepted as true, roughly matches his own. When we talk to people whose sense of what counts as good reason for belief radically differs from our own, we experience a sense of cognitive dissonance; we are incredulous. When we hear beliefs espoused that we ourselves would never espouse, our inability to see ourselves holding those beliefs is sometimes attributable to our inability to conceive of the reasons for those beliefs as good reasons; we find ourselves unable to personally relate to going from the reasons for belief their believers give to the holding of those beliefs themselves. We are members of different epistemic communities. We are not just aware of different facts, giving us different information on the basis of which to weigh potential beliefs; we think differently. And while thinking differently may be wonderful and delightful when we are dealing with creative fields, it can be completely mystifying when it comes to evaluating potential beliefs and deciding which ones are true. What makes sense to me just doesn't seem to be what makes sense to a member of a different epistemic community. We evaluate evidence differently; we have differing senses of what counts as evidence.

I am committed to fundamental empiricist assumptions, and thence to certain principles of logical thought. I think most other people are also committed to those epistemic assumptions, whether they realize it or not, and I hope to show that elsewhere on this Web site. Where a believer, as opposed to a belief, is subject to criticism is when he shares one's epistemic commitments and principles of logical thought and background information relevant to a particular belief but applies them incorrectly. (One of the books I listed among my favorites is The Book of the Fallacy: A Training Manual for Intellectual Subversives, by Madsen Pirie; it is somewhat humorous in its presentation, but the fallacies it illustrates count as applying logical thought incorrectly. I must note that some fallacies are linguistic fallacies; if we are not careful in our use and analysis of language, we may easily be misled.) Even then, however, I hope that I would criticize a person's thought rather than the person himself; and I hope that I would criticize the particular instance of thought that was mistaken rather than the person's thinking processes in general.

At any rate, I hope that it is clear that we can respect believers as persons, simply because they are aware, self-aware, thinking, feeling, experiencing entities, while failing to respect unmeritorious beliefs, and that we can disparage beliefs without disparaging persons. We respect sincerity, genuineness, and the search for truth; but respecting persons does not mean that we must also respect beliefs we find absurd.

(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)

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