Epistemological Relativism

“Christian tradition cannot be obeyed blindly, but it also can’t just be dismissed by the work of a few enlightened theologians working during the span of a few recent decades.”

Although not related to the real argument presented in a post here I think this quote is illustrative of a common problem many of us face. By many of us I really mean all of us, whether Christian or otherwise. We have this tendency to quickly discard old ways of thinking for new ones. We tend to think that we are more enlightened. While I think we have access to improved methods and artifacts, we are still humans within a temporal context. Within that context comes all of the same baggage (in different dress) that those of ages gone were faced with. Perhaps we are more “advanced” because we realize we have this sort of contextual baggage. This realization is by no means the definitive way of arriving at a more accurate view of world in which we live. I’m not saying new ideas should then be discarded in favor of the old. Instead, as always, we must be cautious of both.

What is funny is that this is on the first page of the introduction to his systematic theology text. There is much I could say, but I’ll be silent and let Tillich say it for me. Wait, one thing. Although I agree with most of this statement, there is some of Tillich’s existentialism that I don’t. The important point here is that even if, in my opinion, he gets that wrong (the existentialist ideas) that doesn’t somehow disqualify his other ideas. Many times (most?) when we are confronted with an author’s or speaker’s ideas that we disagree with we immediately tune out the rest of their arguments. Okay, enough of that, I’m drifting way off topic.

“Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundation and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.”

“Most of them either sacrifice elements of the truth or are not able to speak to the situation. Some of them combine both shortcomings. Afraid of missing the eternal truth, they identify it with some previous theological work, with traditional concepts and solutions, and try to impose these on a new, different situation. They confuse eternal truth with a temporal expression of this truth.”

“When fundamentalism is combined with an antitheological bias, as it is, for instance, in its biblicistic-evangelical form, the theological truth of yesterday is defended as an unchangeable message against the theological truth of today and tomorrow. Fundamentalism fails to make contact with the present situation, not because it speaks from beyond every situation, but because it speaks from a situation of the past. It elevates something finite and transitory to infinite and eternal validity…It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to supress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware.”

After reading the first thirty pages of “The Structure of Empirical Knowledge” by Laurence Bonjour I can say that I’m looking forward to listening to the author discuss the challenges that affect theories of epistemic justification. Epistemic justification is nothing more than the reasons (and the criteria which constitute valid reasons) which we possess for thinking that our beliefs are true. The simplicity misleads as Bonjour makes clear. As early as chapter one he attempts to define knowledge, justification, what a theory of justification should include and the challenges associated with each.

Bonjour uses the classic definition for determining what should “constitute a genuine instance of propositional knowledge”. He touches on the Gettier problem but insists that this definition is close enough. The definition looks like this:

(1) A must believe confidently that P,

(2) P must be true, and

(3) A’s belief that P must be adequately justified.

If you meet these three criteria then you are in possession of knowledge. Notice I didn’t say “true knowledge” as that is superfluous. When we say knowledge with this test in mind and we say that we are in possession of it, we know that it passed test number (2) and is therefore true.

(1) and (2) are somewhat straightforward, but in the back of everyone’s mind there is something curious about (3). We may ask, “What does adequately justified mean?”. Bonjour doesn’t waste time in answering by stating that (3) is “clearly the central concept in the whole theory of knowledge”. He attempts to define what epistemic justification is and how it is different from other types of justification. He answers the question by reflecting on why justification is sought and valued.

“What makes us cognitive beings at all is our capacity for belief, and the goal of our distinctively cognitive endeavors is truth: we want our beliefs to correctly and accurately depict the world.”

Too bad we don’t have immediate and precise access to this truth. Justification, says Bonjour, is

“..that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable mediating link between our subjective starting point and our objective goal.”

Justification provides us with good reasons for thinking we possess knowledge. And that, according to Bonjour, is what this is all about.

“The distinguishing characteristic of epistemic justification is this its essential or internal relation to the cognitive goal of truth. It follows that one’s cognitive endeavors are epistemically justified only if and to the extent that they are aimed at this goal, which means very roughly that one accepts all and only those beliefs which one has good reason to think are true.”

We want to have an accurate view of the world, but sometimes we fall victim to irresponsibility.

“To accept a belief in the absence of such a reason, however appealing or even mandatory such acceptance might be from some other standpoint, is to neglect the pursuit of truth; such acceptance is, one might say, epistemically irresponsible.”

The challenge remains, however, to come up with a criteria that produces epistemic justification. There’s more though. Our criteria must be shown to be “adequately truth-conducive”. In other words, we can’t just pick any criteria that suits us. We have to pick one that passes yet another test. This Bonjour calls “metajustification“. So, we need a criteria and reasons why our chosen criteria is the most truth-conducive. The rest of the text is devoted to these two considerations.

I thought I’d share the glyphs that I use to markup the books that I read. Once you get over the initial reaction of writing in your books (which took me a while) it really is quite useful. If you create enough meaningful glyphs flipping through a previously read book gives you immediate access to quotes, important/interesting points and main arguments. Prior to this I had a little notebook that I’d jot down page numbers or other bits of information. This was quite cumbersome. Nevermind the fact that you had to make sure you didn’t lost your notebooks. I use a mechanical pencil or some other erasable medium. I’m sure some people out there want to start reading more books or something like that this year and this may help the process a bit. In order from top to bottom: good or interesting point, main argument, quote, emphasis, questionable or confused, funny and sad. You can use these in any combination to get the desired effect. I think these are lean enough that you don’t have to learn another language and yet meaningful enough to capture your reaction to the books you read. Enjoy.