Exit To Entrance

A Post for NCRcafe: Exit to Entrance
By Marie Schickel Rottschaefer
Vol. 2 No. 7 October 2008

The goal of these posts is to give a brief overview of developments that have relevance for us in the early 21st century, particularly in seeking solutions for pressing people and planet problems.

CONTEMPORARY FAITH METAMORPHOSIS: ANOTHER PARTIAL ANSWER
TO WHY THE CHANGE --- PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT

Beyond the historicity issue of the biblical research and specifically the idea of revelation being extinguished by the process of demythologization, let us look philosophically, explicitly epistemologically, at the circularity argument embedded in the idea of revelation. If you remember from an earlier New Search for Ultimate Reality (#7 2-28-07) we looked at what Thomas Sheehan had to say in his article “Revolution in the Church.” He looked at the circular argument entrapment from both a Catholic and Protestant perspective in accepting revelation as a given (i.e. a fact or event that is true or definite at the outset and that affects following or subsequent reasoning). The Catholic revelation argument seems to fail by begging the question i.e. the infallible interpreters of revelation must interpret revelation as constituting them to be infallible. Or, on the Protestant side, believers are dependent on their unerring personal experience of God’s revelation. The latter way shows that the same circularity of revelation and faith repeats itself: God’s revelation of himself is what brings faith into being; yet only from within faith can the believer know that there has been revelation and what has been revealed. Sheehan says that the rediscovery of the inescapability of this explanatory circle of revelation and faith seems to be bringing the Catholic Church to what can be called the end of Catholicism, meaning to the end of what it can say about God and the human condition.

*When we speak of a circular argument and begging the question (assuming a statement to be correct without evidence) we move into philosophy: logic and epistemology. Robert Audi in his book Belief Justification and Knowledge An Introduction to Epistemology (Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont California, 1988) analyzes philosophically the type of argument that Sheehan shows goes nowhere because it isn’t justifiable. Perhaps later we could move on from simply focusing on the idea of revelation, to what is involved when we speak of faith or belief, and then to what is justification and what is knowledge. All of these epistemological concepts are important in defining a post-axial age faith or belief system. Let us look at Audi and what he says about the circular argument.

I have a circular chain of beliefs, each based on the next. This presents a situation seeking a solution.
First, there is good reason to think that
(a) one belief is based on a second only if the second is at least in part causally[i.e. a cause and effect relationship] responsible for (one’s holding) the first. Audi uses the example: if I believe there is a wind, because of my believing that the leaves are rustling, then I believe that there is a wind, at least in part because I believe that the leaves are rustling.
Second, there is good reason to think that
(b) if one thing is in part causally responsible for a second and the second is in part causally responsible for a third, then the first is in part causally responsible for the third. But together these two points imply that
(c) in a circular chain of beliefs, each based on the next, every belief is in part causally responsible for, and thus a partial cause of, itself. That seems impossible.

His example becomes convoluted so it is important to tread carefully keeping track of the lowercase letters in parentheses and the numbers in parentheses by reviewing them as needed, even though Audi calls the circle “a simple case!”

Imagine a circle of three beliefs, each based on the next.

(1) I believe there is a wind. I believe this on the basis of
(2) my believing there is a rustling; I believe that there is a rustling, on the basis of
(3) my believing I have an impression of rustling; and I believe that I have this impression, on the basis of believing there is a wind.
This case would be a CIRCULAR CAUSAL CHAIN, one whose last link is connected to its first in the same way each is connected to its successor.

For given point (a) [i.e. one belief is based on a second only if the second is at least in part causally responsible for (one’s holding) the first]

belief (1) [i.e. I believe there is a wind] is in part causally responsible for

belief (3) [i.e. my believing I have an impression of rustling; and I believe that I have this impression, on the basis of believing there is a wind]

and, given point (b) [i.e. if one thing is in part causally responsible for a second and the second is in part causally responsible for a third, then the first is in part causally responsible for the third], (3) is in part causally responsible for (1).

This implies however, (according to Audi), given (b), that (1) is in part causally responsible for itself! That is apparently impossible. The belief would be (in part) pulling itself up by its bootstraps. If such circular causal chains are not possible, then there cannot be a circular chain of beliefs each based on the next; for the latter kind of chain implies the former, on our highly plausible assumptions, (a) through (c).

Audi states, we have not assumed that the imagined chain implies that some belief must be BASED on itself, only that such chains imply a belief’s being in part CAUSALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ITSELF; the basis relation implies more than a causal connection.

Thus, we have one more reason, a philosophical one, for our contemporary faith metamorphosis, -- the inescapability of the explanatory circle of revelation and faith.