4. Questions about Religion and Possible Wittgensteinian Answers

 

Based on the analysis of On Certainty, I’ll try now to answer the questions I have posed earlier. I shall start with the most difficult one, because I think it implies the key to answering the other questions.

 

Are religious beliefs hinge beliefs?

 

Wittgenstein’s hinge concept is an extremely plausible way of explaining the peculiarities of religious belief to non-believers and, possibly, those of the scientific world picture to religious believers. The hinge concept works for both worlds, that of the religious believer and that of the non-believer:

 

"Here I have arrived at a foundation of all my beliefs." "This position I will hold!" But isn't that, precisely, only because I am completely convinced of it? - What is 'being completely convinced' like? (OC 246)

 

It is not easy for a person with a scientific world-picture to understand how another person can believe in miracles, divine providence, resurrection, or other mythical narratives that are incomprehensible for her. On the other hand, how has the believer in a scientific world-picture satisfied herself about some remarkable but invisible phenomena of the scientific legacy, such as microbial diversity, the surprising effects of quantum physics, or the structure of the cosmos? Under normal circumstances, I would say, not at all, except in very small areas of personal competence.

 

What does a believer in the heliocentric system really know about it? She has learnt about it in school, has seen some pictures or models and, perhaps, some educational films. Under normal circumstances, she has never recalculated Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. She knows that her teachers, her parents and her peers have no doubts about the earth being part of a heliocentric system and that is enough to be “completely convinced of it”. It has become a hinge, like many other pieces of scientific “truth”.

 

What’s the difference to having been instructed about a religious belief? As Wittgenstein told us, “I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness” (OC 94). Most people have never tried to satisfy themselves of the correctness of the heliocentric system, and the same is true for their religious belief.

 

The arguments for the applicability of the concept of hinge beliefs to religious belief are striking. Using the current version of Moyal-Sharrock’s taxonomy of the properties of hinges, there are now eight of them (forthcoming: 3). To be a hinge, a belief must have the properties of being:

 

(1) nonepistemic: they are not known; not justified

 

(2) indubitable: doubt and mistake are logically meaningless as regards them

 

(3) foundational: they are the unfounded foundation of thought

 

(4) nonempirical: they are not conclusions derived from experience

 

(5) grammatical: they are rules of grammar

 

(6) nonpropositional: they are not propositions

 

(7) ineffable: they are, qua certainties, ineffable

 

(8) enacted: they can only show themselves in what we say and do.

 

It is difficult to find even one of the items in this taxonomy that would not be fulfilled by religious belief: To my knowledge, religious belief is nonepistemic in the sense of not being a matter of knowledge or justification. It is logically indubitable for believers in that the mythical narratives cannot be challenged by logical arguments. It is foundational in that it shapes the world-picture of the believers, though their conclusions are nonempirical, that is not derived from experience. It is grammatical within the specific religious language games, and nonpropositional because the dogmas cannot be tested to be true or false. It is ineffable^[1] in that religious belief cannot rationally be explained to non-believers and, most importantly, as Wittgenstein would certainly agree, enacted – true belief shows itself in the life of the believer.

 

Duncan Pritchard, though dismissing hinge beliefs as a valid anti-skeptical strategy (cf. 2000: 3), seems to agree with the view that hinge beliefs are pertinent to religious belief as much as for other fields of epistemology:

 

There is indeed nothing epistemologically unique about religious belief. It has to answer to empirical conditions just like any other discourse, and, in the most basic cases, it will be impossible to have reflectively-based knowledge that certain initial conditions have obtained. (2000: 8)

 

Wittgenstein, to my knowledge, did not address the question of religious belief being a hinge belief or not and we are left with pure guesswork in respect to this question. However, what he says in Culture and Value reveals many similarities to how we understand his hinge concept:

 

Christianity is not based on a historical truth, but presents us with a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not believe this report with the belief that is appropriate to a historical report, - but rather: believe, through thick & thin & you can do this only as the outcome of a life. Here you have a message! – don’t treat it as you would another historical message! Make a quite different place for it in your life. - There is no paradox about that! (CV: 37e).

 

Wittgenstein accentuates here a nonpropositional, nonepistemic, nonempirical reading of Christianity based on acting – isn’t that exactly what makes a hinge belief?

 

If we assume religious beliefs to be hinge beliefs, then the question arises how the world-picture created by them can coexist with the scientific world-picture which dominates today’s politics, economics and jurisdiction?

 

How can religious and secular world-pictures coexist?

 

In many aspects, scientific and religious world-pictures can perfectly coexist. To bring an example for a coexistence of world-pictures, I want to make a short digression to a field which is less emotionally burdened than religion: medicine.

 

Today, we have, at least in what we call the western world, a consensus about methods and standards of medicine. Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) requires standards of scientific research including reproducibility, plausibility, predictability, and falsification, among others. Symptoms are being reduced to causes, and cures are being tested in statistically relevant numbers of cases against placebo, if ever possible.

 

On the other hand, we see an alternative type of medicine flourishing, that claims to be holistic instead of reductive, shuns plausibility, reproducibility and predictability, as well as statistical methods of research: Homeopathy. In some countries, like India, medicine of this type is still a cornerstone of the official health care system. Even in Europe it seems to be gaining ground, particularly when chronic diseases are to be treated.

 

Without taking sides for one or the other method, I want to present this as a typical example of different world-pictures existing side by side, based on beliefs that are typical hinge beliefs in Wittgenstein’s sense. Both systems are successful to a certain degree, and they even coexist: there are doctors who are practicing both systems, others have undergone a conversion form one to the other system, and patients naturally accept to have their common cold cured with homeopathic and their broken leg with scientific medicine. Both systems work, more or less, as long as patients – and therapists – believe in them.

 

If coexistence of different world-pictures works in medicine, why not between secular and religious life? In fact, most religious world-pictures overlap with the current scientific world-picture at least to an extent that is required for making a living in a scientifically shaped setting. Even religious fundamentalists know that water is freezing at around zero degrees Celsius and take some protective measures for their cars and their water supply when temperatures approach zero degrees. And don’t philosophers defend their personal accounts of age-old philosophical controversies sometimes with quasi-religious fervor?

 

Realizing that one’s own world-picture is based on a large number of nonepistemic hinge beliefs opens the door for accepting the peculiarities of other world-pictures. A number of possible ranges of hinge beliefs that can be comprised by a person is being demonstrated in the following Diagram 1. For the purpose of simplicity, I have chosen three different groups of hinges, have given an example of each and have indicated the type of epistemic system they are part of. The bars symbolize the range of hinges a person can comprise. Think of the dark bars as signifying typical distributions and the white bars as conceivable extensions:

 

 

Diagram 1: Coexistence of different hinge beliefs

 

Obviously, overlapping world-pictures based on scientific and/or religious beliefs can coexist and Wittgenstein’s concept of hinge beliefs is a plausible explanation for this phenomenon.

 

How is a religious belief acquired?

 

Wittgenstein answers this question first for children, and then in a more general fashion. “The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief.” (OC 160)

 

How does a child achieve certainty about how to live and behave?

 

The child learns to believe a host of things. I. e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it. (OC 144)

 

One of the ways to acquire certainty is experience, either one’s own past experience or other people’s. There remains only the question which source is trustworthy enough to procure justified certainty? This is a matter of one’s experience with various sources:

 

If experience is the ground of our certainty, then naturally it is past experience. And it isn't for example just my experience, but other's people's, that I get knowledge from. Now one might say that it is experience again that leads us to give credence to others. But what experience makes me believe that the anatomy and physiology books don't contain what is false? Though it is true that this trust is backed up by my own experience. (OC 275)

 

Both paragraphs do not support a complete account of the hinge concept, but they are compatible with it. Religious and other believes are formed in the child by his or her being introduced to a world-picture, an integrated system of beliefs. In the following paragraphs, Wittgenstein provides some more details of the process of acquiring experience: “We believe, so to speak, that this great building exists, and then we see, now here, now there, one or another small corner of it.” (OC 276). "I can't help believing..." (OC 277) "I am comfortable that that is how things are." (OC 278)

 

Obviously, Wittgenstein is not speaking about empirical experience in a scientific sense here, but rather about the process of experiencing a form of life. Thereby he provides us with an important clue to the hinge concept: in the process of experiencing a form of life we select from the hinge beliefs offered to us those we need for our personal life. Many people can get along very well without much scientific know-how and, contrariwise, others can get along very well without any religious belief. As long as a pool of common hinges is being shared, there is no need for both groups to understand all of the specific hinge beliefs of the other group in all details. Under most circumstances they can get along very well on the basis of their shared hinges and regard the hinges they don’t share as personal attributes of the other person.

 

What exactly do the faithful believe, know, and feel certain of?

 

The subtle difference between “he knows” and “I know” is important in dealing with religious belief. As Wittgenstein observes: "What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it“ (OC 487). The believer thinks he knows, but epistemologically, religious belief is not knowledge, because the contents of the belief cannot be proved to be true. On the other hand, as a mental state, religious belief probably feels very much like knowledge:

 

My "mental state", the "knowing", gives me no guarantee of what will happen. But it consists in this, that I should not understand where a doubt could get a foothold nor where a further test was possible (OC 356).

 

If I can neither understand where a doubt could apply nor where a further test was possible, the feeling must come close to knowing, but it is just a feeling, not knowledge in the epistemological sense.

 

One says "I know" when one is ready to give compelling grounds. "I know" relates to a possibility of demonstrating the truth. Whether someone knows something can come to light, assuming that he is convinced of it. But if what he believes is of such a kind that the grounds that he can give are no surer than his assertion, then he cannot say that he knows what he believes. (OC 243)

 

Can a religious believer ever provide grounds for her belief that are surer than his assertion that the holy book she reveres is trustworthy as an epiphany? If not, she does not know – in an epistemological sense - what she believes.

 

Thus, religious belief is characterized by a mental state of conviction. The believer feels certain about his belief, regardless of the belief being true or false.

 

It would thus be possible to speak of a mental state of conviction, and that may be the same whether it is knowledge or false belief. (OC 42)

 

As we have seen, certainty has to do with knowing, but it is categorially different from it. Religious certainty is a subjective certainty, it has “subjective truth” (OC 179).

 

How does religious belief affect the conduct of one’s life?

 

Wittgenstein is known for a predominantly practical view of a religious life. As Brian R. Clack puts it, “Wittgenstein sees religion as a way of living, a way of acting, rather than a theoretical account of the world” (1999: 55).

 

We need to show that even if he never uses the words "I know...", his conduct exhibits the thing we are concerned with (OC 427).

 

Religious belief has to show in one’s conduct. As Wittgenstein says:

 

It appears to me as though a religious belief could only be (something like) passionately committing oneself to a system of coordinates. Hence although it's belief, it is really a way of living, or a way of judging life. (CV 73e)

 

This is the aspect of religion that Wittgenstein was most interested in – the impact a religious belief has on the acting of a person. His answers contribute to a better understanding of religious belief: if living under the rules of a religion is a passion, why should the believer then question the rationality of his belief? Do we scrutinize and constantly question other passions we have? No, we hardly ever do and in the same way the religious believer is– not epistemically, but morally – entitled to live up to her passion. If she believes passionately in a mythology that she shares with millions of other people, and acts accordingly, then that is not a question of epistemology, but a legitimate choice of a form of life.