Conviction & Certainty (Draft)

This little "meditation" puts together some of the ideas from recent posts. Either the end is silly, or it manages to function as a "reminder" (which is an idea I explore briefly within). As always, comments appreciated.

Up next (I think): "The Courage of Conviction."

Conviction & Certainty

It might be said that...to have a conviction is to be subjectively certain—to feel with great confidence that one’s beliefs, values, and aims are correct. Imagine, for example, a theist who admitted that she is not certain that God exists but believes in God nevertheless. We could take her to mean that she has no sufficient evidence or proof for God’s existence, but rather believes it on faith. And we might then suggest that to believe something on faith is to be subjectively certain about it—to feel with great confidence that this belief is correct or true. But this will not do. People struggle with their faith, question it, seek to better understand it—and also struggle to bring their lives and other beliefs into conformity with their faith (or convictions).

If I take something on faith, then I resolve myself to accept it, to go along with it, to let it shape me and to shape my actions around it. In none of this is a requirement that I feel certain that what I am committing myself to is correct (or true). It is possible that I have reservations about going forward. I might have doubts, but my doubts about turning back might be even greater, and I might find myself forced by my situation either to press forward or retreat. To press forward in faith, or with conviction, is to devote myself to that path—to give myself to it. Perhaps I can withdraw later if things aren’t working out. But if I continue to think that, then I am not living with faith or conviction. It is not a lack of certainty that destroys conviction, but rather a lack of devotion.

A person might show such conviction—and devotion—in a relationship such as a marriage. A person might not know, let alone feel certain, that his spouse is his soul mate. One might not put much stock in such fine phrases. At the same time, one can be committed to his or her matrimonial vows, committed to cultivating a relationship in which continued love is possible. Such a commitment is not a prediction of what will happen, that the marriage will not fall apart (or at least that if it does, this person won’t be the one responsible for it). Thus, such a person—without showing any lack of conviction with regard to the depth of his devotion—could say, “I am not certain that things will work out between us.” This is not, of course, the sort of thing to be said on one’s wedding day. It could, however, be said in full seriousness—to a friend, perhaps—during a serious marital disagreement. “Do you believe that things will work out?” “I don’t know.” Such a confession of ignorance and uncertainty has nothing to do with whether one is still devoted to the marriage. Being committed to making it work out—to the extent that this is in one’s control—is not the same thing as being committed to the proposition that it will work out. Of course, if one has no hope that it will work out, then there would be little point in being committed to making it work. Thus, there is a connection between conviction and devotion, and between devotion and hope. If certainty has any role to play here, it is simply that one must not feel subjectively certain that the relationship is hopeless. When that is gone, then one had better get a priest or a lawyer.

(I wrote this before actually looking back over p. 168ff in Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, to which Tommi had quite helpfully referred me. There's definitely some overlap here with Williams, and I imagine I will take up some of what Williams says around p. 169 about conviction being somehow "inescapable" soon, though some of what I said here is a start on that. For what it's worth, I take a similar, though I don't think as well-articulated, position on conviction and subjective certainty around the second page of my forthcoming paper "Moral Conviction.")

Reflection

(A snippet from some further reflections...am I being fair enough to Williams? Update: Read the next post above.)

Conviction and reflection might seem to be awkward partners, their relationship constantly strained. Although Socrates claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living, Bernard Williams suggested that “reflection can destroy knowledge” by undermining the foundations upon which one’s convictions stand. I have always thought that Williams must be wrong—or at least that he only wins the point by abusing language. Reflection can undermine convictions, for it can uncover bad reasoning, hidden motives, ignorance, and blind spots in one’s sensibility. If that is what reflection destroys, then I would not say that it destroys knowledge but rather the semblance of knowledge.

If reflection destroys a conviction, then it was either a bad conviction or a bad act of reflection. Where reflection destroys a bad conviction there is no loss in its destruction. On the other hand, if one were to destroy a worthy conviction because one had engaged in poor reasoning and reflection, then a real loss has occurred. Perhaps for this reason those who were never taught how to reflect—how to navigate the maze of philosophical questioning without losing their patience or their way—are better off not reflecting. But equally, perhaps those who are better off not reflecting are also better off not having any convictions.

Even better: perhaps one who is inclined toward some conviction should learn how to reflect, so that she can better know what it is she has, and neither destroy what is truly precious nor become accustomed to living with fool’s gold. And the first thing one should learn is that true reflection does not destroy knowledge, but rather unsettles comfortable and merely convenient illusions.

Conviction & Desire

Here is the continuation of the line of thought started in the post "I Must..." (I'm including it as a pdf because I thought it was a bit long for a blog post.) There's a lot of work yet to do here; this is just a start to what I hope to be a series of thoughts/meditations/reflections of this sort, which will ultimately connect with some of the other work (about courage and humility and patience, etc.) I've been doing and posting about here.

Thoughts appreciated. I'm sort of going out on a limb here, and hopefully I won't fall off.

Dying & Killing

Michael Cholbi over at In Socrates' Wake quoted some lines by a recent reviewer of Rhodes Scholar applications, complaining about the intellectual shortcomings of recent applications, evidence that students are falling short when it comes to critical and philosophical thinking (or articulation). Given my recent trains of thought, this part stood out to me:

A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn't seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for.

This is perhaps connected to the kind of intuition/judgment Duncan's students at VMI were having/making about killing civilians. Without thinking clearly about the distinction between what is worth dying for and what is worth killing for--or without seeing that these can come apart--we get all too quickly to this chilling moment in Malcolm X's notorious speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet":

If you don't take this kind of stand [viz: of fighting back in self-defense], your little children will grow up and look at you and think "shame." If you don't take an uncompromising stand, I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And that's the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality.

Is it? Or was that part of the speech part of the temporary insanity?

Must We Always Stand By Our Convictions?

Just a short note: I've made some substantive revisions, particularly to the end, of Must We Always Stand by Our Convictions? (The revised document is on Scribd, too, and should show up on the original post below.)

Standing by One's Convictions

Here's a draft of another part of my summer project on conviction and integrity. This piece actually precedes, "Must We Always Stand by Our Convictions?"

Again, comments appreciated!

(I anticipate working one last part of the overall project into a smaller paper, concerning something I've already discussed here about what kind of virtue integrity is.)

Don't Think Too Hard (?)

Convictions, I claim, are important and valuable for the living of an integrated, self-directed, and morally good life. But some convictions, of course, as well as some ways of acting on one's convictions, are horrendous. The short of the issue is: how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? It would seem that reflection plays some important role here. In my paper on this (now undergoing revision right on this point), I suggest that, among other things, we must be willing to take a "reflective stance" on our convictions. There are, however, some serious questions to be raised about this: How much should we reflect? Should we reflect on all of our convictions? I'm currently trying to refine what to say about the role of reflection to avoid certain possible problems.

The first worry is, as Bernard Williams put it, "reflection can destroy knowledge." The problem is that reflection might lead us to doubt an entire framework within which we had (what seemed like) knowledge. But Williams' point is more severe than that reflection can destroy appearances. (In some cases, that might be a good thing!) Rather, Williams suggests that if we allow that a person who has a set of value (or virtue) concepts which she can correctly identify when they are displayed by others (or in the world), and thus can correctly apply her concepts, then she has a certain kind of knowledge. (She knows when things satisfy the value-concepts she embraces.) But if she reflects on those concepts and comes to doubt their objectivity (say), then that knowledge becomes tainted: what she does with her concepts comes to look like one game among many. Her knowledge has been destroyed.

Mill became aware of a similar problem during his mental crisis. He questioned all of his commitments and found that his belief in them was easily weakened by his intrusive self-doubts. Upon recovery, Mill had this to say about reflection (and happiness):

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, ot putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. (emphasis added)

So, it seems, don't think too hard! I've always had doubts about this negative view of reflection, even though it is true that we can raise doubts about our own lives that are extremely hard to answer.

A different worry about the reflective requirement is that it doesn't (or shouldn't) apply equally to all of our convictions. Should I really reflect on whether slavery is wrong? Do I need to examine that?

I tempted to say that it depends on what we mean by reflection here. It seems right that I shouldn't doubt my conviction that slavery is (absolutely) wrong. But that doesn't rule out there being a point to reflecting upon why. Of course, the problem here is that at some point, we reach moral convictions that are bedrock, and the "why" question no longer has an answer. But if that's because the why question no longer makes sense, then I don't think reflection is destroying anything. Reflection might show us that the bedrock lies much deeper below the surface than we thought--that many of our convictions involve taking much for granted. Optimistically, reflection can help us better understand the structure (and relations between) our beliefs. (And here, I don't want to rule out that reflection can be informed by outside sources, e.g. by findings in moral psychology, etc. I can (and sometimes should!) bring empirical data to the armchair!) A related worry has to do with confirmation bias: that reflection is just going to give me whatever answer I want. However, this is a place where knowing the risks (and flaws) of reflection can make reflection better, even if not perfect. (We can't demand perfection.)

The last worry is that too much reflection will lead to inaction. We don't want to end up starving like Buridan's Ass. But sometimes a moment of "reflective paralysis" is a good thing: it stops us from doing something foolish, or dreadful. Equally important as reflecting on our convictions themselves is reflecting upon what we are prepared to do in the service of our convictions. (See, e.g., this previous post on tolerance.) This is another place where reflection might uproot other assumptions/convictions. (For example, my conviction that X is wrong is a different animal from my views about what should be done about people who do X.) Surely it's not a bad thing to reflect upon what we're prepared to do in the service of our convictions, and to consider whether that itself can be justified. (Or on the other hand, whether we're really not living up to our convictions...)

The Paradox of Conviction

Here's a puzzle I've been thinking about (with qualifiers, especially about the rife usage of the term reasonable below):

1. Most of us are, more or less, reasonable.
2. Most of us have some convictions about controversial issues (and reasonable people have conflicting convictions; hence, the controversy).
3. When our beliefs conflict with the beliefs of other (equally) reasonable people we should weaken our confidence in our own belief (tantamount to withdrawing our conviction, possibly adopting an agnostic stance on the issue).
4. Thus, it would seem that reasonable people should not have convictions (about controversial issues).
5. But reasonable people do have such convictions.
6. Thus, reasonable people are not reasonable!

Qualifiers:
A. By reasonable, I mean susceptible to evidence, disinclined to take radical skepticism seriously (or a pragmatic reason for disbelief), not inclined to the preposterous view that we are infallible (or even less fallible than our peers), etc.
B. I limit "controversial issues" to disagreements between reasonable persons. So, whether the Holocaust occurred is not a controversial issue.

Thoughts:
- Maybe 1 is false? Let's hope not! (If we aren't, to some degree, reasonable, how will we get out of this mess?)
- I'm inclined to think there is something wrong with 3, even though it looks...reasonable. But denying 3 seems tricky. One possibility is that not all reasonable people are "epistemic peers"--that is, our background beliefs might be sufficiently different to give us each independent justification for holding the particular convictions we have. Nevertheless, if I have to assume that your background beliefs are just as prima facie reasonable as mine, then when confronted with a genuine, persisting controversy, I seem to have some reason to weaken my belief.

The puzzle, in part, has to do with a way I'm proposing we understand the notion of a conviction: we have convictions precisely about those things that are controversial in the sense above. If an issue is not controversial, then it does not, on my account, count as a "matter of conviction." (It's not my conviction that the Holocaust occurred, or that slavery is wrong...but I do, of course, believe these things and am completely convinced of them.) (NB: Convictions in my sense are not "blind": the person of conviction has reasons for her beliefs.)

So the puzzle is that it looks like it is never reasonable to have convictions on the very issues on which it is possible to believe with conviction (i.e. controversial issues). So, either we're not being reasonable in having convictions or, roughly, 3 above must go. (Or maybe my working account of conviction is the trouble-maker here?) To be continued...