From the APA: is faith a virtue?

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine that a bunch of philosophers have to ask the question at all, the answer for me is obviously no. But ok, let’s see what happens here. We have two speakers: Robert Audi (Notre Dame) on “Faith, faithfulness and virtue” and John Schellenberg (Mount Saint Vincent, Halifax-Canada) on “How to make faith a virtue.” (Interestingly, both speakers come from Catholic Universities — coincidence?)

Audi distinguishes between blind and non-blind faith, and between religious and secular faith (the latter being “faith” in your family, country, democracy, etc.). Right off the bat we are into silly territory: first, I find the whole idea of non-blind faith nonsensical, if it ain’t blind then there are reasons for the belief, which means it’s not faith. As for “faith” in family, country, institutions, etc., if it is blind, it is just as irrational and dangerous as the religious variety, and if it is not blind, then see above (it should be called trust, or belief, etc.).

Audi sees faithfulness — not surprisingly — as a virtue (I’d call it a vice). For him, however, faith is different from, say, justice, in the sense that the latter tends to be directed toward all others (when we are being just, we are not just only with regard to some people), while faith is typically directed to a subset of subjects (you are faithful to your family, or country, or god, but not other families, countries, or gods).

He then finally moves to the real issue: Christian faith (ah, I thought so!). He claims that this sort of faith implies having moral virtues, it is a virtue of character. His big example is Christians (ideally, as we know) treating others as ends in themselves (as Kant would have put it), rather than as means to other ends. Right, but since we can easily get there following an entirely secular route (as Kant himself showed), then why do we need the Christian mumbo-jumbo about god, the trinity, original sin, and so on and so forth?

Audi says that we can be faithful to someone we do not have faith in. This is certainly empirically true, but should we? If my partner betrays my trust in some major way, should I keep unwavering faith in her, or would it be both more rational and more just to question my trust in her? But of course if I question my trust, it automatically means that I did not have faith to begin with, but rather a conditional form of belief. Frankly, I see the latter as the only reasonable, and in fact ethical, relationship to other humans (at least adults, the case is more complicated for children given their temporary immaturity of character).

Time to move to Schellenberg’s talk on how to make faith a virtue (good luck). He says that virtue, rather by definition, is something that is admirable or desirable for a person to have (indeed, which is why I don’t think faith fits the bill). He wants to propose that “nondoxastic” faith, i.e. faith-that without belief-that, is a virtue. Oh boy.

The possibility of nondoxastic faith is exemplified by a woman who found herself in a potentially life-threatening situation while hiking on ice. She “had faith” that she would make it, despite her (alleged) lack of belief that she would actually make it. Bad example for a large number of reasons. First off, how do we know that she didn’t believe in the possibility of making it? Just on the basis of subjective self-report? Second, perhaps she had a very low level of belief, since beliefs don’t often come in yes/no versions, but that low level was enough to motivate her to try. Third, regardless of issues of faith, it was simply the rational thing to do for her to try to get out of danger anyway, even if her chances were close to zero, for she would have certainly died otherwise. Fourth, one could easily construe an example where irrational faith (I know, redundant) is actually positively harmful to an individual’s physical or psychological health.

Here are the author’s examples of the good that nondoxastic faith can do in a secular world: faith in the possibility of knowledge in the face of radical skepticism; faith in personal worth to overcome addiction or depression; socially, in pursuing friendship and cooperation; and morally, to reject the idea that there are no moral absolutes.

These seem to me all perfect examples of instances where one does not need faith, but reason: I don’t have faith in the possibility of knowledge, I have good evidence that human knowledge can improve over time (though it certainly isn’t boundless); addiction and depression are complex problems that depend on a combination of external circumstances and internal biochemical imbalances, and it seems to me that reason is a better guidance for addressing both constructively (to the point that it is possible) rather than “faith”; I think I have better ways than faith to see the cooperation of my fellow human beings and to establish friendship, since I happen to know enough about human needs and frailties to be able to navigate the human social universe qua human; finally, there are in fact no moral absolutes, dude, but that doesn’t imply that moral relativism is the only game in town — again, we get ourselves out of this particular ditch by the power of reason.

Finally, Schellenberg comes to nondoxastic faith in the religious dimension. Here is where his thoughts become seriously confused. The author seems to argue that religious faith can help us reject both “pure skepticism” and “naturalism” (i.e., a science-informed philosophy). But while I can see the (pragmatic, not substantial) rejection of skepticism as inevitable if we want to have a life, it seems to me that rejection of naturalism (presumably in favor of supernaturalism) is a really bad move, essentially the very same bad move that has been made by a large part of humanity over and over in the course of centuries, and which has caused much suffering and a large waste of human resources.

It is not by chance, I think, that Schellenberg toward the end mentioned one of the most irritating concepts in modern philosophy: William James’ “will to believe,” the last refuge of the rationally-challenged believer. It has always seemed to me to be a perfect example of taking the blue pill (in the now famous metaphor out of The Matrix), a choice that I find both unethical and highly dangerous.