Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality [1 ed.] 9780813215839, 9780813213644
An original contribution to Newman studies, the book has an interdisciplinary focus, drawing from recent work in social
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Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Informed Judgment
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
q
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Informed Judgment Newman’s Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality
Frederick D.Aquino
q
The Catholic University of America Press
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Washington, D.C.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
.–. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aquino, Frederick D., – Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman’s illative sense and accounts of rationality / Frederick D.Aquino. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. -- (alk. paper) . Faith and reason.
. Knowledge, Sociology of.
John Henry, –.
. Newman,
I.Title.
. .—dc
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
For William Abraham Valued mentor, teacher, and friend who embodies the qualities of informed judgment
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
q
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Contents
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Acknowledgments
. Re-reading Newman
. University Sermons:A Preliminary Investigation
. Cultivating Personal Judgment: A Methodological Dilemma
. A Social Epistemology of Informed Judgment
. Shaping Communities of Theological Judgment Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
ix
References Index
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
q
Completion of a book involves the cooperation, guidance, and support of many people. First of all, I am sincerely indebted to Professor William Abraham, to whom I dedicate this book. As a mentor, teacher, and friend,William embodies the qualities of informed judgment described in the book. I have always felt inspired after consulting with him. For its collegial and financial support, I thank the faculty and administrators of the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. I appreciate the support of Jack Reese, Dean of the College of Biblical Studies, James Thompson,Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Theology, Ken Cukrowski, Associate Dean of the College of Biblical Studies, and Charles Siburt, Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program. All four have regarded the book as a top priority and found ways to ensure its completion. I thank my graduate assistants, Jennifer Jeanine Thweatt-Bates and Jason Bridges, as well, for their assistance in finalizing the text. Both offered invaluable editorial insights. I am also grateful to the Ven. John Henry Newman Association for furnishing a context in which to share my research.The Association has provided a wonderful context for staying on course and for exchanging ideas. I appreciate the advice, encouragement, and friendship of Professor John T. Ford of The Catholic University of America and Dr. Edward J. Enright of Villanova University. Both offered critical and helpful feedback on the manuscript. ix
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
x
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
In addition, I thank Dr. James Thompson (editor of Restoration Quarterly) and Dom Dunstan O’Keeffe (editor of Downside Review) for permission to use revised sections of two previously published articles. Chapter is a slightly expanded version of “A Theology of Informed Judgment,” Restoration Quarterly (): –. Portions of the book, in a significantly shorter version, also appear in “Modalities of Reasoning: The Significance of John Henry Newman’s Thought for Shaping Accounts of Rationality,” Downside Review (): –. Susan Needham and Carol Kennedy have been thorough, critical, and constructive editors.They have read the entire manuscript, commenting, questioning, and suggesting ways in which to weave ideas and preserve the economy of expression. The book is improved because of their remarks. Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my wife, Michelle, my son, David, and my daughter, Elizabeth (who joined the Aquino family during the last stage of this book), for their patience, support, and love, without which I could not have completed this book.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Informed Judgment
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
q
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
[]
Re-reading Newman
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Under what conditions is it appropriate to think of Christian belief as rationally acceptable? Recent scholarly developments furnish new resources for tackling this important question. Such efforts do not suggest dissatisfaction with the process of human rational reflection itself, but they reveal a growing dissatisfaction with scholarly treatments of the nature and scope of human cognition. There has been a tendency, for example, to think of Christian belief either as based on canons of strictly deductive and inductive logic or as based on faith.1 Recent accounts of rationality, however, expand options for understanding the process of belief-formation. The aim is to carve out broader and more refined accounts of rationality that reflect the actual conditions under which Christians form and sustain beliefs.2 . For further discussion, see William J. Abraham, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, ), –; and Michael Peterson, et al., Reason and Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. . E.g., Randall Basinger, “Faith/Reason Typologies: A Constructive Proposal,” Christian Scholar’s Review (): –;William J.Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ); and Mikael Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life: A Critical Evaluation of Four Models of Rationality (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ). Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , argues that two conceptions of rationality have dominated scholarly discussion for some time: () a criterial
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
New accounts of rationality consider various factors that shape the process of belief-formation. Some accounts, for instance, explore the role of non-rule-governed judgments in forming, evaluating, and sustaining beliefs.As Harold Brown points out,“a growing number of philosophers, including philosophers of science, have been slowly coming to the conclusion that we can not make sense of human knowledge without recognizing the role that judgement plays at key epistemic junctures.”3 The focus on judgment recognizes that rule-governed procedures of reasoning, though important, do not capture fully the nature and scope of human cognition. Rational assessment of beliefs requires acquisition of knowledge and skills in different domains of knowledge. In practicing good cognitive habits, people of informed judgment learn how to detect key clues for evaluating evidence in concrete situations. Part of the task involves understanding the social context in which people refine cognitive skills and cultivate informed judgment about particulars. Focus on the social dimension of reasoning recognizes both the domain-specificity of human cognition and the impact of environment on cognitive development. Reducing human cognition to what goes on in the head fails to account for conception of rationality—institutionalized norms that determine whether beliefs are rationally acceptable (e.g., logical positivism)—and () a non-criterial conception of rationality— different cultures and historic epochs produce different paradigms of rationality (e.g., relativism). Putnam, however, argues that several considerations play a role in determining whether a belief is rationally acceptable (e.g., relevance, adequacy, and the role of values in assessing beliefs). In essence, Putnam is arguing that we need to rethink standards of rationality, using broader terms than we have in the past. . Harold I. Brown, Rationality (London: Routledge, ), . For further discussion, see J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality: Toward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ); Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life,William G. Lycan, Judgement and Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ); Louis P. Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ); and Putnam, Reason,Truth, and History.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Re-reading Newman
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social conditions under which people form and sustain beliefs.4 Cognitive development requires distribution of labor, not simply the activity of a brain isolated from the influence of other cognitive agents. It depends on the human capacity “to diffuse achieved knowledge and practical wisdom through complex social structures, and to reduce the loads on individual brains by locating those brains in complex webs of linguistic, social, political, and institutional constraints.”5 By calling into question the notion of disembodied cognition, emphasis on the social nature of reasoning explores the process by which cognitive agents shape maturation of reasoning within real-world environments. People learn to reason under the tutelage of exemplars of cognitive excellence; they hone cognitive capacities in order to reason proficiently in a domain of knowledge. Proficiency in reasoning, therefore, stems from induction into a community with vibrant practices, nurtured by exemplars of skillful judgment. In An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman makes a similar point in discussing the nature, function, and scope of the illative sense. His proposal shows a strong preference for an . Donald A. Norman, Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine (Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley, ), . Norman adds that “many of the important parts of life go on outside of the head, in our interactions with the world, in our interactions with each other. Just as an important part of science is the value system that keeps the scientist motivated for years on end pursuing what might turn out to be a fruitless search in a promising but eventually inappropriate direction, many of the important parts of human activity come about through our social interactions and shared knowledge and beliefs, not just the activity within the individual head.” For further discussion on the connection between cognition and environment, see Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (Cambridge: MIT Press, ); Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M.Todd, and The ABC Research Group, Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten, eds., Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (Cambridge: MIT Press, ); F. Varela, E. Thompson, and E. Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge: MIT Press, ); and Michael Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). . Clark, Being There, .
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Re-reading Newman
empirical study of human cognition; a real-world environment is the context from which we evaluate cognitive performance and determine whether beliefs are rationally acceptable.The stress here is compatible with the focus on the concrete nature of human cognition. Accounts of human cognition consider constraints under which people reason within everyday events (e.g., limited time and knowledge). Consequently, cognitive success depends on the capacity to employ information effectively within real-world environments. Securing reliable channels of informed judgment plays an indispensable role in achieving epistemic goals and in refining cognitive performance.
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Rethinking Judgment Newman’s notion of the illative sense paves the way for the construction of a fresh account of the rationality of Christian belief. It attempts to “steer a middle path between reducing religion to a matter of emotion or sentiment and reducing argumentation to a formal logical or deductive reasoning.”6 Newman’s project focuses on the informal and tacit dimension of reasoning, shaped by experience and personal insight. In dealing with the rationality of Christian belief, most accounts of rationality have focused their attention on determining whether a certain proposition yields rationally acceptable beliefs. Some accounts, however, have recently explored how a community context facilitates development of intellectual virtues and how these qualities contribute to the process of forming and sustaining beliefs.7 Newman understands such ac. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Systematic Theology: Task and Methods,” in Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, vol. , ed. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, ), . . E.g., Guy Axtell, ed., Knowledge, Belief, and Character: Readings in Contemporary Virtue (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, );William J.Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, ); Linda T. Zagzebski, Virtues of the
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
tivity as the cultivation of personal judgment, which requires mastery of a concrete field of knowledge and enhancement of cognitive skills. He challenges the claim that beliefs are rationally acceptable if and only if demonstrative proof is forthcoming. Evidence can be seen from various perspectives; antecedent assumptions, training, experience, and moral disposition influence evaluation of evidence. In addition, belief-formation is a cumulative process of investigation: Christians form, evaluate, and sustain beliefs by accumulating different material (e.g., testimony, tradition, experience, and Scripture).The illative sense sifts, evaluates, and integrates various pieces of evidence into a synthetic judgment and furnishes concrete answers to specific questions. The Grammar contains the most explicit formulation of the illative sense and gives considerable attention to how personal judgment shapes the process of belief-formation. As a complex beliefproducing process, the illative sense enables people to be certain about concrete matters without epistemic access to how the mind justifies knowledge. Explicit awareness of the grounds of belief is not a precondition for forming rationally acceptable beliefs. Though the illative sense connects various pieces of data, its manner of concluding does not follow strictly a rule-governed process of inquiry. In highlighting the domain-specificity of judgment, Newman Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, );Alvin Goldman,“Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology,” in Naturalizing Epistemology, nd ed., ed. Hilary Kornblith (Cambridge: MIT Press, ), –; Basil Mitchell, Faith and Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ); James A. Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ); Jonathan Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ); Ernest Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Laurence Bonjour and Ernest Sosa, Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues (Oxford: Blackwell, ); and Lorraine Code, Epistemic Responsibility (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brown University Press, ).
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Re-reading Newman
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
notes the difficulty of furnishing a common measure independent of cognitive practices. The personal nature of the illative sense of reasoning complicates the search for a common ground by which radically different communities can adjudicate truth claims. Though his proposal makes sense of intellectual differences, it fails to identify ways of moving beyond this methodological impasse.8 How, then, do communities test personal claims? How do they ensure skillful judgment of competing claims? This problem of common measure, however, has been viewed incorrectly. A solution to the problem presupposes that reflexive awareness of how the mind justifies knowledge is indispensable to belief-formation. The problem, however, cannot be solved by reference to a common measure independent of communal instantiations of the illative sense. People cannot assume a position independent of cognitive practices to determine the reliability of a . Basil Mitchell, “Newman as a Philosopher,” in Newman after a Hundred Years, ed. Ian T. Ker and Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), f., states the problem nicely: “Indeed it would be true to say that [Newman] had a sharper awareness of the problem it raises than any other philosopher up to the present day, with the possible exception of Wittgenstein.The question we are bound to ask is whether Newman is able to suggest a way of resolving the problem.The difficulty, evidently, is that the more persuasively we account for the fundamental disagreements about matters of importance that we actually encounter, in terms of antecedent assumptions, divergent traditions, and so on, the more impossible it seems to become to envisage any rational means of resolving the disagreements and reconciling the contending parties.The debate is commonly conceived to lie between those who claim that there are basic principles of rationality common to all the disputants and who are, therefore, hard put to it to account for the intensity of the experienced disagreements; and those who ascribe the latter to the coexistence of variant conceptual schemes which are ultimately incommensurable—and who are, therefore, unable to suggest how the disagreements might be resolved.” My concern here, then, is with what most scholars describe as the problem of incommensurability. For further discussion, see Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ); Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ); Larry Laudan, Beyond Positivism and Relativism: Theory, Method, and Evidence (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ); Stan Stein, “Wittgenstein, Davidson, and the Myth of Incommensurability,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy (): –; and Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ).
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Re-reading Newman
belief-forming process.9 Thus, the problem of trusting a beliefforming process replaces the problem of common measure. Most deem beliefs to be rationally acceptable because a reliable beliefforming process produces them.The illative sense operates on the same level, transposing the problem of common measure into the problem of trusting a belief-forming process. It is reliable if and only if it is guided by good cognitive practices and by exemplars of informed judgment and so produces a preponderance of true beliefs over false ones.
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Developing a Social Epistemology of Informed Judgment Although the Grammar hints at the social dimension of the illative sense, a personal dimension predominates in Newman’s analysis. A fuller account of the social dimension of the illative sense is warranted. For this reason, I propose a social epistemology of informed judgment that merges Newman’s account of the illative sense with insights from recent work in social and virtue epistemology. The proposal retains Newman’s preference for the concrete nature of cognition, but it explores how the concomitant exercises of the illative sense by others, both within a communal setting and among other communities of informed judgment, enhance the personal dimension of the illative sense. Newman acknowledges that refinement of the illative sense of reasoning requires the company of informed people, that is, people who, by means of practice and experience, have acquired proficiency in a . Paul K. Moser, Dwayne H. Mulder, and J. D.Trout, The Theory of Knowledge:A Thematic Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, ), , point out that “unfortunately, we cannot assume a position independent of our own cognitive sources to deliver a test of their reliability of the sort demanded by skeptics.This, for better or worse, is the human cognitive predicament, and no one has yet shown how we can escape it.”
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
field of knowledge. Nevertheless, the Grammar lacks a fully developed discussion of social conditions under which people develop the illative sense. A social epistemology of informed judgment connects personal and communal dimensions of the illative sense. The beginning point for dealing with the problem of common measure lies in a proper understanding of how people form and sustain beliefs within a community context. However, this preliminary understanding does not imply the inability to adjudicate claims across different communities of informed judgment. Sensitivity to the process of forming and sustaining beliefs does not rule out the possibility of assessing whether people have good reasons for believing and behaving as they do in everyday affairs of life.10 Fruitful exchange with others demands informed judgment, which involves integration of at least four essential elements: praiseworthy dispositions, modalities of reasoning, evidence, and wisdom.Without these elements, the illative sense remains a personal matter and exacerbates the epistemic crisis described thus far. Philosophers of science have also discussed the concept of informed judgment.11 Though rule-governed procedures are important, a community of informed judgment ultimately governs the rationality of scientific investigation. Along these lines, Harold Brown develops a notion of informed judgment, retaining the . Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ), . . Gary Gutting, ed., Paradigms and Revolutions: Appraisals and Applications of Thomas Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ), , points out that Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions has had a powerful impact on how scientific communities understand the nature of scientific authority. Scientific authority, for Kuhn, “ultimately resides not in a rule-governed method of inquiry whereby scientific results are obtained but in the scientific community that obtained results.” Judgment is “ultimately determined by the carefully nurtured ability of members of the scientific community to assess rationally the overall significance of a wide variety of separately inconclusive lines of argument” ().
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
stress on scientific rationality as the best example of human cognition. Scientific communities, for example, are composed of people who, by means of adequate knowledge, training, and practice, have earned the right to make informed judgments in different areas of research. Brown, in effect, argues that “rational beliefs arise out of informed judgements that have been submitted to the community of competent individuals for evaluation and criticism.”12 Mikael Stenmark identifies the model of informed judgment as a form of social evidentialism. Beliefs are rationally acceptable if and only if they are formed by people of informed judgment and if and only if they have been “exposed to or tested against the judgments of a community of relevant expertise.”13 Stenmark, however, sees the proposal of informed judgment as an “idealized model” of cognition, since it fails to account for actual conditions under which most form beliefs. In equating judgment with expertise, the model violates an “axiom of reasonable demand,” that is, it “demands of the agent more than what that creature can reasonably be demanded to do.”14 Thus, Stenmark calls for a broader account of rationality that exhibits context-and-agent sensitivity. Standards of rationality cannot be formulated without considering the situation of cognitive agents.Within real-world environments, people reason under constraints of limited time and knowledge. Everyday believing offers a broader context from which to glean the nature and scope of rationality. It “is a paradigm case of rationality not in the sense that it is the best we humans can do, but in the sense that it is the most we do.”15 A social epistemology of informed judgment concurs with the focus on the contextual nature of human cognition, but it argues . Brown, Rationality, viii, see also . . Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life, . . Ibid., . . Ibid., .
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Re-reading Newman
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
that informed judgment has a stronger phenomenological basis than Stenmark’s comments suggest.A key element here is the phenomenon of epistemic dependence. On two levels, epistemic dependence solidifies the process by which most people form, evaluate, and sustain beliefs. On one level, some people form beliefs in everyday events without explicit awareness of the grounds for those beliefs. They rely on insights from people who, by training and practice, have earned the right to make informed judgment about particulars. On another level, epistemic dependence takes place in specialized areas of knowledge. Scholars trust that others, who possess specialized knowledge in different areas of research, are capable of supplying reliable assessments of evidence. Both levels are rationally acceptable ways of forming, sustaining, and evaluating beliefs; epistemic deference to recognized experts implies an acknowledgment of a person’s competence to furnish informed judgment about relevant issues. Maintaining confidence in the trustworthiness of others is reasonable unless we discover extenuating circumstances that call into question their reliability as sources of informed judgment.
Fusing Horizons Newman’s notion of personal judgment has not been fully articulated in scholarly literature. Some scholars have tackled the illative sense of reasoning in the Grammar, but few have offered constructive suggestions on how to move beyond the methodological problem of common measure. My proposal agrees with Newman’s emphasis on the concrete nature of reasoning, but my constructive move involves connecting the personal and social dimensions of the illative sense. It uncovers and develops Newman’s epistemic hints, as stated in the Grammar, on the social dimension of the illative sense, paving a way for rethinking a time-honored
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
problem of the rationality of Christian belief. In my estimation, recent work in social and virtue epistemology furnishes crucial insights for understanding conditions under which Christian belief is considered rationally acceptable. A social epistemology of informed judgment, therefore, contributes to rethinking an important question of theological prolegomena: Under what conditions is it appropriate to consider Christian belief as rationally acceptable? The value of my proposal lies in setting forth the groundwork for theological reflection on the nature and function of the illative sense within theological communities. Chapter , for example, offers brief suggestions on how a social epistemology of informed judgment enhances theological judgment within Christian communities. It addresses two topics. The first topic is a discussion of the communal context in which people form theological judgments and participate in the distribution of theological labor. The second topic is an exploration of the relevance of a social epistemology of informed judgment for contemporary theology. It makes a brief foray into contemporary theology and shows what a social epistemology of informed judgment means in this arena. Both enriching theological judgment and scanning the terrain of contemporary theology are the business of a community of informed judgment. In re-reading Newman this way, a constructive proposal of informed judgment strives to understand his thought in its own context. Only from this perspective is it conceivable to appropriate Newman’s thought for a contemporary context. Hence, I focus mainly on the University Sermons (Chapter ) as a backdrop for understanding the development of the illative sense in the Grammar (Chapter ).16 The University Sermons contain a preliminary treat. John Henry Newman, Newman’s University Sermons, ed. D. M. MacKinnon (London: SPCK, ), . MacKinnon notes that students of Newman’s thought “will rightly couple
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
ment of faith and reason, and the Grammar offers a mature account of rationality, concentrating on the role of judgment in the process of belief-formation. Though one may detect an implicit understanding of judgment in most of Newman’s writings, these two works serve as his most explicit treatments of faith and reason. The corpus of Newman’s writings is not a systematic collection but a series of responses to particular issues. In fact, Newman understood most of his works as a response to some specific occasion: “another reason, closely connected with this, was my habit, or even nature, of not writing & publishing without a call. What I have written has been for the most part what may be called official, works done in some office I held or engagement I had made—all my Sermons are such.”17 Development seems to be a logical outcome of studying his thought. Historical sensitivity unearths both the context of Newman’s thought and the starting point for further elaboration or refinement.The goal, consequently, is to fuse both horizons into an informed understanding of how non-rule-governed judgments shape the process of forming and sustaining Christian beliefs. In my estimation, both critics and disciples have held Newman captive to his own context.18 Such moves render constructive prothis work of his Anglican period with the later Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, and indeed a comparison of the two works would be a fascinating and valuable exercise.” David A. Pailin, The Way to Faith: An Examination of Newman’s Grammar of Assent as a Response to the Search for Certainty in Faith (London: Epworth Press, ), , says that “a major and comprehensive attempt to determine the relationship between faith and reason occurs in the four Oxford University Sermons which Newman preached in and .These discourses foreshadow the Grammar of Assent. They show a greater understanding of the role of our reasoning powers in matters of faith than appears in most of Newman’s previous work.” See John Henry Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, rd ed., intro. Mary Katherine Tillman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, ); henceforth cited as US. . John Henry Newman, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Henry Tristam (New York: Sheed & Ward, ), f. . On this point, see John T. Ford,“Recent Studies on Newman:Two Review Articles,”
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Re-reading Newman
posals nearly impossible. A social epistemology of informed judgment, therefore, respects the integrity of Newman’s thought, but it recognizes the importance of expanding his notion of judgment. John Ford aptly summarizes the way in which I see the contemporary significance of Newman’s project:
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Newman, of course, can not be expected to provide ready-made answers to today’s questions; however, he was gifted with a proleptic discernment into theological problems that were faintly surfacing in his day and have since emerged as critical issues. In effect, Newman’s writings provide a framework of meaning and a method for contemporary theological investigation.19
The key to connecting Newman’s context with our own context is a balance of analytical precision and constructive vision.Thus, a proposal of informed judgment offers a preliminary suggestion on how to fuse Newman’s thought with contemporary work in social and virtue epistemology.The ultimate goal is to craft an account of rationality that prompts further consideration of the role that nonrule-governed judgments play in other real-world environments (e.g., church, academy, and society).20 The contribution of my proposal, then, lies in expanding options for understanding the complexity of the process by which Christians form and sustain beliefs. The Thomist (): –. I agree with Ford’s observation that “devotees frequently succumb to the convincing appeal of [Newman’s] arguments; adversaries usually seem unduly controlled by their biases” (). . John T. Ford, “Newman Studies: Recent Resources and Research,” The Thomist (): . . I have recently applied the notion of informed judgment to the context of church and the environment of theological education in “A Theology of Informed Judgment,” Restoration Quarterly (): –, and “The Craft of Teaching:The Relevance of Newman for Theological Education,” Christian Higher Education (): –.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
[]
University Sermons A Preliminary Investigation
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q
The Oxford University Sermons offer a preliminary investigation of the conditions under which Christian belief can be considered rationally acceptable. Newman rethinks the process of belief-formation, stressing an integral balance of subjective and objective dimensions of Christian belief. Both dimensions play a distinct, but compatible, role in the life of Christian faith. Accounts of beliefformation that neglect one or the other dimension tend to reduce Christian belief either to a religion of sentiment (subjective) or to a religion of evidences (objective). However, some insights in the University Sermons warrant further development.Therefore, I conclude with a discussion of three unresolved issues.
Context of the University Sermons Newman preached the University Sermons before faculty and students of Oxford University between and . He delivered the first nine sermons between and and the last six between and . These sermons focus principally on the relation of faith and reason in the life of the Christian.1 I agree .The volume’s first edition of was entitled Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, Preached before the University of Oxford.As Ian Ker, John Henry Newman:A Biography (Ox-
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with Mary Katherine Tillman’s argument that the University Sermons should be interpreted as a whole; however, sermons X–XIV provide the best background material for understanding Newman’s development of the illative sense in the Grammar.2 Consequently, I focus on these five sermons. Though the University Sermons were written at an earlier period of his intellectual development, their main arguments do not differ radically from his later treatment of the rationality of Christian belief in the Grammar ().3 The difference between these two texts lies in the extent to which Newman completed and developed his thought.4 In the preface to the third edition of the Uniford: Oxford University Press, ), , points out, “the relation of faith to reason is the principal theme of the Oxford University Sermons. Although this is not treated systematically, there is a gradual development which becomes more precise, as well as more accurate, as Newman noted in his preface, where he provides a useful summary of the salient points, which is especially helpful in view of the confusion over the senses in which the term reason is used.” .Tillman,“Introduction,” in Newman,US, viii–xii. . For example, Ker, John Henry Newman, , points out that the last six sermons rehearse themes both in the Grammar and in the Development Christian Doctrine. . Newman describes the University Sermons as “the best, not the most perfect, book I have done. I mean there is more to develop in it, though it is imperfect,”Wilfred Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. (New York: Longmans, ), . In a letter to Richard Hutton (February , ), Newman states,“for twenty years I have begun and left off an inquiry again and again, which yesterday I finished (if writing the last sentence is finishing) as far as I am able to carry it out. I began it in my Oxford University Sermons; I tried it in —and at several later dates, in , in , indeed I do not know when I have not wished to attempt it—but, though my fundamental ideas were ever the same, I could not carry them out. Now at last I have done all that I can do according to my measure—I finished it [the Grammar] yesterday,” The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. , ed. Charles S. Dessain and Thomas Gornall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), (henceforth cited as L&D). Newman wrote to his sister: “Some of my University Sermons will be hard, but I have now for twelve years been working out a theory, and whether it is true or not it has this recommendation, that it is consistent.l.l.l. I have kept to the same views and arguments for twelve years” (L&D, vol. , ). Newman, however, remained dissatisfied with the sermons for two reasons: his reflections in these sermons were not distinct enough because “I was feeling my way and had not found it; next because, conscious of this, I had not requisite confidence in my own train of thought,” John Henry Newman, The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Certainty, vol. , ed. J. Derek Holmes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
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versity Sermons (), Newman explains that he published these sermons, with the exception of some verbal corrections, in their original form. He supplied corrections by means of footnotes “to draw attention to certain faults” in the sermons,“either of thought or of language, and, as far as possible, to set these right”(US, ix).To his surprise, the errors were not “of a serious character,” especially the explicit treatment on faith and reason in the last six sermons (US, x).5 In these sermons, Newman maps out a broader account of faith and reason than the one usually offered in his day, and so redefines the nature, scope, and value of reason in the life of Christian faith. An alternative version to which Newman responds is evidentialism, an “Age of Evidences” in which “love was cold” (US, ).The main concern of evidentialism is to determine whether assessable forms of evidence can support beliefs. Can theology, for example, demonstrate its claims “as convincingly as, say, mathematicians and geologists” demonstrate theirs? 6 Or are theological claims simply formed by opinions and, at best, shaped by probabilities? . In a letter to J. D. Dalgairns (Jan. , ), Newman wrote: “I am both surprised and pleased to hear what you say about my University Sermons—for though I feel confident they are in the main Catholic, yet I doubted whether they did not require considerable alteration in the phraseology, as indeed I have hinted in the Preface [advertisement to the original edition] I still think they need explanation.What you say, as the essay on devt [Development] lags in translation, to bring out six of these sermons translated, under the title of ‘Remarks on the relation of Faith to Reason by JHN.’ Then, in a preface to explain that they were preached at Oxford, and therefore cannot be supposed to be in all points accurate, that they are submitted to the judgment of the Church, but that they are (it is hoped) Catholic in substance and may be useful to explain the Essay on Devt. now in course of translation” (L&D, vol. , ). . Thomas J. Norris, Newman and His Theological Method: A Guide for the Theologian Today (Leiden: Brill, ), xvii. Francis Bacchus, “Newman’s Oxford University Sermons,” Month (): , aptly describes the logic of the Evidential School. “The representatives of this School were great upon Natural Theology and Christian Evidences after the manner of Paley.They apparently held that just as it was the duty of every sound Protestant to be his own interpreter of the Scriptures, and believe no doctrine which he could not prove from them to his own satisfaction, so also was he bound to push personal inquiry further back, and con-
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Evidentialism, therefore, sets up reason as the sole judge by which people evaluate the content of and evidence for Christian revelation. It governs public conversation about the extent to which religious beliefs are rationally acceptable. Newman, however, rejects the notion that Christian belief is rationally acceptable if and only if formal reasoning can account for the evidence. People form beliefs, whether religious or non-religious, in light of prior dispositions, not merely in terms of evidence.Accumulation of experience and antecedent considerations play an important role in the formation of beliefs (e.g., implicit assumptions about God, world, and self). Evaluation of evidence is an interpretive act, shaped by such background factors. The strong phenomenological basis here will naturally evoke the charge that Newman cannot distinguish between epistemology and psychology or between reasons and causes in matters of belief. A may believe p because of certain wishes, desires, or dispositions (psychological conditions), but epistemic inquiry involves deciphering rational grounds for believing p. In sermons XIII– XIV, Newman offers a preliminary response to this query by distinguishing between implicit and explicit modalities of reasoning. Phenomenological inquiry, however, does not rule out this stated epistemic concern (as Chapters and argue). For example, recent studies in naturalized epistemology challenge the separation of psychological and epistemic conditions of belief-formation.Acvince himself of the truth of Christianity by a careful examination of the Evidences.” Robert O’Donnell,“Newman on Faith and Dogma, the Anglican Years:A Critical Analysis of Selected Texts –,” (S.T.D. diss.,The Catholic University of America, ), , adds that “the th century Deists and Free-thinkers maintained that Christian faith is irrational because it assents to truths not warranted by objective evidence of nature and history, while the defenders of Christianity, particularly the Evidential School of the second half of the century, insisted that rigorous reasoning on the evidence can compel an honest man to assent to the truths of revelation. Both sides assumed that faith, if it is to be rational, must owe its intelligibility to a prior process of demonstrative reasoning.”
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counts of rationality need greater connection of phenomenological and normative concerns. Though Newman grants an explicitly rational process of reflection, such accounts of belief-formation do not exhaust the operation of the mind’s capacity for reasoning. Belief-formation reflects a holistic process, involving cognitive, affective, and moral dimensions of the human person. Hence, truncated versions of cognition are not empirical enough, since they fail to account for the multifaceted dimensions of belief-formation. Without considering the data of experience, accounts of rationality overlook the extent to which most people form a genuine faith without a formal process of explanation and verification. Faith is not merely a sentiment or a moral quality dependent upon insights of reason. Rather, it is a presumptive modality that acquires knowledge by an inferential process of reasoning.Though proper disposition is crucial for forming beliefs, it must be nurtured by orderly and systematic analysis of the content of divine revelation and of other fields of knowledge. Such activity requires Christian wisdom. Newman specifies and evaluates at least three uses of the word reason. All three have elements of truth, but they tend to offer narrow depictions of faith and reason. The first view (a popular approach) equates reason with an explicit process by which “rational criteria are entirely formal in character and, consequently, transferable without alteration from one context and from one body of subject matter to another.” 7 Since reason transcends material content, the only valid modality of reasoning is a formal one, which unearths grounds for a belief. Proficiency in reasoning is commensurate with the level of expertise in logical argument.8 Faith, by . Jouette L. Powell, Three Uses of Christian Discourse in John Henry Newman:An Example of Nonreductive Reflection on the Christian Faith (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, ), . .“Reason has a power of analysis and criticism in all opinions and conduct, and nothing
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contrast, is a feeling or sentiment—an inward state of the heart. Justification of Christian belief, therefore, requires an explicitly logical account.The second view understands reason as the faculty for weighing, assessing, and framing evidences. Christian belief is rationally acceptable if and only if demonstrative proof is forthcoming; the mind “rejects every thing but the actual evidence producible in its favour” (US, ). The third view associates reason with critical evaluation of religious belief without proper acquaintance with its subject matter; reason assesses Christian faith by means of “secular maxims, which are intrinsically foreign to it” (US, xv). In the sermons, however, Newman shows that reasoning well in one field of knowledge does not imply the same level of reasoning in other fields of knowledge. Each field of knowledge has its own specific rules and principles of reasoning. In offering a broader account of belief-formation, Newman shows how Christian faith may be construed as a process of reasoning.The three views of rationality factor into Christian belief, but none of them fully captures the spontaneous reasoning of Christian faith. Christian belief, for example, may involve use of formal logic and evidence, but forming Christian faith reflects an implicit process of reasoning by which a person judges doctrinal thought in view of antecedent considerations (e.g., first principles, scripture, tradition, and experience). An explicitly reasoned account of Christian faith is appropriate, but it is not indispensable for forming beliefs. An explicit account plays an important role in is true or right but what may be justified, and, in a certain sense, proved by it; and unless the doctrines received by faith are approvable by Reason, they have no claim to be regarded as true” (US, ). O’Donnell, “Newman on Faith and Dogma,” f., adds that in sermons X–XIV, Newman takes issue with the notion that “the mind achieves truth solely through a process of formal inference in which assent is strictly proportionate to the demonstrative force of the objective evidence for that truth. All genuine reasoning is ultimately syllogizing. In such a view, faith, if it is to be rational, must rest on a prior process of formal, argumentative reasoning in which alone the mind grasps the intelligible reality mediated through revelation.”
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the life of faith, offering a retrospective analysis of experiences, practices, and antecedent considerations that factor into forming Christian belief. Reasoning, however, is not synonymous with proficiency in logical argument; it is present outside demonstrative proof. In real-world environments, most people form beliefs without epistemic access to ways in which the mind justifies knowledge. Instead, they operate from a presumptive level of reasoning, acknowledging the strong probability of reliable belief-forming processes (e.g., testimony, memory, sense perception, and experience). The key is thinking of cognition in holistic terms, stressing the integration of subjective and objective dimensions of Christian belief.
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Unpacking a Common Assumption In “Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind,” Newman unpacks a popular understanding of the process by which Christians form and sustain beliefs.9 He interprets and challenges the popular approach as a contrast of two radically different habits of mind. According to this interpretation, faith evaluates religious matters on weaker grounds (e.g., presumptions, probabilities), but reason sanctions beliefs if and only if they stem from the preponderance of evidence. Reason guides the process for determining . Newman preached this sermon on January , . James D. Ernest, “A Study of John Henry Newman’s Oxford University Sermons” (Ph.D. diss.,Yale University, ), , points out that this sermon troubled some (e.g., Anthony Froude) because of Newman’s quick dismissal of evidential theology. Newman, however, does not develop his understanding of faith and reason in this sermon; rather, he simply unfolds the common contrast of faith and reason as two habits of reflection.“Next, I observe, that, whatever be the real distinction and relation existing between Faith and Reason, which it is not to our purpose at once to determine, on a popular view, is this,—that Reason requires strong evidence before it assents, and Faith is content with weaker evidence.l.l.l. It will be observed, I have not yet said what Reason really is, or what is its relation to Faith, but have merely contrasted the two together, taking Reason in the sense popularly ascribed to the word” (US, , ).
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whether scripture yields rationally acceptable beliefs. Consequently, faith, as a moral quality, embraces insights of reason rather than simply springing from a proper state of the heart.10 This interpretation, however, disparages a rational dimension of Christian faith and fails to consider both the testimony of Scripture and the contours of human experience.11 Scripture depicts faith as the proper instrument by which humanity knows God and acts upon this knowledge.The mind of faith, illumined by Christ, recognizes the sensible world as a natural means for conveying divine gifts, but it rejects the sensible world as the final arbiter of divine truths. Furthermore, faith is a presumptive form of reasoning, since it proceeds more from probabilities than from demonstrative evidence. Concrete moments of human experience reveal that most people form beliefs without explicit awareness of how the mind justifies knowledge. If explicit accounts of belief-formation were mandatory, most would never achieve an authentic level of faith. An explicit account of evidence, therefore, is not a precondition of Christian belief, or for that matter, of any process of beliefformation.12 . Newman argues that Hume, for example, follows this line of reasoning.The Christian claim of miracles is founded more on faith than on reason. In judging from the constant of human experience, it is more likely that the “witnesses should deceive than that the laws of nature should be suspended” (US, ). Newman, however, contends that Hume’s argument is not based purely on evidence; rather Hume’s argument proceeds from the presumption that rules out the possibility of miracles.That is, Hume accepts the antecedent improbability of miracles as “a sufficient refutation of the evidence” (US, ). . O’Donnell, “Newman on Faith and Dogma,” . In a letter to Edward Healy Thompson (October , ), Newman considers the attempt to oppose faith and reason as a fundamentally misguided approach because it would “encourage the notion that the intellect of the world is naturally and properly on the side of infidelity” (L&D, vol. , ); see also Edward J. Enright, “Faith and Reason in Newman’s Anglican and Roman Catholic Correspondences as Historical Background to ‘An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent’” (S.T.D. diss.,The Catholic University of America, ), . . Newman says that most, in his day, equate reason with “the habit of deciding about religious questions with the off-hand random judgments which are suggested by secular
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Faith is not simply a matter of sentiment; moreover, it does not call for an implanting of new faculties in our minds, “which, of course, are known to those who have them without proof; and to those who have them not, cannot be made known by any” (US, ).The Christian gospel complements rather than alters our nature. The process of forming Christian belief is not something “distinct from what nature supplies.”13 Though reason plays an important role in evaluating the process of belief-formation, it does not follow that faith springs from a formal account of Christian belief. A judge, for instance, does not create honest people, but rather she “acquits and vindicates them: in like manner, Reason need not be the origin of Faith, as Faith exists in the very persons believing, though it does test and verify it” (US, ). Consequently, the process of forming Christian belief differs from justifying Christian belief. Identifying an explicitly rational account of belief-formation as the source of faith misunderstands the difference between a “creative power” and a “critical power” (US, ). The example of conscience illustrates the distinction. No one sets conscience in opposition to reason. The dictates of conscience can be analyzed by and justified by reason; yet conscience does not rely on formal insights of reason before it acts. Reason may critically evaluate “grounds and motives” of a moral act, but it does not function equally as the motive of the act itself (US, ). The difference between literary criticism and poetry principles.l.l.l. At best, by Reason is usually meant, the faculty of Reason exercising itself explicitly by a posteriori or evidential methods” (US, ).As Norris, Newman and His Theological Method, , points out, “Newman here is challenging the notion of reason conceived by the Liberals. Reason is conceived by the Liberals as being explicit and conscious. Its model is the syllogism. Only logic is worthy of human Reason; only formal inference deserves the attention of the person who loves the truth. For the Liberals, Reason is a faculty of framing evidences, of expertise in logical argument, or again of acumen in irreverent deliberation of the secular mentality upon Religion.” .Tillman,“Introduction,” in Newman, US, xiv.
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also illustrates the point. Evaluating poetry and creating it are distinct phenomena. A creative artist need not, and perhaps cannot, give an accurate analysis of what she nevertheless genuinely perceives and expresses. A literary critic, likewise, may assess what she is incapable of creating. Reason, likewise, may analyze grounds of faith, but it is not the source from which faith arises. Newman’s argument shows a strong preference for an empirical account of belief-formation. Ignoring how people form and sustain beliefs in real-world environments contributes to a deficient understanding of human cognition. Formal accounts of belief-formation are helpful in the appropriate setting, but such inquiries “have a tendency to blunt the practical energy of the mind, while they improve its scientific exactness; but, whatever be their character and consequences, they do not answer the needs of daily life” (US, ).Within real-world environments, faith requires decisions that are sensitive to and grounded in practical affairs of life. Some people may have time to sift through and evaluate various pieces of evidence, but others depend on reliable sources of knowledge (e.g., testimony, informed assessment of evidence, tradition, and scripture) for making everyday decisions. Epistemic dependence, however, is not unique to Christian belief. Most beliefs depend more on presumptive reasoning, shaped by experiences, than on demonstrative evidence. Most people have little aptitude for detailed investigations and accept the testimony of an informed person or an informed community.They operate on the level of presumptive reasoning until “antecedent probabilities fail” (US, ). An error of evidentialism (beliefs are rationally acceptable if and only if one has sufficient evidence to support them) is its propensity to evaluate Christian belief without proper acquaintance with the subject matter of religion. Evidentialism presupposes that a person can judge religious truths without understanding the material content of the biblical witness; it assumes that, since truth is
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open to all, it “is to be approached without homage” (US, ). Newman was ahead of his time, stressing both the contextual nature of evaluating beliefs and the importance of a proper disposition of mind for reasoning rightly about religious matters. Texts within religious communities “have their illuminating power, from the atmosphere of habit, opinion, usage, tradition, through which we see them” (US, ).14 The extent to which a person is shaped by a text or by a community to which she belongs will affect her understanding of any subject matter. Apart from the danger of pursuing religious matters without proper orientation, evidence may be of “great service to persons in particular frames of mind” (US, ). It may encourage and confirm faith, endowing Christians with greater levels of gratitude and reverence. Nevertheless, the assessment of evidence will vary according to “the temper of the mind surveying it” (US, ).The evidence itself does not vary in force, but evaluation of it, given the influence of interpretive communities, may differ greatly. The contextual nature of evaluating evidence complicates the search for a standpoint of justification independent of communally established practices. Sermons XII–XIV emphasize the importance of securing a safeguard of Christian faith, recognizing the problem associated with an overly subjective dimension of Christian faith.
Faith as a Modality of Reasoning Newman has yet to offer a full treatment of the relationship between faith and reason. Thus far, the focus has been on a popular .Tillman,“Introduction,” in Newman,US, xxii, notes that “just like the artist’s horizon, his position in the cathedral, his ‘school’ of painting, so the context or horizon of any view, according to Newman, is a particular (dis)position and orientation. A particular tradition and a particular ‘circle of ideas’ serves as a kind of antecedent atmosphere in which an individual’s thinking originates.l.l.l.Thinking presents itself in a variety of shades and hues amid multiple prejudices and predispositions.Thinking is always already interpretive.”
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contrast of faith and reason as two distinctive habits of mind. Living faith stems more from antecedent probabilities than from demonstrative proof. Can faith, then, be considered a valid modality of reasoning? What is the relationship between faith and reason? In “The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason,” Newman develops a richer understanding of the rationality of Christian belief.15 Faith operates from a modality of reasoning and is grounded both in Scripture and in empirical observation.16 Scripture depicts faith as a valid modality of reasoning about a specific subject matter. Newman, for example, cites Paul’s appeal to an unknown God in Acts .The claim here falls short of demonstrative proof, since its main argument depends upon the testimony of Paul. The antecedent probability of revelation is enough for people who are inclined to believe. Facts of everyday experience and the common voice of humanity also confirm this understanding of faith. Most people see faith more as a weaker modality of reasoning than as a moral quality dependent upon insights of formal reasoning. Faith involves “the reasoning of a religious mind, or of what Scripture calls a right or renewed heart, which acts upon presumptions rather than evidence; which speculates and ventures on the future when it cannot make sure of it” (US, ). As a presumptive form of reasoning, then, faith accepts divine revelation on two grounds: testimony and the probability of the message. In offering a brief empirical observation about the process of acquiring knowledge, Newman specifies two distinct modes of . Newman preached this sermon on January , . . Ian T. Ker, The Achievement of John Henry Newman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, ), , argues that Newman’s definition of faith in this sermon shows the extent to which he refused to restrict the meaning of reason to the way in which an empiricist such as Locke used it. For some discussion on Newman’s relation to empiricism, see William R. Fey, Faith and Doubt:The Unfolding of Newman’s Thought on Certainty (Shepherdstown, WV: Patmos Press, ); and M. Jamie Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt: The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid and Newman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ).
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knowing external reality. Human beings possess a direct mode of knowing through which they are cognizant of the material world by means of the senses. Human beings do not have direct knowledge of immaterial things.We are not conscious of possessing any such faculties.The senses are the only means by which human beings ascertain direct knowledge of and immediate awareness of external realities. Human beings also possess an indirect mode of knowing that extends beyond what is immediately present to the senses. Inference plays a crucial role here. Reason acquires knowledge indirectly, proceeding “from things that are perceived to things which are not; the existence of which it certifies to us on the hypothesis of something else being known to exist, in other words, being assumed to be true” (US, ). Understood in this way, faith may be construed as a process of reasoning in which we accept “things as real, which the senses do not convey, upon certain previous grounds; it is an instrument of indirect knowledge concerning things external to us” (US, ). Is faith, then, predicated on insufficient grounds? Or does the mind possess “some grounds which are not fully brought out, when the process is thus exhibited” (US, )? Faith, as the reasoning of a divinely enlightened person, is analogous to other forms of reasoning in everyday life. The methodological problem of interpretive differences illustrates the point. People who are equally capable of articulating grounds for their beliefs form different conclusions when examining the same evidence. They, for example, view the same phenomena of the physical world and ascribe different explanations. Do interpretive differences stem from faulty reasoning? Seeing an interpretive dilemma as a clear sign of an inability to conform the mind to “laws on which just reasoning is concluded” reduces reasoning to a syllogistic process (US, ). Reducing cognition to a syllogistic process results from a mistaken assumption. Everyday
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events of human experience offer ample evidence that most people form beliefs without sufficient consideration of their grounds, and in practical matters (e.g., political, ethical, and business) they reason well when their own interests are at stake. Here, skillful judgment reflects an implicit process of reasoning. Empirical observation confirms that faith is not the only mode of reasoning that “approves itself to some and not to others, or which is, in the common sense of the word, irrational” (US, ). Interpretive differences do not imply faulty reasoning. Rather, every form of reasoning stems from acceptance of certain first principles.
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However full and however precise our producible grounds may be, however systematic our method, however clear and tangible our evidence, yet when our argument is traced down to its simple elements, there must ever be something assumed ultimately which is incapable of proof, and without which our conclusion will be as illogical as Faith is apt to seem to men of the world (US, ).
In real-world environments, most people form beliefs “on grounds which they do not, or cannot produce, or if they could, yet could not prove to be true, on latent or antecedent grounds which they take for granted” (US, f.). For example, they trust sense perception as a reliable belief-forming process, though it may deceive them at times.The same applies to memory.Though it fails us occasionally, we still use memory as a reliable source for acquiring knowledge. Consequently, in forming beliefs, most people acknowledge the strong antecedent probability that sense perception and memory are reliable processes of belief-formation. They dispense with the need for demonstrative proof and follow the dictum that probability is the way of life in everyday affairs. Living faith, likewise, operates from a presumptive level of reasoning, but this level of reasoning is not unique to Christian belief. It squares with how people reason in everyday events.
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If faith is a presumptive modality of reasoning, then is there a criterion for determining the truth of Christianity? What prevents such reasoning from degenerating into dogmatism, enthusiasm, or superstition? In “Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition,” Newman focuses on this problem of criterion.17 First, dispositions play a crucial role in forming and sustaining beliefs. Evaluation of evidence is an interpretive act, shaped by background factors such as intellectual training, levels of experience, moral character, and communally established practices. Each hearer will have his own view concerning it [the assertion of a fact], prior to the evidence; this view will result from the character of his mind; nor commonly will it be reversed by any ordinary variation in the evidence. If he is indisposed to believe, he will explain away very strong evidence; If he is disposed, he will accept very weak evidence .l.l. I do not mean that there is no extent or deficiency of evidence sufficient to convince him against his will, or at least to silence him; but commonly the evidence for and against religion, whether true religion or false religion, in matter of fact, is not of this overpowering nature. Neither do I mean that the evidence does not bear one way more than another, or have a determinate meaning (for Christianity and against naturalism, for the Church and against every other religious body), but that, as things are, amid the engagements, the confusion, and the hurry of the world, and, considering the private circumstances of most minds, few men are in a condition to weigh things in an accurate balance, and to decide, after calm and complete investigations of the evidence. Most men must and do decide by the principles of thought and conduct which are habitual to them; that is, the antecedent judgment, with which a man approaches the subject of religion, not only acts as a bearing this way or that,—as causing him to go out to meet the evidence in greater or less degree, and nothing more,—but, further, it practically colours the evidence, even in a case in . Newman preached this sermon on May , .
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which he has recourse to evidence, and interprets it for him.l.l.l. This is the way in which judgments are commonly formed concerning facts alleged or reported in political and social matters, and for the same reason, because it cannot be helped. Act we must, yet seldom indeed is it that we have means of examining into the evidence of statements on which we are forced to act.l.l.l.We decide one way or another, according to the position of the alleged fact, relatively to our existing state of religious knowledge and feeling (US, -).
Antecedent judgments shape the process of forming religious and non-religious beliefs, indicating that the main difference lies in the presumptive nature of these judgments. A non-religious person’s assessment of Christian belief reflects radically different presumptions from those of a believer. Acknowledging the influence of dispositions, however, does not imply that evidence plays no role in adjudicating truth claims. Rather, reason is present outside demonstrative proof. Most people do not have the luxury of weighing evidence before judging a belief. Such factors prompt Newman’s preference for a phenomenological investigation of belief-formation. An adequate account of faith and reason must be grounded in the world of facts; it should “take things as we find them” rather than try to “distort them into what they are not” (US, ). True philosophical insights exhibit sensitivity to the ways in which people form beliefs. We cannot contrive or alter facts, but rather we must interpret and use them rightly. Accounts of belief-formation, then, should have a strong phenomenological basis. Without concrete grounding, accounts of rationality tend to overstate the importance of one factor of belief-formation (e.g., logic or moral disposition). Are we, then, strapped by our own dispositions? Is truth relative to our specific tradition-formed notions? Newman anticipates the charge of relativism. On the one hand, some may interpret his proposal as a justification of superstition, dogmatism, or fanaticism.
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On the other hand, some may see it as a justification of the impenetrable stance of unbelief. Is there a criterion for evaluating theological claims? Or is Christian belief insulated from public scrutiny? One may use antecedent probabilities to justify both truths and falsities.18 Antecedent probabilities lack an “intelligible rule” for determining whether a belief is rationally acceptable (US, ). Acknowledgment of an implicit modality of reasoning complicates matters, since other religious communities can equally claim rationally acceptable beliefs in line with a specific modality of reasoning. How, then, can one distinguish true beliefs from false beliefs? How can radically different communities adjudicate truth claims? If people operate from an implicit process of reasoning, is there a way of showing how beliefs of a community are “more rational” than those of other communities?19 The “safeguard of Faith is a right state of heart,” a properly disposed faith rooted in and formed by love (US, ). It is not the common understanding of love as agape, but the cultivation of “praiseworthy dispositions” or, more precisely, maturation of intellectual, theological, and moral virtues.20 Newman clarifies the word love in a footnote of the edition of the University Sermons. Love safeguarding faith does not mean “love precisely, but the virtue of religiousness, under which may be said to fall the pia affectio, or voluntas credenti” (US, ). Newman uses the same terminology in an earlier theological paper on faith and certainty, . In the first edition of An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (), Newman recognized a similar problem and tried to establish “tests” for evaluating doctrinal developments; cf. Gerard McCarren, “‘Tests’ or ‘Notes’? A Critical Evaluation of the Criteria for Genuine Doctrinal Development in John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” (S.T.D. diss.,The Catholic University of America, ). . Jay Newman,“Newman on Love as the Safeguard of Faith,” Scottish Journal of Theology (): f. . Ibid., .
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contending that “a pia affectio, or voluntas credendi,” entails “determining and commanding the intellect to believe.”21 Rational insight without proper disposition clouds the mind. A properly disposed mind, by contrast, creates and disciplines faith, while guarding it from deficiencies such as superstition, fanaticism, and dogmatism. Love transforms the mind of faith into the image of Christ.22 Forming Christian faith, consequently, involves something more than simply assenting to religious beliefs. A properly disposed faith integrates cognitive, moral, and affective dimensions of human selfhood, transforming faith into single-minded devotion to the one from whom all things exist and find their very meaning. Living faith focuses on Christ as “the very Object whom it desires to love and worship,—the Object correlative of its own affections; and it trusts Him, or believes, from loving Him” (US, ). As an intellectual act, faith reasons from “holy, devout, and enlightened presumptions” (US, ). Without proper orientation, faith may experience moral, theological, spiritual, and intellectual deficiencies.With love as the operative principle, Christians determine whether expectations of the divine are right, are proper, and correspond to the nature of God. Faith, when perfected, changes neither its nature nor its function. It continues to function primarily as a principle of action, and when its quality is enhanced, faith cultivates “the presumption of a serious, sober, thoughtful, pure, affectionate, and devout mind. It acts, because it is Faith; but the direction, firmness, consistency, and precision of its acts, it gains from Love” (US, ). Hence, faith, in relation to reason, may be seen as the cultivation of sound habits.The result is the formation of cognitive excellence that facilitates proper love for and obedience to God. . John Henry Newman, Theological Papers, vol. , . . Here Newman follows scholastic theology in arguing that love forms faith (fides formata charitate).
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Jay Newman argues that John Henry Newman’s proposal fails to solve the problem of adjudicating Christian beliefs in a publicly accessible manner.23 Gerard Magill retorts that the metaphor of love safeguarding faith “is replete with meaning specifically to avoid the nineteenth century exaggerations of romanticism and rationalism in religious belief.”24 Newman rejects the reduction of Christianity to a religion of sentiment or to a religion of evidences. Though faith has an intellectual dimension, it cannot be reduced to an objective process of reasoning; antecedent considerations and dispositions factor into the process of belief-formation. Furthermore, Magill claims that the use of the word love does not support the charge of relativism and anti-intellectualism. It neither reduces the meaning of love to “moral disposition alone (relativism)” nor employs the word to “undermine the role of reason . Jay Newman, “Newman on Love as the Safeguard of Faith,” , . Leslie Armour, “Faith, Reason, and Love:A Reply on Behalf of Cardinal Newman,” Scottish Journal of Theology (): , contends that this apparent problem can be resolved by showing that the “doctrine of love does play a part, though a subordinate one, in the outcome.” Armour says that love functions as part of the intelligible framework of a Christian belief system. “For it plays a central role in lived and literary experience and, in its developed forms, seemingly defies reduction to a phenomenon of biology or psychology. But love is also the natural object of the demand for integrity which arises from the understanding of reason and of its limitations.l.l.l. It is ‘objective’ experience in the sense that it contains the structures with which men ordinarily identify themselves and others. It also exhibits the order which gives rise to the common and universal themes of literature and religion. Even if such experiences cannot be the ultimate foundation of knowledge, they can serve to give body to an otherwise empty rational framework.l.l.l. It is reasonable to draw concrete details from one’s own experiences and from the experiences of others whose illative sense has been informed by faith—in short, from the historical revelations of one’s religion.There could surely be justified religions other than Christianity. A justified religion in this sense is one which meets the demands which reason puts upon faith and which does so within the confines of what is reasonable and is guided by the original perception which reason makes possible” (). I am not sure whether Armour takes care of Jay Newman’s main concern, namely, the problem of adjudicating truth claims in a public way. . Gerard Magill, “Love Safeguarding Faith: The Ethical Commitment to Ecumenical Dialogue in Newman’s Theory of Religious Assent,” in Religions of the Book, ed. Gerard S. Sloyan (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, ), .
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(anti-intellectualism)” in the life of faith.25 Rather, Newman offers a broader account of faith and reason, integrating subjective and objective dimensions of belief-formation. To support his claim, Magill cites Newman’s comments, both in a footnote in the edition of the University Sermons and in a theological essay on faith and certainty, that the “pia affectio” does not command the intellect to assent “without a sufficient ratio volendi.”26 An ethical, and I would add epistemic, responsibility is to acknowledge “what reason presents as sufficient for assent.”27 Magill, then, reads Newman’s sermon as an attempt to create a balance of subjective and objective dimensions of Christian faith.A subjective dimension entails a moral responsibility to follow insights of reason, while an objective dimension uses “reason to interpret the data. In each case Newman eschews relativism (by avoiding a resort to will alone) and anti-intellectualism (by defending the role of reason).”28 If one were to read sermon XII in isolation, Newman perhaps could be accused of overstating the importance of love and ruling out an explicit use of reason in the life of faith. But such a move would hold Newman’s thought captive to one sermon and so constitute a disservice both to his understanding of faith and reason and to the integrity of his thought. His point is that truncated versions of rationality neglect the holistic nature of reasoning. Sermons XIII and XIV illustrate the need for a safeguard of faith and illumine the role that explicitly rational criteria play in the life of Christian faith. . Magill, “Love Safeguarding Faith,” . Magill argues that Jay Newman misreads the sermon, especially when he contends that the “association between love and moral disposition (or virtue) .l.l. reveals an anti-intellectualism in Newman’s attempted response to rationalism.” . Newman, Theological Papers, vol. , . . Magill,“Love Safeguarding Faith,” . . Ibid., .
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University Sermons Modalities of Reasoning
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So far, Newman has been critical of the role that formal reasoning plays in the process of belief-formation. Is formal reasoning, then, diametrically opposed to the life of Christian faith? Should explicitly rational criteria be factored into the life of Christian faith? Should Christians formulate reasons for what they believe? Is evidence relevant for forming and sustaining Christian belief? In “Implicit and Explicit Reason,”29 Newman discusses the role that an explicitly rational element plays in the life of faith. Scripture delineates implicit and explicit modalities of reasoning; it provides “a clear warrant” for rendering an explicit account of the process of belief-formation. We are not only to ‘sanctify the Lord God in our hearts,’ not only to prepare a shrine within us in which our Saviour Christ may dwell, and where we may worship Him; but we are so to understand what we do, so to master our thoughts and feelings, so to recognize what we believe, so to trace out our ideas and impressions, and to contemplate the issue of them, that we may be ‘ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh us an account of the hope in us.’ In these words, I conceive, we have a clear warrant, or rather an injunction, to cast our religion into the form of Creed and Evidences (US, f, Pet. :).
A reasoned account of faith, then, involves both a subjective dimension (faith as a habit of mind) and an objective dimension (faith as the object of critical analysis).As is evident in sermon XII, Newman begins to carve out a fresh approach to belief-formation, integrating both subjective and objective dimensions of Christian faith. In its most elementary form, faith is a simple assent of the mind to divine revelation “without conscious reasoning or formal argu. Newman preached sermon XIII on St. Peter’s Day, .
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ment” (US, ). An implicit level of reasoning, however, does not preclude critical analysis of the grounds for Christian belief. The warrant for such a critical act is found in the task of defending the faith (apologetic task) and instructing others in the faith (pedagogical task). Some people examine faith as an object of reflection and elucidate grounds from which Christian belief is formed. Justifying Christian belief has an explanatory, rather than a formative, dimension. The human mind has two distinct modalities of reasoning.The first modality (implicit reasoning) refers to the spontaneous process by which people form beliefs without explicit awareness of how the mind justifies knowledge. It constitutes our original process of reasoning. The second modality (explicit reasoning) refers to the process by which the mind recognizes and specifies grounds for Christian belief. On this level, the mind investigates and analyzes its original process of reasoning. Both modalities stem from the same faculty of reasoning. At some level, all people reason, attaining knowledge and truth from prior knowledge and truth.The difference is that not all people engage in critical reflection about their implicit level of reasoning. In other words, all people reason implicitly, but not all can reason explicitly about their faith (US, ).30 The modality of explicit reasoning, however, does not exhaust the operation of the mind’s capacity for reasoning. The normal functioning of the living mind is “both richer and more mysterious than its reflex, logical operations.”31 The dynamic nature of . In a letter to William Froude (April , ), Newman makes a similar point:“At the same time you know my writings well enough (e.g., my University Sermon [Implicit and Explicit Reason]) to understand that, at least in my opinion, persons have very good reasons, which they cannot bring out into words” (L&D, vol. , ). Enright,“Faith and Reason in Newman’s Anglican and Roman Catholic Correspondences,” , points out that Froude believed that “the ability to express one’s reasoning was essential to verification of the arguments.” . O’Donnell,“Newman on Faith and Dogma,” .
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human cognition can be compared to that of a skillful mountaineer.
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The mind ranges to and fro, and spreads out, and advances forward with a quickness which has become a proverb, and a subtlety and versatility which baffle investigation. It passes on from point to point, gaining one by some indication; another on a probability; then availing itself of an association; then falling back on some received law; next seizing on testimony; then committing itself to some popular impression, or some inward instinct, or some obscure memory; and thus it makes progress not unlike a clamberer on a steep cliff, who, by quick eye, prompt hand, and firm foot, ascends how he knows not himself, by personal endowments and by practice, rather than by rule, leaving no track behind him, and unable to teach another. It is not too much to say that the stepping by which great geniuses scale the mountains of truth is as unsafe and precarious to men in general, as the assent of a skillful mountaineer up a literal crag. It is a way which they alone can take; and its justification lies in their success. And such mainly is the way in which all men, gifted or not gifted, commonly reason,—not by rule, but by an inward faculty (US, ).
The description of the mind here anticipates the discussion of the illative sense in the Grammar. Rule-governed procedures of reasoning, though important, do not capture fully the nature and scope of human cognition. Reasoning, in its simplest form, is a spontaneous and informal process by which people develop intellectual skills and make apt judgments, shaped by experience and personal insight, within concrete moments of human existence. Do Newman’s remarks on the limits of formal reasoning open him up to the charge of fideism? His discussion of formal logic, though problematic at times, does not reduce the strength of his argument. Formal logic may help justify beliefs, but it does not “play, or even can or ought to play, the dominant role in the business of getting to know about things.”32 Moreover, fideism and ev. Hugo Meynell,“Newman’s Vindication of Faith in the Grammar of Assent,” in Newman
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identialism, for Newman, are inadequate representations of Christian belief. On the one hand, the fideist assumes that formation of true belief is disjoined from critical or logical reflection.True belief remains pure when it abstains from the rigors of logical reflection. Such a position is both unrealistic and unfounded, especially in its attempt to sever the science of theology from the life of faith (US, ).33 On the other hand, the evidentialist assumes that true belief is predicated purely upon evidence and adequate skills of argumentation. Such a position is both unrealistic and overly theoretical; it presupposes that every person must be either a theologian or a philosopher. It requires articulation of grounds for doctrinal beliefs as indispensable to the process of belief-formation. By devaluing the place of reason in the life of Christian faith, the fideist surrenders to skepticism and concedes that faith is a feeling of the heart, and by setting up narrow boundaries of investigation, the evidentialist restricts acquisition of knowledge to one modality of reasoning.34 Newman’s proposal lies between evidentialism and fideism. An after a Hundred Years, ed. Ian T. Ker and Allan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), . Thomas K. Carr, Newman and Gadamer:Toward a Hermeneutics of Religious Knowledge (Atlanta: Scholars Press, ), , adds that “if the work of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Polanyi (in addition to Gadamer) has taught us anything, it is the business of explicating theories, methods, and hypotheses in any area of inquiry is a matter that cannot always be reduced to simple logic.” . Norris, Newman and His Theological Method, , correctly argues that “Newman roundly rejects a two-tier approach to faith and reason, which would put faith on one level and reason on a lower level never to meet. Such a separation easily produces false problems such as the classic conflict of fideistic religion and a religious science or philosophy. Newman ingeniously prevents such a clash by identifying the false grounds on which it is based, namely, the Liberals’ principle that all reasoning worthy of the name is both conscious and explicit, and can be exhibited only in the syllogism. Newman masterfully displays the error of such a position by pointing out the existence of implicit but real, reasoning which is complementary to explicit reasoning.” . John Henry Newman, The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman, vol. , General Introduction to the Study of Newman’s Philosophy, ed. Edward J. Sillem (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, ), .
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intellectually reasoned account of Christian belief is important, but it is not essential to the faith of all Christians.The following quotation aptly summarizes the distinction between forming Christian belief and justifying Christian belief.
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Faith cannot exist without grounds or without an object; but it does not follow that all who have faith should recognize, and be able to state what they believe and why. Nor, on the other hand, because it is not identical with its grounds, and its object, does it therefore cease to be true Faith, on its recognizing them. In proportion as the mind reflects upon itself, it will be able ‘to give an account’ of what it believes and hopes; as far as it has not thus reflected, it will not be able. Such knowledge cannot be wrong, yet cannot be necessary, as long as reflection is at once a natural faculty of our souls, yet not an initial faculty (US, ).
These forms of reasoning are not to be confused with one another. Each modality of reasoning has its specific function in the life of faith. To conflate the two indicates a failure to distinguish an implicit process of reasoning from the cultivation of an explicit level of reasoning in argumentation. Failure to differentiate implicit and explicit modalities of reasoning creates deficient versions of cognition. Proficiency in argument is not “indispensable to reasoning well.Accuracy in stating doctrines or principles is not essential to feeling and acting upon them. The exercise of analysis is not necessary to the integrity of the process analyzed” (US, ).35 Exercise of explicit reasoning reflects the extent to which a person has been endowed with a “gift or talent” in a specific field of knowledge (US, ). For example, a person’s cultivation of knowledge in the field of mathematics does not imply that she will reason with the same proficiency in the domain of theology . Newman, for example, cites Tillotson as one who fails to make a distinction between reasoning and arguing.Tillotson contends that “nothing ought to be received as divine doctrine and revelation, without good evidence that it is so: that is, without some argument sufficient to satisfy a prudent and considerate man” (US, ).
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or physics. Proficiency in reasoning occurs in proportion to the cultivation of specific capacities and skills. Though the nature of this reasoning faculty “is one and the same in all minds, it varies, without limit, in point of strength, as existing in the concrete, that is, in individuals, and that according to the subject-matter to which it is applied” (US, xiii). Such variance reveals that proper cultivation of this reasoning faculty requires a certain level of experience and practice in a specific field of knowledge. On the level of explicit reasoning, Newman mentions three critical methods of reflection: evidences, biblical interpretation, and dogmatic theology.36 All three probe the implicit level of reasoning in which Christians acquire impressions of the grounds, meaning, and doctrinal expressions of Christian belief.They “analyze, verify, methodize,” and articulate the mind’s impressions of Christian faith (US, ). However, faith, “though in all cases a reasonable process, is not necessarily founded on investigation, argument, or proof; these processes being but the explicit form which the reasoning takes in the case of particular minds” (US, ). Such a concession does not suggest that faith is incompatible with an explicitly rational process of reflection. Rather, theological reflection and religious faith are distinct, yet mutually related, dimensions of the Christian life.37 Critical methods of theological reflection enable some to engage in second-order reflection on Christian faith. The essential defect, however, lies in expecting from these resources more than they can deliver. No method fully captures the dynamic and subtle . For Newman, evaluation of evidences focuses on conditions under which Christian belief can be considered rationally acceptable; biblical interpretation focuses on the manner in which one should understand the meaning of Scripture; dogmatic theology deals with the content of Christian belief. . In The Idea of a University, ed. Martin J. Svaglic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ), , Newman defines theology as “the Science of God, or the truths we know about God put into a system.”
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process through which the mind forms beliefs. Thus, one should employ critical methods of theological reflection cautiously rather than rejecting them from the outset. Failure to recognize such a limitation contributes to the crucial mistake of assuming finality, when in fact the mind and the activity of God cannot be exhausted by or explained by any methodology. Or as Newman puts it, “who shall give method to what is infinitely complex, and measure to the unfathomable?” (US, ). Newman offers an apt empirical observation of two modalities of reasoning. Explicit reasoning involves a retrospective analysis of experiences, practices, and antecedent considerations that factor into forming Christian belief.The difference between implicit and explicit reasoning lies in the level of awareness of how the mind forms and sustains Christian beliefs.38 For some people, the mind becomes dissatisfied with an absence of order and methodological clarity. Consequently, some people strive to analyze and explain how an implicit mode of reasoning and various experiences contribute to the formation of Christian belief. In the end, Newman’s proposal covers both an implicit process of belief-formation and a critical process by which people analyze beliefs. If all were required to produce explicit accounts of beliefformation, then most people would be ruled out of the discussion. Newman is committed to the following principle of epistemic dependence: A is entitled to believe p if tradition B supplies reliable channels of knowledge. Though tradition B may furnish reasons for believing p, there is no need, and perhaps, no possibility, that A “should be able to cite them, let alone articulate them, on de. As O’Donnell, “Newman on Faith and Dogma,” , puts it, both modalities of reasoning “differ precisely as processes. Explicit reasoning is never an adequate representation of the pre-reflexive act of reasoning. Explicit reasoning proceeds by rule, in measured steps, but implicit reasoning moves instinctively. It moves with bewildering rapidity, grasping, discarding, conjoining fact and conjecture, principle and prejudice; it bridges logical gaps with an ease which defies analysis.”
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mand.”39 No one should be considered irrational simply because she is incapable of offering an explicitly rational understanding of an implicit process of reasoning. Reflexive analysis is not a prerequisite to being rational.
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Connecting Wisdom and Faith How, then, are subjective and objective dimensions of Christian faith connected? In “Wisdom, as Contrasted with Faith and Bigotry,”40 Newman offers additional insights on the role of an explicitly rational element in the life of Christian faith; wisdom solidifies a balance of spiritual and cognitive excellence.The sermon sketches a broad description of the nature and scope of Christian wisdom, showing how faith, nurtured by wisdom, differs from dogmatism.Though Christian wisdom functions as a distinct habit of mind, it is not opposed to the presumptive reasoning of faith. Rather, an integral relation of faith and wisdom guards against a narrow approach to Christian belief. Christian wisdom involves orderly and systematic analysis of the content of divine revelation. As a philosophical habit of mind, Christian wisdom retains continuity with its divine source, showing how grace complements the natural process of human cognition. People attain truth through a natural process of reasoning, and the same can be said about the process through which Christians obtain truth in “a state of grace” (US, ). Though we forfeited gifts bestowed upon us in creation, the gospel empowers us to reclaim a proper use of our cognitive capacities. “Under the Gospel we do not lose any part of the nature in which we are born, but regain what we have lost. We are what we were, and . Basil Mitchell,“Newman as a Philosopher,” . . Newman preached this sermon on Whit-Tuesday, . Ian Ker, John Henry Newman, , points out that this sermon contains “respectively the genesis of the Idea of a University.”
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something more” (US, ). Since gifts of both faith and wisdom involve an exercise of reason and are rooted in human nature, one is justified in analyzing the process by which faith is formed and in identifying intellectual and theological deficiencies (e.g., dogmatism or superstition). Christian wisdom also entails the integration of knowledge from different fields of knowledge. It involves “expansion or enlargement of the mind,” that is, a synthetic grasp of various pieces of data, not simply knowledge of isolated facts (US, ). In contemporary terms, Newman’s definition of wisdom would fall under the category of systematic theology.The aim is to render a coherent understanding of Christian faith, connecting and weaving various pieces of data into a community’s own locus of knowledge. Christian wisdom, for example, accounts for historical developments of and philosophical queries about Christian doctrine; the goal is to secure new understanding of divine revelation and detect ways in which the content of Christian faith may be impoverished. Cultivation of wisdom, therefore, is not simply an accumulation of isolated facts. Knowledge is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for expanding the mind. Rather, Christian wisdom requires integration of new knowledge into previously accumulated knowledge. Accumulating information from different fields of knowledge, without exploring their relations, does not expand the mind but simply loads it with isolated facts. Such a process of acquiring knowledge is undigested reading.The mind recalls isolated facts but fails to integrate them into a unified account of knowledge. Without integration, one lacks the perspective from which to render informed judgments about concrete matters. Students who possess extensive knowledge of isolated facts but never connect them illustrate the point. Systematic thought is necessary for enlarging the mind. Wisdom requires an active engagement of the mind in explicating and
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connecting Christian knowledge with other fields of knowledge. It construes all things around a framework of reference.
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It is the power of referring every thing to its true place in the universal system,—of understanding the various aspects of each of its parts,—of comprehending the exact value of each,—of tracing each backwards to its beginning, and forward to its end,—of anticipating the separate tendencies of each; and their respective checks or counteractions; and thus of accounting for anomalies, answering objections, supplying deficiencies, making allowances for errors, and meeting emergencies. It never views any part of the extended subject-matter of knowledge, without recollecting that it is but a part, or without the associations which spring from this recollection. It makes every thing lead to every thing else; it communicates the image of the whole body to every separate member, till the whole becomes in imagination like every spirit, every where pervading and penetrating its component parts, and giving them their one definite meaning (US, ).
Wisdom links various pieces of data to an epistemic point of reference, the reality by which all things are related and connected. Those who lack the temper of wisdom operate without a stable point of reference; consequently, they cannot render informed judgments about a belief. The sermon also highlights the main difference between faith and bigotry.The term bigotry conveys the idea of narrow-mindedness or dogmatism. Initially, faith may be confused with narrowmindedness, since it operates from a presumptive modality of reasoning. Both also assent fully to things without securing grounds for their claims. One difference, however, concerns the way dogmatism forms and sustains beliefs. Dogmatism presumes comprehensive understanding of its own claims, but its mode of inquiry indicates otherwise. In exhibiting an inordinate desire to be right, dogmatism continues with its mode of argumentation, even when significant pieces of evidence challenge its central claims. At first, dogmatism appears to qualify as a philosophical habit of mind, but
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in reality its narrow focus precludes an essential condition of wisdom: weaving ideas from different fields of knowledge into a unified account of knowledge. People of faith, however, see obedience as the stance from which they operate and from which they understand things.They desire a greater good, which is to obtain a state of blessedness. Though they lack the “capacity of mind” either to integrate different fields of knowledge or to justify their claims, ordinary people of faith seek “simple obedience” to divine revelation (US, f.). Faith does not presume comprehensive understanding but demands a readiness to act upon dictates of divine revelation. A crucial dimension of living faith requires moral growth of the mind; consequently, it remains open to new ways of understanding divine revelation. Such a disposition stems primarily from the belief that God furnishes various ways to foster expansion of the mind and learn new things about Christian faith. However, narrow-mindedness isolates facts and refuses to incorporate new realities into its own locus of knowledge. Though Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, new explanatory insights and applications may shed light on the content of this divine witness. The following quotation summarizes nicely the distinction between faith and narrow-mindedness: As the world around varies, so varies also, not the principles of the doctrine of Christ, but the outward shape and colour which they assume. And as Wisdom only can apply or dispense the Truth in a change of circumstances, so Faith alone is able to accept it as one and the same under all its forms.And thus Faith is ever the means of learning something new, and in this respect differs from Bigotry, which has no element of advance in it, and is under a practical persuasion that it has nothing to learn.To the narrow-minded and the bigoted the history of the Church for eighteen centuries is unintelligible and useless; but where there is Faith, it is full of sacred principles, ever the same in substance, ever varying in accidentals, and is a continual lesson of ‘the manifold wisdom of God’ (US, ).
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Newman recognizes the historical nature of Christian faith and shows the extent to which faith and wisdom function together. When wisdom provides a fresh interpretation of doctrinal ideas, faith readily accepts this insight.Yet, Christian wisdom, as an explicit modality of reasoning, must never lose sight of the revealed data. It does not try to sort out or “infer new truths but rather limits itself to analyzing the truths already given in Christian revelation.”41 Newman articulates a robust notion of Christian wisdom. Of contemporary interest here is the integration of spirituality and cognitive excellence. Though not explicitly developed in sermon XIV, the definition of wisdom retrieves a patristic understanding of theological reflection. It sees systematic theology as an attempt to fuse, without blurring, distinctive moral, philosophical, theological, and spiritual habits of mind. Consequently, systematic theology recognizes knowledge both as an object of theological reflection and as source of moral transformation. Focusing exclusively on knowledge as an object of critical reflection misses the ultimate goal of wisdom, which is conformation to the triune life of God.A balance of Christian spirituality and intellectual development guards against deficiencies such as fanaticism and dogmatism. Wisdom enables Christians to recognize when a theological position is predicated purely on prejudice, shallowness, and partisanship.As a spiritual gift, wisdom nurtures, rather than destroys, Christian faith; it prepares Christians for the eschatological encounter with God.
Beyond Preliminary Investigation As a preliminary investigation, the University Sermons leave three unresolved issues, two of which Newman picks up and develops in . O’Donnell,“Newman on Faith and Dogma,” .
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the Grammar, and one of which he notes as an epistemic dilemma. All three issues factor into his proposal of the illative sense, but the last issue is central to my constructive proposal of informed judgment. First, Newman expands the nature and scope of human cognition within real-world environments. Instead of implicit and explicit reasoning, the Grammar speaks of three types of inference: formal, informal, and natural. It accords pride of place to informal inference, which combines elements of implicit and explicit modalities of reasoning.42 Informal inference is primarily, though not exclusively, the domain of the illative sense and plays a major role in solving the next issue. Second, the Grammar explores the role that judgment plays in securing certainty about religious matters. The University Sermons show how presumptive reasoning factors into formation of religious and non-religious beliefs.The strength of antecedent probabilities ensures a reliable process of belief-formation in everyday life. In this respect, the Grammar examines an important question posed by some of Newman’s contemporaries: How can a presumptive modality of reasoning, which is conditional by nature, secure certitude? Presumptive reasoning relies on testimony, and at best it points to the likelihood of a belief. How, then, can presumptive reasoning ensure certitude? Can Christians be certain of things for which they lack demonstrative proof? With such questions in mind, Newman recognizes the need for greater clarification of conditions under which Christian belief can be considered rationally acceptable.The Grammar, consequently, attempts to show how the process of belief-formation, guided by the illative sense of reasoning, enables Christians to be certain of their beliefs. The illative sense of reasoning operates informally and sanctions
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.
. I am indebted to John Ford’s insight here on Newman’s expansion of the categories of cognition in the Grammar.
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assent to that for which one does not have demonstrative proof. Third, Newman’s strong phenomenological appeal raises an epistemic concern. Is his account of belief-formation merely a descriptive exercise? Does he adequately distinguish between psychological and epistemic conditions of belief-formation? Newman’s proposal does not pit faith and reason against one another. Sermons XII–XIV stress the importance of supplying a safeguard by which the church can identify and correct deficient understandings of Christian faith. A phenomenological account of belief-formation does not rule out normative inquiry. However, the problem of securing a standard of justification, independent of communally established practices, remains an unresolved issue. How can communities shaped by radically different ways of thinking adjudicate truth claims without an agreed-upon standard of justification? Is there a way of moving from presumptive levels of reasoning within a community to public exchange of ideas among different interpretive communities? Does the illative sense, as a personal mode of judgment, fare any better than Newman’s notion of presumptive reasoning in the University Sermons? Or does the illative sense also complicate the search for a common standard of justification?
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Cultivating Personal Judgment A Methodological Dilemma
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How can Christians justify ordinary beliefs, the vast majority of which lack demonstrative proof? What role does judgment play in solving this epistemic concern? For Newman, the search for a reliable process of belief-formation ends with the discovery of the illative sense, a non-rule-governed process of reasoning, which accumulates probabilities and renders informed assessment about concrete matters. Discussion of the illative sense takes place in part two of the Grammar.Yet, the reader needs a basic understanding of the argument in part one to follow the development of the illative sense. Consequently, I discuss the purpose of the Grammar and the key notions in part one, and then I show how the illative sense furnishes the interpretive key for understanding the argument in part two. However, Newman’s appeal to the illative sense fails to resolve the problem of securing a common measure among different minds.
Purpose of the Grammar The Grammar qualifies as the most difficult text to read within the entire corpus of Newman’s writings.As Charles Dessain points
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out,“the Grammar is a baffling book at first sight.”1 The abrupt nature of the text, along with its use of terminology, creates interpretive problems. For example, the Grammar opens without an outline of argumentation, and the body of the text lacks an explicit statement about its purpose. Moreover, the structure of the text, on the surface,“is almost made up of two different books.”2 Initially, such factors complicate a fluid reading. Three items, however, furnish clues for discerning Newman’s argument in the Grammar: () the structural arrangement of the Grammar, () a personal correspondence with Edward Caswall, and () a note appended to the Grammar. First, Newman divides the Grammar into two parts.The distinction between assent and inference helps to decipher the argument of the Grammar. Part one unpacks the nature of assent and tackles the question of whether a person can assent to a proposition without complete understanding. Part two concentrates on the nature of inference and considers the question of whether a person can assent to a proposition without demonstrative proof. Newman challenges the claim that without demonstrative proof people cannot sustain their beliefs with confidence and that they cannot posit them as rationally acceptable. Second, Edward Caswall, a priest of the Birmingham Oratory, recorded some revealing comments on the flyleaf of his own copy of the Grammar (December ).They summarize the gist of his conversation with Newman about the purpose of the book:“Object of the book twofold. In the first part shows that you can believe what you cannot understand. In the second part that you can believe what you cannot absolutely prove.”3 Both parts of the . Charles S. Dessain,“Cardinal Newman on the Theory and Practice of Knowledge:The Purpose of the Grammar of Assent,” Downside Review (): . . Ian T. Ker,“Editor’s Introduction,” in John Henry Newman,An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), xi. . Dessain, “Cardinal Newman on the Theory and Practice of Knowledge,” . Dessain
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Grammar engage key questions posed by Newman’s contemporaries. Is Christian belief rationally acceptable without explicit awareness of how the mind understands claims of faith and without epistemic access to how the mind justifies knowledge? Third, a note appended to the Grammar (December ) restates the purpose of part one and clarifies the role of the illative sense in the entire work. The Essay begins with refuting the fallacies of those who say that we cannot believe what we cannot understand.l.l.l.This portion of the work finished, I proceed to justify certitude as exercised upon a cumulation of proofs, short of demonstration.l.l.l. I will add, that a main reason for my writing this Essay on Assent, to which I am adding these last words, was, as far as I could, to describe the organum investigandi [the illative sense] which I thought the true one, and thereby to illustrate and explain the saying in the “Apologia” which has been the subject of this Note.4
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Newman attempts to refute the charge that he had abandoned the “thought of bringing arguments from reason to bear upon the notes that Caswall was “a member of Newman’s community, and one of his closest friends.” In a letter to Charles Meynell (January , ), Newman says that if he were to develop his thought on the rationality of Christian belief, the work “would be on ‘the popular, practical, and personal evidence of Christianity’—i.e. as contrasted to the scientific, and its object would be to show that a given individual, high or low, has as much right (has as real rational grounds) to be certain, as a learned theologian who knows the scientific evidence” (L&D, vol. , ). . An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, intro. Nicholas Lash (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ), , ; henceforth cited as GA. For a fuller discussion of Newman’s notion of the organum investigandi, see Norris, Newman and His Theological Method. Norris, f., argues that “it is clear at once that what Newman wishes to convey is the true ‘process of investigation’ or the proper ‘organum investigandi.’ And the province he has most especially in mind is the religious and theological one, which requires a method ‘sui similis’ and appropriate to its ‘definite belongings and surroundings.’The goal of this method will be the justification of the ‘assent’ of every believer, simple or cultivated,‘to the truth of the Catholic Religion.’ Here we detect his orientation towards the specific opposition of the contemporary liberal spirit, personified in William Froude, which confined assent or certitude to mathematics and straight science.l.l.l. [The Essay] proceeds ‘to justify certitude as exercised upon an accumulation of proofs, short of demonstration separately’” (GA, ).
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question of the truth of the Catholic faith” (GA, ).The illative sense plays a pivotal role in advancing the claim here; it enables Christians to be certain about concrete matters. Formation of Christian belief involves a cumulative process of investigation, guided by a living rule rather than by a rule-governed process of inquiry. The Grammar is an analytical rather than a comprehensive treatment of the process of belief-formation. Shortly after its publication, Newman described the work as an “analytical inquiry,” though the word “grammar” implied a synthetic account of beliefformation.5 Thus, the Grammar does not explore the formal conditions of assent; it probes the actual conditions under which an assent is made. Part of this inquiry is a clarification of two distinct categories of people.The first group maintains that full assent to a belief occurs only when evidence is forthcoming. The highest amount of probability does not authorize full assent; any assent without proper warrant and demonstration violates agreed-upon standards of justification.To proceed in any other way would be an immoral use of our faculties.6 Lurking within the background of the Grammar are various conversation partners (e.g., Locke, Paley, Montaigne, Whately, and Hume), but a dominant voice is Newman’s friend William Froude. Froude’s claim is summarized in the following: “More strongly than I believe anything else I believe this.That on no subject whatever .l.l. is my mind, (or as far as I can tell the mind of any human being,) capable of arriving at an absolutely certain conclusion.l.l.l. Our ‘doubts’ in fact, appear to me sacred, and I think deserve to be cherished as sacredly as our beliefs.”7 The second group (the vast majority of people) needs to be considered when determining whether a belief is rationally ac. L&D, vol. , . . Dessain,“Cardinal Newman on the Theory and Practice of Knowledge,” . . L&D, vol. , .
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ceptable. Most people “hold unhesitatingly to truths which they are incapable of explaining satisfactorily or defending logically.”8 To this end, Newman sets out to show that most people, whether religious or non-religious, attain certitude about truths in concrete matters without demonstrative proof.
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Assent and Apprehension The Grammar begins with a discussion of how the mind enunciates and apprehends propositions. A proposition consists of a subject and a predicate united by a copula and takes three external forms: categorical, conditional, and interrogative. For the most part, external forms (categorical, conditional, and interrogative) correspond to internal modes of thinking (assent, inference, and doubt). Exercising internal modes of thinking is a natural function of the mind. We “fulfill our nature in doubting, inferring, and assenting, and our duty is, not to abstain from the exercise of any function of our nature,” but to carry out our constitutive faculties properly (GA, ). Concrete moments of human existence function as the real-world environment in which one evaluates how people form and sustain beliefs.The claim here is not a new theory of knowledge, but an attempt to uncover how people reason and attain certitude in everyday affairs.9 . Aidan Nichols, “John Henry Newman and the Illative Sense: A Re-consideration,” Scottish Journal of Theology (): ff. . Norris, Newman and His Theological Method, , notes that for Newman constructive discussion between “partisans of science” and “theologians” necessitates phenomenological exploration of the process of belief-formation.“It was no use continuing to reject the claims of science and the new mentality as rationalistic. It was Newman’s conviction that only a painstaking study of the constitution of the mind and of human method could get to the root of the problem.The key to the solution of the debate, and the consequent delineation of the frontiers of scientific reason, philosophy and theology, would become clear upon establishing how a person comes to inquire and understand, verify and assent, reason and research, discover and believe.”
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The primary concern in the Grammar is with assent and with inference in so far as it relates to assent, but not with the kind of inference that is demonstrative in nature (e.g., formal inference).10 Assent differs from inference in two ways. First, assent is unconditional, but inference is not, since its conclusion stems from the assumption of other premises, and “still more, because in concrete matter, on which I am engaged, demonstration is impossible” (GA, ). Second, assent requires apprehension of the terms of a proposition, while inference calls only for formal management of the terms.A formal example illustrates the point.We cannot assent to the proposition that A is C until we know something about these terms, but we can infer that if A is B and B is C, then A is C, without understanding the content of the proposition. Apprehension, therefore, is a precondition for assent but not for inference. What, then, does apprehending the terms of a proposition entail? Apprehension is “simply an intelligent acceptance of the idea, or of the fact which a proposition enunciates” (GA, ). One must apprehend the predicate of the proposition, which provides information about the subject of the proposition. Newman prefers the word apprehension to the word understanding, since the meaning of the latter is ambivalent, “standing sometimes for the faculty or act of conceiving a proposition, sometimes for that of comprehending it, neither of which come into the sense of apprehension” (GA, ). For example, we may apprehend, without fully understanding, someone’s behavior. Comprehension entails “full and complete knowledge of its object whereas apprehension designates only a . Martin X. Moleski,“Illative Sense and Tacit Knowledge: A Comparison of the Theological Implications of the Epistemologies of John Henry Newman and Michael Polanyi” (Ph.D. diss.,The Catholic University of America, ), f., points out that Newman’s “skipping over the role of questioning as part of the process of making new discoveries allowed him to focus his attention on the distinction between inference and assent, which he considered the key to the development of the essay, but it may have distorted his dialogue with [William Froude], who felt that doubt was the source of progress in science.”
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partial knowledge.We may properly claim to have apprehended a proposition when we have not completely grasped all that it signified.”11 Though apprehension of the terms is essential for assent, one may assent to a proposition on the basis of authority.A level of epistemic dependence is crucial. The following states the point formally. A trusts B’s claim that p is true without fully understanding the truth of p, relying on the trustworthiness of B’s testimony. The focus here is the “intrinsic conditions” of apprehending a proposition, not the grounds upon which a proposition is justified (GA, ). Specifying grounds of assent is different from offering a phenomenological analysis of intrinsic conditions of assent. Apprehension has two subject matters and two corresponding forms of expression: () things external to us and () our own thoughts. In one sense, terms of a proposition stand for realities external to the mind, shaped by and derived from concrete experiences; this is real apprehension. In another sense, terms of a proposition stand for ideas existing purely in the mind; this is notional apprehension. Real apprehension stems from our experience of individual things, but our inevitable comparison of them calls for notional activity.Along with retaining impressions of concrete experiences, the mind is capable of comparing and contrasting these impressions.The difference is that notional apprehension does not determine the intrinsic meaning of things but considers how they are related to one another. Real apprehension and notional apprehension are distinct but compatible dimensions of cognition. Both are essential for cognitive development, but they produce different results. Notional apprehension ensures a broader range of knowledge, but it tends to miss the subtleties of concrete experiences. Real apprehension, by contrast, probes the depths of concrete experiences, while constricting its locus of knowledge. In expanding our mental horizon, . Pailin, The Way to Faith, .
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notional apprehension moves us beyond a “small circle of knowledge,” while real apprehension, firmly rooted in the concrete, challenges “vague speculations” (GA, ). A refined intellect combines specificity and breadth of mind. Though the mind is capable of contemplating both external realities and mental abstractions, Newman prefers real apprehension. It is stronger than notional apprehension, because concrete experiences leave “more vivid and forcible” impressions on the mind. Mental abstraction “cannot compete in effectiveness with the experience of concrete facts” (GA, ).The effect of concrete experiences increases the level of apprehending a proposition. Consequently, notional assent functions more like inference, since its conclusions stem more from mental abstraction than from the force of concrete experience. Profession, credence, opinion, presumption, and speculation are categories of notional assent; the order progresses from the weakest to the strongest forms. Profession is little more than assertion, affirming propositions without ever understanding them. Credence refers to a “spontaneous acceptance” of things; it takes “opinions or professed facts” for granted (GA, , ). Opinion, which is a reflexive act, renders explicit assent to the likelihood of a proposition. Credence takes the probability of a proposition for granted, but opinion reflects on our spontaneous acceptance of it. Presumption involves assent to first principles—propositions with which we begin reasoning on any subject matter. First principles are, to some extent, notional, since they are “really conclusions or abstractions from particular experiences; and an assent to their existence is not an assent to things or their images, but to notions” (GA, ). Speculation, which is the strongest form of assent, contemplates mental activity; it denotes “those notional assents which are the most direct, explicit, and perfect of their kind, viz. those which are the firm, conscious acceptance of propositions as true” (GA, ).
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Cultivating Personal Judgment
However, the “strength of our mental impressions” does not settle the question of whether a proposition yields true beliefs or false beliefs (GA, ). Real assent requires the guidance of reasoning, since the imagination may project illusions. The aim of the imagination is to intensify assent, not to create it. The experience of one person may not be the experience of another. Furthermore, real assent has a personal dimension, since it is rooted in concrete experiences. Notional assent, by contrast, furnishes greater possibilities for assessing the validity of beliefs. Since all of us possess the “power” of mental abstraction, we “can be taught either to make or enter into the same abstractions; and thus to cooperate” with others, securing a common standard of justification. Hence, real assent complicates the search for a “common measure between mind and mind,” hindering rather than advancing exchange of ideas among different people (GA, f.). The personal nature of real assent falls short of supplying some independent standard of justification. The same distinction applies to religion and theology. Religious propositions are guided by the imagination and stand for a thing, and theological propositions are guided by reason and stand for a notion.12 Religion, like real assent, is rooted in concrete moments of experience; theology, like notional assent, involves systematic analysis of dogmas of faith. Theology examines doctrinal formulations, comparing and contrasting them, and forming them into a unified account of Christian faith. Religious imagination is not sufficient for supporting claims of faith. It needs the guidance of theological reflection in order to ensure proper understanding of “revealed truth” (GA, ). Understood rightly, religion and theology are distinct, but mutually related, dimensions of the Christian life. . In Chapter of the Grammar, Newman “investigates what it is to believe” in dogmas
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The Route to Certitude How, then, does inference, which is conditional by nature, lead to “unconditional acceptance” of propositions (GA, )? How can people adhere unconditionally to a proposition that cannot be demonstrated but only can be shown to be probable? The second part of the Grammar tackles such questions.The illative sense plays a dominant role in weighing evidence and so forming a response, thereby solidifying a reliable belief-forming process that ensures certitude about particulars.
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Sanctioning the Natural Newman’s sanction of the illative sense echoes the fundamental premise of the work; consulting the world of facts is indispensable for assessing the process of belief-formation.We live in “a world of facts, and we use them; for there is nothing else to use.We do not quarrel with the world of facts, but we take them as they are, and avail ourselves of what they can do for us” (GA, ).The world of facts reveals that the illative sense is a natural process of reasoning that takes place within concrete moments of human existence. Within real-world environments, “our most natural mode of reasoning is, not from propositions to propositions, but from things to things, from concrete to concrete, from wholes to wholes” (GA, ).13 of faith,“what the mind does, what it contemplates, when it makes an act of faith” (GA, ). The aim of the chapter, therefore, is not to justify the dogmas of faith (e.g., the Trinity). . In the first chapter of the Grammar, Newman says that “in this Essay I treat of propositions only in their bearing upon concrete matter, and I am mainly concerned with Assent; with Inference, in its relation to Assent” (GA, ). In a letter to William Froude (April , ), Newman states that “nothing surely have I insisted on more earnestly in my Essay on Assent, than on the necessity of thoroughly subjecting abstract propositions to concrete. It is in the experience of daily life that the power of religion is learnt.l.l.l.And I repeat, it is not by
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A phenomenological analysis of the process of belief-formation describes how the mind works within real-world environments.14 The aim is to understand the “human mind as we find it, and not as we may judge it ought to be” (GA, ). On this point, Newman criticizes Locke’s approach to rationality primarily because it proceeds more from an a priori view of human cognition than from the world of facts.
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Instead of going by the testimony of psychological facts, and thereby determining our constitutive and our proper condition, and being content with the mind as God has made it, [Locke] would form [people] as he thinks they ought to be formed, into something better and higher, and calls them irrational and indefensible, if (so to speak) they take to the water, instead of remaining under the narrow wings of his own arbitrary theory (GA, f.).15
syllogisms or other logical process that trustworthy conclusions are drawn, such as command our assent, but by that minute, continuous, experimental reasoning, which shows baldly on paper, but which drifts silently into an overwhelming cumulus of proof, and, when our start is true, brings us on to a true result.” Gordon H. Harper, Cardinal Newman and William Froude, F.R.S.:A Correspondence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, ), . . On this point, Carr, Newman and Gadamer, makes a nice connection between Newman and the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer:“Newman, much like Gadamer, sets at the forefront of his epistemology a phenomenological account of what actually happens when a person comes to know what he or she knows” (). . In a correspondence with Alfred Plummer (April , ), Newman states that Locke’s account of the mind does not begin with experience, but rather from “pure imagination” (L&D, vol. , ). In a letter to R. H. Hutton, Newman clarifies his notion of the a priori.“I ought to have explained my use of the words ‘a priori.’ I accuse Locke and others of judging of human nature, not from facts, but from a self-created vision of optimism by the rule of ‘what they think it ought to be.’This is arguing, not from experience, but from pure imagination” (L&D, vol. , ). Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt, , argues that “Newman’s very explicit challenge to Locke’s dichotomy between knowledge and probability puts him in a direct line with a [naturalist] tradition preceding him in which a certainty equal to that of demonstration can result from a converging, probabilistic process of reasoning in which the conclusion is secured ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’” For a different interpretation of Locke, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
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Common practices of humanity, however, do not fit such a theory. Newman takes empiricism seriously and rejects the idea that one can propose a normative account of rationality independent of an empirical analysis of belief-formation. Furthermore, the world of facts cuts against the claim that Christian belief is rationally acceptable only when demonstrative evidence is forthcoming. Such an assumption does not square with common practices of humanity; it fails to account for “many truths in the concrete matter, which no one can demonstrate, yet every one unconditionally accepts” (GA, ). Newman, for example, shows that people render unconditional assents to propositions that fall short of demonstrative proof and admit of nothing higher than probable reasoning.16 This is where the illative sense factors into the discussion; it sanctions assent to matters for which one does not have demonstrative proof.17 How, then, should one begin to investigate the process of belief-formation? The first step involves examining daily experiences of life and uncovering what they teach us about the nature of human cognition. Our first duty is to ascertain the laws of the mind under which we live and to resign ourselves to the laws of our nature.18 To do otherwise is “to be impatient at what I am and to indulge an ambitious aspiration after what I cannot be, to cherish a distrust of my powers, and to desire to change laws which are identical with myself ” (GA, ). The concrete self is the starting point from which one begins to understand the laws of the mind. Newman sees “a basic self-acceptance, a communion with the concrete individual that I am, as a necessary condition of possibili. For example, we give full assent to the following propositions without demonstrative proof: the existence of the self, the existence of an external world, the reality of birth and death. . Moleski,“Illative Sense and Tacit Knowledge,” . . Newman’s reference to the laws of nature reflects a nineteenth-century context.
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ty of self-realization. His conviction is that there is a fundamental reality of the person, of the concrete person, which must be accepted.”19 Jay Newman, however, finds fewer problems with Locke’s approach to rationality than he does with Newman’s phenomenology of Christian belief. In severing “belief and evidence in the radical way that he does, Newman ends up attaching too much importance to what people already believe and not enough to what they ought to believe.”20 The normative concern resurfaces here. Does John Henry Newman’s preference for a strong phenomenological basis create a deep chasm between psychological and epistemic conditions of belief-formation? Is his proposal merely a descriptive exercise? Jay Newman raises a substantial issue, but a closer analysis of John Henry Newman’s approach shows that normative inquiry is fundamentally connected to phenomenological analysis of belief-formation.A purely descriptive account does not adequately address the normative question of how one ought to reason. Nevertheless, John Henry Newman’s focus on the natural dimension of reasoning corrects a fundamental mistake of empiricists such as Locke by insisting that descriptive accounts of belief-formation should inform normative proposals about right reasoning. Without consulting practices, “it does not really make sense to ask whether or not something ought to be a law of reasoning.”21 . Norris, Newman and His Theological Method, . . Jay Newman, The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, ), . . Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt, . Ferreira adds that Newman provides a “description of the norms generated in practice. Genuine description cannot be a priori, and prescription cannot be arrived at without regard to description. Newman does not attempt to say a priori what should be practised; nor does he evaluate the norms he abstracts. In this sense there is no ‘attempt at evaluation.’ But the description he aims at is clearly meant to allow him to correct illegitimate usage, so it is description of norms (of what counts as certain, for example), rather than merely empirical generalization” (f.).
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The question about psychological and epistemic conditions can be answered in two ways. On the one hand, Newman rejects the Cartesian method of doubt as the starting point for assessing the process of belief-formation.
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[The preference to begin with universal doubt] is of all assumptions the greatest, and to forbid assumptions universally is to forbid this one in particular. Doubt itself is a positive state, and implies a definite habit of mind, and thereby necessarily involves a system of principles and doctrines all its own.l.l.l. Of the two, I would rather have to maintain that we ought to begin with believing everything that is offered to our acceptance, than that it is our duty to doubt everything.The former, indeed, seems the true way of learning (GA, ).
In the process of reasoning we discover and discard errors. Notwithstanding, faulty reasoning does not justify complete distrust of our ratiocinative powers. The same logic, for example, applies to the reliability of memory.Though our memory fails us occasionally, we still depend on it as a reliable source for acquiring knowledge.Thus, an account of belief-formation should not begin from a perspective of universal doubt; people do not evaluate beliefs from a “tabula rasa or a consciousness without any content.” Analysis of belief-formation ought to be critical, but not skeptical; philosophical investigation, which proceeds from a certain perspective, reflects critically on “pre-philosophic opinions we already possess.”22 Within real-world environments, reliable belief-forming processes, instantiated in communally established practices, furnish the proper context for examining the nature and function of our constitutive faculties. Any normative inquiry must account for these practices.23 . Gérard Verbeke, “Aristotelian Roots of Newman’s Illative Sense,” in Newman and Gladstone Centennial Essays, ed. James D. Bastable (Dublin:Veritas, ), . . Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life, , points out that in philosophy of science “all practice-oriented philosophers share the claim that any normative account of an aspect of science, such as rationality, must be in substantial contact with the actual
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On the other hand, mere description of practices does not imply that all assents are true assents. Simple assent and complex assent are distinct phenomena. Simple assent involves the mind’s acceptance of propositions without conscious reflection of the grounds upon which the assent is made. A great many of our simple assents stem from untested assumptions shaped by a social context. Determining the truth of an assent is the business of complex assent, which involves deliberate recognition of grounds upon which an assent is made. It reflects the activity of “mature minds, the product of investigations into the argumentative proof of the things to which they have given their assent” (GA, ). Complex assent, then, differs from simple assent in that it uncovers cognitive infelicities and determines whether a proposition yields true beliefs or false beliefs. Errors in thinking originate primarily from faulty reasoning; they serve as “lessons and warnings, not to give up reasoning, but to reason with greater caution” (GA, ). False certitudes also stem from insufficient training. Growth of knowledge, nurtured by proper levels of training and experience, is crucial for fulfilling our intellectual nature. Acknowledging the fallible nature of human cognition does not undermine the very process of reasoning within real-world environments and ultimately does not hinder our quest for truth. But it does suggest that epistemic humility is an important practice for determining whether practices yield true beliefs over false ones. Intellectual pride misses the aim of complex assent. Cognition, for Newman, is rooted in a teleological conception past and present practice of science.” Helen Longino, The Fate of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), , makes a similar move.“I insist instead on an epistemology for living science, produced by real, empirical subjects. This is an epistemology that accepts that scientific knowledge cannot be fully understood apart from its deployments in particular material, intellectual, and social contexts.”
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of nature. Since the human mind is wired for truth, falsehood neither forms nor sustains the natural process of belief-formation. Truth is inextricably tied to our cognitive well-being. Our desire for truth, along with avoidance of error, reflects a proper function of the mind. The example of a clock illustrates the fallible nature of cognition, but also shows the importance of a properly functioning intellect reasoning rightly and pursuing truth.
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We do not dispense with clocks, because from time to time they go wrong, and tell time untruly.A clock, organically considered, may be perfect, yet it may require regulating.Till that needful work is done, the moment-hand is the quarter-past, and the hour hand is just at noon, and the quarter-bell strikes the three quarters, and the hour-bell strikes four, while the sun-dial precisely tells two o’clock.The sense of certitude may be called the bell of the intellect; and that it strikes when it should not is a proof that the clock is out of order, no proof that the bell will be untrustworthy and useless, when it comes to us adjusted and regulated from the hands of the clock-maker (GA, f.).
Certitude reflects the natural order of things; it has “a definite and fixed place among our mental acts; it follows upon examination and proof, as the bell sounds the hour, when the hands reach it” (GA, f.). Unless the mind is duly regulated, it fails to perform its proper function.24 When the mind reasons incorrectly, errors are sure to abound. Faulty reasoning, however, does not suggest the impossibility of attaining certitude; it reveals a need for refining our ratiocinative powers. Proper training enables the mind to perfect its ratiocinative powers, detecting faulty assumptions and securing certitude of given propositions. . John R.T. Lamont,“Newman on Faith and Rationality,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (), , sees a connection between Newman’s analogy of the clock and Alvin Plantinga’s notions of warrant and proper function. Locke also offers a theory of proper functioning, positing how God intends the mind to function; see John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), especially ..
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Securing grounds of belief is not incompatible with the unconditional nature of assent.The process of justifying Christian belief may change, but truth does not change.25
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The conclusiveness of a proposition is not synonymous with its truth. A proposition may be true, yet not admit of being concluded: it may be a conclusion and yet not a truth.To contemplate it under one aspect, is not to contemplate it under another; and the two aspects may be consistent, from the very fact that they are two aspects. Therefore to set about concluding a proposition is not ipso facto to doubt its truth; we may aim at inferring a proposition, while all the time we assent to it (GA, ).26
Justification of Christian belief enables us to fulfill our epistemic duty. In the case of mature minds, fulfillment of epistemic duty is “an obligation, or rather a necessity.” It requires the “exercise of mature judgment” (or, as I intend to show in Chapter , the exercise of informed judgment). Justification of Christian belief is in accordance with a law of our nature, “like the growth of childhood into manhood, and analogous to the moral ordeal which is the instrument of their spiritual life” (GA, ). Cognitive excellence is not divorced from spirituality; integration is essential for nurturing the life of the mind and the life of faith. Living faith and theological reflection are compatible but distinct phenomena within the life of the church. The vast majority of people rarely attain this level of reflexive awareness. Nevertheless, they believe with the same vigor as a per.“Now truth cannot change; what is at once truth is always truth; and the human mind is made for truth, and so rests in truth, as it cannot rest in falsehood” (GA, ; see also ). . As Paul K. Moser, Dwayne H. Mulder, and J.D. Trout, The Theory of Knowledge, , point out,“epistemic justification is, according to most contemporary epistemologists, defeasible, that is, subject to defeat.A justifying proposition, in other words, can cease to be justifying for you when you acquire additional justification beyond your current evidence.l.l.l. In this respect, justification differs from truth, which does not change with changes in evidence.Your beliefs about what is true may change with changing evidence, but it does not follow that the truth concerning what you believe itself changes too.”
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son who operates on the level of complex assent. They “pass through life with neither doubt nor, on the other hand, certitude (as I have used the words) on the most important propositions which can occupy their minds, but with only a simple assent” (GA, ). The last thing Newman intends to convey is a narrow understanding of belief-formation, a theory that categorically denies the validity of simple, yet firm, faith. Thus, he introduces the notion of material or interpretative certitude.27 Though this level of certitude does not function fully as reflexive activity, posing a question about the truthfulness of assents may evoke “from them an act of faith in response which will fulfill the conditions of certitude.” Such activity, however, is “valid and sufficient” if and only if it is “carried out seriously and proportionate to their several capacities” (GA, ). Newman here acknowledges the contextual nature of belief-formation. The claim, however, is that all simple assents do not qualify as material or interpretative certitude, but all material certitudes are basically simple assents.They qualify as material or interpretative assents if they have the potential to meet the conditions of and to be converted into certitude.28 Newman’s approach, then, couples normative inquiry with phenomenological analysis of belief-formation.29 But how do we . Terrence Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: The Religious and Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman (Louvain: Peeters Press, ), . . Dr. Zeno, John Henry Newman, Our Way to Certitude: An Introduction to Newman’s Psychological Discovery:The Illative Sense, and His Grammar of Assent (Leiden: Brill, ), f. . As a contemporary illustration of the point, naturalized epistemology rethinks the connection between psychological and epistemic conditions of belief-formation. In my estimation, placing Newman in this context may be one way to rethink his epistemology of Christian belief. Chapter brings Newman’s project into conversation with recent work in social and virtue epistemology, exploring how social conditions of belief-formation (phenomenological inquiry) factor into the process in which radically different communities adjudicate claims (normative inquiry). For a good collection of essays on the project of naturalized epistemology, see Hilary Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ). Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt, f., categorizes Newman’s
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know when our constitutive faculties are functioning properly? The world of facts reveals that human beings are moral agents of progress. Each being secures its own good by acting in accordance with its specific nature. Most beings “are complete from their first existence, in that line of excellence which is allotted to them,” but human beings function differently in this regard (GA, ). Realization of the good depends upon the extent to which each person exercises and perfects those faculties with which she has been endowed.30 Hence, Newman sees a difference between a proper and an improper use of the illative sense. The proper function of the illative sense “is not furnished by how most people use their ratiocinative powers. It is determined by how those who have perfected them do so.”31 Perfection of our constitutive faculties is the fulfillment of a sacred duty.Achieving this goal is inextricably tied to proper “acquisition of knowledge, of which inference and assent are the immediate instruments” (GA, ). This occurs by means of careful training within a community context. Accumulation of knowledge takes place within a social context and varies according to the intellectual complexion of the individual. The mind does not passively acquire knowledge but actively masters fields of knowlapproach as “Reasonable Doubt Naturalism,” which “claims that justification and rationality are themselves practices. What counts as justification has developed—there is no necessity built into these particular practices such that only they could have been generated.l.l.l. The undermining of the attempt to show the unjustifiability of our basic beliefs is not in itself an attempt to ‘justify’ them, but rather to show that they are more basic than things that can be justified. Unless we believed those things we couldn’t have justification at all.l.l.l. Reasonable Doubt Naturalism sees description and norms tied closely together because description is of norms that have been established. We are concerned not simply with description of what is being done, but with description of the norms generated by practice.What links description and norms is that description reveals the norms that have been established in the practices we describe.” .Vincent F. Blehl, “The Role of Education in the Formation of Conscience and the Illative Sense,” Newman Studien (Glock und Lutz, ): . .Wainwright, Reason and the Heart, .
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edge; subsequently, it makes apt judgments about concrete matters. Within a social context, people of informed judgment impart knowledge to a community of inquirers.
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Instead of trusting logical science, we must trust persons, namely, those who by long acquaintance with their subject have a right to judge.And if we wish ourselves to share in their convictions and the grounds of them, we must follow their history, and learn as they have learned.We must take up their particular subject as they took it up, beginning at the beginning, give ourselves to it, depend on practice and experience more than on reasoning, and thus gain that mental insight into truth, whatever its subjectmatter may be, which our masters have gained before us. By following this course, we may make ourselves of their number, and then we rightly lean upon our own moral or intellectual judgment, not by our skill in argumentation (GA, f .).
Informed judgment is context-dependent and person-specific. Proper employment of the illative sense requires a social transmission of tested experience and of perfected modes of knowledge. The claim here is that “only after having pursued such a course of learning from recognized experts can the individual come to rely upon his own personal moral or intellectual judgment.”32 Newman follows Aristotle’s observation that skillful judgment comes from giving “heed to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of the experienced, not less than to demonstrations, from their having the eye of experience, they behold the principles of things” (GA, ). At first, Newman’s focus on the social conditions of cognitive development seems to conflict with his stress on the laws of the mind. Human cognition, however, is a dynamic process in which cognitive agents ascertain from empirical observation reliable belief-forming processes for fulfilling their epistemic duty. Development of this ratiocinative faculty in any subject matter . Blehl, “The Role of Education in the Formation of Conscience and the Illative Sense,” .
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requires comprehensive mastery of a concrete field of knowledge. The illative sense “is not a general instrument of knowledge, but has its province, or is what may be called departmental” (GA, f.). Along with accumulating knowledge, right judgment in reasoning depends on the level of sagacity, skill, or prudence cultivated by a person. However, the focus on the material nature of reasoning does not imply that each discipline operates from a unique mode of reasoning. Rather, in any concrete field of knowledge, we reason “as far indeed as we can, by the logic of the language, but we are obliged to supplement it by the more subtle and elastic logic of thought” (GA, ).This is where the illative sense factors into the material nature of reasoning. Assessing the validity of an inference in a particular field of knowledge requires cultivation of the illative sense. It is our duty “to strengthen and perfect the special faculty which is its living rule, and in every case as it comes to do our best” (GA, ).The main point is that “there is no single formula for determining the truth of each subject matter.”33 The illative sense is the elastic logic of thought, the living rule by which people judge issues in various fields of knowledge. It “is always checking back with itself, as it were, taking the measure, correcting and readjusting in relation to what it always already knows, even as it deliberately enters into the profusion and variety of elements in its immediate field.”34 Perfecting Our Natural Faculty of Judgment The illative sense principally is a natural faculty of judgment, an informal and tacit ability for reasoning, developing intellectual . Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt, . . Mary Katherine Tillman, “Economies of Reason: Newman and the Phronesis Tradition,” in Discourse and Context: An Interdisciplinary Study of John Henry Newman, ed. Gerard Magill (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ): .
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skills, and making apt judgments.35 On one level, the illative sense governs a natural process of reasoning by which a person arrives at the truth of a proposition without explicit investigation (e.g., the person who predicts the weather without assigning explicit and intelligent reasons; Newton’s ability to perceive mathematical truths without demonstrative proof; Napoleon’s apt judgment in military matters; GA, –). The mind combines various phenomena unconsciously and forms judgments for situations. On another level, the illative sense needs to be honed within a community of informed judgment.Though it is an informal process of . In several places in the Grammar, Newman calls the illative sense ‘higher logic,’‘a living organon,’‘a personal gift,’‘supra-logical judgment,’‘the judgment of prudent people’ (judicium prudentis viri), ‘the architectonic faculty,’ ‘good sense,’ ‘common sense,’ and ‘phronesis’ (, f., f., f.). Zeno, Our Way to Certitude, –, however, correctly points out that “these definitions, however, are to be found in the Grammar merely incidentally and by the way. Consequently they must not be taken as adequate and complete, but only as descriptions and aspects of his idea which supplement one another.”The proper context for defining the illative sense must be restricted to places in which Newman explicitly discusses its nature. In , for example, the following comments resemble and anticipate Newman’s development of the illative sense in the Grammar: “Practical matters cannot be defended by argument, or explained on paper—(i.e. except accidentally)—they are determined by the h\qo"” of the agent—who (whether he be correct or not) still adopts his measures, not on a process of reasoning which words will do justice to, but on feeling, on the dictates of an internal unproduceable sense” (L&D, vol. , ). In , Newman describes judgment as “partly a natural endowment common to all, or a special gift to certain persons, partly the result of experience; and it varies in its worth and preciousness, and its rarity, with the subject matter on which it is employed. Accordingly it has different names, and kinds; sometimes it is sagacity, sometimes common sense, strong sense, shrewdness, acuteness, penetration” (Theological Papers, vol. , ). For a good survey of Newman’s use of the term “illative sense,” see Enright, “Faith and Reason in Newman’s Anglican and Roman Catholic Correspondences.” Enright correctly points out that “while the meaning conveyed by the term ‘illative sense’ can be found in Newman’s letters at least as early as , he did not use the term itself until he was writing the Grammar of Assent in . He used other terms such as prudentia, judgment, and phronesis. The last two can be found in the Grammar” (). Enright notes that in a letter written to Richard Holt Hutton after the publication of the Grammar, Newman used the expression ‘the living intelligence of the prudent man’ to convey the idea of the illative sense. In another letter he referred to the illative sense as the ‘inductive sense’” (). See also Ian Ker’s introduction to An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent.
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reasoning, skillful judgment about concrete matters requires perfection of “right judgment in ratiocination” (GA, , ).36 Here, the activity of the illative sense parallels Aristotle’s notion of phronesis—practical and experiential wisdom.37 Rules play an important role in addressing moral issues, but applying them in concrete situations requires skillful judgment.The exercise of the illative sense, which is analogous to the formation of good judgment in the area of morality, also depends on the level of sagacity, skill, or prudence cultivated by a person (GA, ). Practice and experi. Gerard Magill,“Newman’s Personal Reasoning:The Inspiration of the Early Church,” Irish Theological Quarterly (): –, argues that patristic theology played a significant role in the formation of Newman’s notion of personal reasoning.Two citations seem to confirm Magill’s argument. First, Newman inscribed the following citation on the title page of the Grammar: “Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum” (It is not by logic that it has pleased God to bring about the salvation of his people).The citation comes from Ambrose’s De Fide ad Gratianum Augustum. In the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ed. David DeLaura (New York: Norton, ), , Newman describes the impact of Ambrose on his thinking about logic.“And then I felt altogether the force of the maxim of St.Ambrose,‘Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum;’ —I had a great dislike of paper logic. For myself, it was not logic that carried me on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it. All the logic in the world would not have made me move faster towards Rome than I did; as well might you say that I have arrived at the end of my journey, because I see the village church before me.” See also Robin C. Selby, The Principle of Reserve in the Writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ). . In a letter to William Froude (April , ), Newman says that “there is a faculty in the mind which I think I have called the inductive sense, which, when properly cultivated and used, answers to Aristotle’s frovnhsi"” its province being, not virtue, but the ‘inquisitio veri,’ which decides for us, beyond any technical rules, when, how, etc. to pass from inference to assent, and when and under what circumstances, etc. etc. not. I do not see that he notices that I consider what Aristotle calls ‘phronesis’ is that habit and act of the mind which leads a man to determine when ‘inference’ is to pass to ‘assent’”(L&D, vol., , ).As editor of The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman, vol. , , Sillem argues that Newman adapted two themes from Aristotle’s philosophy: () the idea that there are various ways of reasoning and () the personal dimension of knowledge. See also Tillman, “Economies of Reason,” –; and Joseph Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground: Practical Judgment and the Lure of Technique (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ); cf.Verbeke,“Aristotelian Roots of Newman’s Illative Sense,” –.
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ence are crucial for reasoning well and making apt judgments in concrete situations.This developmental process is characterized by prudence. Informal inference is primarily, though not exclusively, the domain of the illative sense. Newman calls it the real mode of reasoning in concrete matters. It has three characteristics. First, informal inference combines elements of implicit and explicit reasoning; “antecedents are more or less explicitly prominent in the mind, though not in all details.”38 On the one hand, informal inference does not supplant “the logical form of inference, but is one and the same with it” (GA, ). On the other hand, informal inference differs from formal inference in how it reaches conclusions. Informal inference operates within concrete realities of life, “its premisses being instinct with the substance and the momentum of that mass of probabilities, which, acting upon each other in correction and confirmation, carry it home definitely to the individual case, which is its original scope” (GA, f.).39 . Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, , rightly points out that what Newman identifies as implicit reasoning in the University Sermons becomes natural inference in the Grammar; that is, ratiocination in a state of nature. “It is the act of reasoning without effort and intention, or any necessary consciousness of the path the mind takes in passing from antecedent to consequent. Akin to it, but manifesting a slight difference, is informal inference. Whereas in natural inference the mind’s transition from the known to the unknown is effectively unconscious, in informal inference the antecedents are more or less explicitly prominent in the mind, though not in all details.This difference, however, is neither great nor important, because with both natural and informal inference the mental process goes on spontaneously, and, with both, one looks at things per modum unius, disregarding the details” (). Explicit reasoning becomes formal inference in the Grammar. The illative sense, for Newman, functions primarily as an informal or natural process of inference. .The following quotation aptly summarizes Newman’s understanding of this informal process of reasoning:“I commenced my remarks upon inference by saying that reasoning ordinarily shows as a simple act, not as a process, as if there were no medium interposed between antecedent and consequent, and the transition from one to the other were of the nature of instinct,—that is, the process is altogether unconscious and implicit. It is necessary, then, to take some notice of this natural and material Inference, as an existing phenomenon of the mind; and that the more, because I shall thereby be illustrating and supporting what I
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Second, informal inference is mainly an implicit process of reasoning. In everyday affairs, the mind reasons in spontaneous, subtle, and dynamic ways and consequently its process of reasoning cannot be captured fully by logical rules or formal analysis. The mind “is unequal to a complete analysis of the motives which carry it on to a particular conclusion, and is swayed and determined by a body of proof, which it recognizes only as a body, and not in its constituent parts” (GA, ).40 In informal inference, we are not fully conscious of the process by which we reach conclusions in have been saying of the characteristics of the inferential process as carried on in concrete matter, and especially of their being the action of the mind itself, that is, by its ratiocinative or illative faculty, not a mere operation as in the rules of arithmetic” (GA, ). Newman hesitates to label such workings of the mind as instinctive powers of thinking. However, informal inference, guided by the illative sense, may be called instinctive if one means by this designation the “perception of facts without assignable media of perceiving” (GA, ). In letters to Charles Meynell, Newman says that “by instinct I mean a realization of a particular; by intuition, of a general fact‚ — in both cases without assignable or recognizable media of realization” (L&D, vol. , , f.). Newman’s hesitance to equate the illative sense with an instinctive process of reasoning also stems from an implicit recognition of the conflict between the significance of instinct as a source of knowledge and the importance of expanding one’s locus of knowledge.As I have shown, Newman handles the issue by distinguishing a cultivated level of the illative sense from a basic level of the illative sense. . Newman seems to suggest that the operation of the illative sense cannot be captured by formal rules. He wobbles on this point mainly because the aim of the Grammar is to show that people can attain certainty in concrete matters without full understanding of the grounds of their beliefs. Moreover, the focus is on the process of belief-formation in everyday events. Newman’s caveat, however, squares with some recent work on cognition and self-perception. For example, Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ), , argues that the “adaptive unconscious” is largely inaccessible to us but “plays a major executive role in our mental lives. It gathers information, interprets and evaluates it, and sets goals in motion, quickly and efficiently.” Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way we Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books), , agree that “nearly all important thinking takes place outside of consciousness and is not available on introspection; the mental feats we think of as the most impressive are trivial compared to everyday capacities; the imagination is always at work in ways that consciousness does not apprehend; consciousness can glimpse only a few vestiges of what the mind is doing: the scientist, the engineer, the mathematician, and the economist, impressive as their knowledge and techniques may be, are also unaware of how they are thinking and, even though they are experts, will not find out just by
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concrete matters. Instead, “we grasp the full tale of premisses and the conclusion, per modum unius [by means of one]—by a sort of instinctive perception of the legitimate conclusion in and through the premisses, not by formal juxta-position of propositions; though of course such a juxtaposition is useful and natural, both to direct and to verify, just as in objects of sight” (GA, f.). It is possible, to some extent, to cast this tacit dimension of reasoning into formal language, but even the “most elaborate exhibitions” of formal inference “fail to represent adequately the sum-total of considerations by which an individual mind is determined in its judgment of things” (GA, ).41 Last, informal inference is conditional, since its conclusions depend upon non-demonstrative premises. Assessing the weight and significance of various probabilities depends upon the intellectual development of each person. What is proof for one person is not proof for another. Hence, this aspect of informal inference complicates the search for a common measure by which radically different communities can adjudicate their claims. asking themselves.” See also George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh:The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, ). . Newman calls formal logic the ‘scientific form’ of ‘verbal reasoning’ and distinguishes it from mental reasoning (GA, ). Zeno, Our Way to Certitude, f., rightly points out that both verbal and mental reasoning “imply premises and middle terms, but when reasoning verbally we know these antecedents reflexively and express them whereas we often remain unconscious of them reasoning mentally.Verbal reasoning is called arguing or explicit reasoning, mental reasoning is implicit reasoning, and this is the function of the illative sense.” In other words, verbal reasoning is primarily the business of formal inference, while mental reasoning refers to the activity of informal and natural inference. Gerard Casey, Natural Reason:A Study of the Notions of Inference,Assent, Intuition, and First Principles in the Philosophy of John Henry Cardinal Newman (New York: Peter Lang, ), , argues that “Newman’s real thesis is that inference is a continuum, with informal inference being its norm and formal inference and natural inference being its limiting cases. What locates a piece of inference at a particular place on the continuum is its degree of consciousness or verbalizibility. Reasoning which is completely explicit or conscious is formal inference (or rather, formal inference is its limiting case): reason which is completely inexplicit or unconscious is natural inference.”
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Newman illustrates this modality of reasoning with cases of people who assent to propositions without sufficient evidence. For example, most people believe without a doubt that Great Britain is an island. If asked about its grounds, most people would offer something like the following reply:
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We have been so taught in our childhood, and it is so in all the maps, next we have never heard it contradicted or questioned .l.l. everyone whom we have heard speak on the subject of Great Britain, every book we have read, invariably took it for granted; our whole national history, the routine transactions and current events of the country, our social and commercial system, our political relations with foreigners imply it in one way or another. Numberless facts, or what we consider facts, rest on the truth of it; no received fact rests on its being otherwise.l.l.l.There is a manifest reductio ad absurdum attached to the notion that we can be deceived on such a point as this (GA, ).
Such considerations do not rule out doubt, but a denial of them would lead to an absurd conclusion. Belief in the insularity of Great Britain has not been established by the highest kind of proof; if we required demonstrative proof, then only those who circumnavigated the island would be entitled to be certain. Nevertheless, belief in the insularity of Great Britain, without demonstrative proof, is reasonable, and the process of reasoning is “best represented as inferences to the best explanation.”42 Belief in the .Wainwright, Reason and the Heart, . Jay Newman, The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman, , argues that Newman’s claim here is ambiguous and, in fact, “when asked why we believe that Britain is an island, we can articulate our reasons, in other words; the probabilities are not really ‘too fine to avail separately,’ and given time we can list hundreds of very specific reasons for believing.l.l.l. Not only is our giving reasons a verbal activity, but each and every reason we give is subject to critical evaluation.l.l.l. In arriving at or confirming the conclusion that Britain is an island, we may make complex deductions as well as complex inductions, and the premises and conclusions of the deductive inferences are no less concrete than those of inductive ones.”Wainwright, however, offers a convincing response to Jay Newman’s observations. First, the fact that we can cast this implicit process of reasoning “in the form of an inductive or deductive argument (or a complex set of them), does not im-
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inevitability of death makes the same point.What are my grounds for thinking that I shall die? We are certain about the inevitability of our own death, even though demonstrative proof is lacking; demonstration of a future event is not possible.The strongest proof for the inevitability of our own death is the reductio ad absurdum. How do we account for past generations of people, unless the truth of the matter is that they all have died? The warrant for our certitude in such cases is “my own living personal reasoning, my good sense,” a healthy use of the illative sense of reasoning (GA, ). At one point, Newman identifies the illative sense with “common sense” (GA, ). In its most basic operation, the illative sense refers to an informal process of reasoning, but judging the validity of an inference in concrete matters involves more than the application of common sense. The transition from inference to certitude requires development of right reasoning in judgment.43 As a “supra-logical judgment,” the illative sense “is not mere commonsense, but the true healthy action of our ratiocinative powers, an action more subtle and more comprehensive than the mere appreciation of a syllogistic argument” (GA, ). In moving from inference to certitude, the illative sense supplements, rather than excludes, insights of formal logic. Newman, therefore, differentiates between the illative sense as “a natural uncultivated faculty” and as a cultivated faculty of judgment (GA, ). Though the illative ply that our reasoning had that form.” The ability to reason explicitly about this belief does not imply that its formation was predicated on these reasons. Second, belief in the insularity of Great Britain is “best represented” as an inference to the best explanation, rather than as a deductive or inductive argument.Third, the validity of such an argument,“and of other inferences to the best explanation, does not depend on our ability to recast them in deductive or inductive form” (f.) . Fey, Faith and Doubt, , says that “Newman introduced the expression, illative sense, to summarize and denote ‘the perfection’ of our complex intellectual activity when it combines real assent and notional inference, formal exhibitions and informal reflection—in coming to know what is the case.” See also Zeno, Our Way to Certitude, –.
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sense “has its first origin in nature,” maturation of right judgment in reasoning comes by means of practice and experience.Attaining certitude requires insights of prudent people—“the judgment of those who have the right to judge” (GA, , ). It follows, then, that maturation of the illative sense is indispensable for fulfilling one’s epistemic duty. Skillful judgment about the validity of an inference reflects insights of reason, sanctioned by the personal operation of the illative sense. Certitude is not a passive impression made upon the mind from without, by argumentative compulsion, but in all concrete questions (nay, even in abstract, for though the reasoning is abstract, the mind which judges of it is concrete), it is active recognition of propositions as true, such as it is the duty of each individual himself to the exercise at the bidding of reason, and, when reason forbids, to withhold. And reason never bids us be certain except on an absolute proof; and such proof can never be furnished to us by the logic of words, for as certitude is of the mind, so is the act of inference which leads to it. Every one who reasons, is his own centre; and no expedient for attaining a common measure of minds can reverse this truth;—but the question follows, is there any criterion of the accuracy of an inference, such as may be our warrant that certitude is rightly elicited in favour of the proposition inferred, since our warrant cannot, as I have said, be scientific? I have already said that the sole and final judgment on the validity of an inference in concrete matter is committed to the personal action of the ratiocinative faculty, the perfection of the virtue of which I have called the Illative Sense (GA, ).
The illative sense judges the validity of an inference, determining whether a person has sufficient grounds for maintaining a belief. Furthermore, converting an inference to certitude depends upon whether one properly cultivates the illative sense. Developing the illative sense is a natural function of the mind; it takes seriously “the law of my mind to seal up the conclusions to which ratiocination has brought me, by that formal assent which I have called a certitude” (GA, f.). Reference to an epistemic duty indicates
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
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that pursuit of truth has a moral dimension, a commitment to “embrace what reason presents as sufficient for belief.”44 The Scope of the Illative Sense The illative sense operates in three ways: conducting an argument, resolving concrete questions, and assessing first principles. The dimension with which the Grammar is primarily concerned is the role that the illative sense plays in the final resolution of concrete questions. Here, the illative sense “determines what science cannot determine, the limit of converging probabilities and the reasons sufficient for a proof ” (GA, ). It recognizes the extent to which probabilities converge toward a certain conclusion.45 The following quotation aptly summarizes Newman’s understanding of the cumulative nature of proof in concrete matters.
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It is plain that formal logical sequence is not in fact the method by which we are enabled to become certain of what is concrete; and it is equally plain, from what has been already suggested, what the real and necessary method is. It is the cumulation of probabilities, independent of each oth. Magill,“Love Safeguarding Faith,” . . Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt, , rightly points out that determination of converging probabilities is the crowning achievement of the illative sense. Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, , adds that “Newman’s theory of the illative sense constitutes the answer to a question that had troubled him from his earliest years, and one that had acquired especial prominence with the rise of philosophical naturalism.” For example,William Froude asks Newman:“The Apologia has been very much read by men of Science and with a feeling of great interest, a feeling which couples the perception of extreme power of mind in the writer with the anxious and (wondering) curiosity to know how he substantiates the bridge by which he steps so freely from the state of doubt which (as they feel) inevitably attaches to these results of probabilities, to the state of absolute certainty which he seems to substitute for this” (Cardinal Newman and William Froude, ). Merrigan, f., adds that “Newman’s considered reply to this query—a query he rephrases in the Grammar in terms of the problem of the relationship between inference and assent—is that it is the operation of the illative sense which enables one to bridge what has been described as the logical gap dividing probability from absolute conviction.”
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er, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case which is under review; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and various for such a conversion.As a man’s portrait differs from a sketch of him, in having, not merely a continuous outline, but all its details filled in, and shades and colours laid on and harmonized together, such is the multiform and intricate process of ratiocination, necessary for our reaching him as a concrete fact, compared with the rude operation of syllogistic treatment (GA, ).46
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On another occasion, Newman illustrates the cumulative nature of reasoning with the example of a cable.A cable is composed of several strands; individually each is weak and insufficient to support a belief, but collectively they are as “sufficient as an iron rod” (e.g., mathematical or strict demonstration). The cable symbolizes “moral demonstration, which is an assemblage of probabilities, separately insufficient for certainty, but, when put together, irrefragable.”47 People who refuse to depend on the durability of a . “For me, it is more congenial to my own judgment to attempt to prove Christianity in the same informal way in which I can prove for certain that I have been born into this world, and that I shall die out of it. It is pleasant to my own feelings to follow a theological writer, such as Amort, who has dedicated to the great Pope, Benedict XIV, what he calls ‘a new, modest and easy way of demonstrating the Catholic Religion.’ In this work he adopts the argument merely of greater probability. I prefer to rely on that of an accumulation of various probabilities. But we both hold (that is, I hold with him) that from probabilities we may construct legitimate proof, sufficient for certitude” (GA, f.). . L&D, vol. , . Philip Flanagan, Newman, Faith and the Believer (London: Sands, ), , rightly points out that in the Grammar, Newman offers a defense of “moral certitude, the certitude arising from a convergence of many probabilities, the type of proof on which our belief in everyday facts depends, and on which our proof of the claims of Christianity is based.And the illative sense is the faculty by which we know when these probabilities converge and are sufficient to allow us to be certain.” Perhaps Newman’s analogies might be improved by equating formal inference with a chain, informal inference with a cable, and natural inference with a bar. I thank John Ford for this insight. Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt, , also points out that Newman’s image of a cable is “almost identical to Reid’s to illustrate such certainty. Just as for Reid probable evidence ‘may be compared to a rope made up of many slender filaments twisted together’ such that the ‘rope has strength more than sufficient to bear the stress laid upon it, though no one of the filaments of which it is
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cable and demand “an iron bar, would, in certain given cases, be irrational and unreasonable.”The same applies to people who say that a religious belief is rationally acceptable if and only if that belief can be supported by “rigid demonstration,” rather than by “moral demonstration.”48 Appraisal of evidence, governed by the illative sense of reasoning, reflects a holistic process. In determining whether a belief is rationally acceptable, we consider various pieces of evidence, rather than a single line of argument.With this cumulative process of reasoning,“indirect evidence and weak arguments, which alone would bear little weight, may be interwoven into a fabric that strongly supports a conclusion. Each element derives warrant from its place in the whole.”49 Christians form and sustain their beliefs by accumulating different material instead of reducing them to one piece of evidence.50 The illative sense provides “a mental comprehension” of various pieces of data, “reflecting a clear and rapid act of the intellect, always, however, by an unwritten summing-up, something like the summation of the terms, plus and minus of an algebraic series” (GA, ). It does not merely combine various probabilities but shows how they mutually support one another and form the best possible explanation. Evidence, however, can be seen from various perspectives; its weight and significance varies according to a person’s intellectual complexion and training. Evaluation of evidence takes place composed would be sufficient for that purpose.’” For discussion of an analogous approach to evaluation of evidence in the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce, see Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), . . L&D, vol. , . . Catherine Z. Elgin, Considered Judgment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), . .William J. Abraham, “Cumulative Case Arguments for Christian Theism,” in The Rationality of Religious Belief, ed.William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holtzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
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“within a framework of assumptions, which are to some extent influenced by the individual’s entire character and personality, a certain stability over time in these assumptions is necessary.”51 People, then, should keep several things in mind before deciding whether Christian belief is rationally acceptable. Most people approach the question of whether Christian belief is rationally acceptable with prior assumptions about adequacy and relevance, and tradition-formed notions of how things ought to be.These assumptions, however, are not confined to Christian belief; all people come with preconceived notions that influence evaluation of beliefs.52 Determining whether a belief is rationally acceptable does not occur in a vacuum. A belief usually represents accumulation of several factors (e.g., experience as a factor in weighing evidence, the influence of moral disposition in weighing evidence, the role of epistemic practices in shaping mature forms of judgment).53 The illative sense also plays a formative role in the process by which people conduct arguments, operating “in the beginning, middle, and end of all verbal discussion and inquiry, and in every . Mitchell, Faith and Criticism, .Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, , notes that the standpoint from which one evaluates evidence “will emerge amid a host of background claims you already think you know or justifiably believe. It will also turn on more personal variables such as what kind of training you have undergone and what kind of person you are—whether, say, you are morally and intellectually virtuous—and so on.” . Mitchell, Faith and Criticism, . Mitchell points out that the work of Thomas Kuhn sheds important light on how human beings deal with new discoveries in light of their existing belief (or value system).“What we learn from [Kuhn] is that, in so far as fresh discoveries threaten the received scientific picture, it is simply not the case that the essential features of the system are at once abandoned or confidence in them allowed to fluctuate from day to day. A variety of devices is resorted to in order to avoid such a consequence. Comparatively low-level theories are jettisoned or modified in order to accommodate the new observations; sometimes the observations themselves are questioned.” . For a discussion on the significance of Newman’s thought in relation to cumulative case arguments, see Basil Mitchell, The Justification of Religious Belief (New York: Seabury Press, ); and Abraham, The Rationality of Religious Belief, –.
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step of the process” (GA, ). It sifts, evaluates, and integrates various premises into a synthetic judgment and furnishes answers to concrete questions.The mind gathers various pieces of data, experiences, and testimonies, and determines the best way for addressing questions. A historical dispute illustrates the point. Historical disagreements arise mainly because of the different starting points from which each historian approaches a document. Before interpreting a document, each historian determines the significance and relevance of certain pieces of evidence, traditional accounts, testimonies, and methodological assumptions. The inquirer has first of all to decide on the point from which he is to start in the presence of the received accounts; on what side, from what quarter he is to approach them; on what principles his discussion is to be conducted; what he is to assume, what opinions or objections he is summarily to put aside as nugatory, what arguments, and when, he is to consider as apposite, what false issues are to be avoided, when the state of his arguments is ripe for a conclusion.l.l.l.Then, as to the kind of arguments suitable or admissible, how far are tradition, analogy, isolated monuments and records, ruins, vague reports, legends, the facts or sayings of later times, language, popular proverbs, to tell in the inquiry? Then, arguments have to be balanced against each other, and then lastly the decision is to be made, whether any conclusion at all can be drawn, or whether any before certain issues are tried and settled, or whether a probable conclusion or a certain. It is plain how incessant will be the call here or there for the exercise of a definitive judgment, how little that judgment will be helped on by logic, and how intimately it will be dependent upon the intellectual complexion of the writer (GA, ).
Conducting an argument on this level reflects cultivated judgment. Selection of sources, methods, questions, and interpretations varies according to factors such as the training and the intellectual complexion of each author.These authors would never come to a conclusion if they confined themselves simply to facts. Instead, implicit understandings of reasonableness enable them to conclude
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on historical matters. The focus on a historical dispute shows the extent to which people articulate and adjust arguments in a manner consistent with their first principles. Our reasoning proceeds “from starting-points, and with collateral aids, not formally proved, but more or less assumed, the process of assumption lying in the action of the Illative Sense, as applied to primary elements of thought respectively congenial to the disputants” (GA, ). Consequently, fundamental differences emerge mainly because of various starting points from which people address issues. These starting points from which we reason are first principles, that is, fundamental premises or assumptions that furnish an “intellectual and moral frame of reference.”54 Starting points are “very often of a personal character, which are half the battle in the inference with which the reasoning is to terminate” (GA, ).When logic fails to secure a common measure, people appeal to their own first principles and to their own personal judgment, against the first principles and the judgments of others. In conducting arguments, first principles may be “those elementary contrarieties of opinion, on which the Illative Sense has to act, discovering them, following them out, defending or resisting them, as the case may be” (GA, ). Though Newman attaches a wide variety of meanings to the expression “first principles” in the Grammar, a passage from his earlier discussion of presumption captures what he has in mind here. By presumption I mean an assent to first principles; and by first principles I mean the propositions with which we start in reasoning on any given subject-matter.They are in consequence very numerous, and vary in great measure with the persons who reason, being received by some minds, not by others, and only a few of them received universally. They are all of them notions, not images, because they express what is abstract, not what is individual and from direct experience (GA, ). . Bernard M. G. Reardon, “Newman and the Psychology of Belief,” Church Quarterly Review (): f.
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However, most people accept some first principles without reservation. For example, the belief in an external world, though not beyond doubt, is universally received in everyday events. Belief in an external world reflects an inductive process of reasoning in which we draw conclusions from “our ever-recurring experiences” (GA, ).55 Most people trust sense perception as a reliable belief-forming process, though it may deceive them at times.They reject the assumption that errors constitute “prima facie evidence” against its reliability.56 They acknowledge the strong probability that sense perception is a reliable belief-forming process.
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The Problem of Common Measure Newman’s proposal explains how the illative sense shapes the process of argumentation and makes sense of intellectual differences among people of informed judgment. Though the illative sense operates in the beginning, middle, and end of arguments, its personal nature creates the problem of a common measure. One function of logic is to supply a “common measure between mind and mind” (GA, ), thus testing personal claims and transforming personal insights into public knowledge.57 However, the per. Carr, Newman and Gadamer, f. Carr argues that first principles such as the reliability of the senses and of memory “belong to that realm of public discourse in which we are prereflectively immersed, as attested by the fact that we cannot deny them without at the same time presupposing them. By the same token, they have common, universal validity and do not simply reflect the temper of particular minds.” For a fascinating approach to the question of the reliability of sense perception and the problem of epistemic circularity, see William Alston, The Reliability of Sense Perception (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ). . Hilary Kornblith, Inductive Inference and Its Natural Ground: An Essay in Naturalistic Epistemology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ), . . Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground, , points out that “Newman may indeed be the first writer in modern times who carries the term ‘incommensurability’ outside its matrix in mathematics and gives it epistemological significance.” As “early as , Newman spoke of the ‘incommensurability .l.l. of the human mind’—‘since each mind pursues its own course and
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sonal dimension of the illative sense falls short of resolving intellectual exchanges among different people. Interpretive differences warrant a criterion by which radically different communities can assess the process of reasoning employed in forming beliefs. Such a method serves as “a common measure between mind and mind, as a means of joint investigation, and as a recognized intellectual standard—a standard such as to secure us against hopeless mistakes, and to emancipate us from the capricious ipse dixit of authority” (GA, ). The limits of formal logic, however, are never more apparent than in concrete matters. Reasoning by rule cannot account for the subtleties of arguments in concrete matters. In completing a proof, “we are thrown upon some previous syllogism or syllogisms, in which the assumptions may be proved; and then, still farther back, we are thrown upon others again, to prove the new assumptions of that second order of syllogisms” (GA, ). Does the process ever stop? Or is it a vicious circle? The limits of logic surface in interpretive differences about first principles. In arguing about concrete matters, formal logic does not furnish a common measure for evaluating first principles, but they pervade the reasoning process on any subject matter. How, then, can formal logic accomplish its purpose, “if it only leads us back to first principles, about which there is interminable controversy?” (GA, ). The personal dimension of the illative sense, along with the presumptive nature of first principles, complicates the goal of achieving a common standard of justification. Cultivation of the illative sense may lead people to form different opinions about the same subject matter. Since the illative sense operates in all modes of reasoning, differences are bound to occur. First principles with is actuated in that course by ten thousand indescribable incommunicable feelings and imaginings’” (L&D, vol. , ).
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which we reason are “very numerous and vary in great measure with the persons who reason, according to their judgment and power of assent, being received by some minds, not by others, and only a few of them received universally” (GA, ).58 In concrete matters, the ultimate criterion for determining whether our inferences yield truth or error belongs to “the trustworthiness of the Illative Sense” (GA, ). It “appeals to no judgment beyond its own, and attends upon the whole course of thought from antecedents to consequents, with a minute diligence and unwearied presence” (GA, ). Since determining converging probabilities depends on personal judgment, the cumulative force of evidence on any matter may affect people differently. Concrete experiences shape evaluation of evidence and impede the effort toward consensus.They are “spontaneously present to me, and with the aid of my best illative sense, I only do on one side of the question what those who think differently do on the other.As they start with one set of first principles, I start with one another” (GA, ). The core of disagreement stems from acceptance of certain first principles. The illative sense assesses the weight of an argument, culling first principles and following the probative force of these recondite sources of knowledge. Multitudes indeed I ought to succeed in persuading of its truth [Christianity] without any force at all, because they and I start from the same principles, and what is proof to me is a proof to them; but if any one starts from any other principles but ours, I have not the power to change his principles, or the conclusion which he draws from them, any more than I can make a crooked man straight. Whether his mind will ever grow .“Moreover, all reasoning is from premisses and those premisses arising (if it so happen) in their first elements from personal characteristics, in which men are in fact in essential and irremediable variance with one another, the ratiocinative talent can do no more than point out where the difference between them lies, how far it is immaterial, when it is worth while continuing an argument between them, and when not” (GA, ).
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straight, whether I can do anything towards its becoming straight, whether he is not responsible, responsible to his Maker, for being mentally crooked, is another matter; still the fact remains, that, in any inquiry about things in the concrete, men differ from each other, not so much in the soundness of their reasoning as in the principles which govern its exercise, that those principles are of a personal character, that where there is no common measure of minds, there is no common measure of arguments, and that the validity of proof is determined, not by any scientific test, but by the illative sense (GA, ).59
Appropriate judgments come “either by means of a natural gift, or from mental formation and practice and a long familiarity with those various starting points” (GA, ).At times, the illative sense simply illumines the nature and extent of interpretive differences. Nevertheless, “in no class of concrete reasonings, whether in experimental science, historical research, or theology, is there any ultimate test of truth and error in our inferences besides the trustworthiness of the Illative Sense that gives them its sanction” (GA, ). In acknowledging the personal dimension of the illative sense of reasoning, Newman opens himself up to the charge of relativism. However, his claim that pursuit of truth is the business of complex assent challenges such a charge. Also, the discussion of first principles merely highlights the subjective dimension of the illative sense, showing how moral and experiential factors shape judgment of concrete matters.60 Nonetheless, interpretive differ. See also L&D, vol. , . .“We judge for ourselves, by our own lights, and on our own principles; and our criterion of truth is not so much the manipulation of propositions, as the intellectual and moral character of the person maintaining them, and the ultimate silent effect of his arguments or conclusions upon our minds” (GA, ). Magill, Religions of the Book, , contends that Newman’s point here “is not to argue that character is the criterion of truth (that is the relativist trap of Romanticism that he wanted to circumvent) but that the intellectual perception of assent requires ethical commitment (that is his response to ‘the manipulation of propositions’ that characterized rationalism). Moral and intellectual dimensions of religious percep-
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ences, arising from numerous starting points, do not negate the existence of objective truth.61 Here, I say again, it does not prove that there is no objective truth, because not all men are in possession of it; or that we are not responsible for the associations which we attach, and the relations which we assign, to the objects of the intellect. But this does suggest to us, that there is something deeper in our differences than the accident of external circumstances; and that we need the interposition of a Power, greater than human teaching and human argument, to make our beliefs true and our minds one (GA, ).62
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The personal nature of reasoning complicates the search for a common measure but does not rule out the pursuit of truth. Attainment of truth is inextricably tied to our cognitive well-being. The methodological dilemma lies in securing a reliable beliefforming process by which radically different communities can adjudicate their claims. In restricting my focus to the epistemic problem of common measure, as stated in the Grammar, I am aware of other dimensions tion are thus inseparable: ‘We rightly lean upon ourselves, directing ourselves by our own moral or intellectual judgment, not by our skill in argumentation’ (GA, ).” In both references, Newman is simply showing the interaction between subjectivity and objectivity in assent. . Ker, John Henry Newman, , points out that some non-Christian critics concurred with some Catholic reviewers in criticizing Newman’s failure in the Grammar to “provide a theory of truth which would enable true certitudes to be distinguished from false certitudes.” Newman “was well aware that this was a weak point of the book; but it was not exactly a failure, since he had not even attempted to provide one.” . For Newman, the interposition of a Power most likely refers to the necessity of divine revelation.An exploration of the role of divine revelation in evaluating differences would be a fruitful study. Carr, Newman and Gadamer, , rightly points out that Newman’s depiction of first principles does have an objective element.That is to say, “the first principles that structure and orient human cognition are dependent for their existence and ‘enlargement’ on sources outside the self—and it is therefore wrong to characterise him, as at least one scholar has, as ‘a religious individualist, and next to God the world’s greatest solitary.” Gerard Casey, Natural Reason, , argues that on the deepest level “Newman says no” to the possibility of discourse among “holders of different first principles.”
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of the illative sense, but exploring them is beyond the scope of this project. Since the corpus of Newman’s writings is not a systematic collection of writings but a series of responses to particular issues, developing his thought can be an onerous task. One must glean Newman’s philosophical position piecemeal. Furthermore, Newman’s project is not steeped in individualism; his work on doctrinal development, ecclesiology, and education shows otherwise. For example,Terrence Merrigan recognizes the void of a communal dimension of the illative sense in the Grammar but shows how “Newman’s vision of the operation of the illative sense in the individual is present in his vision of the process of dogmatic definition in the Church.”63 Newman’s implicit suggestions about the communal nature of the illative sense in the life of the church warrant further consideration. In On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, Newman argues that the consent of the faithful (consensus fidelium) is necessary for the reception of church doctrine; it is “a sort of instinct, or frovnhma, deep in the bosom of the mystical body of Christ.” 64 The power of illation, governed by the Holy Spirit, enables the entire church to participate in defining doctrine. Also, the collective judgment of the faithful is consulted “because the body of the faithful is one of the witnesses to the fact of the tradition of revealed doctrine, and because their consensus . Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, . . John Henry Newman, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, ed. John Coulson (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, ), ; henceforth cited as OC. As John Coulson points out, “The Phronema, that instinct deep within the mystical body of Christ, is obviously a counterpart to the phronesis or illative sense which, in the individual, is that power to make a real, as opposed to a notional, assent in judgments of faith and conscience.l.l.l. It is clear that Newman sees the individual conscience (Phronesis) as being fulfilled only in the phronema, or communal conscience of the whole church: one was the mirror to the other, in which we could sometimes see ourselves more clearly, and by which our individual moral insights were fulfilled, completed and sustained (see OC, , f.). Tillman, “Economies of Reason,” , adds that when Newman “shifts from the individual seat of judgment to that of the ecclesial community, the illative sense becomes the sense of the faithful, and conscience is translated into the principle of tradition in the Church.”
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through Christendom is the voice of the Infallible Church” (OC, ).This communal judgment functions as one medium of ecclesiastical tradition.65 The problem of common measure resurfaces again in view of such a claim.66 Not all will consent to Newman’s notion of the infallible nature of communal judgment. Some will inquire about grounds upon which the church can substantiate the claim that its communal witness is infallible. Others will claim that Scripture is the only authoritative source for theological reflection. Notwithstanding, Newman’s proposal should furnish fertile ground for the landscape of contemporary theology. An important inquiry would determine whether Newman’s appeal to the conscience of the faithful is really an offshoot of his views on interpreting revelation in the church and is only accidentally tied to a social dimension of epistemology. Though his proposal may furnish some insights for understanding the internal formation of a Christian community, it does not solve the problem of common measure. In the Grammar, Newman concedes the absence of a methodological solution and never fully moves beyond the personal dimension of the illative sense. My concern here, then, is with what most scholars describe as the problem of incommensurability. Is it possible for radically different communities of informed judgment to adjudicate claims without an independent standard of justification?
. James Kroeger,“Gleanings: Newman on the Consensus of the Faithful and the Magisterium,” East Asian Pastoral Review (): . . For a good discussion of the problem of circularity in Newman’s proposal of consulting the faithful, see John T. Ford,“Newman on ‘Sensus Fidelium’ and Mariology,” Marian Studies (): especially .
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An Experiment in Social Epistemology A contemporary epistemological discussion illumines the problem of common measure.The aim of securing a common measure between mind and mind assumes an internalist framework of knowledge. An internalist requires epistemic access to how the mind justifies knowledge; an externalist, by contrast, simply explores whether a belief-forming process yields true or false beliefs. The key is determining whether a process (or a faculty) is reliable—capable of producing true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs. Likewise, the Grammar challenges the internalist assumption that “a necessary condition for the possession of knowledge is in some sort of mental or epistemic access to the features of our knowledge that make it knowledge.”67 Though complex assent is a fulfillment of an epistemic duty, reflexive awareness of belief-formation is not a necessary condition for attaining knowledge. Epistemic dependence suffices; it factors in both everyday events and specialized areas of knowledge. Newman’s discussion of the social and progressive nature of the illative sense needs further attention. It recognizes the importance of a communal context for perfecting the illative sense but fails to incorporate these insights into the discussion of the problem of common measure.The deficiency may be explained by his attempt to justify an ordinary Christian’s beliefs and practices against the challenge of evidentialism. His stress on the importance of developing our constitutive faculties presupposes that there are proper and improper ways of perfecting our ratiocinative powers. It seems possible, then, to develop the illative sense as a reliable, though complex, process of belief-formation. Newman rightly shows that epistemic growth requires personal . Lamont,“Newman on Faith and Rationality,” .
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development of cognitive skills. Cultivating the illative sense, however, is a communal affair, not merely the outcome of an isolated faculty of the mind. As Carr points out, the illative sense “is also a communal sense, for one only has one’s personal ‘being’ by relation to other ‘beings’ with whom we live in community.”68 Though Newman speaks of the communal dimension of the illative sense, he fails to develop this point fully in the Grammar.A fuller account of the social conditions of knowledge may furnish insights for developing this epistemic hint. Consequently, I intend to focus more on the communal nature of the illative sense, showing that proper development of this complex belief-forming process requires insights of a community of informed judgment.The distinction between the illative sense as “a natural uncultivated faculty” and as a cultivated faculty by which we judge the validity of inferences in concrete matters is crucial here. If not cultivated properly, the illative sense can be “degraded by prejudice, passion, and self-interest” (GA, ). Can one move from personal judgment to extended forms of illation among different communities of informed judgment? Does the personal nature of the illative sense rule out the possibility of evaluating disputes that exist among people from radically different traditions? Though plagued with the problem of common measure, Newman’s account of the illative sense has many potentialities that have not been fully exhausted. One potentiality involves expanding the personal dimension into a community of informed judgment. A community of informed judgment is the context in which one acquires knowledge and skillful judgment. Moreover, it divides the cognitive labor. Not all members of the community need to justify grounds upon which Christian belief is formed. New. Carr, Newman and Gadamer, .
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man’s ambiguous comments on the role of formal logic most likely reflect his preoccupation with showing that the illative sense is a reliable belief-forming process for those who adhere to Christian beliefs without demonstrative proof. Fundamentally, his discussion of the limits of formal logic stands, but effective distribution of cognitive labor ensures greater precision in articulating the role of complementary modes of reasoning.This is where Newman’s proposal fails to trace out the social implications of the illative sense. It highlights the process of belief-formation, showing that most people form beliefs without reflexive awareness of the grounds upon which beliefs are established. Though people may falter in their reasoning occasionally, the illative sense is fundamentally a reliable belief-forming process, analogous, for example, to that of memory and sense perception.The next step involves exploring, in greater detail, social conditions under which people both acquire informed judgment and interact with other communities of informed judgment. Though it offers hints, Newman’s project fails to develop fully an account of how this belief-forming mechanism ensures proper judgment.The illative sense has a personal dimension, but its proper development depends on a community of informed judgment. In trying to show that the average person is justified in her unconditional assent to propositions without demonstrative proof, Newman overstates the personal nature of the illative sense in terms of interpretive differences. As I have shown, Newman discusses the social aspects of knowledge in which a person, within a community context, learns how to refine cognitive skills. Acquisition of knowledge and skillful judgment involves trusting those who have a right to render judgment. A social epistemology of informed judgment shows that proper development of the illative sense is indispensable both for ensuring informed judgment and for enhancing intellectual exchange among different communities of in-
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Cultivating Personal Judgment
formed judgment. Thus, proper development of the illative sense, within a community of informed judgment, creates greater possibilities for interacting with other communities of informed judgment without sacrificing the perspective of one’s community.The possibility does exist that if the illative sense were cultivated properly by different people, then potential for disagreement might be diminished.69 By means of practice and experience, a community of informed judgment learns to reason rightly and properly. It operates on at least two levels. On one level, some persons trust the insights of informed people in order to make good decisions in everyday events. This process is implicit and laden with tacit assumptions. On a second level, some persons function within the community as people of informed judgment.Their training equips them to appraise pieces of evidence and arguments accumulated for a given belief. In this regard, a community of informed judgment acknowledges “the division of cognitive labor.”70 We depend upon a community of informed judgment in numerous ways. A community of informed judgment, for example, shapes our moral and intellectual dispositions, explicates our system of belief, informs us of new insights, and identifies communal forms of self-deception. Interaction with others also may broaden our existing locus of knowledge and alert us to some distortions. The personal dimension of the illative sense does not annul pursuit of truth.71 As Alvin Goldman rightly points out, people, in .Wainwright, Reason and the Heart, , makes a similar observation. . Elgin, Considered Judgment, . Abraham, The Rationality of Religious Belief, ff., observes that “the full articulation of the grounds for our favored metaphysical vision is unlikely to be executed by any single individual.l.l.l. In believing that one’s chosen tradition embodies the truth, one depends in part on the labour and judgement of others.” .Abraham, The Rationality of Religious Belief, , correctly points out that “the testing of the tradition is something which takes place over time, and is not therefore something to be decided in an instant. The community nurtures within itself a band of scholars and critics
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
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spite of their differences, have a common interest in pursuing truth and in avoiding falsehood.72 Newman’s observation that the proper function of the mind is pursuit of truth shows basic agreement with Goldman’s fundamental premise. Newman, as noted, explains the search for truth in terms of an epistemic duty. By pursuing truth, we fulfill the laws of our intellectual nature and perfect our natural mode of reasoning in concrete moments of existence.The difference may lie in how Goldman and Newman arrive at their conclusions. A social epistemology of informed judgment targets such dilemmas.
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who explore the depths and horizons of the faith and report back on their findings.l.l.l.Again and again the prevailing expression of the tradition has to be adjusted in the light of new knowledge and fresh testing.” .Alvin I. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
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A Social Epistemology of Informed Judgment
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A solution to the problem of common measure presupposes an internalist framework of knowledge—cognitive access to how the mind justifies knowledge.The problem, however, cannot be solved by reference to a common measure independent of communal instantiations of the illative sense.There is no appeal beyond cognitive practices to which people find themselves “fully committed.”1 People deem beliefs to be true because a reliable belief-forming process produces them or, as I intend to show, proper exercise of the illative sense produces them. The illative sense transposes the problem of common measure into the problem of trusting a belief-forming process. A belief-forming process is reliable if and only if it, guided by good cognitive practices, produces a preponderance of true beliefs over false ones. Development of the illative sense requires training, education, and experience, in addition to native talent, within a community of informed judgment. In this context, people refine cognitive skills under the tutelage of exemplars of informed judgment. The material nature of the illative sense, however, does not exclude exchange among different communities of informed judgment. Rather, the problem of common measure sets up an impossible . William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ), .
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Epistemology of Informed Judgment
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standard that cannot be met in cases of cognitive practices that the objector readily accepts as legitimate.Though the illative sense is a fallible belief-forming process, it can be relied on in the same way as sense perception, memory, and reason. We trust these things, though they are not infallible resources of belief-formation.A lack of consensus, therefore, should spur better practice of the illative sense, rather than an elimination of it as a dimension of human cognition. To this end, I offer a social epistemology of informed judgment that develops Newman’s epistemic hints in the Grammar. Fruitful exchange with others demands informed judgment, which involves integration of at least four essential elements: praiseworthy dispositions, modalities of reason, evidence, and wisdom. All four elements can be extracted either from the University Sermons or from the Grammar.The difference, however, is that Newman never explicitly weaves them into a unified account of belief-formation in order to address the problem of common measure.This is where social and virtue epistemology enters the discussion. Recent work in these areas furnishes important insights for constructing a viable response to the problem of common measure.
Making the Connection Maturation of the illative sense consists of a developmental process by which people acquire skillful judgment in different fields of knowledge. Right reasoning in judgment, however, relies on social transmission of wisdom embedded in various practices (e.g., cognitive, moral, religious, and liturgical). Within a context of community, people imitate examples of informed judgment, recognizing that enhancement of the illative sense depends upon established practices. Without a communal dimension, the personal level of the illative sense fails to achieve its full potential in an ex-
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
change among different communities of informed judgment. For this reason, I offer suggestions for moving from a personal to a communal level of the illative sense. Without sufficient consideration of the social dimension of cognition, the illative sense plays a minimal role in addressing the conditions under which people form and sustain beliefs. Accounts of rationality, which include both personal and communal dimensions of cognition, recognize that people reason within a social context rather than on some epistemic island alone. A communal dimension of cognitive development does not ignore the personal level of reasoning but focuses more on how a social context shapes individual cognition. Newman’s point is well taken on the concrete nature of decision making, but his undue restriction of personal cognition heightens the problem of adjudicating individual assent in view of competing claims of personal assent. Aidan Nichols contends that extending the illative sense to a broader community of illation may address the restriction in question. By considering how others understand the divine through experience, our own illation may find richer materials from which to draw conclusions. Cognitive agents learn to integrate other forms of illation into their personal form of assent. The point of departure is not simply personal experience, but a “gallery of figures,” who furnish a richer collection of “illative materials.” Understood in this way, extended illation functions more as a “grammar of consent” than as a “grammar of assent.”2 Extended illation accumulates insights from a richer and broader corpus of theological reflection. Nichols, for example, extracts theological ideas from figures such as Gregory of Nyssa, Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, and Pascal, to illustrate how the personal di. Aidan Nichols, A Grammar of Consent:The Existence of God in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, ), .
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
mension of the illative sense can be enhanced by the illation of others. Culling from various forms of illation, a community of informed judgment mounts a cumulative case for the rationality of Christian belief. Extended illation still requires individual assent to incorporate personal insights into a communal dimension of belief-formation, though “consent itself plays a vital role in extending our awareness of the range and variety of possible signals of the transcendent in our experience.”3 The focus, however, expands from personal assent to consent of an extended community of judgment. A communal setting is indispensable both for developing cognitive skills and for interacting with other communities of informed judgment.Taken to an extreme, a personal dimension of the illative sense heightens the problem of common measure, echoing a long-standing tradition of epistemic egoism. Connecting personal and communal dimensions of the illative sense traces how different communities reason and cultivate informed judgment. Communal interaction enhances epistemic practices, enables people to hone their cognitive skills, and creates greater possibilities for exchange among different communities of informed judgment. Thus, right reasoning in judgment is an acquired habit, refined within the company of exemplars of informed judgment. Likewise, the same process occurs in engaging people from other communities of informed judgment. The craft of teaching illustrates the importance of moving from an individual to a communal level of judgment. It connects knowledge and wisdom in a living and vibrant pedagogical agent. As a creative act, teaching connects new and existing knowledge in “spontaneous, improvised efforts of mind and spirit, disciplined by education and experience.”4 The teacher serves as a living reser. Ibid., . . James M. Banner, Jr., and Harold C. Cannon, The Elements of Teaching (New Haven:Yale University Press, ), .
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voir of knowledge and wisdom, rendering both a synthetic judgment of and a skillful application of various pieces of data, theories, and interpretations.5 The intellectual virtues of knowledge and wisdom, though connected with the same subject matter, are distinct phenomena. Knowledge of the subject matter is essential for informing students, but it does not ensure proficient evaluation of the information acquired. Along with knowledge, teachers acquire skillful judgment by means of experience and employment of specific pedagogical virtues (e.g., love of truth, compassion, intellectual integrity, wisdom, knowledge of audience, good skills of communication, and patience).6 Combining knowledge and wisdom enables the teacher to render qualified judgments for particular situations. Skillful judgment requires the presence of an experienced educator, who passes on a vibrant tradition of teaching.7 In this sense, the art of good teaching reflects a process by which the teacher pursues knowledge and formation of character. She cultivates virtues for applying knowledge to situations both inside and outside the classroom.8 Skillful judgment, then, requires more than acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge without evaluative proficiency bars students from determining whether the material acquired is worthy of consideration. Such evaluation requires a community of informed judgment. Apt judgment in teaching is an acquired skill that empowers students to connect and evaluate the significance .Aquino,“The Craft of Teaching,” . . For a good and practical discussion of pedagogical virtues, see Banner and Cannon, The Elements of Teaching. .As Chapters and show, Newman sees acquisition of knowledge as the cultivation of a “philosophic habit” of mind. This involves the capacity to compare and systematize ideas, showing their “mutual and true relations” (The Idea of a University, , f.; see also sermon XIV in the University Sermons). . For an interesting connection between epistemology and teaching, see Keith Lehrer, et al., eds., Knowledge,Teaching, and Wisdom (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, ).
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Epistemology of Informed Judgment
of ideas for everyday decision making. Without wisdom, students merely learn to digest isolated facts and fail to render synthetic judgments about the relevance of data for particular situations.The skill of good teaching enables students to combine acquisition of knowledge with critical skills of evaluation, ensuring that good judgment involves the capacity to appraise critically the constituents of knowledge acquired.9 The example of good teaching highlights the communal dimension of the illative sense. People acquire knowledge, hone cognitive virtues, and learn how to apply knowledge to particular issues within concrete moments of human existence.Wisdom and knowledge no longer live in separate but equal worlds. Instead, a person of informed judgment sees the intricacies, nuances, and complexities of the subject matter, while rendering suitable judgments for particular situations both inside and outside the classroom.
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The Indispensability of Epistemic Dependence The phenomenon of epistemic dependence is indispensable for moving from a personal to a communal dimension of the illative sense. It undergirds refinement of the illative sense within a community of informed judgment, furnishing reliable social media for transmitting knowledge and for evaluating beliefs. The goal is informed judgment. Evidence of epistemic dependence can be seen in communally established practices that shape the process by which people form, evaluate, and sustain beliefs. These practices follow “patterns that are not only widely distributed in a society but also transmitted, reinforced, and sanctioned through socialization.”10 . Lehrer, Knowledge,Teaching, and Wisdom, . .William P. Alston,“Belief-Forming Practices and the Social,” in Socializing Epistemolo-
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How, then, does maturation of the illative sense take place within a context of community? In what ways does epistemic dependence factor into cognitive growth? A preliminary response offers an apt description of the process of cognitive development. Here I echo Newman’s empirical observation about the concrete nature of reasoning. An adequate account of rationality considers the conditions of belief-formation and challenges the attempt to impose an a priori notion of rationality on the nature of human cognition. It also strives for a greater connection between psychological facts of reasoning and the normative dimension of human cognition. Contextual awareness of the embedded nature of cognitive practices is fundamental for achieving an adequate understanding of the formation and sustenance of Christian belief.11 Phenomenological inquiry also explores social conditions of belief-formation. Though a focus on the personal nature of the illative sense captures some dimensions of belief-formation, neglect of its communal nature results in a failure to account for the impact of social conditions. In this regard, social epistemology both complements and provides a necessary corrective to the personal dimension of the illative sense. It connects personal and gy: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, ed. Frederick F. Schmitt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ), . . Edward Stein, Without Good Reason:The Rationality Debate in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), provides a helpful discussion of the relationship between descriptive and normative dimensions of rationality. Stein argues for a naturalized understanding of rationality that connects empirical facts of cognitive development with normative principles of rationality without confusing them. My notion of informed judgment also sees the need for including both dimensions of rationality. For an interesting account of rationality that grounds epistemic normativity in epistemic desires, see Hilary Kornblith, “Epistemic Normativity,” Synthese (): –. Kornblith, , notes that his proposal does not investigate the connection between epistemic normativity and virtue epistemology. Later, I tackle the issue in two ways: () the role of epistemic virtues in determining the reliability of a belief-forming mechanism and () the role of epistemic virtues in cultivating informed judgment.
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communal dimensions of reasoning, targeting the social conditions under which belief-formation occurs and recognizing the collaborative nature of knowledge and human decision making.12 One facet of social epistemology evaluates the truth-conduciveness of cognitive practices; the central question here focuses on whether these practices produce knowledge or error.13 Social epistemology challenges the depiction of belief-formation as a process in which isolated individuals form and sustain beliefs.14 In exploring social conditions of belief-formation, accounts of rationality include assessment of the reliability of a belief-forming process within its social environment. Just as we desire to “know whether our natural inferential tendencies are likely to give us an accurate or a distorted picture of the world, we also need to know whether our social . E.g., Frederick F. Schmitt, ed., Socializing Epistemology:The Social Dimensions of Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ); Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World; Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ); J. Angelo Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ); and Margaret Gilbert, Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ). . Alston, “Belief-Forming Practices and the Social,” , rightly points out that social epistemology shifts the focus from exclusive concentration on how individual cognizers acquire beliefs to investigating ways in which individuals form and sustain beliefs within a social context. Moreover, social epistemology explores ways in which institutions, disciplines, and organizations store or embody knowledge.Within these social contexts are “socially established (transmitted, sanctioned) procedures and methods that are directed to the acquisition of knowledge or rational (justified) belief, and hence have epistemic import.” . Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge, , notes that epistemological individualism and epistemological collectivism have been two dominant accounts of social knowledge.The former asserts that only individual agents of cognition are possible subjects of knowledge, while the latter claims that only collectives are possible subjects of knowledge. Corlett constructs an argument for social epistemic reliabilism, which focuses on both individual and collective cognizers as two subjects of knowledge. In offering a hybrid of these two accounts, Corlett points out that not “all individuals or all collectives are possible subjects of social knowledge. Rather, some individuals in a social context and some collectives (i.e., conglomerates, as mentioned and defined in Chapter ) who/which possess the characteristics essential for knowing (e.g., a normal cognitive or decision-making system) are possible subjects of social knowledge.” A social epistemology of informed judgment also includes both individual and collective components.
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
institutions and practices are helping to inform us or misinform us.”15 The social dimension of belief-formation signals at least two levels of epistemic dependence. On one level, people form beliefs in everyday events without consciously exploring the evidence of a claim or offering explicit accounts of justification. A patient, for example, implicitly trusts a doctor to provide reliable knowledge on medical matters. Even when the patient challenges a medical diagnosis, an attempt to consult other recognized experts still involves a basic trust in the testimony of others. Epistemic deference to recognized experts implies an acknowledgment of a person’s competence to render informed judgment about relevant issues. It requires a disposition of trust for solidifying human transactions in everyday events and for maintaining a community of informed judgment. A community has no alternative other than to trust living resources of informed judgment; in this sense, acquisition of knowledge is a cooperative enterprise. As recent philosophical studies suggest, testimony plays an important role in obtaining knowledge and in evaluating beliefs. Without testimony, immediate experience would be the only means for forming and sustaining beliefs.16 . Hilary Kornblith, “A Conservative Approach to Social Epistemology,” in Socializing Epistemology, . . John Hardwig,“The Role of Trust in Knowledge,” Journal of Philosophy (), , maintains that reliance on the testimony of others is an indispensable element of epistemic dependence. Scientific communities confirm this observation, especially the extent to which people rely on others for accepting most scientific propositions. In this sense, scientific knowledge depends on the moral and epistemic character of scientists. The inevitability of epistemic dependence, however, does not imply that “hard data” and “logical arguments” are unnecessary for scientific communities, but rather that amassing relevant evidence and arguments is “too extensive and too difficult to be had by any other means than testimony.” Furthermore, radical skepticism “would impede the growth of knowledge, perhaps without even substantially reducing the risk of unreliable testimony. Trust in one’s epistemic colleagues is not, then, a necessary evil. It is a positive value for any community of finite minds, provided
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
On another level, epistemic dependence takes place in specialized areas of knowledge. In academic communities, for example, people rely on others for insights because the completion of research depends on collaborative effort. Scholars trust that others, who possess specialized knowledge in particular areas of research, are capable of demonstrating competence in rendering reliable assessments of evidence. Scholarly credentials, publications, and collegial endorsements provide some safeguards for ensuring fruitful exchange of ideas. Epistemic dependence is not simply a shot in the dark! Nevertheless, confidence in the work of others still requires some level of dependence on collegial peer review. Trust, which is “partly a matter of faith in the reliability of our fellows as purveyors of knowledge,” shows the extent to which epistemic dependence solidifies a community of inquiry.17 It seems obvious that belief-formation takes place within a social context. Acquisition of knowledge and formation of skillful judgment reflect a level of social interdependence.A person skilled in judgment has learned how to mediate knowledge in various situations and so reflects implicit trust in people of informed judgment. By means of practice and mastery of a specific field of knowledge, people of informed judgment earn the right to render apt judgments about particulars. They are reliable examples of right reasoning in judgment, confirmed by their expertise in a only that this trust is not too often abused. For finite minds can know many things only through epistemic cooperation.There is, then, a very delicate balance between places for trust within epistemic communities and places for insisting on better safeguards against untrustworthy testifiers.” See also Trudy Govier, Social Trust and Human Communities (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ); C. A. J. Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ); Onora O’Neill, A Question of Trust:The BBC Reith Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); and Nancy Nyquist Potter, How Can I Be Trusted:A Virtue Theory of Trustworthiness (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ). . Michael Welbourne, “The Community of Knowledge,” Philosophical Quarterly (): .
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subject matter and by their interaction with other people of informed judgment. An obvious question emerges as to how we know that every process of conferring the designation “expert” is a reliable one. Is there a social process in place to ensure a reliable flow of expert judgment? Or is the designation “expert” relative to a specific community context? Is it reasonable to rely on the testimony of socially recognized experts? Such questions demand an explanation of how personal and communal dimensions of the illative sense complement one another in transmitting knowledge. Social transmission of knowledge warrants a reliable belief-forming process by which a community can ensure success in forming and sustaining beliefs. Determining a reliable belief-forming process is an ongoing task and is essential for nurturing cognitive growth within a community of informed judgment. In ascertaining the reliability of a belief-forming process, a community of informed judgment considers at least three factors. First, the reliability of a belief-forming process is a matter of truthconduciveness.The task is to determine whether a belief-forming process guides communal practice in ways that yield a preponderance of true beliefs over false ones. On this point, I follow Alvin Goldman’s recent suggestion that a social epistemology, operating from a reliabilist framework, must be assessed in terms of its veritistic outcome, that is, whether cognitive practices are linked to truth.18 The mind, as Newman indicates in the Grammar of Assent, . Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, , mentions an additional sense in which one can understand truth-conduciveness. “I suggest that we may legitimately call a trait or procedure truth conducive if it is a necessary condition for advancing knowledge in some area even though it generates very few true beliefs and even if a high percentage of the beliefs formed as a result of this trait or procedure are false. For example, the discovery of new reliable procedures may arise out of intellectual traits that lead a person to hit on falsehood many times before hitting on the truth. As long as these traits are self-correcting, they will eventually advance human knowledge, but many false beliefs may have to be discarded along the way.”
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is wired for truth; consequently, proper development of the illative sense regulates truth-conduciveness as a necessary outcome of epistemic inquiry. Social epistemology does not merely describe social conditions of belief-formation, but it probes whether a belief-forming process is linked to truth.19 A community of informed judgment supplies a social network for acquiring knowledge and for evaluating whether a belief-forming process yields true beliefs. Though a personal level of the illative sense does not annul pursuit of truth, a communal dimension pays greater attention to the process of socialization that fosters, corrects, and achieves greater levels of truth-conduciveness. Second, cultivation of epistemic virtues complements the goal of truth-conduciveness.20 Formation of intellectual character cre. Kornblith,“A Conservative Approach to Social Epistemology,” , f. Mapping out a theory of truth for a social epistemology of informed judgment would be a fruitful study. . I am fully aware of the fact that Goldman’s reliabilist schema follows more of a consequentialist approach to belief-formation and what I am suggesting here falls more along the lines of a virtue approach to epistemology. For example, Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, , says that the structure of a veritistic approach “is perfectly analogous to the structures of consequentialist schemes in moral theory.” Social practices are evaluated in terms of their “veritistic outputs.” See also his Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. Ernest Sosa,“Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology,” Nous (): –, argues that though Plantinga, Goldman, and he differ methodologically, all three focus explicitly on “truth-conducive intellectual virtues or faculties” and operate under the perspective of virtue epistemology. As Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, , , points out, however, all three fail to derive their version of virtue epistemology from a virtue theory of morality. Axtell, Knowledge, Belief, and Character, , points out that the consequentialist move is usually tied to the “demand for normative criteria.” However,Axtell contends that in order for virtue epistemologists to share a broad range of interests, they need to begin with a broad enough definition of intellectual virtue .l.l. an account of epistemic agency will necessarily involve both descriptive and evaluative concerns” (, ). Consequently, Axtell argues for a “mixed” externalist account of knowledge and justification. “The epistemic agent () has beliefs formed by reliable processes, () is cognitively well integrated and ‘in a position to know’ because properly affected or attuned to her environment, and () seeks to acquire virtuous habits or dispositions” (). See also Guy Axtell, “Epistemic Luck in Light of the Virtues,” in Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, – (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –.
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
ates greater possibilities for producing a reliable belief-forming process.The move here connects epistemic virtues with truth and investigates how the cultivation of intellectual qualities is “conducive to the discovery of truth and the avoidance of error.”21 Cognitive agents assess the reliability of a belief-forming process against a list of epistemic virtues. In this regard, empirical examination of habit formation is key to understanding the process by which epistemically virtuous people determine whether a beliefforming process is a reliable one. The exercise of good cognitive habits usually enables epistemically virtuous people to detect procedures linked to truth-conduciveness.22 Acquiring such habits enables people to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information. Third, a community of informed judgment ascertains whether a cognitive practice of right reasoning in judgment shows continuity with other modes of informed judgment. Consulting other sources of informed judgment takes place both in everyday life and in specialized areas of knowledge. Informed judgment is not created in isolation but takes into account feedback from other sources of informed judgment.23 Newman, for example, concurs that the argument from conscience “would not be worth while my offering it, unless what I felt myself agreed with what is felt by hundreds and thousands besides me, as I am sure it does, whatever be the measure, more or less, of their explicit recognition of it” (GA, ).24 Communal consensus, however, does not guarantee . Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, . . Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, , . Kornblith, “Epistemic Normativity,” , argues that desire factors into epistemic normativity, as long as truth plays a central role. . James Shanteau, “Psychological Characteristics and Strategies of Expert Decision Makers,” Acta Psychologica (): . . Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, , astutely notes that “many contemporary writers confuse justification with interpersonal agreement.Where there is no agreement, and no basis for settling disagreement, justification or rationality are thought to be impossible.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
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truth-conduciveness; it may obscure truths or produce a preponderance of false beliefs over true ones. Trust again plays an important role in forming consensus, since the social agency of a community’s beliefs must be trustworthy. Social transmission of knowledge of p relies intrinsically on the fact that people from whom we derive knowledge are justified in knowing p.25 Maintaining confidence in the trustworthiness of others is reasonable until we discover some extenuating circumstances that call into question their reliability as sources of informed judgment. Truth-conduciveness and epistemic virtues, therefore, play a vital role in consulting other communities of informed judgment. All communal inquiries are a matter of truth-conduciveness and require habitual formation of epistemic virtues. In consulting other sources of informed judgment, a community realizes that public scrutiny plays an important role in deciding whether its beliefs reflect a reality independent of socially established practices.26 Social exchange of ideas may foster greater possibilities for refining thought, since others may be better at detecting conflicts within a community’s system of belief. Though others may provide a variety of perspectives from which to address particular issues within a Without neutral, transcultural principles for settling disagreements, prospects for an ‘objectivist’ epistemology founder. But this view elevates agreement to an exaggerated epistemic position.An ability to elicit agreement is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of justification.”A social epistemology must include a veritistic epistemology, which evaluates social practices “in terms of respective knowledge consequences” (). In this sense, a “belief is considered justified if it is arrived at by processes or practices that the speaker (or the community) regards as truth conducive” ().The presumptive ground for epistemic authorization is truth conduciveness (). Goldman’s observation is at the heart of my proposal.Agreement does not equal justified belief. My proposal recognizes the social context of reasoning, but it adds that right reasoning in judgment requires a proper use of the illative sense. See also Nicholas Rescher, Pluralism:Against the Demand for Consensus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). . Keith Lehrer,“Personal and Social Knowledge,” Synthese (): . . Coady, Testimony, , , makes a statement about the need for a similar assessment of individual beliefs.
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
community of informed judgment, “there is no guarantee that these views will not lead to other internal conflicts of their own.”27 Interpretive differences are bound to exist between people of informed judgment within a specific community, let alone in an exchange with other communities of judgment. Nevertheless, perfecting the illative sense within a community of informed judgment and among other communities of informed judgment is indispensable for ensuring a reliable process of acquiring knowledge and forming apt judgment. Scholarly conferences, for example, illustrate the possibility of exchanging intellectual differences while exhibiting some agreed-upon standards for conducting good arguments.Though current focus on intellectual differences is fashionable, most people, guided by the illative sense, still attempt to distinguish between quality scholarly work and less than desirable work. Social and communal factors impact these judgments, but informed judgment still leads the way. Peer review monitors exercise of a belief-forming process when it satisfies at least two conditions. First, peer review acknowledges the importance of training under the tutelage of recognized experts. Implied here is that reliable exemplars of informed judgment breed new possibilities for ensuring continuity of informed judgment. Second, peer review recognizes the importance of social channels both for transmitting knowledge and for crafting skillful judgment. Scholarly publications, for instance, may provide a context for attaining a high degree of recognition. Affiliation with recognized people of informed judgment and with journals of noteworthy status may help to solidify a reliable process of knowledge acquisition.28 Though epistemic reliance is a fallible . Hilary Kornblith,“Some Social Features of Cognition,” Synthese (): . . Keith Lehrer,“Social Information,” Monist (): , tackles the issue of reliability in terms of aggregating expertise.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Epistemology of Informed Judgment
process, plagued with moments of distortion, it still plays an important role in our daily practices; it is unavoidable. For example, when scholarly communities, guided by the goal of truth as an epistemic outcome, incorporate such virtues as intellectual honesty, open-mindedness, and thoroughness into their practices, the process is expected to yield fruitful exchanges.29 Epistemic dependence also suggests a communal division of cognitive labor. Acquiring knowledge and skillful judgment depends upon the establishment of procedures that test the reliability of its belief-forming process. The task is to connect the reliability of a belief-forming process with proper demarcation of cognitive labor. Philip Kitcher rightly notes the importance of balancing cognitive capacities and truth-conduciveness.
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Communities that set lenient standards for the adoption of a proposal made by some subset of their members as part of community lore are evidently more likely to pass on false beliefs than those that are more exacting. By the same token, communities that demand exacting independent checks of such proposals will be inclined to waste valuable cognitive efforts.30
Balancing truth-conduciveness and an economy of cognitive labor is crucial for maintaining a communal embodiment of informed judgment. To the extent to which we can make good judgments about “human cognitive capacities and about the social relations found in actual communities of inquirers, we can explain, appraise, . Coady, Testimony, , rightly points out that scholarly communities have a vested interest in securing public criteria of evaluation. One would expect from these communities social mechanisms to assess the reliability of informed judgment. Since these mechanisms are not infallible, “the occasional fraud will go undetected even for a long time and there will also be the problem, to be addressed shortly, of the fraudulence or doubtfulness of whole areas of putative scientific expertise. None the less, the community of scientific experts is, for the reasons given, a good litmus agent for the presence of the relevant expertise.” . Philip Kitcher,“Contrasting Conceptions of Social Epistemology,” in Socializing Epistemology, .
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and in principle improve our collective epistemic performance.”31 How, then, does a community manage division of cognitive labor in view of intellectual differences? Are there ways in which a community can benefit from various perspectives both within and outside its social context? One way to assess different perspectives is to determine whether they successfully generate true beliefs. In this way, a community recognizes a need for division of cognitive labor while allowing for a complex probing of how differences may contribute to an epistemic enterprise. A qualification here is whether these differences can function as reliable belief-forming processes. Members of a community share in the cognitive load by offering informed assessment of specific issues from their particular fields of expertise. In the end, collaborative effort helps a community determine what distribution of informed judgments might serve it best in achieving “consensus on the truth.”32 Epistemic chauvinism, by contrast, is a cognitive vice that hinders effective collaborative effort both within and outside a community. Division of cognitive labor recognizes how different people contribute to the formation and sustenance of epistemic practices. A vast range of specialized knowledge demands division of cognitive labor, since assessment of data relies heavily on contributions of many cognitive agents.33 Communal beliefs result from successful distribution of tasks that facilitate both cognitive growth and fulfillment of epistemic goals. Consequently, a community of informed judgment operates efficiently by relying on members who provide reliable knowledge in specific areas of interest. Division of . Ibid., . . Kitcher, “Contrasting Conceptions of Social Epistemology,” . Kornblith, “Some Social Features of Cognition,” , argues that “the consequences of the disagreements caused by belief perseverance are no doubt far more truth-conducive than consequences of the unanimity of opinion which would be caused by its absence.” . Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective, . Hardwig, “The Role of Trust in Knowledge,” , notes a recent shift in scientific journals from individual projects to collaborative projects.
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cognitive labor also enables a community to retain its common vision, especially in situations in which “requirement of common belief or joint belief would cause the group to founder for lack of agreement among members. Coordinated beliefs are thus an effort-saving, reliability-promoting, and controversy-sparing device.”34 Without division of cognitive labor, completion of most research projects would be nearly impossible. Formation of new theories would be delayed, since scholars would have to spend enormous time forming skillful judgments in several fields of knowledge. Mastery of different fields of knowledge, however, still requires a level of trust, since proper training in these fields of knowledge involves dependence on others. Without division of cognitive labor, acquiring knowledge would be a slow and scanty process. Intellectual progress would suffer! Adequate division of cognitive labor, by contrast, assigns members of a community appropriate tasks, and each member fulfils the appointed cognitive business. Recognition of various forms of expertise reduces unnecessary duplication of cognitive labor. My current study of Newman, for example, would never have been completed if I had tried to secure every firsthand account of the life of John Henry Newman. Biographical sketches would be valid if and only if I checked every piece of data. If this scenario were true, scholars would engage in a very slow and unproductive process of investigation. The division of cognitive labor envisioned here, however, does not call for uncritical acceptance of recognized experts. Epistemically virtuous people realize the importance of critical interaction with expert opinion, though such scrutiny still reflects dependence on the testimony of other experts. For instance, a community, which recognizes research as a necessary part of its cognitive la. Frederick F. Schmitt, “The Justification of Group Beliefs,” in Socializing Epistemology, .
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bor, assigns some of its members the position of researcher. A researcher’s epistemic goals will be assessed by the common good of a community (or communities) to which she belongs. Along with these goals, the aim of research is to follow procedures that “maximize justification.”35 On this point, Frederick Schmitt makes a relevant distinction between short-term and long-term justification of beliefs. In some ways, testimonial beliefs are more effective than firsthand beliefs. Though specializing in one area of research involves securing firsthand accounts, it narrows one’s range of knowledge. However, a person who relies on other testimonial accounts most likely will acquire a broader range of knowledge. In the short-term, testimonial accounts have an advantage of providing more information, since scholars extend their range of knowledge by reading books and articles in different areas of research. However, “in the long run the intellectual atrophy that would result from merely reading would probably stymie further intellectual development and very possibly reduce the total amount of justification.”36 A balanced view encourages long-term justification, but it does not call for acquisition of new and fresh information, irrespective of its use by a community. A community of informed judgment embodies both short-term and long-term projects. Some people pursue long-term justification, while others mediate testimonial (short-term) accounts of knowledge. Both projects are invaluable resources for forming and sustaining practices within a community. Is epistemic deference justified? Is a person justified in relying on the reasons of others? Both questions focus on the issue of whether justification covers individuals. An extreme form of epistemic individualism rules out the possibility of justifying knowl. Frederick F. Schmitt, “Testimony and Evidence: A Rebuttal,” Social Epistemology (): . . Ibid., .
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edge based on testimony; all knowledge must be derived from firsthand observation.37 A moderate form of epistemic individualism permits reliance on testimony, provided that one can furnish sufficient reasons for trusting testimony as a reliable medium of knowledge. It grants derivative authority to people of informed judgment, knowing that a channel of testimony is a reliable one. In this case, epistemic dependence proceeds from the following logical inference: A trusts that B knows p, since A has sufficient reasons to believe that B functions as a reliable medium of knowledge. A possesses ample reasons for thinking that B’s capacities, resources, and knowledge place A in an epistemically responsible position to judge B’s claims.38 Though A allows for testimonial knowledge, the process of justification results from A’s ability to offer reasons for accepting testimony as reliable knowledge.39 Epistemic egoism, however, limits acquisition of knowledge when each person must possess explicit reasons for justifying claims. It follows an internalist account of knowledge; one is justified in deferring to experts if and only if reasons for trusting testimony are internally accessible.40 Social epistemology, however, queries whether each cognitive agent can and must mount sufficient non-testimonial reasons for securing the reliability of a testimony. Without adequate firsthand observations, cognitive agents would have to rely on social channels of knowledge to determine the reliability of a testimony. Each person would need to obtain firsthand knowledge in different fields of knowledge in order to judge the reliability of testimony from others in their particular areas of expertise. . Frederick F. Schmitt, “Social Epistemology and Social Cognitive Psychology,” Social Epistemology (): . See also C. A. J. Coady, “Testimony and Observation,” American Philosophical Quarterly (): –. . Richard Foley,“Egoism in Epistemology,” in Socializing Epistemology, . . Schmitt,“Social Epistemology and Social Cognitive Psychology,” . . Kornblith,“A Conservative Approach to Social Epistemology,” .
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Trustworthiness, nevertheless, plays a role in determining the validity of most beliefs. Informed judgment requires connection of intellectual character and truth-conduciveness. A’s trust of B as a source of reliable knowledge implies continuity of witness in B’s intellectual character. This is where presumption factors into the equation. A is entitled to presume the truth of B’s knowledge of p, unless extenuating circumstances offer valid reasons for rejecting B’s testimony.Two fundamental conditions must be met here. First, B’s testimony must be a matter of truth-conduciveness, accompanied by practice of epistemic virtues. Second, B must exhibit informed judgment, knowing what constitutes good reasons for believing p in a specific domain of knowledge. For instance, intellectual virtues such as thoroughness, careful investigation of issues, and conscientious awareness of problems accompany competence. The reliability of B’s testimony, in other words, depends upon the cognitive agent’s intellectual character.41 As stated earlier, B’s character must reflect requisite virtues for rendering informed judgment. If B’s intellectual character can be called into question, then A has reason to inquire into the reliability of B’s testimony. A social epistemology that confers epistemic authority on people of informed judgment must account for the reliability of testimony. Though a social dimension of epistemic deferment is unavoidable, explaining what makes epistemic deference a rationally acceptable practice is a critical issue. A strength of epistemic individualism lies in its propensity to guard against collective distortions, but its weakness lies in severing people from sources of informed judgment.42 Epistemic deferment is a matter of degree, since levels of dependence correlate with levels of knowledge. Growth in knowledge and in expertise lessens chances of deferment. Expertise in one domain of thought, however, does not . Hardwig,“The Role of Trust in Knowledge,” . . Foley,“Egoism in Epistemology,” .
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negate epistemic dependence on people from other fields of knowledge. Collaborative effort requires trust in the proficiency of others. Epistemic egoism reminds us that communities can create and perpetuate systemic distortions. A community of informed judgment must avoid suppressing insights from others, since the illative sense is not the property of a “privileged few.”43 In grappling with complex issues, a community guards against undermining and distorting other forms of judgment through some ideological lens. With reliable belief-forming practices in place, a community of informed judgment detects idiosyncratic practices that fail to yield truth-conduciveness.44 A community, then, should not restrict informed judgment to one context. Contexts for rendering informed judgment can be numerous. As a systematic theologian, I depend on insights from a vast range of disciplines for rendering theological judgments on doctrinal issues (e.g., theology, ethics, philosophy, biblical studies, history, sociology, psychology, and cognitive science). Furthermore, I work within at least three contexts: the church, the academy, and the broader social context.45 Within these places, additional communities of informed judgment may surface.At times, my theological insights reflect concerns of a specific community of informed judgment, and at other times perhaps a combination of all three or more. My approach to rationality, for example, reflects particular . Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, . . Alston, “Belief-Forming Practices and the Social,” , rightly points out that “the social character of what makes a doxastic practice (in my restricted sense) reliable stems from what a doxastic practice is, rather than from what reliability is. But while recognizing this, I would also add that any such idiosyncratic practice is secondary, derivative from the individual’s mastery of, and participation in, social belief-forming practices. It is only after learning to do it in the socially accepted ways that one has the resources to devise deviant beliefforming practices of one’s own.” . Terrence W. Tilley, The Wisdom of Religious Commitment (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, ), .
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schools of thought, but is not confined by them. It merely shows that a certain level of training fosters a context in which people acquire skills for thinking about and reasoning in a specific subject matter. Fundamental to the scholarly enterprise is a level of trust in which a community of informed judgment directs and shapes people to think critically about relevant methods and content. Academic training illustrates the point. Acquiring a degree from an academic institution involves demonstrating levels of competency to a community of informed judgment. Hence, an exchange among different communities of informed judgment reflects a social transmission of knowledge. Reducing accumulation of knowledge to one social context, however, fails to account for a person’s ability to adopt insights from other sources of informed judgment.
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Elements of Informed Judgment How, then, is informed judgment developed? What factors constitute informed judgment? In the spirit of Newman, I derive my proposal from the world of facts, shaped by particular experiences, training, and material forms of reasoning.46 Moreover, I develop his insights into a unified social epistemology, fleshing out and connecting the four elements of informed judgment. The Indispensability of Praiseworthy Dispositions Praiseworthy dispositions play a crucial role in developing informed judgment. They equip a community with the capacity to prune intellectual deficiencies, foster good cognitive habits, perfect . Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, , argues that though Newman provides a detailed treatment of belief-formation, his conception is “evidently less rationalistic and less moralistic than my own.” My proposal of informed judgment, however, refines and develops some of Newman’s insights.
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the illative sense, and interact with other communities of informed judgment.47 People acquire praiseworthy dispositions within a community context. Cognitive agents pursuing praiseworthy dispositions are “bound together in a community,” learning to recognize and imitate epistemic qualities instantiated in the lives of people of informed judgment.48 Without mature expressions of the illative sense, a community never acquires requisite dispositions for forming and sustaining beliefs. Paragons of informed judgment ensure a connection between communally established practices and truth.The following are some of the intellectual qualities necessary for a person who desires truth as an epistemic outcome:49
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. desire to attain truth and avoid falsehood;50 . concern for details and aptitude for recognizing key facts; . epistemic dependence—capacity to recognize reliable sources of informed judgment; . intellectual honesty; . intellectual humility; . open-mindedness in collecting and evaluating evidence; . Alston, Perceiving God, , , refers to the constellation of dispositions or habits as doxastic practices.These practices “can be thought of as a system or constellation of dispositions or habits, or to use a currently fashionable term, ‘mechanisms,’ each of which yields a belief as output that is related in a certain way to an input. Sense perception, for example, is a constellation of habits of forming beliefs in certain ways on the basis of inputs that consist of sense experiences.l.l.l. Doxastic practices are thoroughly social: socially established by socially monitored learning, and socially shared.We learn to form perceptual beliefs about the environment in terms of the conceptual scheme we acquire from our society.” .Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, . . See Harvey Siegel, Rationality Redeemed? Further Dialogues on an Educational Ideal (New York: Routledge, ); Israel Scheffler, In Praise of Cognitive Emotions (New York: Routledge, ); Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, .Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, , delineates four ways in which people employ intellectual virtues, namely, intellectual qualities relevant for acquiring, maintaining, communicating, and applying beliefs. . For an excellent treatment of the epistemic virtues of truth and truthfulness, see Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness:An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ).
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. pedagogical virtues—capacity to communicate and apply knowledge; . wisdom—capacity to offer a synthetic judgment of various pieces of data. Epistemically irresponsible actions precipitate cognitive vices that stifle development of informed judgment. Cognitive virtues, by contrast, stem from habituation of praiseworthy dispositions that yield epistemically responsible actions.The list of epistemic virtues requires long-standing practices in which people can see dispositions evolve into good epistemic habits.Virtues such as intellectual honesty and intellectual humility reflect habitual praiseworthy dispositions that aim at achieving truth, but neither at the expense of overstepping one’s limits nor at the expense of ignoring difficult questions. Both excess and deficiency hinder skillful judgment of the issue at hand. Epistemic virtues that stem from a reliable belief-forming process achieve a desired end. Good cognitive habits, sustained by proper motivation, are important for ensuring a reliable process of belief-formation. The cultivation of epistemic virtues “requires that an agent’s motivational states bear an appropriate relation” to the desired end.51 For example, the vice of intellectual pride creates an inordinate desire to be right, even disregarding significant pieces of evidence that challenge communally established beliefs. By contrast, people motivated by a desire for truth “will be more likely to conduct thorough inquiries, scrutinize evidence carefully, investigate numerous fields of study, consider alternative explanations,” and so forth.52 Zagzebski illustrates the point with the example of a medical researcher. .Abrol Fairweather,“Epistemic Motivation,” in Virtue Epistemology, . . Ibid., , .
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In the case of a medical researcher, her desire for fame will lead her to believe in the same way as a person with a genuine love of truth in a limited range of cases, but eventually her desire for fame will lead her to believe what others want to hear or will get her name in the journals, and when that happens, her belief-forming processes will diverge from those of the genuine truth lover.53
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Praiseworthy dispositions serve as a safeguard against improper motivation; when cultivated properly, praiseworthy dispositions equip a community to achieve truth as a common epistemic end.54 Without solidifying praiseworthy dispositions into good epis. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, . Fairweather, “Epistemic Motivation,” , contends that motivation explains how people “with the same evidence but different motivations can wind up with different beliefs. A person motivated by the goal of holding novel beliefs will respond differently to the evidence that makes P likely to be true than would a person motivated to have true beliefs. For the former, the evidence for P would serve as a disincentive to accepting P, since P is the typical thing to believe in the circumstances. For the latter, the evidence for P serves as an incentive to accepting P, since P is likely to be true.” . Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, , argues for a virtue epistemology that combines both an internalist and an externalist component. Her proposal focuses on the role that motivation plays in achieving a reliable process of belief-formation. Pure externalist epistemologies “are unsuccessful because they do not give due regard to the place of motives and their governing virtues in the proper way to form beliefs in order to attain knowledge.” Nevertheless, Zagzebski retains a weaker version of externalism in which virtue is construed in terms of its success. “Intellectual virtues are in part reliable mechanisms for producing true beliefs, or understanding of beliefs. If they were not reliable, they would not be virtues.” Fairweather and Zagzebski, “Introduction,” in Virtue Epistemology, , see “reliability as a component of virtue. An intellectual virtue, like a moral virtue, has a motivational component as well as a component of reliable success in reaching the end (if any) of the motivational component. What makes intellectual virtues intellectual is that they (or most of them) include motive dispositions connected with the motive to get truth, and reliability is entailed by the success component of the virtue.This strategy shows how the internalist feature of responsibility and the externalist feature of epistemic success can be combined in a unified concept—indeed, a concept that has a long history in ethics.” John Greco, “Virtues and Rules in Epistemology,” in Virtue Epistemology, , says that we may view epistemic justification in the following way: “A belief p is epistemically justified for S if and only if S is both subjectively praiseworthy and objectively reliable in believing p.” My proposal of a community of informed judgment offers similar suggestions about combining the motivational component and the reliability component.Where I differ is in the role that epistemic dependence plays in the process.
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temic practices, the illative sense functions on an intuitive (basic) level and falls short of full development. Successful application of knowledge to particular situations requires habitual practice of praiseworthy dispositions. The desire to learn, for instance, is a quality of the mind that plays a crucial role in refining the illative sense. It shows willingness to learn from those who, by means of knowledge, practice, and experience, have earned the right to offer informed judgments. Excising this virtue from a community’s intellectual diet stunts both cognitive development and the capacity to interact authentically with others. Acquiring informed judgment presupposes the existence of a tradition that provides a vibrant transmission of good cognitive practices. Cultivated experience, displayed by living models of cognitive excellence, enables a community to modify practices. It is an essential ingredient for perfecting epistemic qualities that enhance communal wisdom. Textbook descriptions of epistemic virtues are merely an abbreviation of those found in a community’s living examples of informed judgment. Hence, a vibrant tradition is indispensable for acquiring and passing on requisite qualities of informed judgment. A tradition of cognitive practices, then, fosters proper acquisition of praiseworthy dispositions, which ensure maturation of the illative sense. On this level, people offer explicit accounts of Christian belief, combining various pieces of data into synthetic judgments. Such judgments also display greater integration of moral theory and cognitive development. Linda Zagzebski, for example, offers some astute observations about the indispensability of virtue theory for cognitive development. She argues for the application of Aristotle’s notion of phronesis (practical wisdom) to philosophical governance of beliefs. Justification of religious belief is linked to the formation of cognitive virtues, especially the virtue of practical wisdom, and depends on whether a person of practical wisdom would accept it in a specific situation. Hence, cognitive de-
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velopment, along with subsequent acts of justification, requires contexts in which people learn to imitate models of practical wisdom. Experience and practice foster right reasoning in judgment, since theory without practical wisdom (cultivated experience) misses the subtleties and complexities of human cognition.A community, which begins with long-standing practices, leaves to some the task of offering a retrospective analysis of experiences, practices, and antecedent considerations that factor into the formation of Christian belief. In proceeding this way, a community recognizes “the primacy of the practical wisdom of certain persons— persons whose judgment is recognized as good prior to the formation of the theory.”55 It focuses on the “normative properties of persons, i.e., the stable dispositions or character traits that constitute their intellectual virtues.”56 Development of cognitive virtues, . Linda T. Zagzebski,“The Place of Phronesis in the Methodology of Theology,” in Philosophy and Theological Discourse, ed. Stephen T. Davis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ), . However, Nancey Murphy, “The Role of Virtues in Epistemic Practices,” in Philosophy and Theological Discourse, , argues that Zagzebski’s definition of knowledge and rationality is not communal enough. Rather, it suggests an individualistic understanding of knowledge. Murphy continues that since most understand that “all knowledge is essentially communal,” then “Zagzebski’s definition should be amended to take into account the need for a community of virtuous truth-seekers.” On this point, it seems that Zagzebski runs the same gamut as Newman. With some modification, a personal dimension of phronesis (or the illative sense) needs to be complemented by a richer notion of a community of knowers. Murphy, f., also correctly notes that philosophical treatment of theological judgment must take into account such factors as “prayer, experience, tradition,” along with an appeal to some public criteria (e.g., conformity with apostolic witness). In Virtues of the Mind, , Zagzebski makes it clear that practical wisdom is socially based. Acquiring intellectual virtues involves following exemplars of practical wisdom. People form and sustain rationally acceptable beliefs in the company of others in the same way as they develop moral wisdom.The end result is that “the intellectual healthiness of the whole community is vitally important for the justifiability of our own beliefs.” Murphy’s point, however, needs to be heard.Accounts of rationality need to consider the communal dimension of epistemic practices and, moreover, unfold the social conditions of belief-formation. . Greco,“Virtues and Rules in Epistemology,” .
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then, presupposes induction into a vibrant tradition of practices, which are guided by living voices of wisdom. Accounts of rationality consider the connection between moral theory and cognitive development.57 Perfecting the illative sense, like acquiring virtue, occurs by modeling people who have cultivated rightly the illative sense within concrete moments of human existence. In this way, a person’s belief is rationally acceptable if and only if she forms and sustains it “in a virtuous way. More precisely, she is rational if and only if she forms and holds her religious beliefs in the same manner as a person with phronesis would do.”58 If Zagzebski is right here, and I think she is, then a greater connection is needed between moral theory and the rationality of Christian belief. Praiseworthy dispositions, which are instantiated in good epistemic practices, foster informed judgment about particulars. In my estimation, accounts of rationality should at least include a discussion of the role that dispositions play in the rationality of Christian belief, and for that matter, in any belief. A social epistemology of informed judgment includes investigation of the context in which people learn to reason rightly in the presence of people of informed judgment. Rendering in. On connecting moral theory and cognitive development, see Hilary Kornblith,“Justified and Epistemically Responsible Action,” Philosophical Review (): –. For Kornblith, epistemic responsibility requires a cognitive agent who “desires to have true beliefs, and thus desires to have his beliefs produced by processes which lead to true beliefs; his actions are guided by these desires” (). See also Christopher Hookway, “Cognitive Virtues and Epistemic Evaluations,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies (): –. . Zagzebski, “The Place of Phronesis in the Methodology of Theology,” . In Virtues of the Mind, , Zagzebski argues that “the social component in cognitive activity is handled more easily by the traditional concept of virtue than by either the concept of a reliable beliefforming mechanism (Goldman) or that of a reliable belief-forming faculty (Sosa). Mechanisms and faculties can be contextualized into a social framework only with quite a bit of artificiality, whereas a social context is intrinsic to the nature of a virtue as traditionally understood.l.l.l. Virtue is acquired through imitation of those in one’s society who already have it.” My proposal of informed judgment combines a reliabilist account of belief-formation and a virtue approach to epistemology.
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formed judgment is a reciprocal process in which exemplars of praiseworthy dispositions equip others to do likewise. Informed judgment involves more than following rule-governed procedures in advance of particular situations. The art of medical diagnosis aptly illustrates the point. Though technology and science greatly aid medical diagnosis, skillful judgment typically distinguishes a good physician from an average one. A physician of skillful judgment has sufficient medical knowledge, but she also possesses the gift of informed judgment, a quality that “cannot be captured by a set of rules, and cannot be taught except by personal influence.”59 Pre-established rules are no replacement for informed judgment within concrete moments of existence. Knowledge and logic play an important part in making informed judgments, but they never encapsulate fully the process by which people make these judgments. Praiseworthy dispositions, then, contribute to the development of a community of informed judgment. A proper disposition of mind is indispensable for reasoning rightly about religious matters. A community of informed judgment provides an environment for nurturing rightly disposed faith. Factors such as intellectual training, moral dispositions, and cognitive habits are embedded within communal practices. A rightly disposed faith produces a certain kind of person and a certain way of thinking. It fuses intellectual and moral dimensions of Christian faith, realizing that communal well-being depends upon habitual practice of good cognitive practices. Newman makes a similar point in the University Sermons. Christian faith must be properly ordered.Without rightly disposed faith, people adopt cognitive excesses and deficiencies (e.g., dogmatism, narrow-mindedness, and fanaticism). Rightly disposed faith, along . John Casey, Pagan Virtue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
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with good intellectual habits, aids a Christian in forming a mind of holiness that facilitates proper love for and obedience to God. As William J. Wood has recently suggested, “we come to knowledge of God and other religious truths only if our affections are rightly ordered. Just as our ability to grasp scientific truths requires that we be equipped with the requisite training and abilities, so our capacity to grasp religious truths requires that we be the right sorts of persons.” 60 Praiseworthy dispositions display integration of moral and intellectual habits necessary for forming and sustaining a community of informed judgment. Cognitive and moral vices, by contrast, cripple a community and prevent it from fulfilling its epistemic goals. For instance, intellectual vices such as intellectual dishonesty, close-mindedness, and rash judgments preclude the possibility of refining the illative sense and of participating in conversations with others. They also distract a community from its correlative ground of thought, affection, and behavior, namely, the triune God who calls people to love him with all of their mind, heart, and being. Epistemic dispositions such as love, humility, honesty, courage, and other-mindedness ensure proper development of the illative sense within the life of a community of informed judgment. A community immerses itself in established practices long before members possess explicit awareness of their impact for ensuing truth-conduciveness. Such activity is “a much more ineluctable part of our lives than are habits, dispositions, and practices that are acquired by deliberate effort later in life.”61 Nevertheless, cognitive development requires honing moral and intellectual dispositions in order to achieve excellence in knowledge and in judgment. Formation of character plays a crucial role in defining .Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, . .Alston, Perceiving God, .
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the nature and destiny of a community. Praiseworthy dispositions shape the intellectual as well as the moral fabric of a community. Intellectual and moral deficiencies, by contrast, hinder cognitive growth and preclude meaningful discourse with others. The goal, therefore, is to identify certain epistemic qualities as virtues and “other epistemic sources as vices because the community judges the former to be generally reliable (i.e. conducive to truth) and the latter to be generally unreliable.”62 These intellectual qualities enable a community to reason rightly, decipher the significance of evidence, and render skillful judgments in particular situations.
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The Indispensability of Modalities of Reasoning The human mind employs distinctive modes of reasoning. Recent studies in cognitive psychology have explored different modalities of cognition, recognizing both the domain-specificity of reasoning and the impact of environment on cognitive development. Reducing human cognition to one modality of reasoning ignores how material forms of reasoning require specialized cognitive capacities to decipher particular fields of knowledge.63 Domain-specificity, consequently, rejects a long-standing assump. Alvin Goldman and Joel Pust, “Philosophical Theory and Intuitional Evidence,” in Rethinking Intuition:The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, ed. Michael R. DePaul and William Ramsey (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ), . . Lawrence Hirschfeld and Susan Gelman, eds., Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), . Hirschfeld and Gelman, for example, contend that “theories are by nature domain-specific. Theories make different ontological commitments (biologists appeal to species and DNA; physicists appeal to quarks and masses). They put forth domain-specific causal laws.l.l.l. If human thought is in important ways analogous to scientific theories, then it should be organized separately for distinct domains.” See also Denis R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds., Modes of Thought: Explorations in Culture and Cognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Robert J. Sternberg and Richard K.Wagner, eds., Mind in Context: Interactionist Perspectives on Human Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); and Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind:The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, ). For a recent
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tion that “human beings are endowed with a general set of reasoning abilities that they bring to bear on any cognitive task, whatever its specific content.” 64 Cognitive development involves acquisition of skills within real-world environments in order to achieve specific epistemic goals. Newman makes the same point in discussing the nature, function, and scope of the illative sense of reasoning. The Grammar, as already noted, identifies at least three modes of reasoning. On one level, a person arrives at the truth of a proposition without any investigation at all (natural inference). For example, a mathematical genius who simply sees the outcome of mathematical problems does not offer explicit explanations. On another level, a person sifts through data without consciously tracing each step (informal inference). A person, for example, may form skillful judgment about particulars without obtaining conscious access to a logical process of thought.Yet, she follows an informal process of reasoning that supplements insights of formal logic and requires maturation of informed judgment. On another level, the mind offers explicit accounts of an implicit process of reasoning (formal inference). Such accounts explore the cogency, adequacy, comprehensiveness, and logical force of beliefs. The mistake, however, is made when a proposal of rationality excludes any one of the three interpretation of the modularity of the mind, guided by a computational approach to cognition, see Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, ). . Hirschfeld and Gelman, Mapping the Mind, f., argue that domain-specificity implies that “the mind is less an all-purpose problem solver than a collection of enduring and independent subsystems designed to perform certain circumscribed tasks.” Howard Gardner and Nira Granott,“When Minds Meet: Interactions, Coincidence, and Development in Domains of Ability,” in Mind in Context, , maintain that “interactions with diverse environments affect the development of intelligence in the domains related to those interactions.” In this regard, they posit a theory of multiple intelligences [MI]. They distinguish, , generic from special abilities, showing that a person’s “innate first order multiple intelligences” [generic abilities] “continue to develop through interactions with her environments, interactions that form a second-order MI effect.”
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options from consideration or assumes that rationality can be captured fully by any one option.65 Inability to account for a belief does not imply that the belief is irrational in nature. A community of informed judgment acknowledges the co-existence of modalities of reasoning. Though distinct from one another, all three modalities stem from the same faculty of reasoning.66 Within a community, people must allow for employment of all three modalities of reasoning, seeing how they complement one another while recognizing their strengths and limitations. Reducing human cognition to one modality of reasoning contributes to the truncated versions of rationality to which the current scholarly literature on rationality attests. As a safeguard, a community learns to share the cognitive load. Some people exhibit keen insights into and methodological clarity about the process by which . On this point, Charles Allen, “The Primacy of Phronesis: A Proposal for Advocating Frustrating Tendencies in Our Conceptions of Rationality,” Journal of Religion (): f., describes two extremes: an objectivist approach in which standards of rationality “are so rigidly fixed as to be completely unaffected by people’s contingent standpoints” and a tribalist approach in which standards of rationality “are so localized as to be completely subservient to people’s contingent standpoints.” When people insist upon two ways of cognition as the only ways of reasoning, advocates of either perspective leave themselves “basically with only two possible outcomes” and propel the current epistemic crisis of objectivism and relativism. Allen’s proposal calls for a phronetic dimension of reasoning in which communities retain their level of specificity, while engaging in broader conversation with others. . Steven A. Sloman, “The Empirical Case for Two Systems of Reasoning,” Psychological Bulletin (): –, argues that mind has at least two modalities of reasoning: () an associative process in which the mind connects a similarity structure and relations of images, and experiences, and () a rule-based process in which the mind is governed by symbolic rules.Though they differ in terms of operation, Sloman concludes that they can serve “complementary functions and can simultaneously generate different solutions to a reasoning problem.” For example, Sloman, , applies the distinction to educational practices in which a teacher knows that students must achieve mastery of the rules in a field of knowledge in order to render skillful, systematic, and conclusive judgments about particulars. However, students also must “develop useful associations between elements of the domain to allow for reasoning to become less effortful and more flexible.l.l.l. Useful associations guide the rule learner in the right direction; rule training provides a means to check and correct performance.” In its mature form, the illative sense functions in a similar way.
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an implicit mode of reasoning forms and sustains Christian belief. Nevertheless, reflexive awareness—internal access to the workings of the mind—is not equivalent to rationally acceptable belief and should not be viewed as an essential condition of rationality for all. As suggested, a community of informed judgment assesses the reliability of its belief-forming process with three factors in mind: truth-conduciveness, epistemic virtues, and continuity of its informed judgment with other sources of informed judgment. Modalities of reasoning follow the same process of evaluation. Recent studies illustrate the importance of one modality of reasoning while showing how elements such as environment and adaptive skills shape human cognition. Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Todd, and the ABC Research Group, for example, explore the topic of rationality within the context of everyday events. Operating from a perspective of fast and frugal heuristics, the project pursues the question of how people can form rationally acceptable beliefs with limited time and knowledge. It highlights a specific modality of rationality, embedded within concrete practices of everyday life and conducive to real-world environments. The aim of fast and frugal heuristics is to determine how people actually reason within specific environments, employing “reasonable, adaptive inferences about the real social and physical world given limited time and knowledge.”67 Evaluation of cognitive performance within a real-world environment is the context from which the project determines whether beliefs are rationally acceptable. Few are afforded the time and knowledge requisite for considering a vast range of data and rendering adequate assessment of complex problems. Fast and frugal heuristics questions the notion that maximal amounts of information are vital for securing greater levels of accuracy in making decisions. . Gigerenzer and Todd, Simple Heuristics, .
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Fast and frugal heuristics follows a triadic vision of bounded, ecological, and social rationality. Bounded rationality observes two basic methodological principles: () models of human cognition should reflect knowledge of the actual operations of the mind rather than fictive competencies; and () a heuristic for making judgments should fit the structure of an environment.68 A model of bounded rationality, which recognizes the limits of time and knowledge, does not require exhaustive consideration of all options before making decisions.The success of bounded rationality depends upon a cognitive agent’s capacity to exploit information within actual environments. Furthermore, human adaptation to real-world environments involves a social networking of beliefformation. Cognitive agents in specific environments depend on one another for making decisions, following both established cues and a reliable belief-forming faculty of memory. People discover social norms and reliable sources by which they can make decisions, knowing that epistemic dependence reduces a need both for firsthand observation and for an excessive collection of information.Thus, a triadic structure of fast and frugal heuristics intends to achieve a common epistemic goal: to ascertain how human cognition adapts to specific environments and how simple heuristics guides the process. In some respects, fast and frugal heuristics echoes Newman’s preference for an account of rationality that mirrors how people reason within concrete moments of human existence.The project also complements my notion of informed judgment, showing the need for accounts of rationality that consider actual conditions under which people reason within their social environment. I concur with its overall focus on the social dimension of reasoning in . In this regard, the project is indebted to Herbert Simon’s notion of bounded rationality; see, for example, Herbert A. Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality (Cambridge: MIT Press, ).
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which cultivated experience informs those who lack time and knowledge for optimal investigation.The illative sense operates on a basic level of fast and frugal heuristics and renders mostly reliable judgments.As a complex belief-forming process, however, the illative sense functions on more than one level. A social dimension of rationality, consequently, requires a closer look at different levels on which the illative sense operates within a community of informed judgment. Accounts of rationality, then, need greater clarification of the plurality of human cognition, including exploration of both shortterm and long-term dimensions of the illative sense. In some realworld environments, people make rationally acceptable decisions under finite constraints of time and resources.69 That reasoning is done under these constraints, however, does not suggest that fast and frugal judgments are either irrational in nature or less than accurate; they are simply limited to and reflective of specific environments.70 Other real-world environments, however, call for exhaustive accounts of rationality that explore maximal amounts of information before rendering informed judgment (e.g., scholarly communities). An adequate treatment of informed judgment requires ample time for full consideration of and synthetic judgment of relevant pieces of data. The project of fast and frugal heuristics becomes a problem when it is viewed as a replacement for other modalities of reasoning. One problem is the extent to which the project limits its focus. As a crucial component of fast and frugal heuristics, limited search does not engage in maximal computation before making . Stein, Without Good Reason, , describes this dimension of rationality as the human finitary predicament. . Gigerenzer,Todd, and the ABC Research Group, Simple Heuristics, offer several examples to show that fast and frugal heuristics is not any less reliable than unbounded rationality for rendering accurate judgments in real-world environments (e.g., the stock market).
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decisions: “not all available information is looked up, and consequently, only a fraction of this information influences judgment.”71 Though limited search may procure reliable assessment of issues in some real-world environments, other real-world environments require informed judgment—cultivation of epistemic virtues—to render skillful evaluation of complex issues. Furthermore, fast and frugal heuristics depends on insights of informed judgment in order to recognize cues and to make economical decisions. A social dimension of reasoning, in other words, presupposes communally assessable and reliable resources of informed judgment. In limiting its focus, fast and frugal heuristics fails to explain the multifaceted nature of reasoning in everyday affairs. The project furnishes an important cognitive resource for thinking in everyday events, showing that explicit knowledge is not necessarily required for making some decisions. Nevertheless, an exchange of informed judgment with others requires a level of skillful reasoning, sustained by reliable channels of knowledge. The distribution of cognitive labor also applies to modalities of reasoning. Some people reason within a community under constraints. Others, however, offer explicitly rational accounts of the Christian faith. Implicit and explicit accounts of Christian belief, though distinct, should complement one another. On the one hand, members of a community of informed judgment, who operate from a dynamic of fast and frugal heuristics, illustrate how people can form rationally acceptable beliefs under limitations of time and knowledge. Accounts of rationality must factor this modality of reasoning into their proposal. On the other hand, any community of informed judgment needs people who are capable of unearthing modalities of reasoning. Long-term accounts of human cognition help us to understand ways in which people reason . Gigerenzer,Todd, and the ABC Research Group, Simple Heuristics, .
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within a variety of real-world environments, including specialized areas of thought. Fast and frugal heuristics, however, illustrates how insights from various fields of knowledge may inform an epistemology of Christian belief.72 Since belief-formation is a natural process, it makes sense to explore actual ways in which people come to and maintain beliefs.73 Recent studies on the plurality of human cognition, for example, claim that solitary intelligence is misleading; rarely does the mind function fully on an epistemic island, independent of the influence of other cognitive agents. Distributed modes of cognition are not located in a single mind; rather they reflect a social network of practices that comprise vibrant mediums of knowledge and wisdom. In this sense, a community of informed judgment forms a partnership in which “distribution of cognition is a joint one; it cannot be attributed to one or another partner.”74 Also, a proposal of cognitive distribution must account for the role that individual agents play in the development of human cognition. A community of informed judgment must possess keen awareness of how it distributes cognitive activities within a social context. Communally established practices furnish a social .The project of fast and frugal heuristics reflects collaborative efforts of people from a variety of disciplines such as psychology, mathematics, computer science, economics, and evolutionary biology. . Gigerenzer and Todd, Simple Heuristics, , conclude that simple heuristics can “exemplify a way to break down this unfortunate but widespread belief in an opposition between the rational and the psychological. This misleading idea has cursed the cognitive sciences since the antipsychologism of nineteenth century philosophy, and it continues to obscure a realistic view of cognition to this day. A bit of trust in the abilities of the mind and the rich structure of the environment may help us to see how thought processes that forgo the baggage of the laws of logic and probability can solve real-world adaptive problems quickly and well. Models of reasoning need not forsake rationality for psychological plausibility, nor accuracy for simplicity.The mind can have it both ways.” . Gavriel Salomon, “No Distribution without Individuals’ Cognition: A Dynamic Interactional View,” in Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, ed. Gavriel Salomon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
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network in which individuals discern the extent to which their skills “enter into distributed, intellectual partner-like situations.”75 Ascertaining circumstances of real-world environments, therefore, is crucial for understanding how social channels of knowledge both foster cognitive development and shape informed judgment.
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The Indispensability of Evidence A community of informed judgment recognizes that some are capable of rendering explicit accounts of the meaning, grounds, and doctrinal expressions of Christian belief. However, explicit awareness of the rationale for Christian belief is not necessary for every member within a community of informed judgment. Likewise, rejection of an explicit employment of the illative sense hinders some people from developing the illative sense in ways that ensure both transmission of Christian belief and engagement with other communities of informed judgment. The same principle applies to evaluation of evidence. Critical assessment of evidence also plays an important role in developing informed judgment. Identifying key cognitive agents is crucial both for ensuring reliable assessment of evidence and for governing beliefs in the life of a community.The capacity to evaluate evidence effectively increases a community’s success as cognitive agents of informed judgment. Cognitive success depends on a community’s willingness to assess practices over the long haul. Rash assessment of evidence fosters intellectual deficiencies, but skillful judgment nurtures cognitive well-being. Moreover, praiseworthy dispositions are inextricably connected to evaluation of evidence within the life of a community of informed judgment . Ibid., . Richard E. Snow, “Abilities in Academic Abilities,” in Mind in Context, , agrees that any interactionist theory of cognition must strike a greater balance between focus on context and focus on individual cognitive capacities.
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and within the context of discourse with other communities of informed judgment. Evaluation of evidence, guided by epistemic qualities, creates greater possibilities both for communal growth and for extended illation. Cognitive success requires communal acknowledgement of the importance of good intellectual habits both for evaluating evidence and for achieving truth as a desired end. A community of informed judgment also recognizes the cumulative nature of evidence.76 In forming and sustaining Christian beliefs, a community does not consider one piece of evidence but engages in a cumulative process of investigation. As a complex belief-forming mechanism, the illative sense culls various pieces of data and renders acute judgments for particular situations. Both long-term and short-term evaluations of evidence demand the epistemic virtue of wisdom, along with the practice of other cognitive virtues. As a mature form of the illative sense, wisdom deciphers relevant pieces of data and their significance for the issue at hand. Such judgments are context-specific, since refinement of the illative sense takes place within a particular community of informed judgment. To some extent, skillful judgment of evidence depends on epistemic goals and habits set forth by a community. Moreover, assessment of evidence is usually tied to a specific subject matter.The material nature of evaluating evidence is complex because of its connection with a specific discipline, which has its own history of methodological procedures and issues. Since background factors such as intellectual training, levels of experience, moral character, and communally established practices affect assessment of evidence, there are bound to be different appraisals of the adequacy, relevance, and significance of various pieces of data. . In An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, th ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ), , Newman argues that the church assesses the truthfulness of its doctrines by considering the cumulative effect of different pieces of evidence.
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Nevertheless, truth, as an epistemic outcome, should constrict a community’s tendency to overlook pieces of evidence that do not fit with established practices. Concern for truth demands consideration of the overall significance of evidence. Ignoring counterevidence signals an absence of intellectual virtues within the life of a community.77 Since the illative sense is discipline-specific, it requires refinement of judgment in a material mode of reasoning and in evaluating evidence.When assessment of evidence is domain-specific, the skills of a person of informed judgment most likely diminish outside the area of expertise.The contextual nature of appraising evidence brings us back to the social dimension of reasoning. Communities of informed judgment depend on others for gathering and evaluating evidence. Not all bring the same specialized knowledge to the table; each depends on others for judging the relevance of various pieces of evidence. Moreover, a communal process of evaluating evidence occurs within specific research traditions along with particular skills of training.These factors complicate the process. Newman stated the same point nicely both in the University Sermons and in the Grammar. Evidence can be judged from various points of view, especially when you consider the vast range of intellectual makeup and training of the people involved. Are we strapped by the social conditions of evaluating evidence? Does the illative sense contribute to a vicious circle of epistemic relativism? First, acknowledging interpretive differences merely shows that informed judgment is a complex phenomenon, warranting instantiation of praiseworthy dispositions. Willingness to cultivate scholarly virtues opens up opportunities both for learning from others and for refining the illative sense. A community that refuses to learn from and consider other assessments of .Alvin Goldman,“Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology,” .
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evidence stifles cognitive development and fails to link beliefs with truth. Second, recognizing the cumulative nature of evidence implies that an ongoing process of reflection is a necessary ingredient for developing informed judgment. Maintaining a belief does not imply sustaining a static deposit of cognitive content; instead it represents a robust attempt to develop thought in light of the maturation process of a community of informed judgment. In addition, a community of informed judgment rejects the assumption that all must have cognitive access to the grounds of their beliefs. Such a move restricts the number of people who can actively participate in justifying their beliefs and does not square with ways in which people actually form and sustain beliefs in everyday events. A community of informed judgment learns to share the cognitive load by following proficient assessment of evidence and by refining practices in light of new pieces of evidence. Evaluation of evidence, then, calls for epistemically responsible action. People of informed judgment learn how to identify relevant pieces of evidence for the issue at hand.The difficulty lies in nurturing epistemic virtues that aid appraisal of relevant pieces of evidence. This is where informed judgment enters into the picture. People of informed judgment practice good cognitive habits and learn how to pick up key cues for evaluating evidence. The combination of knowledge and wisdom helps a community to discern key patterns of experience for making decisions in relevant situations.A community’s locus of informed judgment equips it to render skillful assessment of evidence without explicit awareness of all the relevant procedures of investigation.The capacity to judge rightly stems mainly from the fact that examination of evidence, accompanied by good cognitive habits, is part of a community’s intellectual character. The key here is that a community of informed judgment sets in place a reliable belief-forming process, which ensures cognitive success.
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Along with openness to new evidence, a community embodies the virtue of tenacity. In considering the cumulative force of evidence, it balances tenacity and revision, operating with certain antecedent assumptions and levels of training. Growth of understanding accumulated within a community context, however, does not imply an inability to assess claims across different communities of informed judgment. Certainly, evaluation of other communities of informed judgment begins from a certain perspective, but the call for wisdom equally entails incorporation of new insights into a community’s current locus of knowledge. Sensitivity to how others form and sustain beliefs, however, does not rule out the possibility of assessing whether they have good reasons for believing as they do in everyday affairs of life. Acknowledging the insights of other communities of informed judgment does not privilege consensus as the criterion of informed judgment. Rather, informed assessment of evidence involves forming, developing, and extending cognitive practices in “reflective equilibrium.” A balanced system of belief is rationally acceptable “in light of what we already have reason to hold; that is, it must answer to our initially tenable commitments about the subject at hand.”78 Reflective equilibrium includes conceptual and empirical dimensions of a belief system and is wide enough to balance “our first-order judgments about what counts as good reasoning, our more general intuitions about what the normative principles of reasonings are, and various philosophical and scientific theories.”79 This involves willingness to consider new evidence.Yet, different communities must allow sufficient time to test their antecedent assumptions about any subject matter. A proper balance of tenacity and revision enables a community of informed judgment to sustain and modify its system of beliefs. . Elgin, Considered Judgment, , . . Stein, Without Good Reason, .
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The Indispensability of Wisdom The virtue of wisdom is also fundamental for nurturing the health of a community of informed judgment. It furnishes reliable processes through which a community learns to render right reasoning in judgment. When keenly honed, the illative sense empowers people to grasp complex issues, integrate knowledge and experience, and make apt judgments for particular situations.Wisdom guides and weaves cognitive practices into a seamless whole, incorporating new insights into a community’s locus of knowledge. As Newman points out, “we see a proposition to be true, when we can make it dovetail closely into our existing knowledge.” 80 Integration, therefore, is essential for rendering informed judgments.Though Newman never states this explicitly, Christian wisdom is a mature form of the illative sense—right reasoning in judgment. Wisdom grasps the significance of various pieces of data and solidifies a synthetic account of a community’s epistemic life.81 Digesting isolated facts is no replacement for making a judgment about various pieces of evidence, experiences, and understandings of Christian faith. Such judgments stem from the capacity to shape intellectual virtues and apply knowledge properly to specific situations. Factual knowledge alone does not ensure proficient evaluation of and suitable application of the material acquired for partic. Newman, Theological Papers, vol. , f. M. Jamie Ferreira, Doubt and Religious Commitment:The Role of the Will in Newman’s Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), , describes Newman’s approach here as “conservative coherence,” that is, how well and easily a belief coheres with our web of beliefs. On this point, Ferreira argues that “Newman foreshadowed [Gilbert] Harman’s conclusion that ‘justification is not a matter of derivation from basic principles but is rather a matter of showing that a view fits in well with other things we believe.’” . Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, , rightly points out that wisdom “is neither a matter of the properties of propositional beliefs, nor is it a matter of the relations among such beliefs; it is a matter of grasping the whole of reality.”
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ular situations. Securing an extensive base of knowledge and experience, nurtured by people of informed judgment, is indispensable for ensuring the growth of wisdom. Paragons of wisdom are those who have cultivated the illative sense and have earned the right to render apt judgments about particulars. A genius is by definition an exception to the rule, but even she needs a community of informed judgment to ensure intellectual and moral development. Recent discussion of the rationality of Christian belief has insufficiently emphasized wisdom as a complementary process of cognitive development.82 Various dimensions of everyday life confirm the need for integrating knowledge and wisdom. In Sources of Power, Gary Klein aptly illustrates the point with an example of a fire chief.When a chief offers quick assessment of the complexities of a fire hazard, both knowledge and experience factor into the final decision. Skillful judgment implies years of tested experience, rooted in knowledge of fire science and of recognized patterns of field experience. The strategy is “recognition-primed decisionmaking,” which identifies typical and familiar patterns in situations.83 Intuition obviously plays a role here, since the fire chief connects patterns of experience without going through an explic. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, , concurs and contends that “understanding ought to be an important concept for us as well, it has clearly been neglected, and this neglect cannot be remedied if epistemology persists in making the locus of evaluation individual propositions or states of believing single propositions, as is the case with justification.l.l.l. One understands p as part of and because of one’s understanding of a system or network of truths.” . Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (Cambridge: MIT Press, ), . The recognition-primed decision model “fuses two processes: the way decision makers size up the situation to recognize which course of action makes sense, and the way they evaluate that course of action by imagining it.l.l.l.They understand what types of goals make sense (so the priorities are set), which cues are important (so there is not an overload of information), what to expect next (so they can prepare themselves and notice surprises), and the typical ways of responding in a given situation. By recognizing a situation as typical, they also recognize a course of action likely to succeed. The recognition of goals is part of what it means to recognize a situation.”
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it process of reasoning.84 However, proficiency in recognizing familiar patterns is an acquired skill. The inescapable reality of new and unfamiliar situations warrants an inductive process by which a person of informed judgment connects novel situations with past experiences.85 Wisdom, as reflected in Newman’s University Sermons, is the epistemic glue that integrates knowledge, experience, and practice. In The Idea of a University, Newman argues at great length that the mind is not simply a passive recipient of knowledge but has to be carefully trained in order to attain truth.86 Moreover, he saw the danger of isolating domain-specific forms of reasoning and of ignoring both their connections and their limitations.87 A person must be taught how to reason in a specific field of knowledge, understanding its bound. For a good treatment of intuition from philosophical and psychological perspectives, see DePaul and Ramsey, eds., Rethinking Intuition. . For an interesting proposal on the role of practical induction in forming judgments, see Elijah Millgram, Practical Induction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). . Blehl, “The Role of Education in the Formation of Conscience and the Illative Sense,” . Newman, The Idea of a University, xliii, argues that “when the intellect has once been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual” (see also discourses and ). .The following quotation summarizes the gist of Newman’s argument for the connection of domain-specific fields of knowledge: “The enlargement [of the mind] consists, not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind’s energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action of a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the matter of our acquirements; it is a making of objects of our knowledge subjectively our own, or, to use a familiar word, it is a digestion of what we receive into the substance of our previous state of thought; and without this no enlargement is said to follow. There is no enlargement, unless there be a comparison of ideas one with another, as they come before the mind, and a systematizing of them.l.l.l. I have accordingly laid down first, that all branches of knowledge, are, at least implicitly, the subject-matter of its teaching; that these branches are not isolated and independent one of another, but form together a whole or system: they run into each other, and complete each other, and that, in proportion to our view of them as a whole, is the exactness and trustworthiness of the knowledge which they separately convey” (The Idea of a University, , f.).
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
aries while seeking complementary insights from other fields of knowledge. Without wisdom, the mind applies the principles and methods of one field of knowledge to every domain of knowledge. Growth of wisdom also depends upon proper training. A community of informed judgment derives wisdom from an expansive base of knowledge, complemented by a complex blend of epistemic qualities and experiences.88 Over time, wisdom solidifies intellectual qualities that enable people to exercise sound judgment in particular situations. In the case of Christian belief, wisdom mitigates deficiencies such as intellectual pride and dogmatism while fostering virtues that enhance both theological vision and cognitive performance. Wisdom demands epistemically responsible actions from a community of informed judgment. It guides a community’s integration of faith and different fields of knowledge, patiently considering new insights and necessary correctives while maintaining continuity with classical expressions of faith. Such situations require a presence of mind to balance intellectual virtues for particular situations. Christian wisdom, for example, extends its illation by gleaning truths from a larger context of Christian thought and by engaging other sources of reflection.Without extended illation, a community limits its theological vision and fails to enter public domains of informed judgment.Wisdom demands critical interaction with others in the world. Epistemic virtues, guided by wisdom, furnish necessary mechanisms for forming and sustaining beliefs. Wisdom properly links intellectual virtues to truth; for example, it guides people in deciphering the relevance of different pieces of evidence and in continuing a line of thought. The level of competence obviously de. Helene G. Brenner and Karen Strohm Kitchener,“Wisdom and Reflective Judgment: Knowing in the Face of Uncertainty,” in Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, ed. Robert J. Sternberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
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termines the extent to which a person relies on the authority of others.Though the illative sense may follow certain procedures for evaluating evidence, its decisions are not confined by pre-established rules. People of informed judgment couple knowledge and experience without explicit awareness of procedures. This is where the social dimension of the illative sense plays a major role. Refinement of the illative sense within a community context is vital both for forming and sustaining beliefs and for ensuring truth as an epistemic outcome. Cognitive development requires communal awareness and pursuit of the appropriate social channels for securing reliable knowledge and wisdom. Without wisdom, a community ignores various possibilities for filtering crucial insights into its own locus of knowledge. Extended illation, in other words, calls for continuity of practical wisdom within the epistemic life of a community. By pursuing wisdom, a community inquires whether its practices yield a preponderance of truth over error. Wisdom exposes intellectual deficiencies and regulates the degree of confidence in a community’s belief. The difference between a person of informed judgment and a novice lies in deciphering relevant pieces of data, not in acquiring a quantity of information.89 Uncritically collecting massive pieces of evidence implies deficient evaluative skills in determining the worth of the information acquired. The same applies in distinguishing wisdom from mere acquisition of knowledge. A person of informed judgment recognizes important clues for evaluating particular issues. Moreover, she knows how to integrate relevant information into her community’s locus of knowledge. Accumulating knowledge and experience does not weigh down people of informed judgment; they are not simply extended brains saturated with facts.90 . James Shanteau,“How Much Information Does an Expert Use?” Acta Psychologica (): . . Klein, Sources of Power, . Klein, , points out that two primary sources of expert-
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
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Though people of informed judgment operate from an extensive base of knowledge and wisdom, the distinguishing mark is recognizing patterns, connecting ideas, and seeing the big picture. The academic world illustrates a clear distinction between informed judgment and domain-specific knowledge. A scholar that sees everything through her discipline-specific lens lacks key characteristics for making informed judgments. Instead of connecting ideas from different fields of knowledge, she rules out possibilities that seem foreign to her way of thinking. When pushed outside her domain of knowledge, she fails to improvise, since standard patterns of recognition are unfamiliar. A person of informed judgment, by contrast, retains domain-specific knowledge, but she also enhances personal illation through different insights.As already indicated, epistemic deferment implies distribution of cognitive labor. Wisdom empowers a community to consider different ideas, but it realizes that truth must be the outcome of these differences. Seen in this way, academic gatherings demand the exercise of intellectual virtues for exchanging ideas.Wisdom solidifies these efforts, since people of informed judgment know when to sustain and revise ideas.
From Prolegomena to Theological Reflection Thus far, a social epistemology of informed judgment has been an exercise in theological prolegomena, tracing the social conditions under which people form and sustain beliefs. Connecting personal and communal dimensions of the illative sense is crucial for exchanging informed judgment. Such a move necessitates exise are pattern matching and mental simulation. “Pattern matching (intuition) refers to the ability of the expert to detect typicality and to notice events that did not happen and other anomalies that violate the pattern. Mental simulation covers the ability to see events that happened previously and events that are likely to happen in the future.”
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
ploration of the social conditions of belief-formation. Seen in this way, cognitive development takes place in a community context, nurtured by exemplars of informed judgment. The result is crafting the kind of people who see an inextricable connection between cognitive practices and truth. Moreover, when the illative sense is cultivated properly by different people, then the potential for disagreement might not be as great. Integration of the four elements of informed judgment creates opportunities for exchange with different communities of informed judgment. Isolation of these elements precludes growth of knowledge and wisdom while prolonging, even exacerbating, interpretive differences. Properly disposed faith enables all Christians to engage in an ongoing process of belief-formation while empowering some to reflect retrospectively on experiences, practices, and antecedent considerations of their own community. My proposal keeps an integral balance of these elements, recognizing that all play a distinct role in creating informed judgment. In extracting a notion of informed judgment from Newman’s thought, I acknowledge and develop hints for constructing a social epistemology of informed judgment. With such a move, I recognize Newman’s context while modifying his thought for a new situation (Chapter ).The advantage of such an approach is its attempt to offer a close reading of Newman’s major works on the rationality of Christian belief while deriving insights that “transcend his personality quirks and cultural biases.” 91 In reading Newman this way, I have argued that an exclusive focus on the personal dimension of the illative sense heightens an epistemic crisis. Social epistemology, however, supplies helpful insights for moving from a personal to a communal dimension of the illative sense. Extended illation draws from other resources of informed judg. Magill, “Love Safeguarding Faith,” . Magill makes a similar move on the issue of inter-religious dialogue.
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Epistemology of Informed Judgment
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ment, but it also begins from communally established practices. Though praiseworthy dispositions, modalities of reasoning, and evidence are essential for extended illation, wisdom is the epistemic lens through which a community gains a coherent vision of various pieces of data. A social epistemology of informed judgment focuses more on understanding a communal process of cognitive development than on describing it as a finished product.The next step is to see how the notion of informed judgment actually operates in real communities. The fruit of my labor, for example, will be seen when this heuristic device is tested on concrete issues in theological communities. A logical transition involves greater consideration of how theological communities refine the illative sense of reasoning. Such exploration is the focus of Chapter .
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Shaping Communities of Theological Judgment
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How does a social epistemology of informed judgment shape the formation of theological judgment? What role does theological reflection as a mature reflection of informed judgment play in shaping ecclesial life? What are some implications for contemporary theology? The result of such inquiry is a richer understanding of how informed judgment shapes theological reflection. The capacity to connect knowledge of God and ecclesial context requires informed judgment. As an acquired skill, informed judgment aptly assesses and applies theological ideas to particular situations. It is indispensable for thinking proficiently in ecclesial, social, academic, and other contexts. In this chapter, I offer some brief suggestions on how a social epistemology of informed judgment enhances theological judgment within Christian communities and what it means in the arena of contemporary theology. Both enriching theological judgment and scanning the terrain of contemporary theology are the business of a community of informed judgment.
Forming Theological Judgment Formation of theological judgment reflects a social process by which people develop theological skills and render apt judgment
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Communities of Theological Judgment
about particulars. Communally established practices empower people to cultivate good intellectual habits, and as a result, they desire true beliefs over false ones. Securing a reliable belief-forming process is indispensable for developing theological judgment. Underlying a communal process of belief-formation is a social network of epistemic dependence. Consequently, a theology of informed judgment challenges the attempt to sever inquiry about the rationality of Christian belief from communally established practices. Undergirding the process of belief-formation is a communal base of coherent and meaningful examples of theological judgment. People of informed judgment prescribe, through word and deed, praiseworthy dispositions to be cultivated, modalities of reasoning to be adopted, evidence to be considered, and connections to be made. Knowing how to think theologically comes by habit and by imitation, not simply by acquisition of isolated facts.Thus, proficiency in theological judgment stems from knowledge enhanced by communal experience and by interaction with other sources of informed judgment.The aim is to achieve a unitary account of Christian faith, which is another way of defining a fundamental task of systematic theology. A theology of informed judgment also fuses moral and cognitive dimensions of Christian belief. In exercising theological judgment, a community crafts the kind of people who meld praiseworthy dispositions and truth. Induction into a community sustained by good theological practices creates within people a desire for transforming praiseworthy dispositions into good theological habits. For example, practices such as studiousness, prayer, concern for truth, informed understanding of the Christian faith, and synthetic assessment of various pieces of data translate a properly disposed faith into good theological judgments. In its mature form, theological judgment involves an earnest and long-term commitment to culti-
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Communities of Theological Judgment
vate the “gift of Christian wonder or curiosity, which is the specifically theological mode of faith.”1 Though praiseworthy dispositions are linked to truth, identifying the process by which people acquire qualities of excellence is essential for forming theological judgment. If it ignores the process, a community continues to function on a basic level of the illative sense. A community of informed judgment links epistemic qualities and truth. Connecting moral theory and theological judgment sheds light on how people intend both to function as a community and to live with others in the world. Such an endeavor is another way of defining “moral and pastoral theology.”2 Though compatible with the elements of informed judgment (Chapter ), the cultivation of theological judgment is materially specific to a particular community. For example, praiseworthy dispositions are epistemic qualities shaped by a particular theological vision embedded within communal practices. Maturation of theological judgment depends on knowledge of the tradition to which a person belongs.Without sufficient historical knowledge of doctrinal developments, for example, a community lacks proficiency in assessing contemporary theological options. In this regard, factors such as liturgy, prayer, experience, and catechesis play a crucial role in shaping theological judgment.3 The church, therefore, is an .Aidan Nichols, The Shape of Catholic Theology:An Introduction to Its Sources, Principles, and History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, ), . . Ibid., . . Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds:The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . See also Murphy, “The Role of Virtues in Epistemic Practices,” f. In following Newman, then, a social epistemology of theological judgment would include consideration of the impact of liturgy, piety, and catechesis on the formation of theological judgment. Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, , points out that for Newman Scripture, religious examples, doctrine, and piety served as channels of religious knowledge; see Newman, OC, .
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Communities of Theological Judgment
important environment for acquiring theological virtues and discerning theological truths.4 Theological discernment is not confined to an ecclesiastical context but takes place in other settings (e.g., the academy and the larger social context).To isolate the church as the sole locus of theological judgment would negate wisdom as a fundamental principle of informed judgment. Wisdom endows a community with the capacity to weave ideas from different sources of informed judgment into a unified account of the Christian faith.A community of theological judgment retains the integrity of its resources (e.g., scripture and tradition) while taking into consideration insights from other resources of informed judgment (e.g., philosophy, psychology, sociology, and history). The result is a coherent presentation of Christian faith. Though knowledge of the Christian tradition is necessary for developing theological judgment, it is not sufficient for rendering informed judgment about particular theological issues. Informed judgment entails an expansive base of knowledge, complemented by a complex blend of epistemic qualities and experience.Without wisdom,“knowledge lacks nuance, since decision-making requires constant shifts in judgment in assessing information and circumstances.”5 Accumulating isolated facts, at best, exhibits a basic level of the illative sense, but acquiring wisdom enhances theological judgment, enabling people to connect knowledge and particular situations. Such acts of theological discernment require communal support; without reliable social channels of wisdom, refinement of theological reflection suffers, and communal understandings of Christian faith lack a coherent pattern of expression.6 . Avery Dulles, The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad, ), . . Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds, . .William A. Christian, Sr., Doctrines of Religious Communities: A Philosophical Study (New
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Communities of Theological Judgment
A mature exercise of theological judgment, then, involves “sympathetic imagination,” that is, the capacity to see different proposals in all their complexity and, consequently, to consider “how well each position is able to accommodate the strengths of the other and to remedy its own weakness.”7 Without living voices of wisdom, however, a community of theological judgment struggles both to assess competing claims and to develop a unitary account of Christian faith. Maturation of the illative sense, by contrast, enables a community to connect practices and ideas, mirroring the unity to which the triune God has called it. Proficiency in theological judgment, in other words, reflects knowledge of Christian faith and of recognized patterns of experience. The contextual nature of theological judgment, however, does not rule out exchange with others; rather, it demands an exercise of extended illation.As previously indicated, the goal of a community of informed judgment is to expand particular expressions of the illative sense into communal forms of illation. The precondition for exercising mature judgment is the capacity to evaluate other sources of informed judgment and weave them into a community’s locus of knowledge. Theological sectarianism, by contrast, is an epistemic vice that cripples a communal process of theological formation. By ignoring insights from others, a community Haven:Yale University Press, ), captures the process by which religious communities extend doctrinal formulations into a coherent pattern of life. “It seems a fair generalization to say that each of the major religious communities teaches its members to live in a certain way, in accord with a certain pattern of life, and that it teaches them how to live in that way. It nurtures them in that pattern of life.The beliefs, valuations, and courses of action which are proposed in its primary doctrines are constituents of the pattern. By way of precepts, backed by accounts of how the world is, by way of examples, pointing to individuals whose lives have manifested and defined the pattern concretely, and by way of direct induction of its members into certain practices and habituation in those practices, a community aims at shaping the lives of its members. It instills habits of appreciation, of overt behavior, and of thought, which hang together as a more or less coherent pattern of life” (). . Basil Mitchell,“Newman as a Philosopher,” .
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exhibits theological narrow-mindedness and suppresses the urge to connect ideas from larger domains of thought. Though materially specific, theological judgment also considers truth-conduciveness, epistemic qualities, and consultation of other sources of informed judgment (Chapter ). First, theological judgment is a matter of truth-conduciveness, since its goal is to guide communally established practices in ways that yield true beliefs over false ones.The task of theological judgment is to foster good understandings of Christian faith, identify deficiencies, and achieve greater levels of truth-conduciveness. Second, theological virtues shape judgment. Any communal inquiry is a matter of truth-conduciveness, requiring habitual formation of theological qualities of excellence (e.g., knowledge, love, faith, hope, humility, courage, and wisdom). Last, a community ascertains whether its theological proposal shows continuity with other sources of theological judgment. Social transmission of theological judgment requires confidence in sources from which we derive knowledge and consensus. Again, consensus does not imply attainment of theological truth; rather, theological collaboration protects a community from isolationism. Of course, different communities are bound to disagree, but as I have suggested, incorporation of praiseworthy dispositions, modalities of reasoning, evidence, and wisdom enhances the probability of informed judgment. Any community of theological judgment shows interest in following a reliable social process that yields true beliefs over false ones. In spite of methodological and interpretive differences, communities of theological judgment have a common interest in pursuing truth and in avoiding falsehood (to say otherwise would show a preference for falsity!). As I have argued, truth-conduciveness, good epistemic practices, and willingness to consult others are indispensable for ensuring a reliable belief-forming process. Following Newman, I see theological judgment commensurate
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Theological Judgment
with a natural and spiritual process; grace completes nature. Entering the public domain guards a community of theological judgment from uncritical acceptance of its own ideas. Wisdom demands a public hearing!
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Managing the Theological Load A theology of informed judgment acknowledges the importance of community both for transmitting Christian faith and for ensuring continuity of theological judgment. Formation of theological judgment reflects a communal process by which people learn from received texts of informed judgment (e.g., Scripture and tradition) and from living examples of informed judgment. A community’s reservoir of wisdom structures the “internalization of models within the context of a tradition.”8 The result is the creation of people who reflect the presence of God in the world; rightly ordered thought leads to mature expression of Christian faith both within the life of the church and within the larger context of society. Identifying such sources ensures communal knowledge of the Christian faith; at least, it ensures knowledge commensurate with a basic operation of the illative sense. Enhancing theological judgment may “involve directly teaching the lessons learned” by mature practitioners of Christian faith or may involve “helping individuals to develop the skills needed to learn more effectively from their own experiences.”9 Such training equips people to extend personal and communal forms of theological judgment to larger domains of inquiry. The formation of theological judgment is a collaborative pro. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds, . . Robert J. Sternberg, et al., Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Theological Judgment
cess. Solitary theological discernment is an illusion; rarely does a person make judgments in isolation from other agents of theological discernment. Highlighting a communal dimension of theological judgment, however, does not suggest annulment of individual contributions, but rather it stresses social conditions under which people materialize a specific theological vision. John Thiel expresses the complexity of the relationship between individual theological contributions and the communal context of theological reflection.
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The exercise of theological talent involves judgments that draw the theologian’s individual experience into such intimate relationship with the communal realities of church and society that it is virtually indistinguishable from them. Indeed, theological talent is measured by its ability to speak in an intellectually defensible manner on behalf of these groups and the truth they have to tell about God, humanity, and the world. But there is no denying that theological talent, like any talent, is fundamentally an individual affair and that mediating the sources of theology, though responsible to the church, is an act of the personal imagination.10
Recognizing individual contributions is important, but adequate distribution still requires a communal process of discernment. Hence, a community of theological judgment must guard against squelching unfamiliar voices; unwillingness to listen to others implies that a community lacks wisdom and continues to function on a basic level of the illative sense. Nevertheless, a community of theological judgment maps out ways in which distribution of labor contributes to fulfillment of a common vision. Working out this matter is certainly a complex process. Proper exercise of theological judgment requires effective distribution of labor. Identifying a reliable belief-forming process is indispensable for enhancing theological judgment. Without reli. John E. Thiel, Imagination and Authority: Theological Authorship in the Modern Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, ), .
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Theological Judgment
able social channels of knowledge and wisdom, maturation of the illative sense suffers; depending exclusively on the personal dimension of the illative sense impedes a communal process of rendering apt theological judgments.A community, therefore, stresses the importance of social practices for acquiring requisite qualities of theological judgment. It also recognizes that theological judgment, though connected with a common goal, is multifaceted. Some people, for example, focus on the social conditions of beliefformation as an exercise in theological prolegomena, while others tackle particular doctrinal issues. Both contribute to the theological life of a community, but they require allocation of different resources. Within a community of theological judgment, not all focus on the same issues; rather, they combine individual efforts in order to achieve a common goal. Proficiency in theological judgment results from successful distribution of tasks that enhance both theological growth and fulfillment of theological goals.
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Implications for Contemporary Theology Reading contemporary theology reveals that many proposals exist, some compatible and others not. Is there a way of seeing through the methodological fog and coming to a clearer but broader understanding of theology? The fundamental premise of informed judgment—the urge to connect—unfolds new possibilities for engaging contemporary theology. Contemporary theology is a multifaceted enterprise. At least five options reflect the current theological landscape.11 The first option sees theology principally as a philosophical enterprise and . My narrative has been shaped by, but differs in some ways from, two sources: Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven: Yale University Press), ), and David F. Ford, Theology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ).
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takes the broader philosophical climate as its point of departure. It construes the task of theology as a constructive activity, not as a description of the grammar of Christian faith.The goal is to construct theological ideas that cohere with broader criteria of meaningfulness and universality rather than simply articulating the material claims of Christian faith.12 The church is not the exclusive domain of theological reflection. The second option reverses the order of priority and roots theological reflection in the life of the church.As an ecclesiastical discipline, theology involves critical reflection on the church’s discourse about God. The norm of theology emerges from the internal witness of Christian faith, not from some general theory of knowledge.Transporting alien epistemic schemes into the life of the church distorts the task of theology, compromises the integrity of Christian faith, and shackles the freedom of God. Divine revelation is the starting point for theological reflection.13 The third option, though compatible in many ways with the second, differs slightly. It understands the task of theology mainly as description of the grammar of Christian faith.As a non-foundational enterprise, theology concentrates on communally established practices. Within this context, one learns the internal logic of Christian discourse, like a language, and understands the truth claims of the Christian story.14 Consequently, Christian discourse cannot be assessed by some independent standard of justification. The task of theology is to unpack the internal logic of Christian discourse and to live out faith from that perspective. . See Gordan D. Kaufman, An Essay on Theological Method, rev. ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, ). . See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.., The Doctrine of the Word of God, nd ed., trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, ). . See George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia:Westminster Press, ).
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Communities of Theological Judgment
The fourth option anchors theological reflection in concrete moments of human existence. It sees an unbreakable linkage between praxis and theological reflection, especially within the context of oppressed communities. Experience is the starting point for thinking theologically. The praxis of liberation functions as the norm by which communities judge the adequacy of theological statements.15 The fifth option defines theology as critical correlation of the broader contours of human experience and the Christian message. Theological reflection entails a dipolar process, an interaction between the Christian tradition and the contemporary situation. Neither pole dominates theological reflection; each pole informs and challenges theological reflection, expressing a mutually critical process, not a level of subordination.16 How, then, does a social epistemology of informed judgment speak to this vast range of theological perspectives? The landscape of contemporary theology is oriented toward various communities and is essentially a social enterprise. Proliferation of theological approaches occasionally hinders the urge to connect, creating what appear to be incommensurate boundaries. As a social enterprise, however, contemporary theology exhibits levels of epistemic dependence, deriving insights from work in biblical studies, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, and so on.Thus, contemporary theology would benefit by making its epistemological commitments explicit.17 . See Gustavo Gutiérrez, Essential Writings, ed. James B. Nickoloff (Maryknoll: Orbis, ). . See David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, ). . For example, George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –, shows how a particularist epistemology undergirds Barth’s theological proposal. Barth takes an epistemological line of inquiry derived from a specific theological framework, not from a general theory of knowledge. In this
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Communities of Theological Judgment
A theology of informed judgment calls for greater levels of integration among different fields of knowledge without blurring their distinctive modes of inquiry. A fitting example is a recent project in which biblical scholars and theologians seek to bridge a long-standing gap between their disciplines by exploring ways in which biblical interpretation informs the task of theology.18 As a person trained both in theology and in biblical studies, I can attest to the importance of this conversation.19 A social epistemology of informed judgment implicitly guides such activity, since its fundamental premise calls for integration. Unpacking epistemic commitments is crucial for continuing the conversation. Canonizing an epistemology—holding theology captive to any one theory of knowledge—is not what I have in mind here. Instead, a theology of informed judgment balances specificity and comprehensiveness, avoiding extremes such as epistemic imperialism and theological sectarianism. Acknowledging philosophical commitments does not imply that they govern the task of theology. Theology, like other domains of thought, has its own methodological concerns, material forms of witness, and particular questions. However, acknowledging the contextual nature of theology does not justify theological sectarianism or suppression of methodological commitments. Uncovering epistemic points of reference sense, Barth is concerned with the question of how people in the church speak, hear, and come to know the Word of God. Roderick M. Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, ) argues that a particularist carves out an account of knowledge from what one knows, rather than from some general account of knowledge. Barth, in my estimation, offers a thoroughgoing theological particularism. . See Joel B. Green and Max Turner, Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ). . Last spring, Dr. Mark Hamilton (biblical scholar) and I co-taught a class on the topics of creation and theological anthropology. We explored the relevance of biblical, theological, historical, philosophical, scientific, and moral insights for rendering a coherent account of creation and human selfhood. As we discovered, a theology of informed judgment is crucial but challenging.
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Communities of Theological Judgment
opens up possibilities both for enhancing communal self-understanding and for connecting with other communities. Various stripes of contemporary theology would benefit from a theology of informed judgment.Two examples should suffice.The first example (option ) reminds us of the human potential for involvement in dehumanizing activities.Theological reflection must engage the struggles of life. Specific focus on concrete experiences of life is indispensable for engaging in the task of theology.Yet, a theology of liberation should seek comprehensive understanding of Christian faith and the broader context of human experience. Inclusion entails a multiplicity of perspectives, but not at the expense of some common end. Cultivating informed judgment makes us better practitioners of theological reflection, exposing our idiosyncratic tendencies, while connecting us with the rest of creation. The second example combines options and . Both options rightly stress the importance of paying close attention to the internal logic of Christian faith and to securing theological proposals from resources such as Scripture and tradition.The outcome is an informed understanding of the Christian message. Both, however, must guard against quickly subsuming contemporary concerns into classical formulations of Christian faith. One has to give only cursory attention to contemporary expressions of theology to see how powerfully they have been shaped by the intellectual developments of the last four centuries. In fact, a theology of informed judgment could be read as a critical response to two long-standing tendencies in Christian theology: fideism and evidentialism.Theological reflection is multifaceted, but its elasticity does not warrant theological balkanization. A proposal of informed judgment characterizes theology as an enterprise of wisdom in which practitioners embody an urge to connect. It rejects the temptation to hibernate in theological en-
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Communities of Theological Judgment
claves. Affirming the particular without concern for broader expressions of Christian thought creates an unnecessary impasse. It tends to see the task of theology as a one-dimensional enterprise. Focus on social location is important, but not at the expense of conversation with other theological communities. Implementation of good theological habits should create greater possibilities for authentic forums of dialogue.The urge to connect does not imply sacrifice of particular theological commitments; rather it calls for growth of theological wisdom. The relevance of my proposal can be summed up in the following way. A theology of informed judgment renders a phenomenological account of the landscape of contemporary theology. It observes concrete ways in which contemporary theologians go about their business. Obviously, the aim of a particular theological option influences the division of labor. For example, option places a high premium on philosophical inquiry; options and rely heavily on insights from biblical studies and history; option depends on insights from political philosophy and sociology. Option tries to correlate the Christian message with insights from various fields of knowledge. Nevertheless, all work with implicit philosophical assumptions.The key is balance rather than uncritical endorsement of one resource of theological reflection. As Newman points out, real apprehension and notional apprehension represent two dimensions of thinking. Comprehensiveness and specificity are essential poles of theological reflection. Insulating Christian theological discourse from broader philosophical thought creates the problem of relativism, while subsuming theological discourse into an epistemic scheme compromises the integrity of Christian faith. A theology of informed judgment has many components. It seeks to weave biblical, historical, philosophical, moral, scientific, and social insights into a coherent account of Christian faith. Ob-
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Communities of Theological Judgment
viously, ways of prioritizing of these resources vary according to how each community works out issues in theological prolegomena. Furthermore, greater awareness of epistemic dependence may increase informed understanding of radically different proposals. Recent studies in social and virtue epistemology furnish insights for thinking about the process of belief-formation, but not at the expense of particular theological traditions. Consequently, a theology of informed judgment seeks to render a unified account of Christian faith, implementing insights from various dimensions of contemporary theology.
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Exploring the Territory A proposal of informed judgment stresses the communal nature of theological judgment. Without a communal presence of wisdom, the process of theological judgment is left to personal choice. Under the tutelage of people of mature theological judgment, a community learns to connect key ideas within concrete moments of human existence. Learning to think theologically requires something greater than mastery of information. A theology of informed judgment recognizes the difference between acquiring facts and filtering information for particular situations. As an acquired skill, theological judgment fuses contemporary issues with biblical and historical expressions of Christian faith. I have shown the relevance of Newman’s notion of the illative sense both for constructing a fresh account of the rationality of Christian belief and for connecting with the landscape of contemporary theology. In challenging the separation of cognitive excellence and spirituality, Newman offers a balance of intellectual thought and Christian experience. He criticizes truncated versions of rationality as well as proposals that focus exclusively on the life of devotion, which easily “degenerate into fanaticism or supersti-
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Communities of Theological Judgment
tion.”20 Echoing his moves here, a social epistemology of informed judgment sees the nature of cognition in holistic terms. Following the same logic, theological judgment merges cognitive and moral dimensions of selfhood. Since theological judgment is contextand agent-sensitive, it cannot be reduced to a formal process of reflection that claims to discern theological truths independently of the cognitive agent. Instead, theological judgment, like all modes of reflection, stems from the “activity of the living person,” and so it includes personal outlook, as well as moral and social dimensions of reflection.21 I have offered some brief suggestions on the formation of theological judgment. Cultivating praiseworthy dispositions, modalities of reasoning, evidence, and wisdom enhances the probability of informed judgment. Rejection of wisdom hinders the process by which a community internalizes and articulates the content of Christian faith. A vital aspect of theological judgment is the urge to connect.22 Without informed judgment, a community fails to secure a coherent understanding of its own material witness; moreover, it never achieves the capacity to converse with other communities of informed judgment. A social epistemology of informed judgment sees theological judgment as a process by which people connect ideas without losing communal particularity. Extended illation, as a mode of being in the world, sustains healthy . Norris, Newman and His Theological Method, . . Ibid., f. Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, vol. , f., adds that theological judgments, like moral judgments, “are not simply the outcome of abstract logic, but result from practical reasoning. Just as practical reason is based upon a learned experience, so too does a link exist between moral knowledge and ethical experience.The illative sense is therefore linked to the character and experience of individuals that affect the beginning, process, and conclusion of reasoned and considered judgments. In short, practical experience determines what persons become; it affects not only who they are but also their whole process of reasoning, ranging from the selection of principles, to the mode of argumentation, to the construction of conclusions.” . Nichols, The Shape of Catholic Theology, .
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Communities of Theological Judgment
communities of theological judgment.The next move in theology involves greater clarification of how a social epistemology of informed judgment factors into communal understandings of Christian faith.The territory needs further exploration. Another logical step is to trace the actual ways in which informed judgment operates in other real-world contexts. Future studies should include investigations of how informed judgment works in areas such as education, leadership, law, medicine, the sciences, the humanities, and everyday decision making. For example, during the process of writing this book, I realized some of the implications of informed judgment for an important dimension of my career: the area of pedagogy.23 I also recognized how indispensable informed judgment is to every aspect of life. To this end, I hope others will join me in fleshing out the role of informed judgment in various real-world contexts.
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. See Aquino,“The Craft of Teaching,” –.
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References
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says on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Bacchus, Francis.“Newman’s Oxford University Sermons.” Month (): –. Banner, James M., Jr., and Harold C. Cannon. The Elements of Teaching. New Haven:Yale University Press, . Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, I., The Doctrine of the Word of God. nd ed. Trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Edinburgh:T & T Clark, . Basinger, Randall. “Faith/Reason Typologies: A Constructive Proposal.” Christian Scholar’s Review (): –. Bernstein, Richard J. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, . Blehl, Vincent F. “The Role of Education in the Formation of Conscience and the Illative Sense.” Newman Studien (Glock and Lutz, ): –. Bonjour, Laurence, and Ernest Sosa. Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs.Virtues (Oxford: Blackwell, ). Brenner, Helene G., and Karen Strohm Kitchener. “Wisdom and Reflective Judgment: Knowing in the Face of Uncertainty.” In Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, ed. Robert J. Sternberg, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Brown, Harold I. Rationality. London: Routledge, . Carr, Thomas K. Newman and Gadamer: Toward a Hermeneutics of Religious Knowledge.Atlanta: Scholars Press, . Casey, Gerard. Natural Reason: A Study of the Notions of Inference, Assent, Intuition, and First Principles in the Philosophy of John Henry Cardinal Newman. New York: Peter Lang, . Casey, John. Pagan Virtue. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Charry, Ellen T. By the Renewing of Your Minds:The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Chisholm, Roderick M. The Problem of the Criterion. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, . Christian, William A., Sr. Doctrines of Religious Communities: A Philosophical Study. New Haven:Yale University Press, . Clark, Andy. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge: MIT Press, . Coady, C. A. J. “Testimony and Observation.” American Philosophical Quarterly (): –.
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———. Testimony:A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Code, Lorraine. Epistemic Responsibility. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brown University Press, . Corlett, J. Angelo. Analyzing Social Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, . DePaul, Michael R., and William Ramsey, eds. Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, . Dessain, Charles S. “Cardinal Newman on the Theory and Practice of Knowledge: The Purpose of the Grammar of Assent.” Downside Review (): –. Dulles, Avery. The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System. New York: Crossroad, . Dunne, Joseph. Back to the Rough Ground: Practical Judgment and the Lure of Technique. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, . Elgin, Catherine Z. Considered Judgment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, . Enright, Edward J. “Faith and Reason in Newman’s Anglican and Roman Catholic Correspondences as Historical Background to ‘An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.’” S.T.D. diss., Catholic University of America, . Ernest, James D. “A Study of John Henry Newman’s Oxford University Sermons.” Ph.D. diss.,Yale University, . Fairweather, Abrol. “Epistemic Motivation.” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed.Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . ———, and Linda T. Zagzebski.“Introduction.” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner. The Way we Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books, . Ferreira, M. Jamie. Doubt and Religious Commitment: The Role of the Will in Newman’s Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . ———. Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt: The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid and Newman. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Fey,William R. Faith and Doubt:The Unfolding of Newman’s Thought on Certainty. Shepherdstown,WV: Patmos Press, .
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Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler, and John P. Galvin, eds. Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. vols. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, . Flanagan, Philip. Newman, Faith and the Believer. London: Sands, . Foley, Richard. “Egoism in Epistemology.” In Socializing Epistemology:The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, ed. Frederick F. Schmitt, –. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, . Ford, David F. Theology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Ford, John T. “Newman on ‘Sensus Fidelium’ and Mariology.” Marian Studies (): –. ———.“Recent Studies on Newman:Two Review Articles.” The Thomist (): –. ———.“Newman Studies: Recent Resources and Research.” The Thomist (): –. Frei, Hans. Types of Christian Theology. Ed. by George Hunsinger and William C. Placher. New Haven:Yale University Press, . Fuller, Steve. Social Epistemology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, . Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. nd ed. New York: Basic Books, . ———, and Nira Granott. “When Minds Meet: Interactions, Coincidence, and Development in Domains of Ability.” In Mind in Context: Interactionist Perspectives on Human Intelligence, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). Gibbard, Allan. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, . Gigerenzer, Gerd, and Reinhard Selten, eds. Bounded Rationality:The Adaptive Toolbox. Cambridge: MIT Press, . Gigerenzer, Gerd, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. New York: Oxford University Press, . Gilbert, Margaret. Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, . Goldman, Alvin I.“Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology.” In Naturalizing Epistemology, nd ed., ed. Hilary Kornblith, –. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, . ———. Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . ———. Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public. Oxford: Oxford University Press, .
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———, and Joel Pust. “Philosophical Theory and Intuitional Evidence.” In Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, ed. Michael R. DePaul and William Ramsey, –. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, . Govier, Trudy. Social Trust and Human Communities. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, . Greco, John. “Virtues and Rules in Epistemology.” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Green, Joel B., and Max Turner. Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, . Gutiérrez, Gustavo. Essential Writings. Ed. James B. Nickoloff. Maryknoll: Orbis, . Gutting, Gary, ed. Paradigms and Revolutions:Appraisals and Applications of Thomas Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, . Hardwig, John. “The Role of Trust in Knowledge.” Journal of Philosophy (): –. Harper, Gordon H. Cardinal Newman and William Froude, F.R S.: A Correspondence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, . Hirschfeld, Lawrence, and Susan Gelman, eds. Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Hookway, Christopher. “Cognitive Virtues and Epistemic Evaluations.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies (): –. Hunsinger, George. How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, . Kaufman, Gordan D. An Essay on Theological Method. Rev. ed.Atlanta: Scholars Press, . Ker, Ian T. John Henry Newman:A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . ———. The Achievement of John Henry Newman. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, . Kitcher, Philip. “Contrasting Conceptions of Social Epistemology.” In Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, ed. Frederick F. Schmitt, –. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, .
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Williams, Bernard. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, . Wilson,Timothy D. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, . Wolterstorff, Nicholas. John Locke and the Ethics of Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Wood,William J. Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, . Zagzebski, Linda T. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . ———.“The Place of Phronesis in the Methodology of Theology.” In Philosophy and Theological Discourse, ed. Stephen T. Davis, –. New York: St. Martin’s Press, . ———. “Must Knowers Be Agents?” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Zeno, Dr. John Henry Newman, Our Way to Certitude: An Introduction to Newman’s Psychological Discovery: The Illative Sense, and His Grammar of Assent. Leiden: Brill, . Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, .
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Index
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q
ABC Research Group, , , – Abraham,William J., ix, , –, Allen, Charles, Alston,William P., , , , , , , Anselm of Canterbury, Saint, antecedent considerations, , –, , , , apprehension, –; notional, –, ; real, –, Aquinas, Saint Thomas, Aquino, Frederick D., , Aristotle, , , Armour, Leslie, assent, –, –, , –, –, , –, –; complex, , , , ; notional, –, ; real, ; simple, , , , Augustine of Hippo, Saint, Axtell, Guy, , Bacchus, Francis, Banner, James, Jr., – Barth, Karl, – Basinger, Randall, Bastable, James D., Bernstein, Richard J., bigotry, , – Blehl,Vincent F., –,
Bonjour, Laurence, Brenner, Helene G., Brown, Harold I., , – cable, example of, – Cannon, Harold C., – Carr,Thomas K., , , , , Casey, Gerard, , Casey, John, Caswall, Edward, – certitude, , , , , –, –, Charry, Ellen T., –, Chisholm, Roderick M., Christian belief, , , –, –, –, –, , –, , , –, , –, , , , ; justification of, , , , , , , , , ; rationality of, , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , ; objective dimension, , , –; subjective dimension, , Christian,William, Sr., Clark,Andy, Coady, C.A. J., , , , cognition, –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, , , , –, –, , , –, ; teleological conception of, –
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Index
common measure. See problem of common measure consensus, , –, , –, , , consensus fidelium, constitutive faculties: perfection of, , , , Corlett, J.Angelo, Coulson, John,
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Davis, Stephen T., DePaul, Michael R., , Descartes, René, Dessain, Charles S., , –, division of cognitive labor, , –, doctrine, –, , , , , , , , , , –, ; development of, , , dogmatism, –, , –, , , doubt, –, , –, –, , –, –, , –, Dulles,Avery, Dunne, Joseph, , Elgin, Catherine Z., , , Enright, Edward J., ix, , , epistemic dependence, , –, , , , , , –, –, , –, , , , , , , , , , epistemic duty, , , , –, , , epistemic egoism, , – epistemic vices, , , –, , epistemic virtues, , –, –, , –, , , –, , , epistemology. See informed judgment, social epistemology of Ernest, James D., evidence. See Informed judgment
evidentialism, , , , , , , externalism, , Fairweather,Abrol, , – Fauconnier, Gilles, Ferreira, M. Jamie, , , , , , –, Fey,William R., , fideism, –, Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler, , first principles, , , , , – Flanagan, Philip, Foley, Richard, – Ford, David F., Ford, John T., ix, –, , , formation of character, , , , , . See also moral theory Frei, Hans, Froude,William, , –, , , , Fuller, Steve, Galvin, John P., Gardner, Howard, – Gelman, Susan, – Gibbard,Allan, Gigerenzer, Gerd, , , – Gilbert, Margaret, Goldman,Alvin I., , –, , –, , , Govier,Trudy, Granott, Nira, Great Britain: example of, – Greco, John, , Green, Joel B., Gregory of Nyssa, Gutiérrez, Gustavo, Gutting, Gary, habits: intellectual, , –, –, , , , , , , –, –, –, , –, , , , ;
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Index
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theological, , , , . See also epistemic virtues Hardwig, John, , , Harper, Gordon H., Hill,Allan G., , Hirschfeld, Lawrence, – Holmes, J. Derek, Holtzer, Steven W., Hookway, Christopher, Hume, David, , humility, , –, , Hunsinger, George, , illative sense: communal dimension, –, , , , , –, –; cultivated faculty of judgment, –, –, –; as a faculty that assesses an argument, , –; as a faculty that assesses first principles, , –, –; as a faculty that determines the convergence of probabilities, –; as a holistic process of reasoning, ; natural (uncultivated) faculty of judgment, , –, ; personal dimension, –, –, –; of reasoning, , –, , , , , –, , , ; as a reliable belief-forming process, , , , inference, , , , –, , , , , –, , –, , ; formal, , , , , , , , ; informal, , –, , ; natural, , , , , informed judgment: antecedent probability, , ; communities of, –, , –, , –, –, –, –, , , ; evidence, , , , , , –, , –, , , –, , , , , –, , , –, , , , , –, , –, , –, –, , , , ; ex-
emplars of, , , , , , , ; modalities of reasoning, , , –, –, , , , –, , , , ; as a non-rule governed process of reasoning, , , , –; praiseworthy dispositions, , , , , –, , , , –, , ; social epistemology of, –, , , , –, , –, –; theology of, , , –; urge to connect, , , , –, ; wisdom, , , , –, , , –, , –, , , –, –, – intellectual virtues. See epistemic virtues internalism, , Johnson, Mark, Kaufman, Gordan D., Ker, Ian T., , –, , , , , , Kitchener, Karen Strohm, Kitcher, Philip, – Klein, Gary, , knowledge, justification of, –, –, , , , Kornblith, Hilary, , , , , , –, , , , Kroeger, James, Kuhn,Thomas S., , , , Kvanvig, Jonathan, Lakoff, George, Lamont, John R.T., , Lash, Nicholas, Laudan, Larry, Lehrer, Keith, –, – Lindbeck, George A., Locke, John, , , , , Longino, Helen E.,
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Index
love, , –, –, , , , ; as a safeguard, , , , – Lycan,William G.,
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MacKinnon, D. M., Magill, Gerard, –, , , , , McCarren, Gerard, medical researcher, example of, – memory, , , , , , , , Merrigan,Terrence, , , , , , Meynell, Hugo, , , Millgram, Elijah, Mitchell, Basil, –, , , modalities of reasoning. See informed judgment Montaigne, Montmarquet, James A., , , moral theory, , , , Moser, Paul K., , mountaineer, example of, Mulder, Dwayne H., , Murphy, Nancey, , , Napoleon, naturalized epistemology, , Newman, Jay, , –, , Newman, John Henry: Apologia Pro Vita Sua, , , ; Autobiographical Writings, ; On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, –; An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, , , –, –, , , , , –, –, , , , ; An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, , , ; Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, –, –, , , , , , ; The Idea of a University, , , , ; Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ; The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry
Newman, , ; The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Certainty, , , , , Nichols,Aidan, , , , Norman, Donald A., Norris,Thomas J., , , , , , , O’Donnell, Robert, , , , , , Olson, Denis R., O’Neill, Onora, Pailin, David A., , Paley,William, , Pascal, Blaise, pedagogy, , –, , , peer review, , Peterson, Michael, phenomenological accounts of rationality, , –, , , , , , , , Pinker, Stephen, Placher,William C., Pojman, Louis P., Potter, Nancy Nyquist, Powell, Jouette L., praiseworthy dispositions. See informed judgment pride, , , , problem of common measure, –, , , , , , , , –, –, , problem of criterion. See problem of common measure proof, , –, , , , , , –, –, –, , –, –, psychology, , , , , , , Pust, Joel, Putnam, Hilary, , ,
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Index Ramsey,William, , rationally acceptable belief, –, –, , –, , , , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , –, Reardon, Bernard M. G., reasoning: communal, –, , , , ; deductive, , , –; explicit, , , , –, –, –, –, , , , , , , , , , , , ; faulty, –, –; holistic, , , , , ; illative sense of, see illative sense; implicit, , , , , –, –, , –, , , , , , , –, , , ; inductive, , –, –, , ; modalities of, see informed judgment; as a non-rule governed process, , , , –; personal dimension, , , , , , , –, , –, –, , , , ; presumptive, , –, , , –, , , –; within real-world environments, , , , , , , , , , –, –, , – relativism, , , –, , , , , Rescher, Nicholas, revelation, –, , , , , –, –, , , Salomon, Gavriel, Scheffler, Israel, Schmitt, Frederick F., –, – scientific communities, , –, , , , , Scripture, , , , , , , , , , –, , sectarianism, , Selby, Robin C., self, , –, , , –, Selten, Reinhard,
sense perception, , , , , , Shanteau, James, , Siegel, Harvey, Sillem, Edward, , Simon, Herbert A., skepticism, , Sloman, Steven A., Sloyan, Gerard S., Snow, Richard E., social epistemology. See informed judgment Sosa, Ernest, , , , Stein, Edward, , , Stein, Stan, Stenmark, Mikael, –, –, Sternberg, Robert J., , , Stout, Jeffrey, Svaglic, Martin J., sympathetic imagination, tenacity, testimony, , –, , , , , , , –, , – theological judgment, , , , –, – theological labor, division of, –, theological prolegomena, , , , theology: contemporary, , , , , , , –; five models, –; and informed judgment, –; liberation, , ; moral dimension of, , , –, , –, –, , , –, , –, , –, , , , , –, , , –, , , ; notional aspect of, –, ; and the religious imagination, , , , ; systematic, , , , , ; virtues of, , , Thiel, John E., Tilley,Terrence W., Tillman, Mary Katherine, , , , , , ,
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Index
Todd, Peter M., , , – Tomasello, Michael, Torrance, Nancy, Tracy, David, Tristam, Henry, Trout, J. D., , truth, , –, –, –, , –, , , –, , –, , , , –, –, –, –, –, , , –, –, –, –, , –, , –, –, –; consensus on the, , , , –, , , truth-conduciveness, , –, , –, , , Turner, Mark, Turner, Max,
virtue epistemology, , , , , , , , , Wagner, Richard K., Wainwright,William J., , , , Ward,Wilfred, , Welbourne, Michael, Whately, Richard, Williams, Bernard, Wilson,Timothy D., wisdom. See informed judgment Wood,William J., , , , Zagzebski, Linda T., , –, –, – Zeno, Dr., , , ,
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
van Huyssteen, J.Wentzel, Verbeke, Gérard, ,
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Re-reading Newman
Communities of Informed Judgment: Newman’s Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality was designed and composed in Bembo by Kachergis Book Design, Pittsboro, North Carolina; printed on -pound Glatfelter Natural and bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc., Lillington, North Carolina.
Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of
Copyright © 2004. Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved. Aquino, Frederick D.. Communities of Informed Judgment : Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of