Ways of whatting?
Josh Rosenau talks about ‘ways of knowing’ and the non-empirical nature of the claims made by most religions.
It’s certainly true that the Jewish Bible can be read as making a number of empirical claims, for instance about the timing of human origins…But that’s not how Jews have understood the Bible for the last couple thousand years. Maimonides, writing well before any of the modern squabbles over evolution, explained:
“Ignorant and superficial readers take them [certain obscure passages] in a literal, not in a figurative sense. Even well informed persons are bewildered if they understand these passages in their literal signification, but they are entirely relieved of their perplexity when we explain the figure, or merely suggest that the terms are figurative.”
That won’t work – that quotation doesn’t back up the claim that “that’s not how Jews have understood the Bible,” it backs up a different claim, which is that that’s not how Maimonides understood the Bible. Notice that he’s complaining of all those other fools who understand it the other way! Granted he doesn’t give us a demographic breakdown or an opinion poll – but he does say that both ignorant people and well informed people get it wrong, and he doesn’t sound optimistic about it. Rosenau seems to be doing an Armstrong here – pretending that a minority view of religion is in fact all but universal.
To call these “empirical” claims then seems to miss the point. They are certainly truth claims, but not claims about what literally happened. I like to compare this to the non-literal truth claims of good novels, or good stories more broadly. I think we can all agree that literature offers a different “way of knowing” than science does.
Wait, slow down. One, for a great many believers, yes they are claims about what literally happened – that’s exactly what they are. They are for the Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, as he has said very firmly. They are for Albert Mohler of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They are for Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.
Two, yes lots of people like to compare religious truth-claims to the truth-claims of novels, but that doesn’t make the comparison a good one, and it isn’t a good one. Novels aren’t the same kind of thing as religion, and religious truth claims aren’t the same kind of thing as novelistic truth claims, if there even is such a thing.
And three, no actually we can’t all agree that literature offers a different “way of knowing” because I don’t agree that literature offers a way of knowing at all. I think knowledge is the wrong word for what literature offers. I think it offers (sometimes) understanding, including understanding of what it might be like to be a different person, what it might be like to be in a different situation, what other people feel like, and so on – but not really knowledge. Why not knowledge? Because that’s not what it is. It’s speculative. It has to be speculative, and it’s none the worse for that, and it can (sometimes) offer real understanding, but it still amounts to speculation on the part of the author which if good enough is convincing and empathy-inducing in the reader. I don’t think we get to call it knowledge because it’s basically a form of (at best educated) guesswork. It’s imagination. Imagination is a great thing, but what it produces on its own isn’t exactly knowledge(except perhaps knowledge of what the imagination can produce).
This is not to denigrate literature, it’s to attempt to be precise about what is what. I just don’t think literature is a “way of knowing” unless we’re broadening the concept of knowledge to fit, in which case we’re talking about something new.
Vampires don’t exist…But telling stories about vampires is a great way to convey certain truths about the world we all live in. These aren’t truths that science can independently verify, but they are still true in a meaningful way.
Telling stories about anything can be a great way to convey certain truths about the world we all live in, but conveying truths about the world is not the same thing as being a “way of knowing” and religion is not the same thing as either one. Religion includes stories, but a story is not all it is.
I like novels. I like TV. I like art. I like baseball. I think there is truth to be found in such endeavors, and I think any brush that sweeps away the enterprise of religion as a “way of knowing” must also sweep away art and a host of other human activities.
And that’s where I completely fall off the train. I think that’s an absurd claim, and I can’t see how he got himself there. Can you?
Sort of? If you assume (wrongly) that any worthwhile thing must be a “way of knowing,” and then you claim that what nonbelievers dismiss about religion is what makes art/baseball/whatever valuable, then his last claim makes sense.
Talk of non-literal interpretation of religion makes more sense to me coming from someone talking of Judaism than Christianity, I have to say, because Jewish people actually have taken this interpretation in significant numbers and have fewer literalist whackjobs.
OB: “And that’s where I completely fall off the train. I think that’s an absurd claim, and I can’t see how he got himself there. Can you?”
We believe what we want to believe, and choose our ‘ways of knowing’ and ways of finding out accordingly. Much of basic Newtonian physics is counter-intuitive, which is why it was so elusive for so long.
Believing is also a means to belonging, and shared belief is a social glue. Hence the Lord’s Prayer begins “Our Father…” not “My father…” On the other hand the collective statement is set aside for an individual one in the Apostle’s Creed, which begins “I believe…” not “We believe…” But it is recited aloud and in unison in church services: at least the ones I attended in my teens.
I think Rosenau is believing as he wishes to.
I think Armstrong, and to some extent, Rosenau are describing emotional ‘knowledge’, not the result of any rational process.
The human brain has a propensity for feelings of abstract appreciation, what many describe as religious or communal spirituality, awe in the face of the magnificent, reference of the perfection of Truth and Beauty.
We can all achieve this with pharmaceuticals, the unfortunate few because of brain lesions, and Armstrong gets her buzz evidently via the hymnal.
Perhaps this ‘addiction’ to spirituality is why so many cling so dearly to the cult of their choice. Ecclesiastical endorphins.
Yeah, I don’t understand why the discussion is about ways of knowing instead of routes to understanding. In the post-positive age, truth-claims in general are broadly semantic, i.e., about cognitive status and susceptibility to rational argument, not necessarily first-order claims about reality.
What I think he might be getting at is that when we look at these non-indicative senses of truth, we’re still apt to find traces of reality that leak in. After all, the very fact that we understand each other is because participants share a wide body of beliefs that they can draw on to make utterances. When these factual drips and drabs are smuggled in thematically through a good book, a clever analogy, a turn of phrase, etc., the revealed states of affairs become more intelligible and familiar to us. And so it feels as though we have better grip on the way things are.
Though it’s arguable as to whether or not that’s so. When I reframe an issue, can I come to know new facts about it that I couldn’t have gotten by more literal means? I don’t know.
A story can convey truths only to the extend that the story actually relates to the real world. Other than being factually accurate, such a story would need characters that behave like real people, for instance.
All the other things he mentions – TV, art, baseball – are not ways of knowing, they’re primarily ways to stimulate your emotions, just like religion. At most, they could give you some sort of understanding of your emotional responses, but don’t expect any other “deep” knowledge.
I’m sorry, but understanding other people’s emotions, appreciating their circumstances, learning about virtues etc. do not religion make. I can read either a novel, a news story, or the bible, and learn about the virtue of fidelity through any of them, but none of that makes me religious. To be religious is far more than reading a book and saying “now I understand why I shouldn’t covet my neighbor’s wife.”
Tea: indeed, good point, but that wasn’t my point. My point was to refute the claim that things like art, sports and religion are appealing because they contain knowledge. They’re not, and they don’t. (Longer comment on Josh’s blog here).
When I look at my favourite art, it is certainly emotion-inducing, and usually requires great leaps of imagination.
Thanks a lot, Ophelia – now I am going to be re-pondering the art I like, the video games I play and books I read to find the knowledge/emotional understanding divide! Brilliant insight.
Your point is essentially my problem with Francis Collins waterfall conversion to Christianity: he saw a sight in nature that moved him to the sublime, but he couldn’t accept it as it was. He had to varnish over some muddy religious thinking to be able to accept his emotions.
I can’t see how he got to that either, OB, BUT I can create an imagined way to get there. Since it is speculation, that is like fiction, and therefore equally a ‘way of knowing’ at an emotional level. SO I have a ‘way of knowing’ what I don’t actually know, so thats OK then, at least by his standards.
Sounds a bit like prophetic ministry, and a lot like a new gnosticism.
It’s axiom dropping and hostage taking. I live my life by art but art is not real, true or factual. To the faithful, religion is. Yet this important fact is discarded in order to draw a false equivalency and to make the humanities a collateral damage shield for theology.
Theology is a way of explaining things. So when you attack science, you are attacking theology!111!! Etc.
Deen,
My comment was aimed at Rosenau, not you. Sorry for not being clearer about that.
Rosenau’s piece is so terrible it’s hard to read without holding one’s nose. It’s as though he’s saying that anything that makes me feel good, makes me feel as though I understand something, is, in some sense, a way of knowing. With that debased coinage it’s hard to say what is not a way of knowing. Instead of being an accomodationist, Rosenau is an obscurantist, and that should be a matter of considerable concern, considering that he works for NCSE.
It strikes me that we are really back with Clifford and William James. Some people (Clifford) think that there is moral territory here, and belief involves moral demands. Others (James) think (as Ian says) that we believe what we want to believe, and that belief depends largely on personal priorities.
I take Jerry Coyne, Russell Blackford, Ophelia, and others to fall into the Clifford camp. It is ethically important, especially in a world which is simply awash with all kinds of mad belief possibilities, to make very clear on what basis you are offering your beliefs for the consideration of others. To blur the distinctions between, say, literature as a ‘way of knowing’, religion as a ‘way of knowing’, and science as a ‘way of knowing’ is to do a disservice to everyone. In fact, we could imagine someone writing a novel about precisely this theme (1984 comes to mind). The novel would not in itself be a way of knowing, but it would alert us to the dangers of reading ‘ways of knowing’ too generously.
Take the idea that the substance of something can change, although it looks and tastes just the same as before (transubstatiation). We could interpret this as a ‘way of knowing’, because, in communion the Christian is supposed to have a sense of himself/herself somehow sharing in the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice. So the person knows – in and through this ritual act – and experiences salvation. One has encountered a religious mystery through consuming a piece of tasteless ‘bread’. This kind of knowing can now be extended, however, for if I can know all this by encountering a piece of bread, then it is conceivable that the person I meet is not just a harmless person, but is really an agent of Satan, or a witch.
Are we still so keen, now, to think of the ritual encounter with a piece of bread as a way of knowing? I don’t think we are. And the same thing goes for things like the figurative reading of scripture. Whenever I see a rainbow I am to remember not to be greedy and sexually impure, for example, because that is really what the story of the drowing of a world is all about.
There is something extremely troubling about this story, and reading it in such a simplistic figurative way seems to go clean contrary to the real horror of it. As a ‘way of knowing’ it is seriously compromised, even if (which is probably not true) a majority of religious believers read the story that way. The other possibilities are always there.
I think Rosenau is being careless, even immorally so. Despite William James’ rhetorical way of getting around Clifford’s more sturdy appeal to an ethics of belief, the problem is still with us. We forget Clifford’s point at our peril: “He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.” Beliefs have effects now or in the future. We need to have some way of ensuring that our beliefs stand at least a reasonable chance of being true. Critical thought is vital here, science being one of the main types of critical thought. Adulterating the purest spring that we have is just asking for trouble.
I think the biggest surprise to me was the fact that he doesn’t see miracles as being a problem to science. I regard the acceptance of supernatural biblical miracles (rather than statistical anomalies such as plane crash survival or cancer recovery) in science as being akin to allowing one side in a debate the freedom to lie. What was more illuminating was the fact that he doesn’t see the problem that empirical proof for biblical miracles is much the same as a hypothesis that the earth was created last Thursday. When asked why one religion more than another should be chosen he came out with the idea that maybe all religions have some basic truth, not something that most practitioners of these religions seem to think. His final point that he wanted to get followers of ‘bad’ religions to switch to ‘good’ religions is almost too silly to answer.
I like novels. I like TV. I like art. I like baseball. I think there is truth to be found in such endeavors, and I think any brush that sweeps away the enterprise of religion as a “way of knowing” must also sweep away art and a host of other human activities.
I like farting while sitting on the couch. I like a hot shower after a hard day working outside. I like coffee. I think there is truth to be found in such endeavours (particularly the farting), and I think any brush that sweeps away the enterprise of religion as a “way of knowing” must also sweep away drinking coffee and a host of other activities.
Sometimes I wonder if these kinds of posts (new age sycophants write similarly) are actually written by robotic facsimiles of people. They understand sentence structure, know how to use nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but just can’t seem to string them together in a way that is logical. Logical-like but not logical.
@Tea: no apology required, no harm was done :) Besides, it gave me a good excuse to plug my response at Rosenau’s blog ;)
If you were a believer and two atheists came to your door one morning, which would you find more palatable, which more forthright: the atheist who challenges and may deride your beliefs or the atheist who instructs you on the correct way to believe in your god?
gilt- that’s the difference. Atheists won’t come to your house to convert you, we have shit to do. In general, atheists don’t give a damn what you do at home or think/believe. But we would love you to stay the fuck out of the education system and forcing us to not say Happy Holidays and rewriting history to serve your view of the world.
If you were simply playing devil’s advocate, I redirect my response to some generic tool. However, I doubt you were, so Ill keep it in the first person.
I’d like to return to the X of Y-ing structure here. (Although I agree, atheists are too busy moping around at parties and not having any sense of humor to schedule rounds of knocking on doors. So much moping and misery, so little time).
I’m most familiar with “ways of knowing” in education-speak, and it has always given me a greasy creepy feeling. But I looked around and I think teachers have borrowed or maybe re-invented the term as one way of explaining to themselves children who are mysteries to them.
E.g. Instead of saying “that damn kid isn’t paying attention” they might say “that damn kid just has a different way of knowing, so doesn’t get it yet.” They sometimes say other vague folkloric things like “I am not a linear thinker.” Or, “that damn kid is acting up because it’s windy.” Some of them misinterpret Gardener’s multiple intelligences or older “learning styles” work to explain why Muffin likes to draw and Cupcake likes to run around. There’s lots that teachers have to explain to themselves because there’s lots of semi-mysterious unexpected stuff going on w/students. It’s a lame example, but I think it’s close to what I understand teachers to mean when they talk this way. I’m not bashing teachers here. I love teachers in general. I don’t love “education” as a field, but I love teachers, and I’m in a lucky position to work with teachers and to think about learning, but not have to be in a school of education.
I’m not sure what Rosenau was thinking when he used “ways of knowing” because to me it’s about the tritest, vaguest commonplace ever. But he does work at a place that has a connection to education, so maybe he picked up some of the words.
To move on, I don’t think “knowing” actually maps directly onto knowledge. I suspect that people who use the term “ways of knowing” would be surprised if we pinned them down and said “Knowing what? What is the knowledge here?” Knowing marks a kind of hazy activity. It’s not a nice noun like knowledge.
And in the usage I’ve heard, I’ve always thought that the speaker was focused more on the “way” than on the “knowing.” There are “ways” things enter one’s mind or one’s awareness or whatever. Gas fumes perhaps are one vehicle. That god damned transcendent deal might be another, reading or being told things might be another. Imagination + eating is another (“This isn’t a crappy protein drink, this is lovely Mexican hot chocolate made w/creamy milk”). Maurice Sendak recommends that children chew on his books, and that might be another.
I’ve always focused on the “ways” part rather than the “knowing” part. So if I had been the one writing the title of the post instead of “Ways of Whatting???” I’d have said “WHATS of knowing??”
I guess I should add that I don’t think stuff that enters our awareness via unconscious paths has anything to do with knowledge or knowing. I save “know” for other purposes, as in: God says to do that? How do you know? How do you know it’s true? How do you know someone didn’t just make it up? What’s your evidence?
“to know” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. Perhaps this is the meaning of “religion as a way of knowing” given all of the sex scandals by clergy and “family values” politicians.
“I’m most familiar with “ways of knowing” in education-speak, and it has always given me a greasy creepy feeling.”
Same here, especially about the greasy creepy feeling. In particular I’m most familiar with the phrase from Women’s Ways of Knowing, a book and set of ideas which make me feel actively ill.
“if I can know all this by encountering a piece of bread, then it is conceivable that the person I meet is not just a harmless person, but is really an agent of Satan, or a witch.”
And just a couple of days ago someone deposited a comment on a piece about Helen Ukpabio and the child “witch” hunts in Nigeria at Bartholomew’s Notes – saying very emphatically that it’s all true, it’s all real, Satan can hide inside children, the children are a mask for Satan, etc etc etc. This is no joke – these people torture and kill real children – based on a “way of knowing” that children are masks for Satan.
The fact that that is actually happening is what led me to show the link. And it is, in fact, no different, as a way of understanding, reality, than the idea of transubstantiation. I agree with Clifford that claiming to know can be a morally perverse act, and it should not be so easily taken for granted that we can distinguish ‘ways of knowing,’ unless some real content can be given to the claim to know. Religion in fact has got away with sheer murder, because of a systematic failure to justify claims to know.
Michael. Regarding knowing and sexual relationship. It so happens that mystical experience, even male mystical experience, is expressed in terms of female sexual experience. It is extremely odd that people who are, on the face of it, supposed to be ignorant of sexual experience altogether, and some of whom should not have any idea what it is like to be a woman in a sexual relationship, should so often express their mystical experience in precisely those terms. Don Cupitt has a lot of interesting remarks about this in his fascinating book, Mysticism and Modernity. He believes – and I think he is right on the money – that mysticism is a literary tradition and not an experiential one. This, I think, tends to be confirmed by Karen Armstrong.
Yikes Lorax, it was a thought experiment on tactics. And I think the accomodationists would be just as unpalatable and especially more condescending than any new atheists.
Eric
Thanks – so mysticism in the modern age turns out to be religious fiction with authors imagining transcendent worlds.
Jean has an interesting post on the subject.
(Unfortunately, and quite surprisingly, she appears to be upset with me for broadly agreeing with her.)
And she also says the same thing I say in the post (yes fiction can make us wiser) and then says that I’ve missed the point. Eh?
Maybe that’s the professional philosopher’s disease. Some people are so used to a climate of contrarian disagreement that they’re flabbergasted by sincere convergence of opinion. Like the principle of charity in reverse.
I’ve been following your attempts to get Rosenau to answer your questions directly, Ophelia. Kinda like talkin’ to Mooney, innit?
I just posted this over there:
Josh, god, it’s exactly like talking to Mooney! So I should give it up now. Give it up, you fool! [tears hair]
I’ll rend garments if you keep tearing your hair out. Misery loves company.
Well, Jerry has now posted on this – I made a long comment over there. Might even turn it into a post, but maybe not. I’m more focused on the Problem of Evil this week.
Just one thing, though. Jerry’s original post on Eugenie was based on MY original post on Eugenie. Jerry says. “If Russell is accurate, blah, blah.” I say, “Eugenie is great and most of the talk was fine, blah, blah, but this bit bugged me if I understood/am remembering it correctly, yadda, yadda.”
So why attack Jerry for using second-hand information when he wasn’t there? He freely says he’s relying on my version of it. And where is the evidence that I have misrepresented Euguenie? After all the rigmarole at the start, Rosenau never actually claims I did, so what the hell was it about? And if I did, there was a certain epistemic humility in the way I reported it, so I could have had any points clarified in a nice way, as I asked for in my original post.
So why all the posturing by Rosenau up the front of the post. If Eugenie actually said something else, just tell us what it was.
The upshot seems to be that I have represented Eugenie fairly accurately. It’s just that Rosenau wants to defend her position (which is much as I reported it). No wonder I think that he is just being defensive and that we are getting no attempt at the other end to engage in a constructive way with constructive, civil, thoughtful, respectful criticism.
His follow-up post is even worse. He starts off with a series of personal insults directed at Jerry and then proceeds to state he wants to raise the level of discourse!
I suspect the whole problem is the theft of Prof Steve Steve (he was clearly the brains behind the partnership).
Something occurred to me when reading Josh’s post, it was his use of the word “enablers” to refer to the new atheists (“clique of atheists who seem intent on enabling creationists”). I looked up “enabler” in a couple of sources for psyche terms, and enablers are people who support addicts etc in their habit – provide drugs for example – rather than confronting them with the dangers they are doing to themselves. And it occurred to me, surely the accommodationists like Josh are the enablers here, not the new atheists telling the religious that they’re wrong, nuts or whatever? Isn’t telling the religious that their ways of knowing might be OK, please continue with that, blah blah – aren’t they enabling religious believers? I left a comment to that effect on Josh’s post, but with no reply. (Also developed a little more at my post: Buffy and the Enablers of the NCSE.)
I propose that we stop calling Josh and his group, “accommodationists.” I’d like to start calling them what they really are – enablers. Thoughts?
Good point. And good idea! Or maybe call them accommodationist on Monday Wednesday Friday, enablers on Tuesday Thursday Saturday, and cheese-eating surrendender monkeys on Sunday?