Swinburne's Principles of Credulity and Testimony

Richard Swinburne, a distinguished Oxford University philosopher, has argued in favour of the existence of God in such books as: Is There A God?. He has defended some of the traditional arguments for God's existence, as well as taking the 'Argument from Religious Experience' further than most previous theistic thinkers. In order to do this, he has suggested that we should not be so sceptical about people's personal experiences of God, visions of angels, and so on. He suggests that in general we should trust such experiences, since otherwise we are left with a philosophy that doubts everything. He proposes two principles to support this, which work on a kind of 'innocent until proven guilty' basis.

The Principle of Credulity states: "...(in the absence of special considerations)...if it appears to a subject that X is present, then X is probably present. What one seems to perceive is probably so."

To which, my first question would be: What is meant by 'present'?

If one merely means, subjectively present, then the claim is vacuous. Obviously it appears to be present, unless we are accusing these people of wilful deception, which I am not inclined to do for every believer who has claimed such experiences (though I am sure there are plenty of believers who have grossly exaggerated the strength and clarity of such experiences, if not entirely made them up - perhaps out of what they see as a virtuous desire to promote the religion that they believe will save people's souls.

If one means that it is 'really' there, then immediately we risk stepping into a hugely problematic area of metaphysics (i.e. the debate between realists and anti-realists). Countless philosophers have argued that we cannot know what is truly real, or that the world is essentially made up of our perceptions. However, whilst I am interested in this debate, it is not the line or argument I think is most relevant to Swinburne's claims.

One might hope to avoid all this, and argue for a 'common sense' understanding of reality... which some modern philosophers have called 'naive realism'. However, when the matter at stake is not at all a matter of common sense - i.e. claims of religious experience, then the appeal to common sense reality is not justified. There is a convincing argument for a kind of pragmatism, which allows us to get on with life, since solipsism is highly unsatisfactory, and we don't get too far if we don't come to accept that things like trees and computers are 'real' - Hilary Putnam has proposed what he calls 'Pragmatic Realism' as a kind of 'solution' to this debate. Unless one believes that there is a good pragmatic case for believing in God because of the benefits this brings (which I think is highly dubious to say the least), then the appeal to common sense realism falls flat when we are dealing with religious experiences. People can get by perfectly well without believing in God or angels, etc, if not better.

The Principle of Testimony states: "In the absence of special considerations the experiences of others are (probably) as they report them ... In general there are no special considerations for doubting what subjects report about their religious experiences."

In response to such claims, Richard Dawkins has often quoted the astronomer and atheist Carl Sagan's famous phrase: 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. The point being that whilst it makes sense to accept in general what people say, for example, about what they had for breakfast, or how many children they have, it is not wise to naively accept what they say if they are claiming to have run 100 metres in less than 9 seconds, or that they can make themselves disappear for a day once a year. We would rightly demand pretty sound evidence for such claims.

Furthermore, it worth looking at these 'special considerations' that Swinburne mentions. He suggests that unless we know someone to be a habitual liar, mentally ill, or to be 'under the influence' of some hallucinogen, we should trust what they say. He goes on to argue that it would unreasonable to assume this for all the millions of people who have claimed such experiences. In other words, it seems he is hoping that the sheer weight of numbers adds an increased probability that some of these experiences are veridical. However, it still seems to me that the 'burden of proof' lies with the believers to give a good reason to accept that when people claim to see something that most people cannot see (and those that can cannot see most of the time), that this is not in itself a reason to doubt their state of mind.

For more on this topic, I recommend checking out the following site: http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/rel_four.htm
The article finishes (appropriately, I think) by responding with arguments from David Hume, such as those he used against belief in miracles. I think that on the whole David Hume's arguments stand up as a convincing refutation of Swinburne's suggestion that these experiences are 'probably' true.

A Defence of Soft Determinism

"A common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy, and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which everyone has heard. This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground--not, perhaps, of forcing a conclusion or of coercing assent, but of deepening our sense of what the issue between the two parties really is, of what the ideas of fate and of free will imply."

William James - The Dilemma of Determinism

Despite my title, I should start by saying that I am of the opinion that the topic of Free Will and Determinism poses certain intractable problems for philosophy. I respect the dilemmas generated by centuries of philosophy too much to proffer any kind of simple 'solution'. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that I prefer to call myself a Soft Determinist than a compatibilist. If we allow the libertarians to define free will as the ability to have done otherwise (cf C A Campbell), then it seems clear to me that this is not compatible with classical determinism. This point is not an unimportant claim, and as such is worth exploring with more careful analysis.

Determinism is generally equated with belief in the 'principle of universal causation': that all events have a cause. Whilst I recognize that the notion of 'causation' is in itself a whole area of philosophical analysis and argument, it would derail me too much to survey this fully at this point. (Briefly: I personally am intrigued by the work of Helen Beebee, a compatibilist who has developed a defense of a Humean theory of causal non-necessitation; and of Hilary Putnam, who has argued, in Pragmatic Realism that statements about causation are 'radically perspectival'). Whilst I would not want to be said to have ignored such scholarship, I think that, at least at a common sense level, to say 'X causes Y' is to say that X materially implies Y. Given that X was the case, we then are led to the conclusion that Y could not have been otherwise. In conclusion, then, belief in universal causation, is a belief that universally, things could not have been otherwise. Hence, Free Will is not compatible with Determinism.


Let me clarify what I intend to defend: my idea of 'soft determinism' has some roots in William James' idea in The Dilemma of Determinism, but needs to be distinguished from certain interpretations of that definition. Let us look further at his words about the term:


"Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom." (op cit.)



I do not believe in fate, with its implication of there being some force or plan or intelligence guiding our futures to a certain destination. I sort of believe in the bondage of the will, but not in the sense implied by St Paul saying that we are slaves to 'sin'. Why 'sin' is given such importance I do not know. All sorts of things are compelling, not just unchristian things, and many habits of thought that captivate us are surely of just the sort that the YHWH of the Bible would approve. Perhaps the real problem with the analogy implied by the word bondage, is that it could be interpreted as meaning that our will is something separate, which would be free if it weren't constrained by our desires and appetites. To me, the will is just a word for the brain process which initiates when different imagined outcomes are brought to consciousness. Each outcome might perhaps satisfy different desires and appetites, and forego others, thus it seems to me a better way round to suggest that our will keeps certain appetites in bondage.


I wouldn't 'repudiate' the word 'necessitation' either. I personally believe that the determinists are right in saying that choice is an illusion, on a metaphysical level. I can certainly imagine having chosen differently, but how can we ascribe reality to counterfactuals? Probably only by creating a theory such as David Lewis' approach where each 'possible world' really exists! Whilst I found it enjoyable and fascinating to consider Lewis' metaphysics, and admire his intellectual sturdiness, I just can't work with his conceptual scheme. To me, possibilities are not realities.


I'm currently exploring further the notion of freedom implied by the phrase 'freedom is only necessity understood' - which seems to be a clear reference to Spinoza's approach and his argument that we need to free ourselves from the burden of hopes and fears... a burden that comes from the existential weight of feeling we could have been anything other than what we are. No doubt I will write more about Spinoza in a future post - lately many of my thoughts have sent me in the direction of his Ethics, so I have resolved to take a fresh look at his work.


The view I want to defend is that (a): determinism is true.
(b): we are 'free' in a certain sense.



I have already clarified (a), but would also like at this point to add Daniel Dennett's precise definition of the claim: "All physical events are caused or determined by the sum total of all previous events."
The second claim, that we are free, I have placed in inverted commas, to indicate that we are dealing with a word that has a controversial or subjective application. William James thought in his essay it would be best to avoid using the word 'freedom' at all, due to its having too many connotations and interpretations. Daniel Dennett prefers to continue to use the word, and argues that we should appropriate it to be used in a more helpful way, rather than leaving the word to the libertarians. He attempts to show the vacuousness of their usage of the word, and that in fact, their sense of 'freedom' raises more problems for morality and philosophy than determinism does.


I am a great admirer of Daniel Dennett's philosophical work in general, but in particular I was impressed by his arguments in Elbow Room (1984). To summarize, he claims that we have all the varieties of 'free will' worth wanting, and that our resistance to determinism is due to its being portrayed in certain ways that engenders an irrational fear. Analogies are used such that we are made to feel as if we are puppets, or as if we are robots, or animals, for example. Dennett shows that although we are animals, and although we are mechanistic, like a robot, we have brains that are sufficiently more complex such that we can process information about our situation and about imagined consequences of our actions more effectively, giving us increased ability to navigate the natural world effectively. What kind of 'free will' is worth wanting? One in which we can follow our desires, not blindly, but using our minds. Well, our brains give us exactly this ability - in fact we cannot help but to will our actions using our minds!


A common objection is that this kind of determinism still doesn't satisfy our sense of moral responsibility. If, in the final analysis, one was always going to do a certain action, one could not have avoided it, then how can they be held responsible? My answer would be that if the (most relevant) reasons that one could not have avoided the action can be located as part of that agent's character, then one is morally responsible, since blame can then be directly laid on the character of the agent. Certainly, I think we have to dispose of the notion of ultimate moral accountability. No person invents himself in a vacuum, or ex nihilo, so to speak. We have to 'settle' for a limited notion of responsibility that recognises that whilst ultimately one's character is a product of one's brain and the environmental influences we undergo, nonetheless we are forced to take ownership of this character - it doesn't belong to anyone else!


This philosophy may not suit those of certain right-wing political tendencies, who - for a variety of reasons... perhaps selfish ones - are inclined to minimize the influence of both nature and nurture. However, I am not inclined to see their disapproval as a particularly bad thing.


Another common objection is that such a mechanistic approach leads inexorably to fatalism or nihilism. To which, I would start by simply countering that it cannot be that inexorable, since I myself am a determinist - and yes, I am one who finds Nietzsche's work fascinating - but I am by no means a nihilist. I am, as you may or may not know, a 'pragmatic realist', in a sense inspired by Hilary Putnam (see Metaphysics, Kim & Sosa, p.591ff). As such, I have a great regard for American pragmatism, such as that espoused by William James. However, I disagree with a number of his arguments in The Dilemma of Determinism. I see no reason for pessimism to follow directly from determinism, though nor do I think optimism is implied either.


Things are what they are, and people are who they are, and yet they change how they change. For my part, I find it pragmatic to act as if I am ultimately free, but only because it doesn't help to be constantly meditating on the sources and causes of our 'choices'. Furthermore, I don't think society 'needs' this idea of absolute responsibility, as some have argued. Once the the libertarians' 'straw man' arguments against determinism have been exposed as exaggerating our helplessness, we can find a moderate sense of responsibility that is much more realistic. Individually, we can but do our bit. We will continue to imagine different futures, and select those we most desire. It is the duty of the moral philosopher to identify the values, virtues and behaviours that will bring about the greatest good.


I wonder if those who argue for the absolutist notion of responsibility, have inherited this notion from religion, which seeks to personify all that is praiseworthy into one being. I love praise, don't get me wrong, but I am at peace with the notion that I can but claim limited credit for what I do...


This essay would not have been possible without ....[here I should list infinite factors, but will rather single out my metaphysics tutor at Manchester University, Helen Beebee]....................