Chris Eberle Replies to Brian Leiter

This post is one of a series of posts (here and here).  I think that with this post, the conversation has played itself out for now.  Thanks very much both to Chris and to Brian.

Chris's reply to Brian:

Professor Leiter is undoubtedly correct that Wieseltier is misinformed about various claims that are, in fact, relevant to the claims Wieseltier wants to make. I’m not nearly so bothered by that as Professor Leiter seems to be. I genuinely care not a whit that Wieseltier doesn’t correctly characterize how Dennett’ project articulates with Hume’s. That kind of misunderstanding is nearly inevitable when the inexpert comment on topics about which they lack expertise. What I do care about is whether Wieseltier has something relevant to say about the substantive points at the heart of Dennett’s project. And he does. (I have to admit that I haven’t read Dennett’s book and so I’m at a severe disadvantage. So perhaps I should say that Wieseltier has something worthwhile to say about the topic Dennett seems to address.) What’s that?

Professor Leiter grants that Dennett tells a speculative story about the origins of religious belief. I take ‘speculative story’ here to mean something like ‘a story that might be accurate but that is decidedly lacking in evidential support.’ The question is: what philosophical or polemical interest does such a story have?

I take it that Dennett regards his project as having some kind of polemical or philosophical point – he’s going to tell a story about the origins of religious belief and wonders whether religious people “will have the intellectual honesty and courage to read this book through." But if Wieseltier and Professor Leiter are correct that Dennett’s story is possibly true but decidedly lacking in evidential support, I’m perplexed as to why reading his book should require courage on the part of religious believers like myself.

So here’s my perplexity. I, the religious believer, firmly adhere to my pieties, think that my theological commitments are true, and even that my central religious commitments have warrant. Dennett doesn’t think my theological commitments are true, and he denies that they have warrant either. He doesn’t try to show that my theological commitments are false; if Wieseltier is correct, he’s not even interested in that question. Rather, he tells a story about where my beliefs come from, a story which, if true, entails that my religious commitments lack warrant. What am I to make of that story? Does it provide me with any reason at all to believe that my religious commitments lack warrant? Should I grit my teeth before I purchase Dennett’s book, fearful that my dearly held pieties are soon to be ground down by the force of Dennett’s logic? Doubtful. How could his speculations provide me with good reason to withhold belief from my pious commitments given the paucity of evidence Dennett’s able to adduce for his story? My beliefs lack warrant if they’re actually unreliably formed, and Dennett’s story provides reason to believe that they’re actually unreliably formed only if his story is not only possibly but actually true, and in order for me reasonably to believe his story I really need evidence to believe that his story is in fact accurate. And that's just what he hasn't given me.

So far as I can tell, Wieseltier, and Professor Leiter and I can agree – here’s my peace proposal. Reliability is an important epistemic property – and I should want my religious commitments to have it. Dennett tells a yarn such that if it’s true, I should believe that my religious commitments are unreliably formed and so lack warrant. But his yarn lacks adequate evidence, and so provides no good reason for me to reject my religious commitments. That’s Wieseltier’s view, and he’s correct: “So all of Dennett's splashy allegiance to evidence and experiment and "generating further testable hypotheses" notwithstanding, what he has written is just an extravagant speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.” Moreover, that’s the central concern Wieseltier’s review raises – better, it’s the issue he raises that I care most about. Are my religious beliefs true? Are they reliably formed? I very much want to know. And unless Dennett can offer us more than speculative storytelling, he’s not really much help for me, here, now.

--Chris Eberle
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