Philosophy of Religion 28: 35-45, 1990. �9 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Coherence and warranted theistic belief

ANDREW WARD Department of Philosophy, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN 55057

In a number of his papers, Donald Davidson appeals to the intelligibility of an Omniscient Interpreter in order to undercut the skeptical contention that it is intelligible that human beings have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false. The purpose of this paper is to take Davidson's argument and use it to provide a defense for belief in the existence of God.

In a number of his papers Donald Davidson appeals to the intelligibility of an Omniscieot Interpreter in order to undercut the skeptical contention that it is intelligible that human beings have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false. (see, for example, CT, p. 433) 1 As Davidson

says:

... it is plain why massive error about the world is simply unintelligible, for to suppose it intelligible is to suppose there could be an interpreter (the omniscient one) who correctly interpreted someone else as being massively mistaken, and this ... [is] impossible. (MTM, p. 201)

This argument against the skeptic lies at the heart of Davidson's claim that using the coherence of beliefs (sentences held true) as a test for truth allows us to "be realists in all departments." (CT, p. 432) Specifically, Davidson contends that with the acceptance of a coherence test of truth "[W]e can accept objective truth conditions as the key to meaning, a realist view of truth, and we can insist that knowledge is of an objective world independent of our thought or language." (CT, p. 432) This having been said, it is important to keep in mind that Davidson's version of realism, what Michael Dummett calls "semantic realism," is not identical with what Hilary Putnam calls "metaphysical realism. ''2 According to metaphysical realism, there is no connection between epistemology and

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metaphysics which would negate the possibility that humans' beliefs about the world may all cohere with one another and yet be false. In contrast, while a Davidsonian coherence theory of truth (and knowledge) will allow that any one of a person's beliefs may be false, it cannot allow that m o s t of that person's beliefs are false. (see CT, p. 424 and TT, p. 168) But this is just what the skeptic is contending - viz., that it is intelligible that human beings have a coherent system of beliefs that "hang together and yet ... [are] comprehensively false about the actual world." (CT, p. 426) Accord- ingly, if Davidson intends to use the coherence of beliefs to support his

brand of realism, then he must demonstrate the unintelligibility of human

beings' having a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false. This is the purpose of Davidson's Omniscient Interpreter argument, which may be given informally in the following manner: 3

1. Suppose it is granted by the skeptic that it is intelligible (i.e., it is epistemically possible to believe 4) that there is a language user who has all and only true beliefs - call him/her the (doxastically) Omniscient Interpreter (OI). (See MTM, p. 201)

2. According to Davidson, "[I]f we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behavior of a creature ... we have no reason to count that creature ... as saying anything." (RI, p. 137) Put differently, ".. . interpretation is essentially translation ... [and] if translation fails, there is no ground for speaking of two [conceptual schemes]." (POPC, p. 243)

3. It follows that the intelligibility of an OI requires that we are, in principle, able to interpret the language of that OI. As Davidson says, "a form of activity that cannot be interpreted as language in our language is not speech behavior." (VICS, pp. 185, 186; also see RI, p. 137)

4. A necessary condition for interpretation is that the interpreter and the creature being interpreted share a coherent system of beliefs "since too great deviations from consistency ... leave no common ground on which to judge either conformity or d i f - ference." (CT, p. 433) The general point here is that because beliefs are "identified and described only within a dense pattern of beliefs ... [then] much community of belief is needed to provide a basis for communication or understanding." (MTM, p. 200) 5

5. Thus, if an OI is intelligible, then it must be because we share a coherent system of beliefs with that OI. If we did not share a coherent system of beliefs with an OI, then we could not grant the intelligibility of such a language user.

6. But in (1) it was supposed that the skeptic granted the intel-

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ligibility of an OI who, by definition, has all and only true beliefs.

7. Thus, most of our beliefs are true, and it is not the case that we have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false.

What now of the skeptical contention that it is intelligible that there is a language user whose "perceptual bad luck and intellectual frailty should coincide so as to make most of its beliefs about 'simple or obvious' matters false"? 6 From the argument above it follows that most of our own

beliefs are true and so, by (4), if we could interpret this language user then most of his/her beliefs must be true. But this violates the assumption that most of his/her beliefs are false. Hence, by (4) we could not interpret his/her language and, as a result, have no reason to believe that he/she is a

language user. The upshot is that if one accepts Davidson's argument, then the very idea of a language user having a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false, is unintelligible.

Having said this, suppose we narrow the focus of Davidson's argument to the religious skeptic and consider the Christian theist's belief in the

existence of God. In contrast to Alvin Plantinga who, following the lead of Reformed thinkers and theologians, says that "it is perfectly rational to accept belief in God without accepting it on the basis of any other beliefs ... that belief in God is properly basic, ''7 on Davidson's account belief in God is not properly basic. In fact no belief is properly basic. Instead, what warrants the acceptance of a belief is its coherence with an indefinitely large set of holistically interconnected other beliefs. (CT, p. 432) Thus, if, contrary to the religious skeptic, belief in God is warranted, it is because there is reason to believe that the Christian theist's entire pattern of beliefs cannot be both coherent and mostly false.

Of course one might object here that Davidson's argument, even if accepted, does not show that all of a person's beliefs are true. Thus, why couldn't the religious skeptic accept Davidson's argument while saying that the Christian theist's belief in God is one of those beliefs which is false? Here it is helpful to turn to Plantinga and his discussion of "an index of depth of ingression. ''8 Using "noetic structure" to mean roughly what Davidson means by an indefinitely large set of holistically interconnected beliefs, Plantinga writes:

Some of my beliefs are, we might say, on the periphery of my noetic structure. I accept them, and may even accept them quite firmly; but if I were to give them up, not much else in my noetic structure would have

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to change. I believe there are some large boulders on the top of the Grand Teton. If I come to give up this belief, however . . . . tha t change wouldn't have extensive reverberations throughout the rest of my noetic structure ... so its depth of ingression into my noetic structure isn't great. 9

So what of the Christian theist's belief in the existence of God? Following Plantinga, the answer seems to be that, for the Christian theist, the belief's depth of ingression is very great. In particular, if this belief were false, then many other of the Christian theist's beliefs would be false. Thus, if Davidson's Omniscient Interpreter argument is defensible, and if the skeptic grants the "centrality" of belief in the existence of God to the Christian theist, then there is reason to believe that even if not all the Christian theist's beliefs are true, this one is, and that, as a result, belief in the existence of God is warranted.

It is at this point that Jonathan Bennett objects to the Davidsonian

argument that "a mostly false corpus of beliefs might be understood, on the basis of a complete agreement, by an interpreter whose own beliefs were mostly false. ''1~ Here the idea is that even if one concedes that beliefs are "identified and described only within a dense pattern of beliefs" (MTM, p. 200), this is not sufficient to justify the claim that most of the beliefs within the pattern must be true. Put differently, Bennett's point is that the agreement of beliefs within a dense pattern of holistically intercon- nected beliefs is not a sufficient condition for most of those beliefs being true.

In response to this line of objection Davidson says that "[F]alse beliefs

tend to undermine the identification of the subject matter; to undermine, therefore, the validity of a description of the belief as being about the subject." (TT, p. 168) In other words, we can be said to have a belief about something only if we have an indefinitely large number of related true beliefs. Without a coherent pattern of largely true beliefs as background there is nothing upon which any agreement or disagreement can focus, and so no basis for communication or understanding. (see TT, p. 168; MTM, p. 200) Thus, Davidson will not allow the occurrence of the situation that Bennett describes.

Unfortunately, this sort of answer to Bennett will not work. If truth and falsity are characteristics of beliefs, then the characterization of a belief as being either true or false presupposes the identification of that belief. To suppose otherwise is tantamount to saying that what warrants the iden- tification of a belief as, say, the belief in the existence of God, is not its

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functional role vis-d-vis other beliefs, but rather some sort of direct

correspondence relation between it and some "theory-neutral" reality (or some intermediate representation of reality such as sense-data). On this account beliefs, trivially, are true in that they are identified exclusively in terms of a particular correspondence relation in which they stand to objects in the world. The problem is that not only does this fly in the face

of Davidson's own claim that "we make sense of particular beliefs only as they cohere with other beliefs ..." (ME, p. 221; also see TF, p. 157, MTM, p. 200 and RA, p. 321), it is also difficult to see how there could be false beliefs on such an account. On the other hand, if Davidson says that what warrants the identification of a belief is its "location in a pattern of beliefs" and that "it is this pattern that determines the subject matter of the belief, what the belief is about" (TT, p. 168 - my emphasis), then short of

an acceptance of the Omniscient Interpreter argument there is nothing to

preclude the situation Bennett describes. In this case, the most that Davidson would have shown is that an interpreter having a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false, could not interpret someone having a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are true (and vise versa).

In light of these problems, it seems to me that a better response for the Christian theist using Davidson's argument would be to say that the situation described by Bennett is fundamentally incoherent precisely

because the Omniscient Interpreter argument shows that we do have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are true. As noted

earlier, the point of the Omniscient Interpreter argument is to suggest that the notion of a person whose "perceptual bad luck and intellectual frailty should coincide so as to make most of ... [their] beliefs about 'simple or obvious' matters false" is, really, unintelligible. Accordingly, what the argument suggests is that the situation Bennett describes either begs the question in favor of the skeptic by assuming the intelligibility of a person

having a coherent system of beliefs most of whose members are false, or else simply makes no sense. On this reading, the trick is not to solve Bennett's objection, it is to dissolve it.

However, Bennett does not leave matters here. He continues his critique of Davidson's argument with:

The thought of an omniscient interpreter reminds us of the im- plausibility of the claim that any interpreter of x's thought and speech must share most of x's beliefs, n

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Bennett 's point is that Davidson has drawn the connection between an interpreter's beliefs and an interpretee's beliefs too tightly. In contrast, Bennett wants to drive a wedge between the two sets of beliefs such that the ability of an interpreter to interpret the linguistic behavior of a person does not depend upon the two sharing a coherent system of beliefs. Relative to the version of Davidson's Omniscient Interpreter argument offered above, Bennett can be read as claiming that (4) is false. The idea is that the first stages of the Davidsonian argument can be turned upside down as a reductio against (4). In particular:

(1') An OI is intelligible. (2') "[I]f we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other

behavior of a creature ... we have no reason to count that creature ... as saying anything." (RI, p. 137)

(3') Thus, we are in principle able to interpret the language of an OI. (3") The OI, by definition, has all and only true beliefs, whereas it is

intelligible that we have mostly false beliefs. (4') Thus, interpretation does not require that the interpreter and the

interpretee share a coherent system of beliefs.

If correct, then Bennett will have undermined a necessary assumption of Davidson's argument for (semantic) realism, and so too the Christian theist's use of the argument to justify belief in the existence of God.

So, is Bennett fight or wrong? Well to begin with, notice that the crucial step in the above rendition of Bennett 's argument is (3"), which assumes the negation of the conclusion of the Omniscient Interpreter argument - namely that it is intelligible that we have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false. Accordingly, the real question is why we ought to grant Bennett the point that it is possible that we have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false.

Here it seems to me that "the Great Pumpkin Objection" to Plantinga's defense of Reformed Epistemology is relevant to the question at hand. Following Plantinga, the objection can be put this way. If the Christian theist's belief in God is warranted by the Omniscient Interpreter argument, then why isn't the Great Pumpkin believer's belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween warranted by the argument? 12 Within the present context, what this objection purports to show is two-fold. First, that interpretation does not require a shared coherent system of holistically interconnected beliefs since, presumably, the Christian theist understands the language of the "Great Pumpkin believer" while not himself/herself being a believer in the existence of the "Great Pumpkin." Second, suppos-

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ing that the Christian theist is not a Great Pumpkin believer (and vice

versa) and that the belief in the Great Pumpkin is as central to the Great Pumpkin believer's system of beliefs (noetic structure) as the belief in God's existence is to the Christian theist, 13 then it is intelligible for a person to have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false. Thus, "the Great Pumpkin Objection" seems to underscore Bennett 's claim and support the views of the religious skeptic.

However, the Christian theist who attempts to defend belief in the existence of God along Davidsonian lines has an answer to this objection. Following Davidson's remarks concerning changing scientific paradigms, the Christian theist can say that the Great Pumpkin Objection supports the claim that most of the Christian's beliefs may be false only if it entails a separation of the "organizing system and something waiting to be or- ganized ...". (VICS, p. 189) But this bifurcation "cannot be made intel- ligible and defensible" (VICS, p. 189) because "the concepts of objective truth, and of error, necessarily emerge in the context of interpretation." (TT, p. 169) That is to say, it is only against a public norm that someone can have the concepts of objective and subjective truth, and such a norm can only be provided by language. (see, e.g., TT, pp. 167, 170; RA, p. 327) 14 Thus, for the Christian theist using Davidson's ideas it makes no sense to adopt a dualism of scheme and content; the two are inseparably bound together as elements of linguistic practice. As Plantinga says, the Christian community is responsible only to its own practice. 15 This means that, from the point of view of the Christian theist, the belief in the existence of the Great Pumpkin can be recognized as a belief only if there is some broader shared linguistic framework into which both it and the Christian theist's belief that God exists fit. (see VICS, p. 184) In turn, what follows is that for the Christian theist the intelligibility of the belief in the existence of the Great Pumpkin presupposes a shared "conceptual picture" of the world with the Great Pumpkin believer rather than telling against it. As Barry Stroud says:

No revision open to us can take us beyond the language we now use and understand - any "alternative" is either something we already understand and can make sense of, or it is no alternative at all. 16

At this point though, one might raise a new objection. 17 Either the belief in the existence of God is, as suggested earlier, central to the belief system of the Christian theist (i.e. the belief's depth of ingression is very great) or it is not. If the belief is central, then there seems to be no principled way in

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which to exclude the belief in the existence of the Great Pumpkin from a similar position in the belief system of the Great Pumpkin believer. In this case the Davidsonian Omniscient Interpreter argument seems to entail that the belief in the existence of the Great Pumpkin is true. Indeed, it would appear to follow that any religious belief that occupies a central place in some belief system is, according to the Omniscient Interpreter argument, true. Thus, to the extent that these belief systems are incompatible with one another, the Davidsonian argument is unable to undercut the intel- ligibility of a person's having a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false. In contrast, if the belief in the existence of God is not

central to the belief system of the Christian theist, then there is nothing that precludes it from being one of the beliefs that may be false. (see TT, p. 165) In this case the religious skeptic could rightly insist that the Davidsonian Omniscient Interpreter argument has failed to demonstrate that the Christian theist's belief in the existence of God is warranted. So, to sum up the dilemma, either the Davidsonian argument offered is subject to a reductio by allowing the intelligibility of a person's having a coherent system of beliefs most of whose members are false, or it fails to preclude the possibility that the Christian theist's belief in the existence of God may be false. In either case then, the Omniscient Interpreter argument fails to warrant the Christian theist's belief in the existence of God.

The resolution to this objection depends on grasping the dilemma by its first horn. In particular, if the Christian theist understands the claims being made by the Great Pumpkin believer, then what the Davidsonian Omnis- cient Interpreter argument contends is that the difference between the two belief systems is one of terminology and not one of concepts. (see VICS, p. 184) Put differently, what the Christian theist is led to say by his/her acceptance of the Davidsonian argument is that the claims being made by the Great Pumpkin believer are intelligible precisely because they are not

indicative of an alternative religious belief system held by the Great Pumpkin believer. As Davidson puts it, "[D]ifferent points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them ..." (VICS, p. 194) Thus, the Christian theist's recognition of the intelligibility of the claims being made by the Great Pumpkin believer entails a conceptual compatibility between the two belief systems. It may be true that the Christian theist and the Great Pumpkin believer use different languages, but a difference in language does not entail a dif- ference in belief systems. As Davidson says:

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... speakers of different languages may share a conceptual scheme provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. (VICS, p. 184)

Thus, the Christian theist who uses the Davidsonian Omniscient Inter- preter argument to warrant belief in the existence of God has an answer to the above dilemma. What he/she says is that, difference in language not withstanding, the believer in the Great Pumpkin is a Christian theist. As John Calvin said:

There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majes- ty. TM

Of course, by itself, the above falls short of logically demonstrating that the Christian theist's coherent system of holistically interconnected beliefs, the Christian theist's "conceptual picture," is made up of beliefs which, for the most part, are true. On the other hand, what it does suggest

is that there are good reasons to accept (4) in the version of Davidson's Omniscient Interpreter argument outlined earlier. In this case the argument seems to go through for the Christian theist and there is no reason for granting the religious skeptic's claim that the Christian may have a coherent system of beliefs, most of whose members are false.

In conclusion, if the religious skeptic grants both the genuine intel- ligibility of a language user having all and only true beliefs, and David-

son's method of (radical) interpretation, then the religious skeptic's position is undermined and the Christian theist's belief in the existence of God is warranted.

Notes

1. In what follows "MTM" will be used to refer to "The Method of Truth in Metaphysics," "Rr' to "Radical Interpretation," "TT" to "Thought and Talk," and "VICS" to "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," all in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); "CT" will be used to refer to "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge," in Kant oder Hegel?, ed. Dieter Henrich (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983), pp. 432--438; "ME" will be used to refer to "Mental Events," and "POPC" to "Philosophy of Psychology: Comments and Reply," both in Essays on Actions and Events

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(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); finally, "RA" will be used to refer to "Rational Animals," Dialectica 36.4 (1982): 317-327.

2. See Hilary Putnam, Meaning and the Moral Sciences (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 124ff.

3. A contrast to the reconstruction of Davidson's argument in this paper can be found in Richard Foley and Richard Fumerton, "Davidson's Theism?," Philosophical Studies 48.1 (July 1985): 83-89. Also see Stig Alstrup Rasmussen, "The Intelligibility of Abortive Omniscience," The Philosophi- cal Quarterly 37.148 (July 1987): 315-319.

4. The point of tying intelligibility to epistemic possibility is to make it clear that "the limits of the imaginable or intelligible are narrower than those of the logically possible ..." Richard Eldridge, "The Normal and the Normative: Wittgenstein's Legacy, Kripke, and Cavell," Philosophy and Phenomenologi- cal Research 46.4 (June 1986): 568. Also see Jonathan Lear, "Leaving the World Alone," The Journal of Philosophy 79.7 (July 1982): 382-402.

5. Davidson makes this same point when he says:

People are in general right about the mental causes of their emotions, intentions, and actions because as interpreters we interpret them so as to make them so. We must, if we are to interpret them at all.

"Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride," in Essays on Actions and Events, p. 290 (my emphasis).

6. Jonathan Bennett, "Critical Notice of Inquiries into Truth and Interpreta- tion," Mind 94.376 (October 1985): 610.

7. Alvin Plantinga, "Is Belief in God Properly Basic?," Nous 15.1 (March 1981): 42.

8. Alvin Plantinga, "The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology," Christian Scholars Review 11 (1982): 192.

9. Ibid., p. 192. 10. Jonathan Bennett, "Critical Notice of Inquiries into Truth and Interpreta-

tion," p. 610. 11. Ibid., p. 610. 12. See, for example, Alvin Plantinga, "The Reformed Objection to Natural

Theology," pp. 195ff.; and Alvin Plantinga, "Rationality and Religious Belief," in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, ed. Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 274ff. Also see Bredo C. Johnson, "Basic Theistic Belief," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16.3 (September 1986): 455-464.

13. This precludes the possibility that the Christian theist and Great Pumpkin believer share most of their beliefs.

14. Notice the strong connection between understanding and translatability this implies, a connection that some would argue against. See, for example, Simon Blackbum, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 60ft., and George MacDonald Ross, "Angels," Philosophy 60.234 (October 1985): 500ft.

15. Alvin Plantinga, "Is Belief in God Properly Basic?," p. 50.

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16. Barry Stroud, "Conventionalism and the Indeterminacy of Translation," Synthese 19 (1969):92.

17. The objection was raised by William Alston. 18. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T. McNeill, trans. Ford

Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), Book l, Chapter iii, section 1.