Epistemic Goods, Epistemic Norms, and Evangelization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In spite of the minor imprecisions which can be easily dealt with, the paper is original and well-argued – both the topic and the argumentation in support of the conclusions is novel but well-grounded in literature. I recommend it for publication after minor revisions (see the detailed comments below). I only have two general concerns:

1. The author seems to assume at the start that evangelizing consists of making others share our religious beliefs; while this is normally a part of evangelizing, one could argue that its core is not convincing people that religious beliefs are true but bringing them to religious faith (which, as increasingly agreed, can in some cases be non-doxastic, i.e. does not have to involve belief). It may be a good idea to at least mention this as a possible concern (perhaps in the part of the paper when other possible concerns are mentioned and set aside -- lines 93-103). However, there are more ways in which the paper can benefit to paying more attention to distinction between faith (as a complex attitude containing or implying non-cognitive states, like desires and dispositions to action) and belief -- especially that the relation between belief and desire plays an important role in the reasoning. As it is, the author seems to gloss over the distinction (e.g. lines 466-467, where there is a mention of 'an understanding of faith or belief as both a noetic condition and a prudential good'); this seems to me to be a problem -- especially that whether religious belief (or faith) is a prudential good depends on whether the proposition which is the content of the belief (and/or underlies faith) is true. But the difference between faith and belief in the context of evangelization is a separate topic (perhaps worth a separate paper), and I realize that the limits of space do not allow for discussing it here in detail; in any case, it would be good to mention it.

2. Given that the author’s account of evangelization focuses so strongly on its epistemic aspect, it would be a good idea to say something about what, if anything, distinguishes evangelizing from trying to convince people that something is true outside of the religious context – e.g. in politics. That believing and getting others to believe particular propositions serves both truth and the well-being of believers does not seem to be specific to religion. So, what makes evangelizing different from trying to convince someone that they should vote for a particular party or that a conspiracy theory is false?

Here are some detailed, mostly technical comments on particular lines:

3-4: It may be a good idea to replace 'some other religious traditions' with a more specific expression, perhaps providing an example.

15-16: 'a paradoxically underexplored and well-trodden subject' sounds a little strange -- I would replace it with something like 'a subject, paradoxically, both well-trodden and underexplored'.

17-18: Here and in further cases, I would replace 'evangelical work' (and other similar expressions) with e.g. 'the work of evangelization' (etc.) so as to avoid connotations with Evangelicalism.

28: About footnote 4: one could argue that the reason why religious epistemology handbooks do not mention evangelization is that evangelization is more about bringing people to faith (which, arguably, does not require belief) than convincing them that religious beliefs are true; with that in mind, I would (optionally) add an example of a handbook/survey focusing on faith.

29: Something seems to be missing between 'specifically evangelical missionary' and 'may not be frequently explored'.

34-36: It is not clear what the difference between 'ecclesial' and 'evangelical' understanding of conversion in this context; a rough definition (or reference to the source of the distinction) would be useful.

62-72: The fragment 'After all, it seems reasonable (...) be aiming at?' needs to be rewritten for clarity. ('Goal' and 'aim' are basically synonyms, so to say that something has x as its goal and that it aims at x are to ways to say the same thing; it is not the goals that aim at something -- it is people and their actions and attitudes etc. that have aims/goals. Also, if the author means that to have a rational goal is to have as a goal something one believes to be a good, it would not hurt to say it explicitly.)

67-71: I do not see how the rationality of amoral goals depends on what the person having these goals believes about the existence of genuine ethical goods. This sentence in particular should probably be changed to make the reasoning clearer.

93-103: Optionally: it may be better to move the reservations described here closer to the beginning of the paper, as they inform the reader about the general angle of the paper rather than the assumptions behind the discussion of norms which follows.

146: It is not clear in what sense the proposal in question is 'reactionary' – if the author really likes this expression in this context, it would be good to say more, maybe simply by adding 'in the sense that…' after 'reactionary’.

292-294: Why is it unlikely that Mary would engage in missionary work if she were convinced that the view to which she wants to bring others is empirically adequate in Kvanvig's sense rather than true? It seems intuitive that she could do that e.g. for moral reasons, believing that people will be better off (e.g in terms of avoiding suffering) exchanging their current beliefs for more empirically adequate ones she is offering.

313-314: The quote from Brandom should read: 'a property of utility for some end, a matter of how useful, in some sense, it is to hold the belief that is a candidate for truth’.

327: Should it not be 'of Mary's belief' rather than 'that Mary's belief'?

448-450: Speaking in terms of an aim involving a desire and a goal is a bit imprecise (see my comment on 62-72).

573-574: If by 'their own soteriological and thus prudential reasons' the author means that the reason consists of the prospect of one's own (i.e. the missionary's) salvation, it would be a good idea to say it explicitly -- the expression 'their own reasons' may suggest to the reader 'private/agent-relative reasons' rather than 'reasons pertaining to oneself'.

565-566: An interesting thought, which would benefit from being developed in more detail.

Author Response

I truly appreciated Reviewer 1’s comments on this paper and I believe an incorporation of Reviewer 1’s concerns have greatly improved the paper.

Reviewer 1’s first concern is that I have overlooked a distinction between faith and belief in the presentation of my case and in several places in my exposition. I have carefully edited the manuscript to address the latter and I have added a paragraph in the introduction carefully qualifying the scope of my project. In doing so, I have also incorporated Reviewer 1’s suggestion that some comments on the scope of my paper be exported to the beginning of the paper to clarify the paper’s angle. I greatly appreciate this suggestion, as I believe it improves the organization and clarity of my position here.

However, while I believe I have fully addressed Reviewer 1’s concern here, I do want to push back on one of the claims Reviewer 1 makes to motivate this concern. Reviewer 1 suggests that truth is a necessary condition for a belief or a faith state counting as a prudential good. The literature on the James-Clifford debate and Jamesian pragmatism more generally has given me a different impression. It seems to me that many critics of pragmatism are willing to admit that a belief might have prudential value, but that this is not an indicator of its truth because prudential value is not an indicator of truth. A common example cited is the case of someone who believes, falsely and unjustifiably, that she will recover from cancer and is thus led to maximize enjoyment of her remaining days with her family and friends. Perhaps Reviewer 1 finds counterexamples to pragmatism such as these unconvincing, but I am not so sure. In any case, nothing hinges on this disagreement, and as I have said, I have made a sincere effort to leave open the possibility of distinguishing faith and belief.

Reviewer 1’s second concern is that I say a bit more about what is distinctive about religious attempts at rational persuasion. In response, I must say that I am not sure why that is necessary. Suppose that X and Y do not differ in some respect R, and that X is well-examined. It seems to me that it might still be worthwhile to investigate Y just to clarify or corroborate our impression that X and Y are alike in respect R. This minor quibble notwithstanding, I have added a brief note in the introductory paragraph on the scope of the paper noting that religious concerns are ultimate concerns and that for this reason, one might think that they are more promising candidates for an examination concerned with the discovery of the structure of epistemic goods, epistemic normativity, and their connection. In fact, I would argue that the multivalent model of fellowship I have articulated here, and the theological underpinnings suggested by this model signify this very outcome. However, I do appreciate this comment insofar as it helped me to explicitly formulate what was only implied in the subtext of the paper. In close, I would also simply add that in some cases, a person’s well-being is not at stake in various attempts at persuasion. For example, I have a friend who, after watching dubious Netflix programming, has what I take to be unjustified beliefs about ancient civilizations, and we sometimes argue about this matter. Given the nature of these beliefs, it is hard to take seriously the claim that they have any bearing on his well-being or mine, although perhaps W.K. Clifford would disagree. In my view, an example such as this view reinforces my claim that it is important to examine rational attempts at persuasion in the context of ultimate concerns, because the impact of these concerns is farther reaching.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Philosophically, this paper is entirely publication-worthy. The author's arguments are rigorous and detailed, the author engages with secondary literature in appropriate depth, and the author is correct that the topic deserves more attention than it has hitherto received.

I recommend a "revise and resubmit."

1. While the author notes the precedent in Wesley for the idea that evangelization aims at fellowship, there is also precedent (arguably even clearer) in Augustine. Given how far Augustine predates Wesley, I think both a) that the author should acknowledge this precedent (on principle) and b) that doing so will bolster the author's case.

“The human condition would be wretched if God appeared unwilling to minister his word to human beings through human agency [because] there would be no way for love, which ties people together in the bonds of unity, to make souls overflow [and] intermingle with each other if human beings learned nothing from other humans.” Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5-6.

2. In my opinion, the translation of the author's model of fellowship into second-order logic (on page 11) does not add value to the paper. The points the author is making about multivalence are relatively simple, and so can be explained in succinct prose without loss of rigor. Bear in mind that I say this as a philosopher trained in the analytic tradition, with no aversion to formal logic in general. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The paper contains an astonishing amount of unnecessary verbiage. I don't mean fancy vocabulary--I mean qualifying phrases and extra clauses that make individual sentences longer and more convoluted than they need to be. Here are a few examples (bear in mind that there are many more):

Lines 19-20: "it must certainly be admitted that" (could be removed)

Line 32: "something of a philosophical" (could be replaced with "an")

Lines 37-38: "there nonetheless remain questions to ask" (could be replaced with "questions remain")

Line 43: "as I inquire into the rationality of that process" (could be removed)

Line 53: "Insofar as this is the case, I contend" (could be replaced with "It follows")

Lines 63-64: "and this thought is buttressed by the consideration that" (could be replaced with "since")

Line 73: "To start in the direction of an answer, I think" (could be removed)

Lines 134-135: "If that is right, then PNI apparently corroborates the contention that the above vignettes suggest that" (I suggest rewriting this sentence from scratch)

Line 545: "which I can briefly gesture at" (could be removed).

Author Response

I would like to thank Reviewer 2 for this review and for the helpful suggestion about the need to cite Augustine. I agree that the citation bolsters my argument, and I have included it. Augustine is always a helpful ally to enlist in one’s argument.

With respect to the claim that the formal logic here is unnecessary, I have to demur. However, in doing so, I will note that this same thought had occurred to me. In many cases, I find the use of symbolic notation pompous and unnecessary. It has occurred to me that this might also be the case with respect to this paper. I have chosen to include the notation for the following reasons. First, while I agree that the modeling I have engaged in is not onerous, I do think it is clarificatory in a way prose is not. The central reason for this is concision. While I could describe these models with various prosaic descriptions, I think it helps to see the notation laid out because it makes the component parts quickly identifiable. Second, the symbolic notation also makes the scope of the evangelization goal quite explicit. This is important because it draws attention to further ethical evaluation of evangelization. For example, without this scope, evangelization can indicate prejudice or bigotry. Finally, I would simply add that the inclusion of this notation follows epistemological precedent for describing epistemic goals with notation, as the cited example of David demonstrates. However, if Reviewer 2 and the editors strongly prefer a redaction of these elements, I would be happy to comply with this preference and revise accordingly.

Finally, and with respect to verbiage, I have made all of the recommended changes and have tried to edit the document for clarity of exposition. I appreciate this suggestion.