Pragmatic Faith: Oxymoron? Maybe Not. (Part Three)

I hope to have shown over the past two entries that pragmatic faith is not something beyond our grasp; that it is not something ridiculous or impossible. But now that we have seen that such a thing is possible, another problem has reared its ugly head: can pragmatic thought (specifically the idea of recontextualization) account for transcendent spirituality like the kind found in Christianity? So now we come to the brief conclusion of our three part series. 

Dealing with the problem

Sometimes the easiest way through a difficult problem is to ask the simplest question. When encountered with the thought that something like recontextualization necessarily eliminates the possibility of spirituality, the best question to ask is: why? Why does recontextualization have to deny spirituality? Though it might seem on the surface that recontextualization denies these things, those reactions usually amount to little more than personal taste. Essentially, is the denial of spirituality a critical aspect of the idea itself, or something born out of the orignial authors bias and attached to the idea? 

The answer in experience

To counter any suggestion that recontextualization denies spirituality, the believer can respond by saying that experience has allowed him access to this transcendent thing (spirituality) that he was unable to access before. What was originally intended (new beliefs ‘woven’ through experience) to block out any notion of spirituality has just worked in our favor–if spirituality is something experienced, then recontextualization can say nothing against it. 

Pragmatic Faith: Oxymoron? Maybe Not. (Part Two)

Is it possible to have pragmatic faith? This was the question we asked ourselves in part one of this series, and in the process we considered a pragmatic way of thinking called recontextualization–a difficult sounding (but very simple) concept by the philosopher Richard Rorty. We left off with the question: is this compatible with faith? Is there room for Christianity in a pragmatic world-view? The answer is absolutely yes. 

Change Through Experience

Recall our example of the spider web, and its representing the human mind. Now, what is it that prompts the mind (or a spider, for that matter) to re-weave its web? Experience is what causes us to re-weave. The example where I was forced to accommodate a new belief that real cars could have two doors (see part one) shows this. We don’t just wake up and say “Well, today I’m going to change my long held beliefs!” Our beliefs are changed forcibly, most often by surprise, through experience. This experience I’m talking about is the kind that slaps us in the face and forces us to realize that our current beliefs may not be the whole story. 

Maybe you can already see where I’m going with this. If experience is what’s needed for recontextualization to take place, recontextualization must allow for faith if the believer has actual experience of her faith. Our experience of God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit, allows our web to be re-weaved so that we afford ourselves belief in those entities. So what happens when someone denies an experience that some would say is from God? Well, that person, instead of re-weaving their beliefs to accommodate God, has re-weaved their beliefs to re-enforce old beliefs that God can’t exist, and so the source of her experience must have been something entirely natural. (This is discussed at more length in part one.)

So while we are free to interpret our experiences and allow our ‘webs’ to be re-weaved, the process of re-weaving our beliefs is something we cannot escape–it happens every day. Most likely, it’s happening right now as you evaluate what I write and either accept or reject these ideas against the background of your other beliefs. 

Anti-Spirituality…? 

At this point, the question may be popping up in your mind to ask ‘Why might this be considered hostile to faith?’ The answer is this: the model of the mind that Richard Rorty gives us (the web) is supposed to be all there is. For Rorty, there is nothing outside the web–nothing transcendent, nothing spiritual, nothing mystical, etc. For Rorty, all humans are is this complex web of beliefs and desires. 

So, now that we’ve established that recontextualization can be seen as something friendly to faith (despite its appearance and original intent), it appears that we’ve hit another road block. How can the idea of recontextualization be of any value to us if it denies the existence of a soul? 

This is the question we will explore next time, in part three of this series. 

Pragmatic Faith: Oxymoron? Maybe Not. (Part One)

Generally, faith is conceived of as something outside of us. Our faith is a link to the ‘outside’ or ‘spiritual’ realm. As such, it doesn’t seem to make much sense for me to say that I have ‘pragmatic’ faith. After all, something is generally considered pragmatic only if it displays itself in the outside world–and faith is generally thought of as something immaterial. I can act through faith, but still cannot produce a lump of physical faith for you to examine. So, taken in the most literal sense, yes, the term pragmatic faith is an oxymoron. But is there anything beyond a literal translation…?

I think so. Generally, pragmatism (please read my What is Pragmatism? page if you are not at all familiar with the subject) and faith are seen as mutually exclusive–but I say that this need not be the case. To understand why, let’s examine something that the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty described as recontextualization.

Big Word, Easy Meaning: Recontextualization

Imagine a spiderweb. Got it? Ok, now imagine that spiderweb is the human mind in its entirety–there’s nothing else to it. There’s nothing we can see beyond a simple web. Pretty simple so far. Now imagine that each strand in the web is a belief, a desire, a predisposition, or an attitude–all weaved together into the tapestry of beliefs and desires that makes up a human being. 

Now you have to believe that every now and then parts of the web will get damaged. Maybe a bug flies into it and breaks some strands, or it rains and parts of the web break off as a result. These damages to the web are analogous to our ‘crises of faith,’ or anything that happens to challenge our beliefs (of any kind) and forces us to ‘reweave our web.’ When we re-weave our web of beliefs, one of two things things happens. We either: 1. Accommodate new beliefs and reject the old, or 2. Reject the new beliefs and fortify the old against them. 

This is, as you might imagine, a bit simplified, but the analogy adequately represents Rorty’s idea of recontextualization. The re-weaving of our beliefs and desires as we come across new ideas that challenge our old ones is the process of recontextualization. That’s all it is. 

Imagine a real world situation: suppose I am a firm believer in, say, the idea that all cars must have four doors to be ‘real’ cars. Then, one day, I see a coupe for the first time. The particular strand in my web of beliefs that tells me that all real cars must have four doors has suddenly been challenged! What can I do? I can either get rid of my old belief and accommodate a new one (that real cars can have less than four doors) or I can reject the new belief and re-enforce my old one (perhaps that the car with two doors is not in fact a ‘real’ car, but maybe a ‘fake’ car). Regardless of what I choose to do, recontextualization has taken place. 

So, the question is: how can a Christian maintain this world-view? It surely seems that Rorty’s idea does not allow for a soul (in fact, for him, recontextualization’s lack of transcendence was the prominent high point) or anything spiritual. 

How could this be compatible with faith? We’ll explore that in my next post. 

What is Pragmatism?

 

The word ‘Pragmatism’ doesn’t sound like a school of philosophical thought. It sounds more like an old time disease–like the story your grandpa told you about how he came down with the Pragmatism when he was a boy. However the name sounds, Pragmatism is not a disease, but rather a philosophy that a lot of philosophers treat as though it were one. So what is it? You might be surprised to find that in many ways (particularly if you’ve ever taken an Intro to Philosophy course, or asked ‘why does this matter?’) you may be a pragmatist!

Most Western philosophies are concerned with questions like: “What is there in the world?” “What can we know?” or “What if there’s another world in my thumbnail, and this world is a part of some other guy’s thumbnail?” Pragmatism takes these questions and hurls them out the window. Why? Because, say Pragmatists, they’re completely pointless. 

Pragmatism gets its name from the Greek word pragma, which means ‘action.’ Consequently, Pragmatism is a philosophy of action. It says that unless your ideas have some sort of practical consequence, then they aren’t of much use. You can imagine the tailspin that this sends traditional philosophers into. 

One prominent contemporary pragmatist, Richard Rorty, says in an essay that pragmatists do not need metaphysics or epistemology–the traditional backbones of philosophical thought! So where does this lead pragmatism? If it rejects the basic tenets of what philosophy has always been, then what does it do? What does it say? Here are a few broad tenets of Pragmatism:

Rejection of ‘Truth’: Pragmatists don’t believe in such a thing as Truth (in the Platonic sense). They don’t think that we can jump outside of our heads and discover what the world is really like–they think that what we know is simply what works, rather than what is inherently true. Instead of seeking some ‘Universal Standard’ of goodness like the Greeks were after, Pragmatists are more concerned that we find a measure of goodness that works. Why must ‘goodness’ come from a standard outside of us? If we can all, or mostly, agree that something is ‘good’ (like Americans agree that democracy is generally good), then what’s wrong with that? Pragmatists say, to continue the analogy, that democracy is not inherently true or good–but that we have found democracy to work better and be more agreeable than anything else! 

Rejection of Epistemology: As a result of the rejection of truth, pragmatists reject epistemology. (Epistemology is the study of human knowledge–essentially asking ‘what can we know?’) We, in a very real sense, say pragmatists, create our own epistemology. We make things like math and science, rather than discover them. Again, society dictates what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ rather than some outside, non-human standard of universal ‘goodness’ and ‘badness.’ Epistemology is no longer a ‘discipline’ of study, but becomes more of a by-product of humanity. 

Rejection of Metaphysics: On a broad scale, pragmatists reject metaphysics. (Metaphysics includes questions like ‘Do I have free will?’ and ‘Is this world a part of a guy’s thumbnail?’) This rejection is based on one simple question: what do the answers to any of these questions matter? Unless there is a practical consequence to the metaphysical question you’re asking, pragmatists will generally tell you to get your head out of the clouds (or other various places). For example: will you ever discover the answer to the question of free will? The answer is most certainly no–the idea of someone discovering the answer as though it were a physical thing is almost comical. So what practical difference does it make one way or another? In fact, why do we even bother asking the question? How do we know that something beyond us (be it the Universe, God, or whatever) has made it so that our will must fall into one of those two categories? Unless something has a real, practical consequence, it is of no use to the pragmatist. 

It ought to be clear now why traditional philosophers have such a difficult time with Pragmatism. Traditional philosophers argue that pragmatists aren’t really ‘doing philosophy,’ and that their ideas bleed off into other academic disciplines. Pragmatists argue back that traditional philosophy has become isolated and stale; unchanging and unwilling to learn from other disciplines. Instead of asking traditional philosophical questions that seemingly have little value or practical application, pragmatists insist that we must do something to change our actual world. It’s better that we produce something of value than simply sit around and philosophize in an ivory tower.