Communities of Informed Judgment: Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality

1. Re-reading Newman

[] Re-reading Newman q Under what conditions is it appropriate to think of Christian belief as rationally acceptable? Recent scholarly developments furnish new resources for tackling this important question. Such efforts do not suggest dissatisfaction with the process of human rational reflection itself,but they reveal a growing dissatisfaction with scholarly treatments of the nature and scope of human cognition. There has been a tendency, for example, to think of Christian belief either as based on canons of strictly deductive and inductive logic or as based on faith.1 Recent accounts of rationality, however, expand options for understanding the process of belief-formation. The aim is to carve out broader and more refined accounts of rationality that reflect the actual conditions under which Christians form and sustain beliefs.2 . For further discussion, see William J.Abraham, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, ), –; and Michael Peterson, et al., Reason and Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. . E.g., Randall Basinger,“Faith/Reason Typologies:A Constructive Proposal,” Christian Scholar’s Review  (): –;William J.Wainwright, Reason and the Heart:A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ); and Mikael Stenmark , Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life: A Critical Evaluation of Four Models of Rationality (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ). Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , argues that two conceptions of rationality have dominated scholarly discussion for some time: () a criterial  New accounts of rationality consider various factors that shape the process of belief-formation. Some accounts, for instance, explore the role of non-rule-governed judgments in forming, evaluating , and sustaining beliefs.As Harold Brown points out,“a growing number of philosophers, including philosophers of science, have been slowly coming to the conclusion that we can not make sense of human knowledge without recognizing the role that judgement plays at key epistemic junctures.”3 The focus on judgment recognizes that rule-governed procedures of reasoning, though important, do not capture fully the nature and scope of human cognition. Rational assessment of beliefs requires acquisition of knowledge and skills in different domains of knowledge. In practicing good cognitive habits, people of informed judgment learn how to detect key clues for evaluating evidence in concrete situations. Part of the task involves understanding the social context in which people refine cognitive skills and cultivate informed judgment about particulars. Focus on the social dimension of reasoning recognizes both the domain-specificity of human cognition and the impact of environment on cognitive development. Reducing human cognition to what goes on in the head fails to account for  Re-reading Newman conception of rationality—institutionalized norms that determine whether beliefs are rationally acceptable (e.g., logical positivism)—and () a non-criterial conception of rationality— different cultures and historic epochs produce different paradigms of rationality (e.g., relativism ). Putnam, however, argues that several considerations play a role in determining whether a belief is rationally acceptable (e.g., relevance, adequacy, and the role of values in assessing beliefs). In essence, Putnam is arguing that we need to rethink standards of rationality, using broader terms than we have in the past. . Harold I. Brown, Rationality (London: Routledge, ), . For further discussion, see J.Wentzel van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality:Toward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ); Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life,William G. Lycan, Judgement and Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, );Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices,Apt Feelings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ); Louis P. Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ); and Putnam, Reason,Truth, and History. social conditions under which people form and sustain beliefs.4 Cognitive development requires distribution of labor, not simply the activity of a brain isolated from the influence of other cognitive agents. It depends on the human capacity “to diffuse achieved knowledge and practical wisdom through complex social structures , and to reduce the loads on individual brains by locating those brains in complex webs of linguistic, social, political, and institutional constraints.”5 By calling into question the notion of disembodied cognition, emphasis on the social nature of reasoning explores the process by which cognitive agents shape maturation of reasoning within real-world environments. People learn to reason under the tutelage of exemplars of cognitive excellence; they hone cognitive capacities in order to...