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

3. Cultivating Personal Judgment: A Methodological Dilemma

[] Cultivating Personal Judgment A Methodological Dilemma q How can Christians justify ordinary beliefs, the vast majority of which lack demonstrative proof? What role does judgment play in solving this epistemic concern? For Newman, the search for a reliable process of belief-formation ends with the discovery of the illative sense, a non-rule-governed process of reasoning, which accumulates probabilities and renders informed assessment about concrete matters. Discussion of the illative sense takes place in part two of the Grammar.Yet, the reader needs a basic understanding of the argument in part one to follow the development of the illative sense. Consequently, I discuss the purpose of the Grammar and the key notions in part one, and then I show how the illative sense furnishes the interpretive key for understanding the argument in part two. However, Newman’s appeal to the illative sense fails to resolve the problem of securing a common measure among different minds. Purpose of the Grammar The Grammar qualifies as the most difficult text to read within the entire corpus of Newman’s writings.As Charles Dessain points  out,“the Grammar is a baffling book at first sight.”1 The abrupt nature of the text, along with its use of terminology, creates interpretive problems. For example, the Grammar opens without an outline of argumentation, and the body of the text lacks an explicit statement about its purpose. Moreover, the structure of the text, on the surface,“is almost made up of two different books.”2 Initially, such factors complicate a fluid reading. Three items, however, furnish clues for discerning Newman’s argument in the Grammar: () the structural arrangement of the Grammar, () a personal correspondence with Edward Caswall, and () a note appended to the Grammar . First, Newman divides the Grammar into two parts.The distinction between assent and inference helps to decipher the argument of the Grammar. Part one unpacks the nature of assent and tackles the question of whether a person can assent to a proposition without complete understanding. Part two concentrates on the nature of inference and considers the question of whether a person can assent to a proposition without demonstrative proof. Newman challenges the claim that without demonstrative proof people cannot sustain their beliefs with confidence and that they cannot posit them as rationally acceptable. Second, Edward Caswall, a priest of the Birmingham Oratory, recorded some revealing comments on the flyleaf of his own copy of the Grammar (December ).They summarize the gist of his conversation with Newman about the purpose of the book:“Object of the book twofold. In the first part shows that you can believe what you cannot understand. In the second part that you can believe what you cannot absolutely prove.”3 Both parts of the Cultivating Personal Judgment  . Charles S. Dessain,“Cardinal Newman on theTheory and Practice of Knowledge:The Purpose of the Grammar of Assent,” Downside Review  (): . . IanT. Ker,“Editor’s Introduction,” in John Henry Newman,An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), xi. . Dessain, “Cardinal Newman on the Theory and Practice of Knowledge,” . Dessain Grammar engage key questions posed by Newman’s contemporaries . Is Christian belief rationally acceptable without explicit awareness of how the mind understands claims of faith and without epistemic access to how the mind justifies knowledge? Third, a note appended to the Grammar (December ) restates the purpose of part one and clarifies the role of the illative sense in the entire work. The Essay begins with refuting the fallacies of those who say that we cannot believe what we cannot understand.l.l.l.This portion of the work finished , I proceed to justify certitude as exercised upon a cumulation of proofs, short of demonstration.l.l.l. I will add, that a main reason for my writing this Essay on Assent, to which I am adding these last words, was, as far as I could, to describe the organum investigandi [the illative sense] which I thought the true one, and thereby to illustrate and explain the saying in the “Apologia” which has been the subject of this Note.4 Newman attempts to refute the charge that he had abandoned the “thought of bringing arguments from reason to bear upon the  Cultivating Personal Judgment notes that Caswall was “a member of Newman’s community, and one of his closest friends.” In a letter to Charles Meynell (January , ), Newman says that if he were...