Newman on the Strength of Beliefs

NEWMAN ON THE STRENGTH OF BELIEFS 'TIHE CONCEPT OF BELIEF merits more attention han philosophers have given it. Action is not so much ased on knowledge as on belief. And even contemporary epistemologists agree that one probably cannot understand the concept of knowledge without having a reasonably clear idea of what belief is. In recent years philosophers have made countless efforts to show that knowledge is a kind of justified true belief; but relatively little has been written about belief itself, and Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent, written more than a century ago, remains the classic work on the subject . Some of the most interesting passages in Newman's essay deal with the question of how strong beliefs differ from weak ones, and since this seminal question has never been satisfactorily answered by philosophers, it may be worth our while to reconsider what Newman has to say about it. I " I strongly believe that. . . ." ; here is a phrase which we have all encountered in everyday discourse and have often articulated ourselves. Clearly we believe some things more strongly than we believe others. But in the sixth chapter of the Grammar of Assent, Cardinal Newman argues that there are no " degrees " of assent, and since he considers beliefs to be only the strongest of assents, he is also committed to the view that there are no " degrees " of belief. It is hardly to be wondered at that so many readers of the Grammar have found Newman 's views on this subject perplexing, for not only is it obvious that we assent to some things more strongly than others, but Newman himself admits as much. In discussing profession, for example, he tells us that, " There are assents so feeble and superficial , as to be little more than assertions" (Grammar, IV, 1, 1). un 132 JAY NEWMAN Indeed, since Newman regards beliefs as stronger than other assents, he would seem to be committed to allowing that in some sense assent admits of" degrees." How, then, can Newman so boldly declare in Chapter VI that there are no degrees of assent? Newman answers this question for us in his introduction to Chapter IV, but we can only appreciate his answer if we understand the conceptual apparatus of the Grammar, and this conceptual apparatus basically involves two distinctions. According to Newman there are two modes of holding propositions and two modes of apprehending propositions. When we examine language we see that propositions may take an interrogative , conditional, or categorical form (interrogative when they ask a question, conditional when they express a conclusion, categorical when they simply make an assertion) . Corresponding to each of these forms is a specific mental act, an internal act of " holding " a proposition; these three modes of holding propositions are Doubt, Inference, and Assent. But Doubt can be explained away in terms of Inference and Assent, and so for all intents and purposes there are two basic ways of holding propositions. In addition to being " held," propositions are " apprehended " ; apprehension of a proposition is the imposition of a sense on the terms of which the proposition is composed . The terms of a proposition, the subject and predicate, can stand for either notions or realities: Now there are propositions, in which one or both of the terms are common nouns, as standing for what is abstract, general, and nonexisting , such as " Man is an animal, some men are learned, an Apostle is a creation of Christianity, a line is length without breadth, to err is human, to forgive divine." These I shall call notional propositions, and the apprehension with which we infer or assent to them, notional. And there are other propositions, which are composed of singular nouns, and of which the terms stand for things external to us, unit and individual, as " Philip was the father of Alexander," " the earth goes round the sun," "the Apostles first preached to the Jews;" and these I shall call real propositions, and their apprehension real (I, 2). NEWMAN: STRENGTH OF BELIEFS 188 With these distinctions in mind, we are now in the position to understand Newman's answer to our question: Real apprehension, then, may be pronounced stronger than notional, because things, which...