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SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS, SELF‐DECEPTION AND MORALLY CULPABLE NONBELIEF
Author(s) -
KINGHORN KEVIN
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the heythrop journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.127
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1468-2265
pISSN - 0018-1196
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00328.x
Subject(s) - deception , citation , blindness , self deception , psychology , psychoanalysis , social psychology , law , medicine , political science , optometry
It is not an uncommon practice to blame others for their beliefs. We say that the Nazi officers should not have believed Hitler's rhetoric as they did. We may argue that those who believe that a government need not provide free healthcare to all its citizens are morally callous. Sometimes we criticize others for whether or not they form any belief, claiming that they are irresponsibly naive in believing too easily or that they are unduly cynical in not being willing to believe. As to why it is appropriate to blame others for their beliefs, our language often suggests that belief is a voluntary matter within people's control. Consider the phrases, 'I refuse to believe that'; 'Why won't you believe me?'; 'I've decided that such a course of action would be imprudent'; and so forth. Yet despite such language, there seem to be compelling reasons to think that beliefs are not the kinds of mental states we can hold simply by choosing to hold them. First, it is a common psychological experience that we are unable by an act of the will simply to acquire beliefs we may desire to hold. A woman who must testify in court and dreads choosing between honesty and loyalty may wish that she could believe that her friend is innocent. A religious person may be convinced that the way in which God judges the lives of people depends at least in part on whether they believe certain propositions contained in a creed. However, even though people may sometime have very strong reasons for wanting to believe certain propositions, is it often people's testimony that they are simply unable to acquire the beliefs they wish they could acquire. Second, some philosophers have pointed out that, aside from any psychological impediments to voluntary belief acquisition, there seem to be logical problems with the idea of choosing to believe things. Beliefs are representational in nature; they are our 'maps' of the world in that they represent what we think is already true of the world. Thus, as Bernard Williams remarks, even if I could somehow find the psychological means to acquire a belief at will, 'it is unclear that . . . I could seriously think of it as a belief, i.e. as something purporting to represent reality'. 1 After all, if