Actions, beliefs and tacit knowledge

For me, Norm’s criticism of Terry Eagleton’s discussion of propositions and performances just highlights why the debate between atheists and the religious is a dialogue of the deaf.
Terry says: “It is a typically positivist kind of mistake to begin with the propositional.”
To this, Norm replies:

Let's first take in everything about the performatives…Even then, not at the beginning but at the end, some of the propositions implied by these performatives can't be rationally defended. And for some of us that undermines the performatives. The practice of religion won't do the things for us that it does for those who believe in the implied propositions.

The thing is, Terry’s claim as it stands is surely right. There are lots of cases where belief or knowledge can only follow from performance. It is only by playing a piece of music many times that we can come to truly know it. In successful arranged marriages, the couples come to love each other only after acting like husband and wife. We can only understand a foreign culture and language by immersing ourselves in it. And there are lots of things, such as gardening or wine-making, we learn best by doing.
In all these cases, performances lead us to propositions, some of which might be inarticulable. It is at least plausible that religion is another such case. A believer might say:

You can’t come to believe in God by sitting at home; He‘s just too far away from you there. It is only by going to church and experiencing the music, architecture, ritual and fellowship that we can come to even vaguely appreciate Him. God is like econometrics; propositions about him look like gobbledegook when written down, but if you practice enough, you’ll get the idea, and then - and only then! - will the propositions make sense. This is what Thomas Merton was saying in his prayer. He begins not from propositions but from ignorance, and hopes that practicing faith will lead him to God:

If I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

Now, I’m not endorsing this answer. My hunch (which is worthless) is that religious practice gives us not true knowledge but what Amartya Sen calls an “objective illusion” - a belief which, though false, looks correct from anyone looking from the viewer’s perspective. All I’m making is two points:
1. There’s nothing odd about putting performance before belief. As the man said, surely correctly:

The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

2. Norm is perhaps asking too much when he asks someone who has gained belief through practice to justify those beliefs to one who hasn’t practiced. One reason why writing about music is like dancing about architecture is that our language struggles to cross the barrier between practitioner and non-practitioner. Perhaps believer and non-believer will always be unable to understand each other. But then, why should all knowledge and beliefs be explicit rather than tacit and so amenable to “rational” debate?

Comments

[Iain Coleman]

Of course, some people do indeed practice and believe in a religious faith, then cease to believe in it. These people don't seem to fit very well into the model you've outlined.

[chris]

THey don't fit, but they don't greatly undermine it. Loads of people take up playing musical instruments, only to abandon them. So my analogy holds.

[Tony Woolf]

Mainstream religions (with the possible exception of some western versions of Buddhism) insist that you believe impossible things. So, should you practise believing impossible things for half an hour a day, like Lewis Carroll's White Queen? Or will you come to believe impossible things just by constantly asserting that you do? I am not a psychologist but I suspect that the latter can happen.

[Iain Coleman]

People don't give up musical instruments becaue they have come to realise that music is a delusion and its apparent pleasures are a lie. I really think you're reaching here.

[John Meredith]

"People don't give up musical instruments becaue they have come to realise that music is a delusion and its apparent pleasures are a lie. "

Well quite. Nor do they abandon the clarinet because they find that the precepts of clarinet playing require them to hate and/or punish homosexuals, women, or other instrumentalists, or to hold specific politcal positions on, say, birth control.

[reason]

I would think it is perfectly possible to practice a religion without believing, I suspect very many do (even amongst the clergy). It is also perfectly possible to believe it without practicing it (in fact some faiths claim that is all that is necessary). So the link in this case seems very tenuous indeed.

[Brian]

I like the analogy put forth about music, but I fully believe that you can practice a musical instrument and at some point realize that it's not for you. Religion is quite different. I have tried quite a few different instruments, and yet, not one of them has called me evil for not continuing on that path. I have learned from it an appreciation of music, and a bit of a critical side to music that I hear. As far as religion is concerned though, all I have developed is a feeling of disgust.

[Liam Murray]

I've came to your defence here:

http://www.liammurray.co.uk/2009/09/big-bloke-in-sky-with-beard.html

[ashok]

This was a most enjoyable read: both sides of the debate were presented, and while you spent a considerable amount of time on one side - practice prior to belief/proposition - you illustrated that so well it put you in a stronger position to understand Norm's claim. And there's nothing dumbed-down here: from performatives to Merton to Marx to Polanyi there are lots of points of departure to keep the issue discussed here alive.

This is all an elaborate way of saying thanks, so thank you again.

[Sarah Danes]

nice post...
i really like this...

thnks...

http://www.pnrinfoline.com

[Drums]

I am not religious. Yet I believe in god.

[Ugg london]

Never frown, when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.