Anscombe on Belief: “Belief and Thought”

187344894 — Elizabeth Anscombe (G. E. M. Anscombe).

G.E.M. Anscombe (1919-2001) was a British analytic philosopher often credited with initiating the return to the study of the virtues in her famous essay, “Modern Moral Philosophy” and with revitalizing interest in the philosophy of action with her enormously influential monograph, Intention. In this series of posts, we will explore some of her later writings about beliefs and how our epistemic agency might be part of our overall character formation. Note: This is part three of the three part series.

The St Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs, a series run under the auspices of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at the University of St Andrews and overseen by John Haldane, has now published the fourth and final volume of Elizabeth Anscombe’s hitherto uncollected and unpublished papers, Logic, Truth and Meaning: Writings by G.E.M. Anscombe, Edited by Mary Geach and Luke Gormally. For those who have been waiting to see what remains of her Nachlass that has been deemed worthy of publication, this is a significant event. Of special interest in this volume are three essays on beliefs, all of which are undated typescripts. These are “Motives for Beliefs of All Sorts,” “Grounds for Belief,” and “Belief and Thought.” My previous two posts discussed “Motives for Beliefs of All Sorts” and “Grounds for Belief.”

And now we come to the most substantive essay on belief, “Belief and Thought.” It too is unfinished (there is a footnote that references two further sections that have either been lost or that never came to fruition). The essay is mostly taken up with various puzzles about belief and thought that arise as we think through assent and assertion, concepts that are central to the distinction between thinking and believing. Its main contribution, I think, is its attempt to take seriously the separation of the logical and the psychological in an account of belief.

Anscombe notes that belief is a “curious concept” because its grammar seems to shift when we apply the concept in different contexts. Sometimes belief is treated dispositionally, but in other cases it isn’t (cases of suddenly believing something, for instance). It seems wrong to say that there are two equivocal senses of belief, as there are two equivocal senses of bank. Nor does it seem right to say that the non-dispositional use signifies a mental act or state of consciousness, since we fail to find such a thing when we survey our mental lives.

A somewhat traditional understanding of the distinction between mere thought and belief is that belief is what one gets when something is added to a mere thought: a mental act of assent. We are tempted by the view that something needs to be added to thought because thought can be a mere grasping of a sense, and understanding, without endorsing what is thought – without in any sense taking it to be true. Thus we can separate judgeable content, something assertable, and assent to what is assertable. When someone does think that such and such is the case, he has done two things: grasped a judgeable content and inwardly assented to it.

Assent is assertion of what is assertable (perhaps the assertion is only inward). There are two ways we might conceive of this. The first is that it is an extra feature that attaches to thought; the second is that it is intrinsic to the thought unless special circumstances take it away. Let us call the former the additive view and the latter the defeasibility view.

There are many considerations that seem to support the additive view. First, the same judgeable content when placed in an if-then clause is not asserted. Second, one can obey a command to think something as being so without thinking it as so: one says, “think of a man with a horse’s tail” and straightaway I do it. Third, things can just cross my mind, but this in no way implies that I believe them. Fourth, when fictional accounts are brought to the mind I don’t believe that they are true. And so on.

But there are equally many reasons to think that assertion is not something added to thought. First and foremost, there is the fact that when I search around for this inner act of assent, I simply do not find it. And though it is true that thoughts can come before the mind, this is thought understood in its logical and not its psychological sense, and thought in its logical sense can contain within it assertion in its logical sense. Assertion needn’t be some extra, psychological ingredient.

Ultimately, Anscombe rejects both accounts. She writes:

Each seems to involve a myth: the defeasibility theory, that of a sort of content which if it occurs in the mind at all must be being believed, or must be being believed unless there is some explanation why not…; and the other, that of the indescribable addition, the act of assent. Both views must arise from a failure to understand. (163)

I think the failure that Anscombe is pointing to is the failure to see the distinction between logical and psychological accounts of assertion.

The defeasibility theory fails as a psychological theory; it says that we must believe any judgeable content that is present to our minds unless special circumstances can explain our not doing it. But this denies the possibility of entertaining mere ideas. It also has trouble accounting for negation. If ‘p’ is before the mind, then the mind must be assenting to it. But if ~p is before the mind, then so is p, for the negation contains the thought that it negates. But I can’t be assenting to both at the same time. But if we say that the corresponding negative idea is not in the offing, then it is unclear what assent amounts to.

Anscombe thinks it will help us to distinguish between grammatical kinds of assertion – logical and psychological. Assertion might be a personal act of mind, but it might also be “a logical character of the proposition as such” such that it can be the “instrument of personal assertions” (166). But there is still logical unassertedness, such as what falls within an if-then clause – here the propositions are asserted in neither sense. How can we say both that the proposition itself asserts and that it occurs unasserted?

Anscombe’s solution, which she takes from Julianne Mott Rountree, is that assertion is context dependent and that we need to be able to grasp the completeness of a context in order to know whether a proposition is asserted. Skipping over the technical details, assertion is not a matter of adding something or taking it away in specified circumstances; rather, “a proposition in itself is an assertion” but “it is not asserted in every context in which it occurs.” The basic notion here is “assertedness in a context”; if the context is simply the proposition, then it is logically asserted, but if it is placed in a different context, say within an if-then clause, it is not. We can only get there if assertedness is fundamentally contextual. The understanding of the completeness of a context is a kind of skill or knowledge-how, rather than a knowledge that, and this implies that once again this knowledge is justified by one’s mastery of a practice and a set of rules. It is also important to this account that psychological assertion depends upon the logical character of assertedness. She writes:

Personal asserting is something we can do because the tools of assertion – the propositions we can construct in our language – lie ready to our hand, and it is not the personal act of asserting which confers their assertive character on the propositions. (169)

So much, then, for the traditional view of the distinction between thought and belief.

The essay ends with some reflections on Moore’s paradox. Moore thought it was absurd to say “I believe p, but not p” or “p, but I don’t believe that p.” It is tempting to understand the paradox in terms of contradictory assertions, but Anscombe thinks that would be a mistake. First, “I believe p, but perhaps not p” has nothing wrong with it; whereas both “p, but perhaps not p” and “I say that p, but perhaps not p” are objectionable. The absurdity of the paradox is better understood in terms of expressions of beliefs. For p does not occur asserted in “I believe that p” and the problem with assertion drops out. The absurdity is just that one cannot at one and the same time take p to be the case and p not to be the case. Here we see something fundamental about what it is to express a belief – to express that one does so take p. To believe something is indeed to mean to believe it.

This series originally appeared as “The Capacious and Consistent Mind of Elizabeth Anscombe” in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol 24, 2016, Issue 2.

Jennifer A. Frey is a principal investigator with Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.

Anscombe on Belief: “Grounds for Belief”

The St Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Affairs, a series run under the auspices of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at the University of St Andrews and overseen by John Haldane, has now published the fourth and final volume of Elizabeth Anscombe’s hitherto uncollected and unpublished papers, Logic, Truth and Meaning: Writings by G.E.M. Anscombe, Edited by Mary Geach and Luke Gormally. For those who have been waiting to see what remains of her Nachlass that has been deemed worthy of publication, this is a significant event. Of special interest in this volume are three essays on beliefs, all of which are undated typescripts. These are “Motives for Beliefs of All Sorts,” “Grounds for Belief,” and “Belief and Thought.” Yesterday I discussed “Motives for Beliefs of All Sorts.” Today I will cover “Grounds for Belief.”

Grounds for belief, by contrast with motives, can serve as premises for arguments that purport to show that the belief is true. Anscombe’s main thesis in “Grounds for Belief” is that what typically serves as a ground for our beliefs belongs to the category of what she calls “common knowledge.” Take, for instance, our beliefs about the life of Julius Caesar – including his conquests, his rule in Rome, and his death by assassination. What grounds do we give for these beliefs in response to the doxastic sense of the question “Why?” All we can say, she argues, is that this is what we’ve been taught to believe.

Anscombe does not think we should worry about this, even though it’s true that ‘what everyone knows’ may be wrong. She reasons that “belief on grounds which can be considered as premises for arguments presupposes belief without grounds, or at any rate without grounds that can be so considered” (183). While many empiricist philosophers put forward sense impressions as candidates for these groundless beliefs, Anscombe suggests that what we know by transmission from past generations is a better suited to this necessary category. Such knowledge may be traced back to witnesses or not (she contrasts the case of Julius Caesar with the biblical story of Adam).

If pressed to give further grounds for one’s beliefs about Julius Caesar, Anscombe thinks we have to admit that we can’t. It’s no good to suggest that one read the ancient sources, because if I doubt whether Julius Caesar existed and did the things my common knowledge says he did, then how can I rely on the fact that Seutonius is a credible ancient source? Seutonius will face the same challenge as Caesar. The best one can do is read the history books, but that is simply to further rely upon and expand one’s common knowledge – of what we’ve been taught to believe or what we have received from tradition.

But can’t we justify the historical record itself by reference to something outside of it? It is strange that Anscombe does not consider the physical evidence that exists in support of the claims we find in our history books, such as the archeological records we have collected. This information has not simply been received – in fact, much of it has been discovered and collected only recently by comparison with the written sources. Archaeological data is not the stuff of common knowledge but surely stands in support of it. She remarks that the existence of Julius Caesar is not a theory, but that is compatible with the fact our belief in his existence need not be groundless: it can be supported by compelling physical evidence that fits what we have received by common knowledge. Perhaps she would insist that the physical evidence relies on common knowledge for interpretation. That is, we can take it as evidence but not as evidence that stands outside of the sphere of common knowledge; it provides no Archimedean point.

Anscombe argues that it is wrong to treat common knowledge as knowledge by testimony, since its relation to testimony is rather remote and only indirect. Nor is it knowledge I get from experience. This knowledge is taught to me, it is handed down or passed on, and what justifies it is my participation in the practice – the form of life – in which the common knowledge centrally figures. Nothing outside the practice justifies this sort of common knowledge. She writes:

I have been taught to join in doing something … but because everyone is taught to do such things, an object of belief is generated. The belief is so certainly correct (for it follows the practice) that it is knowledge; for here knowledge is no other than certainly correct belief in pursuit of a practice. (189)

We can read this essay as an attempt to expand on the idea that much of what we know is justified by our participation in a practice, a theme one finds throughout her work under various guises. It is a further attempt to push back against the empiricist claim that the foundations of our knowledge are the sensible deliverances of private objects of experience. To be initiated into a practice is to be justified in believing certain things with certainty.

What should we make of this suggestion? It is difficult to assess given how loosely defined the concept of common knowledge is. At one point Anscombe characterizes it as what “I have been given as part of my understanding of things.” This is very broad – surely too broad for us to accept. Given that the practice of being British (that is to say growing up in and participating in British forms of life) is what justifies this common knowledge, it is unclear how we can explain the rationality of questioning what we have been taught as members of “British civilization.” Perhaps we can say that common knowledge can only be called into question in a very piecemeal fashion, a bit like the metaphor of Neurath’s boat, in which we can only replace one plank at a time while the rest of the ship remains fixed in place as we travel on the sea.

Tomorrow, Part III: “Belief and Thought.”

This series originally appeared as “The Capacious and Consistent Mind of Elizabeth Anscombe” in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol 24, 2016, Issue 2.

Jennifer A. Frey is a principal investigator with Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.

Anscombe on Belief: “Motives for Beliefs of All Sorts”

In “Motives for Beliefs of All Sorts,” the question at issue is whether we can have motivated beliefs (that is, beliefs based not on grounds that show or tend to show the truth of the proposition believed, but motives that explain beliefs by reference to some end or good).

That motives can and do play such a role is evidenced by the fact that we sometimes make remarks such as “he was under a strong temptation to think that p” or “out of loyalty, he remains convinced that such and such.” One is only tempted by something one desires, and one desires what one finds (in some sense) good. Moreover, some beliefs, such as the belief that my spouse loves me and only me, may be too painful to give up in spite of compelling evidence to the contrary; contrariwise, some beliefs are so satisfying or so tied to my self-identity that I don’t even see the things that would count as evidence against them. In all such cases, the explanations of what I believe bring in factors about what I want (or what I am desperate to avoid). But all the same, Anscombe concedes that the idea that motives can and do play a role in our belief formation is “a bit queer” (190).

The queerness of the idea of motives for beliefs comes from certain features of the concept of motive that appear to divorce it from our concept of belief. First, Anscombe remarks that it’s “crazy” to announce that one believes something on purpose. If one does something on purpose, this implies that one might have done the thing accidentally (that is, not on purpose). But no one can believe something accidentally. It is absurd to say “By a slip of the believing mechanism I believed p when I meant to believe not p.” Anscombe thinks this reveals a deep metaphysical truth about belief: it is not the product of a mechanism that might misfire – to believe something is to mean to believe it.

It is possible, by contrast, to think of something on purpose in order to achieve some end: one might think of something boring in order to fall asleep, or think of something sad in order to elicit a certain emotion, as actors do. One can also believe something with a further purpose in mind, such as cases of wishful thinking, in which one believes that one will do something – make this free throw shot – in order to bring it about that one actually does it. But, she writes, “believing something on purpose … in the way in which one can think of something on purpose, though not with a further purpose: this concept has no foothold” (191).

It is also impossible to believe something just for the fun of it, or because one is feeling rambunctious or depressed, or for no reason at all. Nor is it possible to obey a command to believe a random proposition for which one has no reason other than the fact of the command. All this suggests that belief is simply involuntary but Anscombe rejects this. The very idea of motives for belief is the idea that one can give a reason for believing that does not point to the truth of its content, and Anscombe has already allowed that this is possible and even common in human life.

It is possible that one believes something because one sees that “it would be better to do so.” An example:

“It is rather beastly to harbor suspicion against a man if one hasn’t got to. It’s better – pleasanter or nobler or better general policy for the sake of human relations, if in the particular case it is not unwise – to think well of someone than ill, or to think well of him than to remember he may equally well deserve to be thought ill of, if one hasn’t got to, so let’s accept his story”(193).

One might be motivated by one’s conception of the good life to believe something, but only if one is faced with a case in which the evidence is underdetermined for believing one way or another. In such cases, one doesn’t dwell or seek out evidence against the belief, and one might have to remind oneself of other interpretations when such evidence is brought to one’s attention. These motives for belief, even though they do not relate to truth but the good, seem to be reasons we can give in response to a doxastic sense of the question “Why?” that do not immediately call the belief into question; for this reason Anscombe declares they are “announceable.” They are also “reputable” because they do not call into question one’s doxastic credentials.

Some motives for belief are of obvious ill repute. An example is “I believe it because I hate him.” This is announceable because in saying it one does not invalidate the claim to believe (though one does show bad character). But some motives are “unannounceable” because putting them forward shows that one doesn’t really believe; an example of such a motive is, “I believe it because, if it is true, the inheritance is mine.”

How can we come up with a satisfactory explanation of the difference between the unannounceable motives and the announceable ones? Anscombe says that of the former group, the general form of explanation is: “it is better, more pleasing to me, if p is the case” (194). This tends to show that one doesn’t really believe it at all, because beliefs cannot be indifferent to the way things are, what is actually true. Contrast this with “I believe that because I hate him.” This is a possible expression of belief, because the general form seems to be that “it is better to believe that p is the case” rather than “it is better if p is the case.” And while the former is of ill repute it is still possible as an expression of belief, whereas the latter is not.

Anscombe thinks that a distinction between belief and believing will help make the subject matter clearer. If I am under the strong influence of someone, a powerful man in my field who is mentoring me, I may be inclined to believe things just because he says them. But if you ask me why, the answer does not involve any appeal to truth, but just that he said it. His saying it leads me to believe. So I have a motive for believing but no ground for the belief. This is possible, but as soon as I admit that I have no grounds, the belief is called into question. In the end, Anscombe seems to be saying that motivated belief is possible but psychologically tenuous. It seems that she is suggesting that the more reflective we are about our beliefs and our reasons for holding them, the less likely we are to be motivated in our beliefs in a problematic way. This in turn would suggest that reflection is not similarly motivated, but we may ask why we are entitled to this assumption.

Tomorrow, Part II: “Grounds for Belief.”

This series originally appeared as “The Capacious and Consistent Mind of Elizabeth Anscombe” in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol 24, 2016, Issue 2.

Jennifer A. Frey is a principal investigator with Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.

Kerry James Marshall’s School of Beauty

kjm-bang — “Bang”. Kerry James Marshall, 1994. Image from Artsy.

Can looking at art make us better people? Can art teach us to recognize in others and ourselves a humanity all too often constrained by narrow cultural definitions of beauty and social worth?

Painter Kerry James Marshall has long believed that art has an important social function, and that as a black artist, he should focus on black representation rather than abstraction. In his current retrospective exhibition MASTRY, here in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art through September 25, his decision to engage with European “Old Masters” provokes in viewers recognition that the absence of black figures from Western art history is a moral loss as well as an aesthetic one. By insisting upon black representation and putting figures in dialogue with the great works of European art that exclude them, he also challenges viewers—as the best artists do—to see art, and each other, differently.

In his paintings, black figures challenge viewers to see them. In stark contrast to the Old Masters, who rarely use black in their palettes, Marshall paints his figures with pure black paint, mostly unmixed with other colors except for some highlights where light softly contours foreheads, noses, and lips. Eyes and teeth are sometimes rendered in dazzling whites, or muted greys. Marshall’s engagement with seeing and being seen was sparked, he says in a video accompanying his show at MCA Chicago, by his reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Indeed, the painting that begins the exhibit is the aptly-named Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self (1980), where white eyes and jack-o-lantern teeth gleam in the black field of an indiscernible face.

Marshall’s project of revising what we think we see or know reminds viewers who experience America from outside mainstream culture what it feels like to read symbols of beauty and freedom from the vantage point of struggle and invisibility, and schools viewers used to seeing only from one vantage point what it might be like to see differently. Viewers are forced to acknowledge the subjects of the paintings, and such acknowledgment requires a regard for another that intrudes on the closed world of the individual viewer, in an event not unlike the substitution in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, where “In substitution my being that belongs to me and not to another is undone, and it is through substitution that I am not ‘another,’ but me.” (Levinas, Otherwise than Being). Marshall asks viewers to enter a scene and reflect on the people there. His perspective, while flattened, opens out to viewers, who feel as if they are standing at the edge of the room or the side of the yard. Viewers must look closely to make out the details of his figures, often set against dark or dimly-lit backgrounds. It is necessary to stop, look, and engage with these subjects, many of whom look back, confronting viewers with a direct gaze. This confrontation demands a response, and in this proximity there is the possibility of ethics. “We see you,” the figures seem to say. “Can you see us?”

Marshall likes to complicate our collective sense of what we know by taking familiar holidays such as the Fourth of July and opening up a different way of looking at them by referencing art history. In Bang (1994), a picture that seems particularly timely now, as athletes supporting Black Lives Matter refrain from saluting the flag, and force many to consider the function of public displays of patriotism, a black girl stands in a backyard with her hand placed reverently across her chest, holding up an American flag in front of two boys who also salute with their hands on their hearts. Pink clouds in the foreground are strung together by a banner carrying words from the Great Seal of the United States, “We Are One.” The words on the clouds form the phrase “Happy July 4th Bang,” and overhead another banner carried by doves forcefully declares, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to god.” Here the promise of American prosperity suggested by these slogans seems realized in the gentle suburban landscape, one where black children safely play amid neat houses and trimmed lawns while their holiday dinner cooks on the grill.

But the painting also references medieval and renaissance religious paintings, lending the patriotic tableau both a holy and an ominous cast. The gentle curve of the girl’s neck as she holds out the flag—the symbol of her faith— is achingly vulnerable. Behind her, a patch of yellow on a garage door makes a halo over her head, and beams of light issue from her brow. She is a martyred saint, or the Virgin Mary, her head at the center of the painting, as it would be in a religious icon. The word “Bang” on the pink cloud just as easily suggests the sound of guns as it does fireworks. The boys look away in different directions, their faces innocent, as the barbeque grill issues a coil of smoke and a garden hose circles the girl like a snake. In the background large sunbeams echo the rays in the girl’s halo, but the sun appears to be setting, and the children are standing on a patch of darkness the shape of a grave. In the foreground, shadows enter the frame and angle towards them.

SONY DSC — “School of Beauty, School of Culture”, Kerry James Marshall, 2012. Image from Birmingham Museum of Art.

In another work, School of Beauty, School of Culture (2012), Marshall “schools” viewers to see and understand how the beauty of black women is often haunted and constrained by mainstream culture’s white beauty standards. The scene seems to be a bustling celebration of black women’s beauty, where heart-shaped mirrors on the walls of a thriving black hair salon reflect the words “School of Beauty School of Culture” in backwards letters, and the words “Dark” and “Lovely” are repeated on posters dotting the walls. “It’s Your Hair!” emphasizes one, an encouragement to patrons to claim their style and resist acquiescing to dominant notions about how black hair should be worn. Black women with many different hairstyles move through the space; one looks directly out at us and strikes a classic pinup pose, as if to say, “I am beautiful.” A signed copy of the 1998 landmark album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, with its cover image of a black woman with snaky hair, hangs over a doorway in the center of the painting, echoing the painting’s emphasis on black women’s beauty, lives and experiences, as well as the theme of education.

But something floats in the space between two young children in the foreground: an anamorphic image attenuated to resemble the similarly floating image in the foreground of Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533). In Holbein, two richly dressed men stand amidst their musical instruments, maps, books, and globes, symbols of their worldly accomplishments, while an anamorphic skull, stretched to the point of being nearly

ambassadors_n-1314-00-000192-wz-pyr — “The Ambassadors.” 1533, Hans Holbein the Younger. Image from the National Gallery.

unrecognizable, floats between them in the foreground. The skull foreshortens if the viewer moves to the far right of the painting and looks sideways at it, revealing the classic vanitas theme: death waits for all men, regardless of wealth, stature, or skill. In Marshall’s School of Beauty, the image that haunts the scene is Sleeping Beauty, and she also takes shape if the viewer moves to one side of the painting—the left side, in this case, in a mirror-like reversal of Holbein, hinted at by the reversed letters in the mirrors above the salon. Although the adult women in the picture seem unaware of Sleeping Beauty, the child at the center of the picture sees her clearly, and actually stoops to see past her to the little girl on the other side. Unlike Holbein’s skull, Sleeping Beauty casts a shadow in the picture, and her blond hair, blue eyes, and white skin shadow this scene celebrating black women’s beauty. School of Beauty, School of Culture teaches viewers to make the effort to look differently at the painting, much as Holbein teaches his viewers to move to one side, making the effort to look differently at his painting. In Marshall’s case, he is asking us to reverse the look we have learned from “Old Master,” to recognize that Sleeping Beauty haunts this scene, but to make the effort to see her, and look past her white beauty ideal, as the little child does, and see all the beautiful black women searching for their own reflections.

Kerry James Marshall asks viewers to recognize the ways in which Anglo-European culture has limited artistic representation and ideals of beauty to the images and experiences of white subjects. As a remedy to this, he offers ways of seeing that expand the notion of which bodies get to be represented as beautiful and inspiring. By insisting that black subjects belong in museums, galleries, and high art, he enlarges cultural assumptions of what constitutes the beautiful, the human, and the divine, and this is a supremely wonderful thing.

This video accompanies the exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Kerry James Marshall: Mastry is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, April 23–September 25, 2016, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 25, 2016–January 29, 2017, and at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, March 12–July 2, 2017.

Jaime Hovey is Associate Program Director for Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.

Food Preferences, Temperance, and Virtue

Baby eating dragon fruit — Adobe stock photo.

The concept of habit plays a central role in Thomas Aquinas’ moral theory, and in his analytic psychology more generally. He identifies habits as one of the fundamental principles of human action, together with the capacities of intellect, passions, and will – appropriately so, because habits are nothing other than stable dispositions of these capacities, which enable them to operate in coherent, appropriate ways. Habits are subject to moral evaluation, just as actions are, and the habits of the passions and the will are always either virtues or vices, just as human actions are always morally good or evil. Even more fundamentally, habits of some kind are necessary to the functioning of both the appetites and the intellect. Without some kind of internal development and formation, the appetites and the rational powers of the human creature cannot function at all, or can only operate in rudimentary and ineffective ways. By implication, human action as we know it, whether from our experience as agents or by observation of others, is almost always shaped by habits of some kind, formed out of natural (or supernatural) principles of operation through processes of training and development. Human existence and action is ultimately grounded in natural principles, but the innate principles of human action do not enter directly into our ordinary experiences – rather, we act and interact with one another through the structures set up by the stable dispositions of our virtues, vices, and other habits.
These are claims about the origins and structuring principles of human action, and as such, they invite comparison with other kinds of claims about human psychology, including those set forth by contemporary experimental psychology. A comparison of this kind might seem to be ruled out by the radical differences in assumptions and methodology that divide Aquinas from contemporary scientists of any kind. Yet when we compare what Aquinas says about the habits, we find unexpected resonances with recent work on the formation of stable dispositions, especially those relating to such fundamental matters as food preferences. We need to be careful not to overstate the extent and significance of these resonances. However, it would seem that at the very least, Aquinas and contemporary psychologists share points of reference that enable us to compare them in fruitful ways. To put it crudely, we can assume that they are talking about the same things, more or less, namely, human activities and experiences, together with whatever principles or structures account for these.
I want to defend and develop this way of approaching Aquinas’ psychology by comparing what he says about the formation and necessity of habit with recent work on the formation of food preferences in infants. This research lends support to Aquinas’ view that even the most fundamental human capacities for desire and aversion need some kind of rational formation and structuring in order to function properly. Indeed, Aquinas’ analytical psychology and contemporary experimental psychology seem to converge, and for a Thomist, this convergence suggests that research in this area might tend to confirm—or at least shed light on—Aquinas’ account of a virtue such as temperance, as it pertains to the pleasures of food and drink. When we turn back to relevant studies, however, it would seem that they challenge Aquinas’ account of temperance, insofar as he defines this virtue by reference to the individual’s bodily needs. On further reflection, contemporary work on food preferences is not inconsistent with Aquinas’ account of temperance, but it does suggest that a Thomistic account of the virtue of temperance needs to be expanded and developed in certain ways, if we are to do full justice to the complexities of developmental formation.

adobestock_83596642 — Adobe stock photo.

Habits are commonly associated with stereotyped, repetitive behaviors that often fall outside the range of one’s conscious awareness and may even be experienced as somehow contrary to one’s desires. A habit in the Thomistic sense more nearly resembles a skill, such as touch typing, than a habit like pulling one’s beard – indeed, the skill of touch typing is a habit in Aquinas’ sense, whereas beard-pulling is not. Habits understood in this way are clearly more interesting and important than the kind of habits that we only notice when we want to break them. But we have not yet taken full account of just how important habits are, on Aquinas’ view. He claims that habits of some kind are necessary for the proper functioning of the rational creature. Human capacities for perception, understanding, and desire are naturally indeterminate, and stand in need of some level of development in order to function at all.
Contemporary developmental psychology offers at least one example of a kind of system that would appear at first glance to function in much the same way as do the habits, as Aquinas understands them: “[E]ach of a multitude of core knowledge systems emerges early in development, serves to identify the entities in its domain by analysing their distinctive characteristics, and supports the acquisition of further knowledge about those entities by focusing on the critical features that distinguish different members of the domain (Shutts et al).” A system of core knowledge would thus seem to provide the same kinds of rational structures, and thus to facilitate appropriate functioning, in the same way that habits do. Systems of core knowledge would not be equivalent to habits as Aquinas understands them, but on the contrary, they would provide evidence that habits in this sense would be superfluous.

We can tentatively identify at least one such system that appears to be comprised of highly general concepts, which can only function properly after some level of formation, namely, the system of core knowledge with respect to food. For more than thirty years, psychologists have been studying the emergence and development of the infant’s ability to distinguish between edible and inedible objects, and between appropriate and healthy, or inappropriate, spoiled, or otherwise unsuitable food. In contrast to adults, older children, and at least some kinds of non-human primates, human infants are remarkably indiscriminate with respect to what they will ingest; one study summarizes that “items regarded by adults as dangerous, disgusting, or inappropriate, and combinations of individually liked foods that are unacceptable to adults were readily accepted by many of the younger children in our sample…. [However,] within the 16 month to five year age range studied, there is a clear developmental trend towards rejection of items that adults consider disgusting or dangerous.” (Rozin)

Indeed, recent research indicates that the food preferences of young children are not only formed through social interactions, but strongly tied to perceptions of, and feelings about, group identity. This research supports what experience would seem to confirm, that our habituated desires for specific foods may reflect our sense of social identity and a socially mediated sense of what is desirable, seemly, or appropriate for those of our kind. If this is so, then it would appear that at an early stage, the developing child begins to develop normatively laden food preferences, reflecting basic judgments about what one ought to eat.

Young african american father giving milk to her baby girl in a — Adobe stock photo.

This way of construing the development of food preferences is highly suggestive from the standpoint of a Thomist virtue ethicist. The virtue of temperance, for example, is a habitual disposition towards desires and aversions that reflect normative judgments of some kind. Any suggestion that early childhood food preferences develop in accordance with normative judgments will be grist to the mill for a contemporary Thomist. At the same time, we need to be careful not to move too quickly between contemporary psychology and Aquinas’ account of temperance. It is not immediately evident that the normative ideal informing temperance is the same as the normative standards informing the food preferences of young children. This does not mean that recent research disconfirms Aquinas’ analysis of temperance, but it does point to a more interesting way of thinking about the relation between these two very different ways of thinking about our most basic desires.

Kristin Shutts, Kirsten F. Condry, Laurie R. Santos, and Elizabeth S. Spelke, “Core Knowledge and its Limits: The Domain of Food,” Cognition. 2009 Jul; 112 (1): 120–140.

Paul Rozin, Larry Hammer, Harriet Oster, Talia Horowitz and Veronica Marmora, “The Child’s Conception of Food: Differentiation of Categories of Rejected Substances in the 16 Months to 5 Year Age Range,” Appetite, 1986, 7, 141-151.

Samantha P. Fan, Zoe Liberman, Boaz Keysar, Katherine D. Kinzler, “The Exposure Advantage: Early Exposure to a Multilingual Environment Promotes Effective Communication,” Psychological Science. July 2015 vol. 26 no. 7 1090-1097.

Jean Porter is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Notre Dame and Scholar with Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.

Audio: “Happiness without Religion? A Philosophical Debate”

On September 10, 2016, Principal Investigators Jennifer A. Frey and Candace Vogler and Scholar Fr. Thomas Joseph White debated “Happiness without Religion? A Philosophical Debate” at the Catholic Center at NYU. R. Reno of First Things moderated and offered critique.

Thank you to the Thomistic Institute for sponsoring this event and making these recordings available on SoundCloud.

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Photos: “Happiness without Religion? A Philosophical Debate”| Catholic Center at NYU

We had a full house for our September 10, 2016 session, “Happiness without Religion? A Philosophical Debate” at the Catholic Center at NYU. Moderated by R.R. Reno of First Things, presentations were made by Jennifer A. Frey, Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina and Co-Principal Investigator, Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life; Candace Vogler, David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago and Co-Principal Investigator, Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life; and Thomas Joseph White, OP, Executive Director, Thomistic Institute Dominican House of Studies, and Scholar, Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life.

Thank you to the Thomistic Institute for sponsoring this event, and to photographer George Goss for these wonderful photos!