In this episode, Joe asks Jamie about the discipline of epistemology (Jamie's field of study) and what it means to be a Christian studying and doing research in this field.
Jamie: Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Dew.
Joe: And I am Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: And welcome back to our podcast once again, The Towel & the Basin.
Joe: That's right. So Jamie, you've written this book, How Do We Know?, which was recently re-released, updated in all of that.
Jamie: Yep.
Joe: And it's a book on epistemology.
Jamie: Right.
Joe: So me being me, can you just explain what is epistemology again?
Jamie: Yeah, that's probably for most people that are listening and first let me just say this real quick, I've had, we record these things, Joe, you know this, we record these things in sort of little pockets of time and we'll do a bunch of them over a short up period of time. And then we might go a little period of time and not record a bunch of these.
Joe: Sure.
Jamie: In the last, since you and I have recorded our last little bunch with some of the travels that I've done and other things like that, I have run into a good number of folks that actually say they listen to this thing.
Joe: Come on.
Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, man, that's super humbling. Thank you all for listening, number one. I'm shocked and surprised that everything to do to listen to this, but thank you for doing that. It means a lot to us, and I've enjoyed getting to know all of you out there as I've been in various places. So it means a lot to us. Probably for a lot of folks that would listen to a podcast like this, they may wonder exactly what you've just asked. What in the world is a epistemology?
And so now we are in that aspect of my life that's very nerdy, academic and whatnot. It's the more academic side of my career. I, as a philosopher, this is what we do. And one of the major branches of philosophy is a field called epistemology. And it's the field of philosophy that with knowing and a variety of questions related to our knowledge. So like, for example, what exactly does it mean to know in the first place? So I say to you, "I know that today is Thursday," as we record this podcast. "I believe that it will rain tomorrow." Actually don't know if I'll do that. I don't know that. But you see the difference in those statements cognitively. To say that you know something, it just seems to be a heavier, more robust, bigger deal, if you will, than simply saying you believe something. We believe lots things. We know some things though.
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: And you'll even hear people talk like this. You'll hear people say things like, "Well, I know you believe X." And somebody will say, "Oh, I don't believe X. I know X." So when people say that implicitly, they're recognizing this distinction, that it's one thing to believe, it's another thing to know something. So epistemology is trying to answer that question. Well then, what's the difference? What's the difference between simply believing something, even believing something rightly. We have all sorts of beliefs that are, say right, and we have some that are wrong. People in the ancient world thought the earth was flat or they thought any number of things like that. Turned out, they were wrong. But not everybody in the ancient world believed that the earth was flat. There's lots of people that believed it was spherical. And they believed rightly. Some people believe wrongly. Some people believe rightly. And knowing seems to be something different, even than simply believing rightly.
So epistemology tries to answer those types of questions. What does it mean to know? It answers questions like, well, where does knowledge come from? Do we get it through our senses with what we see? So for example, I know that I'm doing a podcast with you because I see you on my computer screen and I hear your voice. This knowledge that I claim to have comes to me via the five senses. There are other things that we know that really don't come to us that way at all. We know it reflectively. So for example, if I said to you, "I know that a bachelor is unmarried." Well then I get that knowledge in a very, very different way than seeing or hearing you. I know some things via testimony. People come when I, back when I lived in North Carolina, this certainly doesn't happen here in Louisiana, but I'd be sitting in my house and my kids would run in and say, "Dad, Dad, it's snowing outside." I believed them and I thought that that was right, but I certainly hadn't experienced it for myself. I got that on the basis of testimony.
So this is the field of epistemology. These are all philosophical questions, but they're philosophical questions that have to do with our knowing. And so now other questions like, can we have certainty or is just certitude, which would maybe be a lesser degree of that, is that what we get? And those are the kinds of questions that we ask in epistemology. We ask questions about virtues, what we call intellectual virtues. So moral virtues are characteristics that if a person has them, it will help that person and the people around them in some way. And intellectual virtues are intellectual qualities or characteristics that if you have those, it'll help you know. And if you don't have those, it'll hurt you in your knowing. So broadly, this is the field of epistemology.
Joe: Okay. That makes a lot of sense, based on some previous things you've talked about as well. So I kind have a follow up question to this. All right, I know as in plenty of disciplines, you can have, for lack of a better word, a secular version and a Christian version. So you can look at this from a secular point of view or it's a field outside of Christianity, but of course as a Christian philosopher, you have done work in epistemology and it has been in a Christian context or at least it has these Christian elements into it. So when we look at epistemology, is there a difference between secular and Christian epistemology? Is it the same stuff? Do you do different things? What is that like?
Jamie: Yeah, so yeah, I understand the question. Yes and no. There is a sense in which, no, we're all doing the same kind of work. But then there's also another sense in which you'd say, "Well, but religious philosophers tend to focus on certain kinds of areas." So maybe let me do it this way. I think the better distinction is not necessary between secular epistemology and Christian epistemology. I think the better distinction is just between epistemology, per se, as a broad discipline in philosophy, and then maybe sort of a subset of epistemology that we would call or refer to as religious epistemology.
Joe: Okay.
Jamie: So and it would be true, I think, that most people in the set realm of philosophy probably don't give tremendous amounts of attention to the religious epistemological questions. In that field, in that area, one really popular area of epistemology of late in the last few decades have been an area called naturalized epistemology. And essentially naturalized epistemology seems to suggest that maybe what philosophers have been doing throughout history is trying to tell us how we should formulate our beliefs. That's what they say Descartes was doing or Bacon was doing, and most epistemologist throughout history. They'd say what, "What they were doing was tell us how we should formulate our beliefs." And naturalized epistemology really snuggles up nicely and next to psychology, human psychology, and says, "Maybe instead, what we ought to be doing is focusing on how we in fact do formulate our beliefs. Not how we should do it, but let's figure out how we should do it." So in other words, they're essentially saying that maybe epistemology just should focus on human psychology and focus on what we normally do in our minds and all those types of things.
And I certainly think there's tremendous value in learning and being good students of the psychological processes under which human beings go about forming our beliefs, sure. But at the end of the day, it seems to me that that's not a real fruitful path and that the question of how we should formulate our beliefs is still an important question for us to ask. Because I could study how you do formula your beliefs or how I do formulate my beliefs, but maybe I really am, or you really are, formulating them incorrectly. I can think of lots of scenarios where our minds are not functioning properly. They're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and therefore they need corrections. So I tend to think that those older, traditional epistemological questions that are often sort of, I don't want to say neglected, but maybe pushed the side by naturalized epistemology, I tend to think that those things are still very important.
Maybe one other area where you see in secular philosophy, if you want to use that designation, again, I think it's probably not the best designation, but there's always has been and I think there always is still a general interest in the debate between empirical data versus rational data. And this is as old as a epistemology itself. This really goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. Plato would've been much more rationalistic in his epistemology, meaning he focused and trusted less in the sense data and trusted more in rational process, in reflection upon things to get a truth, than he did sense data. And Aristotle is much more inclined to listen and pay attention to the sense data and such. And then you fast forward into the modern and the enlightenment period and sure enough, you've got empiricism and rationalism. There's a sense in which that age old debate is still very much alive, especially with the successes of modern science today, largely in empirical discipline. So I would say, yeah, maybe just epistemology per se you're going to have a little bit more focus on things of that nature.
In religious epistemology, which is I think the better category to put what Christians tend to focus on ...
Joe: So would that be like a subset under ...?
Jamie: Yeah, I mean, so essentially what it would be is, this is still in the field of epistemology, but now you've turned your attention specifically to those questions about knowing that have to do with faith. So take, for example, you believe in God, and I do. But the question now is going to be, well, why? And how should you answer that question? Am I required to develop all kinds of our arguments or evidence and things like that? Or am I rational just simply for believing without those evidences and arguments and things like that? And so the question here in religious epistemology, at least in the Christian sectors of it, the big issue here is going to be on what we call epistemic justification, so epistemological justification. So in other words, what is your justification for a belief, is essentially what that is. And a bigger question, are you required to have justification? Because most of us operate without some kind of religious or epistemological justification, but most of us tend to think that maybe we're supposed to have it. So let me get more specific.
Take Granny who believes that God exists. And imagine a door to door salesman that comes up, wants to sell her some new shoes or something, but they get into a conversation about their faith and he starts to badger her for being an idiot for believing in these things. Because he'll ask her questions like, "Oh, you believe in God. Well, why? I mean, what evidence do you have?" And let's just say that Granny has not taken a philosophy class and that Granny is ill-equipped to answer such a question. And he's going to say, because she can't muster up cosmological, teleological arguments and such, he's now going to say that she is an irrational person for believing these things. Well says who? That's kind of the question. Are we or are we not required to have evidence and reasons and such for the things that we believe about God? That's a big debate in religious theology. And you've got some people that argue essentially, yes, you are required to have evidence and arguments to support your faith if you're going to be counted as a rational person. And by the way, you have Christians that say that, and you have non-Christians that say that.
So for example, if somebody wanted to read more about this, there's a great book that I'm actually working through right now by a friend of mine and a philosopher that I don't know personally, but he's a deeply respected guy, John Depo and my friend Tyler Dalton McNabb. Debating Christian Religious Epistemology is a great resource. But Depo takes the position called evidentialism. And evidentialism is committed to this statement or this idea that we need to have justifications, rationales, evidences and arguments and things like that to be counted as rational people. And then you got other perspectives that would say, no, you don't have to. And these views would be a view called reformed epistemology, phenomenal conservativism, and some things like that. And essentially what they're saying is no, you don't necessarily have to have them to be rational and believe in those things. And we could get into all sorts of details about those, but those would probably be on just this specific podcast. We might be able to circle back on that or something.
Joe: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Jamie: In short, so Christians really turn their attention a lot of times to the questions of justifications about religious beliefs, and that's a really important discussion in the last 30, 40 years in Christian philosophical circles.
Joe: Fascinating. Yeah, all right. Well, that's awesome. Yeah, that's really great. I'll put those book links or that book link in the description for anybody listening, so that they don't have to pull over and write that down.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. Don't pull over and write that down. It's a great resource to guide you through the discussion.
Joe: Awesome. All right. Well, thanks Jamie.
Jamie: Yeah, man.
Joe: Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe. Again, if you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating in review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it. And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them just go to Jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way, and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.