On Believing: A Reply to Professor R. W.

Sleeper
Author(s): H. H. Price
Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 243-245
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20004658 .
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 Rel. Stud. 2, pp. 243-245.

H. H. PRICE
ProfessorEmeritus,Universityof Oxford

ON BELIEVING-A REPLY TO
PROFESSOR R. W. SLEEPER

I am very grateful to Professor R. W. Sleeper for his critical comments on

my article, as also for the kind way inwhich he has expressed them. I should
now like tomake a few comments on his comments.
(i) May I first say that I have no objection to being metaphysical? I do
not like the word 'metaphysics' very much, and wish that we could find a
less provocative one. But still, I do think that the difference between the
reducible and the irreducible belief-in is a difference which there really is
('metaphysically really', if you like). Moreover, I fully admit that when we
believe inGod we are making a factual claim. It is, of course, a factual claim
of rather a special kind. If it is a fact that there is a supreme Being, 'The
Lord of All', this is not just one fact among others. It is not quite like the
fact that there is a stormy north-westerly wind thismorning. One could not
just give a list of facts and add at the end, 'There is also another fact which
I had forgotten tomention: there is a God'. All the same, this factual claim,
like others, does need to be justified; and how is it to be justified? I am
afraid that the brief hint which I offered elsewhere on this subject is indeed
'not good enough' as it stands (Sleeper p. 79). To be even half good enough,
it needs much more elaboration, and I agree that there is much force in
Mr Gunderson's criticisms.
But in the article on 'Belief "In" and Belief "That"' I was not trying to
offer a justification of faith in God; I was only trying to say what it is like
to have such faith. That task is difficult enough (one thing at a time!), and
a philosopher, especially in these days, feels its difficulty most acutely. We
are confronted with the difference between 'insiders' and 'outsiders'; and
the outsiders are the great majority, especially among intellectual persons.
How are we to convey to them what it is like to be 'inside'? How shall we
make them understand what it is that we are trying to talk about? By
means of metaphysical arguments, e.g. concerning the analogia entis, you
may take, or push, the horse to thewater's edge, but how will you make him
drink?
(2) I hardly dare to discuss the difference between agape and eros (Sleeper
pp. 83-4). But is it really true that agape, unlike eros, 'confers value on its
object' (p. 83) ? It does not feel like that. It feelsmore like discerning than

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244 H. H. PRICE

conferring, when its object is another human being. We are told that love
is blind. So it can be. But it can also open our eyes. It can reveal good
qualities in the loved person which others do not notice, and even good
qualities which are as yet potential rather than actual. It takes love to
discern that another person is 'better than he knows'. Moreover, if a person's
love of God is agape, does this love confer value on its object? That seems a
strange doctrine tome. Here isOne who presents himself to us as 'best and
greatest', and all we have to do is to acknowledge gladly and gratefully
that he is so.
(3) Sleeper, if I follow him correctly, wishes to say that belief is a relation
(rather than an attitude). He also wishes to say that it is an activity, and
therefore prefers to speak of 'believing' rather than 'belief'. But can some
thing be botha relation and an activity? Would his view be better expressed
by saying that the activity consists in putting oneself into a relation and
keeping oneself in it thereafter? He prefers 'relation' to 'attitude' because
he thinks of an attitude as something self-enclosed, lacking in transitivity.
But after all, there is something relational about the concept of 'attitude'
itself. An attitude is an attitude to someone or something. I think Sleeper
uses the word 'relation' here because he ismainly concerned, in this part
of his argument, with belief in another person; and he conceives of this as
being, or involving, a social relation between the believer and the person
believed in. By believing in him, one puts oneself into a social relationship
with him, which continues so long as the belief-in continues. I agree that
one does. But the social relationship may be of a rather tenuous kind. I may
believe in someone I have never met, for instance in the leader of the
political party towhich I belong, and he has never even heard of me. Then,
though I do put myself into some sort of social relation with him, the relation
is not reciprocal. For him I am just a member of the anonymous multitude
of his political supporters. Moreover, what shall we say when the person
believed in does not exist? What of the child who believes in Santa Claus,
in the 'trusting' sense? Perhaps he does have to believe that there is some
kind of social relation between Santa Claus and himself. But in fact there
is no such relation.
(4) Let us now consider Sleeper's view that believing is an activity. 'The
sort of person that one is', he says, 'is constituted by the sort of believing
that one does' (p. 86). I think it is true, and important too, that ifwe wish
to understand another person we should try to find out what he believes in
(in the 'irreducible' sense). His beliefs-that are not irrelevant either. They
throw a good deal of light on his conduct, for instance on the means he
chooses for achieving his ends; they also throw light on his hopes and his
fears, on what surprises him and what he feels doubts about.
But I feel uneasy when it is said that believing is 'something that one
does'. Do I only believe inmy doctor at timeswhen I am actually engaged

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 ON BELIEVING-A REPLY TO PROFESSOR R. W. SLEEPER 245

in thinking of him? For weeks or months on end I do not think about him
at all. It does not follow that I have lostmy belief in him. If believing is an
activity, what becomes of it at such times? The same applies to beliefs-that.
Many of our beliefs-that continue for long periods (half a lifetime perhaps)
though the propositions believed are only thought of occasionally. And do
we really wish to say that we lose all our beliefs ('both in' and 'that') every
night when we go to sleep, and then somehow acquire them again when we
wake up next morning?
These are the considerations which suggest that 'A believes that p' or
'A believes in B' are dispositional statements about A, rather like 'A enjoys
playing cricket' (which is still true of him when he is not actually engaged
in playing cricket). And if we wish to say, instead, that believing is an
activity, 'something which we do', we shall have to suppose that this activity
is very often a subconscious one, going on 'at the back of our minds' at
times when our conscious activities are concerned with something quite
different from the proposition believed or the person believed in.We shall
also have to suppose that when we are asleep or under an anaesthetic all our
believing-activities (whether 'in' or 'that') sink, as itwere, to a subconscious
level, or even an unconscious level, except for the very few which sometimes
play a part in our dreams.

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