PropositionalFaithWhatItIsandWhatItIsNot,.docVIP

PROPOSITIONAL FAITH: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT Daniel Howard-Snyder Dept. of Philosophy, Western Washington University Super Bowl XLV. It’s Super Bowl Sunday, 2011. Pittsburgh’s down to Green Bay, 21-3; it’s near the end of the second quarter. I’m taking in the game at my favorite dive, working on some nachos and a super-sized margarita. I’m a partisan of neither team. I just want to see a good game. The guy sitting next to me, however, is a loyal Pittsburgh fan, as indicated by the grim look on his face. The Packers have possession; they’re moving steadily toward Steelers territory, again. During a break in the action, I strike up a conversation: Me: I was hoping the game would be close. Oh well…another Super Bowl blowout. I think I’ll head home at halftime. Fan: Be patient; be patient. The Steelers’ll win. Me: You can’t be serious. No team has ever overcome more than a 9-point deficit to win a Super Bowl. And look at the Packer’s position: Pittsburgh’s 47 with a first down. Fan: I am serious. I have faith that they’ll win. Me: What? You believe they’re going to win? Fan: No, I don’t believe they’ll win; I said I have faith that they will. My topic is faith. More accurately, my topic is propositional faith. What is propositional faith? At a first approximation, we might answer that it is the psychological attitude picked out by standard uses of the English locution “S has faith that p,” where p takes declarative sentences as instances, as in “He has faith that they’ll win”. Although correct, this answer is not nearly as informative as we might like. Many people say that there is a more informative answer. They say that, at the very least, propositional faith requires propositional belief. More precisely, they say that faith that p requires belief that p or that it must be partly constituted by belief that p. This view is common enough; call it the Common View. I have two main aims in this paper: (i) to exhibit the falsity of the Common View and the p