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Can an Agnostic Believe in Anything?
By Bruce Barbour - September 2024 (Version 1.0)
This article is my take on agnosticism. It may not represent orthodox agnostic thought.
Agnostics require information that is accepted as Knowledge - how things actually are - to be fully justified, preferably by scientific experimentation and observation or overwhelming reasoning.This requirement gives rise to what may be thought of as one of the fundamental problems with agnosticism. For much information the justification is not sufficient for it to be classed as Knowledge. Consequently the agnostic is often left sitting on the fence for many issues of importance, seemingly not being able to make a decision one way or the other.
For many types of information this does not have any impact - it really doesn't matter if the information is true or false or something in between. However for other information it may be important to take a stance on whether the information is true or false even if that knowledge or stance is not fully justified.
However this should not mean that anything can be believed. In this category what we choose to believe should still have a certain level of veracity, to be backed to an extent by reasoned argument or observation even if it is not justified to the level of certainty that is necessary for it to be classed as Knowledge. What I want to do in this article is to examine what is the acceptable basis for this type of knowledge, philosophical stance or belief.
I will tackle this question in a number of different ways. Firstly I will investigate the difference between Knowledge and belief. The second approach will be to consider what lessons can be learnt from existentialism. I will also look at what the methods of science can teach us.
Knowledge and Belief
The first approach to the question in the article title lies in the difference between Knowledge and belief.| Venn
Diagram of the Classical Understanding of Knowledge - Justified True Belief  |
| Diagram
from Wikipedia - Creative Commons An "agnostic belief" would sit in the yellow area for justified true belief (Knowledge) or in the purple area for partially justified true belief or in the blue area for mistakenly justified belief (hopefully rarer). |
Belief means the mental acceptance of the truth of the information. A belief does not need to be justified - but it can be. The definition "the mental acceptance of the truth" allows there to be "mental acceptance" that some information is true without it necessarily being true. It is only mental acceptance of truth rather than absolute truth. Mentally, a person might be mistaken.
Agnosticism - from the Greek words "ag" meaning without and "gnosis" meaning knowledge - is about what can be accepted as Knowledge. For information to be accepted as Knowledge it needs all three parts - justification, truth and belief - not just belief.
The question is:- can an agnostic have a belief without requiring it to be Knowledge?
The answer to that is a qualified Yes. The qualifications are that the agnostic acknowledges that:
- the information is a belief rather than Knowledge; and
- the belief is not to be treated as certainty.
It is easier to understand agnostic atheism. Many people claim that agnostics are atheists by definition - they do not believe in a god. But the more correct understanding is that the agnostic does not Know whether there is a god or whether there is not a god - for the agnostic there is no certainty on this issue. But a belief does not require certainty, it does not necessarily require full justification or truth. Therefore an agnostic atheist position would be they do not Know whether there is a god and also believe there is not a god.
The agnostic theist position would be they do not Know whether there is a god but believe there is a god.
The existence of these two positions show that an agnostic can hold an unjustified or not fully justified belief. They show that agnostics can hold mistaken beliefs as one of atheism or theism must be wrong. They also show the difference between Knowing and believing.
Ideally for a belief to be adopted there should be a decent amount of reasoning and justification to support the belief, even if the level of that justification/reasoning is not sufficient for the information to be classed as Knowledge. But perhaps even this isn't an absolute requirement. This will be discussed further later in the article after discussing what existentialism can teach us.
Lessons from Existentialism
There are two main lessons that can be taken from existentialism.The first is that the Universe has not to the present revealed to humanity whether it has any meaning or purpose. And is unlikely to in the future. Consequently it is up to each person to decide what is the meaning or purpose or indeed that there is no meaning or purpose. To try to reach a conclusion about this a person can study and learn as much as they can and use their reasoning abilities. But ultimately they are going to be unsuccessful in coming to a definitive answer that will satisfy everybody and, if they are truthful, that will 100% prove to themself the veracity of their answer - without taking a leap of faith.
However this does not mean that it is not worthwhile searching for meaning. Either the Universe has a meaning or purpose or it has not. If it has a meaning or purpose then it has a specific meaning or purpose. There is an answer, it is just that it is not given to humanity. If a person uses their reasoning ability to come to what they think is a meaning then it is possible that they select the right meaning. The likelihood may still be small but it will be higher than for those who do not investigate and reason an answer.
The second main lesson from existentialism is that human beings are inherently free and as such they can make, and then be responsible for, all their choices in life, including determining their own morality, way of life and meaning, if any.
It may be thought that Existentialism is intrinsically atheistic because many of it's most well known proponents were atheists (e.g. Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus - though Camus did not like the label of existentialist, preferring absurdist. And Nietzsche lived prior to the term being defined). However this is a misunderstanding of existentialism. Existentialism is about free choice. In a world where it is impossible to know with certainty many things, existentialism says "you have a choice. You are responsible for deciding what to believe, using whatever method you like. Or indeed not to believe anything. You are 100% free." Existentialism does not say your beliefs have to be justified.
Consequently there have been, and still are, various philosophers who have either been described by others or have described themselves as "Christian existentialists". Kierkegaard is widely acknowledged as the "first existentialist". Kierkegaard acknowledged that there was a deficit of proof and reasoning for a belief in the Christian God. But, despite this lack of definitive reasoning and proof he advocated a "leap of faith" (though he never actually used that conjunction of words) to a belief in the Christian God, a belief beyond reason and proof. Beyond Knowledge. In other words he used his freedom and made a choice to believe with absolute mental certainty, despite the lack of evidence. He saw this as a way to resolve the questions of existence and the problem of nihilism.
Many other existentialists do the same thing. When confronted with a Universe that does not provide humanity with a reason for, and meaning in, its own and our existence then the existentialist use their freedom and choice to decide their own meaning and reason, or to embrace the idea that there is no meaning or reason. The basis of that decision is not justified Knowledge, though it may have some basis for acceptance.
I suggest that the freedom to choose, the existential choice, is available to everyone. The lessons from existentialism is that people are free to believe whatever they want to believe. This includes agnostics who are after all a subset of the set of all people.
While this section has concentrated on meaning it also applies to beliefs in other areas.
Lessons from the Methods of Science
The differences between Knowledge and belief suggests that an agnostic could have beliefs that have insufficient justification to be classed as Knowledge. Existentialism confirms that humans are free to have whatever belief they choose. However does this mean an agnostic can believe anything if the agnostic wants to remain true to that philosophical method and that approach to life? What restrictions should an agnostic place on the beliefs that they could hold?For this I suggest looking to the methods of science for an appropriate approach. The scientific method requires the formulation of an hypothesis based on reason and observation, then through a process of practical experimentation to either prove or disprove the hypothesis. If confirmed, and confirmed a number of times by others also performing the experiment or similar experiments, the hypothesis become the accepted scientific theory. For practical reasons this becomes Knowledge, though science is (or should) always be ready to modify or reject the theory on the basis of further experimentation or observation.
I suggest the agnostic if they want to adopts a belief can adopt them as what I call a "working hypothesis". The circumstances where a working hypothesis could be adopted are for ideas where the agnostic has determined that there is a reasonable level of reasoning and/or scientific proof or observation, though not sufficient for the hypothesis to be classed as Knowledge.
The other requirement is that the idea is in an area where it is judged to be important by the person to make progress. It is of no use to adopt a working hypothesis unless that hypothesis is in an area of knowledge or philosophy that is important to the person. If the person is not going to do anything with the knowledge there is no point adopting it as a working hypothesis. It might as well stay as an uncertain idea.
Accepting an idea as a working hypothesis allows action and development in accordance with the idea until such time as that idea is shown to be incorrect or another idea is shown to be more likely. There will still be doubt. There will still be the acknowledgement that the idea could be wrong. Effectively the agnostic is saying:
"This is the best idea that the
current scientific evidence and/or my reasoning process,
observations and learnings has come up with at present. I
acknowledge there is not sufficient proof and/or reasoning for it
to be classed as Knowledge and I am willing to modify or drop the
working hypothesis, and any ideas built upon it, if further
contradicting evidence is found. But it is my opinion that the
working hypothesis is the most likely idea at this point in time.
I will use this working hypothesis until it is either disproved or
some better idea comes up."
Consequently progress can be made past the uncertainty to investigate where the idea leads.
One area where I have done this is for free will. I have acknowledged that the justification for free will is less than necessary for it to be classed as Knowledge. It is possible that human determinism could be correct. In the article "Freewill and Determinism" I assigned it a subjective probability of 80%. By doing that I say that in my opinion free will is the most likely explanation of how humans think and behave. It is effectively my working hypothesis.
The probability I assigned in the free will case was subjective - my opinion only. In this case I had sufficiently thought through the arguments from both sides to enable me to make that assessment. And ideally that should be the case. However there may well be other circumstances when the analysis is not so considered. Therefore any subjective probability assigned may be nearly meaningless. I propose that it is not necessary to assign a subjective probability in all cases in order to adopt an idea as a working hypothesis provided it is thought that there is a reasonable argument for the idea and the arguments against the idea are weak.
Summary
The answer to the titular question is Yes - you can have beliefs if you are an agnostic. But you can't believe in just anything. The qualifications for agnostic belief are that the agnostic must acknowledge that:- the information is a belief rather than Knowledge; and
- the belief is not treated as certainty.
