Procedimiento para el análisis de riesgo en los proyectos de inversión pública

Unlike ‘seeing as’ in mathematics, the possibility o f ‘seeing as’ in religious contexts has received some attention by philosophers. Specifically, John Hick has advanced a theory about the role of aspect perception in religious life. Hick, though largely unsympathetic to Wittgenstein’s views, nevertheless believes that Wittgenstein’s writings on ‘seeing as’ may be used to shed light on the nature of religious faith. This, however, proves to be the full extent of the connection between Hick’s project and that of this chapter. For Hick not only proposes an account of ‘seeing as’ that is substantially at variance with the account I gave in Chapter Two, but his theory also has the effect, I will argue, of undermining the conclusions that he wishes to draw regarding religious faith. Since Hick is the main proponent of a role for seeing aspects in understanding religious faith, I will begin by describing his argument and its difficulties before looking in detail at Wittgenstein’s views on religion.

Hick is interested in Christian faith in the sense that a Christian may be said or may claim to ‘know God by faith’ or ‘know that God is real by faith’, which Hick takes to express an awareness of God. That is. Hick is concerned with faith as a form of cognition or awareness rather than mere propositional belief. Hick also thinks that the former is the correct account of faith, and that this fact has been distorted by theologians who have assimilated faith to a propositional attitude. Faith, Hick believes, should instead be assimilated with perception. I therefore want to explore the possibility that

the cognition of God by faith is more like perceiving something, even perceiving a physical object, that is present before us than it is like believing a statement about some absent object, whether because the statement has been proved to us or because we want to believe it.’ (Hick 1969, p. 21) Hick recognises, of course, that faith is not exactly like perception. People do not generally claim to perceive God as such, and it seems that faith often involves conviction without the support of perceptual evidence. Hick therefore proposes the following: ‘. . . the hypothesis that we want to consider is not that religious faith is sense perception, but that as a form of cognition by acquaintance it is more like sense perception than like propositional belief (1969, pp. 21-2). To this end Hick introduces Wittgenstein’s remarks on seeing aspects.

Hick defines ‘seeing as’ as a term which is correctly applied ‘when that which is objectively there, in the sense of that which affects the retina, can be consciously perceived in two different ways as having two different characters or natures or

meanings or significances’ (1969, pp. 22-3). This is a rather vague definition that admits several questionable cases. For example, it is possible to mistakenly give a meaning to something as a result of inattention or carelessness, though we would not clearly want to classify every such misunderstanding as an aspect of what is perceived. Alternatively, one might draw a conclusion from seeing something that rests on other false

assumptions about objects not presently within one’s visual field. For instance, I might believe that I am seeing a red car only to discover that the unseen half is blue, but it is not clear that I would, upon looking at the red half a second time, see it under a new aspect, even though I would now see it as having a different significance (i.e. as being misleading information regarding the colour of the whole car). Also, Hick only later

introduces (and as a symptom rather than a criterion) what is surely a constitutive part of the phenomenon of seeing an aspect, namely, the attitude or disposition one bears to what one sees. Furthermore, Hick implies that seeing as consists in a combination of perception and interpretation (1969, p. 33), a view to which I detailed objections in Section 2.23.1 will not, however, dwell on these difficulties, most of which could be avoided with a tighter initial definition of ‘seeing as’.

Hick proceeds to introduce a second term, ‘experiencing as’, which is said to be akin to seeing as, except applying to the experience produced by any number of senses. Hick then suggests that religious faith, understood in its cognitive sense, could be similar to ‘experiencing as’, because it is the experience of a particular meaning, character or significance associated with an experienced object which is objectively there, i.e. the physical universe, and there are alternative ‘aspects’, such as atheism (and, presumably, any non-Christian understanding of the world).

. . . the analogy to be explored is with two contrasting ways of experiencing the events of our lives and of human history, on the one hand as purely natural events and on the other hand as mediating the presence and activity of God. For there is a sense in which the religious man and the atheist both live in the same world and another sense in which they live consciously in different worlds. They inhabit the same physical environment and are confronted by the same changes occurring within it. But in its actual concrete character in their respective ‘streams of consciousness’ it has for each a different nature and quality, a different meaning and significance; for one does and the other does not experience life as a continual interaction with the transcendent God. (1969 p. 23)

It is the possibility and basis of such an analogy that is the focus of this chapter, although, as I have indicated, I will part company from Hick at this stage. For Hick proceeds to argue, along with Chisholm, that one experiences objects as such and such

even when one is not acquainted with any alternative aspects, even objects which are familiar and apparently unmistakable.

Hick acknowledges that one does not say, when one sees a fork on the table, ‘Now I see it as a fork’, but he thinks that one does see the fork as a fork, except that in this familiar case the ‘experiencing as’ event is called by the more usual terms

‘recognition’ or ‘identification’. But does one even identify or recognise a fork as a fork? Hick believes that an act of recognition occurs, even though one may not realise it, and gives two reasons. First, ‘if the fork were sufficiently exotic in design I might have occasion to say that I can recognise the thing before me on the table as a fork — that is, a man-made instrument for conveying food into the mouth’ (1969 p. 24). Second, ‘a Stone-Age savage would not be able to recognise [the fork] at all. He might identify it instead as a marvellously shining object which must be full of mana and must not be touched; or as a small but deadly weapon . . . But he would not have the concept of a fork with which to identify it as a fork.’ (1969 p. 24) Thus Hick believes that it is the familiar appearance of the fork and the familiar meaning and purpose of forks in our culture that enable us to recognise forks without difficulty; we do, however, recognise them. That is, we do experience forks as forks. But on this argument any experienced object could be experienced differently for reasons similar to those Hick outlines, and therefore must involve some form of recognition. Thus Hick concludes his analysis by equating ‘experiencing as’ with ‘experiencing’.

Beginning with the phenomenon of ‘experiencing as’ as it occurs in puzzle pictures such as the duck-rabbit picture, Hick seems to have shown, first, that the same phenomenon is common to all cases of identifying and recognising, and, second, that it

pervades all experience. But it should be noted the way in which Hick changes the meanings of these various terms. When Hick talks of recognition as being a case of ‘experiencing as’, he does not mean recognition in the sense in which one can recognise somebody in the street as an old friend, and which does involve a change of aspect similar to that in the duck-rabbit picture. Rather, he means it in the different and highly attenuated sense in which one can recognise somebody in the street as somebody in the street. That is, one recognises (in Hick’s sense) simply by virtue of having a concept of what one is experiencing. But even if Hick is allowed the premise that there is a type of psychological phenomenon whenever one applies a concept to one’s experience, it is clearly not what is generally called the act of recognition, because Hick’s notion of recognition is perfectly consistent with aspect blindness, i.e. the application of a concept to experience can carry on without the appropriate psychological phenomenon of seeing the aspect (cf. 2.23).

When Hick goes on to identify experiencing as with experiencing, he is no longer using the former term with the same sense that he introduced it, indeed, by making this final equation he undermines his original definition. Hick set out with the position that one may correctly speak of ‘experiencing as’ when there are two different characters, natures, meanings or significances associated with what is objectively there. Thus ‘duck’ and ‘rabbit’, for example, are associated with the objective and unchanging duck-rabbit figure. But, given Hick’s conclusion that all experiencing is experiencing as, we cannot say that the ‘duck-rabbit figure’ is the objective and unchanging object, for this is only the expression of an aspect. Somebody, perhaps one of Hick’s Stone-Age savages, who lacked the concepts ‘line’ or ‘shape’ would presumably not recognise our descrip-v of

the figure, so it follows fi'om Hick’s argument that our descrip-v — ‘a figure with these lines and this shape’ — is actually a descrip-a. So on the one hand, all experiencing is experiencing as because any object experienced could be conceived in a different way; but on the other hand, no experiencing can be experiencing as because there is no unchanging ‘objective’ component to experience that is not just another aspect. Hick might appeal to his two reasons for thinking that all experience involves recognition as the basis for his identification of experiencing as with experiencing. But it should be noted that ex hypothesi, experiencing as occurs only when there is a particular object

that can be experienced in more that one way, whereas Hick only establishes with his two examples that (a) one would see a different fork in a different way (if, for example, it were more exotic in design) and (b) a different person would see the fork in a different way. Neither of these points tell us anything about the extent of the phenomenon of seeing aspects in perception, but establish only that as a matter of logical possibility any object may be conceived of in different ways. I take this to be equivalent to the trivial truth that any object falls within the extension of more than one concept.

Perhaps Hick would maintain just the truth of the claim that all experiencing is experiencing as. Hick does assert that ‘all experiencing, involving as it does the activity of recognition, is to be construed as experiencing as’, and ‘there is no doubt that we do continually recognise things’ (1969 p. 27). It is curious that Hick should characterise recognition as a continuous phenomenon: if one sits and watches a stream for ten minutes, one does not continually recognise it as a stream for ten minutes; in fact, might one not just watch the water go by without actually conceptualising it as water going by? But I do not wish to dispute the purely epistemological problem of the role of

concepts in experience. My point is that Hick’s argument is no longer pertinent to the phenomenon of seeing as, with which his argument began. In fact, by identifying experiencing as with experiencing. Hick seemingly fails to notice that he is no longer addressing the question that he earlier introduced, as to the analogy between experience, experiencing as (as in the puzzle cases), and religious faith. Because the first two are assimilated, and Hick consequently takes for granted the similarity of religious faith with experiencing aspects, this leaves only the issue of how Christians interpret events in religious terms, and the question of whether rehgious faith is veridical experiencing (and the latter question. Hick states in his conclusion, he has left unresolved). Consequently, Hick does not properly consider the analogy between religious faith and experiencing as and experiencing, and therefore fails to approach an answer to the fundamental question of what statements of faith mean\ are they, like descrip-a, expressions of perceived internal relationships, or are they more like empirical propositions, reporting the properties of objects?

Before turning to the main question of the meaning of rehgious claims, I will consider a final argument proposed by Hick in support of identifying experiencing with experiencing as. There is, he believes, an insurmountable difficulty in providing an account of faith as analogous to experiencing as, that arises if we do not identify experiencing as with experiencing. For in order to experience A as a B one must be acquainted with Bs, but while we are acquainted with ducks and rabbits, we never have before us unambiguously divine aspects. Hick draws the following conclusion:

Just as it would be impossible for one who had never seen rabbits to see anything as a rabbit, so it must be impossible for us who have never seen

an undeniable act of God, to see an event as an act of God. This seems on the face of it to be a conclusive objection. (1969 p. 27)

Hick equivocates over the matter of whether mere acquaintance of B is necessary to experience something as a B, or whether unambiguous acquaintance is required. But in either case, the claim is surely false. For I can recognise a thing as a B by having had Bs described to me, or from knowing when the criteria for the correct application for the concept ‘B’ are fulfilled, even if I have been given no concrete examples of B. Even if Hick’s argument were correct, identifying experiencing with experiencing as would not avoid the problem, indeed, would make it even worse, for it would follow that no novel experience is possible (and, by implication, no experience is possible because one could not have a first experience, since it would require prior acquaintance with what one is experiencing). Hick believes that this conclusion can be avoided by a reductio ad absurdum:

For although the process of recognising is mysterious, there is no doubt that we do continually recognise things, and further that we can learn to recognise. We have learned, starting from scratch, to identify rabbits and forks and innumerable other kinds of thing. And so there is thus far in principle no difficulty about the claim that we may learn to use the concept ‘act of God’, as we have learned to use other concepts, and acquire the capacity to recognise exemplifying instances. (1969 p. 28)

Thus Hick believes that because it is obvious that we do in fact recognise things, even if the process is mysterious, the argument from prior acquaintance must be false. But we are now surely entitled to wonder why this did not occur to Hick before he decided to equate experiencing with experiencing as. Is it not also obvious that we experience certain objects under different aspects, such as the duck-rabbit? In which case we can

reject the argument from prior acquaintance against experiencing, when experiencing is not identified with experiencing as, for the same reason that Hick rejects it as an

argument against experiencing as, when that phenomenon is identified with experiencing.

3 .2 WITTGENSTEIN AND RELIGION

Wittgenstein lectured on religious belief in the late 1930's, at about the same time he delivered his lectures on free will (believed to be 1939 or mid-1940s, cf PC, pp. 427-8) and mathematics. Wittgenstein does not provide any systematic account of religious belief, but offers a barrage of examples supporting three claims: First, a person who has a religious belief in, say, the Last Judgement (Wittgenstein’s principal example) is not contradicted by someone who denies that there will be a Last Judgement. (LC pp. 53-6) Second, that religious beliefs are not like beliefs in empirical theories or

hypotheses, specifically, religious beliefs are distinct from scientific and historical beliefs, and are not justified by historically or scientifically established facts:

Christianity is not based on historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe!

The historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this . .. because historical proof (the historical proof-game) is irrelevant to belief. (CV p. 32)

Third, a positive claim, that religious beliefs are akin to ‘rules of life’ or form part of a ‘system of reference’ in the terms of which a religious believer makes sense of the world.

As statements of belief and disbelief in the Last Judgement, consider the two following passages.

There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At the same time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21: 25-28)^

The second law of thermodynamics makes it scarcely possible to doubt that the universe is running down, and that ultimately nothing of the slightest interest will be possible anywhere . . . So far as scientific evidence goes, the universe has crawled by slow stages to a somewhat pitiful result on this earth, and is going to crawl by still more pitiful stages to a condition of universal death . . . I see no reason therefore to believe in any sort of God, however vague and however attenuated. (Russell 1957 pp. 24-5)

Wittgenstein can hardly deny that a religious believer who embraces the first passage and somebody sympathetic to Russell's vision will disagree, but he thinks that their disagreement has the form of two people who see things in different ways, or who take