Philosophical Good Faith (Or, Boo, Hiss, Moriarty!)

As I tend to do, I’d like to make an argument that I am not necessarily ready to stand by; rather, I’ll throw it out there, and see if it sticks. I’m going to argue that “good faith” is necessary to genuine philosophical dialogue; without “good faith”, genuine philosophical dialogue cannot occur, and there is a direct correlation between the degree of good faith in such a discussion and the value of that discussion itself.

First, I’ll help to define some terms. I choose the word “dialogue” rather than lecture to indicate the method of direct communication between multiple parties, with the intent of communication between the two of them. Let’s leave “philosophical” ambiguous, but state that the goal should be that the dialogue be productive for both individuals, without getting too into what is meant by that (as the meaning of “philosophical” is another post in and of itself). Genuine means that the intentions of the individuals participating are explicitly and directly communicated or understood; there is not a hidden meaning or purpose behind the discussion.

What, then, to make of “good faith”? I’ll introduce the concept as follows: “good faith” refers to the state in which an argument is presented. In order for a state to be considered one of “good faith”, it is necessary (although not necessarily sufficient) that the individual in said state maintain the following three properties: absolute earnestness, justified belief, and coherence between one’s argument, one’s method of communication, and one’s intention. Let’s see if I can expand on those a bit, and how examples hold up.

By “absolute earnestness,” I mean that an individual’s argument must be communicated with conviction, and be willing to affirm that conviction’s relation to the argument. If there are contingencies attached to the conviction, they must be communicated, or else “absolute earnestness” shall not be attained, and an individual shall not be acting in a state of good faith. As an example, assume that I am engaged in what I intend to be a genuine philosophical dialogue with Moriarty, and assume that he proposes, “Atoms do not exist”, to be a justified belief (he might offer rational arguments for this position), and his argument might be internally and externally coherent. However, if his argument is made simply to frustrate his fellow dialoguer, rather than promote investigation and/or edification, his argument is not made in good faith; his argument lacks absolute earnestness. If he were truly acting in good faith, he would work to help either himself or his colleague (or both) reach a productive or edifying philosophical end, rather than simply trying to win an argument. Moriarty, unfortunately, tends not to act in absolute earnestness; he brings in unusual and jarring argument for the sake of confusing or perplexing his fellow philosopher, and doesn’t really intend to serve a philosophical cause with his arguments. Boo, hiss, Moriarty!

By “justified belief”, I mean that one must argue from a standpoint of belief, and that belief cannot be purely arbitrary. First, assume I say, “Murder is necessarily good”; if one stated that and did not believe it, they should not assume it as a premise for an argument. However, imagine that one stated, “Suppose that murder were necessarily good”, “What if murder is necessarily good”, or, “Wouldn’t that entail murder being necessarily good?” Such claims are interrogative, not declarative; they are not stating beliefs, but rather using contra-positives to help explore another’s (hopefully justified) belief. Justification refers to a degree of sufficiency with respect to reasons that one has a belief. Just because Moriarty argues that “Corporations are evil, because they want profit” is justified does not mean that said belief is sufficient (boo, hiss, Moriarty!). What determines sufficiency for justification would be a topic of another post; for now, hopefully my point is clear enough. At any rate, assume that I am dialoguing with Moriarty about whether a true practitioner of Nietzsche’s philosophy would necessarily believe in the existence of God. If Moriarty argued that “Nietzsche proved that God is dead, so God necessarily once existed”, his belief (let’s assume that he actually believes it) would not be justified; even a most basic understanding of Nietzsche’s point with that statement would explicitly affirm that Moriarty missed the point. Moriarty would not have been acting in good faith, because he was citing a vital argument (which he believed to be representative of Nietzsche’s philosophical arguments on the subject) that he did not even have a basic understanding of. Thus, his belief was not justified; he was not acting in coherence with philosophical good faith.

Lastly, good faith requires “coherence between one’s argument, one’s method of communication, and one’s intention”. Since there’s a lot of interplay here, I’ll try to be brief. Suppose that one is trying to communicate a philosophical argument, but doing so at gunpoint. There would not be coherence between the individual’s argument (which was philosophical in nature) and one’s method of communication (which is violent, forceful, and antithetical to the consent and understanding of the gunpointee). One would be acting in good faith if they were arguing, “Give me your money”, and had someone at gunpoint; this element of good faith would be satisfied, even though it might be an immoral act. Similarly, if intends to have a philosophically productive/edifying conversation, and yet their argument or their method of communication were quarrelsome and belligerent, they would not be acting in good faith. Moriarty might try those sort of things, but to him we say, boo, hiss.

So, there you have it. I could go on longer, but it’s a long blog post, already. Zach’s argument for what good faith is. I did not have time to actually argue why it’s necessary, but hopefully the necessity should be implicit in the arguments. If not, it’ll make for a good follow-up post…