Uncertain Faith Comes to Harvard
Dr. Lara Buchak's recent lecture on "Faith, Commitment, and Belief" at the Safra Center
Faith can be rational, argued Princeton philosophy professor Lara Buchak in a public lecture at Harvard. The lecture, titled “Faith, Commitment, and Belief,” was hosted by the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Presenting her theory on the compatibility of faith and rationality, Buchak examined the role of faith in what we believe and, more importantly, how we act. Her perspective can provide a rational explanation for conservative deference to tradition.
According to Buchak, faith entails commitment to taking risks on a claim and maintaining it against contrary, inconclusive evidence. Buchak pushed against the typical model of rationality, which entails waiting to have all the information before acting. Instead, she argued, there are circumstances in which one rationally maximizes their outcomes by making their decisions irrespective of future, undiscovered information. This is particularly true if the decision-maker already has 1) high credence for their claim, 2) any future counterevidence could be misleading, and 3) there are costs or lost benefits to postponing the decision.
Buchak posited that faith can facilitate long-term projects that begin with incomplete information. For example, she observed that in the biblical story of the Exodus, Moses exercised faith by taking risks on the claim that God would lead the Israelites to the promised land. Moses had incomplete but strong evidence that God’s claim was trustworthy, and there was a cost to postponing his confrontation with Pharaoh. Furthermore, Moses maximized his outcomes by his commitment to maintaining his course of action despite contrary evidence, like Pharoah’s denial of his request. As Buchak explains, “the function of faith is to keep us from being blown about by the changing winds of evidence.”
Buchak’s work can provide a rational account for an intellectually conservative disposition. There is arguably a risk in beginning with the core assumptions of the Western intellectual tradition. Some on the left advocate an agnostic stance toward inherited ideas.
But there is a cost in shelving the Western intellectual tradition until we can fully defend its core assumptions, or in abandoning those core assumptions and restarting whenever apparently contrary evidence surfaces. The probability that inherited wisdom is accurate and the potential benefit of our acting on it both suggest that it is advantageous to assume that our predecessors were generally correct.
Those who attended the lecture may have been disappointed that rather than evaluating the existential questions we typically associate with the term faith, Buchak provided a descriptive model for decision making on matters both religious or mundane.
The audience likely did not walk away from the lecture with changes to their exercise of faith, commitment, or belief. But Buchak’s work does signify a meaningful shift in the academy. With its narrow view of rationality, the post-Enlightenment academy bracketed out meaningful engagement with claims that could not be proved with total certainty. Buchak, however, contends that the scope of rationality can be expanded to justify belief amidst uncertainty.
Yes, sometimes faith can present a more likely picture of the entirety of “what is” than a less likely, and just as - or more - incomplete explanation of “what is” by a thesis provided by the children of science and three centuries of philosophy. Those three centuries have provided not only a bedrock of truth but also a bedrock of faith. Considered as theses, we observe that science and philosophy have led to depredations like the millions murdered in the world wars of the twentieth century, including the gassing of soldiers in WWI, and the conscious murder of those in death camps. It has also led to the modern murderous rise of antisemitism and the postmodern rise of the worship of power, and the negation of all value, except political power … creating a cult of death. Neither has faith as an abstract value, or in its concrete expression, an escape from depredations. Yet faith, as described in the lecture, provides a path towards a better description not only of “what is” but also “what should be” for human beings. The way is a Way. Moses saw that, and took the risks, and suffered for his vision. So must we. We must follow the vision. We must have faith.