Mike Tolliver (00:00)
you of one mind or two? And what difference does that make for things like faith in God? Join me this week as I talk with Dr. Joshua Mugg, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Park University, about his new book, From Human Reasoning to Belief. He details an empirical account of belief that helps us make sense of our everyday experiences, as well as those tricky passages in the Bible like, I believe, Lord, help my unbelief. We talk about his account.
making better sense of our doubts, anxieties, and even the kind of faith that we’re gonna enjoy when Jesus returns. So if you like what we do here at the Center for Hebraic Thought and the Biblical Mind podcast, please go ahead and like and subscribe. Or you could leave us that coveted five-star review. Or, you know, if you’re feeling generous, really generous, you could support us directly by going to thebiblicalmind.org slash give. But now
Onto the show.
Josh Mugg (01:02)
My name is Josh Mugg. I’m a professor of philosophy at Park University. Been here for for eight years. This is year year number eight. here in Kansas City, Missouri. born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri.
really came up under the pastorage of of folks who were at Covenant Seminary, came out of Covenant Seminary and was encouraged to pretty at a pretty young age to think reflectively about my my theology and ended up graduating high school a year early because I I was at public school. I thought what I really want to study is theology. So I I went off to a Christian school, Missouri Baptist University, to st disc discover theology and study that.
very quickly realized that the questions that I actually had were not theological in nature. I was interested in the question, how can we know things? what can we know? What is really the fundamental nature of of reality? And it’s not that theology doesn’t have things to say about that, but I remember picking up our systematic theology book and our first unit was a a methodology section. How can we know anything at all? But specifically how can we know anything in theology?
And I found the answers that were offered not satisfying. To to put it to put it mildly. And I dialogued with with my professors and they said, you’re asking really good questions, but the questions you’re asking are no longer in theology proper. You are asking
questions that are epistemic in nature. And you probably should end up going and doing philosophy. And that’s not to say that you’re doing something wrong. It’s just that you have a bit of different interests.
So I ended up pursuing graduate school degrees in in philosophy. and at the time I was really interested in trying to figure out what is the most basic question, what is the first question that we need to get at in an inquiry. and I thought that the first question we have to get at is how can we know anything? and so but then how can we know anything? Well, that truly is going to depend upon what our
What our minds are like. So that led me then to philosophy of mind and metaphysics. So I’m like, okay, actually I’m gonna do philosophy of mind and metaphysics. then it turned out, well, surely things in science have something to say about the nature of our mind and how we reason, and how we reason has something to do with we know things. So now I’m doing philosophy of science. so you can see pretty quickly here, I’ve I’ve actually ended up deciding that there is no one place to start. there’s no
one question that’s going to be the foundation of every other question. We sort of have to do bits and pieces of it all together and really in in a community. so I ended up writing a a dissertation in philosophy of cognitive science, criticism of dual process theory, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. and I’d really consider myself at this point I’m a I’m a philosopher of mind, philosopher of psychology, and a philosopher of religion. Those are the three areas that I I consistently
Publish in and I find myself going back to thinking about over and over again what is the mind, is the human person physical or non-physical or some kind of hybrid of that? How is it that we reason? what is belief? What is faith? is one a subset of the other? Are they completely separate? Are they distinct but related? These are the sorts of questions that I find myself thinking about.
Mike Tolliver (04:24)
Okay. Well, you know, since you
brought it up, what is dual process theory and why do you critique it?
Josh Mugg (04:31)
Dual process theory is an empirical account of human reasoning and the human mind. it says that the human mind is divided in two. On the one hand, there is fast, automatic, intuitive processing, sometimes they call this type one processing. And then there’s slow, effortful, rational, reflective processing, and that’s sometimes called type two processing.
And this is a view that’s kind of captured the imagination. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a popular level book. So if you want
Mike Tolliver (05:02)
I was just gonna ask. Yeah.
Josh Mugg (05:05)
a poster child for dual process theory, that’s that’s him. Nobel Prize winner for his work showing that humans don’t always reason in accordance with our norms of rationality. But then he had, well, why is it that we don’t always reason in accordance with the norms of rationality? His answer is: well, the norms of rationality, it’s typically
Type two, that reflective processing that gets it right. But oftentimes that type one processing gets it gets it wrong. even more popularized in like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, for example. this is this is one of the big dogs out there for an empirical account of how it is that humans reason. And I started my dissertation. The plan was I’m gonna provide a philosophical account of belief that’s empirically informed, and I need to look at the best offer.
Of an empirical account we have on hand, and that looked like dual process theory. So the plan was I’m going to accept dual process theory, maybe you know, tweak it a little bit, and then I’m going to apply it to how we should understand belief. And very quickly I realized this dual process theory stuff is actually just an absolute mess. I’m not going to be able to adopt it. I think it’s false. And so and so I ended up writing a dissertation. I my hope was to.
Provide an empirical account of human reasoning that’s an alternative to dual process theory, and then apply it to belief. on the prospectus floor, two of the the readers said there’s no way you can do all this in a dissertation. So you’re just gonna do a the first two bits, critique of dual process theory, provide your own alternative, and then later on in your career when you write your first book, you can do that last bit about the the nature of belief.
and so that’s that’s where I am now. That’s that’s the book that just came out.
Mike Tolliver (06:56)
The nature of belief.
Josh Mugg (06:59)
Yeah, from human reasoning to belief. So
Mike Tolliver (07:02)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (07:02)
critique of dual process theory, an alternative to dual process theory, and then implications for what a belief is.
Mike Tolliver (07:09)
So then y you would expect people to read both to get a full sense of what you’re doing?
Josh Mugg (07:16)
no. The book just is all of all of that. There’s three portions to the book. You’re going to get a a criticism of dual process theory. You’ll get my alternative to dual process theory and you’ll get implications for the nature of belief.
Mike Tolliver (07:30)
Okay, good. Good. so then you know, you you you talked about what dual process theory is. What is your alternative?
Josh Mugg (07:41)
Yeah, so rather than thinking of there being two processes, it’s either type one or type two, you’ll notice that I distinguish those using a whole bunch of properties. Fast, slow. Now just a second, is fast and slow, is that an either or?
Mike Tolliver (07:56)
Hm. I mean, yeah. It’s not light switch.
Josh Mugg (07:57)
It’s it’s a gradation, right? Okay.
No, no, it’s not. What about automatic controlled? Is that an either or or is it more like a gradation?
Mike Tolliver (08:10)
Automatic or controlled, is that what you said?
Josh Mugg (08:12)
Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (08:16)
I guess I’m tempted to say it’s like a light switch. It’s either automatic or controlled, but it sounds like maybe it’s not.
Josh Mugg (08:24)
Yeah, you well one process might have bits of it that are automatic and bits of it that are that are controlled, and when you zoom out when you have to start saying, Well it’s either or you run into problems.
Mike Tolliver (08:35)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (08:35)
So there might be processes that we have that are more controlled versus less controlled. So I can decide something like raising and lowering my hand right now. Right? That seems to be very th on the h high, high controlled side. There’s something like the beating of my heart.
Which is on the very, very far automatic side. But there’s other cases that seem in between, like I can hold my breath at least for for a while until I pass out, at which point, if everything’s functioning well, I’ll start breathing again. Yeah, that seems like
Mike Tolliver (09:06)
Yeah.
Josh Mugg (09:06)
an interesting sort of case, right? and so we’re familiar with this in the field of biology, but I think that we can also do something in the field of of cognitive science as well, and think of certain cognitive processes as automatic.
versus other ones as as somewhat controlled. So that’s a gradation as well. So here’s the idea. Take all those properties on the dual process theory, fast and slow, automatic, controlled, inductive versus deductive, conscious versus unconscious. I think that’s a gradation as well. Imagine each of those as a slide or a switch on a big old soundboard. So you’re a DJ.
And you’ve got this big old soundboard, but rather than having you know bass and treble and mid, you have fast, slow, automatic, controlled, conscious, unconscious. Some kind of reasoning process problem presents itself to you and you deliberate and the output depends upon where those slides and switches are are set. You don’t have to accept the output though. You can be like, huh, that’s a weird response. That’s a weird response, or I don’t like that response. And you can then rerun the reasoning process.
And you can rerun the reasoning process adjusting those slides and switches as you go. I’m gonna do it in a more controlled way. I’m gonna do this in a more conscious way. I’m gonna change the way the mode of operation I’m I’m I’m using. Rather than testing for validity using my just okay, if I imagine those two premises are true, does the conclusion have to be true? That’s one way of testing validity. You can do it with Venn diagrams, you can do it pictorally, right? These are different modes of operation. you can just do it a
Okay, what what feels right to me in this in this case? There’s lots of modes of operation that you can you can use to test. So you can rerun that reasoning process until you get to a point that you say, Yeah, I’m I’m happy with that that final state. The more and more you rerun those processes, the more controlled that process is. you can also recruit other other beliefs along the way. so here’s an example that I I use in the book. suppose I’m on a train.
And the train is running late and it’s late in the evening. And I realize I’ve got a connection to make. Now this may have actually happened. There’s a connection to make, and I start to get a little anxious. Okay, what if I don’t make my connection? I don’t know anyone in this middling city that I’m in between. I’ve got a place to stay on the far end, but not in the middle place. my cell phone battery’s even running a little bit low. Okay, what am I what am I gonna do? Am I gonna be late?
And so maybe initially I just I think I’m gonna I’m running late, I’m gonna be late for my connection, I’m gonna miss my connection.
But I might then rerun that process. I might think, well let’s actually do this in a more mathematically rigorous way. Let’s go ahead and figure out what time is it now. How much time do I have until I get there? Five minutes to find the next platform. And find out okay, actually I’ll have like two minutes to spare, okay? Maybe. Then I might I might reason inductively. Now wait a second. I’m looking around here, there’s other people on this train. I bet other people are gonna be in the same situation I am.
And it’d be kind of weird if the train company decided to just keep everything running exactly on time if this is the last train out for that other city. and I see other people kind of checking their phones, I’m like, okay, maybe they’ll actually hold back the train. so I’m reasoning kind of inductively or abductively here, best explanation kind of style. So these are just different styles of argument that I can run through over and over again. As in and and I’m recruiting other doxastic states, other belief states into this process as well.
I’ve even gathering more information as I’m looking around and noticing that other people are looking at their phones as well. This is a way in which I can exercise a certain kind of control over what it is that I believe. So what I believe I think is not entirely go ahead.
Mike Tolliver (13:01)
Okay. Now
let me let me jump in here because you you’ve got me asking a question I didn’t expect coming in. So for someone who is feeling anxious about something, would you say that they are constantly rerunning this with different, you know, dials on the the cognitive board there? Or can can you
Josh Mugg (13:23)
Mm, mm-hmm.
Mike Tolliver (13:25)
talk about that maybe just at at first blush? I don’t know if you’re actually even doing anything
With anxiety here, but
Josh Mugg (13:33)
Yeah, so the the chapter on emotion is the bit that got cut. I didn’t have time to go into it.
Mike Tolliver (13:39)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (13:41)
I I do wanna say that I’m not going to contrast emotion with reasoning. there are some dual process theorists, especially on the social side and in moral psychology, who will say type one processing is emotional and type two is rational. So they pit emotion versus reasoning. Joshua Green and Jonathan Hyatt are two prime examples.
who do exactly this. It’s emotion versus reasoning. You know, your gut versus your brain, your heart versus your head.
I think that is a ridiculous dichotomy. I I think that our emotions and our reasoning are are very much intertwined, so much so that I I don’t want to put emotion even as a slider switch on the soundboard. I think that emotion is
Mike Tolliver (14:28)
Sure.
Josh Mugg (14:29)
prob mo emotion is probably one of those portions that determines whether we rerun and how we rerun that reasoning process.
And so someone who’s someone who’s anxious, it it’s gonna depend upon the individual and depend upon the specific case. So I don’t think that one emotion does the same thing every time for every individual in every case. but what may be happening is that an anxious individual is rerunning the reasoning process, but in the same way, each time. And so they’re stuck in a feedback loop might be one possibility.
Mike Tolliver (15:01)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (15:03)
So I I mean I will say something like cognitive behavioral therapy, the idea is to try to get subjects out of that.
that feedback loop and out of that thinking of it in the same way that’s a bad way of thinking about it and showing them there are other ways to to be thinking about this that might be
Mike Tolliver (15:19)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (15:20)
more accurate actually.
Mike Tolliver (15:22)
Gotcha. Okay. No, I I appreciate you letting me derail you there. now I do know in the book you have tied some of what you’re doing here to the story in the Gospel of Mark. the you know, the father asking Jesus for a miracle, I believe, Lord, help my unbelief. how how is how is that interacting with your your soundboard here? What’s going on there?
Josh Mugg (15:50)
Right. So that’s in a way the the the initial problem that got me kicked off on this whole thing years and years ago.
So when the father says, I believe, help my own belief, that sounds like a straight up contradictory, right?
You either do believe or you don’t believe. maybe you maybe you’re agnostic. You just have no belief one way or the other. At least that’s one way of understanding agnosticism. But to say I both believe and I don’t believe, this sounds like we we call this Moore’s paradox. If I said to you, it’s raining outside, but I don’t believe it’s raining outside.
Mike Tolliver (16:31)
Right.
Josh Mugg (16:32)
That seems like a c that sounds like a contradiction. And and the
so this is G.E. Moore who’s writing in the twentieth century, but it seems like we have something like this going on back here in in in the Gospel of Mark two thousand years ago. And I think that there’s something that kind of resonates with a lot of people with that cry, I believe, help thou my unbelief. So what’s going on in there? and I think that actually cognitive science can help us understand what might be going on in cases like this. so some philosophers are going to say, well really they are just agnostic
Some are going to say really they don’t believe and they also don’t not believe. They in between believe. This is a philosopher by the name of Eric Schwitzkebel. He says that really they kind of they belief is more of a spectrum rather than an either or. Other philosophers who think that that belief is a kind of representation end up saying, well, he doesn’t believe, but he does have faith. So you can have faith without belief.
This is a a view advocated by people like Daniel Howard Snyder and a number of other philosophers who call themselves non-doxasticists about about faith. I reject both of those or all three of those views. And the one that I go in for is a view called fragmentation of belief. And this is a view that rather than having one storage system for all of our beliefs, one massive web of belief, we actually have distinct fragments of belief, distinct webs of belief. So I might have
One when I am when I’m operating in the context of washing my dishes and doing my my cooking. That might be one fragment of of belief. I might have a different one when I’m reading a biology textbook. these are gonna be distinct fragments of of belief. And I might actually have taxonomies that are incongruent between those two.
So there’s that that old question of whether a a tomato is a is a vegetable or a fruit. And scientifically it’s it’s a fruit, not a vegetable. but it might be that within the context of the kitchen, it’s perfectly fine to think of it as a as a vegetable in instead. So as I’m making my my delicious gazpacho this morning, I think, yeah, I’m gonna get all my vegetables out. I found myself thinking that. And I’m grabbing
cucumber, which I guess I guess cucumber is also a also technically a fruit.
Mike Tolliver (19:07)
Is that true?
Josh Mugg (19:09)
I I don’t I’m not I think it has to do with like where the seeds are. If like the seeds are inside, then then it’s yeah, yeah. I know
Mike Tolliver (19:13)
Or if it grows on a vine or yes. I I don’t know. I don’t know.
Josh Mugg (19:17)
that yeah. Any anyway the the way that I’m gonna do a taxonomy for the sake of cooking might be different than the way I’m gonna ta do a taxonomy for the sake of
biology. And this is actually
Mike Tolliver (19:32)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (19:32)
totally fine. And actually, human cognition, it seems, is actually precisely like that. So human human cognition isn’t one giant web of belief for all of our beliefs. Rather we have distinct fragments for different domains of inquiry. And I think that in this case the the father is actually somewhat aware of the fact that he has in one fragment
token to the belief Jesus can heal my son. And in another fragment he has token the belief Jesus can’t heal my son. He’s aware of these two distinct beliefs.
Mike Tolliver (20:13)
Fascinating. I’m so I’m I’m thinking this might I I don’t know if y you were going here intentionally, but we just did a podcast interviewing somebody about the topic of deconstruction. And he very helpfully, I thought, sort of differentiated between two kinds of deconstruction. The the
person that’s out there loudly proclaim pro proclaiming that they are deconstructing is likely the one that’s using that as an excuse to, you know.
either gain attention or just call attention to the fact that they have rejected some previous set of beliefs. But that the people who are kind of quietly in the process of deconstructing are just actually holding up these things that they’ve been given to the the the light of question and are probing those beliefs, sort of in this it sounds like what you’re saying, I I believe, but help my unbelief. Like where, where is the
you know you know, the nature of of the deconstruction there. So now y am I remembering correctly sorry, were you gonna say?
Josh Mugg (21:17)
Yeah. Yeah,
so and just just on that, it it may well be that part of the funny thing, I mean ideally you want all of your beliefs to actually cohere with one another. If your beliefs are contradictory,
you are guaranteed to be wrong somewhere. So that’s that’s that’s the main reason that you probably want your beliefs to be congruent. And especially, you know, if I get some evidence that seems ooh, wow, that’s really a good reason for me to reject that thing and
you don’t, you just hold on to it, it becomes increasingly difficult to to track track reality. so it’s a good I think it’s generally a good idea to try to get these things to be to be congruent. and I think a lot of I think a lot of times religion actually is a domain in which we have kind of fragments for that, for the domain of religion or even the domain of the space of church.
And then we have a distinct fragment for operating in other sorts of cases. And so then when you try to bring those two things together and you do find things that are incongruent, you have different ways to go. So I’ve I’ve known plenty of people who as they put it together, they say, Okay, this is how I operate in the normal world. It’s actually incongruent with all this stuff I get in religion. I’m gonna truck the religion bit and make it all congruent. That’s a way to go.
another way to go is actually I’m going to alter the way that I live my life or the way I conduct myself, or to change a bit of both. I’ve actually known some some sort of cases where you have individuals who see I I really like these rather hard-nosed conservative sort of principles on the on the one hand, and those seem incompatible with these teachings of Jesus.
So I guess I’ll reject the teachings of Jesus and hit not for that. seems to be less common in in in society that people go that way, but those are ways to go as as well. So all that to say, I I do think that oftentimes people do operate with distinct fragments, one within the domain of religion and one within some other domains.
Mike Tolliver (23:31)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (23:32)
yeah.
Mike Tolliver (23:33)
Now, yeah, as you’re talking about the the different domains, I’m curious about even within the same domain. And so here I’m thinking of the book grounded theology came out earlier this year. We did an interview with Libby Backfish and Cynthia Schaefer Elliott, who wrote that. And one of the things that they highlight is that the archaeological evidence of the household from ancient Israel shows
that they’re worshiping Yahweh right alongside, you know, a couple other gods. And it seems like in some ways there’s this aspect of like hedging bets.
Josh Mugg (24:14)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Tolliver (24:15)
or like this God is for this and this god is for that. So fertility, for instance, was one of the big things that that seems to have been worshipped right alongside. And so you have ideal Israel
that gets communicated in scripture, like have no other gods before me, but then actual Israel seems to have a lot of other gods before me. and and so that kind of feels like it’s all in the same fragment though, doesn’t it? Or talk about that.
Josh Mugg (24:43)
Yeah,
yeah, that’s that’s probably right. So I don’t think that domains are divided up in
They need not to be super super tidy. And although you might think, okay, there’s domain of religion, domain of science, these two actually there’s there’s overlap between those two. religion makes scientific claims. science might be actually informed by certain norms, religion has certain norms. you can have like partially overlapping fragments. And there’s in in cognitive science we actually have something called the domain problem. because we oftentimes think, well, there are
certain capacities we have a capacity for language. Well what’s the length what’s the domain of language? and how is ex ac exactly is it distinct from say the domain of mathematics. And although prima facie that seems like okay those are two nice, neat, tidy categories, when you delve down in it, it it turns out that they they might be actually a bit more hard to to parse out. And it also depends upon how fine grained you want to go. So I can go with the domain of religion, super super broad category.
You can begin to parse that domain down more. Domain of religion with regard to fertility. Domain of religion
Mike Tolliver (26:03)
Okay.
Josh Mugg (26:04)
with regard to eating, domain of religion with regard to my social interactions with with other individuals, social interactions with my in-group, social interactions with my out group. so you can actually barrel down these domains narrower and narrier.
I don’t have a view on on how exactly that problem gets solved, except to say that it seems somehow cognitively we do solve it. Because every time I think of an issue, every time I think of an issue, I don’t have to bring to bear every belief that I have. I only
Mike Tolliver (26:41)
Right.
Josh Mugg (26:42)
bring to bear I only bring to bear certain issues, and it has to do with the domain of inquiry.
Mike Tolliver (26:49)
Interesting. So now you now you got me thinking about why we believe some things with so little evidence where we believe some things or w the burden of proof for other things is significantly high. And I’m thinking here specifically of things like conspiracy theories. what how how would that fit in with what you’re doing here?
Josh Mugg (27:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, interesting.
So let I’ll just get a definition out there of what I think a conspiracy theory is. I think of conspiracy theories as theories that are unfalsifiable because any evidence you give against it just ends up being evidence that somebody planted that evidence.
Mike Tolliver (27:37)
Mm.
Josh Mugg (27:38)
Right? That’s how I think of conspiracy theories. And so you’re kind of insulated from any any objection, any counter evidence coming in.
Once you’re in the conspiracy theory, it’s easy to see why it’s very hard to get out of the conspiracy theory. Because anytime you give evidence,
Mike Tolliver (27:56)
Okay, sure.
Josh Mugg (27:57)
you know, if if my son’s watching the X Files right now, so I’m rewatching much of it with him. So an any time you give Mulder some evidence that it seems actually it’s not the little green men, you’ll say, but it’s because the government planted the evidence that it’s not little green little green men. So I’m not sure if my theory has anything in particular
to say about conspiracy theories. I think that any any account of how it is we reason is gonna have to make sense is is going to have to make sense of of the fact that that is the the structure of a of a conspiracy theory.
Mike Tolliver (28:35)
Okay.
Okay. Well, so then are there any other places kind of in we’ll we’ll say current practice for Christians that your work would resource them to to handle well? Is there anything that you think you you see your work being particularly beneficial for?
Josh Mugg (28:58)
I think there is a functional acceptance of something like dual process theory in in popular audiences. So when I talk about dual process theory initially, head versus heart, emotion versus reasoning, fast versus slow, intuitive versus reflective, people generally say, I can I can make I can understand that, I can get that. And they can usually point to examples in their own life. yeah, I I f especially the emotion versus reasoning sort of case.
I I felt afraid even though I knew that there was no need to be. you know, walking over the Grand Canyon, there they have a glass floor, and you you look down, you know, you know, you believe so firmly that you are safe. And yet you look down and you are terrified. I won’t I won’t walk out on the glass floor. I’m I’m too scared of heights to to do that. Even though I
Mike Tolliver (29:51)
Sure.
Josh Mugg (29:52)
if you asked me, you know, do you believe that that’s gonna sport? Absolutely. if you put carpet
over that glass, I will walk out on it. Gladly. That would be fine. Do I believe that the carpet is is something else important? No, absolutely not. so I can I I can even feel that that that that pull towards dual process theory. However, this hard dichotomy between emotion on the one hand and reasoning on the other, I think is actually epistemically dangerous. Because I think that what our emotions do in part, I I don’t say this in the book.
But I think what our emotions are doing in in part is actually
giving us some epistemic information. So it’s it’s telling us that something is on or or off. So if one says, this this doesn’t this doesn’t feel right, I wouldn’t say therefore just accept that it’s not right, but rather engage in the inquiry. reflect on that. What are what are your reasons for it? dive deeper into that. pay attention to what your emotional states are and engage in that rerunning of the reasoning process.
And so I think dual pr dual process theorists can end up pigeonholing us in that kind of dualism of emotion versus reasoning, depending upon your version. I think my alternative gives us I think a healthier way to see the integration of reasoning within emotion and emotion within reasoning.
Mike Tolliver (31:21)
Do you feel like that is more biblically faithful in the way that the Bible talks about human persons and the way that they think and feel and operate and believe and not believe?
Josh Mugg (31:36)
My method within this book is to stick with the cognitive science. So a someone who’s totally a naturalist could read this book and I I would hope could follow the conclusion all the way to the to the end.
My understanding of emotions in in the Bible come especially from from the Psalms and that seems to me that I I see the psalmists oftentimes working through their emotions. Sometimes where they the emotion is is kind of in the wrong actually and they seem to work themselves through that process. Other times they’re they’re angry or they’re sad and gosh, you know, they are their right to be so.
sometimes anger is the kind of thing that fuels us on towards correcting injustice. So Myisha Cherry is a philosopher who’s advocated for for that, I think to to great effect. but it can also be a a sort of fire that that consumes us. and I it seems that you know both can be the case. And so I think the idea that emotion should be the kind of thing that should be investigated and lead us to rerun certain
reasoning processes or sometimes actually stop the reasoning process as well. by the way. Some some emotions are going to I think have a a ceasing sort of function for for reasoning process as well.
Mike Tolliver (33:02)
So I’m gonna ask you what may be an unfair question, and I want you to punt if you don’t want to answer, that’s fine. but I’m curious if if you think in in the eschaton, you know, Jesus comes back, the resurrection of the dead, right? We are you know living here in his reign forever, right?
Josh Mugg (33:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Tolliver (33:24)
Does I believe help my unbelief persist?
Josh Mugg (33:30)
So I believe Paul says faith, hope, and love, but only love remains. Faith and hope go away. And I think the reason why hope goes away is because you I I can’t hope that will that I will do a podcast interview with you, Mike. Cause here we are doing it, right? I I got the thing.
Mike Tolliver (33:51)
Yeah.
Josh Mugg (33:53)
like it’s not that it would be irrational for me to hope for that. It’s just I I can’t hope for it.
It’s not possible because we’ve done it, right? faith is but faith is like that too. If I am absolutely certain of something, then it seems I I can’t have faith. faith precludes at least subjective certainty. And so faith that Jesus is Lord, one can’t have faith that Jesus is Lord if one is in the eschaton. We’re a s
Hundred percent evidence to to one. now faith I should say is a I I I’m thinking of faith as a cognitive state here. And so faith I can have faith that all sorts of things. I can have faith that Jesus is Lord, faith that Jesus rose from the dead, but faith also in non-religious cases. I can have faith that my marriage will survive, despite the horrible statistics.
On divorce rates, right? I can have faith that you know, probably most importantly, I can have faith that my favorite sports ball team is going to pull ahead even when they’re behind, right? and people people will use that kind of language, right? In the case of of of sports. and so it it might be then in the Escoton, you can have faith that these sorts of other sorts of cases. So you know, maybe they’re maybe there’ll still be football.
And the maybe we’ll still have the World Cup in in the in the Eschaton.
Mike Tolliver (35:29)
God willing, right?
Josh Mugg (35:31)
And you know I can have I can have faith that my favorite team will will will pull ahead. those sorts of cases would still be open to me.
Hope that wasn’t too long-winded.
Mike Tolliver (35:42)
Got it. All right. All right. I I No, I I appreciate that.
And you know, sorry for putting you on the spot with that. now you and I have spoken before about the I guess the impact of Michael Polanyi, Esther Meek in your work and in personally. you know, I’m curious to hear a little bit from you, maybe some of the the the personal narrative there.
Josh Mugg (36:10)
Sure. so like I said, at at one point in time I was really interested in figuring out what is the most fundamental question that we should answer. The this that’s the starting point. ‘Cause it seems like any question you answer, you can then back and say, but that raises that assumes this question, an answer to this question. and so that backed me up into epistemology, backed me up into philosophy of mind, backed me up into metaphysics, and then circling back to epistemology, I guess.
It’s and it’s that it’s that circling back actually that I think Polani and and Meek helped me do. So this is moving away from a a view sometimes known as foundationalism, within epistemology where you end up with some bedrock basic, properly basic hopefully, beliefs, and those are kind of the bottom of a pyramid, and on those properly basic beliefs you build everything. so d Descartes is probably the most famous example of this.
If I don’t believe if I have any reason to doubt it, I’ll I’ll throw it out. So a strong evidentialism as well combined with foundationalism. And then you have people who reject the evidentialism, but maintain the foundationalism. so people like Alvin Plantika, for example, reject evidentialism,
Mike Tolliver (37:23)
Yeah, right.
Josh Mugg (37:25)
but they do maintain that structure that there have to be some kind of properly basic beliefs.
Pilani and and Meek were part of my my move towards more of a sort of coherentism where things do circle back on one another. And you can have so you have more of a a structure that’s more like a web or more like a raft that’s that’s put together. And these things cohere better or worse with one another. and it’s not that they’re that this view is somehow immune from from criticism.
But I think it’s moved me more of direction of of seeing, well, I’m I have my own web of belief, or at this point I think webs of belief, since I’m a fragmentationalist about about belief. And I’m also doing this not alone. This is the other really important part, is that knowing rarely, if ever, is something that we do in isolation. I’m part of a community. I’m actually part of a guild of philosophers. If you ask me what is a philosopher, I would actually say i it’s to be a member of the guild that calls itself
philosophers that are engaged in this weird thing that we do. and and yeah, I’m I’m a member of this community where I’m doing this bit over here, they’re doing that bit over there, and we’re trying to see how all of these bits kind of cohere together. And so the social aspect of knowing and the more coherent is kind of structure are two things that I’ve I’ve taken away from Plani and and and Esther Meek. and they’re of course not the only two philosophers that have pushed me more so in this direction
as well.
Mike Tolliver (39:03)
Gotcha. Now, maybe final
Josh Mugg (39:05)
Okay.
Mike Tolliver (39:06)
question for me. curious then, you you mentioned the guild. How does the guild receive, you know, your work as a Christian philosopher? Do you find yourself needing to code things like you said a little bit earlier about your book in in merely what what was the word you used, not im empirical, but
Josh Mugg (39:33)
naturalistic. Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (39:34)
Naturalists, yeah.
terms like, you know, how how does that how does that work for you in the field of philosophy here?
Josh Mugg (39:44)
I really have two philosopher hats that I that I wear. So one philosopher hat is one I wear as a philosopher of psychology, empirical form philosopher of mind, and there I’m going to places like the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. And there I’m I’m really I am kind of engaged in a fairly natural, like naturalistic methodology. So it’s not that I assume that there is no
non-natural stuff, but rather it’s I’m going to look at empirical evidence and I’m going to build my account of the mind using empirical meth method and and onward we go. so in that context, if I were to say, well here’s a here’s a Bible verse, therefore it’s true, that would not be taken seriously at at all, within that within that community. And I and I know that. So I that’s not what I do.
I might quote it because it’s it’s recognized in that community that the Bible isn’t a really important piece of literature, whether one likes it or or or not, which is why I have the the quote from Mark right up front. And people in that community are very much interested in understanding why it is that people have have religion, what religious beliefs look like, whether religious belief isn’t actually a belief, whether it’s something else. maybe it’s a religious credence that’s more like a pretense, or maybe it’s a a faith state.
it’s something different or maybe it’s that in-betweeney belief. What’s going on in those cases? so I’m interested in those projects on the one hand. Then I have this other hat that I wear as a philosopher of religion. And here I’m I’m talking to like people within the Society for Christian philosophers.
And there’s Christian philosophers of all sorts of stripes in there. And that’s actually one of the things I love about the the SCP is just how ecumenical it is and the fact that even when I go to a a meeting, you know, not everyone there is even a theist, necessarily.
And so long as I’m I’m clear about what my assumptions are, they’re they’re kind of happy to go along and and let’s make sure that the method that you’re using is appropriate to the question that that you’re asking and the audience that you’re speaking to. So in there I’ve done some work on the mind body problem, assuming a Christian view of the resurrection, the nature of the resurrection, and arguing that that push should push us towards being physicalists.
about the human person and giving up on the idea that there is an immaterial soul that is somehow the the I. So I I am I am my body, kind of kind of you. and I do use scripture in those sorts of cases actually, because I know that the people that I’m appealing to regard it as authoritative.
I recognize that those papers are not gonna be of much interest to someone who is outside of that that audience. and so I just think about what audience I’m writing for and who I’m talking to when I’m writing. And so there’s different questions that Christian philosophers are going to ask in virtue of being Christian philosophers. But I think a lot of the questions that philosophy broadly is asking, what is a belief? Christian philosophers should be interested in.
as as well. What is faith? These are these are questions that not only Christians might ask, but secular philosophers as well. many secular philosophers are engaged in the question of what is faith and its relationship to belief. Precisely because they recognize even if you’re not religious, faith is an important part of of human life. It might involve faith in a certain political party or a certain political movement. It might involve faith in the goodness of humanity.
I’m invite might involve something more locally, like faith in in the in the flourishing of my children in in the future, or the flourishing of of my of my marriage or my friendships. and so faith is is the kind of thing that isn’t only germane to a religious context, but is probably germane to other contexts as well. and so I think that
Secular and Christian philosopher alike can be interested in those sorts of questions.
Mike Tolliver (44:01)
I’m extremely tempted to refer to
Josh Mugg (44:02)
Yeah. Thank you.
Mike Tolliver (44:03)
this as your dual hat theory. if if if we
Josh Mugg (44:06)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Tolliver (44:07)
could do that. Okay. Yeah, that’s my gift to you here. no, we’ll we’ll have to have you back on because I’m now super curious about these non-theistic members of the Society of Christian philosophers that you just mentioned. And then you know, we’ve we’ve often talked of you know, either in articles or or podcast interviews about
The you know, you you you are you and you ha you’ve you are a body-soul mix. Like there is no clean distinction between these two things. So would would love to have you back to talk about that at some point.
Josh Mugg (44:44)
Yeah, that’d be great.
Mike Tolliver (44:46)
All right. Well, Doctor Josh Mugg, thank you so much for your time and wisdom here today.
Josh Mugg (44:52)
Thanks, Mike.
