Can a belief in God be factual? HUM Grant researcher Jackson Hawkins says it can’t—but it doesn’t need to be.
“The sky is blue.”
This statement represents a simple declaration of fact, one that a person can verify just by looking outside. Much of what we say about the world around us can be proven or disproven in the same way; however, humans often have more nuanced beliefs that can’t be proven so easily. What about moral beliefs? How do we prove good and evil exist? Or, that God exists?
Humanities Undergraduate Mentoring (HUM) Grant recipient Jackson Hawkins (Philosophy ’25) set out to explain how we can justify having these very real beliefs that we can’t prove. Using philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theories of “absolute value” and “epistemic hinges,” Hawkins has found a way to explain how spiritual and ethical beliefs can be just as real as anything else in life, even without empirical evidence.
The Problem with Absolute Value
At the beginning of his research project, Hawkins purchased extensive research material written by and about Wittgenstein and annotated and consolidated different scholars’ perspectives on Wittgenstein’s theories. He learned more about “absolute value,” which Wittgenstein describes as an invisible force—something not rooted in fact, but in feeling—that pushes us to believe certain moral things or act in a moral way. This force guides our decision-making, compels us to resonate with certain theology, and contributes to feelings of what Latter-day Saints might call “the Spirit.” Absolute value gives something the property of being intrinsically valuable, rather than valuable as a means to an end.
However, the concept of absolute value poses its own problem. Hawkins explains, “There is no fact that corresponds to absolute value, but nonetheless, we experience absolute value, and this would be a fact. So, it’s paradoxical in the sense that we can experience that which should not be experienceable.” Wittgenstein himself acknowledged this issue and argued that it can be explained by considering all spiritual experiences as a miracle or a mystical force, but Hawkins doesn’t find this solution very compelling.
Developing a Theory
For his project, Hawkins drew on another concept from Wittgenstein’s work called “epistemic hinges.” Hawkins defined “hinges” as certainties that cannot be called into question because doing so would invalidate a myriad of other facts and beliefs. He says, “For [a] door to swing, you need the hinges to stay in place. You can’t modify the hinges without fundamentally undermining or altering everything about the door and the way it works.” He gave an example of a hiker telling a child about a mountain they climbed five years ago. Because the child believes that the hiker’s story is true, that child naturally takes it for granted that the mountain existed five years ago because if it didn’t, then the entire story would have to be false.
Hawkins believes that these hinges provide a more satisfying way of resolving the paradox that exists in absolute value. The same way we accept the idea of the mountain’s age, we also absorb the idea that absolute value exists as something that needs to function outside of empirical evidence. And because we are able to do this, Hawkin says that we come to “justify all kinds of religious beliefs and ethical beliefs.”
Resolving the Paradox
Hawkins goes on to explain why this specific approach works to fix the paradox. He says that whether we are explicitly told or not, we accept that absolute value needs to exist in order for prayer and church attendance and other moral and spiritual experiences to be valuable.
So, religious and ethical beliefs cannot be factual, but they don’t need to be. If understood the same way that one understands a hinge, it can be determined that these beliefs, though not proven by scientific or empirical means, can be proven by virtue of the inability to question a hinge.
Hawkins has been invited to present his theory at the International Wittgenstein Symposium in Austria, an honor not often awarded to undergrads. Hawkins expressed his gratitude to be able to work on this project and invites others to study Wittgenstein’s work. He says, “Wittgenstein as an object of study and his thought as an object of study should be appealing for anyone who’s interested in that kind of spiritual relationship or in spirituality.”
To learn more about HUM Grants and how students can apply for one, click here.