A Pretending Faith: Why Religious Non-Doxasticism Requires Imagination and Local Fictionalism

Proponents of non-doxasticism often stress the similarity between non-doxastic and doxastic faith. I argue that there are crucial differences which are easily overlooked. These differences become apparent once we pay attention to the inner side of the religious life a non-doxastic faith enables. The non-doxasticist must make extensive use of imagination and pretence to be able to include some common aspects of a religious life, such as holiness and the love of God, into her religiosity. Thereby, non-doxasticism is closer to fictionalism than is commonly acknowledged. Even more importantly, I argue that to live a satisfying and rationally consistent religious life, the non-doxasticist must supplement her faith with local fictionalism concerning her own inner states. Non-doxastic attitudes require epistemic possibility, but it is not an epistemic possibility for the non-doxasticist that she believes propositions like “I love God”. The only way she can include such proposition into her religious life is to be a fictionalist about them.