Bell Davidson and his critics

Catherine Bell and Her Davidsonian Critics Curtis Hutt

University of the Holy Land/Center for the Study of Early Christianity Jerusalem

Abstract

In recent years, Catherine Bell's work on ritual has been challenged by scholars influenced by Donald David-son. In this paper, I review some pertinent criticisms of Bell's practice-theory. While agreeing with Bell's Davidsonian critics on several points, I argue that a modified version of her practice theory can and should be defended.

Introduction Catherine Bell, in a number of important and thought

provoking publications, advanced a critique of a tradition long prevalent in religious, cultural, and specifically rit-ual studies which gives prominence to thought over ac-tion, ideas over the material—artifacts, practices, and the body (Bell 1992; 1997; 1998; 2002). Her work leads read-ers to be suspicious regarding the ascription of proposi-tional attitudes, about how the language of thought de-scribes "itself" using the terminology of meanings, beliefs, and intentions. These misgivings and a "practice qua prac-tice" approach has prompted much debate (e.g. Godlove 2002; Schilbrack 2004; Hutt 2007). In my short paper, I shall argue in agreement with Bell that there are good rea-sons to be distrustful of ascriptions of propositional atti-tudes— of appeals to the "intentional." I am unwilling, however, to rule out the usefulness of such ascription strategies in explaining human behavior. After reviewing Bell's project and the response of some detractors influ-enced by Donald Davidson (including myself), I will for-ward a proposal for a more restrained anti-intentionalism. This program is quite similar to one that I have advanced before in opposition to certain aspects of the use of Max Weber's verstehende Soziologie and puts a stress, following W.V. Quine, on the reliability of different types of evi-dence within a holistic and self-supporting "web of be-liefs" (Hutt 2007; 1999). While it may discourage those seeking to ground what is "true" in correspondence to the "real" or others who atomistically isolate the connotations of actions and expressions made by agents, it does leave

JOURNAL OF RITUAL STUDIES 23 (2) 2009 69

room for pragmatic, post-representationalist verification of ascription through theorized inquiry.

Bell's Project Bell famously questioned in Ritual Theory, Ritual Prac-

tice and other texts the cultural method of an "earlier generation" of scholars who optimistically viewed ritual as an almost ideal portal through which the thinking the-orist could access other cultures whether in the present or the past. While participants in rituals were popularly characterized as engaging in thoughtless activity, spe-cialist observers were felt to possess the ability to discern religious and cultural meanings or rationales structur-ing ritual behavior. Ritual was conceived of as a mech-anism whereby problems generated from contradictions and oppositions in culture are resolved. Bell presents a quite radical, alternative view to what she recently re-ferred to as the "old jalopy" of the cultural method (Bell 2006, 315). Not only are practices, typically devalued in examinations of the union between thought and action in ritual, elevated to a position of interpretive priority. But crucially, Bell collapses—like many contemporary scholars, including some famous pragmatists and post-modernists—the classical divide between thought and action (as well as mind and body / idea and material) it-self. Bell argued that her approach, unlike others, does not fall victim to any "myth of fundamental contradic-tion" (Bell 1992, 35). She censured most who have come before her in the study of ritual (e.g., Geertz, Gluckman,

70 JOURNAL OF RITUAL STUDIES 23 (2) 2009

Turner, Bateson, Lévi-Strauss, Hegelians, Marxists, and even Bourdieu) for not having been sufficiently reflec-tive and unknowingly supplying themselves through the imposition of their own selections and biases with man-ufactured objects of study. Bell wrote: "The theoretical construction of ritual becomes a reflection of the theo-rist's method and the motor of a discourse in which the concerns of the theorist take center stage" (Bell 1992, 54). Theoretical discourse about ritual, according to Bell who cites Frederic Jameson (though one imagines she could be borrowing from Hayden White or even Richard Rorty), is a result of an "organizational fiction" (Bell 1992, 8).

Bell highlights the deserved centrality of ritual for tra-ditional scholars of religious studies, at the same time as censuring those like Clifford Geertz—a figure who she places at the end of a long line of cultural theorists be-ginning with W. Robertson Smith (Bell 1992, 14)—who mistakenly distort our understanding of such activity. Geertz, for example, views ritual activity as a prominent "window" through which "meaningfiilness" for actors be-comes visible (Bell 1992, 25-9). The problem with his work, however, is not his focus upon ritual but the way in which he constitutes what Bell refers to as the "raw data" of ritual as an object of interpretation. Such tradi-tional ritual theory, Bell asserts, imposes "a powerful limit on our theoretical flexibility, our divisions of human ex-perience, and our ability to perceive the logical relations inscribed within these divisions" (Bell 1992, 17). Ac-cording to Bell, Geertz—like many others before him— thinks studying ritual is key because it is a place where fundamental dichotomies can be investigated. This is es-pecially clear when Geertz makes evident the predomi-nance of religious ideas in the organization of society. In doing so, he posited a basic distinction between "world-view" (comprehensive ideal view—real order, cognitive, existential) and "ethos" (dispositions, moods or motiva-tions—moral, aesthetic, religious) with beliefs being sub-sumed under the former and ritual under the latter. In ritual activity, conceptions of order and dispositions for participants are "fused." They are then "homologized" with the theorist's project. Bell notes that for Geertz rit-uals are not only the point of fusion of worldview and ethos for the insider or believer, but are considered to be the best locus for the "detached observer" to view the in-teraction (Bell 1992, 27-8). Finally, priority is then given by Geertz—if we are to believe Bell1—to the accounts of these special observers or theorists who "think" while the perspectives of insiders who simply "act" are devalued.

Bell argued that Geertz was not alone in making such mistakes. Performance theorists like Max Gluckman and Victor Turner, who rightly complained that most analy-

sis of ritual "presupposes a corpse" (D.H. Lawrence), also treated ritual as an arena where social conflicts are worked out. They too maintained the distinction that Bell criticizes between the "thinking" researcher and the "acting" object of research. The performance theorist simply makes herself a member of the audience, no longer reliant upon the recorded and stale (Bell 1992, 36). Gregory Bateson and Claude Lévi-Strauss similarly asserted that the resolution of conflict in ritual, ulti-mately between culture and nature, is less functional and more symbolic. Hegelian and Marxist notions of con-tradiction play heavily in this type of sociological theo-rizing, also finding a fundamental contradiction—his-torical change versus culture — at the roots of social experience.

According to Bell, Pierre Bourdieu—at least in Out-line of a Theory of Practice—made a mistake comparable to that made by Lévi-Strauss. "Fundamental oppositions" were utilized in the "internal organization of taxonomic schemes" that generate a sense of coherent cultural unity (Bourdieu 1977, 114-24).2 Of course, these are not fun-damental in any Platonic sense—absolute, metaphysical, ontological, or logical values. For Bourdieu, these oppo-sitions were useful tools for use with taxonomic schemes only. Ritual causes a disruption in the taxonomic order imposing a reordering of "culture." Ritual works out the opposition between conflicting social orders — na-ture/culture, old order/new order. Bell thought that even this delimited use of fundamental oppositions or what others might refer to as "ideal types" is suspect. She wrote: "The notion that ritual resolves a fundamental social con-tradiction can be seen as a type of myth legitimating the whole apparatus of ritual studies Equally mythical, perhaps, is the notion that there is anything fundamen-tal." Her position is closer to Michel Foucault's whom she quotes: "There are only reciprocal relations, and the per-petual gaps between intentions in relation to one another" (Bell 1992, 34).

Bell in Ritual Theory Ritual Practice likewise praised Stanley Tambiah who reworks J.L. Austin and John Searle describing the social conditions under which ritual is seen as social communicative action. Tambiah's work is note-worthy because whereas Geertz, Turner, and others found ritual to be highly symbolic and full of metaphorical meaning, Tambiah doubts this, rejecting "intentionality" theories in anthropology. Bell expands on Tambiah's anti-intentionality, deploying Jameson again — this time against Geertz. The proclivity of social scientists to "tex-tualize" objects of study is a mistake. Rites are not texts though they are often treated as such because it is held that their meanings can be "deciphered, decoded, or in-terpreted" (Bell 1992, 44-5). An alternative to not only


cultural but also literary method in the study of ritual is required.

Bell, citing the practice theory of Bourdieu more fa-vorably (though in my view probably inaccurately—see Hutt 2007, 234, 253), refuses to conduct analyses of rit-ual as communicative at all. She writes:

Bourdieu.... avoids every semblance of literary or verbal analysis. He eschews, for example, all use of the terms metaphor, metonomy, and analogy in de-scribing the operations of ritual practice. Practice qua practice, he insists, remains on the "hither side of discourse," and that is precisely the key to how it does what it does. Even those rites that are just a practical mimesis of the natural process to be facil-itated are not at all like metaphor or analogy sim-ply because they are not nearly as explicit. Ritual practice as such is always much fuzzier, avoiding the distinctive change in state that occurs when things are brought to the level of explicit discourse (Bell 1992, 112).

To her credit, Bell—like Bourdieu—developed a theory of agency in which people are more than thinkers with interests pursuing rational ends. The most important kinds of mastery are not the product of over aggrandized reason, but are practices implicitly learned in social set-tings through imitation and habit. Examining the use of propositions in ritual activities, Bell finds that even where these occupy a crucial position such as in the "I do" in a court of law or wedding ceremony, they "do not open a discourse within the rite about what the ritual is doing" (Bell 1992, 113). In fact, she explains in the longest foot-note of Ritual Theory Ritual Practice relying upon the work of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, that "non-propositional schemata" — divided into three different structural types—produce meaning without appeal to propositional attitudes. These preconceptual, basic-level cognitive structures which "directly organize bodily ex-perience and indirectly organize conceptual categories" are visible in the taxonomic systems of cultures (Bell 1992, 113, 157-8 fn. 184). I think that a great deal depends upon the validity of this theory of preconceptual mean-ing and that Bell needed to further spell out and defend her position in this regard.

In her article, "'The Chinese Believe in Spirits': Belief and Believing in the Study of Religion," Bell is skeptical of and agitates against the language of belief. She ar-gued— following Donald Lopez, J.Z. Smith, and Talal Asad—that the emphasis upon belief has arisen specifi-cally within Western post-Reformation Christian culture and is not portable to other contexts (Bell 2002, 101, 104; Lopez, Jr. 1998; Smith 1998; Asad 1993, 27-54). In the

same way that "religion" has been critiqued as an "over-reaching folk category that misreads and even does vio-lence to other cultures," belief is censured. Bell does not stop here though. By highlighting the beliefs and inner motivations of religious practitioners, she claims that scholars take the focus off where it should be. Causal con-nections more readily detectable in practices are obscured by the prominence of the conceptual. Bell's goal was to reveal the hidden biases in the way that the language of belief is deployed and to link this up to a particular way of discussing religion itself.

Of particular significance for this paper, Bell in " cThe Chinese Believe in Spirits' " resisted and critiqued a trend in contemporary philosophy associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein and in more recent years Donald Davidson. In this tradition, the ability to interpret the meaning of a belief or what someone holds to be true is still considered indispensable in the appraisal of human behavior. What separates Davidsonian "radical interpretation" from more traditional interpretive practices, is that what counts as meaningful and true is determined very differently. In classical representationalist thought, beliefs are construed to be meaningful or true because they correspond to ac-tual "states of affairs." For Davidson, like Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, however, the meaning and truth of beliefs is established inferentially relative to one's other beliefs in specific linguistic contexts. Just as the meaning of a sentence hinges upon the meanings of other sentences in its language, the accurate ascription of propo-sitional attitudes like beliefs to actors—the goal of David-sonian "radical interpretation"—depends upon the rela-tion of beliefs to a greater web of generally reliable, connected beliefs. In " cThe Chinese Believe in Spirits'," Bell might have emphasized at least a couple of impor-tant similarities between her own work and that of David-son. For instance, both Bell and Davidson made similar criticisms of earlier theories of meaning. More interest-ingly, Davidson's undermining of the scheme/content du-alism (where thought is traditionally described as being composed of two distinct parts—a conceptual framework supplied by mind and preconceptual objective content) also effectively collapses the divide Bell attacks between thought and action. Instead, Bell takes direct aim at David-son's claim—extended by Richard Shweder—that it is impossible to make sense of a person's words without hav-ing extensive and accurate knowledge of their intentions and what they believe to be true (Bell 2002, 102, 106).

Bell likewise disagrees with Davidson's famous prin-ciple of charity. Bell refuses to assume, like Davidson, that people have mostly true beliefs about the world and that even where people disagree they must minimally share much more in common in order to be able to ree-


ognize their differences. According to Davidson, differ-ence can only be linguistically articulated in a system where broad agreement is the rule rather than the ex-ception. Bell has two objections. First, Davidson's prin-ciple of charity presents a danger to contemporary "post-theological" adherence to cultural relativism. The different, aberrant, and idiosyncratic are fundamentally downplayed by Davidsonian radical interpreters and this is unacceptable (Bell 2002, 107-9). Second, as noted above in reference to Ritual Theory Ritual Practice, Bell refuses to "push analysis to the level of the sentence" (Bell 2002, 102). Any methodological approach that does so, such as is found in the work of Wittgenstein or David-son, is far too concentrated on linguistic "meaning" to be of much use to practice theorists.

Recent Criticisms of Bell's Practice Theory The response of scholars influenced by Davidson to

Catherine Bell's article " 'The Chinese Believe in Spir-its' "—published in full-view of Davidsonians studying religion in Nancy Frankenberry's volume of collected es-says titled Radical Interpretation in Religion—was pre-dictable. As evidenced in the work of Terry Godlove, who critiqued Bell's earlier work in the article "Saving Belief: On the New Materialism in Religious Studies" contained in Frankenberry's collection as well, Bell's skepticism towards the ascription of propositional atti-tudes and a supposedly narrow, uninclusive practice the-ory are targeted. Others, presumably following Wittgen-stein, could likewise have been expected to be critical of her unwillingness to restrict meaning to linguistic con-texts. My take is, however, somewhat different from Bell's critics like fellow Davidsonian Terry Godlove, oth-ers influenced by Davidson like Kevin Schilbrack, and probably a good number of self proclaimed Wittgen-steinians. While agreeing with Bell's opponents on sev-eral counts, I still think that she was correct to insist upon giving priority to practices over meanings — whether linguistic, intended, or cultural — in the ex-planation of human behavior.

Terry Godlove does praise Bell's targeting of the onesid-edness in earlier studies of ritual that value ideas and the mental over actions and materiality. Admittedly, Godlove's objections to Bell's "materialism" are muted compared to his scathing critique of Donald Lopez, Jr.'s entry "Belief " in the Mark C. Taylor volume titled Critical Terms for Re-ligious Studies (Lopez, Jr. 1998). Part of the reason for this is Godlove's stated inability to pin down what Bell has to say on belief. On the one hand, he notes that Bell claims to have "nothing against belief per se" (Godlove 2002, 18). This is clearly evidenced, I would add, by the

fact that she did not shy away from writing about belief. What matters though is how inquiry into beliefs, inten-tions, and meanings is implemented. Bell positively main-tained, following the work of anthropologists like James W. Fernandez and Jack Goody, that it is possible to em-pirically test the motivations and associations of people engaged in ritual practices (Bell 1992, 183, 186; Fernan-dez 1965; Goody 1977). More critically, Godlove em-phasizes the fact that Bell refuses to ever grant priority or even relevance to beliefs motivating ritual practices for methodological reasons. According to Bell, who draws upon a great deal of evidence not cited by Godlove, par-ticipants engaged in the same ritual activity often have different, confused, or even no beliefs about what it is that they are doing. There is thus no reason to assume that ritual acts are transparent, effortlessly divulging sin-gular meanings. Godlove rightly associates Bell's view of the process of "ritualization" with the work of Barbara Myerhoff. Ritualization is able to produce meaning out of "raw happenings" or the "movements of the body in space and time" without recourse to the intentions of the actors involved (Godlove 2002, 18; Bell 1998, 212, 216).3

The attaining of ritual mastery by participants does not require any significant knowledge of the meaning of learned behavior. Instead, as rituals are performed diverse predilections and habits become inscribed upon individ-ual bodies. Thereby, the activities of the "socialized" are molded by communities and their dominant preferences. Godlove simply thinks that students of religion should attend to both what he labels, also somewhat vaguely, non-discursive and discursive meanings alike. While I agree with Godlove on several critical points including the need to attend both to material culture and proposi-tional attitudes, I think modifying Godlove with Bell nec-essary. More attention, even priority, needs to be paid to the structures underlying and producing so-called "non-discursive" meanings when determining why people do the things that they do. As attested to by that ancient rule of thumb, in the evaluation of human behavior, actions count more than intentions.

Kevin Schilbrack, in his article "Ritual Metaphysics," adds one more important criticism of Bell's work that at first glance appears to sit well with Godlove's argu-ment above. Bell in Ritual Theory Ritual Practice de-scribed ritualization as a process of writing upon one's body and practices schemes put in place by the ascen-dant social order understood inevitably—though not unproblematically—as the "true" nature of reality. This is not done via overt coercion, but instead following An-tonio Gramsci, Bell thought that such "dominance and subordination .. . exist within people's practical and un-self-conscious awareness of the world" (Bell 1992, 83).


Ritualization is, therefore, best understood in terms of learned mastery and empowerment—a process detailed by Bell in her discussion of "redemptive hegemony." Schilbrack's problem is that Bell, like Bourdieu and ap-parently Peter Berger, refused to assume that what is rit-ualized is a reflection of any substantive actual state of affairs or "truth." Schilbrack quotes Bell: "Of course the redemptive hegemony of practice does not reflect real-ity more or less effectively; it creates it more or less ef-fectively" (Bell 1992, 85). Ritualization simply begins with the establishing of any ritual order. Subsequently, this order is "objectified" so that agents will not view it as manufactured but instead as real or true. Those agents engaged in ritual behavior are described as taking part in a grand misrecognition of an arbitrary world (Schilbrack 2004, 84-5). Schilbrack finds Bell at this point to be unreasonably committed to an a priori hy-pothesis that is implicitly Kantian. He writes: "One need not deny that ritual metaphysics are the product of the human imagination and reflect the linguistic and cul-tural context from which they are projected; from the fact that metaphysical knowledge involves imaginative projection it does not follow that all understandings of reality are necessarily false." Bell reassures us in the Frankenberry volume that this is her position. Bell as-serts in 'The Chinese Believe in Spirits' " that by con-necting up belief, intentions, and meaning with the real or the true, the "post-theological" stress upon the co-gency of a plurality of world-views is unacceptably called into question (Bell 2002, 102). Bell consistently defends a strong version of cultural relativism which Schilbrack—at least in part influenced by Davidson — rejects.

Between Bell and Davidson I have outlined the assumptions of Bell's critics that

underlie four main points of disagreement with her work. I will conclude by addressing the first and most impor-tant of these—namely, Bell on the ascription of propo-sitional attitudes to ritual actors. I will begin by adding a few cursory comments about the final three. Generally, in spite of agreeing with Godlove, Schilbrack, and imag-ined Davidsonian and Wittgensteinian detractors on a number of counts, I am more sympathetic to some of Bell's main positions. I definitely think that Bell was right to challenge the extremely influential rhetoric of belief that all too often obscures precisely what practice theo-rists want to bring into relief. Ritual practices are not of secondary importance when it comes to understanding how humans and human culture work—whether con-ceived of as hollow, insignificant movements (just going

through the motions) or as mere windows through which more significant cultural meanings are made visible. Such practices may be utilized instead in a wide variety of ways, of which primary actors are not necessarily aware. In sum-mary, the assumptions of Bell's critics underlying theo-retical disagreements include:

1. Misgivings forwarded regarding Bell's skepticism of the ascription of propositional attitudes.

2. Disapproval of Bell's cultural relativism. 3. Objections to her reluctance to restrict meaning to

linguistic contexts. 4. Criticism of her presumably one-sided practice

theory.

Starting with number four and working backwards, I agree with Schilbrack that Bell's ultimate refusal to characterize the truth claims of a given culture as any-thing but arbitrary or manufactured is problematic. On the other hand, I do think that Bell's rejection of David-son's principle of charity in the Frankenberry volume is provocative. It is easy to see how some influenced by Davidson might take the softening of linguistic and cul-tural differences to an extreme on the basis of their com-mitment to the dictum: diversity only within the con-text of shared belief. Just how far though can such charity take you? Are remaining differences less stark? Is the inability to communicate (Babel) overcome — or, at least in principle, overcome-able? Notably, Terry Godlove is not optimistic in these regards. He has em-phasized the need to account for an exceptional variety of beliefs while at the same time rejecting relativism by sidestepping the Kantian "framework model"—which rests upon the discredited view that knowledge results from a transaction between "organizing scheme and neu-tral content" (Godlove 1997, 4). While agreeing with Davidson that difference can only be posited within the context of shared beliefs, I, like Godlove, think that dif-ferences can be substantive — stymieing not only un-derstanding but basic recognition as well. An alterna-tive way of construing Davidsonian charity, consistent I believe with Davidson's own writing such as found in his response to Andrew Cutrofello's article on "The Tran-scendental Pretensions of the Principle of Charity," is that it assumes the existence of only enough agreement to enable us to make sense of our disagreements—but not necessarily any more! There is much that people know that others don't, and Davidson understood that his theory of charity must take this into account (David-son 1999, 342-3). Radical interpreters, while acknowl-edging that differences can only be posited within the context of shared beliefs, should be open to diversity and the anomalous in a way that separates them from


earlier generations of comparativists who too often sti-fled or ignored significant cultural differences.

Most startling to readers in the tradition of Wittgen-stein and Davidson are Bell's comments in " 'The Chi-nese Believe in Spirits' " and Ritual Theory Ritual Prac-tice challenging the usefulness of reducing meaning to the sentential and her emphasis upon the role played by non-propositional, preconceptual schemata in the pro-duction of meaning. Bell is certainly confusing on these two points. Acknowledging that Bell has not always ad-equately distinguished between "cognitive" and "linguis-tic" meaning, the focus of her work is clearly on non-cognitive structures and non-linguistic practices underlying the output of "meaning." What Bell meant by non-cognitive and non-linguistic "meaning"—which shows up in "bodily movements in space and time" — also needs to be delineated. For example, it sometimes looks as if Bell wished to connect the work of philoso-phers of mind with Bourdieu's focus on imitation and habit. For Bourdieu, however, human behavior is so-cially generated and is not addressed as a byproduct of cognitive structures at all. For the purpose of clarity, not only should separate vocabularies for the "cognitive" and "linguistic" be adopted and adhered to, but new termi-nology for non-cognitive/non-linguistic "meaning as well. Finally, in defense of Bell's tactic of privileging practices over beliefs in the explanation of human behavior, I would invoke the work of the pragmatist John Dewey for whom "beliefs" were best labeled "habits of action." Dewey, like Bell, viewed beliefs to be practices and em-phasized the importance of evaluating propositional at-titudes through theorized inquiry. Going further than Bell, Dewey—as noted by Schilbrack—recognized the role played by non-cognitive/non-linguistic influences like "biological functions and structures" on people's in-teraction with the world (Schilbrack 2004, 86). Dewey like Godlove, however, more insightfully maintained the pertinence of beliefs and commitments to special quests and values which Bell ignores. Religious beliefs may have what Godlove calls an "interpretive priority" for believ-ers—though these are always formed in local social, ma-terial contexts.

Any reproof of practice theory, whether as forwarded by Bell or Bourdieu, which does not begin by acknowl-edging the thesis of J.L. Austin and John Searle that all speech is first and foremost activity is not deserving of serious consideration. This stated, it is clear that Bell, while perhaps having nothing against limited inquiries into the motivating significance of beliefs and intentions, plainly spent the vast majority of her time looking else-where for the production of meaning. Bell's decision to pay very limited attention to the "truths" of coherence

that guide action, expectations, and even perception is disappointing. Bell's apparent common ground with Davidsonians does leave her overall project open to rééval-uation and possible reproach. Because radical interpreters have continued to emphasize an important foundational role for belief while patently not succumbing to criticisms Bell made of others who adopted the thought/action du-alism, Bell's strategy of downplaying linguistic in addi-tion to cultural meaning in the study of ritual as the only option to move forward in ritual studies is called into question.

Conclusion: On the Ascription of Propositional Attitudes

As noted in the opening paragraph, some years ago I made an attempt to outline a methodology for use by his-torians in evaluating the ascription of propositional atti-tudes in ancient literary sources - specifically, as related to the identity of the communities responsible for the scrolls found at Khirbet Qumran (Hutt 1999). While the strategy outlined was fine-tuned to meet special require-ments, its general features are applicable to a variety of research programs including those concerned with the near present and not the distant past. Crucial to this proj-ect was the assigning of weights based upon verifiability and the integration of different types of evidence.4 Ap-peals to intentions, while not entirely dismissed, were downgraded and ordered relative to data confirmed through inquiry. In conclusion, I am going to not only compare my proposal—now slightly revised in light of learned suggestions—to that made by Catherine Bell but also to those of her critics.

I will begin by stating that in spite of Bell's claim made in " 'The Chinese Believe in Spirits' " that sometimes but by no means most of the time belief acts as instigator of action, she is definitely suspicious of the ascription of propositional attitudes (Bell 2002, 107). In this regard, there is much substantive agreement between Bell and me. It is not merely the fact that appeals to human in-tentions and beliefs of ancient writers are extraordinar-ily difficult to evaluate. This is the case, though of course to a much lesser degree, with pinning down the beliefs, intentions, and meanings of even those individuals with whom we are intimately familiar. Recalling Geertz' fa-mous distinction, it is difficult to distinguish between a "twitch" and a "wink" except in familiar settings. Even then, one might miss something if caught off guard. On the other hand, while epistemically speaking these as-criptions stand upon shaky foundations as they are not grounded in a direct awareness or correspondence to the facts of the matter, they are not formed arbitrarily. We


do manage, sometimes more easily than others, to as-certain with relative certainty "what" people have done and the motivations behind their actions. This, as Wittgenstein has shown so well, depends upon seeing what the "lever" is attached to (Wittgenstein 1968, §6). Intentions only become apparent against specific back-drops. Surmising the "truth" of someone's intentions, moreover, invariably depends upon the consistency of our own beliefs.

There is another sort of claim to truth which, while never encountered disassociated from a web of self-sup-porting and mostly consistent beliefs, depends upon active, theorized inquiry for its special character. Re-sults derived from the testing of hypotheses—through the use of procedures that are public and repeatable — have (and certainly deserve) core status in our webs of belief. To once again deploy the terminology and ar-guments of John Dewey in defense of Bell, only beliefs that have been examined are worthy of the warrant "jus-tified." Certainly many very influential core habits of belief and other practices are seldom brought to light, much less questioned. To dismiss them as irrelevant all too often renders their occasionally harmful effects — for example, in the reproduction of social disparities— invisible and free to function undeterred. We might pre-sume that such core beliefs are generally reliable. How-ever, the inquiring mind must acknowledge that this remains to be established. Such beliefs, as seen in the work of Bell above, can be sought out and tested. Es-pecially when they have been theorized as habits and practices! Sometimes it is only feasible to inquire into the consistency and coherence of our beliefs, to selec-tively alter variables, and see if the proposed change makes better sense than what has come before it. His-torians of the ancient world are unfortunately often left to such means, unable to plan out or implement fur-ther useful investigation.

My suggestion is simple, namely, that we grant prece-dence to our beliefs about the world that have accrued as the result of inquiry—whether in regard to neural activ-

1. This is Bell's view of Geertz's work and not my own. I choose to read Geertz as stressing the importance of native or insider per-spectives. As Geertz wrote, anthropologists shouldn't "study vil-lages" but instead "study in villages" (Geertz 1973, 22).

2. Keep in mind that Bell criticized a part of Bourdieu's work that he himself questioned on numerous occasions (Hutt 2007, 246). Bourdieu moved away from such structuralist analyses in later publications.

ity, ritualized practices, or other people's beliefs. Occu-pying the central position in a Quinean web of beliefs, where beliefs do not change piecemeal but always in con-junction with other beliefs, are inner core commitments of which people are generally certain. Our trust in the usefulness and reliability of empirical inquiry is one of these commitments. As one moves out of the core to-wards the periphery, things become more malleable. They must be consistent with the inner or an occasion for de-fensive compartmentalization or, optimally, problem-solving inquiry arises. The less secure outer rings of be-lief are, except in very unusual circumstances, obliged to conform to the inner and not vice versa (Quine 1978). The ascription of propositional attitudes, and generally more traditional literary approaches to interpretation, should be—where possible—tested and judged relative to what is empirically verifiable. Where not possible, our understandings of specific beliefs are more tenuous and subject to revision.

The practice theory of Bell, Bourdieu, and others is intriguing from my perspective—influenced by Dewey, Quine, and Davidson as well! It encourages investiga-tors to give an interpretive priority to practices over as-cribed propositional attitudes in the explanation of human behavior. Bridging the thought/action dualism and emphasizing practices first, however, should lead us onto some middle ground. Practice theorists like Bell, in my view, have needlessly prompted a backlash from Davidsonians and others by at least giving the appear-ance that they disregard the intentions that animate so much human behavior. Meanings, beliefs, and inten-tions may be difficult to identify, but without such pos-tulated referents human behavior is often completely in-explicable. Likewise, Godlove and Schilbrack's call for an unqualified double approach focusing upon the non-discursive and discursive also requires revision — this time in the direction of Bell. Appeal to intentions al-ways needs to be measured against data gained by the most reliable means possible.

3. This claim by Bell is extremely suspicious to theorists in prag-matic and other post-representationalist traditions who maintain that humans never have access to "raw" data or happenings.

4. Following Dewey and Davidson, I think that differences of type or kind are really nothing more than differences of degree.

Endnotes


References

Asad, T. 1993 Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons

of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bell, C. 1992 Ritual Theory Ritual Practice. New

York/Oxford: Oxford: University Press. 1997 Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New

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Biographical Sketch

Curtis Hutt is presently in the Graduate Studies Fac-ulty at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 from Brown University in Re-ligion and Critical Thought. In addition to being a trained

historian of early Christianities, he teaches courses and publishes work in philosophy, the anthropology of reli-gion, historiography, and comparative religious ethics.

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Bell Davidson and his critics