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[See updated question below] I'm debating someone who is making this argument: "Most religions believe all other religions are wrong, and their religion is right. Therefore the consensus is that all religions are wrong."

I think this is faulty logic. In my view, since most believe one is right, and the rest wrong, the consensus would be that one is right - though which one is not agreed on. Am I understanding "consensus" correctly?

Or more specifically, is it faulty reasoning to conclude that "the consensus is that all religions are wrong" given that most religions believe all the others are wrong, except themselves?

Thank you to those who responded to my original question. Your answers really helped me think through the issue.

I'd like to reformulate the question, if I may, removing religion from the topic, and being more precise about the definition of "consensus".

The following is a thought experiment on the consequences of using consensus to form your own opinions. By "consensus" we mean general agreement, and not necessarily universal agreement.

Suppose we have 10 experts, all of whom hold mutually exclusive positions, and all of whom believe the positions of the other experts to be false, and their own position (and only their position) to be true.

When considering each position individually, 9 of the 10 experts believe it is false. So to heed general consensus, we would need to conclude that the individual position is false. If we repeat this for each position, each would be false, and hence all are false.

But when we consider the 10 positions as a set, each expert would be happy to affirm that the set of positions contains one, and only one, correct position (though there would be no consensus as to which one).

But this results in the following apparent contradiction: if we follow general consensus as a guide to our own opinions we would need to conclude, a) that all the positions are false, and b) that one, and only one is true.

Is the above reasoning valid?

thecloud_of_unknowing
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    This is a typical quantifier mistake. There is a consensus that *some* religions are wrong, and (excluding atheists and agnostics) that *one and only one* religion is right. There is no consensus that *all* religions are wrong because jointly they have enough believers to block such consensus. There is not even a consensus for every *particular* religion that it is wrong, because some of them have enough believers even individually to block that. – Conifold Mar 14 '23 at 05:56
  • It is more like a *Filibuster*. A smaller group keeps bringing something to debate, and occupies time on the floor because the majority can't reasonably stop them. – Scott Rowe Mar 14 '23 at 10:45
  • i don't think it's really invalid reasoning unless you mean consensus among everyone. so it could be a mistake about "scope". just before philosophy clicked with me, i remember reading that we can say e.g. "it's all water" and not be talking about the whole of reality itself. i think that's different to what conifold meant –  Mar 14 '23 at 13:38
  • The notion of a "consensus" is just a vague and often not useful concept. The ground truth is what each individual person believes. Sometimes it is useful to summarize what many individuals believe with the word "consensus," sometimes it is not useful to do that. When it comes to religion, everybody disagrees, so it is not useful to say there's any "consensus." Also, whether there is a consensus is independent of whether a proposition is true or whether we should believe it; that should be decided by each individual on the evidence, regardless of what anyone else thinks. – causative Mar 14 '23 at 14:47
  • I cleaned up my original post to eliminate the religious angle, and provided a second post since you've clarified what you're seeking. – J D Mar 14 '23 at 15:40
  • The generalized form is analogous to the reverse of the [preface paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preface_paradox): the author can reasonably believe that each statement in their book individually is right (because they checked them), *and* that at least one of them is wrong (because there are many). This sort of effect happens for terms with vague thresholds like "consensus" generally, see [sorites paradox](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/). It is removed by switching to precise terms, quantitative information about the experts' positions in this case. – Conifold Mar 14 '23 at 18:14
  • How is John right and Tom, Dick, and Harry wrong? – Agent Smith Mar 15 '23 at 02:24
  • This is definitely a fallacy (although tongue in cheek a funny one). If i say "the consensus among astronomers is that the earth is round" it means that, if i ask them one by one, the vast majority of astronomers would answer "yes, the earth is round". Obviously if i go ask religious people "is all religion wrong" they wont answer "yes it's wrong". Also, for exemple, considering about 25% of the world population is muslim you can find at most 75% of people ready to say they are wrong. 75% is hardly a consensus. – armand Mar 15 '23 at 08:54

7 Answers7

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You should use the word consensus to refer to a statement that most people (in the group under consideration) would agree with. Suppose you had ten football fanatics, each of whom supported a different team, arguing inconclusively about which team was best. You could not say that there was a consensus that there was no best team, as every one of the ten would vehemently disagree with you.

Marco Ocram
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  • if you ask people from lots of teams about any one particular team, most of them will agree that team sucks. So is the consensus that all teams suck? Or is it only a separate consensus that Arsenal sucks, Liverpool sucks, Manchester United sucks, etc? – user253751 Mar 15 '23 at 18:00
  • @user253751 if you go to each of these fans asking "do ALL teams suck?" they will all disagree. So there's obviously no consensus on this statement. To the contrary, you could say there is a general consensus that at least 1 team does not suck, and separate consensuses that each separate team suck. The fallacy consists in gathering all those separate "Team A (or B or C) sucks" statement into a single "all teams suck" composite statement nobody uttered in the first place. – armand Mar 17 '23 at 01:09
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Second Answer for the thoroughly revised question:

But this results in the following apparent contradiction: if we follow general consensus as a guide to our own opinions we would need to conclude, a) that all the positions are false, and b) that one, and only one is true.

Contradictions are easily dissolved by providing clarificatory remarks:

  1. Given each individual's instance that theirs alone is the true position, there is a general consensus on each position that it is false, and also a universal consensus that at least one position is true since every individual believes their position is true.
  2. Given objective, mathematically inclined participants there is a universal consensus that there is no consensus for a true position based on the vote for each consensus on a position.

So, you seemed baffled that there can be a universal consensus that a true position exists, and a universal consensus that no true position exists, and rightfully so. The way to extricate yourself from the contradiction is to recognize the equivocation:

In logic, equivocation ("calling two different things by the same name") is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument.

In this case, the equivocation is what "true" and "false" means. In 1, true and false are based presumably on argumentation. Let us call this true-by-argument or TRUE1. In 2, true and false are based on consensus. Let us call this true-by-consensus or TRUE2.

So, is it really paradoxical that a group of people can believe there must be one position true-by-argument who vote to arrive at the conclusion that no position is true-by-consensus? Of course not. It's easy to explain. It just sounds contradictory when you drop the -by-argument/consensus phrase because then it makes appear that you are talking about true in the same sense. Clearly, you are not. Fortunately for you, you come to a place where the multiple senses of truth are vigorously examined. In fact, true-by-consensus sounds very much like socially constructed truth and true-by-argument sounds a lot like truth by coherent claims. It only sounds paradoxical until you recognize the equivocation of the senses of truth, since truth is what linguistics call polysemous. So, let's restate your initial text with a minor tweak and the use of linguistic subscripts to denote different senses:

But this results in the following apparent contradiction: if we follow general consensus as a guide to our own opinions we would need to conclude, a) that no position is TRUE1, and b) that one, and only one, is TRUE2.

Now the paradox dissolves since we are talking about two different ways to decide truth, one of the goals of epistemology and truth-conditional semantics. This is textbook equivocation, and easy to commit if you haven't spent endless hours reading the long ranging debate on what various philosophers mean by 'true'. For a good start on theories of truth and the different senses it entails, I suggest comparing and contrasting correspondent truth and coherent truth to see exactly how truth can differ.

J D
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  • I am rather curious how your fascinating answer would cope with a deflationary account of truth... – Kevin Mar 15 '23 at 06:18
  • @Kevin I think that deflationary notions of truth come from the other side of the paradox. That is, this paradox is situated where it is because it presumptively reifies truth as some monolithic, objective thing, like a tree when it fact 'truth' has multiple, abstract senses. Deflationary theories of truth revolve around not only recognizing the various senses, but attempt to make some sense of them. Disquotational truth a la "S" iff S, for instance, invokes use-mention distinction, so attempts to carve out truth in the language-metalanguage relationship... – J D Mar 15 '23 at 15:42
  • Performative truth attempts to show that some speech is empty because it is a speech act with illocutionary force. Strictly speaking, this question oversimplifies truth, where as the latter categories of truth would revolve around the recognition of the distinctions of statement/proposition, language/metalanguage, and so on. It seems natural to wonder over how people can agree and disagree about truth at the same time without epistemological sophistication; once you start invoking Austin, Quine, and Tarski, clearly you're across a threshold. – J D Mar 15 '23 at 15:46
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is it faulty reasoning to conclude that "the consensus is that all religions are wrong" given that most religions believe all the others are wrong, except themselves?

No, but first consensus is often taken in natural language in two ways.

  • Way the first: universal consensus, that all people agree.
  • Way the second: general consensus, that most people agree.

[Merriam-Webster defines consensus both as 1a and 1b, respectively][1].

If you are having a dispute on consensus, I'd make sure that before descending into logical quantification, predication, and intesion, that you simply seek to understand which definition you are using.

As far as the statement:

I'm debating someone who is making this argument: "Most religions believe all other religions are wrong, and their religion is right. Therefore the consensus is that all religions are wrong."

On reading, this is a simple argument. If general consensus is considered, that is most people agreeing, than if all religions agree that most religions are wrong, there is general consensus that all religions are wrong because for any of n religions, n-1 religions agree that the religion that dissents is wrong. For any sizeable number of religions, n-1 can be taken as a general consensus. The result is that all general consensuses about particular religions coalesce to a general consensus that no religion attains the status of having a consensus of supporters who believe it is right. Therefore, if no consensus exists as for a right religion, all religions are wrong.

J D
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This question conflates consensus (an epistemological concern) with truth (an ontological concern). Consensus merely means the generally accepted understanding of something, which may or may not conform to reality. It's perfectly possible for ten experts to agree that the idea X is the consensus in their field, yet disagree that this consensus properly conforms to reality while offering different ideas to replace it. That is how knowledge evolves.

The idea that experts disagree does not make experts wrong, except in the trivial sense that all knowledge everywhere is to some degree wrong. Experts belong to a field, and that field is defined by a broad consensus that makes all discussion — including disagreements — possible.

Ted Wrigley
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Let C(P) be a modal-type operator representing that there is a consensus that the proposition P is true. Then the premise "Everyone believes their own religion is right and all the others are wrong" means

(1) C(there exists a religion R such that R is right and for all religions S, S =/= R implies S is wrong)

The other person in the argument says "There is a consensus that all religions are wrong" which seems to mean

(2) C(for all religions R, R is wrong)

But that is not a consequence of (1). However there is a charitable alternate interpretation

(3) for all religions R, C(R is wrong).

which is a consequence of (1) under certain reasonable assumptions about consensus, the number of religions, and the distributions of believers.

Your reply "there is a consensus that one religion is right" is somewhat ambiguous between

(4) there exists a religion R such that C(R is right)

which is not a consequence of (1) and

(5) C(there exists a religion R such that R is right).

which is a consequence of (1).

David Gudeman
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    If I am understanding, you say that something could be 'right', and varying amounts of people could agree that it is right, from 0 to all. So when we talk about religion, we are really talking about people and beliefs, not what is right. Right? I think a small proportion of people would agree, unfortunately. Which doesn't make it *wrong*... – Scott Rowe Mar 14 '23 at 10:51
  • @davidgudeman Could you unpack: "under certain reasonable assumptions about consensus"? – thecloud_of_unknowing Mar 14 '23 at 11:30
  • @thecloud_of_unknowing, for example, if "consensus" means that at least x out of y believe something, and from the number and distribution of religions, you can prove that x out of y believe it. – David Gudeman Mar 14 '23 at 16:22
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In your example, you have correctly deduced that:

  • "Position 1 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 2 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 3 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 4 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 5 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 6 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 7 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 8 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 9 is wrong" has a consensus
  • "Position 10 is wrong" has a consensus

(here I take "the majority" as consensus)

However, it does not follow from those 10 consensuses that statement S: "Position 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are wrong" has a consensus, since it's a different statement. Multiple consensuses can't be combined without considering who agree and who disagree. You need to ask everyone again whether they agree or disagree. And to this statement S, you will find that nobody actually agree to it. So not only it doesn't have consensus, it doesn't have anyone who agrees to it!

So there is no contradiction here.

justhalf
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We do not have access to absolute truth. We only have access to our own sometimes flawed reasoning, observations, and inferences. As a result, we can NEVER know if we have absolute "truth" on any subject. And we have to get by with reaching consensus among the best and most reasonable among us as to what we THINK is true. All knowledge, therefore, is based on consensus.

In the case you cited, that of disputes about the "truth" of religions, the conclusion one can reasonably draw is that there IS no cast-iron case FOR any of the world's major religions. Whether there is a cast iron case AGAINST each of them -- is a different question. It is certain that the advocates for each religion can come up with critiques and caveats for any counter-evidence. What you presume, is that there CAN be cast-iron refutations, but that is not really the case. See this answer: How can we know anything is false, based on subjective guesswork? The most we can ever do is show that a viewpoint becomes predictively useless when modified enough to address counter-evidences.

Now, adherents of religions generally consider their views to NOT be predictively useless, but anyone who has considered the truth/falsity of multiple religious views realizes that there are counterevidence's that every religion must take account of. So the question might be one instead of which religious view retains the greatest predictive utility after it addresses counterevidence. And that people might disagree on that, even wise people of good judgement, is actually not an uncommon occurrence in a lot of areas of human thought.

Casting this discussion in religious terms tends to make atheists smug, and the religious defensive. It would be useful to consider a similar case that has a very different set of axes getting ground. There is a very similar situation within secular philosophy, and that is in the physicalist response to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Very few physicalists will say that the Hard Problem is not solveable. BUT, of the attempts to solve it, the vast majority -- even among physicalists -- is that each OTHER claim to have solved it, is wrong.

What one can take away from both of these situations is that a religious views have a lot of problems, and it is NOT obvious that even one of them might be correct, AND physicalism has a lot of problems, and it is not obvious that any physicalist view of mind ill ever be correct.

BUT -- there are enough strengths behind both religious and physicalist "research programmes" that loads of people are still working away within those frameworks, because they think the plusses still outweigh the minuses.

Dcleve
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