Apostasy and Paradigmatic Shifts

The existence of the apostate creates significant difficulties for ethics.  An apostate is not just someone who asserts the inferiority of previously held views or who changes their understanding of a particular part of the world around them.  The apostate is rather someone who changes the very way in which they appraise the value of different views.  An individual, for instance, who converts from Christianity to Buddhism does not keep the same method of deciding what is or isn’t correct – they go from believing that a belief’s accuracy is decided by whether it is in line with Jesus’ teachings to whether it is in line with Buddha’s.  This fundamental change occurs, of course, even though each viewpoint is appraised as accurate by itself but as inaccurate by the other – Buddha’s views are not in line with the Christian’s previous views, while Jesus’ are.  Therefore, it should not happen that a Christian rejects their Christianity in favor of Buddhism, as there is seemingly no method by which they could, as a Christian within a Christian framework, appraise Buddhism as being superior to Christianity.  After all, a Christian’s concept of truth is seemingly exclusive of un-Christian views.  And yet, apostasy does in fact occur.  Throughout this article, we will argue that paradigm shifts such as apostasy are guided not by either rationalistic arguments or completely irrational preferences but rather by people comparing the clarity which each viewpoint offers about how they ought to live and make choices among different options.

To establish our understanding of apostasy, we will first seek to explore exactly what apostasy entails, in contrast to a mere change of an individual opinion.  Then, we will look at how the existence of apostasy contradicts the idea that there is a single way which people use to decide the truth of certain facts.  Next, we will argue that the concept of apostasy cannot be understood by simply imagining that people become apostate due to rational disagreement with their previous paradigm, as different paradigms of the world are often internally coherent, and apostasy does not usually seek to clear up minor issues within paradigms but rather to completely replace them.  Having undermined these conceptions of apostasy, we will then establish our own – one based on the clarity which different, competing theories seem to have to the onlooker.  Furthermore, we will investigate under what conditions such apostasy might occur.  Having analyzed these concepts, we will then look at how they can be applied beyond the mere study of apostasy.  Finally, we will conclude with a quick recapitulation of our analysis.

The concept of apostasy can only exist if there also exist multiple, mutually exclusive processes which people use to appraise the truth of a given statement.  These different processes therefore produce different concepts of what is true; given the same facts, two people with different processes will frequently find two different ideas (even two contrary ideas) to be implied.  These different concepts of truth then lead to different concepts of belief and, as a result, action.  The different processes which people use to decide their beliefs and actions are, in the case of apostasy, not resolvable via a simple logical explanation nor an introduction of facts – each is based on fundamentally different assumptions producing fundamentally different concepts of truth.  For instance, someone could believe that a statement’s truth can be derived from its similarity to or basis in a certain document or group of documents (as with a Christian who believes the truth of a statement is decided by its consistency with the Gospel, or a legalist who believes a statement’s truth is decided by its consistency with the law), a certain group of values or positions (as with a pragmatist who believes a statement’s truth is decided by its being the most practically useful interpretation of events), or a certain process of proving an assertion correct or incorrect (as with a rationalist who bases a statement’s truth on whether rational thought can lead to its proof).  Apostasy occurs when someone changes from believing in one basis for an idea’s truth to believing another.

At this point, we can wonder exactly how our concept of apostasy differs from most other simple disagreements or changes in a certain viewpoint.  Indeed, apostasy shares many traits with other changes in viewpoint, although at the same time it has several significant differences which clearly differentiate it as a separate concept.  First, someone’s original process of deriving truth cannot be the basis for apostasy.  If someone became an apostate by using their original process of deriving truth, then apostasy would be absolutely impossible, as it would require someone to use a certain process to reject the very basis for their new viewpoint, a clear logical absurdity which would place the person’s new viewpoint in no better a light than their old viewpoint.  Either the original viewpoint was right, in which case the new viewpoint, being contrary to the old, is wrong, or the original viewpoint was wrong, in which case there would be no grounds to assert the new viewpoint.  While such a process can possibly explain nihilism, it cannot explain apostasy.  Second, apostasy must include a shift in one’s either actions or practical beliefs about the world – it cannot simply be a theoretical change which re-affirms all other viewpoints, for then it would not be apostasy but rather further refinement of a previous viewpoint.  Third, apostasy must involve changing one’s views from and to previously existing viewpoints about the world.  Apostasy requires a lack of ingenuity on the part of the apostate, who is not a prophet inventing a new kind of viewpoint but rather a follower of a previously created one.  Indeed, the fact that the apostate is not simply a nihilist who now opposes their anterior viewpoint but in fact someone who replaces their previous viewpoint with another one is an extremely important reason why the apostate is not merely a doubter or nihilist.  (This is not to say that there is nothing to be gained from an analysis of doubters or nihilists, merely that we will not be considering them further in this article).  Any such theory must be panoptic; it must be the basis of someone’s actions in all areas; the apostate’s new viewpoint must, after all, explain both their concept of knowledge and their practical actions, two very different and separate things.  Finally, the apostate must have made a purposeful and active decision to replace their anterior viewpoint with a newer one; that is to say, they must have chosen specifically to become an apostate, rather than simply finding themselves accidentally disagreeing with an anterior viewpoint on the world.  Without this specific, intentional rejection of an anterior viewpoint, an apostate cannot commit apostasy, therefore making them not an apostate.

The existence of the apostate creates significant difficulties for any singular theory about the basis of action.  If any single concept of the basis of action were true, after all, it should be impossible for people to outright reject it in favor of a conflicting basis.  The normal reason given for someone rejecting a supposedly true theory (in this matter as well as others) is that they are wrong, that they have not properly considered the issue or that there is some fact or argument which would convince them of the correct position if only they heard it.  However, it is very unusual for people to be wrong on a descriptive level about what process they use to decide the truth of a certain argument or the rightness of a certain action.  The only possible case in which one’s incorrectness about their own actions would be possible is if the process which they believe they are using to act is in fact only part of a greater process which in fact tells them how to act.  (For instance, suppose someone had previously decided that they would pick up money from the ground whenever they saw it because doing so made them richer.  Then, suppose that person were to continue acting that way simply because they had created that rule for themselves rather than thinking through the reason for their rule every time.  If they were then to say, “I only pick up money from the ground because I would like to, not for any other reason,” they would clearly be misunderstanding their own intentions and forget that they were acting to increase their wealth, since the original basis for adopting their tradition of picking up money from the ground was the desire to become wealthier, even if they forgot that reason since they adopted it.)  However, the existence of a superior, unknown process certainly does not exist for any real apostasy.  For that superior process to exist, the apostate must first have completely forgotten their real reason for rejecting their previous viewpoint.  After all, for an anterior reason to exist, there would have to exist a basis for defining truth or the right beliefs beyond their new or old viewpoint, clearly contradicting both viewpoints.  (For instance, if someone converted from Christianity to Islam for the sake of economic success, then they must have believed that economic success was the basis for truth, in essence rejecting Islam, since Islam does not believe that economic success is the basis for truth.  If they truly adopted Islam, they could not have based that adoption on economic success, for then they would not be Muslim.)  The only possibility for this contradiction to make sense is if all apostates simply forgot the reason for their apostasy.  However, such forgetfulness, while possible, would be absurd.  Secondly, the decision to use one anterior appraising tool to justify not itself but an entirely different paradigm would not make any sense.  If one decided to believe something based on some other, anterior appraising tool, it would not make sense not to acknowledge that appraising tool as the fundamental, correct manner of appraising the true or the right.  If they did not recognize that tool as the correct appraising tool, then they would be contradicting their previous usage of it.  However, if an appraising process is used to prove its own rightness, this would not make that tool any superior to any other internally coherent viewpoint about the world, therefore not giving the actor any good reason to believe their new viewpoint over any other.  So, then, there are two main objections to the idea that apostasy is motivated by an anterior viewpoint, first that using an anterior viewpoint would mean that the apostate did not truly believe in their new viewpoint (therefore invalidating the apostasy) and second that it would make more sense as a practical matter for the apostate to recognize their anterior viewpoint as true than to recognize an entirely different, posterior viewpoint as true.

One could attempt to overcome these objections by arguing that the apostate’s anterior viewpoint could be the apostate’s newly taken viewpoint.  Such an argument would seem to resolve the first objection, as it would mean that the person is correct when they say their new position’s truth is the cause of their conversion.  They would also not contradict themselves by having used multiple appraising tools, as the only appraising tool they would need to use would be their new, supposedly anterior viewpoint.  However, this description of apostasy could only explain the phenomenon if it were something which exclusively caused people to believe in a single ideology.  If, for instance, people only converted to Christianity from other religions, then it would make sense to say that (although, it would not necessarily be implied) everyone, anterior to everything else, was a Christian and that the repeated occurrence of apostasy displayed that, knowing the truth, everyone would inevitably convert to the true religion of Christianity.  However, in reality, apostasy does not work like that.  In fact, apostasy causes conversions not just to one particular viewpoint but to many different viewpoints, and for every viewpoint to which an apostate converts, another apostate converts away from that same viewpoint.  For this explanation of apostasy to retain coherence, all such viewpoints must at once be true and false.  While one might be able to argue some kind of subjectivist explanation in response (such as a pragmatist idea of truth, in which truth depends on what is useful to be true and therefore depends on the person declaring something to be true or false), the problems with this argument become especially clear when considering the existence of people who engage in apostasy multiple times, changing their viewpoint from one which they had previously adopted.  According to this analysis, for some people, the same viewpoint of the meaning of truth apparently must be both right and wrong, clearly displaying the ridiculousness of this idea.  We can therefore conclude that there is no single, anterior viewpoint from which all other viewpoints of truth can be judged, and therefore apostasy cannot merely be the result of someone judging their views based on their pre-existing, fundamental belief system.

From here, it could be possible to argue that apostasy can be explained by someone rejecting their prior viewpoint due to internal contradictions.  According to this explanation, the apostate is simply someone who finds that their previous understanding of the world is internally contradictory.  Therefore, encountering the problems with their own viewpoint, they change it to eliminate those contradictions.  The requirements necessary to get rid of contradictions and make a given theory coherent are what constitute apostasy, and the new viewpoint is merely an amended older viewpoint with minor alterations.  While this explanation may be attractive, it is also simply an incorrect understanding of what apostasy actually is.

The first major problem with this explanation is that it would require that only certain theories would see apostates reject them.  After all, not every theory contradicts itself to the point of incoherence, so not every theory should have to face an apostasy that arises only out of incoherent theories.  However, every single theory ever has experienced a significant number of apostates abandoning it in favor of other viewpoints.  And every single viewpoint ever has also attracted many apostates from other viewpoints.  But if every single viewpoint were incoherent and contradictory, as implied by the experience of apostates leaving their faithful, it would not make sense for anyone to convert to that theory if the whole aim of changing viewpoints was trying to avoid incoherence.  Given this problem, one could argue that the reason for these conversions is that the apostate simply does not know enough about their new viewpoint to know it is incoherent.  However, this again makes no sense.  If a lack of knowledge is the only reason for an apostate to join a certain viewpoint, no serious professional researcher or scholar of any religion should ever convert to that religion.  However, it is clearly the case that professional researchers as well as people who study certain religions often come to believe those viewpoints through their research and study and become converts to those new religions (and therefore apostates).

A second problem with this explanation is that, if it were an accurate description, apostasy should be much less radical than it in fact is.  Under this explanation, all that an apostate needs to do is get rid of the contradictions implicit in their previous theory.   Therefore, it should follow that the apostate should merely change a couple of minor parts of their theory wherever they see contradictions, thereby incrementally optimizing their own theory.  It should also be the case that such optimization occurs over time as contradictions become clear, creating a million different viewpoints as each person identifies contradictions.  However, this is again not how actual apostasy works.  Apostates do not often convert to a slightly modified version of their previous views, but rather they convert to an entirely different viewpoint.  Someone who converts from Christianity to atheism, rejecting the very basis for their previous viewpoint, is certainly a much more common form of apostasy than someone who rejects Christianity in favor of “a slightly modified Christianity with a couple of changes,” that is to say, their own distinctive religion with only marginal changes.  Even internal schisms in a religion are very rarely minor, and they usually have extremely large implications for how someone should live and what they believe, such as the schism between Catholicism and Lutheranism.  Second, people very rarely create their own religions in cases of apostasy.  As we noted earlier, apostasy is not usually prophecy, and it usually involves someone converting to another religion rather than creating their own.  If internal contradictions were the cause of apostasy, this should not be the case, since the necessary changes could usually be discovered by individual people and lead then to create their own individual viewpoints whenever they identify problems with their previous viewpoints.

So, then, we have concluded that apostasy cannot find its source in either (a) any third-party, anterior viewpoint, (b) the superiority of the new viewpoint to the rejected viewpoint, or (c) the problems with one’s original viewpoint.  It would seem that there is only one place left to look for the source of apostasy:  the viewpoint which one converts to during apostasy.  Of course, this argument would seem strange at first glance; after all, how can one come to believe a viewpoint in which one did not previously believe, and have that viewpoint cause one to choose to reject their previous viewpoint, if neither the old nor new viewpoint can claim supremacy over the other?  And how can someone be motivated at all by an opinion they do not hold and at odds with what they do believe?  Answering these questions will be the focus of the rest of this article.

To understand how someone can be motivated by an opinion they do not hold, we must first recognize what we mean by an opinion in this case.  Fundamentally, what we mean is not a certain argument or idea but rather a certain process – to be specific, a certain process of knowing.  This process is at heart a mental action used to derive specific beliefs or to justify specific non-mental actions.  It is certainly possible for someone to act out a particular process which they do not already necessarily believe to be correct.  For instance, an irreligious person can imagine, “What would a Muslim think about a certain action?” and can coherently answer the question (rightly or wrongly).  Anyone can think and act based on the assumption that a particular viewpoint is correct, whether they believe it to be true or not.  Therefore, anyone can involve themselves in the process of acting as they would if they believed in an ideology, even one in which they do not already believe.  However, at this point, the person is not necessarily an apostate.  Certainly, an irreligious person can imagine what they might do or think were they a Muslim.  Someone can even act out what they might do if they were a Muslim without necessarily becoming a Muslim (for instance, someone who pretends to believe in something they do not).  Although this is not the end of the process, acting or thinking as if one held views they do not can certainly be an important first step to holding those same views.

For a person ultimately to reject a previous viewpoint in favor of a new viewpoint, they must already believe the new viewpoint to be truer than the previous viewpoint.  If they do not, then the previous viewpoint’s position on its own truth (support) will take precedence over the new position’s view on the original position’s truth (opposition).  For someone to believe that one viewpoint is truer than another, they must consistently assert to themselves their new position is truer than the other.  What that means in practice is that the person must utilize their new position more frequently than their original position when considering and evaluating the truth of their original position.  If both positions can possibly be applied to most day-to-day situations, then that means an apostate must consistently use their new position as opposed to their old position.  This does not mean just consistently using their new position but also using it in specific rejection of their older position.  For any single instance of using the new position in opposition to the old position, both positions must imply different beliefs or actions, and to be an apostate that person must choose specifically to reject the advice of the older position in favor of that the newer position.

This analysis would at first seem to make apostasy appear impossible, as one already assumes their views to be truer than any substitute, new viewpoint.  However, in fact, it is perfectly possible for someone to reject a viewpoint they believe to be truer in favor of another viewpoint they believe to be less true.  If an older viewpoint gives unclear advice or advice which does not view which position one takes to be particularly important, the new viewpoint will likely be looked to as an alternative.  With every instance in which the old viewpoint is rejected in favor of the new viewpoint, the new viewpoint will seem truer, and the old viewpoint comparably falser.  Eventually, the old viewpoint, if it is consistently vague or overly nuanced in its ends to the point of not giving clear advice in any direction, or if it reduces the importance of choices to be made, will be overtaken by a newer viewpoint which provides clearer guidance or emphasizes the importance of certain decisions.  Once the old viewpoint is overtaken, the apostate will then commit actual apostasy by rejecting outright the usage of the older viewpoint in all future cases in favor of their new viewpoint.  Therefore, apostasy would occur because of one’s consistent usage of a newer viewpoint’s way of looking at the world.

However, the prior explanation leaves open a major question.  If consistently using other viewpoints can lead to apostasy, something must necessitate (or at least allow) the introduction of a certain viewpoint into the mind of the future apostate.  In fact, there are many situations in which acting as if one held viewpoints one does not is a consistent requirement.  A good analogue of this situation involves someone who consistently uses a language which they might not have previously used.  This can occur because someone desires to learn the language as a choice, either because they wish to consistently speak it in the future, because they must to interact with the society around them, or for no reason at all but to simply fill up the time.  As one learns the language, they can then adopt it not just in their speech but also in their thoughts, either by choice or subconsciously, and over time replace their previous language as their primary means of thought.  It is just the same with viewpoints.  Someone can become interested in, for instance, pragmatism – accidentally, purposely, or simply because they would be well served in the society around them if they knew what it was.  However, unlike the case of language, merely learning the viewpoint does not necessitate believing in it.

The next question we must ask is what situations are most likely to lead someone to apostasy.  There are several we will discuss.  The first is a situation in which it is difficult to carry out one’s ideas in the world because of societal pressures.  The second is one in which it is difficult to believe in one’s previous ideas due to the vagueness of their ends.  The third one is where one’s previous viewpoint does not give clear practical advice but rather equivocates one way or the other on many issues.  To prove these different scenarios lead to apostasy, we will not just argue that each of these cases logically leads to one becoming an apostate but also give clear examples that show how these cases in fact do lead to apostasy.

First, we will discuss societal pressures.  What we mean by this is not simply the inability to believe in or express one’s goals but rather the inability to act on one’s goals.  Restricting another’s ability to have a goal or espouse it does not necessarily cause someone to be incapable of acting on their goals.  Many (successful) viewpoints have made societal restrictions on action into positives, ways for believers to act out that same viewpoint.  For instance, early Christians believed that restrictions on their religion actually aided them and their ability to act out their religion by martyring themselves.  Without such restrictions, indeed, it would have been more difficult for those Christians to believe and act the way they did.  Rather, what we mean by societal pressures is that if a society makes a viewpoint unpracticable in any way, then that viewpoint will become less desirable.  For instance, if someone believes that a mass of people of their same viewpoint is necessary for their viewpoint to be practiced (for instance, if someone believes a communal liturgy is necessary to be a good Christian), then the lack of those other people makes one’s views impracticable.  If it is impossible for one to reach one’s supposed ends or even to contribute towards them in a reasonable way, then an alternative viewpoint with ends that can be reached will be much more easily practiced and more likely to be taken as true.  This is why more communitarian cultures which depend on society-wide action in favor of a certain position are more susceptible to being culturally upended than more individualistic cultural views which do not depend on community-wide action.  An example of this is how migrants tend to lose their belief in their own foreign nationality over time but do not tend to replace their religious views.*  This statistic makes sense because, while national identity is something which requires society-wide action to uphold, religious identity is much more individual and is therefore less susceptible to societal pressures.

The second possible cause of apostasy would be extremely uncertain ends for the person acting.  This does not simply mean that the activity does not have a clear idea of what people ought to do, but rather that it does not have a clear idea of what situation people ought to be in.  For instance, if an ideology simply repeatedly proclaims that people ought to make themselves happier by any means necessary without an ultimate purpose, then that ideology does not give anyone a clear endpoint for their actions and therefore is quite susceptible to apostasy.  This is because the actor, while given clear instruction when it comes to choices and actions, is not given clear instruction when it comes to thinking about the objectives of action.  To act, a person needs a motivation, and such a motivation is a significant aid to someone completing a task.  If anything can be learned from economics, having a clear concept of why one is acting and what incentivizes those actions is necessary to aiding any kind of action.  Therefore, while action may be prescribed from a viewpoint that lacks clear ends, actual action in practice is rarely completed or even attempted because of such a viewpoint.  Rather, the alternative viewpoint, one which has a clear end, is more likely to actually motivate real action, therefore aiding the apostasy.  This is why most successful religions as well as ideologies tend to have a clear vision of either an afterlife or an end-point of life (for example, in the case of Christianity or Buddhism) or offer a clear idea for a final, utopic society (such as in Marxism), while most ideologies without a clear endpoint for life either fail to spread (as with Judaism) or are looked down at (as in the “society of conspicuous consumption” described by Thorstein Veblen).  This is also why propaganda often includes idyllic descriptions of fictional people in seemingly perfect situations, as in American propaganda in the 1950s in praise of the nuclear family or Stalinist propaganda in praise of the New Soviet Man, as only this degree of attractive ends could motivate significant action without risk of significant apostasy (in this case, treason, or defection).

The final case in which apostasy commonly arises occurs when a particular ideology equivocates about many actions.  After all, if a viewpoint is not clear about what kind of action someone should take, something else is probably needed to decide on action.  And that usually means that some other ideology is going to be used to replace the previous ideology in those cases.  If this happens frequently, it will become increasingly impractical to continue to resort to the often uncertain and unavailing process to do anything at all, meaning that a would-be actor will be forced, even before becoming an apostate, to effectively reject their previous viewpoint in favor of an often more prescriptively useful one.  Whether, at this point, they believe their more effective new viewpoint is superior to their old viewpoint is not important.  Whether they at first believe in their new ideology or not, they will eventually come to believe their new ideology is superior to their older one, as it functionally supplants the older viewpoint and becomes the main process in which the apostate spends the vast majority of their time.  In this scenario, the pressure facing the possible apostate is almost always caused not by the new viewpoint itself (most viewpoints have ethical implications) but rather by one’s level of knowledge about that viewpoint.  For instance, if a Christian were to know very little about the moral implications of Christianity but knew a great deal about the moral implications of Islam, they would find themselves under a large amount of pressure to convert to Islam, while if that same person were to know more about Christianity or less about Islam, they would not feel such pressure.  This is why there can exist, as we have described earlier, people converting both from and to the same religion; as, knowing more about one than the other, people are more likely to adopt that which they know more about.  This source of apostasy explains why popular religions like Christianity that have simple rule systems when it comes to day-to-day life (such as the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule) are much more likely to engender popular support than more complicated ideologies (such as those put forth by moral philosophy).  It is also why high-ranking officials in religions or other viewpoints (such as philosophies) rarely convert mid-way through their career – because they are well-versed in their areas and therefore less likely to require conversion to a new source of moral guidance.

However, the reason for accepting the theory about apostasy which this article has set forth is not just because it is coherent nor because it has an empirical basis but also because it clears up many of the issues which we have previously identified in alternative theories.  Previously in this article, we found that most people must have becomes apostates based on the viewpoint of their new ideologies rather than of some other, universal ideology.  Our theory of apostasy explains why that can occur.  Earlier in this article, we argued that it would make little sense, if there were in fact one single superior ideology toward which all apostasy occurred, for apostates to convert between many other ideologies.  Similarly, we argued that if internal contradictions were the cause of apostasy, we should not see apostasy both to and from the same viewpoint.  However, our theory explains why that happens, demonstrating that apostasy is based not on the superiority of one ideology over another but rather on how practical and coherent an ideology seems to a particular person in a particular situation, therefore allowing for the existence of all different kinds of apostasy from and to all different viewpoints.  Later, when refuting the concept that apostasy occurs in response to internal contradictions, we said that such a description did not explain why apostates would join new viewpoints rather than simply modify or nihilate their previous viewpoints.  Our theory, however, recognizes that apostasy only occurs in relation to one’s new theory, not in response to one’s old viewpoint, and recognizes the role of the new viewpoint is critical.  Indeed, one of the main elements underlying our theory of apostasy is the importance it recognizes of all influences of the apostate’s decision in their apostasy – the new as well as the old viewpoint, as well as the practical utility of both viewpoints.

Now, it could be said that this article has so far been purely descriptive and therefore lacks any prescriptive content.  After all, if one will commit apostasy anyway, then why even try to involve oneself in the process of analyzing apostasy?  However, this idea is wrong for several reasons.  The first is that we are not the only part of the world which we care about.  There are other people, and their interests play a role in our actions (so long as we desire goodness).  This descriptive part of this essay can therefore be used (if one is to agree with the assertion in my prior essay The Question of Liberalism that “good” action is represented by the extension of our own views to others) to aid other people in arriving at what we consider to be the good life and trying to lead them to agree with our own view of what that means.  This examination of apostasy explains how both on a macro level (through societal influence) and on a local level (through knowledge about what other viewpoints offer to the actor in practice) how one can make another’s current viewpoint less desirable than an alternative.  And, on a perhaps more important level, this article also explains how one can make their own viewpoint more desirable for others by showing others what parts of it can be emphasized to make others more likely to agree with it (e.g., its endpoint for a believer and what it tells people to do practically).  Therefore, this article can aid significantly in the missionary part of ethical action.

Secondly, on an egoistic level, the process of apostasy is not particularly desirable.  This is true not so much because of apostasy itself, which is a self-correcting process, but rather because the experience of apostasy includes a great deal of time during which the two contending viewpoints fight one another for control over action.  While each individual viewpoint may regard its part of the battle as virtuous, the extended scuffle is extremely sub-optimal.  A much more desirable situation would be if apostasy occurred rapidly (if that apostasy were inevitably going to occur) or if it were simply not considered (if that apostasy were inevitably not going to occur).  What this implies is that it is important to recognize as early as possible on whether one’s current viewpoint is practical, motivational, and known well enough to continue to serve as one’s future viewpoint, rather than waiting until the actual case of apostasy to decide between ideologies.  When this is not the case, we ought to try to change that.  Now, of course, nobody is going to convert to a religion ahead of time just so that they will not be tempted in the future to consider converting to that religion.  Any person who holds a certain viewpoint will make efforts to save that viewpoint’s existence, as is reasonable.  Therefore, we ought to focus first on trying to get rid of any significant problems with our current viewpoint, whether that involves change one’s society (or one’s placement in it) to be more consistent with one’s viewpoint, changing one’s conception of their end goals and motivations to be less vague, or increasing one’s knowledge about how one should act according to that viewpoint.  And if all that is not enough to retain one’s viewpoint of the world, then one should be open (however difficult that may be) to changing one’s viewpoint to be more practically followable in society, more specific about one’s ends, or more prescriptively clear about what practical action is called for.  While such changes require minor cases of apostasy and are therefore inherently frightening to a person’s current viewpoint (and probably for good reason), concessions like this must be made.  Otherwise, much greater apostasy will be necessary, and there will be no remnants of the old viewpoint left to defend.

To close the article, we will go through a quick recapitulation of our conclusions in simpler language, without any of the technical arguments we have previously used.  We first found that the rejection and replacement of our ideas about how we should figure out the truth, a process which we often go through, cannot be explained simply by testing which idea is better along some external metric.  We also found that not all changes of opinion can be explained due to the objective wrongness or incoherence of one of the two ideas.  Instead, we found that changing one’s views is a process, not a simple decision.  This process, we found, is based increasingly and consistently on acting in a way different from one’s prior views.  When someone does that enough, we found, the way they act affects the way they think, and therefore, they change their views.  This can happen either because they find it difficult in their particular society to act according to their views and therefore must find a different way to act, because they don’t have clear motivation to act in the way that their views tell them to, or because they aren’t sure what their views tell them to do.  We concluded that, first, we should use these findings to be effective in helping other people agree with us on ethical issues, if we believe that is the right thing to do.  Second, we said that people should try to get rid of problems with their current views (such as difficulty of application due to society, not having clear motivation, or not knowing how one can apply their views) – either by changing their own knowledge or situation, or by changing their views in small ways to avoid the weakness currently in their views.  Only in that way, through the immediate change of our views in small amounts by our choice, can we avoid the inevitability of finding ourselves involuntarily changing our views by too much.

*The linked examples compare how Hispanic immigrants to the America’s view of nationality tends to change over time from their previous viewpoint (usually from whichever country they have migrated) to the more common viewpoint (American), while their view of religion tends to not change from their previous viewpoint (Catholic) to the more common viewpoint (Protestant).