What is faith
Questions:
1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither
2) are the purpose of koans to bring out faith?
3) when Muslim scholars of old had the two-truth position, is this a dialectical form of faith?
4) is creativity faith?
5) is courage faith?
6) Finally, why do Christians argue whether faith must have hope and love in order to cause salvation? Are not those three things always intertwined together?
1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither
2) are the purpose of koans to bring out faith?
3) when Muslim scholars of old had the two-truth position, is this a dialectical form of faith?
4) is creativity faith?
5) is courage faith?
6) Finally, why do Christians argue whether faith must have hope and love in order to cause salvation? Are not those three things always intertwined together?
Comments (1635)
Deny this aspect? You said yourself faith is “a form of commitment that reveals itself when it is hardest to maintain.”
That tells us where to look to see faith revealed, but doesn’t tell us what faith is. It doesn’t tell us what precisely is revealed, only “when” or where we might look to point to what faith is.
So I think people are denying this aspect speaks to the question of what faith is qua faith.
The grace under pressure aspect you find essential to the “lived meaning of faith” could be deceptive.
Galileo persisted in his beliefs about the solar system/galaxy in the face of duress, but for the sake of empirical science, which I’m sure you don’t equate with faith.
So pointing out beliefs maintained under duress may show you where to look to seek the “definition” (as you reference it) of faith, but maybe not. There must be something else entirely that defines faith, or you might have to say that Galileo under arrest was possibly trying to start a new religion.
Rather famously, Galileo recanted. Sensible fellow.
That seems to be your rule of engagement, perplexity at other minds saying things you wouldn’t say.
Quoting Banno
Right, you never do, but you keep talking anyway.
If you aren’t trying to define things, why did you say:
“Faith is…”
“Faith is not…”
“Definitions that ignore this…”
???
Why are you bothering with “definitions” then? You said it.
Why say what something like “faith is” and think you can avoid definition?
Quoting Banno
Exactly.
Yes, that seems to be the case, at least for your posts.
Sentences beginning with "faith is..." might be predications, not definitions. I've used a few of them in mapping the use of "faith", and I think at some length. But I do not think that this provides a complete account of each and every use of "faith", which is what some folk seem to think they have done with such stipulations as "faith is trust in authority" or some such. I've tried to look at how the word is used in the wild, rather than to just make some shite up.
I really like your approach of looking at how “faith” operates in real discourse instead of locking it into a rigid definition. Words like “faith” are notoriously slippery and context-dependent, and reducing them to a single formula (like “faith is trust in authority”) oversimplifies the richness of how people actually use them
It's not just simply rudeness; it's craven.
If that's not your view, I stand corrected. I take as an example a prior quote of yours though,
"this goes beyond the merely epistemological point, to demand a response from the faithful as to their humanity.
Faith is not always a good. If your faith is strong enough for you to fly a Boeing into a building, or to fire rockets indiscriminately into a city, then something has gone astray."
Why the cautionary tale identifying the dangers of faith if evil is just an attribute of mankind? Is not implicit in this comment that those without faith are more benign than those with? If just an argument for moderation, why not mention the dangers of extreme atheism as well?
Anyway, to clarify, which makes for the better society, ceteris paribus, one all of theists or one all of atheists?
I gather that we, you and I, are agreed that faith is not much of a virtue. There are perhaps those hereabouts who on the contrary take it as a central virtue. The discussion on my part has been to dissuade others from such a view. This goes beyond the merely epistemological point, to demand a response from the faithful as to their humanity, as to the circumstances in which they would recant. It's not implicit in this, that those without faith are more benign than those with; but that faith must be tempered.
Were I writing in opposition to myself here, I might be pointing out that faith is one amongst at least a trinity, and that when set in the context of hope and love it shines, and my arguments fall away.
But it would remain that faith by itself can be a source of evil.
So this is a complicated statement, crossing categories with strong Christian allusions (lthe trinity and primacy of love (John 4:8 "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love)).
So, faith and hope I'd classify as epistemic categories. It describes the way we know our reality. Faith falls into the certainty class, and should we say we have fauth of something we indicate in our speech as it is. To hope (as to wish, to dream) we don't indicate it is, but we state it as a hypothetical or aspired for reality. The point being that I place hope and faith as ways of qualifying our knowledge of the Good., but not the Good itself
But love, as you use it, sounds like tthe Good iself, the thing we wish to achieve.
Your comment could therefore be interpreted as saying faith in something other than love is dangerous, which is consistent with saying that faith in something other than God is dangerous, if we equate God with love, as John did.
“Predications” as distinct from definitions. There goes the goal post again. Or there you go pulling the ladder out from under yourself.
Just more words to struggle to avoid defining (while predicating and presumably relating mappable elements) and while we avoid defining “faith” instead.
How are you able to speak and think you are not giving me definitions? Not forcing definitions down my throat with each predication, not definition, you distinguish and speak of??
It’s literally preposterous to me, or a lie. If you know what a lie is (as opposed to knowing how to use “lie” in a sentence.)
“Here, let me now explain how there are no such things as words. For some reason, it is best if I use words to do so, so just bear with me, we may never get there, but I will keep talking about wordlessness until there is no further need of explanation…”.
Or, “watch as we approach the goalpost of ‘faith’, as soon as I bring you near to it, I will move it and replace it with some other goal post, like ‘mapping use’.”
It’s why Wittgenstein had to explain the ladder he built was to be thrown away. He had to say that out loud to avoid our confusion at the structure and definition he built.
Here is where we should agree:
Defining things (what I like to do) is as absurd as talking about undefined things (what you do).
Maybe I shouldn’t start speaking until I clarify what an essence is, or what a definition does for speech.
But maybe you should not start speaking until you can show something can be said about anything without having thus defined that thing.
If you don’t see meanings of words, meanings in your mind to define as you speak about those words (ie faith), that’s fine, but I say to you, without essential definitions, without discernible, perceptible distinctions between things in mind, you can’t speak.
You aren’t communicating, or you are lying, if you say you don’t see the meaning of the definition of “faith” here:
“Quoting Banno
It doesn’t matter how you mean those words, or where those words came from, or if they are complete; they are now the objects used, with others, to define “faith” in this discussion. They are useful words when speaking of the essence of “faith”.
It’s unnecessarily impractical to handicap a discussion by avoiding definitions for each and every term we say to each other. It is unhelpful to painstakingly avoid definition, while predicating.
Otherwise you are wasting your time making up your uses for words so that once anything concrete is established we will remind ourselves we have only been “mapping uses” and not found anything fixed by ‘this map.’
We are all stuck with ‘this’ and ‘not that’ - like “predications, not definitions.” Why deny it? Or more precisely, why deny it, while trying to speak about ‘this, not that’??
This, interestingly, is very similar to the point I made about "metaphysics," over on the "Hotel Manager" thread, where we began discussing whether "a wrangle over definitions" is usually useful or not. Trying to pin down a definition does, as you say, ignore what might be learned from a variety of usages. But anyway, the underlying assumption is dodgy at best: That one of these definitions is correct. We can stipulate a definition for the purposes of a discussion, or we can talk about how "faith" or "metaphysics" was defined and used in a particular tradition, or by a particular philosopher, but beyond that . . .?
It’s the same conversation on so many threads. Same exact conversation. Which is a good conversation, but without definitions, a conversation about “faith” and a conversation about “metaphysics” become the same conversation about “conversation.”
When talking about “x”, such as “faith” or “metaphysics” or “cats, not mats”, we can either talk about “x” using definitions, or we can talk about the difficulties of “talking about x” and avoid talking about x and instead talk about talking.
I agree it is hard to define certain ideas, like faith. But admitting the difficulty in fixing one permanent all inclusive definition of things like “faith” is not the same thing as admitting “there are no definitions, or essences or meanings of words to define.”
If one marks any line between any two directions, if one says “this” to clarify “not those”, definitions emerge. Otherwise, without definitions of words to track against the things those words speak of, Speaking “this” while meaning “not those” would not be possible.
If we deny this, we might not have said “this” in the first place; but we already did say ‘this’, we already did say ‘faith’, we are already speaking and partially understanding each others’ partial definitions and blurry but nevertheless clarifying lines.
But speaking is always speaking of. We need what comes after the ‘of’ in ‘speaking of..’ in order to say we are speaking at all. We speak, and communicate our minds to other minds, so definitions must emerge between us.
You said “… we began discussing whether "a wrangle over definitions" is usually useful or not.”
Like “faith”, what is a “wrangle”?
We can’t avoid the essence we speak of and speak of ‘this’ and not ‘that’. We can’t avoid definitions without having the same conversation about all things (as if there are no differences to speak of.)
I understand what you mean, but why not do both? As I was saying over on the other thread, there's a great deal to be learned about the methods of philosophy by "talking about talking." And there's no need to avoid the more specific topics, just because a hard-and-fast definition of some term may elude us. Two different conversations, no?
Quoting Fire Ologist
No indeed. I contrasted this with "tiger," saying:
"Another reason I'm in favor of being more self-conscious about terminological wrangles is that we can learn something, in the process, about what can be usefully defined. That poor tiger we talk so much about can in fact be given a definition which admits of being accurate or inaccurate. It may not be the "only way to define a tiger," but it allows us to sort them out with near-perfect success, and accords with a naming tradition (biology) that has won universal acceptance. Such is not the case, sadly, for putative definitions of love, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to name three. So . . . what is the difference? Plenty of food for philosophical thought here."
So it's not the question of definition as such, but rather of whether and how to try to define terms like "faith" or "metaphysics" that lack universal acceptance, definitionally. But even here, it's fine to stipulate for the purposes of discussion. What I'm calling the "wrangle" begins when someone tries to claim that the stipulation is correct.
You mention trinity and the primacy of love as a value in a thread about faith and think no one will notice the consistency with Christianity?
An argument could be made that you're just making the argument that Christianity would be fine if Christians would just adhere to their creed.
I think most Christians would give an Amen to that.
I agree with everything you said.
I would clarify that the wrangle as we are now wrangling here, begins when someone tries to claim there are stipulations at all.
I get the Wittgensteinian observations that ask the question: Quoting J I get it.
I don't get seeing "faith" is one of those things that cannot be usefully defined, and then continuing to talk about faith. Ridiculous. No one can ever say anything, nor says anything, nor said anything, without reference to differences and distinctions and definitions (or essences if you so choose to name them), by creating a reference point like "faith" and trying to distinguish what has been said from what has not been said. So are the anti-essentialist, non-definers saying anything at all about anything, or what? What recourse could we have to answer that question without defining things and revealing definitions?
There is no need or ability to once and for all clarify the distinct definitions that separate fairy elves from fairy godmothers. If you think "faith" is a word like "fairy elf", that points to nothing ultimately defineable, why try to speak about it all?
But if you think there is something, anything, specific to faith that would distinguish it from anything else you think about specifically, then you must be able to define that specific, line approaching "faith" and leaving "fairy elf" behind.
Quoting J
I think it is essential to do both in order to do the science of philosophy. Talking about talking is more like epistemology. It wonders about the ontology of the connections between my mind, the words my mind creates, and the objects about which my mind is directed and about which my words refer. We need to do this.
Talking about "faith" or "cat, not mat" is more like metaphysics, which is more like physics. It wonders about existing things, not how they are knowable or spoken of. It just says them. "Atoms make chemical combinations." To continue speaking, one needs to define atoms as distinguished from chemical combinations - one needs to do physics and metaphysics.
In other words, when I hear someone say "faith cannot be defined", because that person said 'faith' and not some other thing, all I heard them say is "I don't know the definition of 'faith'." If "faith" cannot be defined, than they haven't said anything at all yet, but jibberish, like "elf" when they said "faith." So if they want to continue asserting things like "that is not 'faith', or 'they don't understand how to use 'faith' in a sentence", then you must merely be saying, about "faith", that they don't know how to define it; they are not actually saying "faith cannot be defined" at all.
If you question whether the assertion "atoms" refers to anything that can approach a definition, you have to instead talk about how we can talk about "atoms" at all meaningfully, and we are back to the same, more epistemological conversation that could care less about the distinction between atoms and chemical combinations. Like here, talking about "predication, versus definition" which could care less about "faith" or any other particular object, like "metaphysics" was on the other thread.
I actually think all of us philosophic thinkers, do both at the same time.
In order to speak, we are metaphysicians, taking ontological objects, in an epistemology.
To do metaphysics, we posit objects related through epistemology.
To do epistemology, we posit objects related through metaphysics.
To posit objects, we universalize (meta), our perceptions (existing particular things - ontological objects).
To focus on any one area, we must focus on all three at once. We don't peer into epistemology without a metaphysic and ontology supporting us. We don't peer into metaphysics witihout an epistemology supporting us.
The fourth thing we do, because we speak to others about our metaphysical, ontological, epistemological mental activities, is language itself. Language, to me is metaphysics, for the sake of epistemology. Words refer to, like knowledge is knowledge of.
Which is why it is dissappointing when people raise a topic, make some points about that topic, and then leave it all at "that cannot be defined". They have already denied the inability to define it by speaking "it" and not "that".
There's an aspect of the ridiculous to it, quite often: People talking past each other, banging their metaphorical tables, never appearing to notice that they aren't talking about the same thing. No doubt many of these conversations would be better off with a stipulation everyone could accept for the time being.
That said, you're certainly putting a lot of faith (sorry!) in the idea of a definition. Has it actually been your experience that, without clear definitions that can be shown beforehand to be correct, progress can't be made in intellectual areas?
I think the insistence on lexical correctness is the problem. This is a matter of whether a word fits a concept, yes? You have a certain concept and you believe that the word "faith," let's say, fits that concept, just as biologists have examined our concept of "tiger" and clarified our word for it. In discussing this with someone else, you might find that they understand your concept quite well, and agree with much that you say about it; however, they don't think "faith" is the right word to apply.
So: shall the two of you wrangle about who is correct about the word "faith"? What would be the point? How would you ever settle it? What you're interested in is a particular concept (or fill in whatever your metaphysics may allow here, if you don't care for concepts). Rather than arguing about a word, why not keep looking at the concept, the idea, the thing under discussion, under whatever name or description?
And when all that is over, and in the happy event that the two of you see eye to eye, you might realize, "Ah, it seems that 'trust' might be more helpful here in capturing what we've been talking about. Let's share what we've learned with others and recommend they also adopt this use of 'trust.'" Now if you want to call that "discovering a definition," I can't stop you, but I think definitions are established by universal agreement within a particular community, not by the sort of ameliorative process I just described. What makes the use of a word like "trust" helpful or not helpful, in a sample case like this, will be whether it carves up the conceptual territory in a perspicuous way, a way that lets us understand what relates to what, in the cluster of concepts under examination. It's not because it was the "correct word" all along, nor does it become the "correct word" now. We can only recommend, on intelligent grounds.
A babe uses "mum", understanding who mum is, and yet cannot provide a definition. Definitions are secondary and derivative, not foundational. Use is at the centre of language. I think yo agree with this, but frankly it is very hard to work out what you think form what you write.
Take care.
No - I intended that they notice.
My little joke.
Yes, I find myself coming back to this a lot.
But not non-existent. Not to be painstakingly avoided when trying to communicate.
You just contradicted yourself. If “definitions are” then my work is done.
Take care.
What is with the “beforehand” and the “correct”? Banno said “foundational”.
The post asks “what is faith”. So the foundation is a question.
Beforehand, we have no definition.
We will be incorrect as we speak “faith” trying to define it.
Our final understanding of faith will likely be incomplete, contain imprecision, contain error, need further revision.
But we can’t avoid defining faith if we want to distinguish “faith” from other things. (Or use “faith” in a sentence that can be understood.)
Quoting J
Looking at a single concept, an idea, is looking at a word. Words name concepts. So there is no difference between arguing about a word and communicating about a concept.
Quoting J
If you don’t want to call what you just did here defining the word “definition” I think you merely handicap our ability to communicate, our ability to share concepts from one mind to another.
We are playing semantics with the definition of “definition” to painstakingly avoid using definitions of words. Ridiculous way of exchanging thought.
.Quoting Fire Ologist
I guess if we had any hope of sorting this out, we'd need to start there. My own view is that words and concepts are quite distinct. But we can let it go.
You seem to agree with this, somewhat adamantly.
So I can't quite see what it is you disagree with. There is this: Quoting Fire Ologist
Which is muddled. Not all words are nouns, so not all words name something. We do a lot more with words than just name concepts.
But to see this one must stop and look at how words are actually used.
Quoting J
"Concepts" versus "words" versus "whatever content X" (here, "faith"). This is the nub of all philosophy, no?
It is really difficult to step outside of language, and talk about language, using only language to do it. That's the rub of the nub.
(And it's the irony of our disagreement over words.)
This conversation is a close cousin to questions like "do you support a mind-independent reality" and "what are the forms". It's where philosophers end up when talking "what is" anything, such as "metaphysics" as you mentioned above. It's all a convoluted mess with the mind, with thoughts about things, or with language about thoughts about things, and further convoluted when we try to get two people to agree on the language about thoughts about things. It's why so many threads devolve into this same issue - "what can be said clearly, at all, ever, about anything?"
And while having these conversations, to downplay the function and necessity of words having/acquiring/being given their own definitions...seems as vain as many seem to think defining a word is vain.
My point is, we shouldn't try to avoid definitions when addressing questions "what is X". And, we, in fact, can't avoid defining our terms (which is why we shouldn't try).
You, who I am assuming think we don't need so much reliance on definitions to communicate, in reference to "discovering a definition" you said the phrase "universal agreement within a particular community." This is a definition of "definition." Right? It's too late to avoid it. Since we are now talking about my use of "definition" and you want to differ with me, you were forced to draw a clear line, provide a provisional, cursory, placeholder definition of "definition" to show a distinction between your concept of things and mine.
That is all my point is. We define when we speak. If we are to speak, we must define. Once we define, once we have communicated a concept, a definition exists, in the word, out in the world among human beings, written in stone.
We dance around the elephant we keep inviting into the room when we think we are not defining things as we speak about things.
I truly appreciate the patience with me, because I know there are many technical ways you want to use words like "concepts" and "definitions" - but technical according to Aristotle, or Wittgenstein, or Augustine, or Quine, or Dostoevsky?
There is no way to have this conversation briefly.
It's the question of "how do we know." It's "what is truth?" It's "What is meaning?" It's "What is a thing?". Same ultimate issues presented. Words-concepts-communication.
And I don't expect you to just say "wow - I never thought of it that way." We started with "what is faith' and ended up with "what do any words do?"
I have no problem saying our words give our concepts definition, and I seek that definition. That's the unspeakable elephant I dance with.
I have to infer this by your manner saying "I've not said no," but if you are saying "there are definitions," then we agree perfectly.
And if you are saying there are few good definitions, then we also agree (and would be agreeing with Plato's Socrates as well. Precious few.)
Quoting Banno
Ok, but must we abandon all hope for any small piece of the essence of "faith", abandon all hope for some small portion of some of those conditions that are necessarily tied to "faith"?
Quoting Banno
That, to me, is a method for defining. It doesn't avoid a resulting definition for faith. You can avoid saying it provides a definition, but that, to me, is like doing all of the math for a complex equation, but refusing to write down the resulting answer. We are solving for X, mapping uses, but never just stating what, therefore, X is.
Quoting Banno
Yes, and no.
Obviously there are many parts of speech besides nouns. And words like "yes" function uniquely from the basic parts of speech. I'm not talking about grammar.
When we speak, we speak about. Right? Speaking is always speaking about. We never speak (qua speaking) without speaking about some other thing.
There is the word, but, if it is a word, there also what the word is about, what the word is being used for (to use your/Witts vernacular).
Like a name. A use of "Banno" is something about you. A use of "use" is something about something else.
When I say "yes" I am doing something - it's not a noun, and there is no normal naming. But if someone else can't tell what I am doing when I say "yes", they still know what "yes" is about. They have to know what "yes" is about to be confused or satisfied with my use. "Yes" names or points to a particular use-function or meaning. If they ask "Do you want vanilla or chocolate?" and I just say "Yes", they might be confused, because they know how "yes" is normally used, and in response to "vanilla OR chocolate", a simple "Yes" names or points in a direction that does not account for the "or". Unless there was a bag full of random Strawberry or Mango ice creams, and a second bag full of vanilla or chocolate ice creams, and the person asking the question wanted to see if I want to risk a strawberry or mango surprise, or a vanilla or chocolate surprise - then "yes" to "vanilla or chocolate" makes perfect sense. But all along, "yes" pointed to or named the function of "agreement", all along, "yes" was about something. (If words have meanings/defintitions/dare-I-say-essences.)
Here is a better example. If you listen to a song sung in some language foreign to you, you might love the sound of the singer's voice, and hear the rhyme of the syllables, but none of those "words" can even be called "words" - none of the lyrics are about anything to you. It might actually be jibberish, and no language at all. But, as soon as I find what the words are about, as soon as I see how they have been used to point out something else, I can name similar words in English that might express the same meaning of the song. Translation is possible because all words name, all words point to, all words are about.
As usual, we are talking past each other.
How can you speak about anything of substance on this forum without delineating distinctions? How is any delineation not some form of definition? And now, once you admit to defining, why persist in raising "cannot set out the necessary and sufficient conditions" as if you aren't defining your terms all of the time anyway?
I know you think a person of faith, acting on their faith qua faith, is not being rational, and that faith qua faith can be used to support heinous evil. All of that may be true, but then, why would you think you have not defined something of the "rational" and given some border and color to "evil"? If one challenges your commentary, you resort to "you shouldn't define terms".
Why would you think you understand other's uses of faith if faith is something you have no use for?
You need to say more to defend your position AND/OR to deconstruct mine. You just snipe. You can do better, I think.
Take care.
First, we do not need to have at hand the essence of some thing in order to talk about it. See the "mum" example given previously. We use words with great success without knowing the essence of whatever it is they stand for. Demonstrably, since we can talk about faith wiothout agreeing on the essence of faith.
Thinking we can't use words unless we first fix their essence is muddle-headed.
Second, we can of course delineate and describe the way a word is used. I did as much using ChatGPT for "faith" a few pages back. We do not, in our usual conversations, use "faith" to mean corned beef, for example. But in other less usual circumstances, we might. So tow things: words do have ordinary uses about which we can chat, and words can nevertheless be use din all sorts of odd ways.
And here again, it is the use that is... useful.
Third, we do far more than just speak about... we command, question, name, promise... Unless you want to use the term in a very odd way, not all words are about; what's "and" about? Or "Hello"? or an expletive? Or your "yes"? Such words do not name anything, but instead do something. "Yes" does not pointed to or named the function of "agreement" (whatever that is); it is to agree.
Forth, I do not think that persons of faith are all of them irrational. What I have argued is that faith can bring about irrationality. Here it is again: when a belief is under duress, one can reconsider or one can double down. Faith can be characterised as doubling down when one ought reconsider.
Fifth, written a reply such as this exemplifies the law of diminishing returns. I'm not getting much out of your repeatedly misunderstanding what I write. Hence, perhaps, what you interpret as sniping.
It's often more difficult to come up with definitions for notions other than substance (things), since such concepts will always [I]inhere[/I] in something else. For instance, one never had a "fast motion" without some thing moving, or "red" without there being something (light, a ball, etc.) that is red. More general principles will tend to be harder to define because they can be analogously predicated under many aspects.
So, for instance, one set of definitions in this thread has focused on faith as the persistence of belief (or even "belief without evidence," although I find the latter sort of ridiculous). But the persistence of beliefs is arguably just one thing that results from faith. St. Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus is often considered to be a quintessential example of an event defined by faith, but if fact this event involves him [I]abandoning[/I] most of his most firmly held beliefs—beliefs that he has been up to that moment willing to fight and risk his life for.
On the flip side, the radical skeptic is also persistent in their beliefs. No evidence can move them from their skepticism, and yet this immobility is because they lack faith in anything.
The mistake here might be akin to claiming that flight is defined by the flapping of wings. While the two go together, there can be flight without flapping or flapping without flight.
Other definitions in this thread seem to use "faith" more akin to trust. People "have faith" in airplanes, doctors, etc. But this is perhaps more a sort of trust in people and institutions, as opposed to the deeper uses of "faith." Again, we might suppose there is a relationship here of the sort where faith entails a sort of trust, is not reducible to trust.
Faith, when discussed as a theological virtue, at least suggests this. It suggests fortitude in assent to the illumination of faith (perseverance and immobility), and it suggests trust, but goes beyond either of these.
I appreciate the organized response. The numbered paragraphs.
But I’m forced to mostly respond on your terms again. Because you don’t make many direct connections to what I actually said.
Quoting Banno
“we do not need to have at hand the essence of some thing in order to talk about it.”
You keep placing the essence or definition prior to the thing, or the word about that thing. You also said:
“Thinking we can't use words unless we first fix their essence is muddle-headed.”
“Unless we first”. I didn’t say that. I’m not giving any priority among the word, or its definition/essence, or the “some thing” the word is about.
I think your causal type prioritization of the pieces, that you think comes from me, is your own doing, it’s how you think, not me. And I can see how that would distort my meaning. I don’t drink the Wittegensteinian cool-aid, as thirstily.
I’m just saying words about things have definitions.
Words-about things-defined.
Definitions-of words-name things/concepts.
Things-defined-in words.
It is precisely the inability to place one of these as prior to the others that demands we can’t avoid defining things, if we want to actually communicate, actually deliver a concept, in words, to another. Definitions emerge as words distinguish things and distinguish themselves in use.
So you aren’t addressing what I said. You are recharacterizing with new elements, adding concepts to what I’m saying and in so doing, not seeing the essence of what I’m saying.
“We use words with great success without knowing the essence of whatever it is they stand for. Demonstrably, since we can talk about faith wiothout agreeing on the essence of faith.”
Ok, maybe, but just because we can do these things, this doesn’t address what I am saying either.
Just because we can identify words to use without “knowing” definitions doesn’t mean definitions aren’t there. So this is, to me, is a non-sequitur, or a fallacious argument. It doesn’t mean that we should have have to avoid defining our terms in a discussion that asks “what is X”.
But with “great” success? I disagree anyway. As is demonstrable in our inability to really communicate.
“we can talk about faith without agreeing on the essence of faith.”
I agree with this clause. We don’t need the whole essence or complete definition. But not with great success. And we can go through your “uses of faith” exercise or my hash out the essential elements exercise to confirm actual “success” as you say.
But overall, I disagree with your analysis quoted above. And I showed you specifically how I disagreed.
The following two mistakes are muddling your assessment of my meaning: 1 attaching some sort of causal priority to definitions/essences, (I don’t) and 2 thinking I am saying we need the full definition with all necessary sufficient conditions, or without it we have no definition at all. (never meant that either) These are features of how you think “essence” or “definition” is being used, but is not how I have used them.
Some of the other things you say deserve attention, particularly your dismissive comments on the aboutness of all words, but what do you think of the above first?
Hi Timothy.
I see us all breaking things down into so many parts. “Inhere” could be problematic. Is this a better way of saying “participate in the forms” or my “concepts are always concepts of something”?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But does that mean definitions should be, or even can be, avoided if we want to ensure communication of ideas among people?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Like there might be “faith” with or without “persistence into death” or “persistence into death” with or without faith.
That is the kind of meaning as use issue that arises, begging the pursuit of something even more essential to the notion of “faith”.
You go on to mention “trust” (which I did way back in the thread as well) may be a part of what is faith. And there other aspects.
I don’t think anyone has carved out the noun “faith” which is more like a religious creed, from the act of “having faith in something” which can be more generically had. The more generic “having faith in” can just mean anything from following intuition, to trusting the words of someone else, to believing in some end without seeing the path that will get you there.
But I believe, I have faith in, our ability to define something of the essence of faith. I don’t believe Banno will suffer my resistance to Wittegensteim-speak in avoidance of definitions much longer, but I want to believe Banno could see some of my points.
I also believe, there are long, precise paths we must take to answer questions about meaning, and definition and essence, but if our answers in the end don’t make sense in some simple and naive manner as well, they are astray. We can’t forget the naive question by the time we arrive at the complex answer. We have to be able to answer “what is faith” with “faith is x, y, etc…”. Or why bother “communicating” about it, or why conclude anyone else knows what we know?
I don't understand what you mean by "attaching some sort of causal priority to definitions/essences" nor how you are using "definition".
So back to diminishing returns.
“Unless we first”
“Have at hand…in order to”
These place things in order of some priority. How hard is that to follow?
I keep forgetting you are willfully blind, and blinding, in your rigorous faith in Wittgenstein.
You don’t want to see how you can’t throw away the ladder and communicate.
You don’t want to communicate, just pontificate.
Don’t know how I am using definition? I wish I could define it for you.
So much for successful discussion despite no prior essence ready to hand.
Demonstrable failure to communicate.
Quoting Fire Ologist
There are a few posters who engage in a pretty wild form of definition sophistry, and this is how they manage to get away with irrational posts. When someone uses a word, either they know what they mean by the word or they don’t. If they know what they mean by it then they will be able to tell you what they mean by it. If they don’t know what they mean by it then they are talking nonsense by literally saying meaningless things. If they refuse to tell you what they mean by a word but yet continue to pretend to use it, then they lack good faith and will not provide meaningful engagement.
The anti-religious in this thread hold something like the following:
For me that level of muddle and bias is not worth engaging. But suppose we take pity on the anti-religious and give them a lesson in philosophical argumentation. In my thread <here> I point out the difference between an assertion and an argument. “Faith is irrational,” is an assertion, not an argument (and it is by no means a definition). Note too that the inference the anti-religious has in mind is actually this, whether or not they are willing to admit it:
3. Faith is irrational
4. Anything which is based on the irrational is bad
5. Religion is based on faith
6. Therefore, religion is bad
If the anti-religious wants to do philosophy then they have to turn 3 into a conclusion. At present it is an assertion or an unsupported (and controversial) premise. So they at least need a middle term, and one way of doing that would be the following:
1e. All X is irrational
2e. All faith is X
3. Therefore, all faith is irrational
Here is the middle term that Tom was groping at earlier in the thread:
1a. Believing in the absence of sufficient justification is irrational
2a. Faith involves believing in the absence of sufficient justification
3. Therefore, faith is irrational
(See The Oxford Handbook of Religious Epistemology, linked <here>.)
Banno has at long last stumbled upon his own rationale:
1b. Obstinacy is irrational
2b. (Religious) faith involves obstinacy
3. Therefore, (Religious) faith is irrational
-
Hopefully this highlights what is actually going on in the thread. It has nothing to do with definitions; it has to do with arguments, namely arguments that the anti-religious prefer to leave unarticulated given their weaknesses. This is what is often at play when someone refuses to say what they mean by a word (and here I am thinking especially of @J, who uses this tactic gratuitously). It is, “If I say what I mean by the term then my argument will be shown weak; therefore I refuse to say what I mean.” Ergo, my first thread: Argument as Transparency.
(The answer to Banno is to <make a distinction with respect to the second premise>.)
Spot on. I appreciate you weighing in. I guess not everything I said is muddled-headed to everyone. (I actually know that, but appreciate your reply.)
I keep thinking Banno is smart enough to display some wisdom, or something interesting, even accidentally, in response to me, so I engage anyway. But, minimal happy accidents, many cliche and tiresome parrots channeling St. Wittgenstein, and maximal frustration strike again.
Banno doesn’t seem to understand he’s being squarely challenged by many around here and he keeps failing to respond. At all.
It is fairly miraculous how all the “muddle” never reflects on him or his methods or his “uses of words.” It’s also quite amazing to me how little self-awareness of his condescension he has, and more importantly, how little awareness of how contradictory he is, like when he “refuses to tell you what [he] means by a word but yet continues to pretend to use it.” Pretend. Like gaming. Spot on.
Quoting Leontiskos
I like all of your restatements, but I like this one the best. I like it best because Banno can’t see that this describes the essence of his beliefs on “faith”. All puns intended.
Quoting Leontiskos
I remember reading that. I had high hopes it would be instructive for some people. Alas…you must have confused them by using the word “difference” or something, or worse, you offered a definition (God forbid!).
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, you are right. This is why Banno keeps trying to talk past me. I haven’t really gotten to the arguments. I’m just trying to establish trust and grounds for a genuine exchange, where he looks at everything like it’s a linguistic trap, or beneath his dignity as high judge of all muddle.
Quoting Leontiskos
You are kind enough to use his favored analytic methods. I agree, his necessary connection between faith and obstinacy is the weakness.
I made that point with Galileo. When Galileo was arrested, he was obstinate in his beliefs under strain and duress. So, was he being a man of faith, starting a new religion? Banno dismissively said Galileo recanted. Totally missed the point. That only means Gallileo lost faith then (according to Banno’s use/definition of “faith”). Didn’t address my point, at all, as usual, which was simply that there must be something else, something more specific to faith if we are to distinguish what Gallileo held versus what a faithful person holds.
Or maybe Gallileo really almost was a martyr in Banno’s religion. Fell from grace by recanting.
I would feel like I’m being mean-spirited, but I don’t think my thoughts register in the lofty heights of Banno’s world, up above all of the ladders.
I think your posts are very much on point.
The other bait-and-switch that usually happens in these contexts is that, when you ask someone what they mean by some word they are using, they go on a long diatribe about the complexities of lexicography and linguistic meaning. Lexicography is complex, but we don't need to plumb its depths in order to give an account of what we intend a word within one of our own sentences to mean. Indeed, in response to the lexicography questions earlier in the thread I pointed to Josef Pieper's studies on the words faith and belief, but it turns out no one was genuinely interested in lexicography at all. It's too hard. Better to query ChatGPT and call it a day.
Quoting Fire Ologist
:up:
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, your point was clear and salutary. Obstinacy is an accidental property of faith, and certainly not a necessary feature. A case like Galileo shows this.
Sometimes when people utterly fail to provide arguments for their claims, it is because they view the issue as moot or unworthy of serious effort. That is likely what is happening in this thread with respect to the anti-religious posters. "Religion is irrational. Everyone knows it. Arguments are unnecessary." Of course these posters tend to do the same thing in other threads as well, but the problem is especially pronounced here.
This is unfortunate given the fact that our age is more faith-based than any previous age, and if our age does not figure out how to navigate the issue of faith/belief/testimony our societies will collapse. Most of the central disagreements in our age have only to do with the question of which authority is trustworthy. Such disagreements include things like politics, religion, medicine, history, ethics, etc. Ironically, the issue of faith in artificial intelligence and LLMs like ChatGPT is perhaps the most acute case. The most recent blowup due to different trusted authorities took place around the Covid-19 pandemic.
Welcome to philosophy!
Quoting Fire Ologist
Then we're in accord. This is what I mean by "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion."
Quoting Fire Ologist
Well, this isn't quite so simple. Usually, when people talk about defining something, I think they have in mind more like a dictionary definition, an agreed-upon use of a word which makes it correct. But you've said, and I agree, that "stipulating a definition for the purposes of discussion" isn't like that. It's more like drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently. I'm not sure what's elephantine here.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Just a suggestion: In a sense, you're right that all these Big Questions refer to, and hinge upon, each other, but by linking them up like this, they become so flabbergasting that it's hard to know where to start. It makes it sound as if you have to address them all, and all at once, in order to get any philosophical work done. In my experience, picking smaller, more tractable questions works better. You arrive at the big ones anyway, but the path is clearer.
Quoting J
I think @Fire Ologist is correct in claiming that the issue is not stipulation:
Quoting J
Quoting Fire Ologist
Word meaning is not actually stipulated, in the sense that meaning is determined by the speaker. What is necessary in terminological disagreements are not stipulative definitions, but rather provisional definitions or semantic narrowing or nominal definitions.
The difference lies in imposition. To stipulate a word's meaning to an interlocutor is to impose that sense of the word upon them. Instead we must seek our interlocutor's agreement, especially in the case of word-meaning. Specifying the sense of a word with a provisional definition or a narrowing of the semantic range provides this necessary room for agreement from the interlocutor. If two people are using a word in entirely different ways, then they are not successfully communicating, and the word should be dropped altogether (and replaced by the two different compositional definitions).
When you give an argument in an OP you have a responsibility to convey your meaning. You are free to use definitions which are idiosyncratic, but that will naturally lead to less engagement with the OP (because others will be less likely to agree/consent to idiosyncratic word use). It will also lead to the critique that you are using words wrongly, and this would be a just critique. A philosophy forum cannot function at all if the participants do not use words carefully and correctly.
In any case, @Fire Ologist is correct when he implies that each time we use a word we leverage a definition. A definition is what a word means, and every instance of every word has a meaning. At the abstraction of the language-group the meaning of a word is best captured by lexicography and dictionaries. At the level of the individual who speaks a sentence, the meaning of the word derives from her. This doesn't mean that her sentence is unrelated to lexicography or dictionaries or the language group, but the primary meaning comes from her and her appropriation of such linguistic realities. If we really want to know what she means by a word, then we ask her. If we cannot ask her then we will make do with more abstract approaches. But words do not exist primarily in some Platonic realm, or in dictionaries. They exist foremost on the tongues of speakers, and it is the speaker who must be queried in the first place. They may answer the query with idiosyncratic usage, and we may walk away after deciding that communication with such a person would be unduly burdensome, but it nevertheless remains the fact that the meaning of a word is found in the person who speaks it.
(The person who stipulates an idiosyncratic meaning is transgressing a convention, and it is burdensome to constantly distinguish the idiosyncratic meaning of their phonemes from the conventional phoneme meanings. All the same, in this case their meaning is not accessible via the conventions, and it still comes from the speaker. The normal and proper case occurs when there is a speaker who uses the language correctly, i.e. according to convention, and yet at the same time we understand the semantic shape to be completed and colored by their own personality and intellect—which is why familiarity with a speaker aids one in understanding their meaning, even when that meaning is not idiosyncratic.)
I appreciate the response and dialogue.
Quoting J
I agree when discussing “truth” or “reality” or “faith” - a dictionary won’t do. I agree about what stipulated definitions are, namely, never to be simply judged “correct.” They are tools to facilitate or maybe start a conversation.
But I also think a few other things, particularly when the conversation is directly asking for something that a definition would address - like, a “what is faith” conversation.
Banno said when people use the word “faith” they don’t normally say “corned beef” as well. Without saying it, Banno shows what I think, and that is, there must be something incorrect about relating “faith” with “corned beef” in normal uses if these terms. Just plain incorrect (according to me, not to Banno - I dont know what Banno actually thinks). It’s a false fact that faith involves corned beef (actually I think it can be a Kosher meat, so we might squeeze corned beef into a way too long conversation about faith, so pretend Banno said “socks”’instead of corned beef.)
Likewise, and we can continue to debate this, in my view, we are not going to get away from a discussion about what faith is, without addressing “trust” (another can of worms), and I think “knowledge and belief” (cans mounting, stipulations begging for entry). And in the end, we are not simply “drawing a temporary distinction in terms so that two people can converse intelligently,” but we are conversing itself for reason, and doing so to identify bright lines like where faith ends and corned beef and socks begin. We may never say of our definition “it is finished and it is correct” but we can say “Faith has at least something to do with trust and belief in someone or something - and it would be incorrect to exclude trust and belief when considering ‘what is faith’.”
So while I don’t disagree with what you are saying, I don’t think you’ve said enough, or as much as I am saying.
I still believe I am seeing bright lines between identifiably distinct things that are worth noting in a conversation as clearly as I see them, as in “faith always involves trust, among other things.” That’s correct to me. It’s not all faith involves so I have no reason to celebrate. But it’s my first bright line in the neighborhood of faith, and a beginning to the correct definition of faith.
Quoting J
This is precisely where I am in my philosophic growth. I currently believe the only way to discuss epistemology is to also discuss metaphysics (which includes language use) while expressly admitting your ontology (which includes physics).
What is. (Metaphysics)
How it is to me. (Epistemology)
Whether it is. (Ontology)
They all beg each other, answer each other, and each cannot be asked without asking each other.
This is way off topic but your sense of where I am coming from was right on. It is flabbergasting, but unfortunately, I think it’s the only way forward, and it is the reason philosophy is stuck (since the 1800s), and is why all of these threads meander back to these same questions.
We back into the starting gate unless we behave more like a mystic (much to the chagrin of the modern scientist.). I, unfortunately, have concluded that we scientists must treat the absurd and the paradoxical, the impossible to say, as if physical objects, if we are to say or simply know one thing.
I’m way off towards Pluto at this point. Makes one long for a simple conversation about “faith”.
Yes.
Some may say this justifies meaning as use, but that would misinterpret what you expressly said. No need for interpretation.
“the meaning of a word is found in the person who speaks it.”
And to the listener who listens, the meaning can then be received and reworded. So that meaning, words and persons, are all distinct objects immediately present when language is…happening.
Otherwise, enjoy Leon's company.
Yep.
That's fair. I could easily have added something about how even a stipulated or tentative definition is going to have to exhibit certain features, if there's to be any point to it. Which features, exactly? Lots of dispute about this. We probably want to include something that will prevent talking about "socks" as part of a discussion of what faith is. In other words, some criterion of relevance. But, apart from the obviously absurd cases, this is a lot harder than it looks.
I'll try to come back to this . . .
Telling ya… The rub of all philosophy. How can we say something about anything.
I don’t have the time, energy, brains or education to do it, but it’s never going away, from me, or human nature. The desire the know. Why is there something?
Quoting J
Setting some criteria of relevance, to me, is a sibling to just saying there is such a thing as a definition.
In respect of 'why is there anything?', the question naturally arises in a culture which originally accepted the fact of divine creation. In the absence of divine creation, an alternative account is sought, presumably grounded in science. But that always seems to face an aporia of its own which is not surprising, as natural science presumes nature without needing to explain it. There are kinds of 'why' questions that science won't even ask, let alone seek an answer for.
Buddhism offers an alternative, as it starts not with the question 'why is there anything?' but 'why is there suffering?' - usually followed by a catalogue of the kinds of suffering which seem unavoidable for all of us, such as old age, illness and death, the loss of what one cherishes, being united with what one dislikes, and so forth. It then proceeds to analyse the deep psycho-physiological processes which give rise to the human condition, under the rubric of 'suffering and its cause'. But it still requires faith - faith that there is a cause, that it is something that can be understood, that release from it is a real possibility. But the salient point is, Buddhism still contains a kernel in religious revelation, insight into another realm of being, which I think is essential if faith is to have any meaning other than sentimentality or wishful thinking.
:blush:
Almost. I've writ about it at some length. What's philosophically illegitimate is dependence on divine writ.
And yes, the fora do much resemble the plight of Sisyphus.
Well, not anything isn't something that can be, right? :)
First, I didn’t think you could understand me, so why bother.
Second, There are fifty things prior to my posts with Leon that you didn’t respond to. Linking your name is no use, is meaningless, towards any interest in obtaining an honest response from you.
Third, Seems muddle-headed for you expect courtesy from me.
And yet here you are.
Quoting Fire Ologist Again, if you want me to respond, link my name. A common courtesy. I'll not be going over your posts looking to see if you ask me something. You are not that interesting.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I agree. Seems I erred in expecting curtesy from you.
Fire, I honestly havn't been able to follow most of what you wrote. I gave it a go. It didn't work. I'll leave you to it.
:rofl: I know! That is so you! But thanks for saying it again.
That’s rather out of the blue. I think there are many many things, like love for instance, which are irrational and good.
I think a child that successfully uses “mum” must necessarily have the essence of their mum. It’s just not a very developed concept.
If we can identify something we must have some conception of it and couldn’t that conception, however simple or complex, be considered the essence of it? Our concepts or essences may not align well, of course.
What is it to "have the essence" of mum, beyond what one does?
Quoting praxis
What is it to have "some concept of it" beyond being able to identify it?
And essences are a bit different to concepts...
You are enunciating the actual idea (as opposed to the common strawman). Good to see that happening. :up:
Ah yes, going back a step.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don’t think anyone would say it’s inherently irrational.
See for example and the claims that began this part of the thread.
I’m thinking that pretty much all a child has is the essence of mum. No words or definitions. Mum may mean security, nourishment, and the like, on an instinctual or just ‘feel good’ level.
I don’t get it. Tom doesn’t claim that faith is inherently irrational in that post or the couple of subsequent posts.
"Belief without evidence" and "We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence" seem like pretty standard claims of irrationality.
If you don't see faith as irrational that's great, but anti-religious folks tend to view faith as irrational.
Something like that is perhaps correct. The babe understands the essence of mum, but not yet the details.
Is that the same use of "essence" as that of the Philosophers hereabouts? "that which makes a thing what it is and not another", or whatever?
Some examples of faith are likely irrational. I provided examples earlier, such as the belief that black people or women are inferior. I've heard such views regularly expressed by theists, both Christian and Islamic, and I would say they don't have good reasons, so they are justifying a prejudice through faith.
No doubt some theists will hold that this is not the real use of faith or religion, but I wonder if this is a No True Scotsman fallacy. It seems to me that there's really no belief that one can't justify using an appeal to faith. As I wrote before, I have a friend who is a Catholic priest, and he often quips that faith is the last refuge of a scoundrel - with apologies to Dr. Johnson.
I also disagreed with the idea which many hold, that catching a plane is equivalent to believing in God, in terms of both being "faith-based" decisions. Having reasonable confidence in something based on evidence is different from having faith in things that are unseen.
That said, it's clear that the word "faith" has multiple meanings and holds different significance for different people. The religious bigots will always accuse atheists of being unphilosophical and polemical and wrong about faith and that's simply how these discussions go. I don't think religious people or "theists" are bad or stupid or delusional. Well, some obviously are... but so are some atheists.
Now whether it is reasonable to believe in God just on faith, I don't know. I would need to understand what this is supposed to mean.
More like a second cousin, I'd say, but I understand you. :wink: Again, though, let's keep in mind whether the "such a thing as a definition" is meant to refer to our innocuous, stipulated-for-the-purposes-of-discussion definition, or something more permanent and indisputable. Because the question of relevance can be similarly discriminated. Biologists are clear on their criteria of relevance for discussing and defining "tiger" in the second sense. We philosophers are not, when it comes to terms like "faith" -- again, excluding silly limit-case examples.
Of course not, I would say it’s intuitive and that we all have intuitive assessments of things and the intuitive sense is foundational. Knowledge, analysis, and philosophizing can shape our intuitions and allows increased manipulation but the intuition is always there.
See Tom’s last post above.
I’m anti-religious and view faith as non-rational, though there are clearly many instances of irrational religious faith.
With respect to what is a definition, the only difference to me between the stipulated version, and the more permanent, to me, is a matter of degree. The stipulated version is likely weak, vague, minimally helpful, easily used imprecisely, and/or just bad (or accidentally good but need further investigation). The more permanent version is closer to useful and reflective of the thing defined.
It’s a question of degree, not some sort of difference in kind, between a stipulated definition or a more solid definition. So it’s all the same thing - a definition.
If we define “faith” as “not corned beef” we have a sort of silly limit case. But that’s the whole ballgame. We have a clear bright line between at least two things. We have a definition shaping up. We know a difference. If we want to look further at “corned beef” we should not look towards “faith”. That is to be treated as absolute, “indisputable, and permanent.”
This is just wildly unhelpful if trying to say anything more about either faith or corned beef.
This silly limit provides no good definition to either thing; but because I know “not faith” tells me something about “corned beef”, further investigation might bring me to a deli as opposed to a church. By the time I am pointing to “pastrami” and to “corned beef”, seeing where they overlap and where they differ, now my definition of corned beef might be starting to approach the essence of some thing. I’m much closer to something permanent and indisputable that might actually also function (use) to allow for communication to happen.
The stipulated definition isn’t innocuous in my view. It’s just likely a poor definition of the two things on either side of the limit, and, if still interested in discussing either of those two things, this limit needs further scrutiny and revision and detailed observation and wording that enables communication about those two things.
And now I realize I haven’t had a Reuben in months. What is “travesty”?
He's changed his view. My point was that there are people who see faith as irrational, such as Tom (before he changed his view) and Bertrand Russell. I suppose if Tom Storm and Bertrand Russell were the only two people who ever thought faith was irrational, then there is no longer anyone who thinks that. :wink:
Quoting praxis
Okay.
The problem with these conversations is that if you can't say what X is, then you are not allowed to say that X is Y. So if you can't say what faith is, then you are not allowed to say that faith is rational or irrational or non-rational. And if you can't say what religion is, then you are not allowed to say that religion is rational or irrational or non-rational. None of the anti-religious in this thread have actually ventured to say what faith is,* and that's an enormous philosophical problem for those who are making claims about faith.
For example, suppose someone says that cars are bad. I ask what they mean by 'car'. Now if they refuse to answer, then their statement is meaningless, and that is the state of this thread. But suppose they answer, "A long-distance transport vehicle with four wheels and an internal combustion engine." I respond, "Are there any electric vehicles that are cars?" They adapt their claim, "Cars are neither good nor bad, but there are many instances of bad cars."
Now if they want to do philosophy they have to specify what makes a car good or bad, and why some cars are bad, and whether this has to do with cars per se or some extraneous factor. So they might say, "Everything which pollutes is bad; Internal combustion engines pollute; Therefore, cars with internal combustion engines are bad." That's what the anti-religious are required to do if they want to engage in philosophy.
* In the sense of a definition
It’s painfully obvious that faith is the most abused aspect of religion, isn’t it?
In what sense do you think this is a requirement?
Tell me what you mean by 'X' and I'll tell you what I think about 'Y'.
The Hebrew Emunah, which involves an I-Thou/personal relation between human and the divine. E.g. Abraham has emunah in God.
The Greek pistis, which involves an I-It/impersonal relation. For example, Christians have pistis in Jesus' resurrection.
It would be beneficial to the discussion to clarify these points.
Let’s say for now that X = trust.
Then I would say that trust is the most abused aspect of life, and that religion is part of life.
I have read Buber on this in part. I tend to think he makes too much of the difference, but it would be worth discussing. Is the text publicly available?
More generally I’m inclined to say that power is the most abused aspect, though in society power amounts to influence and that includes a degree of trust. For the religious that degree of trust or faith offers enormous influential power, and as we all know, power corrupts.
In other words:
This is a coherent argument. My issue is with the premise that dynamics of trust are necessarily corrupt, due to power. I have no qualms with the conclusion that religion is more corruptible on account of trust, but I simply don't see that where there is trust there is corruption. Trust is one of the most important and beneficial dynamics in human life. It is not straightforwardly connected with corruption.
Religion, as with all high things, results in the best and the worst ("corruptio optimi pessima"). If we strike trust from the record we handicap ourselves in both directions, and some may prefer that.
Trust can be earned or given blindly. What is the value of giving it blindly?
Can it?
I’ll let AI take care of the uninteresting questions.
Trust is earned through consistent actions, honesty, accountability, empathy, and respect. By being reliable, transparent, and showing integrity, people come to believe in your character and dependability.
Blind trust is given without evidence or experience, often driven by emotional needs, optimism, authority, or urgency.
Now back to what I think is an interesting question: what is the value of blind trust?
It makes no sense to deny the philosophical import of divine writ. Why would you deny a writing from God himself?
What you mean to say is one shouldn't justify one's belief in a document based upon their false belief it is from God.
Yet that does not mean the writ is false. It just means the basis for accepting it is invalid
This therefore means one shouldn't justify one's disbelief in a document based upon their correct belief it is not from God.
Is it against the forum rules to substitute AI responses for your own?
I addressed the strange idea of "blind trust" earlier, specifically <here> and <here>.
My understanding is that we’re required to mention when AI is used, which is why I mentioned it.
Quoting Leontiskos
It’s a strange idea that people are entirely rational.
You don’t think that blind trust or faith has any value?
That looks like a false dichotomy. "Everyone is entirely blind or else everyone has 20/20 vision."
Quoting praxis
If someone is starving and they decide to eat a mushroom, knowing that it might be poisonous, then I can see how the act has value and reason. I wouldn't describe it as, "Blind trust," or, "Blind faith."
You’re suggesting that people with a God-shaped hole in their hearts may be desperate enough to gulp down some authentic looking Kool-Aid? A leap of faith is not always rewarded, or is it?
Not sure. I only have a superficial understanding of his work on this topic.
I don't think Buber would say that pistis is strictly Christian and emunah is purely Jewish. The Christian can have emunah. The question for me is the role of pistis in Judaism, which would relate to the historical Jesus.
Nailed it. :eyes:
Quoting Banno
I'll stand by that.
Okay, but that's not what you said in the post I responded to.
Quoting Banno
I wish you'd number your three elements for clarity. You also don't attach an "and," or "or," so I don't know if you have to have all 3 or just 1 to be in bad faith. I only understand lawyer speak, sorry.
Two responses: (1) Not all theological systems require scripture be the word of God, which would mean your objection is to only certain theologies, and (2) you need to define what "philosophical argument" rightly is to explain why your criteria are necessary to remain within in it.
It sounds like you view philosophy as pursuit of truth, with only certain types of justifications permissible to reach that truth.
I submit that sophy means wisdom, not truth.
Perhaps. But it is what I had in mind.
Quoting Hanover
The dots dropped out when I used the quote function. See the original, linked.
Quoting Hanover
Sure. Some stuff is both good theology and good philosophy.
Quoting Hanover
I don't agree. It will suffice to point out that "bad" philosophical arguments include those that rest on authority, divine or otherwise.
Agreed.
That's the whole game. Everyone agrees that one should not utilize falsehoods in justifications. Yet the atheist begs the question when they assume that any "theological claim" (whatever that's supposed to mean) is a falsehood. That's why the atheist argues in bad faith: they demand that their atheist presuppositions be taken as true even when their interlocutor disagrees.
So if an atheist is to philosophically engage a believer on the topic of religion (or faith), then they are not philosophically permitted to simply presuppose that religion is irrational. They are not permitted to define the religious act in terms of irrationality. That imposition and begging of the question is precisely what is unphilosophical. Instead they must argue for the conclusion that religion is irrational, using premises that are acceptable to their interlocutor. That this has not occurred in this thread demonstrates the problem and the unseriousness of this form of atheism.
Quoting Banno
These sorts of criteria are not ultimately coherent. Philosophy is not adverse to arguments from authority, so why would it be adverse to arguments from religious authority? And again, what exactly is "religious" supposed to mean? Historically the reified notion of a "religion" does not even exist until the Enlightenment.
What philosophy is adverse to is forcing claims upon one's interlocutor, including claims of authority. So it is not philosophical or reasonable for a Christian to appeal to a religious authority that his interlocutor does not accept, just as in this thread it is not philosophical or reasonable for atheists to beg the question of atheism even when their interlocutor disagrees. The only real principle that supports your claim is the very one you continually transgress. You don't get to exclude an entire class of claims by fiat and pretend that your so doing is philosophical.
Similarly, when two astrologers argue with one another they are still doing philosophy even if you think their premises are false. You don't get to wave your wand and magically determine that no one who is discussing astrology is engaged in philosophy. A good portion of us think your Wittgenstenian premises are hopelessly confused, but we don't have the audacity to claim that anyone who relies on Wittgenstein is not doing philosophy.
Religion in general claims one kind of revelation or another, but there seems to be no way to determine whether purported revelation is telling us something metaphysically real or is just fantasy.
This is what it comes down, religionists cannot say how there could be substantive evidence of their claims. The only conclusion I can see can be drawn from this is that religion is a matter of faith, pure and simple.
"What philosophy is adverse to is assuming claims upon one's interlocutor, including claims of authority."
The forum is full of loose ends you have left hanging. Here is a pertinent one:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If you were right that testimony cannot count as evidence then our whole legal system is kaput. And again, everyone who holds to some authority possesses motives of credibility. There is no magic bullet here. No magic rule like, "Religious stuff doesn't count," or, "Arguments from authority possess no justification," or, "Whatever I think is whatever an unbiased person would think." You have to actually do the real work of arguing a position. You can't just foreclose the whole game from the get-go.
(...and dog whistle to Tim)
That's right?the assumption is that the bible, or some assumedly authoritative interpretation of it, should be accepted as evidence, and yet no one seems to be able to say why. I mean it's fine if I accept it as evidence to support my own faith, on the mere basis that it feels right to me or some such, but in what possible way can it be rationally argued that others should accept it? It is an entirely personal matter, surely.
Some religionists complain about that conclusion, but it is apparent they cannot counter it so they resort to dismissal by labelling and derision. All they would have to do to counter would be to explain just how scripture can be cogent evidence for religious or metaphysical claims, evidence that any unbiased person ought to accept, and that is just what we never find coming from them.
Debating the meaning of original philosophical sources is common here and in academia. There must be some reason you read and debate Wittgenstein for example which goes beyond just trying to put a random puzzle together. That is, you sympathize with his views, believe he has something significant to say, and think he carries a certain knowledge beyond yours worth pursuing.
Does that mean you blindly accept anything be says? Of course not, but there's probably built in deference.
We can both pretend that we've arrived at our fundamental positions after worldly search. I coincidentally found meaning in Judaism, it having nothing to do with my environment, and you having found meaning in the leading anglo-analytic thinkers, that too having had nothing to do with your environment.
Sure.
We're all looking for meaning, and you must begin with some source you're willing to grant credibility to. There are enough legitimate means to finding that meaning that we need not force each other to any particular one. It is the intolerant proselytizer that smugly arrives that we can do without because he lives under the illusion his brand of wisdom is best and that he'll change someone's mind who's not looking to change.
If someone has found meaning in John Smith's interpretation of gold plates stumbled upon supposedly in the Adirondack for example, and he has full buy in to all that due to his upbringing, why would I suggest it's bullshit? That i don't get.
Again, philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom.
I wouldn't suggest it is bullshit unless they argued that I should accept it. There seems to be no rational way to argue that when it comes to scripture. When it comes to Wittgenstein, we can assess whether what he describes about linguistic practices makes sense according to, is plausible in the light of, our own everyday experience, so that is quite a different matter.
The Bible frequently records actual historical events. Much of the Old Testament is true ancient history and is supported by other ancient sources outside the Bible. Obviously, the further back we go, the less is established. As for the New Testament, Jesus surely had a ministry, so the broad outlines of it describe something factual.
Sure, perhaps the bible does present good evidence that certain historical events occurred and that Jesus existed and had a ministry. But that says nothing about the existence of God, or eternal reward and punishment, or Christ as son of God and savior of humankind or whether the reports of extraordinary phenomena ?raising from the dead, curing the blind, walking on water, turning water into wine and so on?should be accepted as reliable. If you think they should be accepted as reliable, then please explain why.
Religious argument and religious interaction is the most interesting kind. This is because religion is primordially identical to culture. Before the pluralism of secular states there was no difference at all. Religio-cultural encounter is the most interesting kind because it involves the interaction of totalizing forms. Chinese Confucianism meets European Christianity meets Indian Hinduism. That sort of thing is the epitome of human encounter, precisely because you have such maximally full and developed expressions of human life coming into contact with one another.
And I'm sorry, but if you think religion or culture or sacred texts are not amenable to argument and rational interpenetration, then your ignorance of history is massive. On a quantitative scale that sort of argument dwarfs all other kinds.
There are no books providing argument in support or against Wittgenstein either.
I just thought I'd write a post as bad as yours so you could see how bad it looked when you read it.
Quoting Hanover
Totally irrelevant and a classic example of resorting to denigration when no argument can be found.
I'd be open to discussing it if we have a primary text to look at. Some of @Hanover's early posts in this thread reminded me of Buber.
So I guess all your talk about intersubjective agreement is just lip service after all. You said a really dumb thing and a bunch of people pointed out that it was dumb. That's a cue.
No, your statement was just categorically wrong, so I provided a similar statement to mirror yours, hoping to point that out, but you just got mad.
There are thousands of years of theological debate, consisting of hundreds of millions of pages. And then you say "there's just no way to rationally debate it."
I'm just saying maybe rethink your post, which is really not a major event. I'm truly not trying just to piss you off.
One cannot logically follow Book XII of the Metaphysics because it talks about God? Aquinas doesn't use arguments from common experience?
On this account, the picture below should be some sort of absurd joke Photoshop, not a scholarly publication...
The result is that god is now everywhere.... :wink:
I blame ... And of course you are welcome to your views.
I'm not at all pissed, just nonplussed by your apparently poor comprehension. You are either cherry-picking or not understanding what I have been writing.
Quoting Janus
I have been saying that there seems to be no rational way to argue that revelation should be accepted by any unbiased person as truth, I haven't anywhere said, or implied, that those who do accept it as truth cannot have rational arguments about what it means. And note the "seems"?I haven't encountered such an argument, so the invitation is for you to provide one if you can.
Yes, theology is not philosophy, and I think the best theologians admit that?acknowledge that theology is based on faith?it's just a matter of intellectual honesty in my view.
This is where I fall into an in-between -- I reject it because I was brought up to believe in it, and yet I don't reject my folks belief. I don't care if they find comfort in it, but I do care that they feel discomfort in my lack of belief. (And "lack of belief" in mormanism indicates various rituals and such -- it's not just what you say at times, but a communal religion, for better or worse)
What that has to do with the OP? I'm not sure cuz it was only your mention of my origins that spurred me on to post.
I was going to say, "If you can't argue about religion, then Moliere must still be a Mormon." :razz:
Quoting Moliere
So do you pretend to believe when you are with your family? I'm trying to understand what you mean by falling into an in-between.
Mormonism is a good example. I don't think the Mormon god exists (and I don't think Mormons worship the God of Nicene Christianity). But that doesn't mean Mormon theology falls short of philosophy, nor does it mean that Mormons are irrational. I don't think the Mormon claims are credible, but I don't make my assessment the standard for what counts as rational. Granted, I do think Mormonism is irrational, but I don't think all religions that I disagree with are irrational.
It actually seems to me that a lot of people nowadays are determined to have an opinion on things they do not at all understand. This happens with the anti-religious, but another example comes from the interreligious scholar Francis Clooney who has pointed out that all of the young people are convinced that every religion is equal despite knowing nothing at all about any of the religions.
O no. My fam knows.
"In-between" in the sense that my folks believe, and I see how my beliefs are tied to that tradition -- it's not like I was born out of nothing -- but I can criticize these beliefs even though they give meaning to people I care about.
"In-between" may not be the best expression. I mostly was inspired to respond because it's easy for me to speak to a person who believes in the supposed golden plates :D
Then how is it that so many people convert and de-convert, in large part on the basis of argument?
You have a tendency to ignore basic questions like this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Or if someone saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb, would they have epistemic warrant for a religious conclusion?
The weird thing in these cases is that the atheist has made their atheism unfalsifiable. They don't seem to even recognize the possibility of counterfactual falsifications. If one's atheism is not to be unfalsifiable then they must be able to say, "Well, I guess if thus-and-such happened then I would be rationally compelled to question my atheism."
Ah, okay. That makes sense. I totally thought of this bit from John Mulaney. :grin:
Quoting Moliere
So do you criticize your parents' beliefs? Mormonism is very interesting given its wholecloth nature, as you point out.
I didn't answer that because it is irrelevant to us. Given it is plausible that some of the ordinary historical events detailed in the bible did happen, what evidence is there that the extraordinary events purported to have happened did happen?
In other words what evidence do we have today to justify belief that those events really occurred? I think the more plausible explanation for those accounts is the well-known tendency of people to exaggerate and myth-make about their heroes. Also when you consider the bible was not written by eye-witnesses anyway...
Have you ever seen an event so extraordinary as someone rising from the dead, walking on water, healing the blind with a touch or turning water into wine? So why bring such unbelievable events up in the context of today?
LMAO at the bit. First time hearing it, and I got a good gut laugh out of it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Naw.
No point in doing so when they live out their beliefs, I think. They are genuine believers and good people -- I know it's false, but what does that matter?
Very well, but for someone so averse to conversations of God, you're omnipresent in these threads.
I, for one, have never begun such a thread, but I'd like to think I keep them balanced, since theism does not entail reliance upon any particular written document, any particular hermeneutic, or actually any scripture at all.
The question is whether they would have warrant, not us. Would they?
Yes, here I am! I'm not at all averse to such conversations!
It shouldn't be this hard. That objection is not to talk about god, but to talk that takes some particular holy book as authoritative. to blatant appeals to authority. As explained, I'm not so keen on such theological meanderings, to what may have began here:
It would depend on whether there was another, better explanation for what they witnessed. Even scientific theories are not proven, and it seems that we have warrant only to believe they are the best we have at the moment, given that they have been superseded in the past.
In any case, I don't think that is the relevant question, because we are here discussing what we have warrant to believe, not what people 2,000 years ago may or may not have had warrant to believe. The question for us is also whether or not we have warrant to believe that they witnessed what it is written that they did.
Would you consider other ancient literature as non-authoritative? What makes literature authoritative for you?
Nice. That performance is one of my favorites of his. :lol:
Quoting Moliere
I've noticed that most former Mormons approach it this way, and I think it's because in Mormonism you get a stark divergence of goodness and truth. I.e. Good religion, false beliefs.
The reason many people try to oppose falsehoods in those they love is because they believe that truth and goodness (or fulfillment) go together.
(Incidentally, such a motive (love) tends to rectify the question-begging nature of some approaches to argument. If you really want someone to think otherwise then you try to give them a good reason to do so. But I digress...)
Martin Luther considered removing the book of James from the New Testament, based in large part on passages such as this which went against the grain of his "sola fide":
Quoting James 2:14-19 (RSV)
Hence, see ; I like my post better because it is not dependent on an the authority of James 2:14.
Who says Aquinas never jests? :wink:
Interesting because believers typically lament the enlightenment and the so called death of God.
And sacred text are eminently amenable to reinterpretation, unfortunately.
Unlike Plato, or Sextus Empiricus, or Aquinas, or Descartes, or Kant, or Wittgenstein, or Heidegger, or Adorno? Plurivocity is the sign of a rich text.
That can be used for a variety of purposes. Shouldn’t there be just one purpose though?
Unity in plurality, like Tallis' polyphony, is the Christian watermark.
Lol, the hallmark of all religions is the expulsion of dissonant voices.
A good thread for you: The Myopia of Liberalism
I have a certain degree of sympathy for Luther's ideas. If one's Christianity consists primarily in going around and doing good deeds to elevate one's spiritual status, why not just be a Jew (or a Muslim?) Why the need for Jesus? You have your deeds.
Not a good man, but a man who delineated firmly between religious traditions to attempt to reform and preserve his own. A sharp mind.
I read Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen not too long ago. What’s your point?
Well, perhaps, but there's two sides to every story. What you consider as a "hallmark" is merely a natural consequential side effect of ensuring truth is all that the vulnerable can be exposed to. This is a staple of what human societies consider a non-negotiable right as far as raising children or taking care of those who are (perhaps yet) unable to care for themselves. So, one might argue, it depends on what you wish to focus on and what you want to believe is the cause vs. the effect. Specifically, one would argue, what one wishes to hang themselves up on and ignore the full chain of purpose, intent, and final outcome.
I would agree, that is certainly a hallmark. But a larger more prominent and universal theme, that would perhaps be considered by those religious or not to be "the" hallmark, is the idea that there is more to one's existence than what is confined between one's first and last breath in one's physical form. That, my strategic and skillful friend, is the "point", per se.
You still owe me a rematch one of these days, by the way. :grin:
Hamlet? I think he was indirectly calling me a nihilist.
That's fair and all, but on the other hand, why the need for Jesus if "simul iustus et peccator" is all one anticipates; snow-covered dung?
You recited Christian theology and all I did was note it. I had no deeper purpose, as if to spread the love of Christ, as if I have any personal attachment to such theology.
The debates here are minimally substantively theological. They generally ask the question whether theology is stupid. Those who don't think it's stupid get pissed and start defending their religion, leaving them prey to further antagonism.
The OP here didn't answer what faith was as much as whether faith is stupid or dangerous or foolish.
Since faith is the centerpiece of religion, it seems its answer would lie somewhere in a theological discussion that preceded our conversation.
This hasn't been mentioned in the thread, but religious scholars will point out that faith is only central to revealed religion (i.e. revelation-based religion). In non-revealed religion faith is no more central than it is in other traditions or institutions. For example, I would argue that institutions like the military are much more faith-centric than non-revealed religion.
In the West we have a tendency to conflate religion with Christianity (or else Judeo-Christianity), and the notion that religions can be referred to as "faiths" is one symptom of that. This is yet another incentive to get clear on what is actually meant by 'faith'.
Quoting Hanover
...but digressions aside, I agree.
Mostly I think it would be great if we could discuss religious topics without anti-religious evangelization constantly occurring. But that's the way it seems to go on the internet: the atheists require that every religious discussion must be reduced to a discussion (or assertion) about whether God exists.
The rules are very specific in this regard.
Quoting Site Guidelines
So if evangelism is occurring, please, report it so that it can be dealt with.
Yes. And, despite all the offers to discuss God and uses of “God” in their sentences, they already seem to know that God cannot exist, whatever “god” refers to anyway. But they keep asking about God, and saying what they think about it, and what they think about those who believe in God.
There is no actual interest in or curiosity about gaining some sense of what an experience with faith and God are to people who actually have faith, and who pray to God.
They don’t seem to respectfully think “that person is rational, thoughtful and able to form clear sentences, yet they believe in God - how is that? Maybe I should see what they say about God.” One minute we believers sound rational and can do the same math and logic as any good atheist/scientist would, but the next minute we jump off the deep end and say “God is”. With no curiosity, most atheists seem to immediately see our reason was a facade; our authentic, irrational, childish selves actually annimate all of our now debased arguments. Any sort of distinct “faith” and actual “god” that the believer experiences can have nothing to do with it. And our ability to be rational is downgraded to amateur-hour at best.
It’s frustrating to me, because I like any clarity, especially when it comes from some other point of view - I think, “it is amazing how the same wisdom can be made clear in so many different voices and mouths - atheists, Christians, children, even modern philosophers once in a while display wisdom.” I get wisdom out of many seemingly irreconcilable places and people. That always amazes me. There are clearly many smart people around here that don’t see God. When they see other things I see, I am amazed at how perfectly they can see them without seeing God.
Atheists don’t seem amazed at how believers see some things as exactly they do, but also still see God. Atheists seem to think if someone doesn’t agree with them, about God, then that person isn’t really reasoning, which is amazing to me in itself - like willful blindness (which is a metaphor and a paradox but apt nonetheless).
No curiosity, so no respect needed, and no real conversation. Frustrating bummer here on TPF.
There’s also a lot of religious bigotry towards atheism. Religious privilege around the world makes it dangerous to be an atheist in some countries, even certain parts of the US, where aggressive forms of fundamentalism seem to be emboldened by the Trump empire. That said, I've never felt that believers are not reasoning, unless they are of the evangelical, fundamentalist kind.
Quoting Fire Ologist
A bit of straw manning, perhaps? I have a number of religious friends, and we have no problems talking about our different views of the world. I am very interested in spirituality and how people make meaning. I spent ten years exploring religions and higher consciousness systems
Quoting Fire Ologist
I don’t know many atheists (out side of the celebrity atheists) who claim to know that God cannot exist. As an atheist, I haven't argued that there is no God. My view is similar to most contemporary atheists: I have heard no good reason to believe in a God. Most freethinkers I know self-describe as agnostic atheists: someone who does not believe in a god (atheist) but also does not claim to know that a god doesn't exist (agnostic).
Quoting Fire Ologist
In my experience, it's often the believers who lack curiosity. I have spent much time among Hindus, Buddhists, Orthodox Jews, Sikhs, Catholics, and Muslims, and I’ve attended most temples, ashrams, synagogues, and churches. I recently attended an Easter service in a high Anglican church. I know a lot of atheists who do this kind of thing. The theists I meet (mostly Catholics, Muslims and Charismatics) tend not to appreciate ecumenism; they stick to a rigid version of God and often belittle or fear other faiths.
Of course, the sophisticated atheists are pretty similar in worldview to the sophisticated atheists. They know that very little is certain, that knowledge is tentative and no one can really claim to have access to the truth. And that most worldviews are sincere attempts at sense making.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I agree. I actually don’t think there’s much difference in the lives of atheists or believers when it comes to moral commitment or awareness of life’s richness. I see deep empathy, ethical reflection, and appreciation for meaning and beauty in both camps.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Unity in the plurality of purposes?
What I meant was that religious influence is used for a variety of purpose, many of which are good of course, but many are self-serving or worse. I think it should be used for what it claims to offer, and nothing besides. Why waste time and effort on anything besides salvation if salvation is worthwhile?
Anyway, I’ve read most of the thread you’ve recommended and skimmed the rest of it. I’ve also read Why Liberalism Failed, as I mentioned. I’m still curious why it’s good for me.
Tom, Banno was telling you not to suffer fools.
Yep, good post. :up:
On a philosophy forum my request is actually extremely meager. It's that evangelistic begging-the-question does not happen again and again and again. For example: that we could have a discussion about faith without constantly begging the question and assuming that it must be irrational.
Quoting Leontiskos
Okay, great. My point was that even the most tolerant do not tolerate everything. When I say that Christianity values unity in plurality, I am not saying that Christian tolerance is without limit.
Quoting praxis
A good thing should never be used for an evil purpose. I agree, but human realities don't work that way.
Still missing the point but nevermind if you don’t want to speak more directly or whatever.
Precisely - that would be a discussion. You begin with whatever is agreed, lay out your logic and conclusions, and you can dispute/discuss/disagree/agree with the logic and conclusions. But If you dispute the premises already agreed upon, you are either begging to start a new/different conversation, or just hiding some other intention in bad faith, pardon the pun.
At this point if the conversation is to continue then I think you need to offer formal argumentation, because you have . So if you want to offer an argument, formalize it and I will accede to answering.
Incurious religious people are no fun to talk to either. Tom, you are much more fun. Clearly curious person. I was talking about “atheists” in general, I do mean most atheists interested in philosophy, but I don’t mean you.
Quoting Tom Storm
I believe you, not only because you say it here and you are an honest person, but because, judging by all you say, that quick summary of your present view is what I would say of your stance as well.
Oops - accidentally hit Post button. Will continue reply in another post.
I see. That was an impulsive comment and I regret making it. Your post caught me off guard—in a funny way—and the wine didn’t help. Sorry. :pray:
It happens
Still, I think formal or quasi-formal argument would be helpful, especially insofar as we draw near to more difficult topics. I don't mean to be a pain, but also bumped us off a topic that is genuinely interesting. It is the question of the relation between the good, the true, and motivation. One could say, "They wish to substitute emotion for evidence" (Russell), but there is a much more philosophical way to investigate that issue.
Is the desperate mushroom-eater merely acting emotionally? The answer is not so obvious. Nor is it obvious that in seeking the good (life) he is forfeiting intellectual honesty (truth).
Then you have some authors who claim that the motive for faith is the good, not the true. For example, why do we listen to the weatherman? Is it primarily because we are interested in what is true, or because we are interested in what is good? It actually seems that the answer is "the good" - it is a practical consideration. We wish to know the truth about the weather precisely in order to know how to act well. For the Medievals this will bear on what is called the transcendental convertibility of the good and the true.
"All that I have written seems like straw"
— St. Thomas Aquinas
In this light I don’t understand your and Fire’s current complaints about irrationality, or rather, non-rationality. Many spiritual seekers go to great pains to transcend the rational. Does the good and the true converge in rationality?
I know plenty of atheists, even just around here - all individual people, with different strengths of conviction, strengths of their reasons and evidence. Love some of them dearly. Like others for just thinking of these questions.
I agree. “God cannot exist” is not the main thing atheists argue. It does paint the same world picture described more plainly as: “God does not exist.” But I agree, most atheist arguments don’t seek to preclude the very possibility of God.
But many do argue there is no meaningful talking about what God is without first verifying some sort of testable evidence that God is. And, to them, since there is no evidence that God is, no one can really talk about “God” at all.
Which makes sense (literally and figuratively) - with no evidence of some unknown thing, there is nothing to say about that unknown thing.
So in the end, maybe “God cannot exist” isn’t the best way to put it, but it seems pointless try to discuss God in any kind of meaningful detail if we cannot merely say what God is and whether this God is. We always end up stuck here at “Does God exist?” Or we start to talk nonsense without being able to verify whether nonsensical or not.
Quoting Tom Storm
If you heard readings from the Old Testament and the New Testament, there is first reference to anything about God I would want to discuss. That’s where I would go for things to talk about if we wanted to talk about God.
Quoting Tom Storm
A rigid version. So more than one version. Sikhs, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, etc.
You are getting ahead of us and calling certain things rigid. Rigid version of “God”?
What was there about God you might judge as rigid or not from the old and New Testament readings and prayers at Easter? Let’s go there, or some other text - something concrete we can share between us.
Catholic means universal, and, mystically, the God the Catholics worship excludes no one who seeks God (even you seeking God here in this discussion), so I don’t know what you are talking about when you say “rigid version of God.”
Plenty of people don’t understand God at all, and none of us understand all of God, but let’s not seek to conclude whether one faith in God can be found better, or less rigid than another faith in God if we are incapable concluding whether God exists or what God is.
And I’ve been assuming you think ecumenical impulses are good and “rigid” is bad, so maybe I misread that.
I don’t care about sects and different religions much - I associate God with love too much to start with rigid things that might obfuscate God and love, and beauty, and richness of life, etc.
Quoting Tom Storm
Exactly. I agree. There is not much difference in all of our lives. Life’s richness, empathy, reflection, meaning, beauty - I would add love of other people. Atheists and believers alike have these experiences. These are where I would go to find evidence that God is, or to say what God is.
I tell you this because you seem to talk to religious people a lot about their religion. I’m a religious person - going to mass tomorrow as I do every Sunday. All I do differently from the scientist, is say thank you to God for these experiences, as gifts. I have nothing more or less than what any atheist has, and I get nothing more than what these experiences actually are, I just maybe would add my own gratitude for them, and I give this back to God - my only gift back for receiving as you put it “awareness of life’s richness. …deep empathy, …reflection, and appreciation for meaning and beauty in both camps…” my only gift back is to say “thank you” but I still give it.
This why it is hard to talk about God on TPF to me. It’s not philosophy anymore. It’s theology, or the metaphysics and ontology of faith in God.
I just realized my frustration with many atheists over subjects relating God and faith: It’s either bad philosophy or bad theology that we struggle with when trying to bridge the gap between the theist and the atheist. And theology has no real place here on TPF anyway.
It's not so hard; surely you know these religious folk too. They're the ones who often call the worshippers of other faiths idolaters. They are rigid, because only through their version of faith can one know God or even have the potential to enter heaven. It's not just, say, Jehovah's Witnesses who think like this; it's members of many religions. An Irish Protestant colleague of mine calls the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon, as the good Ian Paisley often did on television when I was young. The Muslim folks I talk to believe that Jesus was a man who survived crucifixion by having someone else take his place. In their view, Christians are not following the correct revelation. And even within a single religion, the schisms between isms are notorious for their internecine conflicts and bloodshed.
Quoting Fire Ologist
For me it often just comes down to worldviews. People can draw different inferences from the same evidence and arrive at opposite conclusions about the existence of God. Debate about the matter isn’t always helpful and often ends with disparaging the other person’s view. We see this happen here all the time, as people are often accused of bad faith because dogmatic atheists and theists tend to perceive persecution, ill intent or hostility in any form of dissent.
Quoting Fire Ologist
:up: I think that's a fair observation.
Nice talking to you.
Amazing. Just stunned.
The reference to psychology, to not addressing content, to “othering” (great word!). Truly stunned.
How could you say that and not see yourself?
That is exactly how I would describe what you try to do to me.
It’s like you were drawing a self-portrait.
For the others, like me and Leon. :lol:
——-
You’ve been over-duly considered, and I’d still consider you again, but I’d love to see some actual, humble, respectful consideration come my way.
Like I just gave Tom.
Or am I still too muddle-headed to tell you've already given me appropriate consideration, Banno?
I've given you more consideration than your posts deserve.
Maybe religious people seek out environments where they can argue with atheists to help exorcise their own faithless demons?
Well then, on behalf of myself, and all those who muddle through my posts, thank you for that extra consideration you’ve given.
Quoting Banno
You’ve given us all back something to consider here that’s for sure. :rofl:
Astonishing.
Quoting Tom Storm
Lousy people to talk to about any religion, be it their own or the ones they rigidly belittle. Shake the dust off of your sandals when leaving those discussions.
Basically, who cares what they think? And yes I know people who sound that way - most of them, if pressed, realize they don’t understand their own faith let alone the faiths they belittle.
…in my humble opinion regarding this theological, so not philosophical, subject.
People who live in societies where such theists are trying to set the government agenda have good reason to be concerned with the thinking of such people.
Yeah, but not about those theist’s thoughts about God and religion - concerned about those people’s thoughts about policy, law and enforcement. We were talking about what is faith and God, not what lousy arguments might support bad public policy.
I do agree. One can only go over the same argument so often. Reducing religions to a single proposition distorts them and makes them almost pointless.
Quoting Tom Storm
It isn't just a matter of world-view, but of ways of life. I mean by that, that it's not just an intellectual matter, but a matter of how to live one's life, day by day.
Sure - I take worldview to include the quotidian and to be the source of our day-to-day choices and actions.
Quoting frank
Don't know. There's probably many explanations including this.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, I think this definitely applies to some of them.
I was thinking about this one and it occurred to me that atheists (like me) also test ideas and arguments to see how they hold up. I don't believe we ever arrive at a foolproof set of beliefs in life (well, I certainly haven't) and therefore I often bounce around concepts out to see how they land with others who do not share my views. It doesn't always mean I am committed to those ideas personally, what I am interested in is giving them a run to see what others make of them.
Just plain rude.
That would be a friendly sort of discussion though. I was responding to this:
Quoting Tom Storm
Why would a religious person enter into a discussion on a philosophy forum and become angry and insulting? I don't think it's to bounce ideas around. In Jungian terms, it's some kind of complex: a tangle of jagged emotions. There's probably a brewing crisis of faith, looking out at humanity wondering how to make sense of it. Just speculating.
Quoting Banno
:lol:
This site seems to contain a lot of strong voices advocating theism or views related to higher consciousness or transcendence. I'm not sure how many atheists are on this site. As long as the theists are not evangelizing, or abusive, I don't mind.
Quoting frank
I think people often become abusive when their confidence or authority is threatened in some way.
Quoting frank
Speculating: I think some theists believe they have read all the right philosophy and theology and have many of the answers and that modern secular culture is debased and decadent. They're probably angry about the state of the world, and when they encounter people with views they've identified as the cause of contemporary troubles, they lash out.
Well, have a look at the "philosophy" section in your bookshop. If there is one, it will almost certainly be between "self-help" and “religion"...
Quoting Tom Storm
Nor do I, except that almost universally, when one points out a flaw in their position, the comeback is a denigration of the critic rather than a response to the criticism.
So I presented here a brief and fairly obvious criticism of faith. And here we are. @Hanover was the only one to address the actual argument presented.
Quoting Tom Storm
That would be fine on Facebook.
Ah well. They will doubtless see this conversation as me stirring the possum. Perhaps it is. But I find it difficult not to see many of their comments as disingenuous, in bad faith.
I've noticed that also. It's a far cry from the milieu I encountered when I first started posting on forums (mind you the first one I joined was the now-defunct Richard Dawkins forum which as you can imagine was hysterically atheistic.) But it might also be a sign of the times - I think the new atheism is nowadays considered passé and culture is increasingly pluralistic and open to varying perspectives.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I mentioned in the Hotel Manager thread, that I was attempting to maintain a philosophical rather than confessional perspective (not always succesfully). Also that philosophy of religion is not quite the same as theology. I think philosophical theology has a place in philosophy provided it is not overtly evangalistic.
I concentrate on a specific issue, namely, that of the necessity of an heirarchical ontology or degrees of reality. Which is a fancy way of saying that there is a real dimension of value - in Platonist terms, that there is a true good, one which is neither subjective, objective or social, but transcendent of these distinctions, and that classical philosophy was grounded in the understanding that these 'levels of being' have corresponding 'levels of knowing'. Whereas the naturalist assumption is of a 'flat' ontology within which moral judgement is justified on subjective, social or pragmatic grounds.
But then, anything said about transcendent values runs into the overall antagonism towards a religious metaphysic as it is associated with religious philosophy. The deeper dynamic of that is that secular philosophy is antagostic to the possibility of the transcendent because it is fearful that it might be real after all (compare Thomas Nagel's 'fear of religion'). Better to leave the whole question sealed.
What that characterizes the religious life do you think is missing in the secular life?
Quoting Banno
:100: Yep apart from one or two religionists on these forums that is just what almost always happens.
The other thing I would note about religionists is that their investigatory enterprises are almost always aimed at finding confirmation via authority (since argument seems to be a lost cause) for their beliefs, rather than holding up their beliefs to critical examination The latter attitude is what I see as the admirable disposition in scientific enquiry, and it is the only way to improve the understanding. Dogma equals stagnation.
I hadn't thought of that. That makes me feel sympathy.
I expect I'll do as a representative secularist, and I have never in my entire life been afraid that one or another religion might turn out to be true.
You (and Nagel, I guess) are just making this up.
Not too bad a rendering.
I then asked it to list replies to this argument. Here's an edit:
Pretty nuanced.
The justification for doing this is that folk have suggested that I haven't presented an argument. Here it is, summarised by an algorithm.
The evidence for what? For your assertion not applying to me?
Evidence that Thomas Nagel is 'making it up'. So I will flesh it out a bit. Now might be the place to bust out the often-quoted passage from Thomas Nagel in his essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. The essay starts with a passage from C S Peirce, a deep meditation on science, belief, and truth, which ends:
[quote=C S Peirce ]The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real,--the object of its worship and its aspiration.
The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities. [/quote]
Nagel calls these views 'alarmingly Platonist' in that they 'maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our “inward sympathy” with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can then be tested against the facts.' He says it is alarming, because 'it is hard to know what world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious. Rationalism has always had a more religious flavor than empiricism. Even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable. The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.' This is the prelude to the passage in question:
Quoting Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, Thomas Nagel
That pretty well describes my overall attitude towards naturalism in philosophy as a whole. And it's important to note that Thomas Nagel professes atheism - he's by no means a religious apologist.
A lot of if is designed to inspire fear, I'm afraid.
On the flip side, believers have a lot to fear as well, such as:
And you ask me for evidence!
A lot of empty chin-stroking. How you can take this seriously --
I do fear divine judgement. Not so much the others.
As a Buddhist? That's cause & effect and not divine judgement, isn't it?
Explain how this isn't pure ad hom.
I say this because even if you're entirely right, it might be they're theists because theism is true.
It'd be like me opining that atheism is borne from trauma and alienation and whatever else sounds right. Wouldn't your response simply be, sure, all of that, but that you're atheist because that position is correct.
Not to mention it sounds like you care for the souls of the misguided. Ironic.
I think Wayfarer may be right about this but conversely there's also many a theist who is afraid that perhaps there's nothing to this God caper. Having watched Christians in palliative care (an aspect of my work) it is not unusual to find people having no confidence in God at the end, often to the surprise of relatives and friends.
Well it's not my original thinking. I got this from a Catholic Priest friend of mine and it sounded reasonable. I can't do much about your seemingly sour reaction to it.
Quoting Hanover
I actually think if theists feel this way, it is entirely understandable. No irony.
Really? Why?
's Nagel, even if he is right, makes no difference to the content of the arguments involved.
That stuff about psychologising, again.
Oh, and this... why not? I believe some people are drawn to atheism because they feel a sense of disconnection from the world. Perhaps they haven't experienced deep love or meaningful connection with others or maybe their temperament swings towards nihilism. For those people, a godless, meaningless world may seem to make more sense because it aligns with their emotional reality. I have certainly met such folk.
Quoting Banno
I can't help it either.
OK, then the Priest provided an ad hom, and you responded to my comment about an ad hom with another ad hom, suggesting it wasn't that it was an ad hom, but that i was just sour. Like I'm at all upset.
Quoting Tom Storm
The irony is that theists justify their judgment upon others based upon concern for their souls. You offered a similar concern for the souls of theists but from an atheist perspective.
My suggestion is that we stop being so concerned for each other's differing views. I trust wholly in the sincerity of your atheism, have no desire to modify it, and don't believe that but for some unfortunate circumstance you'd be different. Different strokes.
:smile:
There's the argument that such talk provides broad maps of where we are in the intellectual and cultural landscape. As such it's not true or false so much as useful or indicative, and justifiable on those grounds, perhaps.
Seems a sour reaction. I'm not concerned if you're not upset, or are.
Is it an unintended ad hom? Ok then. I also think it may sometimes be correct.
Quoting Hanover
I'm here primarily because I'm interested in what people believe and why. I've never claimed that any of my occasional psychologizing represents the final truth about anyone here. Frank raised a question about motivation and I simply wanted to introduce another possible perspective.
Fair point. Given this is a discussion forum, we are bound to speculate, not just about metaphysics but also about what kinds of situations or emotional states lead to certain views. As long as we don't use this to settle an argument or determine that it's true for everyone, I don't find it overly problematic.
We were talking about why theists might develop a negative tone when arguing with atheists, thinking it might be because of afflicted faith. Tom suggested it might be from pent up frustration about the state of the world and imagining that atheists are responsible.
Yep! That seems to be the key.
It occures to me that, were one to suppose that there is exactly one truth, then those who disagree are indeed wrong, even if you can't say why; and as such the psychology as to why they accept such wrong views might seem more important than the reasons that those views are wrong - allowing one to dismiss views contrary to one's own becasue of who proffers them.
Enter Jordan Peterson, Iain McGilchrist, and John Vervaeke.
Quoting Tom Storm
Ever read about A J Ayer's near death experience?
I’m not angry or complaining.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think you do better than that. Not only do you not mind theists, you bring up God or religious faith yourself. Which is certainly fine with me, but it’s worth noting who is raising these subjects.
Quite honestly, (and that is the real issue - we need to trust each other), but quite honestly, I like my science straight, no ice, and no chaser. That’s the only kind of science there is.
I like philosophy as a blend of physics with the metaphysical/logical/linguistic. I don’t really like philosophy of religion, or shoehorning God into science. Science is specifically about using my own reason to judge everything for myself, so there is no desire in me to go beyond testable evidence when talking philosophy.
The expertise here on TPF is epistemology and logic (language/math) and metaphysics and mind, and anthropology and science generally, and theories of our shared, physical world.
Philosophic conversations particularly about mind and language often then bump into conceptualization and intention, and even immaterial substance, and then it completely crashes into God and the mystical One which is nothingness…and maybe we’ve all gone astray again.
I have no problem making the goal discussions of more falsifiable science here on TPF. We won’t nail this goal, because of the temptations of mind stuff and conceptual non-physical stuff, but “God” is almost always a stretch, a deus ex machina, in philosophy.
I’m good with that here on TPF.
Can’t avoid “God” in a “what is faith” thread, but then maybe this subject is tough for this forum.
Why would I be okay not discussing God so much on this forum?
Let’s say this thread is not what is faith, but what is my wife? “What is Fire’s wife?”
We could talk about her chemistry for hours, and and theorize about where the specific atoms that make up her body today were one billion years ago, and the path those atoms took, etc. We could spend hours talking about my wife and, never get to how she falls asleep on the couch most nights exhausted from taking care of everyone around her, and how she’s got a great sense of humor and is a people person, etc.
Here, on the forum, a conversation about the chemistry of my wife is, let’s say, less open to attack. But when I personally talk about God, like when I talk about my wife, I’d rather talk about the lived experiences, the particulars as I know them. That’s the good stuff in that topic, to me - the only really interesting stuff. Logic itself might seem trivial when discussing my wife’s habits. I am perfectly happy to admit that conversations like those, about God or my wife, are not philosophy, not scientific, and less fitting on this forum.
Quoting Banno
I am not angry. Just so you know.
Like many here, I have read and otherwise studied hundreds of thinkers.
I do believe there are answers (i believe this partly because of faith in what reason is).
I believe I have some of these answers, but not many. I believe there are many more answers to be had by reading more and listening to more people.
To me there is wisdom in Wittgenstein - the gaming that is human mental activity is an important insight worth studying.
And there is wisdom in Aristotle - just trying to say the law of non-contradiction out loud for the first time in history is someone to read - he was one of if not the the first expressly empirical scientist.
Like Descartes just stopping everything - left with nothing but, his existing.
Or Kant clarifying where the thing in itself lies.
None of these discussions need say “God” and I’m fine with that. Descartes best work was when he was alone, not fooled by any God be they evil or beneficial geniuses.
I will admit that sometimes I see people talking about God, and it sounds nothing like God to me, like chemistry sounds nothing like my wife, and because so many seem interested in posting “God” and “faith” as words/concepts, I can’t help but want to try and redirect things and stop the bleeding, but I only hope I don’t make matters worse.
Here is the problem:
Quoting Banno
Scientists don’t seem to trust theists even when they are not talking about God.
Banno, is it possible you are a little biased against me?
Maybe I’m just not who you seem to think I am because of your own constructions and prejudices?
Not bad faith, but just, not enough experience of me to distinguish me from the biased sense of “theist” you see in your reading of my posts?
Does this post really seem disingenuous or in bad faith to you?
How about you, Tom? Don’t I seem like I am just speaking my mind? No anger. No reason to lash out or seek to judge the cause of decadence.
But in any event, I have said nothing in bad faith. Nothing in this post need be doubted for its sincerity.
I do believe “culture is debased and decadent.” Although I would say “adrift” and not “debased and decadent”, but I see a basic point in your words, and I have a skeptical view of what people do with their culture.
There is no reason, theists and atheists can’t discuss many things as equals - as individual thinking beings making their way sharing their views on anything.
If the opinion is “theists think they know it all and lash out at those who they say don’t know it all”, it is certainly one way to look at these things, but when I disagree, I hope you recognize that there is a whole person, just like you, acting in good faith, trusting your good faith, as I give you my opinion; we are vulnerable together in these conversations. That is because of trust. There is no bad faith over here. (That actually feels like an insult.)
Maybe I hurled some wise ass remarks myself, but no bad faith.
Saying “their comments are disingenuous, in bad faith” didn’t seem like a wise ass remark - just an honest judgement, probably against me.
So I respond - does anything I’ve said here, which is all from my heart, resonate with you?
If the answer is no, please explain because I don’t see how that is possible.
This is a ton of content. Just to see if I can pass an entrance exam, can I re-write the premise summary to strengthen it bit:
“Faith is belief in something without (or beyond) empirical or rational justification.”
Even the “or beyond” could be removed and we’d still get the basic gist.
And You/chatGPT add “such belief is often sustained despite contrary evidence” but that sounds like a species of “belief without justification” so have I got the first premise right?
P1: “Faith is belief in something without empirical or rational justification.”
Nice. And generous. I have no expertise, just curiosity.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think this is all very reasonable and nicely put.
I like the word "adrift" and perhaps I should have used it. "Lost our way" is the other phrase which comes up in this discourse.
On the weekend, I saw a father teaching his young son how to do long division. The son wasn’t understanding it. The father eventually got angry and intoned something like, “I’ve shown you this four times now and been very clear, and you can see how it works on the paper. What are you not getting?”
Moral of the story? People get annoyed when others don’t see the things they do, especially when they’ve been patient and tried to demonstrate the reasoning. And it doesn’t have to be about philosophy or God. Perhaps any irritation expressed on these pages has just been frustration at others not understanding.
Of course that's possible. But on thinking about it, early on I didn't give much attention to your views simply becasue what you were attempting to say was way off. You commenced misrepresenting me from very early in this conversation. Look at . And this: Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm offering this not as part of a "you hit me back first" argument, but to point out that sometimes biases are learned.
And I have very little time for Leon, who certainly posts in bad faith. That you fell in with him in my opinion shows poor judgement.
41 pages. The topic is not that interesting.
Why should I engage further?
And you will just say... what was it? That I treat every comment as a linguistic trap? Goes with the territory.
So you want to change "1. Faith involves acting on belief without sufficient evidence" to "P1: “Faith is belief in something without empirical or rational justification.” Can you see how this turns the characterisation of faith into a stipulated definition? Instead of "faith includes this" you have "faith is this". Can you see how your edit changes the emphasis to belief, and from action? But the point here is to bring out the immoral acts that are sometimes the result of faith unfettered.
So no, that's not a reasonable alteration.
Quoting Banno
I just want to make sure we are on the same page.
So the premise is: “Faith involves acting on belief without sufficient evidence"
I think “without sufficient evidence” is fairly close to “without empirical or rational justification” so that isn’t too difficult.
I think “faith involves” is somewhat different than “faith is” but it’s a distinction that isn’t really at the heart of this particular discussion. I think we can say “faith is or involves…” and not get hung up on definition versus faith uses/anecdotes.
But “acting on belief” - huge difference. And I like it better. Faith involves acting on belief without sufficient evidence.
So the act involved in faith is not merely believing without sufficient evidence. Believing isn’t the key act. Faith involves some other act, like leaping off a cliff, based on an unsubstantiated belief. Faith involves acting on belief, but that belief is formed despite insufficient evidence.
Is that the gist then?
Who me- my point?
I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing before I critique it.
Quoting Fire Ologist
And nothing else I said misunderstood that premise, correct or not? Are we on the same page, talking with each other here or what?
Edit added.
My restatement made to show I understand: “Faith involves acting on belief, but that belief is formed despite insufficient evidence.”
You agree?
Karma - means the same. In Buddhism, there's no Supreme Deity handing out rewards and punishment but there are hell realms all the same.
Divine judgment implies a conscious, willful decision by a deity. Perhaps you fear that Buddhism is wrong and theistic religions are true?
I'm saying that in effect, karma and 'divine judgement' add up to something similar. Christianity has God's judgement, in Buddhism, the consequences of one's actions are due to karma. But depictions of hell are similar.
incidentally, about this dogma that 'faith is belief without evidence'. The believer will say that the world itself evidences divine providence. There may not be evidence in the sense of double-blind experimental data across sample populations of X thousand persons. But the testimony of sages, the proper interpretation of religious texts, and the varieties of religious experience all constitute evidence, although of course all of that may equally be disregarded. The will not to believe is just as strong as the will to believe.
I don't disagree. Except that what is to count as evidence ought to be available for public scrutiny. If anything - or indeed, as some suggest, everything - can count as evidence, then evidence loses any capacity to inform our decisions, becoming irrelevant. We must differentiate conviction from justification. The testimony of sages, private interpretations of scripture, or subjective religious experience may be meaningful to the believer but fails as evidence in a public or epistemically shared sense.
So those who believe in divine providence will see it everywhere. Is that evidence, or is it projection, wishful thinking, and confirmation bias?
Resisting an unjustified belief is not "The will not to believe", it's accepting epistemic responsibility - as is believing when there is justification.
And seeing faith as involving belief without evidence is not a dogma, but a description of how faith functions in many religious contexts, where The Faithful are encouraged - indeed, extolled - to maintain their belief in the face of doubt, uncertainty, or counter-evidence.
And this last is the clincher here. It would be extraordinary to see the faithful deny this.
Quoting Banno
Were I in your shoes, oh devout one, I'd be agreeing with Banno that faith might by itself be corrupted, and so it must not be left on it's own, but kept as a part of the whole lived experience of... whatever your pet religion is this week.
Jesus, now I'm arguing both sides. :roll:
Treating faith as a part of a "form of life", lived fully and freely, may be enough to prevent the faithful from crashing into crowds, wearing bombs in public or praying over children while denying them the medicine they need to live.
Maybe.
But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person. I might have a genuine insight, but unless I’m a brilliant artist or novelist, then not be able to convey it for public scrutiny. Or I might try to convey it, but the public might be unable to interpret it.
You yourself profess to resist ‘scientism’ - yet the insistence that truth claims ought to be subjected to third-party validation is one of its principle dogmas. And that’s because whatever evidence it admits needs to be measurable. And as you and I both know and agree on what a meter is, and what a kilogram is - then we can present evidence amenable to ‘public scrutiny’. Whereas, a vital part of religious philosophy is the realisation of ‘the immeasurable’ (although again it is only Buddhism that makes it explicit, and in line with their love of lists, they name four.)
And go back to the source texts of philosophy. Socrates wandering the public square, asking questions of all and sundry. All of his enquires were made in the open, yet many of those he questioned were not able to answer them. Does that mean his questions ought not to have been considered?
I think Plato’s philosophy assumes that the answers to the kinds of questions that Socrates was posing, would not be able to be answered by the hoi polloi. Isn’t that why Popper declared Plato an enemy of ‘the open society’? And yet, that might be saying something significant about the quest for philosophical wisdom.
The tension with Christianity, in particular, is that it removes this need for philosophical discernment. ‘Foolishness to the Greeks’. Even so, Christ himself was quite a stern master: offering salvation to ‘all who would believe’ but then, believing turns out not to be so easy after all.
Quoting Banno
I think it is part of faith that it must be severely tested. For some reason, that countercultural classic film The Game, Michael Douglas, comes to mind. Faith comes with all kinds of trials, and with the real possibility of failure. Part of the game!
Then by that alone, it ain't evidence. It's opinion.
Unfortunately for you, you’re not actually a bystander.
And as for ‘Cartesian anxiety’—it’s not anxiety to ask for public reasons, so much as intellectual hygiene. Assertions grounded solely in subjective conviction can't demand assent from others.
So it's not evidence, it's opinion.
And note that "Perfect statement of modern moral relativism" does not address the actual argument, but instead labels it. Defensive reasoning on your part - "That's just what a heathen would say".
You're better that that.
Misinterpreting again. It’s not that it’s solely a ‘matter of personal opinion’. It’s that levels of reality correspond with levels of being and knowing. What do you think was taught in Plato’s Academy? The aspirant had to prepare themselves to understand. So it was subjective in one sense - has to be known first-person - but in another sense, relies on detachment, which is precisely *not* subjective, in that it depends on self abnegation (subject of my essay Objectivity and Detachment).
Then write more clearly. You said "But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person", then that it might be "genuine insight", now it's levels of reality, and levels of being, whatever they are. And how do you share your "self abnegation" without getting arrested for assault?
I can't claim to be adept at it, but at least I think I understand the point.
The divided line
Edit: A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher, author of Small is beautiful - I think we talked about him previously - has a pleasing and more modern account of such things. You might enjoy it.
People can become stuck in a hellish frame of mind, but it's not punishment. It's a self imposed prison. It comes down to the things a person is telling themselves.
So do you agree I understand you or not?
You said: “ “Faith involves acting on belief without sufficient evidence"
And you said: Quoting Banno
So I clarified your statement about what faith involves as the following:
I said: Faith involves acting on belief, and that belief is formed despite insufficient evidence.
There are two large parts: belief despite insufficient evidence, and, acting on such belief, involved in faith.
Does my restatement show that I understand your premise? Or not?
- Let's say you have a book that contains information on an ancient people. It contains a list of rulers dating back 1000 years. We can confirm the list dating back 500 years, but the evidence starts to become less reliable after that. Does the record in the book count for anything, or would we consider the claims in the books to be baseless beyond 500 years?
-Let's say you were up with Moses on Mount Sinai. What would need to transpire for you to become a believer?
I think what the academic community does is build a collection of speculations that changes as new archeological data emerges. This article about the Sumerian kings list talks about how attitudes change over time.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
First of all, I'd be mind-blown because I thought Moses was mythical. Coming to believe in a theistic divinity would require a shift in worldview for me. I doubt I would allow that. I'd explain events according to the view I have until I reached a dead-end and then stop and say I don't know what's going on.
I doubt people choose to imprison themselves in a hellish frame of mind.
There’s a variety of methods for dating ancient documents and they’re reported to be quite accurate. Personally I would consider the content of the document a one piece of evidence.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
It’s said that only Moses was allowed on the mountain so just being there with him would be unconvincing.
Happens all the time.
Why do they choose to suffer in that way? And if it's a choice, can't they simply choose not to suffer when they get bored with it?
I would say that the world itself evidences the Buddhist concept of emptiness, and that the so-called 'realization of emptiness' is a deeply personal experience—one that is profoundly difficult to convey to others. Not sure where divine providence may play a role though.
That's a brilliant question. I offer three answers.
1. Both saints and sinners would have the same choice - heaven for comfort and hell for company. (But, of course, neither would, in practice, make the inappropriate choice.) A secularist would not be present after death, so would never miss the opportunity.
2. If you consider the duck-rabbit as a duck, what is missing from the interpretation of the figure as a rabbit. Everything? or Nothing? Both answers are correct.
3. More seriously, consider Berkeley's account:-
[quote="Berkeley, Treatise, 109]As in reading other books a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language; so, in perusing the volume of nature, it seems beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order. extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. [/quote]
The possibility that the religious can choose is indeed missing in the secular view. But a secularist will never miss it. Note the Berkeley manages, in spite of the fact that both world views comprise the same facts, to offer reasons why his view is preferable. Sadly, his world view prevents him from recognizing that the secularist will never miss what he sees.
WIttgenstein has a discussion that is relevant to this:-
Quite so. But that's where the analysis in terms of world-views shows an opportunity. The quotidian is what the religious and the secular share. It is not a choice. They bump into each other. So each needs to find an account of the other (or set about eliminating them from their world.)
It seems to me that secularists and religionists are equally capable of seeing purpose, meaning, and beauty, as well as order and truth.
How do you know that it "becomes less reliable" unless you have some other evidence with which to compare it, and that is more reliable?
There are similar things in Midgley.
And here we have "the leap of faith".
Quoting Banno
I'm in good company, then. Murdoch's 'Sovereignty of the Good' has also been mentioned a few times.
But anyway - the reason I brought up the idea of levels of being, is because it is relevant to the question of faith, and to the criticism of faith being 'belief without evidence'.
How so? Because there are truths that only the wise can grasp - grasping them is the hallmark of wisdom. I'm emphatically not claiming to be in such company, I'm simply looking through the glass, darkly. (I guess this comes from my years of hanging out at the Adyar Bookshop.) It is abundantly demonstrated in the literature of Zen Buddhism (and again, making no claims as to any acomplishment in that demanding discipline.) But the culmination of those paths - awakening or satori - provides a perspective that us ordinary folk do not have. So, in the absence of insight, all we have is faith.
This is exemplified by one of the early Buddhist texts (the Pali texts revered by Theravada Buddhists). It's a dialogue between the Buddha and Sariputta, a disciple who is customarily associated with wisdom. Summarily, it is like this (source text provided):
[quote=Pubbakotthaka Sutta: Eastern Gatehouse; https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn48/sn48.044.than.html]The Buddha asked, “Sariputta, do you simply trust that developing the faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom leads to the Deathless?”
Sariputta replied, “It’s not just on trust, Lord. Those who haven’t seen this for themselves must rely on others’ word. But those who have directly known and realized it have no doubt. And I have seen and realized it for myself; I have no doubt that these faculties, when fully developed, lead to the Deathless.”[/quote]
There are at least analogies for this in the Christian faith, as well, not least the 'through a glass, darkly' metaphor alluded to above. None of which means that blind faith, or fanaticism, or misplaced idealism are not real dangers on that or any religious or spiritual path. Faith is not the terminus of such paths, but it is a requirement, in that one has to have confidence enough to pursue what is often a very arduous path, often with no obvious end or reward in sight.
So I reject this 'belief without evidence' dogma, as that is what it is. For those prepared to pursue these paths, there is plenty of evidence, albeit not of the kind that positivism will acknowledge.
Wouldn't you agree that there are stronger and weaker forms of evidence? The existence of some biblical figures is established, while for others, the evidence outside the Bible is limited.
Ok, so if there are stronger and weaker forms of evidence.... what?
We can be more certain of the existence of some historical figures than others.
:wink:
The obvious retort is to ask how you could know this. If you cannot know these truths unless you are wise, how can you know that someone else knows these truths? How can you know someone knows "p is true" unless you also know that p?
And the answer must be in what the wise do. But before enlightenment, gather wood, cary water. After enlightenment, gather wood, carry water.
In my observation the main change in behaviour after enlightenment seems to be having sex with noviciates.
The problem with Plato's line is that it renders differences in kind as if they were differences in degree. Another thread, maybe.
And the obvious response is, one of degrees. One might experience some degree of awakening, short of reaching any kind of plateau of wisdom. A Pali Buddhist expression is ehi passiko - come and see. Learn by doing. Practical wisdom, if you like.
That koan you refer to, incidentally, is extracted from the voluminous corpus of S?t? Zen literature, and taken out of context, can easily be misinterpreted. S?t? puts a lot of emphasis on 'ordinary mind', meaning not seeking some special state or trying to attain something. But this doesn't mean that there isn't the requirement for very disciplined training, and Japanese Zen training is very disciplined indeed.
The way I used it, it does just what I wanted it to do.
Curiously, I just wrote:
Quoting Banno
Same applies here. Both god, and the devil, will be in the detail.
Let me rephrase:
We can confirm the list dating back, e.g., 500 years, but the evidence becomes scarce after that. How ought we view claims of kingship in the book after the evidence stops? Would it be fair to view them as baseless assertions?
If it's you claiming the kings list is correct, yes, it's a baseless assertion.
Do you have a point? Otherwise, I'm out.
I'm not claiming this. Let's say we have 12 kings confirmed in chronological order. The question is whether King 13 exists. Do we have reason to believe so? Does the claim in the book count for anything?
It's tedious. And we all know the game plan.
Just spit it out.
All we have is the information that a 13th king is listed. It's unconfirmed.
Oh well. :grin:
Super crazy. Stuff like this:
Quoting Leontiskos
Apparently this is, "Psychological discrediting." :roll:
"Leontiskos asked that we give arguments for our claims. How rude."
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Hanover
I think you've written a number of good posts and I've mostly fallen behind in this thread, but I nevertheless disagree with the bolded. Well, I don't have a strong desire to modify Tom's atheism, but that's mostly because it feels like a fool's errand. But I think a desire to modify our interlocutor's position is healthy and normal. It just has to be done within proper constraints, such as valid argumentation and the absence of impositions, begging the question, ad hominem, etc.
Not sure why he singled you out.
Because when @Hanover said, "I trust wholly in the sincerity of your atheism, have no desire to modify it..." he was speaking to @Tom Storm. So when I commented on Hanover's statement about Tom Storm, I referred to Tom Storm.
Yikes man, what's your deal? These are pretty wild attempts to discredit me. "Ready, fire, aim"?
(Note that if you think referencing someone without notifying them is "talking about them behind their back," then you've just failed your own test.)
I don’t know, the term ‘samadhi junkie’ suggests that practitioners may develop a strong personal predilection for the experience.
Bottom line, I think you are too hard on faith and acting without sufficient evidence. Plenty of good and reasonable outcomes follow many acts of faith.
The basic premise:
Faith involves
1.) believing something despite insufficient evidence,
2.) and acting on said belief anyway.
And then there is 3.) “the point here is to bring out the immoral acts that are sometimes the result of faith unfettered.” -Banno
Believing without evidence is one thing.
Acting on said baseless belief is another thing.
Acting immorally because you believe things without evidence is a third thing (really a sub category of the second thing).
To start, I see your general point - believing something without good evidence is fraught with peril, and then acting on what is already perilous is reckless, and further, we’ve seen horrible atrocities committed based on such perilous recklessness.
But immorality is not always what happens in every act of faith, so there must be something else to “what is faith.” I’d say that, of the trillions of acts done by billions of believers acting on their faiths, the vast majority are not atrocities such that you or anyone must be skeptical of all acts of faith. Looking at the faith healers and terrorist martyrs is just a tiny narrow picture of actions driven by faith.
I mean, based on insufficient evidence, having only faith in God, people said “take me instead” to the Nazi that wanted to kill someone else, given their lives and saved others. People have turned their other cheek where others would seek vengeance. People have ministered to the sick hoping for miracles risking their lives where no one else would go. Faith builds comfort and hope to those mourning a lost loved one everyday. That isn’t as impactful as some terrorist?
I simply don’t see all acts of faith as bad.
I know you aren’t saying all acts of faith are bad. But I think you are saying something like, because of their reckless disregard for better, sufficient evidence, any good outcome that follows an act of faith is accidental, and the faith component was merely foolishness. But I simply disagree. I think many faith driven acts and the good outcomes hoped for that followed would not have happened without precisely that faith.
So my point here is, a decision to act based on faith in something despite insufficient evidence is not per se bad.
Here is a better way to make this same point.
Prong 1 of your premise: “believing something despite sufficient evidence.”
People do this all of the time outside of the context of religion.
People take things on faith that could otherwise be supported by sufficient evidence - they just don’t do the math. That is still the same thing as an act of faith. Such belief still involves faith because the person doesn’t have the evidence and didn’t use reason to form their belief. This is like when you trust someone giving you directions on the side of the road. You don’t know the person, you have no real reason to believe them, and you could get your own, better evidence, but instead, you believe their word and act, possibly driving off a cliff around the next corner.
So the very act of believing something without sufficient evidence needs to be further analyzed to determine its relative value, its practicality, its prevalence in daily decision-making, usefulness and predictability of outcome, etc. - basically there is no necessary connection between whatever reason you might have to forgo sufficient evidence and yet make a decision to believe and act anyway. In the moment, what could otherwise be a sufficiently evidenced decision, is instead more quickly made with insufficient evidence. So maybe you call it following your gut or intuition, and not faith, but either name here, there is a need and prevalence for all of us to act based on insufficient evidence all of the time.
So again we see that acting on insufficient evidence itself is not per se bad.
If all acting based on insufficient evidence is bad, we should probably not listen to what anyone else ever says.
Second point others are trying to make here is this, I never do anything based on insufficient evidence. I don’t follow Zeus, or Pan. I believe the words of a man who said great things, and the people around him who saw him do many impossible things. I have evidence. I get that I can’t hand you the proof of these things and allow us both to retest veracity, but like the person who gives me directions, when those directions make some sense, I believe them despite insufficient evidence.
Basically, you can’t just conclude that because you don’t see the evidence doesn’t mean it is not there. I see it. I base my decisions and actions on what I see.
It is just not an accurate description of my thought process to call my acts of faith essentially always “based on insufficient evidence.” I see that evidence can be weak, but I also see that there are many decisions we make in our day where evidence will be weak, so the faith muscle needs to be exercised to become a good one.
Religious faith is trust in another person based on your evidence of who that person is. Faith is a gift (just like the other way we make decisions, reason, is a gift). Persons are wild cards - and require faith to know, believe and follow (act upon).
I have not said otherwise. I've just pointed out that the opposite is also true, that obscenities also can be acts of faith.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Appreciated. Would that we could have started here.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Really? I do. I've found we often must act despite not knowing the consequences. Seems to be part of the human condition. But such leaps of faith need to be mitigated by other considerations.
That's pretty much the whole of what I had to say on the issue, pages back.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Sure. And there is also the other option, that we can withhold consent. We can say "I don't know".
Hardly representative. Attachment to any experience is discouraged in Buddhist training. Samma samadhi is the guiding principle.
Nobody has brought up William James The Will to Believe. It's rather a modern classic in this context.
I totally get that it's unconfirmed, but perhaps we could say that the sourcebook has some degree of credibility to it?
Quoting Ludwig V
Right. And the odd thing is that when religious people consistently take the bait they too become confused about thinking that religions have only to do with a single proposition - lol.
It's no coincidence that atheists who fixate on that question are unable to differentiate one religion from another. "God doesn't exist, so they're all the same, namely false!"
Yes, it's a good point.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I was trying to get at the same thing with this:
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see what's at stake here. Why would it make any difference?
This conflates two sorts of faith: (1) faith in God's existence and (2) faith in God's guidance.
Recall the biblical account. The Israelites were present at Mt. Sinai, and they had seen the miracle of the plagues, water from rocks, bushes burning unconsumed, manna from heaven, and seas parting. Despite this evidence, they became restless at Moses' absence while in the process of receiving the 10 Commandments and built a golden calf.
They lacked "faith," but they never questioned God's existence. How could they? He was as obvious as anything before them.
They lacked faith in his guidance and so they disobeyed.
Today's lack of faith, doubting the very existence of God, would be absurdly anachronistic in a biblical setting.
My point is asking why faith #1 is at all worth having without #2? What do you do with this cosmic discovery? You've found a new planet, you've found God, and you found your missing keys. Seems like there's a whole lot more to this faith thing that has us all talking about it.
Apparently, "simul iustus et peccator" is originally an Augustinian concept. Anyway, I'm not the one to be asking about the need for Jesus. I enjoy Luther's insights on humanity and the Bible, but when it comes to Jesus, he loses me completely. I understand justification by God's grace; that's about as far as I get.
He has presented a few bits and pieces as if he had presented an argument.
, have you a conclusion for us? A page later?
I'm not trying to convert an atheist. I'm interested in how you all think, and the differences could lead to an interesting dialogue. For example, if we were to start with, e.g., Ezra-Nehemiah and work backwards, when would the atheists start taking issue? Now that would be interesting. It could expose some interesting points of difference.
I didn't think you were, and couldn't care less anyway.
I've really got no idea what you are attempting to do here.
It started with
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
...which I answered, then a long pause filled with empty posts, now
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Have you a point, or are you just trying to running a bible study group for atheists? 'cause I'm not keen.
If you're ever genuinely interested in grappling with the concept of God, the Bible is how you do it. Not internet debates.
Or conversly, is it possible to have faith#2 without faith#1? A sort of practical faith that's not very concerned with the source? Just a deep-rooted sense of "this is the way"? As an atheist who grew up among lots of atheist-accepting, ecumene-favouring Christians, I've often wondered how important "faith in the existence of God" is. Faith in the guidance seemed more in evidence in the people around me (and I wonder if this "in-evidence" is a result of selctive intention, or maybe incomplete interpretation).
I may well be underestimating the importance of a "personal God", though. That does come up. I wonder if it's possible to follow the guidance with deep conviction, while, say, holding some sort of ironic distance towards the "God exists" discourse, as whatever you say on that issue feels... inadequate. It sometimes feels like that (not with my parents, but I've met people who gave me the impression).
I don't find this an easy topic.
[Aside: I originally typed "discurse" rather than "discourse". I almost want to believe in Freudian slips.]
According to James, religious faith can occur when:
The belief is psychologically possible.
The choice cannot be avoided.
The consequences matter deeply.
Evidence is incomplete.
And faith could open the door to real experience of the divine.
Much if not all of that is dependent on or highly influenced by society, which suggests that it’s the social aspect that makes faith necessary.
You didn’t address the more substantive parts.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Therefore “belief based on insufficient evidence” happens everyday.
You admitted that. Doesn’t that mean your connection between faith acts and immoral behavior may just be correlated, but not causal? I think it does.
Acting without sufficient evidence is a good now. You said yourself you do it all of the time, and I’m sure with great success.
Quoting Banno
That’s my point!
You sound like a man of faith now.
(And if you don’t know the consequences, you didn’t have sufficient evidence - same behavior - so you can’t avoid my point that way.)
Quoting Fire Ologist
Apparently so might you:
Quoting Banno
So if both are true, we can’t use good acts or bad acts as some kind of measure of the faith those acts were based on.
So there is no reason to pause a decision and not to act just because that decision is based on faith.
And so bringing up heinous acts, or only heinous acts, or good acts or any acts is irrelevant and unhelpful when saying “what is faith.”
I think your whole disparagement of faith, your argument, is toast.
Quoting Banno
Mitigated leaps of faith. You must be a lot of fun at a party.
(Thought that was funny. I’m a nerd.)
The most substantive part was where you agreed with my general point.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That'll do.
Quoting Fire Ologist
An odd thing to say. A lesser evil, sometimes.
Good and bad things follow from acts of faith, but not
Quoting Fire Ologist
A non sequitur. I will happily judge that a faith sufficient to murder a child is not a good faith. If you can't do likewise, that's on you. Your argument is invalid.
Of course. Both are equally human. Adopting a world-view, such as a religion, does not change that, except perhaps for some people, at the margins. For the most part, human life plays out, with all its faults through the framework. I know that many believers want very much to believe that they have a better handle on things and lead better lives as a result. That may or may not be empirically true, but there's no reason to assume that it is is.
But will you happily judge a faith sufficient to risk one’s life to save another as good?
If so then there is nothing good or bad necessarily involved in acts of faith qua acts of faith.
So your argument’s reliance on child murder is smoke.
You are avoiding.
Based on faith? A third woman has died under Texas’ abortion ban as doctors reach for riskier miscarriage treatments
It's not murder, it's ritual sacrifice. Nothing in the text suggests Isaac resisted or didn't cooperate. Many interpretations portray him as a willing participant.
I don't understand this comment. Are you suggesting that ritual sacrifice by wililng participants is ok? Seems like something we would want to eliminate. Whether it falls within the purview of "murder" is a very legalistic concern that ignores the fact that it's highly immoral regardless of how we pedantically classify the act.
If, though, you want to go down the path of drawing factual distinctions (as in Isaac might have wanted his throat slit), there's also good argument Isaac was in his 30s at the time, meaning he wasn't even a child.
Notwithstanding all of this, the best argument is that under no hermeneutic has any Abrahamic religion used the binding story to suggest infanticide or sacrificial killing was morally justified. In fact the story is typically used as the opposite, which explains why Abrahamic religions prohibit human sacrifice clearly and historically, without exception. Infanticide has been more common in secular societies (although still largely forbidden), particularly Victorian Britain in the 1800s and China very recently, meaning we as a people have found all sorts of ways to do horrible things. In this instance of infanticide and ritualistic killing, the Abrahamic religions happen to have a much more admirable history though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide
But generally I read the comment your responded to more innocuously, as in it was indicating that child murder is condemnable under any scenario, which I'd agree to.
No, I am merely distinguishing between murder and the institution of sacrifice. God lets us know very early on that murder (including the murder of animals) is wrong. Yet animal sacrifices were offered throughout the Second Temple era and were offered by many of the forefathers. Giving an animal as a sacrifice is not the same as murdering it, even though the animal is slaughtered in both.
Quoting Hanover
This strengthens the idea that Isaac was a willing participant.
Quoting Hanover
I read Banno as referencing the Akedah story as he has often done, and equating the institution of sacrifice with murder.
This is just legalistic stuff, but for what it's worth, retzach is the type of killing forbidden in the Torah. It is not a universal prohibition against killing humans (as killing in war and self defense are examples of lawful killing). That word does not relate to the killing of animals. That is, you can't "murder" an animal, but it is forbidden to kill an animal for the purposes of causing it suffering.
There are laws against sacrifice (referred to as "passing through fire"), but I'd think sacrifice would be a form of retzach, but also a particularly forbidden type. I'm not saying the distinction isn't relevant, but I do think that human sacrifice is a form of retzach, among other things.
The Isaac story is generally viewed by Jews as further support that human sacrifice is forbidden. There are other passages that forbid human sacrifice. There is not a reasonable interpretation that it is supportive of human sacrifice.
Christians see it similarly, but also as foreshadowing Jesus's life, death, and ressurection, a human sacrifice of a child directly of God, brought to earth to purge humanity of its sins. A metaphorical sacrificial lamb.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Kierkegaard's focus wasn't as much on Isaac's acceptance of his fate as it was on Abraham's pure faith in not resisting or questioning God. Since I see the story as metaphor, what is it that is added by concentrating on Isaac's complicity? There is no evidence Isaac knew the sacrifice was God's will, so what do we say about Isaac that he did whatever his father asked without question? Abraham was over 100 years old at the time. Isaac would have easilly taken him.
What are these sentences? Not a syllogism. Yes, we might judge a faith that is sufficient for self sacrifice to be good. And that faith of itself is neither good nor bad is one of the consequences of the argument I presented, and is meant to be contrary to those who insist faith is always a virtue.
So we have agreement on these issues?
You might think that a father trussing up his son and holding a knife to his throat is fine if the child gives consent, but both I and the law disagree.
Pretty much.
This is a reading of the Binding that is told in parallel to reading it as an admonition against human sacrifice. It's the target of much of my argument. In an alternate story, Abraham says to god "This is an evil thing you ask, and I will not do it, even for you", and then god comes clean and says that it was all a test, solving the Euthyphro by showing that god wills what is good, not the good is what god wills.
Do you think this an admirable way to live?
Yes, killing animals is only acceptable for food, sacrifice, and necessity, as I understand it. Initially, I held Genesis 9:5 as demanding an accounting for the unnecessary slaughter of animals, but I was wrong. Interestingly, it holds the animal accountable for the shedding of human blood.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, one is forbidden to offer their seed to Molech. Abraham pre-dates these firm commandments. Human sacrifice may have been defensible in Abraham's day. Sacrifice is established as a valid institution; the question is its proper boundaries.
Quoting Hanover
Agree, although Dan McClellan argues that the earliest layers of the Hebrew Bible are supportive of human sacrifice. I mention this because McClellan is prominent in biblical scholarship today.
Quoting Hanover
Make it more palatable to Banno. Isaac's complicity in the matter would be a morally relevant factor for many secular moral theorists.
I don't take the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and so pointing out better ways it could say things doesn't prove much other than we don't have a divine document.
As to the question of whether it is the source or horrors, less so than other laws documents, maybe more so than others. What is the bigger point you wish to make? Do I discard the wisdom extracted over the millenia because you can show me it's not the perfect book?
Interesting, but not surprising. In the earliest passages, it wasn't monotheistic and gods procreated with humans to form monsters, so God wiped out the planet with a flood.
Would it be ok if Isaac were an adult? What's the issue with an adult consenting to be a human sacrifice?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
What do you think? Should we allow the sacrifice of willing, compliant adults?
Meaning is in your head. Squiggly symbols are the book. Authorial intent is irrelevant.
Let us suppose you read a book, used it to form moral analysis, to form charitable works, used it to form community, used it to form positive identity, do you destroy all that you created if you later learn it was meant as nothing more than a book of humorous tales?
And you needn't point out all could have been done without it because that doesn't justify removing it.
Nuh. Instead of worrying about meaning, worry about what folk do. I'm not asking folk to burn their book, just that they not to use it as an excuse for abominations.
Yes, we agree.
This is a political question, but my answer would be no. Admittedly, my perspective is shaped by my theology, and I can understand how others might disagree.
This moral question has been resolved, but in Abraham's day (2000 BC?), it wasn't.
I like Heath Dewrell's view (partly because I think he's right) that child sacrifice probably wasn't part of the deep history of the Israelites. The laws against it are probably related to the rise of a child sacrificing sect, possibly influenced by the Phoenicians. This would have been around the reign of King Ahaz.
Which period is he referring to?
Quoting frank
Plausible. We know that by the time of the Second Temple era, the practice had ceased among the Jews.
The end of the Bronze Age.
I think you've helped to show the real complexity of a story that is often treated with historically and exegetically tone-deaf canards.
If we don't understand the act, then we don't understand what the angel of God ultimately told Abraham not to do. Abraham was told by the angel not to sacrifice his child; he was not told to abstain from murder. Abraham presumably did not need to be told that you shouldn't murder your children.
I was wondering if the religionists would agree.
How should I interpret silence?
On the latter interpretation then, we are still left with the question as to waht the secularist doesn't have in the life experience as opposed to the religionist (other than the obvious beliefs in God and immortality, and whatever comforts they bring, of course).
I would interpret it this way: people are not interested in entire posts of AI-generated content. The only words of your own were, "All AI generated, btw."
AI will be the end of us.
So around 1500-1200 BC? The Merneptah Stele mentions Israel in ~1208 BC, but I place the Exodus in the 13th century BC. One could put the Exodus earlier, around the 15th century BC. Sounds like Dewrell believes in an earlier Exodus because when I hear "late bronze age" I think slavery.
You've probably read that there's no evidence that there was ever a community of enslaved Israelites in Egypt. If you're interested in what we know about the emergence of the Israelites, check out 1177 BC by Eric Cline. There are some intriguing archeological tidbits that suggest that the Israelites may have been among the so-called sea peoples.
Was there ever any community of Israelites in Egypt? So no Joseph then?
If the Israelites were the Sea People, then why did they need to invent a story about Egypt? They have their own history. Why not just tell their own story of arriving by sea instead of passing down a complete fabrication?
I would agree that there is no evidence of a large-scale Exodus, as described in the Hebrew Bible, where millions of people are said to have escaped Egypt. Numbers in ancient sources are notoriously unreliable.
The archeological record doesn't show that there was.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
They couldn't read or write, it was a chaotic time. One of the tidbits I mentioned was the appearance in Egypt of a word that looks like Israel. So maybe not slaves, but sea-faring invaders.
I mean, if you look at Americans who've been here for a couple of hundred years, they're apt to have no information about how they come to be here. It would have been the same for the early Israelites.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
There's just no record of a community of Israelites in Egypt.
How could you know that if you haven’t successfully completed the journey yourself? Seems like it must be down to faith. If you want to claim that that faith is supported by evidence then tell us what the evidence consists in.
I checked out Cline's 1177. He does not claim that the Israelites were the Sea People. He associates the Sea People with the Philistines.
The Sea Peoples were diverse. The Peleset are among those that we're pretty sure were sea peoples.
The simplest answer for the purposes of TPF is to simply say, "religious experience." At that point you will advert to your presupposition about religious experience, which has been widely criticized on TPF (for example). Your idea that there are no sound inferences from a religious experience to a propositional truth is something that you have consistently failed to defend throughout the last two years I have been here. We make inferences from experience all the time, and the idea that this is simply impossible when it comes to "religious" experience is question-begging.
Such flagrant AI bigotry. What is the world coming to. :fear:
Anyway, my argument is basically that faith is unnecessary for genuine spiritual pursuits; it is religion that demands faith—not for the sake of salvation, but because religion is primarily concerned with forging strong, unified social bonds. Faith is necessary in religion because it is action that proves allegiance. Faith serves to filter out non-committed individuals and strengthen in-group loyalty. Faith in supernatural beliefs, especially when they’re costly or hard to fake, signals deep commitment to the group. And faith-based communities that required costly religious commitments (e.g., dietary restrictions, celibacy) have been show to be robust and long lived.
This is all based on a diverse group of thinkers, namely:
David Émile Durkheim - A French sociologist who formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber.
William James - An American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology.
Peter Ludwig Berger - An Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and contributions to sociological theory.
Scott Atran - An American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan, and cofounder of ARTIS International and of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Oxford University.
Richard Sosis - A James Barnett Professor of Humanistic Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. His work has focused on the evolution of religion and cooperation, with particular interests in ritual, magic, religious reproductive decision-making, the dynamics of religious systems, and related topics such as meaning systems and the anthropology of sport.
Please forgive the appeal to authority.
So now that AI can no longer be used as an excuse to ignore my point, do you agree with it? This is where I was going before, incidentally, when I repeatedly asked you about the value of faith.
Yes. You do well to ignore them.
Quoting Janus
That's part of it, which the secularist has, just as much as the religionis. But Berkeley attributes more to the religionist than that.
[quote=""Berkeley,"].....hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures.[/quote]
The secularist will not do any of that. But won't miss it.
In the context of athiesm, it seems to me like there are two general modes of bigotry. The first is your (earlier) Sam Harris or Nietzsche type, which tends towards hostile "arguments from psychoanalysis" that paint anyone of faith as irrational, child-like, weak willed, etc. This sort of view is straightforwardly bigoted, and in the hands of many of the "New Athiest" it often gets paired with a fairly extensive ignorance of the topic they have decided to address.
I actually don't think this is the most pernicious sort of anti-religious bigotry, for the same reason that bigoted fundamentalists are themselves not as dangerous as their noxious views might suggest. In either case, the bigotry is so overt that everyone sees it, and of course plenty of atheists think the more aggressive of the New Athiest are just obnoxious.
The more pernicious sort of bigotry, to my mind, seems to be much more common in the upper classes, and tends to get practiced by people who are "accepting of religion" or even identify as from a certain faith (although it tends to be people for whom this is more of a cultural identity). In this view, religion is fine—provided it is not taken very seriously. It's ok to be a Baptist or a Catholic, so long as you're not one of [I]those[/I] ones, the ones who take it to seriously, allowing it to expand beyond the realm of private taste.
And this means nodding along with sacrilege and blasphemy, preferably joining in. You're supposed to nod along when someone refers to the Eucharist as a "Jeez-It," etc. It's a bit like the old Roman sacrifices to the emperor. One must prove one's allegiance to the secular liberal order above all else—burning one's incense to Caesar—and then one is free to practice the local faith in private. This is a sort of tolerance of faith just so long as it is rendered meaningless, a mere matter of taste, and a taste that confirms to the dominant culture.
I've read plenty of African Americans describe a sort of similar phenomenon, although there the dominant culture has sort of come around on this sort of thing.
This comes out in two ways:
First, it's not uncommon to see comments directed at religious groups or ethnic/class groups that would be considered "beyond the pale" if they were directed at races or on the basis of sex. Liberalism has a particular focus of [I]biological[/I] identity, precisely because people do not [I]choose[/I] these things. Whereas, religion, ethnicity, and class are things that the upwardly mobile individual must shed upon attaining to the global "middle class" (which is really more of an economic elite comparatively speaking).
BTW, I also think this sentiment is why so much moral debate on homosexuality and trans-sexualism focuses on whether or not it is "natural," (whether people are "born this way," i.e. not a choice). I don't think this framing is helpful though. I would tend to think the bigotry and cruelty are unjust regardless of whether they are based on "naturalness," (that is, it is not necissarily just to oppress someone for their choices either). Whereas, at the same time, something's being "natural" hardly makes it acceptable. Rape is perhaps "natural," but we hardly want to defend that.
Second, religious beliefs are only allowed a sort of freedom from condemnation in as much as they accord with liberal norms. So, things like not ordaining female priests, viewing fornication as a form of sin (against the "Sexual Revolution"), more conservative positions on divorce (sacrament versus contract between individuals), get decried. This, of itself, is not a problem. Some religious beliefs might be bigoted, unjust, etc. The problem is that, because "religious belief" has become merely a matter of "private taste," disagreements on such issues simply get written off as always a sort of bigotry. Yet, it seems to me that there is a sort of rational argument to be had re fornication, pornography, gluttony, acquisitiveness, etc. that it is not helpful to dismiss in this way.
BOOORRRRRINNNNNNNG! :D
Though I'm sympathetic here:
Quoting Hanover
Reason can only go so far, after all. And I don't think @Hanover is using the book as an excuse for abominations, though I know many do.
Nuh, instead of worrying about using a book as an excuse for abominations, worry about what folk do. I'm not asking folk to use anything as an excuse for abominations, just that they not commit abominations.
(Cleaned it up to avoid special pleading, so as to remove the suggestion that there's some rule particular to the Bible that doesn't apply universally).
Again, it's literally against the rules:
Quoting Baden
-
Quoting praxis
My response:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting praxis
You are just name-dropping without providing any evidence that the authorities even agree with you.
Here's my question. If Abraham would have killed Isaac and burned him as an offering to God and that account was consistly interpreted as a prohibition against child sacrifice, resulting in the end of that practice for good, would it matter what other literal translations could have been made?
Meaning is use. And it's for that reason all this contemporary interpretation that decontextualizes the thousands of years preceding say nothing other than if we were the interpreters, we would have come up with pretty evil conclusions.
The interpreters did not do that. They looked for meaning, purpose, and morality. If someone wishes to say they shouldn't have falsely attributed their wisdom to a self-declared holy book in order to provide their wisdom divine status, then I wish that would just be said as opposed to explaining what the right way of interpreting should have been had the interpreters just have been better literalists.
Yes, and that's the issue that relates to the entire thread. The atheists here are arguing on the basis of de-contextualized interpretations that would be rejected by their interlocutors (and therefore they are relying on premises that their interlocutors would obviously reject, thus begging the question). This relates to "hostile translation":
Quoting Leontiskos
What are the grounds for such an interpretation? Did God step in and condemn it? Did something happen to Abraham? Interpretation isn't endlessly open. Some interpretations are plausible, others are not.
I'm not sure why you would disregard authorial intent. Try understanding the Levitical sacrifice from a modern lens. You can't do it. You need to try to examine things from the POV of the ancients. Of course, we could come up with flawed interpretations, but those interpretations would be subject to scrutiny throughout the process of biblical analysis.
Quoting Hanover
Literal is only one mode of biblical interpretation. See PARDES. We can make a literal interpretation, but another could fit better.
You'd imagine this is fairly common today. Why do you find this more pernicious?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Seems fairly benign to me if accurate, but it would be interesting to find out if this is how they saw it too. You're describing your take on it, but would they identify with this account? Or would they have interesting things to say about their privately held faith?
I would imagine that a significant percentage of self-described Christians are not particularly serious about their faith and perhaps find the social connection, community and the fact that their entire town attends a set of churches, compelling reasons to be part of it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
An understandable reaction, I'd say.
quote="Count Timothy von Icarus;989335"]The problem is that, because "religious belief" has become merely a matter of "private taste," disagreements on such issues simply get written off as always a sort of bigotry. Yet, it seems to me that there is a sort of rational argument to be had re fornication, pornography, gluttony, acquisitiveness, etc. that it is not helpful to dismiss in this way.[/quote]
Generally, when I hear this kind of argument, it's framed around the idea that religions often promote outdated or 'backwards' worldviews, which some people follow dogmatically.
When it comes to bigotry, hearing Muslim men say that women are 'whores' if they're not chaperoned by male relatives, or that gay people should be jailed or killed, makes it hard to see such views as something that can be excused or explained away. Bigotry often exists on a continuum, ranging from subtle biases and stereotypes to overt hatred and violence. The latter would seem to be the most concerning.
The relgious bigotry toward atheism can be interesting too. It often involves dismissing atheism as illegitimate or lacking any meaningful foundation. The atheist is frequently characterized as morally bereft, intellectually deficient, dishonest and spiritually empty, as if disbelief in God equates to a deficiency in character or purpose - even a type of disability. This account undermines the atheist’s credibility from the outset; their views are rarely engaged with seriously, since they are presumed to rest on a fragile, incoherent worldview - one readily dismissed as a house of cards.
We don't know who the author was. I look at the interpretation of those who've used the document. I'm not discarding historical analysis. I'm relying upon it heavily.
First, because people end up offending others without realizing it and holding on to a sort of subtle bigotry.
But more importantly, I think it ties into a large problem in liberal, particularly Anglo-American culture, were nothing can be taken seriously and nothing can be held sacred. Deleuze and Guattari talk about this sort of "desacralization" that occurs under capitalism. I think it leads to a sort of emotional and spiritual constipation. Feeling deeply about anything (thymos), or especially being deeply intellectually invested in an ideal (Logos), as opposed to being properly "pragmatic" (which normally means a focus on safety and epithumia, sensible pleasures) is seen as a sort failing. This is born out of an all-consuming fear of "fanaticism" and "enthusiasm" (something Charles Taylor also documents).
Part of what made Donald Trump's campaign so transgressive was the return to a focus on thymos, whereas elites have long had a common habit of complaining that people were not "voting according to their economic interests" (which apparently ought to have been their aim vis-a-vis politics, the common good).
Today, even in politically radical circles, it seems everything must be covered in several layers of irony and unseriousness. Indeed, all pervasive irony is particularly a hallmark of the alt-right. To care about anything too deeply is to be vulnerable, potentially a "fanatic," or worse "a sucker."
This tendency can also lead towards a sort of elitism, which I think Deneen explains this well using Mill:
Deneen goes on to cite Burke's at least plausible response that it is actually "innovators" who have the greatest tendency to be tyrannical.
The secularist may do the same thing with a different object of worship, though.
"Hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom and beneficence of Nature; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, appropriate to the ends they were designed for, Nature's glory, and the sustention and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures".
If true, why does this matter? Describe the problem to me. I'm not sure I see a lack of seriousness myself, but perhaps what you mean by this is many groups no longer read or follow traditional values.
On the one hand, conservative critics bemoan the Left’s excessive seriousness, it's humorless, puritanical enforcement of political and cultural "wokeness." On the other hand, they claim the Left doesn’t believe in anything.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm sure one could argue any number of things about Trump's arrival that would seem to fit. Which one is true? Could it not also just be seen as a return to old school bigotries (anti modernist/anti woke) and white nationalism and a general rage that comes from several sources? That rage may well turn against Trump too, since it seems to me that politicians often just surf on community attitudes.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Isn't your take informed by a bias that values traditionalism and is suspicious, perhaps even hostile towards political radicalism (particularly of the Left)? Is your use of irony as Rorty uses it? Is 'unseriousness' how they would describe it, or is that your description for it? There's a further quesion in what counts as a politically radical circle?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I dislike the smugness of late-night talk shows as much as the next conservative, not for ideological reasons, but because they often feel like the enforced moments of group hate from 1984. But does it matter? Interestingly, one of those figures, Bill Maher is now celebrated by conservatives because of his anti-woke rants. So has he become an approved dispenser of mocking sarcasm and irony—but with a heart?
Trump and co are the elite. It is a mistake to think that there is just one type of elite (not that you are arguing this). Looks like in America they've swapped one elite for another. This latest one seem less concerned about freedom, but let's not get into that can of worms. Politics is a filthy business no matter what side.
So it sounds like, from this and other posts, that you're presenting an anti-modernist position. Like many others, you seem to hold that secularism and scientism are problems and that we need to return to classical ideas and values for the sake of 'civilisation'. Perhaps you could finesse this position for me if I have misread you. I find this sort of discussion quite fascinating. And perhaps this isn't the thread.
Well, you can ask folk to burn there books, which would make your life more interesting.
Yep.
Heh. I wouldn't do such a thing, I just couldn't resist the dumb joke.
This is yet another iteration of your, "I don't have the burden of proof. They do." If you don't believe there are no sound inferences then you would not say, "I can't see how there could be." People who can't see how X could be possible do not think X is possible, and they have reasons why.
Quoting Leontiskos
And the liberal version of tolerance towards the religious or other disfavored ones, doesn’t seem to involve any actual respect. As long as the religious keep their thoughts and practices to themselves, libs will tolerate them.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Certainly not in the public square.
You are making me question my own sarcastic sense of humor.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Another thoughtful and considered analysis, clearly written. Good stuff.
It is automatically an idea worth trying, regardless of how many people it affects, if the idea has never been tried before, and it comes from the left.
A quick search on ChatGPT:
It's not as if this were an uncommon interpretation. Indeed, I had not heard the "Admonition against human sacrifice" interpretation until you presented it in these fora.
Leon calling this a "hostile" interpretation is plainly absurd - it is an interpretation used by theists.
Give a blind guy sight, take him for a walk on water, raise his brother from the dead, and he can still say “yeah, but how did you really do it?”
Is the argument being presented here now that in a philosophy forum, when asked specifically about faith, we should not entertain or discuss the negative aspects of faith for fear of offending the faithful?
Keep in mind that they do not have to be here.
Not at all. Are there any other aspects of faith to talk about Banno?
Or even simpler, "I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from perceptual experiences to empirical beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how."
But
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I had understood that being offended was a symptom of being woke.
Ok cool.
But, are there any positive aspects to faith to talk about?
I’ll take a stab. The problem is, there are serious things to talk about. Lightness and sarcasm break the tension, but don’t resolve it. It’s not that groups don’t read the classics or follow tradition, it’s that they mock it, and maybe never tried to understand it, which would require they take it seriously.
I don’t think conservatives have any choice but to have a sense of humor. We are roasted really quite well by traditional media, higher education, and Hollywood, really quite soundly. I think Count’s point is conservatives sometimes want to be taken seriously too.
I'll assume that you disagree.
We should remember that in this story, God promises Abraham progeny through Isaac. Some commentators reason that if the sacrifice was allowed to take place, Abraham expected God to resurrect Isaac. God had already performed miracles for Abraham.
I was reading William Whiston's dissertation on this topic today (written around 1737), and he notes that in his day, Abraham's actions were often viewed unfavorably, lamenting the loss of religious virtue in his era.
So I covered the positive, beneficial acts of faith?
Can you show me where I did that? I didn’t think you noticed.
I’d rather hear you say something positive about faith yourself.
Because you did say:
Quoting Banno
Yet from pretty much everything else you said, faith just seems stupid.
Even so, it remains that the story is understood by many as advising one to maintain one's faith even if one believes that god is asking for an abominable act.
And here we go again...
I'm not that interested.
Why what?
I agree with you that the primary interpretation lauds Abraham's faith.
Understood by many? Well they are all wrong. But why are we really talking about this?
No offense to @Bitconnectcarlos, but I don’t think Banno will be converted here on TPF.
I know better than to try to convert Banno.
I don't think many view it that way. Maybe a few crazy Mormons.
Maybe you are incapable?
I’m just happy I got you to admit faith of itself has no necessary good or bad to it. (Which I’m not sure you really believe.)
Quoting Banno
I guess we’ll never know.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That would be easier on you, I presume. But supose that I have understood all you had to say, and yet still reject theism. What's the appropriate response?
Seems that some of the faithful will "other" me, call me an atheist and attribute all sorts of odd beliefs and acts to me. You can see this in this very thread. It's implicit in "Maybe you are incapable?".
One alternative might be to reconsider your own beliefs, in the light of my startling response. I'm not expecting that.
Then there is what might be called a liberal view, where we will disagree, and move on.
It is. And explicitly so.
The constant use of irony and humor is sort of a defining feature of the Alt-Right and something they are self-consciously aware of. It's why their biggest voices, and now the presidential administration itself, often advances ideas through vague but provocative "funny" memes. E.g., Trump as the new Pope, joke memes about deportations, etc.
Tucker Carlson fit this mold quite well (who does the two minutes hate better?). He also fits the mold of the sarcastic "exceptional individual who sees through through all the bullshit" (the audience being implicitly one as well, a style incredibly popular since at least Nietzsche).
I wouldn't put this on the left in particular. If anything it is bigger for aspects of the right. The entire Manosphere ideology would seem to make meaningful romantic relationships impossible. Everything is transactional and defined in an economic calculus defined by evolutionary psychology, with catchphrases like "alpha seed and beta need" or "alpha fucks and beta is for the bucks." One cannot "fall in love" without risking becoming a sucker and a "cuck." But the obsession with being "cuckolded" goes beyond romance, and expands to all realms of social life. Hence, one must "keep it real," which means being a strong willed egoistic utility maximizer with one's gaze firmly on those goods which diminish when shared so as to "get one's share."
Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of gender relationships in terms of Hegel's Lord-Bondsman dialectic is spot on here. The "pick up artist" craves female validation (sex being one of the last goods to be commodified) but makes woman incapable of giving him recognition because he has denigrated her into a being lacking in dignity.
Likewise, the right-wing fixation on warrior culture, war, and apocalypse, which seems akin to 1914 in many ways, is a desire for war precisely because "nothing matters/is serious." It's the desire for war, apocalypse, crisis, etc. precisely because of this sort of spiritual constipation and the fear of degenerating into Nietzche's "Last Men," i.e. into the "consumers / workers" they are so likely to be seen as by those in authority.
But it's certainly still a factor in the left as well, in different ways. The political left has done more to lead the way on undermining all claims to authority, advancing the idea that everything comes down to power relations, and yet there is still shock that people no longer trust sources of authority, such as doctors or scientists.
Anyhow, re traditionalism, I see no reason to prefer tradition for the sake of tradition alone. All tradition was new at some point. But iconoclasm, the destruction and denigration of tradition for its own sake, for the sake of an amorphously defined "progress" that has no clear view of human flourishing, or "to liberate the exceptional individual," strikes me as the more common problem. There are indeed people who value tradition for tradition's sake, but they have far less influence than those who value desacralizing everything in the name of "progress."
It is the person restrained by custom who most benefit from its destruction. This is unlikely to be the meek and gentle.
Yes, but they generally learn about God's will from religious teachers, not through direct contact with the divine. If we're both Muslims and you tell me God told you to kill your son, I would call the police. See what I mean?
Not so much.
I've avoided mentioning Islam in this context becasue of the knee-jerk prejudicial reaction... and your account is exactly what I'd expect; that Muslims are moral and understand such nuance.
Indeed, I think I'll drop the topic.
Take it to PM if you wish to follow up.
It has such poor resolve I find
But then ask it whether the Abrahamic religions prohibit human sacrifice and have it compare those views to secular views over time and see whose history is more admiral.
My point will remain: no strranger in the midst of an Abrahamic community need worry about their kinfolk being burned to the gods. How the Jews in particular might fair in the midst of strangers on the other hand, not always so well.
But I'm not presenting any of this claiming superiority of culture or belief. We all have the same potential for kindness. I'm just trying to make that point, and that intolerance of religion based upon special fear of its brand of evil isn't justified
Since your gold standard is how one acts and we both advocate for the same acts, what else can you do to sustain the tension between religion and secular beliefs other than to (1) insist my religious beliefs are founded upon an overly benevolent misunderstanding of my own theology or (2) just declare me an abberation, an oddly secularly moral theist, a diamond in the rough
It is possible you know that its simply that religion isn't a malevolent force.
It's interesting, as I'd think on a religious forum there's probably an atheist right now who just can't get any theist to accept that his atheism doesn't make him a bad person.
Yes. And this interpretation stands. Indeed, the two interpretations are not obviously mutually exclusive.
You might also find intolerance of atheism hereabouts, if you look. It won't be hard to find.
No stranger? That is clearly untrue: https://www.barnabasaid.org/nz/news/at-least-89-christians-killed-by-islamists-in-north-eastern-d-r-congo/
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/nigeria-s-silent-slaughter-62-000-christians-murdered-since-2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_by_the_Islamic_State
https://www.assistnews.net/hundreds-of-churches-burned-in-europe/
It is the religion that causes the situation. It's not ancillary to it. Even in Western countries it seems we'd want to be cautious. In the UK, it appears the majority of violent crime is carried out by Muslim populations (though, finding direct statistics is hard because search engines prefer to show hate crimes against Muslims despite the disparity.
Religious doesn't make one bad, but it makes one do bad, by most lights. At least, the ones unopen to update.
October 7 rears its head...
As long as we agree that it is the act that defines the person, it hardly matters what supernatural belief motivates it.
Just keep burying your head in the sand forever.
It's a tough inference to go from Islam to religion more generally.
Like poor, benighted Wittgenstein:
Quoting Edward Oakes - Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy
Beliefs, more than other forms of cognition, drive behaviour. If your beliefs are religiously-derived, they are, without some rather spectacular intercession, inarguable. That isn't a safe situation when most religions instill beliefs about out-groups.
There are lots of traditional religious groups (not open to updating) which nevertheless do not engage in the sorts of things you pointed to.
Quoting AmadeusD
I would just point back to the same argument that Holland makes, namely that the West's compassionate attitude towards out-groups comes precisely from Judaism and Christianity.
The majority do. And in any case, they are the ones we are worried about - and so condemn. That some people can wield a knife while in a schizophrenic rage and not try to murder anyone doesn't mean we shouldn't be on guard for schizophrenics with knives in a rage.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is wholly irrelevant. Religion/religious fervour is the chief source of global harm.
But why would it be irrelevant?
You say
Suppose I gave a parallel argument
You respond, "But humans are also the source of global good." It would not make sense to say, "This is wholly irrelevant."
Just because a subset of humans do evil does not mean humans in general are the problem. We could get rid of humans and "solve" the problem, but that is not a reasonable way forward. It's fairly important to make distinctions between humans, and between religions, especially when you are talking to religious humans.
Religious fervour is the chief cause of global harm.
Humans carry out the religious fevour.
Thus, removing the religious fervour reduces the harm for which humans are culpable. It's irrelevant because "Not all men, but always men" is a totally reasonable refrain. Not all religions/religious people - but always fucking religion.
Except for Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or any of the other counterexamples to your assertion that it's always religion. You've presented premises about a single religion, Islam, and you are drawing conclusions about religion generally. That is an invalid argument to be sure. If all of your premises regard Islam, then your conclusion is about Islam. In that context, shifting from "Islam" to "religion" is a form of subtle equivocation.
(It would make no sense for me, a Christian, to look at your articles and say, "Oh, Islamic adherents killed a bunch of Christians; therefore religion itself must be the problem.")
I’m not asking about theism. Never really brought up God first in this whole thread. I can’t seem to make you believe that I think there are non-theological ways to understand and act on, faith. And we haven’t even started that conversation.
Most of this thread has been theological/psychological and now political target practice with people shooting in different directions, occasionally hitting marks. But often off target. Like you bringing up theism to me here.
I’ve taken some steps to show you I understood what you had to say. I am trying to be clear about what is meant here, not suppose anything between us.
You ask me to “suppose you understand what I say.” No one here wants anyone to suppose what anyone else thinks - I want to hear it from you.
You said “faith is neither good nor bad.”
You said this. And I agree. That’s what I understand. What you said. So I suppose you understand what I said, because we said the same thing.
But if, as we both now agree, faith is neither good nor bad, why is it that everything else you bring up about faith has to do with fathers murdering their children and fools acting without evidence or reason? Or theism? Because that doesn’t sound “neither good nor bad” to me.
So the question is what do you think?
Me supposing you understand me won’t work, because “neither good nor bad” seems to contradict the murder, ignorance and irrationality involved in everything else you say involving faith.
I think we are all having the wrong conversation about faith.
Faith is belief in something particular. It is hard to see faith apart from having faith in. But it can be seen, but it cannot be seen apart from faith in.
If someone merely says “I have faith.” they have not formed a complete thought. No one knows much about the person who simply says that. There must be some context or content before this statement, or some after it, like “I have faith in X.”
Faith can involve belief in the existence of X.
It can be belief in the capabilities of X (whose existence you already assume or know).
You can have faith in another person.
You can have faith that another person knows something you don’t know, or can do something you can’t do, so you act on this faith and let the other person take the wheel, giving all control to the pilot, etc.
But faith is always the particular momentary act of believing in….X particular.
That now said, Banno, you also said it’s not the meaning or even the lack thereof that is most important (or most worrisome is how you put it), instead, it is what folk actually do that matters.
I agree with that.
But does this widen the precise, initial focus?
I do like keeping things action based and with as many empirical, measurable components as possible, as all acts do. So “what folk do” is good to keep close to “what is faith”.
But here, to me, the precise question is changed a bit to “what is a leap (act) of faith?” What does faith do or lead to?
If so, the conversation, to me, has to now involve two acts: 1) the act of believing that is involved in faith (belief in X without reason or evidence for instance) and 2) the act undertaken based on this faith as a springboard. It’s two acts now, so we have more work to do before we can start judging faith based on God and Abraham’s and jihad, and sacrifices and saints, and other particular “acts of faith.”
We are no longer just seeking to answer a question about faith; we are replacing this question with another two questions - faith and acts based on faith.
Right?
Everyone has leapt ahead. To do sketchy psychology, theology and politics.
So - how is faith “neither good nor bad” as you said before?
Or is faith really only weak justification for anything the faithful wants, mostly used in connection with heinous crimes?
Right, I wouldn't say it's always religion, but it's always ideology, which includes religion. Ideologies are like religions in that they are faith, not evidence, based.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm not presuming to answer for @Banno but I couldn't resist giving my take on this. When faith is taken to be fact, then we have fundamentalism. Fundamentalists treat articles of faith as if they were empirical, evidence based facts, and that is where the trouble begins. If, instead, intellectual honesty prevailed and the faithful acknowledged that their faith is for them alone, between them and their God, so to speak, then they would not be arrogant enough to commit heinous acts purportedly in the name of God.
Don’t you see how none of what you just said addresses what I asked?
All of what you just said contradicts “faith is neither good nor bad” because that all sounds bad.
You’re not being very observant.
Religious people, generally, are softies, to the core. Lots of moms and dads, loving their kids. Not many thoughts like you are all having. That’s what a “theist” actually is 99 times out of 100 - a whole person, mostly like the family down the street who really cares about other people and makes sacrifices for those others.
But I wish we could just finish the conversation about what is faith instead.
I never though otherwise. I wasn't aware that this was a potential bone of contention.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Simply becasue that is the argument I was pursuing.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm not going over it again. Good to see you struggling with the conceptualisation, though. Keep going.
Quoting Janus
There's a lot in this. An ideology is another example of a belief that is not to be subjected to scrutiny.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That might be down to the what your question was phrased, since Janus/ answer seemed quite relevant.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Pretty fucking rude. So atheists are none of them "moms and dads, loving their kids"?
That is silly. Unless religion/religious fervor is also the chief source of global good.
Get rid of all religion, I guarantee you, harm by humans skyrockets.
Despite how it occurs to most people as they grow up and begin to think for themselves, Atheism is not a new discovery.
Ye who rebuke religion by excluding yourselves from it simply know not what ye do. I wish you knew.
And once the concern is all the things you say that are examples of religion, or how religion makes you immediately conjure up knife wielding schizophrenics in order to draw your pictures, you are really just talking politics, civil law, psychology, social crap. Not religion. Not even ethics.
I, like most of my churchgoing friends, speaking for all of them can tell you, 99 out of 100 of us want all the same basic rights, freedoms and laws and happiness for all people.
You cripple society by judging the religious so harshly. Just silly. Religious people invented “do not judge others”. Religious people invented “love your enemies.” Religion is also a source of hope for mankind. The source I would add, but certainly a source. Period. Historical fact.
Don’t be such a sour puss on those who are trying to love their neighbors as themselves.
Because, like I said, maybe you can’t.
You’ve been caught in a contradiction.
What fallacy is the above?
What did I say about atheists? Nothing. How did you assume anything I was saying about atheists?
So, what I said was when I think of faith, I think of moms and dad living their kids.
When Banno and others around here think of faith, they think of murder and heinous acts.
I didn’t say what atheists do or think about their kids.
You take me in bad faith.
Over and over.
To avoid dealing with my refutation of your adolescent and unoriginal caricatures of false religion.
What an obtuse head you have.
“Faith is neither good nor bad.” - Banno
“For instance [insert heinous acts and atrocities]” - Banno
“Any examples of non-bad acts of faith, because you just said faith is neither good nor bad was so obvious? Anything good?” - FireOlogist
“[Insert some bullshit to avoid the simple question, or crickets].” - Banno
I’m happy for you that you have such certainty in your life about religion. It’s a big issue and you seem to have it all solid. Faith = shitstorm.
But then “neither good nor bad…”. Are you saying murdering martyr terrorists are neither good nor bad, because you are leaving me no other options.
Break it up, you two. If you can't be civil, walk away, or I'll have to start deleting your posts.
I appreciate your work here. I used to moderate a forum once. And I manage a team of people. People are a nightmare.
So you know, I don’t feel any worse treated than usual, and I’d still love to hear Banno’s response. I thought we were on to something interesting.
But I’ll defer to you.
Thanks
Interestingly, I imagine that a contemporary Western religionists tends to envision a nuclear family that enforces patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other power dynamics.
More and more it's the extended family/(intentional) community, at least in the ideal case (for religious intellectuals).
But it's not like the alternatives don't enforce power dynamics. The power dynamic in more self-consciously "progressive" thought just tends to be the exceptional individual destroying other power relations so as to increase individual freedom on behalf of the "masses" (a move favoring the exceptional individual most of course), and then the (progressive) state stepping in to remove friction between individuals and to correct various "market failures."
However, since individuals liberated from culture (particularly exceptional ones) tend to have a lot of friction, and because markets fail a lot and entrench, rather than revalue existing disparities, the state (and activist) has to do a lot of intervention and reeducation. Hence, they need to have a lot of power.
I don't think this thread has ever moved beyond my observation:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
It could be, "Irrational assent," "Belief without sufficient justification," "Belief without sufficient evidence," etc. They all amount to the same thing.
Given the way that the anti-theists are consistently begging the question, what the theist can say, every time, is, "Yes, I agree that faith[sub]ath[/sub] is bad. We are in agreement with regard to your faith[sub]ath[/sub]. Let me know if you want to talk about a more relevantly defined concept." Telling me over and over that I engage in a religious act, namely faith[sub]ath[/sub], which I obviously deny that I engage in, is nothing more than unphilosophical gaslighting. This sums up the whole latter portion of the thread. It's no coincidence that the religious get annoyed in the face of this obstinance.
NB: I admit that @Janus has a unique view where belief without evidence need not be irrational, and so things are a bit more complicated for him (i.e. he is a very strong coherentist). No one else holds that premise; therefore it doesn't fit the tenor of the thread; and therefore I haven't spent much time singling it out in this thread.
I would agree that there can be a substantial amount of faith in progressivism.
Incidentally, regarding intentional communities, I was curious about what you thought about Twin Oaks in The Myopia of Liberalism thread, if you have anything to say about it there.
Yes, exactly right. :up:
Banno is equivocating. One second he says that faith is neither good nor bad, and the next second he is back to construing faith as bad. It's a new rendition on what I described <here>.
The point I am trying to make is, there is probably a more philosophic conversation about “what is faith” to be had than “what is religious faith” has turned out to be here on the forum.
When I think of faith, I don’t necessarily think of God or religion.
But most here seemed to want to talk about God and religious believers.
So what I am saying above is, when I think of religious faith, I think of moms and dads loving their kids. The point being love.
Many on this thread, when they think of religious faith seem to think only of Abraham attempting murder, terroists bombing schools, etc.
(And that has nothing to do with how atheists must love their kids, which of course they do, because kids are just lovable).
So so much of this thread has obfuscated a philosophic treatment of faith, without need or basis, mixing it with what I see as bad theology, and completely unnecessarily.
I am happy to apologize for offending anyone who thought I was speaking to how they love their families.
But praxis, “a nuclear family that enforces patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other power dynamics” is, to me, completely off the topic of what is faith.
Quoting Banno
Banno here relies on a non sequitur in order to take offense. Fire Ologist says that religious people do not exhibit the traits that Banno is ascribing to them, and instead exhibit good traits. Banno claims that Fire Ologist has said that no atheists exhibit good traits. Banno is relying on the conditional
Same.
Neither do I, but clearly religion is the quintessential exemplar and that makes it an excellent subject to focus on.
Quoting Fire Ologist
What do you think that implies?
Quoting Fire Ologist
That's off topic but not moms and dads loving their kids?
Nothing relevant to this discussion. You might infer I have kids and I love them. But that is not why I said it. I don’t think I could be any clearer about why I said it. There is nothing you need to infer.
I’d rather not be talking about the relevance of Abraham attempting murder or fathers loving their kids as the main discussion on the legitimate question “what is faith”.
Quoting praxis
Quintessential explar of what? Of faith?
Examples are great but not enough to answer “what is X”.
And when all the quintessential examples of faith as religion are fathers attempting murder of their bound children, and heinous crimes and jihad, that seems to reflect poorly on faith, which seems to me is more fundamentally neither good nor bad. So the religious examples are getting in the way.
Since there is an apparent conflict between the religious and the non-religious here, maybe religion is actually a bad example for us to figure out “what is faith” together.
Maybe we get to that later. Let’s assume people who act on faith sometimes kill others and other times sacrifice themselves to save others. Can we see “what is faith” and “what is an act of faith” without only focusing on people hurting people?
How about faith in the ability of the truth to sometimes be made plain here on TPF. Is that an example of faith, and if not, why not? What is faith then?
Here is the quote in context. It seems pretty transparent:
Quoting Fire Ologist
Here is a quote from the OP of the whole thread:
Quoting Gregory
That hope and love are intertwined in faith indicates that its function has to do with human bonding rather than salvation. Why should salvation require faith?
This is a good example of an assertion with no attached argument. I'm not sure why you would think this. An argument would provide me with some insight.
Quoting praxis
Are you at all familiar with Christian theology? Or the Reformation polemics? I'm not sure where your starting point is.
I have no doubt that it's extremely complicated.
I've already made it clear that faith is not confined to religion. It is to be found in ideologues of all persuasions. Facts are supported by evidence, faith is not. By 'evidence' I man 'what the unbiased should accept'; that is what being reasonable means. I don't mean 'what the individual finds convincing' because what convinces one individual may not convince another, and that it what should be expected in matters where there is no clear evidence.
We all hold beliefs for which there can be no clear evidence. To do so is not irrational, but those beliefs are nonrational, not in the sense that no thoughts processes are involved, but in the sense that the thoughts are not grounded in evidence.
You say that what I said about faith all sounds bad, but that was not about faith as such, but about faith not being acknowledged as such.
Quoting Banno
That's right. That is the other key hallmark of faith-based beliefs. If a belief is not based on evidence then it is not open to question (for the believer, obviously), because there is no evidence to be critically examined.
Sounds like religion is bad. Like other ideological persuasions are bad.
Still sounds like a contradiction with “faith is neither good nor bad.”
Quoting Janus
Still sounds like acknowledging faith as such would be acknowledging a bad thing.
How about faith in your own ability to lead a team of soldiers? Any faith needed to do something new and seemingly impossible with people depending on you?
Any faith needed to depend on someone else?
“Men, we might die, I forget why we are here, it might not matter to anyone what we do, but follow me!!”
Any faith in that guy?
Or: “Men, we might die, you are here to stop the enemy from entering your home town with your wives and children, everything you do matters, and I will be with you until the job is done, now follow me!!
How about that guy?
Any time you take someone’s word you are exercising faith. Faith in that person.
Have you ever depended on someone? Put yourself at great risk without any ability predict the outcome except for one thing, you believe in that one specific guy who gave you his word.
What is faith?
How many times do I have to say that I am saying that thinking faith is evidence based knowledge is what is bad? That kind of thinking is what people use as a justification for inflicting their beliefs on others. In case you haven't noticed ideologues, and not just religious ideologues, may be prepared to kill for what they believe in. If they acknowledged to themselves that what they believed was not the Absolute Truth but merely an expression of their own predilections, then they might understand that others need not share their beliefs.
Trust in one's abilities may be blind faith or it may be based on past success, so it is not a good analogy in the latter case at least. We do put our trust in other sometimes, and in life or death situations, someone must lead lest there be chaos. In that situation people do not trust their leader then there will also be the danger that order will break down into chaos, or 'every man for himself"?and that would obviously not be a good strategy for survival.
So thinking faith equals knowledge is bad.
We are still talking about badness. But I agree.
What I hear there is, ‘bad religion and bad science are bad.’ You follow me? Faith that is not faith but a replacement for science is bad religion; science that uses faith as evidence is bad science.
Quoting Janus
I can also see that what you are saying leaves room for thinking faith that is just faith is what is good, or at least, not bad.
But I think we still haven’t gotten away from a discussion about faith that involves badness.
I do appreciate this:
Quoting Janus
Are you saying there is some kind of neutral/more positive sense of faith qua faith?
Are you saying, faith in leaders, in certain people, happens? And that such faith, could be a good strategy?
Because I agree with that too.
I still think with all that’s been said, most of which has involved stories of irrational people’s actions, none of us have adequately said “what is faith.”
I agree whole-heartedly that the notion that one has grasped an Absolute Truth is extremely dangerous. It makes it impossible to acknowledge and tolerate any disagreement. I cannot think of a situation in which this might be a a Good Thing, but I can think of many in which it is clearly a Bad Thing. I do not confine this to religious contexts.
Based on what I've seen in philosophical fora over the last two years, I'm left seriously wondering whether it is possible - how it is possible - to philosophize about religion with people who do not agree with me in my core beliefs, There appears to be no neutral territory.
Surely, philosophy does require that the questions whether God exists or Religion is a Force of Good need to be suspended. I don't mean that actual scepticism is required. I understand that the Buddha said that the question of the existence of the gods is "undetermined". That seems to me the only possible basis for anything that might count as a philosophical discussion.
The fundamental mistake is to treat these questions - the existence of God, whether religion is a Force for Good - as straightforward empirical beliefs with straightforward empirical answers. I don't think that the question of the existence of God is an empirical belief in any ordinary sense. There's some room for philosophy there. Whether religion is a Force for Good does look like an empirical question. But it is a complex question requiring a good deal of analysis before any empirical data can be brought to bear on it. There's already a huge amount of research on this question. If there's space for philosophy there, It needs to take that work into account.
Quoting Janus
I can't see that, in the context of philosophical discussion, there is any clear meaning attached to this slogan. I really don't know where to begin with it. It seems pretty clear, though, that faith is not simply evidence-based knowledge. If it were, there would be no particular philosophical interest in discussing it.
BTW I do wish that we could get beyond the idea that religion and science are incompatible in some way. Many people are both religious believers and scientists.
What about propositions such as: "other groups of humans should not be enslaved?" or "all humans deserve dignity and some groups are not 'subhuman?" Or "one ought not molest children?"
Are these extremely dangerous absolutes we should be open to reconsidering?
At any rate, what you're saying clearly can't be "Absolutely True," itself, right? :wink:
It depends how you interpret and apply them. More specifically, it depends you treat people who violate your principles. Ask yourself why the allies went to so much trouble to put Nazi leaders through an elaborate and difficult trial process, as opposed to shooting them out of hand or, possibly, sending them to their own gas chambers? Is it because there was any serious doubt about what they did?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Very funny. What will you do if I give you the wrong answer?
Yes, what I said deserves more careful expression and more detailed consideration.
PS You did notice that I didn't deny that there are truths? I'm just asserting that a certain caution and humility about our judgements that we have got hold of one is appropriate. Hume describes it as "judicious" and recommends it - as opposed to the "Pyrrhonian" scepticism so beloved of orthdox philosophers.
It is an interesting thing to say. I wonder how you think one should deal with this "complex question". Research?
This is what I spoke to in the .
Quoting Janus
And this is what I spoke to in the last section of that post.
For most people, myself included, to believe X is true without possessing evidence for X being true is irrational. You don't think it is. Now I do not want to adopt your premise arguendo, and the reason I don't want to do that is because the premise is not generally accepted by others in the thread. I think it would be misleading for me to adopt that premise arguendo, because both myself and the many anti-theists would see it as accepting, arguendo, the premise that faith is irrational.
Quoting Janus
There are epistemological problems here, and they center around the question of what the difference is between evidence and (subjectively) justificatory "thoughts." I think this problem runs deep in the thought of strong coherentists such as yourself. has targeted this problem in some detail.
But let me lay out a very common Christian approach to the issue you raise. The idea is that there are reasons and arguments that are undeniable (i.e. demonstrations proper), and then there are other kinds of reasons, which incline one towards a conclusion but do not demonstrate the conclusion undeniably (or "beyond any shadow of a doubt"). We could call these latter reasons defeasible reasons. An act of faith relies upon inferences and reasons that are defeasible and not undeniable (or indefeasible). But note that a defeasible reason does count as evidence, at least if we are to use "evidence" in the way that it has been used throughout human history. Faith involves rational underdetermination; the motives of credibility do not force the mind to believe. (Note that what I say here is technical, and must be read with precision.)
(This is why Christians believe that faith cannot be coerced; because motives of credibility are not demonstrations. Or more straightforwardly, because salvation involves the will and not only the intellect.)
Well, of course. What else? It seems to me that any serious attempt to answer it, will have to include emprical data, as well.
When one researches something, one has to have an issue in mind. What is the issue regarding researching God?
Interesting question. I was thinking about the question whether religion is a force for good. My answer is that there are lots of other similar questions. But also lots of expertise and good and bad practice to learn from. One problem is that something may count as a good thing for believers but not for non-believers. Attracting larger congregations would be an example. Some other things might count as a good thing for one side and actually a bad thing for the other side. The multiplicity of critieria creastes another problem because any overall judgement must be complex and balanced. (It's hard enough with a good car or a good house, but this is a whole different level).
The really tricky problem is the idea of researching God. Of course, it is not hard to see what researching Zeus (or Rhea) would be. There are the stories, the accounts of the relevant practices and so forth. But it's a different thing when you come to God, (or Allah, etc.). A non-believer will follow the same methods as for the research off Zeus. But, for a non-believer, who is looking to develop a relationship with God that is at least akin to a relationship with another person, so it involves a whole different dimension - not merely knowing what the non-believer knows, but learning to take part in the practices - especially the liturgical practices - and taking part in them, not to mention various disciplines designed to train (or re-train) oneself for the new life.
Does that help?
Quoting Leontiskos
Coming to a conclusion on the basis of non-conclusive evidence is a big part of our lives. Cases where we have conclusive evidence, I would say, are relatively rare. So there is nothing special here. Arguably, what makes Christianity special is prounouncements from believers like Tertullian, with his famous "I believe because it is incredible."
It seems to me that what makes religious commitment special is, first, that it is a decision to follow a way of life, not a mere fact. The belief that God sent his Son to redeem the world demands a radical response, which is not merely a belief, but a commitment. So giving up that belief is not like changing one's mind about what the weather will be tomorrow. It is more like ending a friendship or partnership. That is what differentiates faith from belief. But it is more than that. A religion structures one's entire life - it is, to coin a phrase, a way of life. Giving that up is giving up everything.
But most of what is thought about God is a lot of medieval drivel, so that much can be dismissed summarily. The question really is about, after the reduction, the move to reduce God to its defensible core ---minus the endless omni this and that, and Christendom, and the Halls of Valhalla, and so on--- what is it that cannot not be removed because it constitutes something real in the world that religions were responding to? The imagination has been busy through the millennia, and I don't think we want to take such things seriously, regardless of how seriously they are taken by so many. It is not a consensus that that we are looking for. It is an evidential ground for acceptance, and since God is not an empirical concept but a metaphysical one, one is going to have to look elsewhere than microscopes and telescopes.
Meister Eckhart prayed to God to be rid of God. I think it begins here, with a purifying of the question (that piety of thought) so one can be rid of the presuppositions of the familiar, the way when one "thinks" of God, one is already in possession assumptions that determine inquiry. It is, as with the Buddhists and the Hindus and Meister Eckhart and Dionysius the Areopogite and other spiritualists and mystics, an apophatic method: delivering thought, well, from itself. then realizing you had all the questions wrong. Not the answers, but the questions.
And what is a question, but an openness to truth, and what is truth, but a revealing, a disclosure (not some logical function in the truth table of anglo american philosophy). The Greeks had it right with their term alethea. One has to withdraw from the clutter of implicit assumptions (Heidegger's gelassenheit. See his Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking) to ALLOW the world to be what it is so one can witness this. Otherwise, it is simply the same old tired pointless thinking, repeating itself.
That's another way to come at the subject. There's room for both, I think.
Right, the unseeable is totally indeterminable. So, believing in the unseeable is believing in the indeterminable, which means the belief itself is without determinable content, which is really the same as saying that it is without conceptual content, but may have affective content, which is to say it is nothing other than feeling. So believing in the indeterminable is merely the feeling of believing.
Quoting Ludwig V
If you look again at the context "faith is evidence based knowledge" you will see that I was not agreeing with that, but disagreeing with it. I see beliefs determined by evidence and beliefs determined by faith (or feeling in other words) as being on a continuum, with beliefs about the unseeable as being entirely lacking substantive evidence unless they are determined by inference from what is seeable, in which case they might be classed as somewhat evidence based, but in that case the evidence/ belief relation is not clearly determinable, and the games of habit and plausibility come into play.
This is extremely well written and interesting and I think I agree.
Quite, but not just the questions, also posture, practice, direction, communion.
Faith is a broad brush phrase in this kind of discussion and needs to be teased out.
Religious faith is an inevitable consequence of one’s approach to, or questioning of our origin, creation, purpose. If one is to make any progress beyond, “I/we don’t know”. Science and philosophy can’t help us. Other than in describing the world and how it works and helping us to order and refine our thoughts.
There is faith in God, faith in redemption, faith in society and human interaction. Faith in oneself, faith in truth. Faith as a tool used in mysticism, or by the ascetic.
I'm afraid I was not very clear here. My immediate point was that dialogue between believers and non-believers cannot take place, or cannot take place productively, if each side digs in to its own position and exchanges arguments in the way that has become traditional in modern times. It is (or at least it seems to me to be) a completely unproductive exercise. A more productive approach to park the question whether God exists or not, leaving a space in which, perhaps some clarity about what God is supposed to be (in Christianity or Judaism or Spinoza's thought). That opens up some prospect of mutual enlightenment. Conversion or not, it seems to me, will happen elsewhere.
But I also think that your argument chain here has too many steps that are unclear or dubious to be convincing. Perhaps the weakest link (although it may seem entirely normal to many philosophers) your move from "without determinable content" through "without conceptual content" to "may have affective content". This rests on a strong contrast between cognitive (true/false) content and feelings, which are regarded as non-cognitive, because neither true nor false. But this is simplistic. Fear of COVD, for example, is a reaction to various facts/truths about COVID; it is a combination of cognitive and non-cognitive content (which rests on values or needs). More than that, fear is more than a matter of feelings, but is about certain kinds of behaviour - it is about how one reacts to the facts. So I do not see why affective content does not count as determinable content or even as conceptual content? The existence of some god is not just a neutral fact, but requires a reaction. For those reasons, I'm afraid I can't attribute any content to the "feeling of believing".
Quoting Janus
I looked again and saw that you are right. I was careless and I'm sorry.
Quoting Janus
The phrase "beliefs determined by faith" sounds as if faith is somethiing separate from belief, but surely what you mean is (roughly) "beliefs not determined by evidence"? I would agree that there is a spectrum there, from conclusive evidence through partial evidence. I think that beliefs based on authority are diffeerent in kind. In a sense, of course, authority can be regarded as a kind of evidence, but it is a rather different kind of evidence - being, as it were, evidence that the source is trustworthy. So beliefs based on authority require faith, in a rather weak sense. There are also beliefs that are not based on empirical evidence, but on, let us say, the meanings of the words in them, or the (logical) grammar of language. It doesn't seem to me quite right to say that these are based on faith. But religion doesn't quite fit in to any of these categories.
Quoting Punshhh
Once one raises one's head from the rows about religion, faith turns up all over the place.
If religion is about the fundamentals of how one inteprets the world and how one lives in it, I think we should be thinking of faith as not merely a peculiarity of some people, but as about the foundations of whatever form life a human being pursues - however inchoate and unreflective.
Yes, for the religious, the aspirant, faith is the touchstone of their lives. For these people faith is with them all the time and becomes a connection through communion with their divinity, to their unique spiritual ideology. This is very much about lifestyle and practice(service), whereas beliefs are confined to the ideology, the narrative of the person and are more abstract. Also such faith does not need a defined object, a God, or reality in which they have that faith. Like humility it is about the person as a being, his/her posture, rather than part of a philosophical, or theological narrative.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I guess that, for a non-believer, a religion or ideology, can be regarded as about life-style and practice. However, there's a difference, I suppose, between a life-style and a way of life. It seems to me that a life-style is usually regarded as an option, not fundamental. But it seems clear to me that, for a believer, their religion or ideology, is fundamental, not just an option. It's the difference between choosing to wear certain kinds of clothes because of how they look, and perhaps, of the cultural messages they send and choosing to wear those same clothes because they are necessary for how one lives. (I'm not pretending this is a rigid distinction, but the difference is important.)
The difficulty is that, in a multi-faith society, religion or ideology needs to recognize the legitimacy of other religions or ideologies and that blurs the distinction that I'm trying to draw and that is quite difficult for believers.
Immediately? Yep. That's an utterly ridiculous response though. And you know it.
I agree there is something there, yes. What is" the move to reduce God to its defensible core" all about, do you think? What defensible core?
The ways in which a person reaches these stages would be unique to each person, there would be epiphany, revelation, calling, questioning, exploration and choices. The evolution would progress through stages, of realisation, crisis and initiation. A path to be trodden.
There are due to their origins a number of schools(philosophies/religions) through which a believer/aspirant may come to their faith. Some more orthodox, some more devotional, some more meditation based. Some in which a deity is front and centre, others where any deity is barely defined.
Also their are people who explore a number of schools and then follow their own path and people who follow a path, unaware that they are, thinking perhaps that they have no faith, or interest in religious, or spiritual matters at all.
I'd say it is about setting aside big claims and just looking at what shows up in human experience, for instance feelings of awe, moral responsibility, love, the numinous, meaning. The “defensible core” is the part of that experience that still cuts through and remains with us even if we don’t assume God is a 'real' being. Meaning that God isn’t seen as a thing out there, but more like a deep sense of meaning that arrives through experience and gives shape to how we understand life.
I would say reduced to the God in each of us, that essence of self or divinity/atman in each of us.
I don't know what a productive discussion between religionists and secularists could look like. My only aim is to get a clear idea of what kinds of things we can know we have good reason to believe and what we cannot know we have good reason to believe but may believe simply on the basis of faith.
The difficulty for some religionists is that they don't seem to want to acknowledge the obvious?that there can be no substantive evidence for belief in the existence of what cannot, even in principle, be observed.
So, I have no argument with believing just on the basis of faith (or feeling, or intuition) ?and the best outcome I can imagine in a dialogue between religionists and secularists would be agreement on the
epistemology.
Quoting Ludwig V
Perhaps I should have said 'without coherent conceptual content". Anyway you haven't explained as to what you think are the weaknesses in the argument. I think what you offer below is something of a strawman.
Quoting Ludwig V
Covid is a bad analogy because it is something real that could kill you. Take as example fear of eternal suffering in hell?the content there is based on ideas which cannot be distinguished from fiction, because we have no way of deciding rationally whether hell exists or not. So, to be sure the fear has conceptual content, but there is no coherent concept, in the sense of something drawn from actual experience, of what hell could be. Same obviously applies to God.
Quoting Ludwig V
By 'faith" I mean 'feeling'. I can believe something simply because "it feels right" or "it rings true". That is what I think faith is.
I don't think authority is good evidence for the existence of anything unless it is based on sound observations. Scripture and the church tell us that God really exists, but that telling cannot be good evidence because people saying something about something they cannot know cannot count as evidence in the way people saying something about something they can know does.
One could argue: posture, practice, direction, communion are all questions: what posture, practice, etc., should be done, accepted, believed? This gives epistemology the privileged place among the rest, because prior to anything that is accepted as true and important, there is the question of knowing this to be the case. Then we have the problem of evidence, right? I mean, before one goes about being directed, one has to have a well grounded belief for doing so. And the temptation to ignore this just throws the matter into the air; believing without justification moves toward faith (even Kierkegaard's faith is fraught with issues), which begs a lot of questions.
Faith in what? If there are no epistemic rules to faith, then faith is arbitrary, and this leads to a lot of very stupid thinking with awful consequences. That is the practical argument against religious faith. The other is that if there is something deeply important about our existence, faith will inhibit discovery: faith is inherently dogmatic (though reading Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety takes this to task. K is a complicated thinker, and his ideas about faith require an entirely different kind of discussion).
So I'm not a fan of faith. All that you call "faith in..." I say is a call for inquiry. OTOH, I realize that not everyone has the "leisure" time or inclination for this, and that so many face intractable miseries and to these good people, I yield. I speak here only of the "conversation humanity is having with itself" as Rorty put it, which is a push toward authenticity or sincerity or truth.
Philosophy certainly can help "direct" thought. It does depend on what one reads, however. Reading exclusively Nietzsche or anglo american analytic philosophy, which is driven by positivism and naturalism and which is altogether contemptuous of metaphysics, is not going to open thought to responsible inquiry. It is just as dogmatic as faith tends to be.
But then there is Husserl, and the neoHusserlian strain of thought that is very active today. This is where things get very interesting. Imagine metaphysics brought INTO immanence, such that the finitude that wants to draw a line between what can and cannot be spoken finds within itself the eternity to which it stands in opposition.
Well yes there is a role for the intellect in these refinements. But what I am alluding to is an interplay between the intellect and being, or self. The intellect alone cannot bridge the gap between the intellect/personality/ego and the essence of one’s being, or self. Or another way of describing this is that if one accepts that there is a divinity within one’s being, then the intellect/personality/ego is required to accommodate this and reach an interactive orientation (communion) with that divinity. Thus allowing that divinity to progressively play a greater role in the life of the person.
This is what I call the science of orientation*, this is a process of adapting aspects of self to become in alignment with that divinity. Rather like an astrolabe where the dials are turned, aligned with observations in the world, or the skies, to take an accurate reading.
These things can be done absent the intellect through prayer, or meditation. So in a very real sense faith and belief are not the product of thinking but rather prayer, or communion. Although the intellect can play a role for thinkers in this process. So yes philosophy is a useful practice for those who have an intellectual inquiry.
Again, I’m not denying this, but rather saying that this intellectual enquiry is not fundamental to the practice. In a real sense it doesn’t matter what God, or Cosmogony one follows (within reason), one takes one’s pick of the schools or religions available. Also there is not a requirement for the existence, or nature of God to be established. Truth is another matter, but can be accommodated through humility and a focus on the simple path to divinity within the self.
Yes, however this is often a calling, an insatiable need to find out, a sense of the divine. Belief doesn’t necessarily come before these other motivating factors. But yes for the novice it is advisable to join an established school, or broaden one’s reading as wide as possible. To go out into the world to live a rounded life within a community to ground the self. Although for some people these things all come naturally, intuitively. It is also not advisable for people with childhood trauma, psychological issues etc.
We may be talking of different understandings of faith. For me I would substitute the word belief for faith here. Belief is more about the narrative one has developed and is an intellectual development. Whereas faith is not necessarily associated with any particular narrative, but is more a feeling, emotion, conviction.
This sounds interesting, I am not well read in academic philosophy, I would be interested to learn more in this direction.
*When I say the science of orientation, I am referring to the practice of the alignment of the person with the divine as practiced in different ways within the different religious and spiritual schools. This will eventually I expect become a scientific practice. Which it has already to an extent become within Hinduism in the yogic traditions.
As I see it, you lean either in or out. If you are in, then philosophy really has no place, save the entertainment value of marginal thinking, and you join clubs, go to weddings and funerals, take the family out to dinner now and then, and so on. That is IN, and it is a stand alone, finite totality, accessible and filled with affirmations and restrictions that constitute an evolving dialectic that is free and available to inquiry, like a dictionary is there, available to define the world.
Or if you're like me, you are out, then none of this is very interesting, for it all rests on a foundation of indeterminacy. People like me live in the light of this indeterminacy. For those that are IN, the world "sticks" to the understanding as an indissoluble bond. These are engaged people, so confident that everything is what it IS, because doing something is done best in full immersion, and foundational doubt rarely touches this world. Foundational doubt is the absolute "out" of such engagement. Go down this path, this phenomenological reduction that removes all familiarity, and you end up either like Sartre's Roquentin, weird and disturbed, or like Emerson, who, standing in a "bare common," cold and cloudy, testifies
[i]The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am
part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then
foreign and accidental. To be brothers, to be acquaintances,–master
or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of
uncontained and immortal beauty[/i]
Or, with me, a bit of both, decidedly leaning toward Emerson. I think this is in the vicinity of the "deep sense of meaning" you speak of.
Well, agreement on the epistemology would be good. It would be even better if that agreement gave a basis for tolerating other religions. I realize that in many, perhaps most, places, there is already a great deal of toleration, and even co-operation through cross-religion links of one kind or another. But in another sense, it is very hard to see how there could possible be agreement between theists and atheists - or even between one religion and another. But if that could be accepted, a great deal of hot air and wasted time would be avoided.
Quoting Janus
It depends what you mean by observation. I don't want to over-generalize, but many religious people do claim that their faith is based on experience. Some of it is mystical, some not. Religions are a way of life, a practice based on a way of looking at - interpreting - the world. So they govern how experience is interpreted. That's partly why arguing as if the questions were simply empirical is a waste of time.
Quoting Janus
I chose it deliberately because it is not a religious phenomenon. The cognitive content of emotions is fundamental to all emotion, not just religious emotion. (Moods, such as anxiety or depression are a somewhat different kettle of fish.) My account here is only intended as an indicative summary of the line of argument.
See Stanford Encyclopedia - Emotion or
Internet Encyclopedia - Emotion
Quoting Janus
In one way, of course, you are right. But there are descriptions and images of hell in plenty, and they are drawn from experience. As for God, the ideas about God do seem to me to be drawn from experience. God as Lord and Master, God as Father (or Mother). Your criterion of coherence seems to me to be unduly restrictive. The idea of a unicorn or dragon, or even of heaven and hell may nor may not be coherent in some sense. But there is sufficient coherence to enable people to react to them emotionally.
Quoting Janus
I wouldn't argue with that.
Quoting Janus
To be sure, authority can be, often is, wrong. But much, or most, of what we know is based on it. I feel a bit like Hume recognizing that induction doesn't provide a sound basis for knowledge and recognizing that we are going to continue to use it anyway.
I see your point. It's an important feature of most (all?) religions.
Quoting Punshhh
Lots of different kinds of ways. I don't see that as a problem, in itself. It's the claim to exclusivity that makes the difficulties.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes. Everyone is following some path or other, even if they are making it up as they go along.
If you like. But what is this "science of orientation"? The moment you start explaining this, you begin a kind of intellectualizing, for things have to make sense, and they don't belong to everyday accounts, but somehow stand outside of these, yet everydayness is not separated, and if you don't talk about this kind of thing, you could get things wrong interpretatively and you could be missing important contributions to your understanding of what you are doing.
Of course, if you are going for the truly radical, sequestering yourself from all mundane assumptions, retiring to a meditation mat for a program of self annihilation because intimations of divinity are so clear and compelling, then I can hardly complain. I actually believe in such things, and I know people who have made this move to close off entanglements. And see what Meister Eckhart says about attachments:
[i]You should know that true detachment is nothing else but mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honor, shame, or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. This immovable detachment brings a man
into the greatest likeness to God. For the reason why God is God is because of His immovable
detachment, and from this detachment He has His purity, His simplicity, and His immutability.
Therefore, if a man is to be like God, as far as a creature can have likeness with God, this must
come from detachment. This draws a man into purity, and from purity into simplicity, and from
simplicity into immutability, and these things make a likeness between God and that man; and
this likeness must occur through grace, for grace draws a man away from all temporal things and
purges him of all that is transient. You must know, too, that to be empty of all creatures is to be
full of God, and to be full of all creatures is to be empty of God. You should also know that God
has stood in this unmoved detachment from all eternity[/i]
When he speaks of temporal things, there is nothing that survives. Language does not survive, for it is in the "text" (Derrida; read 'context') that the most basic assumptions, those to be expurgated, hold "the world" together. Anyway, it's a big move.
I hear you.
It is a phrase I have coined, there is no peer reviewed scientific establishment, or body of literature. However all the schools that I have looked into have a teaching and practice which amounts to the same thing. To put it as simply as I can. It is the process of the alignment of the conscious self with the divine self and by inference the divine. The result being that one lives a religious, or spiritual life guided by the divine. Which crucially involves the process of the transfiguration of the self.
The reason I keep emphasising this is that in these schools the focus is on developments and changes within the self. Rather like the unfurling of the petals of a flower, this process is already developed, or growing within us and is simply being facilitated in this unfurling.
This is a concern and any novice should enroll in an established school, so as to follow a long established and tested ideology. But here we are discussing this as people who already have an understanding of these things and are just exchanging thoughts about it.
Christian ascetics are some of the most strict practitioners, however there are alternative teachings and practice which are not so stark. Many mystics live a “normal” life. I don’t agree with what you write in this passage;
For me this is a description of what I would call a fiery aspirant. Someone who is forcing their practice to initiate some kind of initiation, or crisis, through which they will emerge in some kind of purified, or transfigured state. Also I assure you there are very few people who have absolute certainty around these things.
I would suggest that there are many who live a relatively normal life, but who have undergone some developments in the self and hold no deeply held beliefs, or faith. But who have in themselves grown to a point, like in my analogy of the flower, where they are unfurling. Some even entirely unaware. In this circumstance, they may emerge out of some development in their life even more purified, or transfigured than the fiery aspirant.
Anyway, my point being that faith and the way it is held and used by people is not reliant on any philosophy, while often accompanied by a philosophy, which by its presence enriches the experience of being a person of faith.
Right, religious faith is based on personal experience and culturally mediated interpretation of that experience. My whole argument is that personal experience and cultural mediation are relativistic and so do not constitute good evidence for the truth of propositional beliefs, although of course they do motivate and condition beliefs.
Quoting Ludwig V
Of course it would be foolish to disagree with that.
Quoting Ludwig V
Right, all our descriptions and images of hell and gods are drawn for experience in the sense that they are cobbled together from images and associations gleaned form everyday experience. When I say they are no coherent or cogent I mean that they are fictions, since we can have no idea whet the real hell or god looks like, even assuming that they existed.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think Hume was merely pointing out that inductive reasoning is not like deductive reasoning in that conclusions necessarily follow from premises in the latter, but not the former. We have good reason to trust inductive reasoning because it works almost all of the time and we have a vast, exceedingly successful and coherent body of knowledge based on it.
The distinction between one God and another can be a trivial distinction, but as to truth, one does want to be deceived, deluded, wrong minded about what is accepted. God is perhaps a term that is first to go, for it carries connotative values that affect the openness of acceptance. It is not as if there is nothing to say, and the saying wants to be aligned with what is there.
Again, if you don't want to ask any questions because what you are doing is a "doing" not an understanding, and there you are, like a radical Buddhist, buried in seclusion, and the whole idea is to shut up and stop manufacturing distracting engagements, then fine, perhaps enlightenment and liberation will be yours. But if you do want to understand what is going on, and this will be an essentially descriptive matter, then you will want to look into phenomenology, which gives one the means to do this.
Quoting Punshhh
Claims about divine sense I don't take issue with. But what one says about this, I do. What IS an intimation of the divine? You don't think there is a language that can talk about this? But there is. It's not what you think, though. Talking about such things is talk about the presuppositions of ordinary affairs. God is not abstract and remote, as I am guessing you agree, but is IN the world of lived experience; ignored absurd to talk about, but there to be discussed.
Quoting Punshhh
I don't think you can separate belief from conviction and feeling, especially conviction, which is synonymous to belief. Anyway, if faith has no object, nothing to have faith IN, then it must be
entirely OPEN. No ideology, no thesis. Just episodic engagement, and I give this to you. But it does align with serious meditation, without the Mahayana thinking. But there is a good deal of what comes from Eastern disciplines that is not ideological at all. The Prajnaparamita, e.g., is striking, and inspired and right, if one's thinks carefully. There are places in the Abbhidamma that are not exhaustingly detailed focus on spiritual categories. These and other work because they are phenomenological, that is, they are part of discovery that can only occur when the "the world" is suspended.
Quoting Punshhh
Sounds like what Buddhists talk abou: as you say, teaching and practice are the same thing. Meister Eckhart is a lot like this. Reading his sermons is an extraordinary experience, if one is so disposed. But the East and the West come together philosophically, that is, phenomenologically, in Husserl's reduction. Call it jnana yoga, the way thought can undo itself, undo the intense relationship between everydayness and freedom. Divinity is a matter of "seeing" and not just passively receiving, I would argue with some emphasis.
I am agreeing with the idea of spiritual growth, though that term 'spiritual', as well as all other familiar terms, carries baggage of multiple contexts and usage, habits of thought already in place. The desire to be rid of old vocabularies is based on an attempt to deliver experience from the consensus that defines normal living. hence the difficulty of phenomenology.
Already have an understanding of what things? Again, if it is a matter of meditation classes, serious ones, insisting on freedom from the dynamics of the social self (Rorty says science is essentially social), and if all one adds is the term divinity, then I really don't have much to oppose. But if "things" are discussed, acknowledged, rejected, understood in their relation to the world, to familiarity, and if there is a perceived alteration in of the way awareness perceives its environment and its objects, its space and time, then this can be very rigorously done, in a helpful way, not distracting.
Few can meditate all day long. If leisure time permits, read phenomenology.
Quoting Punshhh
So Kierkegaard says. His knight of faith can be a seller at a market. He thinks like this because he thinks like you do: faith is a profound surrender, and the intellect is no better than dogmatic belief. I don't agree or disagree with him on this. The approach to divinity is an alienation from the world, but read Paul, "I live and yet do not live - Christ lives in me." But to ask, what IS this about? is the proper question of philosophy. I hold that spirituality IS discovered IN a foundational analytic of our existence. In other words, one can see what Paul is talking about by putting down the demands of faith qua faith, that vacancy of thought in a "pure" "yielding to" (Kierkegaard called this nothing, the nothing one encounters when the question is put forth, for PRIOR to any intimation of divinity, one faces a world in primordial wonder, which is stolen away by culture, what you call "the normal life". Keep in mind, this world really is something to be overcome, not lived comfortably IN. The love one finds in normal matters issue from "deep" within, and the whole point is this profound discovery, which is an inherent resistance interest in "the world", is to move toward this, call it a divine primordiality. Kierkegaard may have believed that existential faith was possible for all, as do I, but he was principally concerned with the way religion had become a culture of religion---Christendom. He was a kind of medievalist, admiring the simplicity of a mind unhindered by thought and conventional extravagance, something he himself could not acquire with great success;
But here I try to be very careful. Consider what divinity IS. Take yourself to a sunset, and observe. See how, at first, the experience is mundane and tame as a kitten. No foreign issues arise, and there you are, perhaps distracted by some outside interest; but your mission is to attend to the sunset as it IS, in the fullness of its presence, and, as Walt Whitman once put it, put all schools in abeyance, so you release yourself from the multitude of whatever's and put the present encounter to the forefront and all things that would otherwise possess you, fall away, and as they do, there is something that displaces all that mundane certainty, which is the "presence" of presence, and you see what is before you as if for the first time, but it is not "as if" at all, but really IS the first time, and you realize that you have been living mostly in memory and history (Heidegger's dasein in Being and Time. See especially in Division Two, section 64 and onward) and have been a prisoner of Time itself, are now somewhere entirely Other, and you never really knew "where" you were at all, because you were living a life of distracting affairs. And now as the sun lowers into the horizon, you understand what it was like for the ancient mind to think the sun to be a God, because the world is now saturated with a beauty so profound (the desideratum exceeds the desire, as Levinas says in Totality and Infinity) that one has to step beyond the boundaries of finitude to bring it to language.
Now take this sublime presence, and ask a powerful question: what is suffering? And ask it in the same way, free of the presumption that hold sway in normal events, and discover that this, too, now is momentous, a staggering assault on our existence. This, too, is divinity, and now one understands the cross, redemption, and divine consummation. This is the core of religion, and God, and all churchy fetishes.
Personal experience and cultural mediation are the basis for all beliefs, aren't they? So why do you distinguish between false religious beliefs and true beliefs, as, for example, in science. There must be an additional element that isn't taken account of in this model.
Quoting Janus
Well, I would debate some of that, but the outline is clear. The relevant question is what do you mean by saying that induction "works" and "successful"? I would be inclined to take that as some kind of pragmatism. (?)
Firstly my comments about faith and other facets of being as something about being, independent of thought. Was only a comment about faith. Not about spiritual enquiry in general, which does involve the intellect and mind, teaching, learning and understanding. I thought it important to make this distinction at the outset. Rather like as you say here;
We need to go beyond the presuppositions of ordinary affairs and I am saying that there are fundamental aspects of self and being, such as certain examples of faith which are not part of the conscious(thinking) mind. So in this enquiry we must deal with things inaccessible to the thinking mind. This has been done formally in the various schools, however for the mystic it is primarily a personal journey, perhaps guided by these teachings. Personal in the sense that it involves a synthesis and subtle relationship between the intellect, the self and the being. Revealing knowing and understanding which requires direct experience and practice.
I have had a look at Husserl and see parallels with his ‘problem of constitution’, the state of ‘astonishment’ and the developing of a ground. With what I generally describe as questing. The aspirant quests so as to strip away his/her preconceptions, conditioning and habits of thought. Working within a spiritual framework of teachings.
This inevitably brings me to the next question of when one reaches this point of a clear ground and is proficient in the practice of astonishment and constitution. What happens next? Where does the phenomenologist go from there?
Science begins with everyday observations about which we could all agree. Observations can be accurate or inaccurate, so science is correctable. Religious beliefs are not like this?because their correctness or incorrectness cannot be demonstrated.
Science begins by examining things as they present to us. The basic appearance of things in our environments is not culturally mediated, and they are present to all in a shared context so it is not a matter of merely personal experience, as it is with religious experiences.
Quoting Ludwig V
Science which is based on inductive reasoning has evolved into an immensely complex and coherent body of understanding, a cohesive picture of the nature of the world which has produced a great many effective technologies.
[i]Faith as ultimate concern
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Tillich believes the essence of religious attitudes is what he calls "ultimate concern". Separate from all profane and ordinary realities, the object of the concern is understood as sacred, numinous or holy. The perception of its reality is felt as so overwhelming and valuable that all else seems insignificant, and for this reason requires total surrender.[80] In 1957, Tillich defined his conception of faith more explicitly in his work, Dynamics of Faith.
Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence … If [a situation or concern] claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of him who accepts this claim … it demands that all other concerns … be sacrificed.[81]
Tillich further refined his conception of faith by stating that, "Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It is the most centered act of the human mind ... it participates in the dynamics of personal life."[82]
An arguably central component of Tillich's concept of faith is his notion that faith is "ecstatic". That is to say:
It transcends both the drives of the nonrational unconsciousness and the structures of the rational conscious … the ecstatic character of faith does not exclude its rational character although it is not identical with it, and it includes nonrational strivings without being identical with them. 'Ecstasy' means 'standing outside of oneself' – without ceasing to be oneself – with all the elements which are united in the personal center.[83]
In short, for Tillich, faith does not stand opposed to rational or nonrational elements (reason and emotion respectively), as some philosophers would maintain. Rather, it transcends them in an ecstatic passion for the ultimate.[84]
It should also be noted that Tillich does not exclude atheists in his exposition of faith. Everyone has an ultimate concern, and this concern can be in an act of faith, "even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God"[85][/i]
It seems to me that the "ultimate concern" of any life governed by self-reflection is the basic ethical question "how should I Iive?" Could there be strictly empirical evidence available to guide me in answering that question?
Of course, that is just an outline of the big picture. I don't disagree with it, exactly, though there are a number of devils in various details.
But perhaps we can agree that it neatly explains why science and religion cannot conflict, doesn't it? I'm happy with that conclusion, and it seems that many people feel the same way, because they are both believers in a religion (ideology) and pursue science.
On the other hand, if "The basic appearance of things in our environments is not culturally mediated, and they are present to all in a shared context" it would seem that there is something basic that is common to both religion and science. Yet you also post "personal experience" which is not shared and it seems that you think the foundation of religion lies there. But religious lives are lived in the shared world. The difference you are identifying seems to me (roughly) a matter of interpretation, of ways of seeing.
Quoting Janus
It would be a mistake not to think that faith often involves quite prosaic and everyday matters, like whether the weather forecast is accurate. Tillich's faith is a different matter. I'm sure he's right to explain faith in terms that do not limit the scope of faith to religious faith, but identify it with decisions that lie at the heart of how we live - religious or no. I doubt that there could be strictly empirical evidence to guide us in answering these questions, because the decisions in question will affect how we interpret our experiences. But there is a common denominator - whether we can make our way through ordinary life without causing undue mayhem or causing our own misery and death.
Quoting Janus
This caught my eye. Could you tighten up a couple of things? First, what would strictly empirical evidence be? Do you mean, say, physical evidence that is uninterpreted, or at least only minimally interpreted according to schema that would gain universal assent? Second, can evidence guide me without demanding or demonstrating a particular answer? I'm guessing that's what you mean, since otherwise you wouldn't say "guide" but something more like "determine" or "necessitate".
Why would one suppose that either Tillich's "ultimate concern" or else the question "how should I live" are not guided by empirical evidence?
Here is your syllogism:
1. All science is X
2. No religion is X
3. Therefore no religion is scientific
In this case your X is "empirical." Elsewhere you have tried different X's. None of them seem to be sound.
Yes, I see no reason why science and religion must conflict. The important point for me is intellectual honesty on both sides. Science cannot answer all questions about human life because many of the questions most important to us cannot avail themselves of strictly empirical means to drive knowledge.
I have referred to phenomenology, analytic philosophy and philosophy of language as "quasi-empirical" in that they reflect, within their specific spheres of interest, on human experience in general and attempt to abstract its most general and necessary characteristics. The results cannot be as rigorously intersubjectively corroborated as the results of the natural sciences can.
It seems to me that when it comes to metaphysical speculation and mystical or religious experience it becomes an even more personal matter. I have my own metaphysical and mystical leanings, but I see them as matters of taste just as aesthetic judgements are. Many religionists and religious philosophers do not seem to be satisfied with this conclusion and yet they seem to be unable to argue cogently for their objections.
Quoting Ludwig V
Right, it comes down to the old maxim "you cannot derive an ought from an is". Empirical evidence shows us in ways that cannot be unbiasedly denied how things are (and I mean here how they are as they present to us, not in any fabulous absolute sense), but it cannot show us how they ought to be.
Straight to a radical realization of the self. Nothing that has ever been observed is done so independently of the act of observing, i.e., the perceptual act has always been an integral part of its object, making an object an event, and not some stand alone thing. The world AS world is, if you will, always already saturated with consciousness. Phenomenology turns science on its head, and it really depends on who you read. Michel Henry, JeanLuc Marion, Emanuel Levinas follow Husserl's Kantian idealism, and hold that consciousness is absolute, and this kind of thinking is hard to follow, frankly, if one is not immersed in the ideas and the jargon. Heidegger's language often rules this thinking, so Being and Time is essential.
Not that faith has no place, but rather that faith assumes the impossibility of grasping the infinite in a finite existence. This idea is prohibitive of metaphysics, and in the philosophers mentioned here, metaphysics is brought to life. At the center of this is Husserl's epoche: the reductive move from a world cluttered with contingent thinking, to one of the "pure" phenomenon, which is the hidden world "behind" normal experience. See Husserl's Ideas I, Cartesian Meditations, The Idea of Phenomenology, and, well , the rest.
In the end, it depends on how intuitive the individual is. One really has to be already quite alienated to be motivated to do all that insane reading of dense philosophy that talks about things entirely foreign to common sense (consider that those you call mentally unstable and perhaps not suitable for your religious education may be the ones most disposed to understand it). This is metaphysics, the essence of religion.
Firstly there is the evidence of the lives lived of earlier people of self reflection.
Secondly, implicit in living a life of faith one has faith in the guidance of whom one has faith in.
In the second case, empirical evidence is irrelevant.
I don’t think we can rush to this conclusion, in a very real sense we are one being, so any so called personal experience may not be as personal as we might think.
We are effectively clones of the being of our species. Yes in the outer world we have budded off into separate units, or people. But we may be more connected than we at first sight appear to be in the inner world. Just look at the behaviour of crowds, or other animals and plants which live in highly integrated colonies.
Yes, it’s easy to say this though, a different thing to do it.
I recognise what you describe, which mirrors quite well the narrative I have followed via Theosophy. There are a number of routes to this point, which mirror each other like this.
There are distinctions between them though. I have encountered some Metaphysicians on this site and they tend to be of the view that the human intellect is to reach the goal of [I]the realisation of the self[/I], through the power of thought, or even logic. This differs from the other narratives in that they are of the view that this goal is reached with the guidance of a [I]deity, spirit,[/I]or [I]higher self[/I].
This raises a number of issues, which leaves metaphysics out in the cold, unable to forge a connection with the unknown and leaving the human intellect on it’s own in reaching the goal.
The primary issue I find with this situation is that it is a fundamental view, or conviction, in the other schools, that the transfiguration of the self requires a revelation of realities far beyond* what the human intellect can achieve from it’s position in the world we find ourselves in. That from this limited predicament we are blind to the realities beyond, have no access to them. That it is required for them to be revealed to us.
Now I don’t deny that it may be possible for the intellect to bridge this divide given the appropriate circumstances. But I can’t see this happening in the near future, in such a primitive society(in terms of spiritual revelation). Or that there might be one, or two maverick genius minds who somehow achieve this goal through the power of thought alone. But I haven’t seen any evidence of this yet.
I don’t agree that it is for the alienated, or the mentally unstable. Because they would become captured by the ego during the process. It is for well rounded people who play a full role in society and have the impulse to follow this route.
Each school will invariably say this about their preferred method.
* when I say beyond us this can be because;
It is a reality which is inconceivable to a being using the human brain to exercise thought.
It may be hidden from us, for some reason, or purpose.
It might require the person to be hosted by the deity, thus enabling them to witness things that we cannot witness unaided. Or to reach some state unaided.
Quoting Janus
This, I think, deserves attention. You're saying that, because phenomenology et al. are at least "quasi-empirical," we can reasonably abstract from them to make statements about human life in general. This can't be rigorously intersubjective, but it is more so than mystical or religious experiences. Would it follow, then, that if most people had mystical experiences, we'd consider them also to be "quasi-empirical" and possible evidence for general conclusions? How many would we need? What would be the threshold beyond which the experiences gained evidentiary status?
There's a general anti-religious argument that goes something like: "There isn't any personal God, because there's no evidence for such a being. That explains why so few people are 'mystics' and claim to have such direct evidence. They're a little crazy, and are misinterpreting their experiences." The question is, Which way does the reasoning go? Are we saying that the lack of evidence shows the non-existence of God, or are we saying that, because God does not exist, there couldn't be such evidence? If it's the latter, that would commit us to saying that even if everybody had mystical experiences, they'd still be wrong in believing they were evidence for a personal God. I think this is what most of the atheists I know would say: You can't have evidence for unicorns because there aren't any. Those who believe in them nonetheless are, charitably, misguided.
So compare that to our (relative) confidence in the conclusions of quasi-empirical inquiries such as philosophy. Do we have confidence in them merely because the experiences they're based on are so widespread? Or is it rather that we have independent, non-experiential reasons for believing in the credibility of these experiences -- and thus expect most people to have them?
Yep. :up:
And note here that the whole crux is the coherence of intersubjective approaches to truth. Is something made true because lots of people believe it? Or do lots of people believe it because it is true? Or is truth something else entirely, such that something can be true even if lots of people do not believe it?
The intersubjective analysis is of course highly dependent on the sample. When and where the sample is taken will largely determine whether some proposition is intersubjectively held.
But to see such a bridge, one has to step into it. Metaphysics is reborn in thinkers like Jean Luc Marion. Alas, getting TO him, one has to go through Heidegger and Husserl. This is hard to do, I mean, this is a doctoral thesis. One could spend one's life reading and thinking about the ontological and phenomenological "divide".
Talk about "other realities" is exactly the kind of thinking that relegates metaphysics to the bin of absurdities. Where does any idea about the world at all find its descriptive possiblities? In what is already there, in the totality of meaning possibilities of the world one is thrown into. And what "reality" is beingtalked about if not that which is IN the givenness of the world? Talk about "other" realities impossibly remote to all that in which we find ourselves normally, and you have no basis for an evidential ground for understanding. (See the way the Catholic church has turned Heideggerian in its denial of the infinte distance that separates the self from God. A turn toward Meister Eckhart, whose sermons teeter on mysticism. See Karl Rahner, e.g.) This is what religious dogma is made of, and new age superstition. Don't get me wrong, I actually do believe religious people and spiritualists of various sorts are intuitively insightful, even profoundly so, greater than I can imagine. But what theysay about this lacks discipline. And what is this discipline? Phenomenology is essentially descriptive, and is as committed to this as any scientist committed to naturalism, but it doesn't look for quantitative categories to talk about relations, intensities, causes and a linear sense of time or a geometrical sense of space. One is rather brought to face a world that is "there" as the presupposed phenomenality that is the world PRIOR to quantification, and prior to the presumptions of knowing that constitute the everyday things "proximal and for the most part" (Heidegger's term, meaning familiar and readily "there" to understand something) accepted by all.
Did I say lacks discipline? Reading the Abhidhamma I am overwhelmed by the discipline, but this is an ancient Buddhist text that reads like a phenomenological analysis, another order of signification that discards mundane interests. It strikes me as I read through that it is essentially descriptive of consciousness and the complex ways it is entangled in the world, a veritable list of spiritual pathologies? Sort of. But int he end, all of this, Buddhists should be running miles away from, for the summom bonum of Buddhism is nirvana, and there is really nothing one can say about this "as such"; but then, one can say a great deal about what falls short of this, and hence this dense compendium.
This is essentially the way I look at phenomenology: it is an analytic of our entanglements in the world that is dismissive of nothing, least of all that which is in the bewildering features of consciousness, the "call" of transcendence that is structurally IN the world itself, for consciousness and the world cannot be separated, which is an abiding premise of this philosophy. The most conspicuous of all this is affectivity, pathos, the passionate modality of this "value" dimension (as Wittgenstein puts in his Tractatus), if you will, keeping in mind that when language gets a hold of this, it is deflationary and pragmatic, and passion becomes contextualized, the usual, available for conversation. The task that faces the phenomenologist is to undo this, and this undoes everything, puts distance between one and ordinary matters. Two worlds emerge and one lives a threshold existence to live at all. (I refer to schizophrenics as perhaps those closest to this threshold: of course, deeply disturbed, but then, this disruption IS with the world as we know it at the most basic level. What they "say" in their delusional ramblings and paranoia and hallucinations, screams pathology, yet it is also a radical disruption of the ordinary acceptance of things that is exactly the cause of, call it "spiritual delusion": the thoughtless engagement of habits and familiarity that bind one to everydayness. I have known such people, and they also possess an original intensity that is so taboo in society. We live in a Freudian cubicle of sorts, says Deleuze, that so neutralizes what we are, so trivializes what we are, and here we "forget" the depth of our existence.
So, to refer back to my original response, if there are "other" realities, they must be discovered in this reality, which is phenomenality. This mundane consciousness of fence posts, clouds and computers, is "always already" what it is called to be in the transcendental "other" that beckons. The task lies in the analysis that reinterprets this world, and this lies with language which, after all, is not simply a structure of thought that sits like a ontologically distinct stratum---but reaches deep within the relation with and in the world. Undoing the way language occludes, conceals, distorts, recasts all things into something reality is "not" (a "hyperreality"? See Baudrillard, though he was following Heidegger et al, and had no thoughts about anything transcendentally imposing on analysis; but to be clear, Heidegger is a threshold thinker).
Quoting Punshhh
Well rounded? Okay. I am pretty well rounded. But then, I live two lives. The other is not well rounded at all, for there is nothing to round it out with save pure phenomenality, and this is a question AND a resolution in one. It has depth and meaning that will not be rounded, or contained; nor does it carry one into dizzying heights of irrationality. It is completely still, and the distance it creates is what I am, a self discovery. I read Michel Henry to look deeper, and of course, the Abhidhamma: Take a look here (lengthy but worth it, I think):
[i]Having thus gained a correct view of the real nature
of his self, freed from the false notion of an identical substance of mind and matter, he attempts to investigate the cause of this “Ego-personality”. He realises that everything worldly, himself not excluded, is conditioned by causes past or present, and that this existence is due to past ignorance (avijjà), craving (taõhà), attachment (upàdàna), Kamma, and physical food (àhàra) of the present life. On
account of these five causes this personality has arisen and as the past activities have conditioned the present, so the present will condition the future. Meditating thus, he transcends all doubts with regard to the past, present, and future (Kankhàvitaraõavisuddhi). Thereupon he contemplates that all conditioned things are transient (Anicca), subject to suffering (Dukkha), and devoid of an immortal soul (Anattà). Wherever he turns his eyes, he sees nought but these three characteristics standing out in bold relief. He realises that life is a mere flowing, a continuous undivided movement. Neither in a celestial plane nor on earth does he find any genuine happiness, for every form of pleasure is only a prelude to pain. What is transient is therefore subject to suffering and where change and sor85 row prevail there cannot be a permanent ego. As he is thus absorbed in meditation, a day comes when, to his surprise, he witnesses an aura emanating from his body (Obhàsa). He experiences an unprecedented pleasure, happiness, and quietude. He becomes even-minded and strenuous. His religious fervour increases, and mindfulness becomes perfect, and Insight extraordinarily keen[/i]
Not that there are no questions about this, but it is essentially a step into metaphysics. Not an abstract and assailable idea at all. Yes, assailable descriptively, but the fault lies in language, not in insight.
Quoting Punshhh
Until al schools are in abeyance. This is the point of phenomenology. Husserl begins Cartesian Meditations intent to find,
a knowledge for which he can answer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights. If I have decided to live with this as my aim the decision that alone can start me on the course of a philosophical development I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge.
Well, atheists I know would not say, as you write, “there isn’t any personal god.” They would say instead that there are no compelling grounds for belief in a personal god, though they remain open in principle to revising that view should persuasive evidence arise.
Quoting J
Well, I think many atheists would more likely start with: there are no good reasons for belief in a personal God and one reason sometimes offered is mystical or personal experience of God. However, this is not a compelling justification, since such experiences rely on subjective testimony, which is inherently problematic.
The difference between some theists and atheists lies in the willingness to accept a subjective psychological experience, experiences that, while meaningful to the individual, could have multiple naturalistic explanations and thus can't meaningfully serve as reliable evidence for the existence of a divine being.
That said, I've known a number of number of Catholic clergy who also have little confidence in people's accounts of spiritual experiences. When discussing such cases with me, they tend to describe the person as likely to be mistaken or undergoing a psychological episode. Given their starting point is that God exists, I think this is interesting. Possibly it's the most appropriate default starting point whether you're a theist or an atheist.
You know nicer atheists than I do! :smile:
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't think this is the heart of the problem. We routinely accept subjective testimony about all sorts of things, if by "testimony" you mean merely "Here is what I saw/heard/tasted/thought." Rather, the problem is the explanatory value, as you say here:
Quoting Tom Storm
An alleged mystical experience can indeed have multiple explanations, just as an experience of romantic love can. The atheist can allow the experience, on a purely descriptive level; what they draw the line at is the explanation. They don't believe -- and I think they're right not to -- that any experience can be completely "self-credentialing." I can't claim that my experience of X includes as part of that experience the knowledge of what caused the experience. At best, we draw the most plausible conclusions.
And this leads to the other point that the atheist wants to insist on -- your use of the phrase "naturalistic explanations." I think that, for most atheists, non-naturalistic explanations are ruled out a priori. But if we don't do this, and simply talk about "multiple possible explanations" among which could be explanations based on an encounter with God, then at least the "God explanation" can join the other contenders and be weighed for its plausibility just like any other.
I don’t spend much time with atheists these days, but I used to. Many are, frankly, dull zealots. That said, the more thoughtful ones today typically don’t outright deny the existence of God, after all, that would be a positive claim, and one that can’t be demonstrated.
Quoting J
I suppose so. For an extraordinary claim like, “I had direct communication with God” an atheist is going to need more than someone's personal testimony. And so do the priests and sisters I know. I'm pretty certain many theists would also be sceptical when someone says that have had a religious experince.
Quoting J
I wouldn't say 'ruled out' but worth of robust skepticism certainly. Is there a non-naturalistic explanation for anything we can definitely identify?
You write this:
Quoting J
I'd say there are many theists for whom you could use the same argument in reverse. They already believe in God, therefore spiritual experiences are real.
Quoting J
Yes, this is the nub of the issue: is the God explanation really of equal weight to alternative explanations - such as psychological phenomena, mental illness, or substance use? I would say no. That judgment ultimately comes down to a choice we make based on how we interpret and structure the world.
And perhaps it's not worth debating, these discussions rarely shift anyone’s position and too often descend into unproductive or abusive exchanges. Not from you, I hasten to add.
Regarding the meaning of the word 'atheism', see <this post>.
Neither of those count as empirical evidence. I'm not being pedantic, or trying to dismiss religion as an evil or even a problem on account of its lacking empirical evidence to support it. I just think it's important to maintain consistent and coherent epistemological distinctions between different spheres of knowledge and belief.
Quoting J
As I understand it phenomenology aims to reflect on and characterize the general nature of human experience. I have always been skeptical about attempts to make inferences from human experience to metaphysical claims.
There are poetic commonalities between the writings of mystics from all cultures, which should not be surprising given the cross-cultural everyday commonalities of human experience. In patriarchal cultures?which have predominated at least in historical times?it is not surprising to find that the figures of worship?the gods, buddhas, gurus, saints and deities ?have been predominately male.
What exactly are mystical experiences? It seems they mostly consist in feelings of being a part of something much greater than oneself, of something that one might naturally think of as infinite and eternal, in that it feels radically different than our finite, temporal experience. One might feel "saved" in that visionary moment, and feel a personal presence, as of a loving parent. Or not...
I think the salient question is as to just what is the content of a mystical experience, and just what comes after in the attempt to articulate, interpret, understand the meaning inherent in that experience and what its implications are.
The interpretation of mystical experiences seems to me to be a very personal matter. For me interpretation is more of a feeling, a sense of something, more like poetry than anything which can be couched in definite terms. The descriptions by others of their mystical experiences can only resonate with me insofar as they embody a poetic feeling which seems to me akin to my own sense of the experience.
So, the shared intersubjective descriptions, definitions and explanations here seem to be stretched very thin. It seems that there is a cross-cultural commonality of mystical human experience?but what does that point to? Who can say? Does it even matter?
Quoting J
If phenomenology is "quasi-empirical" and the study of mystical experiences is not, would this change if most people had mystical experiences?
I would divide this into "the subjective experience," described as neutrally as possible, and "the explanation," in this case a purported direct communication with God. I'm suggesting that the atheist can accept that an extraordinary subjective experience took place while denying the explanation. But this isn't about rejecting personal testimony -- unless, that is, the claimant wants to maintain that the experience was what I'm calling "self-credentialed."
Quoting Tom Storm
Me too. Again, a "nicer atheist" may take this position, but I've just as often heard it described as "impossible" or "incoherent."
Quoting Tom Storm
I think all explanations that involve reasons, as opposed to causes, are non-naturalistic -- but that's a whole huge other topic.
Quoting Tom Storm
It may not be, in a given case, but I wasn't saying all the possible explanations had to be weighted equally. Indeed, it would be odd if they were; that isn't how it works with "ordinary" explanations for things like sensual perceptions. I was saying that we ought to allow the "God explanation" to be weighed along with any others. Equal weight? That will be influenced by many factors, including substance ingestion!
Quoting Tom Storm
Nor you, thanks.
If the purpose of the discussion is really to shift someone's position on religion or mystical experiences, I completely agree -- ain't gonna happen. But I do think it's worthwhile to get some analytical clarity on what's involved in talking about, and evaluating, this kind of report. Especially, we want to understand better how beliefs are formed, and what counts as adequate justification and refutation.
Just to note a basic division in testimony, non-theistic religions tend to report experiences of emptiness and such, while theistic religions tend to report experiences like the unification with God or whatever. Perhaps a general conclusion is not possible.
Did you mean to reverse the two?
You’re fast, I corrected that within a minute.
You will certainly find a lot of "emptiness" in theistic traditions, and also some (but less) "unification/fulfillment" in non-theistic traditions.
In any case my view is that experience and interpretation/framework are mutually influencing, such that anyone who draws a one-way arrow is mistaken.
So do you think a general conclusion is possible for religionists?
That’s odd, you seem to be asking for empirical evidence in guiding one in how to live one’s life (governed by self reflection) While excluding evidence of how people lived their life (that was governed by self reflection).
I was responding to this comment;
Surely what you are asking for here is evidence which can be used as a guide, while excluding all evidence of evidence being used as a guide in all previous lives.
Not to mention that how one might live a life would also include an enquiry of the results of a previous life lived to glean an idea of where such a life course might lead.
There is clearly empirical evidence of the results of lives lead guided by self reflection. Just take a previous life lead this way and see where it lead.
Now I feel pendantic.
On the other hand, I agree that there can be no empirical evidence of a divine realm.
And phenomenology was initially meant as a corrective to this tendency. But as many philosophers have argued since, this is very hard to do. In the act of reporting an observation, say a simple perception of a tree, we must include metaphysical assumptions if we are to speak at all. (Granted, this depends on a fairly broad interpretation of "metaphysical.").
What we're talking about here, I think, is the difference between the inference that there are really trees out there, and the inference that there is really a god out there. The evidentiary bases are wholly different, and would need to be weighed differently as well, but I want to claim that the basic process is the same -- we try to describe and understand our experiences, and then see if we can infer anything from them about the world, even if it's only an inference to the best explanation.
Quoting Janus
I agree. And to be unbiased, we should really put "mystical" in quotes, since several possible descriptions of their content would reveal "mystical" as an error.
Quoting Janus
I think we were talking about interpretation earlier in this thread, weren't we? (Or was it somewhere else? Sorry!) I'll just say here that I think interpretation is much more than just a feeling or a sense. There are good and bad interpretations, in terms of their fidelity to the facts. Hermeneutics tries to lay this out in a systematic way.
Quoting Janus
Good questions. And that, I believe, is the important thing -- that they are good questions, not ones we can dismiss because the answers are somehow obvious.
These are the questions that phenomenology must account for when the phenomenologist claims to have an alternative route to the mystical path. It is the realisation of our limited abilities, our human frailty which underpins the religious, or mystical life. That in order to see beyond these limitations a belief, or faith in some form of guidance, or hosting is required. Otherwise we are blind to that which is beyond our scope. And by blind, I don’t mean, haven’t worked it out yet. But rather we are entirely unable to see, we don’t have the eye to see it.
The bridge is quite easy to conceive of, but to surmise what is at the other side of it requires a telescope. To step onto the bridge without knowing which direction to walk, or how to put one step in front of the other, leaves one wandering around in circles. The idea is that a guide is required. A guide who can provide you with a telescope and steer you in the right direction.
Again if the phenomenology is the be an alternative to the mystical path, then it must account for these questions.
I agree with what you say about unraveling our entanglements freeing ourselves from conditioning, reaching stillness etc. Although as I said before, I take issue with the idea that faith must become ecstatic. That one must prostrate one’s self, basically to break yourself. Although young aspirants will want to do this in the beginning, I did myself. As one becomes older and the new you evolves, there is the opportunity to calm down and root one’s self in a normal life and play a role in society and family. While retaining one’s insight achieved in one’s youth, coming to realise that the fiery stage is not a requirement, but rather an initiation, the cracking of a shell. A seed to germinate and once the tree is growing it lives and grows and integrates in and with the human world.
Again we have immersion, “absorbed”, this is not necessary and could be quite harmful in the modern world. I suppose if one resides in a monastery where your needs are met, it is a suitable course of action. I have known many people who meditate over the years and beyond a certain point, I don’t think it does them much good.
Okay, but doesn't that mean that the study of mystical experience broadly possesses the same sort of "quasi-empirical" nature that you ascribe to phenomenology? To deny this would seem to require that some parts of phenomenology are not quasi-empirical.
That's not really what I've been saying. Firstly I was saying that phenomenological investigation is carried out via reflection on human experience. Great novels, biographies and autobiographies are examples of phenomenological inquiries into what it is to be human. I haven't touched on the question as to whether human lives are lived self-reflectively. It seems most likely that some are and some are not.
So we have some textual evidence of how people lived their lives or at least how their lives seemed to them on reflection, that we can probably safely assume to be trustworthy. But assuming it is trustworthy it is not evidence for anything other than that the described events happened, and that the persons or people described reacted to the events in the ways described.
Quoting Punshhh
So, I'm not excluding evidence that others lived their lives according to what they considered to be, for themselves, the evidence that they took to support whatever worldview they lived their lives in accordance with. I agree that we all do that. I'm questioning the idea that such "evidence", which although not being strictly empirical, it is nonetheless reasonable to think of it as evidence for anyone other than the person for whom it "feels right". I'm saying it is only strictly empirical evidence that should be expected to unfailingly convince the unbiased of whatever it is evidence for.
So this:
No need to feel pedantic (or did you mean you were wearing a pendant? :wink: ) When we examine lives, whether those of others or our own I think we do accept the reports as true and accurate (so "quasi-empirical"). When it comes to evaluating them we do so in terms of value judgements, and those are not empirical judgements.
I agree with you and think this is amply obvious but many will disagree while apparently being unable to explain their disagreement.
I'm out of time so I'll have to come back to respond to your posts. Hopefully what I've written above may clarify some of my ideas on these questions.
Q: What is faith?
A: Baby, don't hurt me.
In all seriousness though, I think this is a difficult thing to pin down. I think faith can mean different things to different people, but I think of it as a strong belief in the way things work through mostly anecdotal evidence. The world is more complicated than our minds can truly wrap themselves around, so we create mental constructions of the world based on experience that can through time or external reinforcement become beliefs and faith. When someone's faith is shaken, I'd argue it's often when they're confronted with something that causes mental dissonance in their faith ie how they believe the world works. Which does not mean that all faith is misplaced, just that it's not always easy to tell where to place it, as none of us can claim to know everything. So in the end, maybe faith is the belief that things will work out in the end ie, won't hurt me.
I do think it is important for philosophers to examine things in this way, even if it is a slow process and may take a long time to come to explain things like religious, or mystical experience. I do think there will one day be a science of these things along the lines of psychology.
The stumbling block I see repeatedly is that we are blind to the reality, rather like I was saying to Astrophel, we are blind to the reality we are attempting to pass judgement on, we don’t have the eyes to see it. All we have is the testimony of people who have had religious, or mystical experiences. Some who may have seen beyond the veil, but who’s testimony we must set aside, until we have some metric with which to measure it.
But this sense of "beyond" is speculative, and while I have no doubt that the more one moves into this strange terrain, the more is disclosed, it is not a move into a confirmation of a speculation. It is an openness that is its own disclosure that leaves speculative anticipation altogether, because it is openness itself. But whatis openness? It is found in mundane affairs in the question itself. So how is it that something as familiar and plain as a question be of the same essence as "spiritual enlightenment"?
Phenomenology discovers the supramundane IN the mundane, and reveals that all along in the daily course of things we stood before a world that had extraordinary dimensions of possible insight. Two worlds: my cat as the usual adorable annoying pet, and my cat that is not a cat at all, but something else not bound by "totality" of meanings that circulate through culture, something "Other". This issues goes on and on, and there are tensions here as to the nature of this Other vis a vis the conscious act in which it is encountered, and the term 'intuition' comes into play, and this is a controversial matter, but in the end, it really depends on if one is the kind of person who is capable of "pure eidetic" apprehension, and this refers to pure presence, pure givenness of ordinary things. This is where the epoche takes one, to this unconditioned givenness of the world: one does not go anywhere but realizes that what and where one already is is somewhere else entirely. The only (ontological) divide there ever was lies within the understanding--- the absolute hegemony the habits of familiarity that are always already there, ready to hand at a moment's notice to acknowledge something "as" such and such (a book, a table, a democracy, a right, and on and on), on the one hand, and the freedom (openness,the Greek's "alethea") from all of this on the other.
So getting back your thoughts above, this kind of thing is offered instead of "belief, or faith in some form of guidance, or hosting." Would you want science to take the same approach? Does science rest with these, or is it more rigorous and bound to evidential grounding? Phenomenology is called, and I agree in a qualified way, the science of pure phenomena. It is about a method that takes as its object the realization of he world at the most basic level of apprehension. Analytic schools call this qualia, but have no sense at all of the method that drives inquiry deeper, the phenomenological method that unpopulates, if you will, the horizon of awareness itself, such that the "seeing" is unburdened by the presumptions familiarity, which is no less than the operations of language itself taken as foundational truth, as if what a scientist, the most analytic expression of plain talk, has to say has authority that cannot be gainsaid. Phenomenology says, not only can it be gainsaid, but it can be utterly undone in the face of phenomenological ontology. The slate can be wiped clean! This is the essence of religion, the wiping clean of all the clutter in simple perceptual awareness such that the world finally shows itself, and God is discovered with the consciuosness that beholds.
So "guidance and hosting" does make sense, to correct myself on this, because of this important distinction: science works dogmatically at first, meaning one has to memorize and master complex paradigms before one can move into matters less categorical, and the same holds for phenomenology, for thematically, the world does not hold written on its sleeve the understanding only philosophical inquiry can bring out (the world at the most basic level of analysis is both the most idstant in that no one even begins to suspect such a level even exists, yet the most proximal, for the pure phenomenon is the absolute clarity of the pure presence of all things and there is no "distance" at all between consciousness and presence), but phenomenology is so alien to common sense it is not, not will it ever be, available to most. So the matte of divinity has to be treated symbolically, or "analogically" as Karl Rahner puts it (he thinks the church itself is a sacrament, an analog to heaven). BUT THEN: why not just leave it to the church, a priest or minster and let the Bible (or whatever) do the talking? I think this lead to irrationality and it creates problems out of problems, that is, entirely contrived conceptions about the way the world is, and solutions that are built on this that, as we see in the church today, are bound up with a great deal of bad thinking.
Quoting Punshhh
It does. Phenomenology IS the mystical path, if one is so inclined. Others see it less so, but admit the idea is sound. Others don't read it. Husserl's students once found themselves turning to spirituality because the disciplined and sincere turn toward the phenomenality of the world is a shock to ordinary experience, and one needs to be shocked if one is going to try to understand the world at the basic level. The thing is, faith stops inquiry where inquiry should be just beginning, and one never gets to the real matters at all, but gets comfortable in faith, like Buddhist doing hatha yoga, which is nice, but complacent and spiritually inert.
Quoting Punshhh
This is so much like a standard prescription for orthodoxy, which is looking to the historical affirmation, the spreading in time to a new foundation accepted as a socio-religious institution. This already exists. Calming down and rooting oneself in a normal life is, alas, the very opposite of where thought takes one if one follows through. Religion always seeks to get beyond itself to affirmation that is evidentially based, but this has been impossible because of the universally held notion that our finitude was prohibitive of exceeding its own delimitations, but this has always been just a dogma emphatically laid out by those who didn't understand the world because it takes work and sacrifice, the kind of thing you find only with monks, ascetics, those who climb mountains and stay there until they are brought to witness something, driven people who not only seek this novel "ecstasy", but insist on it---ecstatic from the original greek ékstasis, to stand outside of one's existence, apart from the social conditioning that binds one to culture and its language habits, what Kierkegaard called inherited sin in his Concept of Anxiety which takes up the old Genesis story of original sin and turns it into an analysis of metaphysical separation from God (taking a derisive attitude toward Luther and other dogmatic interpretations in the process). This ecstatic reorientation is the very essence of the "movement" toward divinity, for, as Meister Eckhart says again and again, the more we are here in this world of constructed values (one may care very much about General Motors, say, invests, works for, manages affairs for, and so on: but does GM really "exist"? Not really. It was conceived in a pragmatic desire, entirely abstract in the Real events of people's affairs. The world of familiarity is just this. Does biology exist?...), the farther out we are from divinity. For divinity is absolute Being that is constantly being denied in the participation of this world. Ask the question Wittgenstein refused to philosophize about because he feared inquiry would distort is nature, What is value, ethics? For ethics and value and aesthetics are, in the ecstatic perspective, meta value, meta ethics and meta aesthetics. All things that appear are always already metaphysics.
Put simply, our ethics IS God's ethics. For this world really is not finite at all, every chair, cloud and vacuum cleaner, every breath belongs to eternity.
Quoting Punshhh
Meditation is a struggle for depth by the radical
But note how boring this is. Not to offend, but really? What is the world? What is this tonnage of suffering and blisses that lays at our feet for the understanding to take up? What does it mean to exist as a person, to be thrown into the intensity of all this, to be a child screaming in a burning car? Is questioning and moving closer to a divine apprehension of the depth of what we are just about this absurd "closure" one gets in prayer. Meditation is hard because liberation is hard--a radical removal of the soul from the world INTO divinity (a term I prefer because it carries the gravitas of eternity).
Yes I see this explanation and I see how such an openness is a receptiveness to what is there to be disclosed, whatever it is.
I see this and am aware of it in my own way.
I think I know what you are saying here and I have worked on this for some time.
Yes, this is also something I work on. But I would say that God is something that is beyond our capacity to either see, or comprehend, while it plays the role of guide, in that we revere it. Commune with it.
Yes, been there many times.
Agreed, but the phenomenological approach is so discreet as to be available to a very few who have the capacity.
So here we have the implicit claim.
And here we have an attack on spiritual practice, which you seem to conflating with mysticism. But mysticism as opposed to general spiritual practice in these schools, does begin the enquiry where you say it settles into a complacency. Nothing you have described goes beyond what I consider as the basics tools of mysticism.
This was because the vast majority of followers of those religions didn’t have the capacity, or disposition to practice at the priest level, or above.
Yes and when they have witnessed it, the ecstasy recedes and they return to their day to day way of life. Like I said, an initiation, or right of passage. This ecstatic state can only be maintained for short periods by the human body. The mystical life has a series of these rights and the skilled practitioner is able to cross them without going to those ecstatic extremes.
We are back to the science of orientation.
So this is why as I said, the kind of meditative practice you are describing is not advisable in our modern world. It was developed for monastic life in cultures far more simple and down to earth than ours.
I don’t want to argue with you, but you keep making claims which are difficult not to challenge. I have no argument with phenomenology and am not critical of philosophical approaches to these issues. I have a genuine interest.
Going back to what you are describing, I have covered all these things, albeit from a different route. I’ve been there, done it, got the T shirt, so to speak. Over 30yrs ago. If `I were still seeking that ecstasy you describe every day for the last 30years, I expect, I would be a bit frazzled by now.
I don't know what you are referring to in saying "cracking a nut with a sledgehammer". Perhaps you could clarify. Also it's not clear just what are the many things which can't be accounted for or in what way they can't be accounted for. All in all, if you want me to respond I need more clarity and detail.
Quoting Punshhh
Unless we have had experiences of the type usually referred to as mystical then of course we are blind to that kind of experience. How would we know we have had so-called mystical experiences? Because of their extraordinary, uncanny nature I'd say. How do we know others have had such experiences? Because of the extraordinary, uncanny descriptions of their experiences, which we can relate to sympathetically. That's about all we have to go on.
What do we know of the implications for metaphysics of such experiences? Absolutely nothing I would say—although the extraordinary, uncanny nature of such experiences naturally seems to lead people to extraordinary, uncanny speculations. However such speculations have nothing cogent to support them—people simply believe whatever it is they feel moved to believe. And that's all fine—we all believe whatever it is we feel moved to believe, if we are one of those given to believing—or else we suspend judgement, remain skeptical if that is our bent.
Does it matter? I would say no—all that really matters is how we live our lives—how we live this life, the only life we know or can be confident we can really know, the only one we can be confident that we actually have or will have. And even knowing this life is not the easiest or most common achievement.
On the contrary, Eckhart would say that God is in General Motors, and that the one who says otherwise does not understand God. The one who cannot find God where they are has mistaken God for something else:
The question then is, when it is affirmed that God is something beyond our capacity, from whence comes the ground for this claim? Language opens experience to interpretation. It carries the "non formal" affectivity (intimations of immortality?) into a region of analytic work that puts, explicitly, the mundane into brackets, and this allows the understanding to take hold and do important work. In other words, when we philosophize, we gain access into what is being examined. Language opens what is simple allows elucidation which brings whatis hidden into view, not unlike what a scientist does with her observations, that are at first quit easy and accessible, gravity or acceleration or centrifugal force. A scientist does not know what a force is, but can work up a vocabulary of analytical detail that brings this term into various contexts. making simplicity into complexity, and for a naturalist, a scientist, this opens wide the possiblities. With phenomenology, something rarely even acknowledged is brought out in the same kind of examination, very rigorously, and here is discovered the ground for religion, and God, and divinity, redemption, consummation of "meaning" and importance (see Von Hildebrandt on this. What does it mean for something to be important, not for something, but important as such?)
Now there is discovery where before there was only faith and indeterminacy. This is a very important idea, for now one can research metaphysics by "observing" what has been silent through the centuries; observing "apriori" that is, things unseen, if you will.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes, right. But if the matter is going to be just left to what those who don't think and study, then the understanding is left with a lot of medieval drivel. This here I am talking about is a plea for taking religion and God seriously enough to put time and work into it in order for DISCOVERY to take place.
Well, with Eckhart, one has to be very careful with context. I mean, what he says belongs to a discussion, and shouldn't be isolated from this for its meaning. Eckhart was not talking about, heh, heh, GM being divine in its nature, GM as a manufacturing institution hiring thousands of people functioning in a thousand ways. He was not saying, say, that the advertising department at GM was doing God's will (though, there are those who hold that America and its businesses are privileged in mind of God. Keeping in mind that Genghis Khan was doing God's work, as well). Read his broader discussion, as well as other sermons and works; see, e.g., On Detachment: "man who stands thus in utter detachment is rapt into eternity in such away that nothing transient can move him, and that he is aware of nothing corporeal and is said to be dead to the world, for he has no taste for anything earthly." This is rather typical of the way he speaks of our relation to God vis a vis the world. But GM?? Surely as transient as it gets, no? I only bring it up to raise the point that language has brought into "existence" a great deal of useful fiction, but it goes deeper than something so obvious, for the question is begged: Why stop with an obvious institution? Is there really a world that language is "about"? Or are all of these just useful fictions as well? I mentioned biology, which carries the same ground for same question: Once there was no biology, so where does its "existence" come from? Surely, 'biology' is just a systemic imposition on what was there prior to the categorical rigor placed upon things. Rorty puts it, " Truth is propositional, and there are no propositions "out there." So what ontological standing does language have? Depends on who you read.
Anyway, regarding that the enigmatic quote you cite above, the question: what the fuck is he talking about? More in, more out..... Eckhart begins by talking about what is within and without at once, citing Paul, and making public the word of God. So looking at this little phrase again:
[i]God is in all things. The more He is in things, the more
He is out of things: the more in, the more out, and the more out,
the more in[/i]
So, does this mean God is "in" GM? Yes, but one has to look at "being in" more closely. He says God is divine and intelligible and is in all things, so in all things insofar as all things are divine and intelligible, and the intelligibility of GM and its many facets is of course, qua intelligibility, of God, God being the source, the ground of reason itself. Not qua its being a social construct with a finite purpose, for such being the case would giving the divine endorsement to anything intelligible, like Nazism or well planned child molestations. Divine? The same: the divine as such, not as an institution of corporate interests. Where is the divine "as such" evidenced in GM? This is a longer answer.
Another:
In fear? Yep. In pain? Yep. In Genghis Khan? Yep. In Nazism? Yep.
By definition.
God is something which may have created us and the world, may be with each of us and every animal and plant, every planet. May be performing a task via these things. May have a purpose in mind. All of these actions are beyond our capacity to understand (unaided).
The mystic does all this internally, rather than inter subjectively. Infact it may not be possible to cover the same ground inter subjectively. Because doing it internally is a much more integrated process of knowing the self, working with the self, developing personal dialogue, narrative and walking the walk. The fact that in the spiritual schools there is direct interaction and communication between teacher and student at a profound level, would indicate that there is a process of guiding and communion going on, which goes well beyond the intellectual and intellectual analysis.
I agree with you about what really matters, but your downright no to the question about these experiences seems to me to be over the top. So far as I know, mystical experience does not lead to harm to the mystic or to others and, on the whole, does seem to encourage peace and loving-kindness. That's important. Also, if it is important to those who follow the disciplines and/or have the experiences, then it has a certain importance for the world. But, whether it is/leads to our final destination or not, it does not seem to make any difference to the majority who do not have these experiences. Their relevance to the only life we know is not at all clear. All this is my opinion, not my dogma.
There is no argument or reasoning in "yep". Sounds like you stand by a naïve interpretation without saying why.
But none of this is by definition. The essence of God is not determined such that definitional proofs can simply be brought forth. What comes to us is a long history of dogma and theological speculation, and whatever can be analytically derived from this would carry the same arbitrary thinking. One has to drop everything, just as empirical science has dropped nearly everything evolving through the centuries, dropped and added through endless paradigms (as Kuhn puts it) that hold sway and then yield. It is a dialectical process of discovery. But what if something came along that truly was as apodictic (certain) as a logical proof? Or even more so? We think of logic as apodictic, cannot be second guessed, a tautologically structured system, like mathematics, but consider that logic and math are brought to us through language, and language is not apodictic, but is historically wrought out, so when one faces a logical construction, the rigor of insistence is there, but we really cannot say what this IS as absolutely as we are compelled to yield to it. Logic gives us the strongest analytic basis for truth making, but it is entirely abstract, and it is a pure formal truth that "If P, then Q"; "P"; therefore Q. It has no content, just form.
But the world has content, IS content, and this content has always been deemed, as you say about God, infinitely remote (impossible) to determine, for knowledge about the world comes to us from induction, and induction is statistical and indeterminate. Gravity is confirmed in "repeatable results" as science says about its experiments, not apodicticity. Thingscould fall up or sideways, for there is no logical constraint to contain their behavior.
The point is, consider what Husserl says about his phenomenology:
[i]I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute
poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge. Beginning thus,
obviously one of the first things I ought to do is reflect on how
I might find a method for going on, a method that promises to
lead to genuine knowing.[/i]
Absolute poverty is the clarity of observation, like not having the church interfering with well reasoned thinking about celestial events, dropping all assumptions about what the world is, so as to have before one the world that is there and unassailably so--pure phenomenality, pure presence. Reading through his "Ideas" one discovers his "method": the phenomenological reduction. Now God can be conceived apart from the traditions, the bad metaphysics/theology, the presumptions of science, the clutter of busy thinking. God is a concept of invention, mostly, and this concept is suspended! God emerged out of the language of cultures first, that is, it is a construct made of language possibilities, disregarding along the way, well, the world. The idea is to begin from poverty of thought so as to allow the world to "speak" (gelassenheit, Heidegger's use of the term), to yield to what is there to yield to and allow it to come forward. Here philosophy discovers metaphysics, the Real metaphysics.
Not that all is disclosed, but that disclosure is now in the "right place" and the inexorable enigma (Heidegger again. One MUST read Being and Time. Pretty much my mission in life is to get people to read continental philosophy) of metaphysics is palpable, with a depth of meaning thought impossible. Phenomenology is freedom to realize "God" IN finitude, for finitude never was finitude, but is eternal. In Kantian terms, there can be no line between phenomenon and noumenon. The former IS the latter, and vice versa. Everydayness IS metaphysics.
Quoting Punshhh
I guess I am asking, what does it mean to guide? Phenomenology is not an invitation to think in the abstract, but to see the world "for the first time". What does this mean? is answered in the process of realization. When one is comfortably encountering the world, one is ensconced in the past as it gives familiarity to the present that makes the anticipation of the future secure. Time separates God from us, you could say.
Good stuff.
Only after all evidence is gathered can we, by our choice and faith, consent to putting our lives in the hands of the doctor.
And so none of this discussion of ‘what is faith’ is necessarily about God or a religion. And further, relegating faith to belief without reason or incorrigible choice, only misunderstands faith (or far too narrowly construes it), and misunderstands the role of evidence and reasoning, and consent, and how people are called to act in everyday practical situations all of the time.
Thanks for posting that.
I agree with you, but isn't it inherent to the experience that it feels like an encounter with truth and therefore natural, even inevitable, to conflate interpretation with knowledge that ought to be shared with the world? From their perspective, it's not dogma, it's clarity, even a form of compassion to share it.
From what I’ve seen, the experience is often all about ‘one truth for all' so how could we expect restraint? Intellectual honesty seems to me to be a separate project. Are we really expecting those touched by the divine to say, ‘I encountered a higher power and I know we are all one, but I’ll keep it in perspective because intellectually this is the right thing to do?'
If it’s something else, well that’s fine, provided it fulfills the tasks that we ascribe to God. If it’s something else and it doesn’t fulfill its tasks, then it’s not God, or anything to do with God and why would someone refer to it as God?
Yes, I have dropped any mention of God, in my own life and in conversation,(except where God is being addressed directly). You brought it up, I was only talking about divinity and aspects of the world that we don’t know about.
Yes, although I apply this to ego, rather than lifestyle, living in the modern world with all the stuff we have around us, makes that difficult. To be humble, to always approach situations and people with humility kindness and to be unassuming. It is remarkable how these simple things act as a powerhouse in the mystical life. The ego has to be tamed like the ox in Zen is tethered to the post.
Yes, well apart from the bit about God. This is the bread and butter of mysticism.
We’re getting somewhere;
Developing and embracing humility.
Developing and embracing an unassuming posture.
Clearing the self of all conditioning.
Realising our limited position in the world and the limits of knowledge.
An ability to put to one side all cultural and social narratives.
Communion with nature, or prayer.
All things which ought to be practiced at length before one takes one step.
Yep. :100:
If we are intellectually honest then we do not talk about "truth" if we are subjectivists. "The same truth for all," is vacuously true, and follows from the notion of truth itself. If 2+2=4 is true then it is true for all, not just for some. That's what truth means. *sigh*
The intellectually honest naysayer needs to start admitting that they don't think religious claims are truth-apt. They can't have it both ways:
Quoting Leontiskos
Broadly, I agree. But I think we have to modify what we have been saying a bit. Putting it crudely, it is not dogma, ideology and fundamentalism in themselves that are the problem. It is the bad behaviour that those things lead to - no, sorry, correction - often lead to. I don't mind people being dogmatic or even fundamentalist, so long as they behave themselves in a civilized fashion - that is, adapt to the world as it is, as opposed to eliminating or attempting to eliminate those features of the world that they disapprove of. (Since everybody has an ideology, we should only condemn ideologies that seek to suppress, by inappropriate means, other ideologies.)
In short, the important distinction between a mere hallucination and a vision of God is the question of harm to self and others in everyday life.
Quoting Tom Storm
That is indeed asking a bit much. But the practicalities of existence do demand that one not use inappropriate methods to compel (insofar as that's even possible) belief amongst other people.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes, but how do I decide who is the ego and who the ox-tamer?
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm a bit cautious about a general claim about all religious claims. I don't exclude the possibility that some, even many, may be truth-apt. But I do think that an important part of religious claims are interpretations of the world that are the basis of various ways of life and practices and that those interpretations are not truth-apt. The same applies to secularism and atheism.
I would lay out a general principle that addresses all sorts of things on TPF.
Suppose that S ? P, and P is truth-apt. It follows that S is truth-apt. It doesn't really matter what kind of thing S is. S could be a way of life or practice.
For example, if S is the "way of life" of theism or atheism, and P is a proposition like, "God exists," then we have a case where a way of life is truth-apt. If P is true, and yet is made false by a way of life, then that way of life is to that extent false.
It would be hard to overemphasize how relevant this is to all sorts of things that are said on TPF. For example, fdrake gets at something very similar when he resists the notion that a stance is simply "upstream" of facts:
Quoting fdrake
When Pierre Hadot emphasizes the way that ways of life and discourse are mutually influencing, he is crucially aware that latter also influences the former.
It's not that the experience is all about "one truth for all", but that the interpretation of it may be, indeed usually are. The interpretations are generally culturally mediated, and so vary greatly cross-culturally, even though there are also, admittedly, commonalities. So, they are not absolute truths, but are culturally relative.
Those who are reputedly "touched by the divine" are usually the saints and the sages and they would seem to be the least likely to be ideologues, dogmatists or fundamentalists.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think those are problems in themselves. And they are behind most of the culture wars, genocides, and brainwashing of children and the gullible. Also given that they are intellectually dishonest, in that they claim to know more than can justifiably be claimed to be known, I believe they should be disavowed and even disparaged. Of course I'm not suggesting that people should be punished merely for being ideologues. dogmatists or fundamentalists, though.
Logical. mathematical and empirical truths are "one for all", not so much metaphysical "truths". The point is if there are metaphysical truths, we don't and can't know what they are, or even if you want to say they could be known by "enlightened" individuals, it still remains that they cannot be demonstrated.
I'm inclined to agree. Maybe not dogma, if we take it literally as "canon of beliefs." But it's no coincidence that "dogmatic" has come to mean rigid and intolerant. So many dogmas encourage dogmatism.
The other two -- ideology and fundamentalism -- are picking out ethical problems. I don't think they can be used neutrally. To subscribe to an ideology is to indulge in false consciousness, whether deliberately or unconsciously. This is likely bad for you, and if you're remotely inclined to act on it, then probably bad for others as well.
Fundamentalism strikes me as similar to "fascism" -- it can be a historical or sociological description of a specific movement, but it's also naming a mindset, an attitude, and a practice which is more general. So we can neutrally talk about fundamentalist Christianity or Islam, as a set of beliefs, but "fundamentalism" is what those beliefs have in common with any rule-bound, indubitable, authority- or holy-text-based belief that insists that others acknowledge this "truth." Such an attitude is ethically obnoxious, for reasons I doubt need explaining.
So by all means let's disparage these attitudes. And if we need yet another reason -- they've done incalculable harm in blinding people to the gentle, compassionate core of what I think of as genuine spiritual and religious practice.
That's nonsense, and evidence for this is the fact that you put 'truths' in scare quotes. You yourself know that you are not talking about truths when you talk about things that are not true for all.
The idea that there are metaphysical "truths" that are not truths makes no sense at all. Why do people on TPF keep peddling this nonsense? Why don't they just admit that they don't believe metaphysical claims are truth-apt? That's what the moral antirealists do, and at least their claims aren't facially incoherent.
The notion that a metaphysical proposition is true but not true for all is just as incoherent as the notion that 2+2=4 is true but not true for all.
Which was, I thought, all well and good. But then, back in olden times, the parishioners were not expected to ‘understand God’. When you went into the Church, your role was entirely passive. Your informed assent or agreement with the proceedings had nothing to do with it. If you were to be the recipient of God’s grace and forgiveness, that was entirely up to God. Children were expected to listen and obey, and perhaps receive instruction in Sunday school. The only thing you had to do was accept and believe and to behave accordingly; to have an opinion about it was precisely the meaning of ‘heresy’.
(That was a point made by Peter Berger in a book called The Heretical Imperative (1979). The rationale behind the book title, is that this model of the complete passive receptivity of belief is hardly viable in a pluralistic, individualist culture such as our own - we are required to make a choice, hence, 'the heretical imperative'. Furthermore that we are faced with a choice our ancestors did not practically have to make - that between 'Jerusalem and Benares', as Berger calls it - the choice between a Biblical faith, and a faith grounded in Asiatic religions.)
But I've also come to understand the rationale behind the traditional attitude. Just as you wouldn't be your own surgeon or defense lawyer, you don't have the necessary skills and attributes to 'enter the life eternal' through your own understanding and efforts, given the ubiquity of ignorance and//or corruption ('original sin') that we have been born into. Hence the demand for the surrender of the ego. Zen Buddhists have an expression, 'washing off blood with blood' which is about the futility of trying to suppress or control thoughts and emotions through conscious effort.
I don't have any answers on this matter but that is a question I'm mulling over.
Coincidentally, in the homily this weekend the priest talked about this. He noted that he encourages the bride and the groom to memorize the vows, yet that some do try to memorize them but then mistakenly say, "Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity," whereas the words in the Catholic ceremony are, "Receive this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity." He was riffing on reception as active, which was also a big theme of the Second Vatican Council. The difference between reception and passivity (and also between taking and receiving).
Quoting Wayfarer
Lol - Acts 10:34 means that God does not play favorites:
Quoting Acts 10:34-35, RSV
The point here is that God is not like the judge who gives you an unfavorable verdict just because he dislikes you, regardless of what you did or did not do. The context is that Cornelius is acceptable to God even though he is a Gentile. There are problems with reading the KJV in a contemporary idiom. :razz:
That's right. I was feeling for the point at which dogma etc. becomes a problem that needs to be addressed by social action. Which is a delicate but important matter.
Quoting Janus
I believe that to be true as well.
This seems right to me. I suppose some people might argue that there are intersubjective agreements about metaphysical truths, such as the existence of God or the idea that human beings have a soul.
Do you think a follower’s faith in a guru is of the same nature as a patient’s trust in a doctor? And what if the roles were reversed; if the person were receiving medical advice from the guru and spiritual guidance from the doctor?
Forgive me. I get your drift. However ways of life, unlike propositions about them, are not true or false. But they can be validated by or founded on facts which are articulated by propositions; those propositions need to be true if they are to do their job.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't want to waste time bickering about whether your argument is valid or not. I'll skip to agreeing with you and Pierre Hadot. OK?
In one way, you are quite right. However, I am puzzled why there appears to be no end to the argument about the existence of God and inclined to think that the possibility of such an argument is an illusion. I find Wittgenstein's ideas about interpretations ("seeing as") interesting because puzzle pictures seem to be a case where two incompatible statements are both true - in a modified sense of true. In addition, Wittgenstein articulates the concept of "hinge" propositions, which are protected from refutation by their role in the practice(s) they support.
(copied from Fluharty - Hinge propositions)
.. and then there's Presuppositional apologetics - Wikipedia. This one is not my cup of tea, but I gather it has followers. This is a variety of fideism, which has its place in philosophical discourse because it was Hume's position. (People forget that Hume had one exception to his general critique of miracles - the Resurrection. He does not claim to believe in it on rational or empirical grounds.)
All I'm saying here is that there are alternatives to hammering round the ancient necessary proofs and empirical arguments.
That may depend on the person, the ailment, the doctor, the advice being sought, the guru and the reason for your question.
Do you think faith only has to do with a lack of reason and knowledge?
But faith is basically always the same qua faith, it just may be self-deluded, or misplaced if the person or thing one has faith in is not reasonable or worthy.
It is hard to tell who is worthy. Just like it is hard to be a good doctor and a good guru.
This is one of the crosses to bear, for the believer, or mystic. They have beholden truths which for a number of reasons they cannot impart to their friends, family and associates and yet they must continue life as normal.
This is the most crucial crisis in the life of someone who seeks to serve (in these terms), to follow a spiritual life, or to seek the divine. To be able to make right choices. It is necessary because otherwise one will end up navel gazing.
There is a process where one questions oneself, asks for guidance, tries to live by the example of saint’s, or prophets. Fails, has crises of conscience etc etc. For each person it is different. For me it was a combination of a faith in guidance and the realisation of good. The power of good, can when you want to do good, or have goodwill, is like an accumulator. As each act of good, or kindness and its rewards are experienced it colours your way of life etc. Rather like acts of service, or compassion. Eventually a purification takes place. For faith in guidance, one offers freely to be guided, to follow the guidance. Where the guidance isn’t so much in the external world, but internally. In a sense, one is offering up one’s liberty, freedom to follow selfish thoughts and desires. To put other’s needs before oneself, to put the guidance before oneself. A tipping point is reached beyond which there is a strength of feeling and knowledge that one is living a gooder life and yet not feeling the lesser for it, but the more for it. Again a tipping point is reached beyond which one can grab hold of and tether the ego.
That makes sense and I guess would match my understanding of it. If this is the case, how does one determine when a faith is appropriate?
Quoting Fire Ologist
From what I've read here, I think we probably need specific examples of faith in action in order to assess whether or not it is reasonable. If someone says they have faith that Trump will make America great again, as I’ve heard from several Christians, then I would doubt that faith is a reliable or useful path. If they say they have faith that Black people are inferior, which I have heard from white South African Protestants, then I would also consider that kind of faith to be mistaken.
As I’ve said before, if “faith” just means “trust,” then I’d prefer to use the word “trust” instead. And presumably if we have trust in something there are likely good reasons for this - eg medicine. For me, “faith” often implies belief without evidence, possibly without good reason, and perhaps even in the face of contrary evidence. But let's not return to this, since we'll probably just go around covering the same ground in a kind of endless regression. :wink:
Yes, I understand that the ego is the ox. But who is it that tames the ox/ego? The story would lose its point if we could imagine the ox willingly submitting to the tamer. You speak of "one" or "me", which seems to be neither ox nor ego. I sometimes think that the journey is something that happens to us adn which we cope with as best we can, rather than being something that we decide to do.
Quoting Tom Storm
I suppose the only way to see any value in faith is to think about the times when it implies something different.
It is odd, though, that one of the commonest story-lines in our burgeoning entertainment industry is the lone hero who is gripped by an unorthodox, even crazy, idea and pursues it relentlessly in the face of all opposition. The ending is, of course, triumphant vindication. Which is all very well, but perhaps not the most sensible idea to feed into the minds of people.
I think that faith, if it is ever to count as a good thing, must be the willingness to start on a project, accepting the risk of failure, but willing to see it through to the end anyway. Whether it is actually a good thing in particular cases, will depend on our evaluation of the project.
Except that we know that some people achieve success despite all the odds and setbacks, just look at any list of entrepreneurs or Hollywood stars. This evidence of success, despite barriers and failures is why some people think it's worth taking chances. I'd argue that faith in something which cannot be demonstrated follows a very different trajectory.
We do indeed see a great deal of stuff about people who have succeeded against the odds, and, as you point out, not only in fiction. We don't see nearly as much about the people who try to follow in their footsteps and fail - and they are the vast majority. Anyone who looks at the numbers for successful and unsuccessful business start-ups and thinks rationally will walk away. Ditto careers in music, acting &c. Even philosophy!
I'm surprised at your last sentence. That's exactly what I'm trying to talk about. But N.B. I do not want to go down the rationalist road of saying that people who do that are crazy and irrational and even unphilosophical. I'm trying to identify what makes such projects worth while, and not just foolishness.
Quoting Tom Storm
I was also trying to tease out why you said that faith often implies those things, which suggests that sometimes faith does not imply those things.
Come to think of it, perhaps my thought is only that commitment is often a good thing, though always implying an acceptance of risk, or at least ignorance about what the future holds. Whether that is a good thing or a bad one will depend on the nature of the project, not on whether it succeeds. Commitment that takes a doctor to Gaza is a good thing, I think. Commitment that takes a soldier into an aggressive war is, on the whole, a bad thing. Whether a commitment to getting to the top of Mt. Everest is a good thing or not is not clear to me. Ditto religious commitment.
This can become complicated when we use phrases like ego. Ego can mean different things, not only different aspects of the self, but it could be the whole self, or just something that the self uses, in it’s tool box so to speak. I make the distinction between ego, personality and being(sentient). Although, there could be more than three parts to the person. We are after all talking about a narrative used by people, involved in religious, or spiritual schools with their own terminology and I’m trying not to get into that, if possible.
So I would say, it is the being, working with the personality who wrestles with the ego.
Yes, of course and both happening at the same time, as well. I adhere to the view that it is mainly something that happens to us and that a propensity, or calling, towards such a lifestyle may be a result of that.
I mean, you could give your definition of "true," but the point here is that if ways of life can be validated by propositions (facts) then they can also be invalidated by propositions. Ways of life and propositions cannot be neatly separated.
Quoting Ludwig V
"God exists," is a proposition, and there is no "the" argument for it. There are lots of different arguments for and against the existence of God.
But yes, relativists will say, "People endlessly disagree about proposition X, therefore it must not be truth-apt." That's a common argument.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think hinge propositions are another example of the confusion I outlined, insofar as they involve the claim that non-truth-apt axioms entail truth-apt propositions.
Quoting Ludwig V
Another example of the confusion, in my opinion.
Quoting Ludwig V
My point is that no "way of life," "hinge proposition," or, "presupposition(alism)" is immune to propositions and facts. I would say that the erection of such immunity is based on the confusion that I outlined <here>.
A lot of this goes back to what I said about the relation between the true and the good, for ways of life are predicated primarily upon goodness and yet are not separate from considerations of truth.
I agree that ways of life and propositions cannot be neatly separated. For me, at least, that was the significance of accept Hadot' remark.
Quoting Leontiskos
Thatl would be a bad argument. So, could I ask what arguments you propose as evidence that God exists?
Quoting Leontiskos
Hinge propositions are not non-truth-apt. They are true, in such a way that whatever else gets questioned in the debate, they are protected from reputation. "God exists" is a good example - unless you can tell me what arguments you would accept as evidence that God does not exist.
Axioms are also not non-truth-apt. They are stipulated (assumed) to be true. Presuppositions, in that theory, are simply adopted as true in something of the same way.
Ways of life, on the other hand, in Wittgenstein's use of the term, are the foundations of language and are the basis of our understanding of truth and falsity, so not truth-apt, any more than practices are. Practices are just our way of doing things; they include the ways in which we establish truth and falsity. In practice, our lives are more complicated than that, and our ways of life and practices are always liable to development and change, often in response to facts about the world. But the relationship goes two ways and is more complicated than material implication.
Quoting Leontiskos
The question will always be, then, whether P is really truth-apt and not false.
Okay, great.
Quoting Ludwig V
Well if something is false then it is truth-apt, so this makes me think that you don't understand what "truth-apt" means.
If P is not truth-apt, then of course S need not be truth-apt.
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't know what "being protected from reputation" means, but the point is that truth-apt things are open to scrutiny.
Quoting Ludwig V
I suppose I just stand by what I already said. If Wittgenstein thinks his "ways of life" are not truth-apt and yet entail true or false propositions, then he is in a pickle.
Quoting Ludwig V
It's the argument at the bottom of Wittgenstein's and everyone else's strange claims about the fundamentals being non-truth-apt.
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't usually engage that question in these contexts, as the inquirer is just looking for something to try to debunk. I'm also not sure what it has to do with this conversation, especially given that you said my point about relativism, "Would be a bad argument."
I have a problem with any theory that divides the person/self into separate elements like this. When we do the wrong thing, we are usually anxious to shift the blame away from ourselves. One of the tactics is to attribute the agency to something that is not us (not our selves). I didn't do that, my appetites did it. I don't want to say that it is never appropriate to think in this way, but I do want to say that it is sometimes inappropriate to think in this way. We find addictions very hard to classify, with some people seeing the addiction that is not the person, but which takes over control of the person, and other people thinking that it is just the result of a "weak will" - as if going to some sort of gym would sort the problem out.
Quoting Punshhh
Yet you seem to be able to tell this story without the help of the analysis, until the very last moment, when you revert to the "ego", and I want to say that it is your ego that took you through the process of training that allows you to grab hold of the ego and tether it (yourself). I have no idea what a Zen master would say about this story, but I say that the point is that you have not tethered yourself, but set yourself free. Or rather, you were taking the process as a process of tethering, but now you can see it as a process of freeing yourself. Life in the wild, we might say, is not freedom; it is suffering. But No, it is both. The paradoxes are endless. That, no doubt, is where the Zen master comes in.
Quoting Leontiskos
If P is not truth-apt, then S need not be truth-apt; but then S might be truth-apt. So if P is not truth-apt, then S might or might not be truth-apt. The trouble is that we might well disagree about whether a given proposition, such as "God exists", is truth-apt or not.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's a typo. I mean "protected from reFutation". To illustrate what I mean, let me sketch an argument in which this protection occurs. The point here is not whether the argument as stated is a good one, but just to illustrate what I mean by "protected from refutation". Suppose someone asserts that God always answers prayers. A possible reply might be "But yesterday you were praying for fine weather to-day and look, it's raining." The protective answer is "But sometimes the answer is No."
Quoting Leontiskos
No, that's not what Wittgenstein thinks. His discussion of ways of life and practices is not extensive; it's little more than a series of hints. But the foundations of language cannot possibly entail true or false propositions; if they did, they would already be language and therefore not the foundations of language.
As an illustration, consider the foundations of mathematics. Some people are inclined to think that the foundations of arithmetic, at least, are the practice of counting. This practice entails no arithmetical truths whatever, but it does make it possible to work arithmetical truths out. (We could go further and think that the practice of counting has foundations in our practice, in language, of distinguishing one apple from the next one and recognizing that there is more than one wasp eating the second one.) All of this is sketching, of course.
As Wittgenstein is worrying about the foundations of rationality, there is a much quoted moment when he comes to the end of the justifications that he can offer and exclaims "But this is what I do!". An example of this point in argumentation is concluding that, since S implies P and S is true, P is true. There is no more to be said. Anyone who can't see that needs education, not more argumentation. (Charles Dodgson somewhat anticipated Wittgenstein here by writing a dialogue in which the tortoise refuses to conclude that Achilles won the race and Achilles sets out to convince him. It doesn't work.)
Quoting Leontiskos
That seems a very sound policy. I was looking for examples that would show what I was trying to assert. I was not looking to engage in those arguments. I've outlined a couple of arguments above, and I hope they help.
Quoting Leontiskos
When I said that's a bad argument, I was agreeing with what I thought was your point - that the conclusion does not follow from the premiss. I don't know whether you think that "God exists" is an empirical statement or not, but I think it very unlikely that there is any empirical fact that would persuade you to abandon that claim. Equally there is for me no empirical statement that would persuade me to accept that God does indeed exist. Hence, I do not believe that "God exists" is an empirical claim.
What the Zen master is getting at is that by tethering the ox to the post, one is controlling things like blind passion, envy, greed etc and the psychological tendencies to inflate a sense of self importance, status in social grouping, for example. Or to feel a victim, when you are not, but you are in denial of poor behaviour to someone etc. (this can be a long list, with a lot of detail). These tendencies in human behaviour act as stumbling blocks and hurdles in the practice of stilling the mind and quelling emotions.
What I’m getting at is that a person is able to self reflect and carry out a restructuring of the psychological make up of themselves. Even the emotional make up, although, this is very difficult and usually accommodation is made for this in the practice. Also that in the spiritual scenario, to rebuild the self in the image of, and guidance of a deity. Hence the goal of enlightenment etc.
I would place this in the context of an internal process within the self, which does not necessarily require a thorough analysis. There are checks and balances and analysis going on, but in a personal form and language. When you say “ego”, presumably you are referring the the thinking person, the mind. The mind and thinking might be able to convey the process, but the practice of the process may include, emotions (the endocrine system) and the body (the animal, the primate, which we are).
It is a process which includes control, restriction etc, in order to free, through crisis. Or another way to see it, would be a way of getting out of a rut.
* I come to this with a history of seeing the self as made up of different parts. Sometimes 3, sometimes 5, or 7, or 12. So will find it difficult to go into detail without referring to this.
Well I never said that. The problem here is that implication doesn't make sense among non-truth-apt things, but that's a separate issue.
Quoting Ludwig V
How is that supposed to be "trouble"? Try presenting an argument to the effect that, "We might disagree about whether P is truth-apt, therefore Leontiskos' claim is false."
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
These two claims contradict one another. One moment you say that S cannot entail true or false propositions, and the next moment you say that S implies P and P is true. This is a good example of the problem with Wittgenstein's approach.
The point here is that when Wittgenstein says, "But this is what I do!," he is trying to excuse himself from argument and thus presupposing that "what he does" is inevitable and therefore not arguable or truth-apt. I would say that better philosophers don't make such an excuse. Aristotle will wrestle with the principle of non-contradiction, for example, in Metaphysics IV. He won't make an excuse and abandon the obvious fact that where S implies P and P is truth-apt, so too is S.
Quoting Ludwig V
See my post <here>.
To be honest, I don't think Wittgenstein is a very good philosopher, and I don't have much interest in discussing him or exegeting him. Of course if you think he makes a good point you can introduce that same point in your own words, but appeals to his name will be ineffective for me. I have no regard for his name, and these topics help explain why.
Quoting Ludwig V
Where does your desire for an argument for God's existence go? As far as I'm concerned, wherever it goes, it supports my point. Suppose I present an argument and it is convincing. In that case an atheistic way of life will be falsified (or invalidated) by the propositional truth. Or suppose I present an argument and it is unconvincing. In that case a theistic way of life will be less plausible given the propositional truth. Either way the propositional outcome will bear on ways of life.
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't think the argument is wholesale invalid. The idea behind it is that intractable disagreement among intelligent persons can signify a more fundamental problem (and that this problem could be related to what is or is not truth-apt). There is a rationale to the idea, even if I think it is wrong in this case.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think beliefs of this kind are falsifiable, and empirically so. Of course, it is obviously easier to falsify a negative existence-claim than a positive existence-claim. What is generally overlooked in this thread is that people change their minds all the time on the question of God, and they often do so when presented with arguments or when faced with empirical considerations (miracles, suffering, psychological insights, etc.). If the theories being proffered by atheists and agnostics within this thread were sound, then no one would ever change their mind about religious propositions. The theories are therefore empirically inadequate given the way people often change their mind with regard to religious propositions (and faith propositions more generally).
If the atheist says, "I believe God does not exist, and nothing will ever convince me otherwise," then I would say they are just being stubborn and irrational. If there is nothing that would convince him otherwise, then he is not taking the question seriously.
P.S. I think you need to address this in order to ensure that our whole conversation is not based on a misunderstanding:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Not in so many words, but you did say this:-
Quoting Leontiskos
and I think that what I said follows from that.
Quoting Leontiskos
It is trouble because you have to covince me that "God exists" is truth-apt before I'll be convinced by your argument.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, you are right. I carelessly continued using S without remembering that you had already assigned a value to it. I should have used a different variable, such as T. I'm sorry.
Quoting Leontiskos
Why on earth do you suppose he abandons that?
Quoting Leontiskos
Thank you for clearing that up. I mention his name because I had the impression that it is courteous to identify the source of other people's arguments when deploying them and because it saves time if you accept the argument. If you don't, then we may have to do this the hard way.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is indeed a more nuanced understanding. But now I need to ask why you think it is wrong in this case.
Quoting Leontiskos
That would be correct if "God exists" is true-or-false, like "Unicorns exist". You seem to think that it is. I think that it isn't. Until that is sorted out, your schema above does not apply. I believe that "God exists" is comparable, not to "Unicorns exist" but to "Matter exists" or "Consciousness is an illusion".
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm speechless. What on earth does that have to do with it?
Quoting Leontiskos
How would you prove that? Only by begging the question.
Incidentally, I could reply in kind - "If the theist says, "I believe God does exist, and nothing will ever convince me otherwise," then I would say they are just being stubborn and irrational. If there is nothing that would convince him otherwise, then he is not taking the question seriously." But that would be disrepectful. I take you more seriously than that.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, you are right, of course. I wrote that passage badly, without explaining myself. It doesn't matter, so I withdraw the claim.
Yes, that is clearly true. The question is, what more can we usefully say?
Quoting Punshhh
There's two more difficult terms. Sometimes the self is me, not a part of me. Sometimes not. Equivalent to the ego or not? But then, we do want to talk about processes going on "within" the person (as opposed to the body). Sometimes they are conscious and sometimes not. But there doesn't seem to be any agreement how this can be done. (In one way, ordinary language sets our starting-point, but it seems too limited for what we want to do.)
Quoting Punshhh
I would like to treat "ego", "self", "mind" as all equivalent to "person" - unless and until a more detailed and more objective framework can be developed.
We can say that it might make someone more constructive and cooperative in their and their family, friends and associates’s lives. It might make the life of the person more peaceful and enjoyable. It could result in the restoration and care of the ecosystem, locally, or globally. It might further their progress towards their liberation from material incarnation. And in the long term, contribute to humanity finding it’s rightful place as the custodian of the ecosystem of the planet and all that would entail.
Yes, I know, which is a part of the reason I went elsewhere to do this. There is a language and literature which does this in Eastern philosophy. But translating this into a Western narrative is not easy, Theosophy has tried, but this has not been adopted by Western academics as far as I know.
Well I can try.
I think concepts (including “faith”) need to be contextualised wrt their actual and scoped usage for better understanding and communication. Then one can abstract from some specific aspects to better identify similarities among different usages.
For example “faith” in ordinary contexts has different meaning from “faith” in religious sense. And its meaning may lean toward one direction or the other depending on what is contextually contrasted to: in the Western tradition, the meaning of the religious notion of “faith” has been contrasted to philosophical rationality and science.
If I wanted to abstract from more specific usages, I would say, as a starting point, that trust is an “epistemic emotion”: “emotion” because it has to do with “how I feel about something” and “epistemic” because faith is about “beliefs” (e.g. God exists, Jesus has both a devine and human nature, God is a trinity, etc.). This starting point seems to fit well with ordinary and religious usage. But I say it’s a starting point, for two main reasons:
- Epistemic feelings can concern also our senses and mental calculations. “Faith” seems more related to what somebody else communicated (a friend, a politician, a prophet, the holy book, etc.) or proved through deeds.
- In religious contexts, faith is also related to some normative practical engagement (which may include rituals and pious acts) by which we assess how virtuous and/or meaningful one life is. And also in ordinary usage, "faith" conveys some sort of informal engagement by which we assess people reliance, especially under test.
I think your view is being skewed by the religious use of faith - which does seem to be about beliefs. I agree that one can be faithful to one's beliefs (or principles). But if you think about common-or-garden phrases like " faithful friend", or "supporter/fan" or "husband/wife", or "servant" or "dog", I think you will see that in those cases, it is not about belief at all. It is about how someone behaves - different behaviour in each case, as required by the relationship in each case. "Faithful picture" or "account" are different, but obviously not about any beliefs.
But I think the religious use of faith is more complicated than it seems. In the Christian faith, the creed and signing up to it are very important. In other faiths, beliefs are less important. What matters most is behaviour - behaving according to the moral code, taking part in the liturgy and so on. Religion is only part about belief and only about belief as part of a whole way of life. Acccepting a religion is accepting the obligation to live according to those rules.
Does faith involve emotion? Yes, I would agree that it does.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Ludwig V
My original claim was, "If P is truth-apt, then S is truth-apt." You responded by effectively saying, "But the question is whether P is truth-apt." My response about "need not be" has to do with the fact that you are subtly committing the fallacy of denying the antecedent. When someone denies the antecedent the correct response is, "Both the consequent and the negation of the consequent need not follow." Saying, "It need not follow when you deny the antecedent," does not positively entail anything about the possibility of the consequent.
Furthermore, the idea that P may not be truth-apt has nothing to do with my original claim, and it tells us nothing about S given that original claim. You want to discuss the proposition, "If P is not truth-apt, then S is possibly truth-apt." The problem is that there are different modalities at play, but given that such a proposition seems irrelevant to my thesis, I don't see any use in pursuing it. My original claim has everything to do with the cases in which everyone agrees that P is truth-apt.
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
Okay, thanks. I appreciate that. :up:
Listen, this conversation is getting long and unwieldy. Rather than answering the whole bevvy of issues you are now raising, why don't you just point me to two of them that you deem most central, and I will answer those.
In my post, I already agreed upon the fact that the meaning of “faith” must be determined in the various contexts of their usage. Still, if the task is to identify some commonalities between some (not necessarily all) various usages, then one has to make some effort to abstract from a fine-grained analysis of each specific usage.
Besides, I also warned that my idea that “faith” is some sort of epistemic emotion was just a starting point in need of further elaboration, like the one you suggest: [I]In religious contexts, faith is also related to some normative practical engagement (which may include rituals and pious acts) by which we assess how virtuous and/or meaningful one life is. And also in ordinary usage, "faith" conveys some sort of informal engagement by which we assess people reliance, especially under test [/i]. So yes the behavioural dimension is also worth mentioning.
Still, what I would disagree with you on is the following claim: [I]if you think about common-or-garden phrases like " faithful friend", or "supporter/fan" or "husband/wife", or "servant" or "dog", I think you will see that in those cases, it is not about belief at all. It is about how someone behaves[/I]. Indeed, your putative counter-examples seem to be very much compatible with what I wrote. Beliefs do not need to be about what exists, their identity or properties, beliefs can also be about how people behave. For instance, when we talk about a faithful friend, parent, dog we are referring to the fact that these friend, parent, dog will act in ways we would expect (and approve of) from friends, parents, dogs based on passed behaviour. It is precisely because friends, parents, and dogs behaved in ways we approved of in the past, that we can believe they will do it again, and rely on it in our life (maybe even under daring circumstances).
"Faithful picture" or "account" refers to idea that certain representations won't betray expectations based on them, they can be trusted, I’m tempted to add "as men can be" (because those expressions can sound as a personification or a metonym).
By the way, I’m inclined to say that faith in an ordinary (non-religious) sense looks more synonymous of “trust” than faith in a religious sense (rhetorical nuances aside, i.e. “to have faith in” sounds more solemn or stronger than “to trust”), as if the religious understanding of faith is richer than that of trust.
Quoting Ludwig V
Again I agree on that the religious notion of "faith" has a complex semantic and that involves behaviour. I also readily referred to it in my post with the expression [I]“normative practical engagement (which may include rituals and pious acts)”[/I]. But the idea that “beliefs are less important” in faith (at least, in other religions compared to Christianity) sounds rather a misleading objection to me. “Rituals” and “pious acts” concern people’s behaviour, what people say or do in certain circumstances. And behaviour, what people say or do, can be performed without having appropriate inspiring beliefs or, even, theologically elaborated or critically scrutinized beliefs, or even a satisfactory grasp of what it is believed (religious people can believe in mysterious things like the holy trinity, Jesus' dual nature, miracles, etc.). So yes, in some of these senses belief in religious faith can be said to be "less important" than behavior. The point however is that also in the religious contexts behaviour, especially in the long run or under daring circumstances, is typically taken as an indicator of the strength/authenticity of one’s religious beliefs. Indeed, if people would perform rituals and pious acts without believing at all in the creed that inspired them, maybe due to peer pressure or out of irreligious interests, I doubt we would take them as a the paradigmatic example of religious faith. Prophets, saints and martyrs… they are.
On the other side, the difference between Christianity and other religions you are pointing at may even lead us to not consider those other religions as religions if the element of faith in some supernatural/sacred world is remarkably lacking (e.g. Buddhism is considered by some more as a philosophy than a religion).
Well, I was thinking that beliefs about people name, age, address place of work - neutral facts - don't count for anything like as much as about how they behave with us.
Quoting neomac
But to describe these relationships in that bloodless way does not distinguish these personal relationships from business partnerships etc. This is where the idea of faith as involved emotion does have appeal. Friends and family are the people that you love and are committed to; that goes beyond approving of their behaviour - it precisely means that you won't walk away whenever you disapprove of their behaviour. There is a lot of variation here, so I think that all we can say is that commitment when times are rough is at least on the table, and walking away will need justification.
But we do seem to be broadly in agreement. Faith is a complicated business and escapes from many of the formulas that people suggest.
It certainly is. I'll do my best.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the remark that I responded to. I took truth-apt to mean true-or-false, (i.e. empirical) and responded because I do think they are not true-or-false. We've discussed some of the reasons for that. I admit it may seem counter-intuitive, because it is said in philosophy that all claims of existence must be empirical. The alternative (unless all religious beliefs are pseudo-propositions) is that they are analytic or meaningless. Neither of which really make much sense. However, empirical or analytic are not the only options. Wittgenstein has richer resources. (I realize you won't like them.)
1. Hinge propositions are not non-truth-apt. They are true, in such a way that whatever else gets questioned in the debate, they are protected from refutation. "God exists" is a good example.
2. I think I've mentioned Wittgenstein's discussion of "seeing as" and this seems to me a really useful way of understanding what it going on here. A believer interprets the world in a different way from the unbeliever, seeing it as meaningful where an unbeliever sees it as meaningless - and finds meaning in it in a different way.
I know you don't like quotations but I don't want to waste your time, so let me make it clear that I know that you don't like Wittgenstein and I expect you to criticise this idea - and I will defend it as best I can. As a starting-point, the suggestion is that philosophical theories about the world are like interpretations of a picture. Which leaves all sorts of questions unanswered, but at least gives some understanding of the problem.
There are further possibilities, but they are not attractive to me;-
3. Axioms are also not non-truth-apt. Nowadays, they are stipulated (assumed) to be true, but it used to be the case that they were thought to be self-evident.
4 Presuppositions, in presuppositionalism, are simply adopted as true - an arbitrary starting-point. I don't quite see how any apologetics could develop from this
We've spoken a good deal about ways of life. Wittgenstein's use of the term, they are the foundations of language and are the basis of our understanding of truth and falsity, so not truth-apt, any more than practices are. Practices are just our way of doing things; they include the ways in which we establish truth and falsity and so provide a bridge between ways of life and language. We learn these as children as part of learning how to negotiate life. They are not themselves true or false but enable us to make statements that are true or false.`
In practice, our lives are more complicated than that, and our ways of life and practices are always liable to development and change, often in response to facts about the world. But the relationship goes two ways and is more complicated than material implication.
The implication of this is to give space to a world in which more than one way of life and one world-view may have at least provisional legitimacy at the same time. For me, that's the way the world is. Wittgenstein writes as if there is only one way of life in the world, and it is shared by all human beings. It is true that all human beings share something of their way of life, but they also differ enormously and I don't think that view holds water.
OK. So where do you want to start?
Quoting Ludwig V
I’m not sure you understood my proposal. I talked about “faith” in terms of “epistemic emotion” not about the reasons/genesis of such epistemic emotions or the metrics to assess the emotional component of such epistemic emotions or the rhetorical forms in which we can express such epistemic emotions. I can feel more confident about the disposition of business partners to act in certain ways in certain circumstances than it is the case with those I decided not to partner with, as much as I can feel more confident about the disposition of friends or relatives to act in certain ways in certain circumstances than it is the case with those who are not my friends or relatives. In both cases, it’s about how we feel about people’s dispositions to act in certain ways. It doesn’t matter whether what I feel about these people is based on affection or on material interest.
The emotion I’m talking about when talking about faith is epistemic not affective. It’s not the emotions we feel for friends and relatives like love or admiration. I can still be affectively attached to someone and support him/her even if I do not fully trust or have faith in or feel confident in his/her dispositions to act in certain ways in certain circumstances.
Finally, I doubt that ordinary phrases like “faithful friends” typically expresses some commitment on our side when we talk about our friends, as a religious expression of faith would. “Faithuful” in “faithful friends” is a qualification of our friends’ behavior (e.g. to stress the fact that s/he has never disappointed use, even in daring situations) independently from how we react to it.
Most certainly, it offers us a reason to reciprocate their faithfulness, which in turn can be motivated by their informal commitment toward us as we are inclined to assume when talking about “friendship”.
Oh, I see. Emotions = feelings. That's a new one to me.
A part from the fact that what I wrote doesn't presuppose such equation, “emotions" and "feelings" can be legitimately used as synonyms in common usage [1] that is why I didn’t feel the need to delve into their semantic differences. But I can also appreciate more subtle conceptual or psychological analysis. If you feel like providing yours, I can try to be more specific.
[1]
[i]"emotion
noun [ countable-uncountable ]
/??mo???n/
Add to word list
a feeling or sentiment
émotion [ feminine ]"[/i]
source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-french/emotion
[i]Definition of emotion noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
emotion noun
/??m???n/
/??m???n/
[countable, uncountable]
?a strong feeling such as love, fear or anger; the part of a person’s character that consists of feelings
to show/express your emotions
They expressed mixed emotions at the news.
Counselling can teach people to handle negative emotions such as fear and anger.
Fear is a normal human emotion.
This documentary manages to capture the raw emotions of life at the tough end.
Emotions are running high (= people are feeling very excited, angry, etc.).
She showed no emotion at the verdict.
The decision was based on emotion rather than rational thought.
Mary was overcome with emotion.[/i]
source: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/emotion?q=emotion
Quoting Ludwig V
Besides dictionaries, you can have a look at these entries of the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”:
The Early Feeling Tradition: Emotions as Feelings
Emotions as Evaluative Feelings
So what of all the thinkers who took mysticism and/or God quite seriously? It's sort of a whose who list from East and West: Plato, Aristotle, Shankara, Plotinus, Augustine, Ghazzali, Aquinas, Proclus, Avicenna, Hegel, etc.
Were they all affected by bias and a lack of intellectual honesty?
I don't have one. But I did wonder about feelings like the feeling of falling, or the feeling of an insect crawling up your arm, or feeling sick (nausea) or dizzy. "Feeling" seems to cover a multitude of sins, some of which count as emotions. Feeling confident is certainly something we say, and you seem to recognize that it is not the same kind of feeling as feeling angry or happy when you call them epistemic. I don't have any intuitive understanding of that category, so I feel somewhat at sea. Oh, and by the way, when I draw a conclusion from a conclusive argument, is that also a feeling?
Okay.
Quoting Ludwig V
Right: so we are dealing with the thesis that religious claims are not truth-apt (or in your case, some religious claims are not truth-apt). I think you are the first person in the thread to admit that you believe such a thing, so that's good progress.
Quoting Ludwig V
Well, I would first say that something which is truth-apt is not necessarily empirical. "3 > 1" is truth-apt, but not empirical, for example. But I would agree that a proposition which is truth-apt is true or false (or else capable of being true or false).
Quoting Ludwig V
Well I think <this post> of mine is the thing we have primarily been focused on. The key idea:
Quoting Leontiskos
One would object to this by saying, "In such-and-such a counterexample, S ? P, and P is truth-apt, but nevertheless S is not truth-apt." Do you or Wittgenstein have such a counterexample?
Quoting Ludwig V
Here it seems that you are conceding my point. You seem to recognize that we might encounter a fact about the world (~P) which causes us to change our way of life (S). Nowhere have I claimed that material implication exhausts the point I am making, and therefore your point about material implication does not actually count as an objection to my thesis. In fact I don't see that it has anything specifically to do with material implication. It has to do with implication and the possibility of modus tollens, which was already inherent in the implication relation long before Frege succeeded in introducing material implication. See also:
Quoting Leontiskos
If you want to say that P can invalidate S rather than that P can falsify S, I won't quibble with that. Are we disagreeing on anything more than that?
I could have more accurately said, "The point here is that if ways of life can validate propositions (facts) then they can also be invalidated by propositions."
They all have their different interpretations, which rather supports my point?the interpretation is not the experience. I take mystical experiences very seriously myself, having had quite a few of them and I think it is evident that they may be life-altering?I just don't believe they can be used to rationally justify any particular metaphysics or set of religious beliefs.
Quoting Leontiskos
"Truths" as I intended it translates to "purported truths". That people may imagine metaphysical conjectures to be truths does not mean they are. Some Buddhists believe we will all be reborn, and some Christians believe we will be resurrected?they can't both be true. Some Buddhists say there is no individual soul, some Vedantists say there is an individual soul, and most Christians believe there is an immortal individual soul?they can't all be true.
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree it is an important matter. I think religious or political indoctrination of children is immoral and should be illegal. But this is also a delicate matter, and its implementation would be difficult or even impossible in any way that would be generally acceptable.
Quoting Tom Storm
While it's true that people may of course agree about metaphysical posits I can't see how those agreements could be well-founded as agreements about empirical and logical posits can be. Even if people agree about metaphysical ideas being true, it is not possible to even accurately compare what they are agreeing about.
Well there's your equivocation. Truth and purported truth are two different things. When you say "truth" and mean "purported truth," you are equivocating in order to try to salvage a bad argument. Everyone knows that purported truths are not the same for all. Nothing notable there.
Have you thought of a reply to <this post> yet?
You're remarkably good at either failing to see the point or at deliberately changing the subject to avoid dealing with what is problematic for your position The point is that metaphyseal posits cannot be more than purported truths in that they fail to be subject to demonstration. That they cannot be more than purported truths was the reason I wrote "metaphysical "truths". Why harp and carp on it when I had already explained that?
Quoting Leontiskos
The phenomenological study of mystical experience would consist in investigating the ways in which those experiences seem, just as the phenomenological study of everyday experience consists investigating the ways in which everyday experience seems. Phenomenology is, or least the cogent parts of it are, all about the seeming.
But it has already been pointed out to you in some detail, by multiple persons, that your second sentence here does nothing more than beg the question. People who think metaphysical truths exist also think metaphysical truths are demonstrable. What good is your assertion otherwise? It makes no difference that you say metaphysical truths are not demonstrable, given that you have no argument for your assertion.
This is very close to your failure to justify an anti-slavery position. By all of your own criteria, "Slavery is wrong," is an unfalsifiable metaphysical position. And yet you hold it all the same, without argument or rationale. So you basically hold "metaphysical" positions when you want to, and you object to others holding "metaphysical" positions when you want to, and there is no rational basis in either case. It's just your will. Whatever you want, regardless of arguments.
Quoting Janus
So you think phenomenology limits itself to what experiences seem like? Have you read any phenomenology?
Does it? There are differing interpretations vis-á-vis everything. This seems like an appeal to consensus as truth. But I think it's fairly obvious that this is a poor measure of truth. If having many interpretations means there is no fact of the matter, then there can be no truth for indecisive murder cases either, since interpretations vary. So did no one in particular kill the victim? You virtually always have varying interpretations about the effects of economic policies before they have been implemented. Is there no truth of the matter about what their effects will be? Clearly, this applies as well to all manner of historical analysis and questions of history. And it would apply equally to the whole of ethics and aesthetics.
On the flip side of consensus, earlier you said racism was irrational. Yet there was previously scientific consensus about the superiority of different races in many respects. So too vis-á-vis sex, etc.
They are obviously not demonstrable to the unbiased, not matter how much the biased might beleive them to be.
Quoting Leontiskos
Your reading skills are truly woeful if you are writing honestly here. I have said many times I hold some positions which are not demonstrable, just because they seem intuitively right to me. I have also said I think it is fine for others to do the same. I have also said that I see no reason to expect others to agree with me about my intuitively held beliefs. The problem is when people conflate such intuitively held beliefs to be absolute truth.
You argue that metaphysical truths are demonstrable and yet you cannot explain how they could be demonstrated. All you do, over and over, is deflect in order to avoid answering that one very hard question.
Quoting Leontiskos
:roll: I was interested in phenomenology for many years and took undergraduate units in Heidegger and Husserl. How about you?
This is typical of your style? cast aspersions by asking leading question instead of addressing your interlocutor in good faith. If you disagree that phenomenology consists in reflecting on human experience in order to discover how it appears to us while bracketing metaphysical inferences, then give your account.
I thought I'd give you another chance to discuss things in good faith but if you don't up your game I'll just go back to ignoring you.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Truth is not a matter of interpretation?if something is true it is simply true. Beliefs are matters of interpretation. Don't conflate belief with truth and much confusion will clear up for you.
:lol:
You may as well just put an exclamation point on the end of your assertion and pretend that you have done something philosophical. Each time I point out the problem you can add an extra exclamation point.
Quoting Janus
Is the thing that "seems intuitively right to me" truth-apt? Isn't it precisely, "The thing that seems intuitively true to me"? And so the ever-looming question asks what is meant by these strange utterances such as, "Absolute truth." Does it seem intuitively true to you, but not intuitively absolutely true? Are these distinctions really thought to be meaningful?
Quoting Janus
I don't think you even know what a "metaphysical truth" is. It is not a stable category for you. Apparently you think that everything which is "indemonstrable" is "metaphysical." And apparently if we came up with a demonstration for something that previously lacked one, then it would magically transform from a metaphysical claim into a non-metaphysical claim. None of this is principled reasoning, and it is pretty hard to answer your request when you don't even know what you mean by a "metaphysical truth."
A well-accepted metaphysical truth would be the PNC, which Aristotle argues for in Meta IV. And given your remarkably strong reliance on intersubjective agreement, the PNC must be a demonstrable metaphysical truth (since virtually everyone recognizes it).
Quoting Janus
And you think Heidegger and Husserl limit themselves to what experiences seem like?
The point here is that you called phenomenology "quasi-empirical," and then you said that mysticism is a variety of phenomenology. I am wondering if you therefore deem mysticism quasi-empirical.
Or perhaps not to the biased.
Earlier you said non-demonstrable beliefs have absolutely no business in politics. So apparently anti-slavery beliefs should sit out of public life? Would it be inappropriate bias to object to slavery as a matter of law?
This would have the potential to be a fruitful conversation if you knew what you meant by your terms, but I don't think you know what you mean by either "metaphysical" or "demonstration." By "metaphysical" you seem to mean, "Stuff I don't think can be demonstrated," and by "demonstrated," you seem to mean, "intersubjectively agreed upon." This is basically a less coherent version of the equally circular, Rawlsian notion of "public reason."
They may have indulged in metaphysics. Heidegger accused Husserl of just that and then could arguably be said to have done the same. The original point of the epoché was to "return to the things", the actual experiences, and study those while bracketing metaphysical questions. I see that as the valuable part of phenomenology.
That doesn't mean I don't think metaphysical ideas can be interesting, or that the creation of elaborate metaphysical systems should not be admired in the kind of way one might admire great works of art, music and literature.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No it wouldn't because there can be no purely rational justification for treating someone as a slave. Power and authority are not purely (as opposed to practically) rational justifications but are tools of the biased.
If you think metaphysical claims can be demonstrated to be true then show how, or admit you are wrong.
So all government is the "tools of the biased"? And the authority of parents over their children? Or officers over their enlisted men, deans over their professors, or bishops over their priests and parishioners?
That seems pretty all-encompassing. Is anarchism the only way to escape "bias?"
Is there any purely rational justification for not doing it? Or not raping? Based on your standards, I would think not.
But there are. The Pope for instance. And there is practical justification for this.
That point is sort of ancillary though. Your standards make the whole of political theory "bias," and seemingly ethics and large parts of the study of history as well. Aside from being eyebrow raising, the fact that "bias" applies to so much seems to make the term mean little.
If the whole of political life is already mere bias, then I can hardly see how you can maintain your objection to religion being involved in politics on account of it also being biased.
The default is not to do it, obviously. The logic of living in community precludes treating others merely as means.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There might be practical justification for treating the pope as head of the church?it certainly doesn't follow that his word is the infallible word of God. There is also no justification, practical or otherwise, for excluding women from the role.
Ethics can be based on absence of bias?that is there is no purely rational justification for treating others any differently than one would expect oneself to be treated. There may be practical reasons for according special privileges to some people, but certainly no purely rational justification for doing so.
You seem to be endeavoring to dismiss my argument by egregious extension. I would hope to see better argumentation from you.
In any case that my position entails that all political theory, ethics and even history is mere bias has not been argued but merely asserted. Give it a go if you can be bothered.
I can agree on that. To my understanding too “feeling” has a wider meaning than “emotion”. And while emotions are feelings, not all feelings are emotions. That’s why I’m reluctant to accept the equation between feelings and emotions you attributed to me.
Quoting Ludwig V
“epistemic” refers to the fact that the “confidence” we feel is about holding something to be the case. In the religious context, people believe in things like Gods, angels, demons, souls, Afterlife, miracles.
In more ordinary contexts, our epistemic confidence is solicited or challenged by other peoples’ behaviour wrt our expectations about their behavior. But, as I said, in my first post epistemic confidence may concern also our own sensory or intellectual capabilities: e.g. we can grow skeptical about our sensory capacity once we understand that they can also mislead us (see, optical illusions or the distortions of our perceptual apparatus with substance abuse). And this is one of the main reasons why talking about religious faith as an epistemic emotion is just a starting point.
Quoting Ludwig V
I’m inclined to say that drawing conclusions from certain premises is a rule based intellectual activity. We can feel more or less confident in performing such an activity. So one thing is what we do (drawing conclusions from premises) another how confident we feel about it. We can draw a conclusion from certain premises, and doubt we have been performing this intellectual task successfully.
Showing that an argument terminates in absurdity is sort of a classic, hardly bad argument.
You're hanging a lot on "default' here. There is no reason not to have slaves, no reason not to exclude women, but we should tend towards the "default" because...? That doesn't seem very strong at all. Why is the default preferable If it is also just bias?
Second, if all of ethics is merely bias, I can hardly be acting "badly" by ignoring the default. I am merely choosing one bias over another. Why is that wrong? Is it irrational to not always prefer the default to anything else?
Plus, if not having slaves is also mere bias, but is the "default," why did slave taking seemingly exist in all human societies? If not raping is the default, why does rape exist throughout human history? If war were not the default, why has it existed throughout human history, or even in chimpanzee societies?
It looks to me like you have rendered all sorts of things mere "bias" through poor criteria, and now you are trying to bring back all you'd like through new terms.
If the symbol "?" unequivocally expresses a logic implication, then it expresses a truth function (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_function), where the truth of the implication must be assessed wrt the truth of S and P in a certain way (i.e. according to the truth table for the logic implication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional#Truth_table). For that reason it doesn't make any sense to say "It doesn't really matter what kind of thing S is" because if one talks unequivocally about "logic implication" then the kind of thing S must be is already constrained by definition: S and P must be something capable of being true or false. So S can not be whatever kind of thing, since there are things that are not true or false like a stone. That's also why it doesn't make any sense to infer the truth-aptness of S from P based on a supposed logic implication between S and P. S and P must be truth-apt for an implication between them to make sense, we do not need to suppose P to be truth-apt nor to infer S truth-aptness from P truth-aptness through the implication.
Your claim sounds as silly as claiming "suppose the arithmetic sum x + y = z, and that x and y are numbers. The result of that sum is that z is a number, no matter what kind of thing z is"
Good, but what is the premise of your point here? It is that, "No one would ever say that S implies P and yet S is not truth-apt." But we have folks doing that all the time on TPF, including within this thread. We regularly see folks who respond in this way: "Why do you hold P?" "Because of S, but S is not truth-apt." One of the examples I pointed to was an entire thread arguing for that idea.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Great points. :up:
What you describe as "default" I have previously described as @Janus's exclusive reliance on "burden of proof" claims. His one and only argument, at bottom, is, "They have the burden of proof, not me."
I seems pretty clear that @Janus embraces irrationality when confronted with these problems. This is a broader problem, in that, on TPF, discussions of ethics or politics or metaphysics are usually wholesale irrational. The current state of philosophy is incapable of addressing such topics in a rational manner. That's why the threads on logic or mathematics or reference are so popular: because they represent that small slice of reality where the Western mind can still manage to engage in rational thought. Asking someone like @Janus to consistently apply his theory to laws against slavery results in an endless circle of non sequitur responses, or in other cases, brazen equivocation.
Note though that if you ask Rawls why religion must be excluded from the public sphere, you will get the same sort of fumbling incoherence. This sort of incoherence is part and parcel of our epoch, and has been imbibed deeply by the post-WWII generation. The younger generations are so appalled by this sort of irrationality that I fear we will see a strong pendulum swing.
My comment to your quote is clearly premised with [I]“If the symbol '?' unequivocally expresses a logic implication”[/I]. So my or your opinion about what people say or said in this forum or outside is irrelevant. And even if it mattered, I would tell them the same I said to you about logic implications.
Quoting Leontiskos
"Holding P because of S" does not necessarily refer to a logic implication between P and S. And if S is not truth-apt then it doesn’t make any sense to claim that there is a logic implication between S and P.
Quoting Leontiskos
I’m not sure what you are referring to. Can you quote the claims which triggered that comment of yours I quoted in my first post?
Yes, it does, in precisely the way that is required for the relation I have pointed out. If someone holds proposition P because of S, then S is truth-apt. It doesn't matter if, for instance, S is one conjunct within a conjunctive antecedent (i.e. if S is only jointly sufficient along with other conjuncts).
Quoting neomac
Why insert yourself into a conversation if you do not understand the context?
Yes, I hoped you would want to add propositions like that. Do we call them necessary or analytic? Or both?
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think this is a key idea at all. It goes nowhere.
It is statements or propositions that substitute for the variables in a formula like that. You cannot substitute the Eiffel Tower for either S or P. But ways of life and practices are about what you have to know - be capable of doing - before you can make a statement, never mind draw an inference from it.
It looks like you want to substitute the Christian way of life for S and God's existence for P. Or is it the other way round? Never mind. The question that matters here is how we determine whether God exists. Until we can agree on that, there is no way an agreed conclusion can be achieved.
There is also an uncomfortable dilemma in the background. If S implies P, then we may want to establish wether S is true. Suppose we find an argument, with premisses R that implies S. Then R implies S and S implies P. It looks as if an infinite regress is looming here, with the uncomfortable result that nothing can ever be proven. The alternative is to find a starting-point. What might that be? That's what talk of ways of life and practices is about.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. That was a pragmatic decision. But it's scope is limited. The idea that a fact about the world might persuade to wholesale change in our way of life misunderstands what a way of life is. But amending or revision does not seem impossible to me, though I have no idea what Wittgenstein would say about the idea.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. Subject to the restriction that propositions emerge from ways of life via practices, so the changes will be changes of detail.
But it is worth remembering how much Christianity has changed in the last three hundred years. The church thought that Galilean physics was heresy, but seems to have managed to swallow it in the years since then. Evolutionary theory was thought to flatly contradict the Bible, but many Christians (but, yes, not all - far from it) have managed to swallow that as well. I'm sure you can think of other examples.
I don't follow your disjunctive syllogisms here. You said:
Quoting Ludwig V
"All philosophical existence-claims must be empirical. The alternative is that they would be analytic or meaningless, which is not right. But empirical or analytic are not the only options."
I don't follow any of that. And now you are saying, "'3 > 1' is not empirical, therefore it must be necessary [inclusive or] analytic."
Quoting Ludwig V
Why?
Quoting Ludwig V
If that's how you define a "way of life," then apparently there is no way of life that implies any proposition. But in that case, what are you supposed to be disagreeing with? Nevertheless, Wittgenstein would never say, "It's just what I do," about a way of life understood in that sense.
Apparently you are trying to say, "Yes Leontiskos, I agree with you. And I don't think ways of life ever imply propositions."
Quoting Ludwig V
Sure, if you like. Here is an atheist argument:
1. [Christian way of life] ? God exists
2. God does not exist
3. Therefore, the Christian way of life is false or invalid
That's a perfectly valid argument, and the Christian can't say, "Oh, but ways of life are not truth-apt, so your argument is illegal. My way of life is, 'protected from refutation.' "
Quoting Ludwig V
Why would anyone amend or change their way of life, on your view? Isn't it precisely because the way of life is undermined in whole or in part by something they come to understand? Do you have any principled way of "limiting the scope" of the idea that P can invalidate S?
Quoting Ludwig V
They can be changed in part or in whole. New discoveries can lead to modification of ways of life or full-scale refutation of ways of life. When Darwin wrote his book some Christians modified their Christianity and others abandoned their Christianity (while others were uninterested altogether). There was no "limited scope" preventing the wholesale abandonment.
I think what a lot of people are stuck on is "undecidability," so to speak.
Quoting Leontiskos
You want to say, "Ah, but there are cases where S and P are both undecidable, even if they are truth-apt." You seem to think this is one of those cases: <[Christian way of life] ? God exists>.
I grant you that if P is undecidable then S will not be falsified by P. Note that in that case what I say still holds, it's just that no modus tollens is practically possible.
In a practical sense I am thinking of P's which are decidable, and I think that all substantial ways of life will imply P's which are commonly recognized to be decidable. So if our age thinks God's existence is undecidable, then a better P for the Christian way of life would be historical, political, or ethical propositions which are thought to be decidable. The Christian way of life implies all sorts of propositions like that. In fact I would say that if a way of life lacks all such implications, then it is altogether otiose.
Focus, I’m talking about logic implications because you seemed to talk about logic implications in that quote while using the symbol "?". That was clearly stated as a premise in my first comment. If you want to talk about reasons to believe, then they shouldn’t be confused with logic implications. If I believe that an apple is on the table because I see an apple on the table, that doesn’t mean that there is a logic implication between my belief and my experience of the apple, not even between their descriptions (if S = “I believe that an apple is on the table” and P = “I experience an apple on the table”, then “S ? P” can be false, because S can be true while P false). The relation between belief and experience could be understood in causal terms or rule-based terms.
So either you are confused about what logic implications are, then my comment wasn't out of place. Or you are not confused, then you could have simply said: "no I'm not talking about logic implications" instead of coming back with a pointless rebuttal wrt my comment.
Quoting Leontiskos
Oh, you mean that if I understood the context of the conversation, I would have said something different about logic implications? Why do you answer me if you do not understand my comments to your quotes?
Claims of yours like the one I quoted may contribute to make the context of your conversation hardly intelligible. In fact, even after reading the post you pointed out I didn’t get what you were referring to in your quote.
That's an interesting thought. Do you have an example?
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm sorry I made a mistake. I was trying to do your work for you. I should have just asked the question. Given that "3>1" is not empirical (even though it is truth-apt), how do you classify it?
I may be wrong, but I am unclear whether truth-apt (meaning true-or-false) is really applicable to propositions that are true in all possible worlds. Perhaps you can clarify that for me?
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree that remark would not help their case. One cannot just announce that a proposition is protected from refutation. One protects a proposition from refutation by the moves one makes in the argument. In the case you give, I would expect the Christian to reject the second premiss "God does not exist".
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm sorry. I was under the impression that when a philosopher uses the arrow of implication, by convention they are talking about material implication. But you are right, modus tollens etc. are much older than Frege's logic.
Quoting Leontiskos
St. Paul might be a good example. But here's a puzzle. I've got very confused about whether it is the Christian way of life that demonstrates the existence of God or God that demonstrates the Christian way of life. Perhaps even both?
But the point here is that although St. Paul did radically change his way of life, he still managed to live in the same world as the rest of us, so did not abandon large parts of the way of life he was living before his conversion.
The critical role for standard philosophy of ways of life is that they establish and enable our practices, including our ability to formulate propositions, evaluate them and so forth (and I include making judgements of value in this). St. Paul may have modified his beliefs, but the fundamental abilities were not touched. They were differently applied.
Quoting Leontiskos
As we get deeper into this, it is necessary to question your use of "validate" here. Ways of life do not, in themselves, validate anything. They are the foundation on which we build our practices of validating things. They establish or enable those practices.
I don't question our ability to evaluate how we live and to identify room for improvement. But that ability presupposes the existence of ways of life and at least a continuity in our modification of them.
Quoting Leontiskos
Partly, yes. But now I'm modifying that concession by insisting that part of the role of ways of life is beyond validation, because it is the foundation on which our practices of validation are built. (Believe it or not, this is new territory to me, and I'm thinking on my feet. So things may change.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
In some cases, like the puzzle pictures, more than one interpretation is applicable and there is no fact of the matter that will decide the issue. In those cases, it would not be wrong to say that both interpretations are true, though I would add "in a modified sense of the word". But one could also say that both interpretations are correct or satisfactory or valid. I think that accurately reflects the facts of the matter.
But in other cases, like your indecisive murder case, there is an assumption that somewhere there is a fact of the matter that will arbitrate between competing interpretations; after all the person in the dock either did, or not did not, kill the victim. (Actually, in some cases, that assumption may be false. It is not impossible for more than one person to share the guilt, and the law has devised various ways of coping with those situations.)
Quoting Janus
I agree with you that truth and interpretation do not sit easily together. In puzzle picture cases, I agree that it is not satisfactory to simply say that the interpretation of the picture as that of a rabbit is true, or that the interpretation as a duck is true. For me, the truth of the matter is that the picture can be interpreted both ways and even, possibly, as a collection of marks on paper.
Quoting neomac
I agree with you. It's a complicated issue.
Reasons given for truth or true belief are logical implications. "There is an apple on the table because I see it" -
Quoting neomac
If you believe that your vision of the apple implies its existence, then you believe the logical implication. Of course believing something does not eo ipso make it true, but there are no truth-claims apart from beliefs.
We should not confuse reasons to believe with logic implications, because reasons to believe have to do with the actual formation of our beliefs, their genesis.
We should not confuse reasons to believe with logic implications, as much as we should not confuse an arithmetic sum with calculating an arithmetic sum or a deduction from certain premises through logic operations like logic implications with logic implications.
The process by which we derive certain beliefs from a certain informational source can be understood in causal terms or as rule-based cognitive activity.
Quoting Leontiskos
I have no idea what "fallible logic implication" means. Either the logic implication holds or it doesn't. Our beliefs can be said to be "fallible" not logic implications. Logic implication is a function which applies or not. If it does not apply, then there is no logic implication. On the other side, we can succeed in processing a logic implication or we can fail it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Focus, you have moved from describing a genetic relation between belief and their reasons as a logic implication (which I’m questioning) to a belief on a logic implication. Sure, if I believe in a logic implication, then I believe in a logic implication. So what? That’s not the point.
You seem to think that there are truth-claims apart from beliefs. If I question P and someone says that P is justified on account of S (or that P is true because of S), then we have a putative logical implication between S and P. This shouldn't be as hard as you are making it.
You seem to think that the person is not asserting a logical implication between S and P, but I really don't follow your reasoning. If some onlooker said, "They don't believe P because of S; rather, they believe P because of T," then we would have to talk about beliefs, causality, and all of the other tangents you want to bring in. But there is no need, because we are talking about people who are claiming justification for their own beliefs, and that's what logic always is. There is no such thing as logic apart from minds and beliefs.
A few posts ago I wanted to clean up the conversation because you had created so many different tangents, and now I fear the same thing is happening. You claimed that what is truth-apt is empirical, I pointed out a counterexample, and you seemed to agree. But now you want to go on another tangent, this time about how exactly we should classify mathematical propositions. Why the tangent? What purpose of ours does it serve to answer such classification questions? I simply cannot afford so many new tangents every few posts.
Summarizing, I said this:
Quoting Leontiskos
You have offered what I see as two basic responses. Your first response was that there are some things that do not imply any propositions, and you gave the example of Wittgenstein's hinge propositions. My response is that if we cannot suppose that S ? P then there is no objection to my claim, but that this only holds for some S's.
Your second response is something like the idea that, entirely apart from the question of truth-aptness, there are some P's which are not decidable, and those P's will not be sufficient to falsify S. My response is to concede the point, but yet claim that this only holds for some P's. So we are running into Square of Opposition difficulties:
Quoting Ludwig V
An example of a decidable P which follows from your chosen example of the Christian way of life would be, "Creation is good," or, "Care for the widow and orphan," or, "Do not commit abortion (or else exposure of infants)," or, "Jesus was resurrected from the dead."
Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
A way of life which implies nothing at all hardly seems to count as a way of life.
Quoting Ludwig V
But if they must engage in argument to protect P from refutation, then P has already been taken to be truth-apt and decidable. We were talking about a priori ways to protect P from refutation, such as denying its truth-aptness or its decidability.
Quoting Ludwig V
Okay, then we understand each other.
Quoting Ludwig V
We could simplify the story and categories a bit and just say that St. Paul encountered something which caused him to decide to abandon Judaism and embrace Christianity. Your objection is something like, "Ah, but Judaism and Christianity have a lot in common, therefore he did not abandon his way of life; he just modified it."
You're still claiming that, "The scope [of changes to one's way of life] is limited." Well, what limits it, and why? What counts as an abandonment and what counts as a change, and why can humans only change but never abandon their way of life? All of that looks rather arbitrary to me.
And what if we look again at your chosen example, the Christian way of life? People obviously abandon the Christian way of life, so it sure looks like abandonment of things that you deem ways of life is possible.
Quoting Ludwig V
Implication can be two-way, even though the various reasons will be chronologically limited.
Quoting Ludwig V
What is happening is that you are equivocating on "ways of life." The equivocation was present even when you were talking about Wittgenstein, for even there you referred to both non-justificatory schemas and justificatory schemas as ways of life. But your chosen example of the Christian way of life certainly does validate certain propositions.
Here is the place where you spoke about justificatory schemas:
Quoting Ludwig V
Obviously, given what you say here, S implies or "validates" P.
But all of this goes back to the some/all problem. Do you really think that all S's imply no propositions?
Quoting Ludwig V
Okay, thanks for letting me know.
Do you read what you write? “putative” means that the implication that is believed to hold, in fact it may not hold. So no implication. What’s so hard to understand?
A justification can be understood as a rule based cognitive process by which we derive certain beliefs from some source of information. Logic implication is one of such rules. One thing is the rule another how we process it. You have to compare a logic implication with an arithmetic sum. Arithmetic sums apply to numeric values as much as logic implications apply to truth values. Still we can fail to process them correctly. That “2 + 3” “putatively” equals “23” to me, means that I failed to apply the arithmetic sum between 2 and 3. Namely, 23 does not result from the arithmetic sum 2+3. Is that hard to understand?
Quoting Leontiskos
I have no problems with people asserting logic implications, I’m simply claiming that you can not conflate logic implications with inferences based on logic implications, nor conflate justifications and reasons to believe with logic implications. Logic implications are like rules, that we can successfully apply or fail to apply. Logic implication and arithmetic sum can not be meaningfully claimed to be fallible. What is fallible is our processing of logic implications and arithmetic sums.
Quoting Leontiskos
No I’m pointing at a basic categorical mistake you are committing. It’s like you are confusing a rule with the execution of it. It has nothing to do with first-person vs third person reports. A first-person claim that I believe there is an apple on the table because I see an apple on the table, or that my belief that there is an apple on the table implies that I see an apple on the table (or that there is an apple on the table), doesn’t mean that a logic implication holds about what is believed and the source of this information. Stating a logic implication doesn’t make it true. So a “putative” case of logic implication which does not hold is no logic implication. The fact that 23 does not result from the arithmetic sum between 2 and 3 is not matter of first and third person report.
If you want to distinguish so strongly between believed logical implications, and other logical implications, then why don't you point me towards a logical implication that is not believed? Because you seem to think that if "the implication is believed to hold, in fact it may not hold. So no implication." What this means is that in order for there to be a real implication it must not be believed to hold. You will have to point me towards that real implication, the kind that is not believed to hold. Where can I find that?
Quoting neomac
So you say:
Quoting neomac
You stated an implication, but that doesn't make it true. So what does make it true?
Note that your focus on "objective implication" is beside the point. Here is my argument:
Quoting Leontiskos
We could write this as a conditional, "If S ? P and P is truth-apt, then S is also truth-apt." That is "objectively true," if you like. We could adapt it for belief, "If someone believes that S ? P and that P is truth-apt, then, logically speaking, they ought to believe that S is also truth-apt." Of course this is redundant, given that whenever we present an argument we are attempting to influence the beliefs of others.
Originally you were arguing that if S ? P then both S and P must be truth-apt. Sure, I agree with that, but I want to specifically highlight the independently-derived truth-aptness of P given my interlocutors and the positions they are holding. In any case it seems that some of them would be tempted to say that if P is undecidable then it is not truth-apt.
Our first-person understanding of our own beliefs is that they can be fallible no matter if the content of our belief refers to a fact or a logic implication. So it’s from within our own beliefs that distinction between what is believed and how things are must be maintained. Otherwise just believing that something is true would make it true.
You keep understanding what I’m writing in light of your categorical mistake, not on its own terms. Logic implications are kind of cognitive rules which we can use to process information and can still fail to do so.
Quoting Leontiskos
All the circumstantial conditions (empirical or not) that we take to be relevant to validate that implication. For example, I’m at home and I hear ringing at the door, so I believe that if behind the door there is somebody, then this is my friend which I previously invited at home that day and that time. Then I open the door and see that indeed my friend is there. In this case, I can hold my implication to be true. On the other side, if it’s my neighbor asking me to borrow something from me, then I can hold the implication I believed in false.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, do you read what your write? I already made my objection in my first post against your argument (“Suppose that S ? P, and P is truth-apt. It follows that S is truth-apt. It doesn't really matter what kind of thing S is”). Then you say “Originally you were arguing that if S ? P then both S and P must be truth-apt. Sure, I agree with that”. But if you agree with my objection that highlighting attempt doesn’t make any sense. What you can do instead is to check if your interlocutor formulates their reasons to believe via logic implications and go from there to review your interlocutors’ claims.
But even in this case we should not confuse reasons to believe with logic implications. Indeed, one can use logic implications to convey the idea of a dependency between claims (and that is what you seem to be trying to do with your highlighting). But that doesn’t mean that our reasons to believe are all “claims” over how things are. Experiences are not claims over how things are. Concepts are not claims over how things are. Logic and arithmetic functions are not claims over how things are. Yet experiences, concepts, arithmetic and logic functions are very much part of the reasons why we believe certain things. For example, I believe true that if x is a celibate, then x is not married. What makes it true? The semantics of “celibate”, but “celibate” is a concept not a claim over how things are.
Even the relation between a rule and its execution is a form of dependency that one can render as a logic implication, but it would be totally misleading, actually a categorical mistake, to claim that the relation between rules and their execution is a logic implication. I can claim: If “3+5” expresses an arithmetic sum, then its result is “8”, that doesn’t mean that the relation between the arithmetic sum rule and my actual calculation there is a logic implication, and this time not only because I can fail the arithmetic rule in an attempt to follow it, but also because an arithmetic sum is an arithmetic rule not a claim over how things are, and my mental calculation is a cognitive process not a claim over how things are.
Here is another example of confusing way of talking: the concept of ‘’logic implication” implies truth values. But that can’t possibly mean that there is a logic implication between the concept of logic implication and truth values. What it means is that truth values are integral part of the semantics of “logic implication”.
I'm simply considering your idea from various angles. I don't see a problem. Judging from your reference later on, you classify mathematical propositions as a priori. You could have just said so.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm not sure whether I completely accept your characterization. But since we seem to agree that "S implies P" is sometimes valid and sometimes not, depending what we substitute for S and P, I don't think there is any need to pursue that any further.
Quoting Leontiskos
... unless what is at stake is whether P is truth-apt and decidable.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think that means you think accept both "God validates the Christian way of life" and "The Christian way of life validates God". I'm not sure what to make of that. Intuitively, neither seems wrong. I don't see what you mean by "the various reasons will be chronologically limited".
Quoting Leontiskos
"Creation is good" is an evaluation. I expect you are an objectivist about ethics and so would claim that the statement is true. I won't argue with you. But value statements are a distinct category from factual statements such as "God exists", so I don't see how this helps your case.
"Care for the widow and orphan" and "Do not commit abortion or exposure" are not statements of any kind; they are imperatives and not capable of truth or falsity. They don't help your case.
"Jesus was resurrected from the dead" does appear to be truth-apt and, in principle, decidable. But it is not decidable now, so it doesn't help your case.
Quoting Leontiskos
I doubt if it is possible to equivocate with a phrase as ill-defined as "way of life". It's almost completely elastic and plastic.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's not quite what I meant. I meant that he did not abandon his way of life as a human being when he abandoned his way of life as a Jew. He cannot abandon his way of life as a human being without ceasing to be a human being. It is because he did not abandon the human way of life that he could preach the Gospel and be understood.
Not true.
Quoting Ludwig V
No, not at all. My argument was never, "Every S implies every P." This is a strawman.
Quoting Ludwig V
Is it decidable? That is the question we are asking.
Quoting Ludwig V
So you are a moral anti-realist? Most people aren't, so for most people these are decidable propositions.
Quoting Ludwig V
"Decidable but not decidable now." Looks like more confusion. There are all sorts of arguments for and against historical events, but apparently you are forced to deny this fact.
Quoting Ludwig V
Why would it be hard to equivocate with a phrase that is "completely elastic and plastic"?
Quoting Ludwig V
And there is no reason I must claim that he abandoned his life as a human being as opposed to his way of life as a Jew. Why would you think that? It's pretty clearly a strawman. If he can abandon his way of life as a Jew, then my thesis is secured. You are falling into the same some/all fallacy here. "He didn't abandon every way of life, therefore he didn't abandon any way of life."
Why not? Do you have any valid arguments for this thesis? You say:
Quoting neomac
Suppose I ask someone why they believe P. They answer, "Because I hold to S and S implies P," where S is a "way of life."
What is your objection? Apparently it is that S is an "experience," and, "experiences are not claims over how things are."
So while I would say to them, "If P is truth-apt then S must also be truth-apt," you would say to them, "S is an experience, not an assertion, and therefore it cannot imply P." They would probably just tell you that they hold to S because they believe it is true, or else that they hold to it because it is good and what is good is true. S is not merely an experience; it involves a volitional and normative choice.
The reason I find this conversation so bizarre is because you are basically denying empirical facts. People do justify propositions on the basis of ways of life, including religions. It seems like you are committed to denying this fact. In Western countries with a right to religious freedom it is commonplace in law for someone to justify a belief or an action on the basis of a religious "way of life."
I thank you for your patience during our debate. I have learnt quite a lot from it, especially that I need to think through more carefully what I have been trying to say.
But I'm afraid I cannot continue any longer.
Thanks, that seems fair to me. Sorry if I was impatient - I did not appreciate that you were thinking through some of this for the first time.
As an endnote I just want to note that there is a parallel to the point I am making. The parallel is this: if something "undecidable" bears on something which is decidable, then the former thing is decidable (via the latter). For example, something that cannot be directly decided (Jesus' resurrection) can often be indirectly decided (via, for example, historical arguments, even if these arguments are limited to probabilistic reasoning).
These sorts of points are really the crux of why someone like @Janus is mistaken. We can take it a step further by noting that whenever someone believes something, they have a reason for believing, and that reason will (almost) always be falsifiable. Ergo, given that the psychological PSR holds, there is no such thing as an unfalsifiable belief. The notion of an "unfalsifiable belief" turns on prescinding from the psychological manner in which beliefs are formed.
So for example, if someone believes in Russell's teapot, then on my theory the belief is not unfalsifiable. This means that we can falsify the belief even if we cannot falsify the proposition. So instead of independently investigating whether there is a teapot between Earth and Mars, we would ask the person holding the belief why they believe it, and by falsifying their reasons or inferences for belief we would have undermined the belief. So perhaps it would be better to say that the belief can be shown to have insufficient grounds, rather than be falsified per se.
Thus, running roughshod over most of the previous comments. Weird...
Did you have a point to make, or are you just gesturing without taking the risk of saying anything substantial?
Edit:
Quoting AmadeusD
Ah presumably you are talking about the previous comments within my post, not the previous comments within the thread?
If the objection is that someone holding such a belief is immune from counter-argument, then my post is coherent. If the objection is that someone holding such a belief is amenable to counter-argument even though the proposition itself, considered independently of their belief, is unfalsifiable, then my post is contradictory. But obviously I take the former view, and I think that view correctly captures this thread at large. The complaint/crux has been that the belief is irrefutable, not that the proposition upon which it bears is unfalsifiable. If the objector were to see that an unfalsifiable proposition is refutable qua belief then presumably they would be satisfied, and that is what my post endeavors to argue. The unfalsifiable/irrefutable equivocation is not uncommon. Indeed, it is arguable whether, upon convincing someone that their belief is not true, we should have "falsified" their belief. If they move from "true" to "not true" without going all the way to "false," has falsification occurred?
Both - but our most recent exchange has jaded me on the latter. No hard feelings - just an explanation.
Quoting Leontiskos
.. yes, and with some jest. I should've made that clearer!
Quoting Leontiskos
Yeah - i found that discussion helpful and pretty decent as it's something I've not thought too much about. But hte conclusion seems to say something other than the discussion concludes with. I think beliefs (even ones where the state of affairs can be confirmed) can be shown to have shoddy grounding. Gettierrrrrrrrrrr (with some bells and whistles).
First, as I clarified in my first post, I’m talking about logic implications. but I do not exclude that there are more equivocal ways of using the word “implication” in common usage.
Second, logic implications are functions in the domain of truth values and we use it to construe complex descriptions which can be true or false from simpler descriptions of how things are. Reasons to believe could be any source of information (including empirical facts, of course) that gets in the actual and fallible (I’d also add “conscious”) process of forming a belief. A sharp knife dirty with blood found hidden in X’s house can be claimed by a detective to be a reason to believe that X is the murderer of his/her neighbour. But a sharp knife dirty with blood itself is not a claim over how things are.
Third, logic implications are used in explanations (also in causal explanations) to express a truth-functional dependency between certain described conditions. Both descriptions and explanations are fallible. They can also fail for conceptual reasons: as I clarified in my first post, "If P is truth-apt then S must also be truth-apt" doesn’t make any sense if we are talking about logic implications for the conceptual reasons I already pointed out. The truth-aptness of S can not be implied from the truth-aptness of P since logic implications can apply only to truth value bearers like descriptions. It’s the semantics of “logic implication” that requires the truth-aptness of all its arguments prior to even applying the logic implication. We do not discover the truth-aptness of one argument from the hypothetical truth-aptness of the other argument AFTER applying a logic implication. One can't meaningfully apply "logic implication" to arguments which aren't already truth-apt.
Quoting Leontiskos
As I said, reasons to believe “could be any source of information (including empirical facts, of course) that gets in the actual and fallible (I’d also add ‘conscious’) process of forming a belief” . The categorical mistake you are committing is to believe that a truth-apt description of a certain reason to believe something makes the reason itself truth-apt. I can believe certain things for conceptual reasons, factual reasons, causal reasons, logic or arithmetic reasons, emotional reasons, moral reasons, etc. that doesn’t make those reasons themselves truth-apt, at least not in the same sense descriptions are.
Well that makes two of us.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay - good to hear.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well how do you answer this question?
Quoting Leontiskos
If the belief is 'not true' then the belief is false. Even if there's some way to jigger the state of affairs to not yet be 'false'. It's just an error in terms (would be my answer).
Remember that we are talking about refuting someone's reason(s) (R) for belief (P). They begin:
Our refutation is a refutation of R:
Solve for '?' Are you saying that the conclusion is, "? ~P" ?
The result is that P does not follow, i.e. "P is not (necessarily) true." They have moved from, "P is true," to, "P is not true," without going all the way to, "P is false." Ergo:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
These are the same claims (the two in quotes). P is false. The "solve" you want isn't apt, as far as I'm concerned. P is false at "~R".
The error being that a failure to support one's belief doesn't entail the state of affairs being false. It does, however, directly entail that your belief in the state of affairs is false. Hence "Gettierrrrr (with bells and whistles)".
Wouldn't that form be a sort of "debunking argument?"
A debunking argument will claim to show that the cause of your belief that p is not caused by p (or something that entails p). It is stronger if it also shows you now lack good warrant to believe p, but it can also just show that the relationship isn't direct. In this case, the warrant is undermined, not the conclusion.
There are problems with that sort of argument though. When they proceed from underdetermination, they seem to show that virtually all beliefs are unwarranted, which is obviously far too strong. Using underdetermination, we can cast doubt on the idea that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that mating cats to cats produces cats and not frogs, or that the universe wasn't created seconds ago, etc., but this seems a tad much. The trick is really finding out what goes wrong in the extreme cases (or for some philosophers, it's rebuilding all of philosophy on radical skepticism due to underdetermination...)
But it's also obvious that they are sometimes appropriate.
Reminds me of the heady days of the Jref forum.
Why isn't this just the fallacy of denying the antecedent?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think this is what I am talking about. When I said, "They begin [...] Our refutation [...]," I am envisioning a dialogue. The idea is that you convince the person who had held to R that R is false.
The broader idea is this. Let's suppose there is some unfalsifiable proposition UF, and that John holds to UF. Is John's belief therefore irrefutable? Certainly not, for he holds to UF for a reason. If one were to convince John that his reasons do not hold, then he would stop believing UF, even though UF is unfalsifiable. In response to @AmadeusD's ideas, I would say that what is unfalsifiable cannot be falsified, and therefore we lack grounds for deeming it false. Nevertheless, we need not deem it true.
(Even if we say that some of his reasons are unconscious, they are presumably still able to be addressed. Unconscious reasons do not generate irrefutability unless we are unable to affect such unconscious reasons. Granted, at this point we may be talking about something other than "refutation.")
We could think of a very simple example.
"Trump dyed his hair brown!"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I saw it on the news, from *this video*."
"That video is a deepfake."
"Oh, okay. I guess _____"
Here are two options for the blank ("_____"):
A. Trump did not dye his hair brown
B. I have no good reason to believe that Trump dyed his hair brown
Because it isn't. Not sure what else you could want in response to that. It's my pointing out there you're confusing two separate conclusions which rely on separate reasoning within the example.
Perfect. In your example the state of affairs isn't false (jury is out, as it were, as described) but the belief is clearly false.
The state of affairs, and the belief in it, are not the same thing and are not falsified the same way. Any belief can be falsified without looking at the state of affairs, as I see it. I will simply repeat what you've quoted to round out:
Quoting AmadeusD
I do not understand how, after the above, the argument you're making can be made. You could tell me this conception is wrong and we can talk about that, but your reasoning simply isn't apt anymore. Perhaps the above makes this more explicit..
Really? "Because it isn't," is probably not going to be satisfactory to anyone, anywhere. What everyone, everywhere, will want is a reason why.
Quoting AmadeusD
Can you delineate what you mean by "the state of affairs," and what you mean by, "the belief"?
The fellow believes Trump dyed his hair. Is his belief false?
In a logical sense what we say is that his argument for the conclusion that Trump dyed his hair is unsound, but that this does not entail that the conclusion is false. I don't think it is correct to distinguish belief from proposition in that way and say that the belief is false but the proposition is not.
There are three propositions and three beliefs:
1. If *this video* is reliable then Trump dyed his hair
2. *This video* is reliable
3. Therefore, Trump dyed his hair
Belief/proposition (1) is true; belief/proposition (2) is false, and belief/proposition (3) does not follow from (1) and (2) because (2) is false. The belief/proposition, "Trump dyed his hair," is therefore neither known to be true nor known to be false. I don't see what grounds we have to say that the belief in question ("Trump dyed his hair") is false.
"Why isn't this tshirt Green?"
Right-o.
Quoting Leontiskos
They are, quite clearly, self explanatory, so I don't want to come across an ass and just state them again. They are self-explanatory, and cannot be confused on their own terms. If you are confusing a state of affairs with a belief in the state of affairs, I do not know where to go... That is bizarre and unfortunate, if so.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. I have explained this explicitly above, to the degree that this feels like outright trolling:
Quoting AmadeusD
That's sort of your answer to everything. You very seldom give reasons or arguments for your positions. That's a problem when you're on a philosophy forum. Know that I am simply not going to continue responding to your posts if they do not present any arguments or reasons for your claims.
If not, I cannot see how you are running this line, in good faith. I've presented arguments, and reasoning for all of what I've said (and have reviewed two of substantive exchanges to confirm). That you either don't engage, or don't understand doesn't seem to me something I have to answer to. I've even reiterated an re-posted plainly relevant passages for ease. These appear to be ignored also. It is twilight zone stuff to be charged with something like this:
Quoting Leontiskos
This is, to put it mildly, bullshit.
If you want to PM about what is (in my view) a clear troll on your part, I'm open. Otherwise, it's best we avoid each other to avoid the requirement of impugning each other in a way that violates forum etiquette (though, apparently this does not apply to many other posters).
When there is an impasse such as this, I would say that what is needed are formal arguments, with explicit premises and conclusions. That's why I have been doing this in many of my recent posts. If you want to give formal arguments I think we can continue. If not, not.
(I saw that a post of yours disappeared. Just so you know, I did not report it or even have a chance to read it. A moderator may have simply taken the initiative.)
I disagree. We're not at a point where you're understanding the words im using. Formal argument would not help here. That said, I have responded to your formal arguments. For some reason, my responses are just either ignored to said to be 'wrong' without anything further. Your syllogism above does not work for me, and I've said why.
Here is my argument:
Quoting Leontiskos
You responded by saying, "Yes. I have explained this explicitly above, to the degree that this feels like outright trolling..." But my argument was precisely against your assertion that beliefs and propositions, "are not falsified the same way," so it doesn't help to point back to the assertion I was arguing against.
As to this:
Quoting AmadeusD
Another assertion, which my argument addresses. Replace "Any belief," with, "Some beliefs," and I would agree with you. But the case from my argument cannot be "falsified" without knowledge of the state of affairs, namely without knowledge that the video is a deepfake.
If the actuality is undetermined then the truth or falsity of the belief will also be undetermined. If someone believes something for reasons based on false information then the belief is unsupported, but not necessarily false.
(Good post)
Clearly, but my responses remain the same. That you think the are the same thing as far as this goes, is bizarre and unsupportable to me prima facie. It is non-intelligible. Quoting Leontiskos
Knowledge held by a third party. So, the subject isn't involved in that knowledge-having. I, personally, could give you evidence that such and such a belief is false (i.e you do not have anything which supports it in hand) and not comment on the state of affairs.
I could also provide evidence of hte kind you note (source of hte deepfake, lets say) without getting anywhere near the grounds for your belief.I have not shied from this being quite weird, but I bite this bullet. Maybe you don't, and that's the issue. If something crucial has been missed by me, I would assume it was something around this. That the subject has had this evidence given to falsify the state of affairs. And that's fine, it's not likely they would continue to believe the falsified state of affairs. This does not entail that they had a false belief (to me). They had a true belief, in a false state of affairs (reiterating the bold above)
Quoting Janus
This feels as if it is the reverse of what's being asked. If you falsify the state of affairs, but hte person remains steadfast in a belief due to reasonable standards of evidence then the belief is 'true' and the state of affairs false. That said, this could be only possible in the other direction (i.e falsifying a belief does not entail that the content of the belief is false (this one is clearly true)).
Is that the confusion? If it isn't, I have to just walk away from a conversation which confuses a state of affairs with a belief in it (or, amalgamates them). It isn't something i buy at all. Nothing personal in that. It's just coming across completely stupid to me to claim that reasoning for falsifying a belief in a state of affairs is the same as reasoning falsifying the state itself.
If either of you believe you could run an argument that would bring those two together (rather than premising the argument with that assumption) then we can maybe get further.
Quoting Leontiskos
OK then, I agree that you respectfully disagree. :wink:
Even in my original scenario the knowledge that the video is a deepfake is shared by both parties. That was the whole premise of the multiple-question format:
Quoting Leontiskos
I also said it explicitly:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting AmadeusD
You are saying, "They had a true belief, in a false state of affairs." Can you give me the example where this claim would hold? Presumably you are not just saying, "They truly/really believed something false."
Quoting AmadeusD
If I understand this, then I think we should say that the belief is justified but false.
Quoting AmadeusD
The Gettier case is one where the conditions for justified true belief (JTB) are satisfied and yet knowledge does not obtain. What we are talking about here is a case where one sees that the reasons for their belief are false, and nevertheless the belief itself (and the proposition, if you like), remains undecided.
---
Quoting Janus
Only a moron such as yourself would agree with such nonsense. :rage:
Only a fool such as yourself would think that I was serious. (Don't imagine for a moment that I am being serious here or that I imagined you were being serious either, or your foolishness will be exponentially increased).
Quoting AmadeusD
Right, I get that?such "true beliefs" are just a matter of dumb luck. Let's not get into the gutter with the gettier mess as to whether they may be justified.
Then drink if you dare! And we will see who's who!
That's funny, but I choose not to drink regardless as I have not yet developed enough immunity.
Coward.
:lol:
This is misleading. The example showed a third party falsifying the subjects belief on the basis of the facts by persuading the subject of their truth. But two different things are going on there, as noted so I think its a little misleading to simply state tha hte facts themselves are what brought S to change their belief (or, should have).
Quoting Leontiskos
What you said here is exactly why the above. S wasn't convinced by their own encounter with the facts (though, that probably rarely happens in such a closed type of scenario - I did note that its only hte logical situation that matters there, not that no one would likely hold on the belief).
Quoting Leontiskos
Why would you presume that? That is exactly what this entire exchange has been trying to set up. I have to say, this is.... really weird lol.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yep, I can tell. Have been able too for a while now. That's why I said this:
Quoting AmadeusD
The semantic schema is wrong, on my view. But that can't be any kind of objective claim, so sleeping dogs can lie. I don't think we're disagreeing on much here.
Quoting Leontiskos
This doesn't seem to change anything?? That's what was set up in at least one of my run-throughts of hte possible scenarios.
A believes x.
B presents evidence against A's belief (not against x).
A no longer believes x, as it has been falsified by B.
whether x obtains is undecided.
Yeah? If "yeah", then we're not disagreeing. I just add this to explain my discomfort with how this has been run by yourself:
Quoting AmadeusD
This to say if:
A believes x, and
C (an audience, let's say) has direct, incontrovertible evidence that x obtains
but A is drawn away from their belief by B's evidence against the belief in x (not x)
A doesn't then magically hasn't let go of a 'true belief'. They have let go of an erroneous (false) belief in something true. I can't see that htis is problematic other than disagreeing on terms.
Quoting Janus
I guess in that example justification isn't open to S anyway, so that's fine hahaha.
The third party helped the person see the fact that the video was a deepfake, and the whole scenario I set up was premised on this shared knowledge of the state of affairs (about the deepfake). I don't see how that is misleading. You said, "So, the subject isn't involved in that knowledge-having." But he is. The possession of that knowledge is precisely what produces the two options I provided in the multiple choice question. If he didn't possess that knowledge then those two options would make no sense.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Because it strikes me as uncontroversial and even vacuous. "They truly/really believed something that was false." It's like saying, "They were not lying when they said that Trump dyed his hair." Of course not. Not everyone who is mistaken is lying. Did you think that I held such a thing?
A five-part exchange:
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
I am going to press this, because I don't find your view at all plausible.
Consider the person before it was pointed out to him that the video is a deepfake. I want to say, "At that point his belief was justified but false." You apparently want to say, "At that point his belief was true but the state of affairs was false." Do you really think we should describe his belief as "true" rather than "justified but false"? For example, in the JTB schema is the assigning of a belief as 'true' compatible with the "state of affairs" being false? Does the fellow at that point in time have JTB? On your view he must, unless you think his belief is not justified.
Quoting AmadeusD
How does B present evidence against A's belief without presenting evidence against x, given that A's belief is precisely x? Do you see how my scenario included a separate reason for belief, and why the separation of that reason is necessary?
Quoting AmadeusD
My criticism of your former scenario would have to be addressed before looking at this, because it relies on the same idea.
Quoting AmadeusD
Why wouldn't justification be open to S? For the last few pages I have been presenting scenarios where justification is crucial, given that we are talking about reasons for belief. Maybe reread this post.
Yeah. I'm unsure what to do about that. It seems (even on this description) that my take was accurate. So be it!
Quoting Leontiskos
Not really, no. What you set up was a situation with B brings to A something such that they now know that the video was fake (so, their belief can be considered falsified). But if Trump actually had dyed his hair, aside from this video fiasco, then the state of affairs hasn't be falsified if the belief is restricted to the result, not the process. You could even go as far as to say that A's belief in this video has now been falsified. There may be another, real, video of the same thing happening. All I've set up here, is that you can falsify a belief without falsifying hte state of affairs in the belief, and vice verse. I seriously cannot see anything in any of this exchange which has anything to say about that, other than a claim that evidence against x is also evidence against any given belief in x, which it plainly isn't. Is there something else going on? If not, we're probably talking in circles now.
Quoting Leontiskos
It isn't 'knowledge'. On your, or my description. This is misleading.
Quoting Leontiskos
If that were the case, I wouldn't have needed to say the bold above, I think. I have now several times tried to boil this down to a disagreement in terms: Someone can have their belief falsified, but not disbelieve the content of that belief. Someone can believe x, even when there exists incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. You're right - these are somewhat vacuuous. I somewhat noted this earlier, and tried to boil it down. Here we are - you seem to be very nearly getting it in the next part of your reply. Let's see,...
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. For reasons I've put forward, but again, this just illustrates exactly what my above is somewhat impatient about: You don't like the sentence I use to describe what's happening for A - I don't like yours/ I don't think we're saying something different from one another. I would only note I don't think it can rightly be called 'implausible' to use words in various ways.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't particularly think the JTB schema is a great one, and this would be a bit of a modification to it representing perhaps a second track of assessment in belief v knowledge. It is only hte belief part I'm concerned with at this stage. The 'knowledge' part can remain in the air. It just doesn't make me at all intuitively uncomfortable to say belief in a false state of affairs can be called true belief (this, i suppose, in contrast to 'belief in something true' which would make some of what we're saying redundant).
Quoting Leontiskos
No, and No. As above. My view doesn't run with JTB particularly squarely, here.
Quoting Leontiskos
Really? You can't understand having the reasons for your belief removed, without necessarily having hte state of affairs affected? Gettier cases are prime examples. If after passing the field with the sheep statue (which had a real sheep behind it), you are then later told it was statue, your 'knowledge' doesn't change but the reasons for at least thinking you have it have changed. There was a sheep in the field. But you would have considered it false unless also told "but there was a real sheep behind the statue". The point here being completed different reasons result in the same 'knowledge' despite one being 'false' on that account. Conversely, you could convince someone the source of their information, on good grounds, is shoddy enough to reject the belief. This wouldn't touch whether or not the state obtained. Yes? This doesn't seem at all controversial to me. I do note why someone would have an issue with calling, in that reverse scenario, a belief for good reason, in a false state of affairs a 'true belief'. I don't, and think it works well.
Good evidence that proves either erroneous or deceptive would justify a belief in a false state of affairs. In the scenario where hte evidence is bollocks, justification is not open.
I agree that one can "falsify" a belief (the whole question is about whether that is the correct word) without falsifying the proposition/belief. Namely, one can show that a belief is unjustified without showing that it is false.
Quoting AmadeusD
I could simplify that first sentence and just say that the state of affairs hasn't been falsified. It doesn't matter whether Trump actually had dyed his hair, nor whether the belief is restricted to the result. Either way the "state of affairs" has not been falsified.
The difficulty with your position as I see it, is that it posits the falsification of "states of affairs" apart from the falsification of beliefs. I don't think there is ever a state of affairs that is falsified, except for when a belief is simultaneously falsified. Humans cannot access "states of affairs" without beliefs, and since falsification is a human act, therefore there is no falsification of a state of affairs without a falsification of beliefs. Humans never hold that something is false while not believing that it is false.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay...
Quoting AmadeusD
Here is what I said before that:
Quoting Leontiskos
Why would we call his belief "true"? And which belief do you want to call "true"? Here is the exchange:
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see the first speaker saying anything true here (except perhaps that he saw a video, but that is not a distinct premise - the premise involves the veracity of the video).
Quoting AmadeusD
Me neither, but the "truth" part doesn't strike me as controversial.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think belief in a false proposition should not be called true. Take a false proposition, "2+2=5." Curt says, "I believe that proposition." You say that Curt's belief is true. How so? It doesn't seem strange to you to say that Curt's belief that 2+2=5 is true?
Quoting AmadeusD
That's the whole thing I've been at pains to demonstrate, for example in <this post>. But the point is:
Quoting Leontiskos
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Quoting AmadeusD
Here is what I said about the Gettier case, and I stand by it:
Quoting Leontiskos
As I see it, this is both not a difficulty, and in fact, the crux of our disagreement (such as it is.. It's increasingly clear (to/for me, anyway) we do not disagree about what's actually happening in these scenarios).
Quoting Leontiskos
Disagreed (unless you mean prior beliefs, enabling us to 'trust' our apprehension of a state of affairs... but that itself, is a state of affairs as Sam Harris has quite well demonstrated with his talk about the inarguable nature of consciousness). So maybe there's a deeper disagreement :)
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a good example, but the response wont be satisfying: That example is not apt to the case i/we've put forward. "2+2=5" is a logical truth, so can we set that aside? I don't think it's apt. That said, I'm going to try to at least 'treat' the example, on my view:
I do think its odd. That doesn't make it wrong. Your "How so?" would require that Curt has given me his reasons for believing it, and I cannot find a way to falsify his reasons for belief. As noted, these often have nothing whatsoever to do with the state of affairs. Again, i don't think logical/mathematical props are apt for this problem, but that requirement would be ...required... in any other cases where it is apt. I understand that your view is that the belief should be considered false, as long as the state of affairs doesn't obtain. I don't think that is the best use of these words, myself.
Quoting Leontiskos
Weirdly, the exact point I have made (but I guess I'm separating them in the opposite scenario - i.e, state of affairs false=/=belief false). Does this not seem so to you?
Your comments on Gettier are understood, and were never in question. But Gettier cases give us pause to understand how one's reasons come apart from the facts. Someone can have a 'true' belief in the sense I mean, despite the facts not being true. The reverse is also true as I pointed out using the sheep-in-field example.
Okay.
Quoting AmadeusD
Right, so:
Quoting Leontiskos
If I cannot falsify his reasons (R) then I would say P is not implausible (ceteris paribus). But if I know that P is false (such as in the case of 2+2=5), then presumably I can provide reasons which demonstrate that P is false. In that case the reasons I offer would be in competition with his reasons, R.
In this case where I cannot falsify R, I would say, "Your argument is valid and I don't know how to falsify your premises," but I would not claim that his belief is therefore true. Again, I would say that it is justified.
Quoting AmadeusD
If I know the proposition is false then I would call the belief false. But to merely tell him that the belief is false is to beg the question. I must provide him with a reason to believe it is false, and that reason must go beyond merely falsifying his own reasons.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think a belief is true when it matches the state of affairs, and false when it fails to match the state of affairs. I think that's basically what "true" and "false" mean. Generally speaking, a state of affairs is not true or false, but rather existent or non-existent. Or else it is said that a state of affairs either obtains or does not. "True" and "false" pertain to thoughts or beliefs. So if I say that a state of affairs obtains when it in fact does obtain, then what I say is true. If not then what I say is false.
Quoting AmadeusD
This also strikes me as strange, namely your idea that some facts are true and some facts are false. I would say that facts, like states of affairs, are not true or false.
Quoting Leontiskos
I may be misusing the word 'fact' here, but it is synonymous with 'state of affairs' for me. If the facts aren't to obtain, but the belief is sound (in the sort of JTB (or adjacent)) sense then I'm happy to call the belief true. I don't feel the need to restrict use of truth to apply to facts only.