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)
Could faith be irrational and unjustified beliefs? Rational and justified beliefs are knowledge.
Hold on, we shouldn' jump to conclusions if there is any doubt. There is knowledge. It is always contingent, howevet, and beliefs that may transcend reason perhaps are not irrational but maybe a-rational. Let's consider great phlosophers who defended faith. First therr is Kant, a man who proved the proofs for God wrong. But for the sake if morality he put faith on the highest pedistal. Then there is Kierkegaard who said faith must crucify reason. Finally we have Bergson, who's complaints against reason got his books placed on the Church's forbidden Index. It is easy to say "ye but you are using reaso to refute reason. Isn't that contradictory?" I would respond as saying truth might be beyond reason, so giving up at least some reason to let in all that is faith, might not be a bad idea. Paradoxically, reason needs space in order to breath, and that "space" might just be faith
Its rather odd to ask this question in this context. A Zen koan is a deliberately puzzling or paradoxical challenge intended to demonstrate the inadequacy of discursive knowledge in the pursuit of satori. That is quite a different thing to what is usually understood as religious faith.
Knowledge requires verification and evidence for its validity. When the object or existence under investigation is lacking such requirements, but still folks think or believe in the truths or existence of such objects, then they have faith rather than knowledge. No?
Quoting Gregory
What do you mean by "may transcend"? a-rational? Isn't it just another way of saying irrational?
You seem to be limiting faith to Western religion. Does Buddhism have a word for faith? Do they reject its content?
Quoting Corvus
Try this: imagine you're in the 60's and you are tripping on acid. You have thoughts of a round triangle. When you sober up the idea lingers. Now reason may say such a thing is impossible, but something opened that got you "out of the box". I propose this as chemically induced faith. Now pure faith is doing this such that you aren't on sonething which you have to sober up from. I want to know more about what faith is. As the faith devours the reason, what can reason say about it?
To me, faith refers to a mental phenomenon, a thought for example, that can be right or wrong.
Faith is belief in things unseen. It is precisely not knowledge. It is not verified.
That sounds like hallucination rather than faith. Faith is also underlying motive for the actions aiming at certain achievements or enlightenment. Faith is not purposeless.
I was thinking faith was of the will, not the intellect.
Quoting prothero
That's how saint paul defines it. But what motive have we to have faith? Is the world a simulation? Does it take a natural faith to accept it's not? Can i "prove" my gramma is not really a extra terrestrial imposter as of yesterday? Is modern philosophy too doubtful? Did Descartes make a mistake?
Yes i think all religions point to faith. There are times when i believe faith can literally move mountains, but my mind is never strong enough to endure the confusion. OCD addiction to thinking i suppose
The act of intellect is due existence of faith. Persistence in intellectual activity is due to the will though.
Thinking is based on faith? Hegel said that in his latter lectures on the proofs for God. Will has control over the intellect though, which is one reason i think the intellect is not the superior faculty.. Will is never blind. There is a certain innate knowledge pure will by itself without input from the intellect
While responding to a comment in the "Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith" thread, it struck me that what is called "faith" is the same thing as what I call "intuition." It is not a fundamentally religious mental process - it's applied to everything we do and everything we know every day. That doesn't address the question of whether it is a valid way of knowing, but I think it puts a different perspective on it. Failing to recognize the fact that they are the same allows the religious bigotry endemic here on the forum to draw mislead conclusions.
Well this relates to my number 2 question. I think the East talks about faith in terms of intuition and certain Western philosophers do as well. Orthodoxy frowns on intuition more often than reason because it is seen as esoteric
Faith itself doesn't do anything, It is just beliefs on something. To move mountains, you must hire some cranes and bulldozers, and dig them out with your own labor.
That's the perspective of materialism yes
No. It is called realism.
What's the difference?
Materialism is a way to interpret the world. Realism is also an interpretation suppose, but it includes and emphasizes on the direct action, and interaction with the world. Not just interpretation.
Well reality is not relative to the body. We don't know the future however. As Hume argues, the sun may not rise tomorrow. Who is to say what butterfly effected that? Where do we empirically find the prime mover of caused events?
The world don't care about us, and it goes its own ways. But we do what we can.
What do you think of Schopenhauer when he says the world IS our Will? And have you ever listened to Jim Newman the non-dualist? He's got lots of stuff on youtube. He's ideas are fascinating in light of Schopenhauer
Is that what he said? I thought the world was sheer will and our experience was just representation, hence the title "Will and Representation". Will is the naturre of Kant's thing in itself?
Well for him Will is real, is noumena. Experience is just empirical
Yes. When we think about a subject we have faith that the idea we are trying to develop may be correct. It is however through the processes of thinking that we may reach a correct conclusion.
Quoting Gregory
Interesting. I didn't know that.
Quoting Gregory
Correct.
Quoting Gregory
I don't think that there is such a thing as innate knowledge. What we call thinking is a trial and error process. We take one root and proceed. It might be fruitful or we might reach a dead end without any conclusion. Therefore, will is blind.
How can will be without thoughts? Have you considered Platonic Forms?
The will is aware of thoughts made by the intellect. It can stop a thought or let it go. By the will being blind I mean that it does not know where a thought leads to.
Quoting Gregory
I agree with Plato about the Froms, what I call the Absolute Truth.
there is a story from i know not whence. A bridge across a chasm; you might look at the bridge and wonder if it will support you or not, and you might believe or not that it will support you. But faith is when you trust your weight to it and start to cross. Faith is putting your money or your life where your mouth is, or possibly where someone else's mouth is
1.Faith is an act, a decision, a commitment.
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, - I don't know
I don't know if love is God, but I will act as if it is so.
Saddha, meaning to place ones heart upon. Its less about belief, more about insight, in the Buddhist context. Its a very difficult distinction to grasp because it is nearly always looked at through faith-coloured glasses.
Some partial lyrics (in part pertaining to the term's usage):
This is my brief understanding on Schopenhauer. The only way we can access and interact with the world is via our Will. Our will is supported by intelligence, thoughts and reasoning, as well as bodily desire for pleasure, reproduction and survival..
Quoting Gregory
I am not familiar with the name afraid.
My position is that absolute truth is Freedom, Will. That can be the answer to the problem of pain. If God is sitting up there infinitely happy as we suffer, trying to perfect ourselves, how does that reflect a beautiful world? I think we make the world what it is in some sense, "positing" everything and each other, as Fichte said.. Why is there pain? There is no reason really. It's just free. So the Ideas guide the Will, but the Will is in charge
I never responded to you on the other thread. I think we are on the same page but Id name the moving parts a bit differently.
Believing is found in a moment of consent, and your actions are based on what you consented to. Once you believe something, its as deep as it gets and you are willing to act on it.
We can KNOW it is safe to cross the street by looking both ways, but the moment we step off the curb its because we ARE BELIEVING what we know; we gather the knowledge, CONSENT OR BELIEVE, and only then act.
Intuition is like a parallel process to reasoning, to gathering the knowledge. Intuition is like when you cant explain your reasoning, but you know it is reasonable. Believing is more of an act of consenting to whatever you know, be it known from reasoning or from intuition.
That said, I can see why you place intuition more closely to believing. Both are distinct from knowing and reasoning (qua knowing and reasoning).
Its like anything we do - we get all the knowledge, we train, we check our equipment and then it comes time to act. If we didnt believe we were ready, we wouldnt act. Believing gathers what we know, what is reasonable, where the holes in the reasoning are, where the questions still exist, and then, we decide, we consent, we either believe or not - so belief is the springboard for action.
So religious faith and religious beliefs are a particular subset of this otherwise human process of knowing, reasoning, believing and acting.
Religious faith is about the same process, just the objects of knowledge are fantastical, impossible, non-empirical.
People who mock religious people, think believing is just skipping the reasoning part. Which it can be, so I dont blame them for the mockery (most religious people should expect mockery cause there are some whacky beliefs in most religions). A religious belief is just another type of belief, similar to a belief we might have that it is safe to cross the street, that my own eyes are not deceiving me and there are no unaccounted demons in the sewer!
It will be interesting to explore this. I think the connecting between faith and intuition is only partially successful. The intuitions which work tend to be those which are derived from experience of similar scenarios. We accumulate wisdom in this way. That said, a lot of people's intuitions are based on erroneous feelings and biases. We might need to determine just when an intuition is justified and when it is not. Which returns us to reasoning. I trust my intuitions about some things based on evidence I have acquired over time. In some areas I don't trust my intuitions since I have no experience or expertise. Not sure where gods fit in all this.
My intuitions tells me the idea of god is without meaning. My friend Father John, a Catholic priest, has an intuition God is meaningful and real. How does one assess the faith of one person against the faith of another? Given all we have on this subject is a feeling without reason - would it not seem that faith is a weak foundation? I'm not crazy about having people proudly justify bigotries or even violent Jihad based on faith, as many seem to do. This is one area where reasoning may have a more significant role.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think they are very different.
Crossing the road safely relies upon lived experience of knowing how to check for traffic and knowing the safe speed one can walk at. It is an act based on empirical evidence and learning. Faith does not share this. That's the precise point of faith - "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Hebrews 11 NIV.
To use faith to cross a road would be to hope there is no traffic and feel assured that nothing is coming when we blindly leap out into the traffic.
To suggest that one needs faith to trust one's eyes is incorrect. One is never sure about anything in life but one can have a measured expectation based on empirical measures that we can safely cross roads and not get killed if we look carefully.
What if it is both?
Quoting Gregory
By this measure, it sounds like you understand what faith is.
Quoting Gregory
I think I know what you are saying but please provide your favorite example of such a thing.
Quoting Gregory
Or is it doubt?
Quoting Gregory
It can be described that way. But most of us experience it as a willingness to fight in bad circumstances. Perhaps you are referring to the willingness to suffer harm rather than fight. That decision is pretty darn courageous. I will give you that.
Quoting Gregory
Some views of love are based upon actually doing stuff rather than having an opinion about doing stuff.
I got similar responses to this from @Tom Storm and @Fire Ologist. I also had an exchange with @Janus on the Logical Arguments thread that also addressed similar issues. I previously promised him a better response but haven't gotten back to him yet. I'm going to respond to all of you here. Here's what you said:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Tom Storm
And now here is my completely unsatisfactory response. After the exchange I had with Janus in the previous thread I planned to start a new thread discussing the two major issues I raised with him, i.e. 1) Are faith and intuition the same mental process and 2) Are they valid ways of knowing. I tried to write the OP for that proposed thread. I wrote it and rewrote it three times but I couldn't get it to come together. That's because my own thinking on the subject is muddled. I have lots of ideas but I can't get them to come together.
I agree with much of what all three of you have said, although I disagree with you on the relative importance of intuition and reason in knowing. I think intuition is the foundation of knowledge - it does about 80% of the work - and reason comes along to take the credit. I acknowledge I need to provide arguments to support that position, but, as I noted, I've been struggling to put it into words. This is an important issue for me, so I plan to continue working on it. I'll come back when I have something more coherent to offer.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/double-truth-theory
J.G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man
I think this is right, I also think they see it as mystical.
What do you mean by this?
Quoting Gregory
How do you know that God is infinitely happy while we are suffering?
Quoting Gregory
Perhaps there is a reason. Without pain, we could not possibly evolve.
Quoting Gregory
What do you mean by "it" here?
Quoting Gregory
What do you mean by "Ideas" and "Will" with capital letters?
Intuition to me is an unprocessed reaction to an immediate set of circumstances that arises from ingrained experience and probably some genetic survival instincts. Particularly with social interaction, which is incredibly complex and nuanced, but which is a fundamental part of what it is to be human, requires that we immediately assess and respond. It's that feeling when we don't fully believe someone, we sense kindness, we sense danger, we feel an incompatibility, yet we are unable to know what has caused that feeling.
So when you're thinking should I take that job, marry that person, walk into that bar, or even type that post, your intuition tells you to stop or to go. We then stop and intellectualize, think of the pros and cons and then we arrive at a solution, oftentimes inconsistent with our intuition and convince ourselves (with the intellectual self debating with the instinctive self) to go in the opposite direction. We often make the wrong choice when we just should have trusted our gut because we overrode that powerful intuitive evaluative tool. For some matters we are designed to react, not to deliberate.
I knew a woman once who I would never describe as tempered, deeply thoughtful, and certainly not deliberative, but she ran circles around me picking up on every cue, knowing every motive, and navigating social interaction precisely as if it was as clear as day to her.
Faith to me has a religious context. It's the belief there is a higher power in charge of the world not supported necessarily by empirical or rational grounds, but it might entirely be a choice. My intuition doesn't tell me there is a higher power. It's not that I believe in God but I'm just having trouble putting my finger on why (as with intuition), but it's something wholly different. It's a foundational element required for making sense of the world.
Why is intuition esoteric? In what sense? Do you think it makes sense?
This is a thoughtful response and it helped me clarify for myself some things I've been thinking about. I think the first three paragraphs are a good description of how I think about intuition. The last paragraph set me thinking.
Quoting Hanover
The claim that faith is not a valid way of knowing the world and is somehow outside the normal bounds of reasonable argument is used as a knee-jerk argument against religion. The reason for my post was to make a counterclaim that faith is actually a normal, common way of understanding the world and can be a valid motivation for action. I realize that intuition also causes eye-rolling among the illuminati here on the forum and elsewhere, but I don't think it's as virulent. It's now up to me to make the case for intuition, and thus faith, are mainstream and reasonable ways of thinking.
It was the last line that really struck me - "It's a foundational element required for making sense of the world." Reading that, I realized that it describes my personal experience of intuition. It's not just knowledge that "arises from ingrained experience and probably some genetic survival instincts," although I agree it is that. I also think it reflects our broad understanding of how the world works and how it fits together, what you call a "foundational element."
Also, I don't understand why substituting mini marshmallows for chick peas would be considered ridiculous.
It's a word with various shades of meaning depending on the language and the context.
It's the Greek ?????? (pistis) - to have trust or confidence in something, could be towards God or towards another person among other things. I may have faith e.g. that a mechanic will drive out to repair my car which has broken down in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps he has done so 5x prior so my faith can be said to have some grounds or evidence. Christianity, at least Pauline Christianity, seems to be [s]heavily, if not[/s] entirely, based on pistis in the resurrection.
Faith is also the Hebrew ???????? (emunah) which is a dynamic and fluid concept that's also multi-directional. A popular Jewish prayer said in the morning is Modeh Ani which ends with "raba emunatech" - "great is your faithfuless" - that is, great is God's faithfulness towards us. Through restoring our souls to our bodies each morning and giving us another day God shows his faithfulness towards us.
God almighty came down from heaven to save us from his own wrath by allowing himself to be tortured to death. This strategy worked, even though he didn't actually die and most people weren't saved. Faith is a bamboozle.
And then you say:
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This collapses the two concepts of faith and trust (emunah and bitachon), which are obviously related, but I see them as differing, although faith is required for trust. I have no doubt that these arise from free choice, meaning you can choose to have faith and choose to have trust, but I don't think the choice of faith is non-rational. It's a matter of what you want to believe and the repercussions of that choice. From my perspective, there is no greater positivity that flows from bitachon, and I wonder how people navigate the world with a belief that all is random and meaningless and subject to a sudden collapse at any time.
I'd argue that it's just as rational to ignore the Humean rejections of causation (i.e. every event has a cause) as it is to reject scientific rejections of purpose (i.e. every event has a purpose). I impose my faith and trust in the latter, and that leaves me with the position that we're not just a random dropping of dominoes, but we're a purposeful movement toward meaning. I trust that my conversation with you right now is exactly as it should be, even including any reservations I might have with it. The comfort of every crisis is that it is there for a reason.
So, to the OP, faith is a perspective, valid as its opposite.
There's no objectively correct answer. It would make more sense to ask what someone means when they use the term. Here's an article on a Christian Apologist website. That guy provides 3 definitions:
[i]Leap of Faith
The first usage is summarized quite nicely by Mark Twain. He said that faith is believing what you know aint true. This is where we get the phrase leap of faith; it really means something like a leap in the dark. A mother might have faith that her son is still alive even though all of the evidence suggests otherwise. She certainly believes that her son is alive, yet she cant be said to know he is. The mother lacks evidence and knowledge, nevertheless has faith or strongly believes he is still alive. She takes a leap of faith.
Faith as Trust
The second usage is also very common. Here faith would be something like trust. One can have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. That isnt a leap in the dark, one can have good reason to believe it will rise (given past experience). So faith in this sense is being used as synonymous with trust or confidence. It should be noted here that the first two senses can be had by Christians and non-Christians. An atheist could have faith that science will eventually reveal all there is to know. Now, I dont believe science could possibly do such a thing [1], but the point is that anyone can have faith in the first two senses.
Christian Faith
The third usage, by contrast, is exclusive to Christianity. One can have faith in this sense if and only if Christianity is true. On this account, faith is knowledge of the Gospel produced in us by the work of the Holy Spirit. Modern thinkers will want to reject the idea that faith is actually knowledge. However, if Christianity is true and the Holy Spirit does instigate belief in the Gospel, then what we would have is knowledge, not merely a confidence or trust. Also notice it wouldnt be anything like a blind leap of faith. It would be more akin to beliefs produced through memory or sensory organs. These beliefs arent blind leaps in the dark. They are produced by some sort of mechanism.[/i]
His third definition is contingent upon Christianity being true. If it's not true, then it would imply that Christian faith is delusion. More generously, I'd say that faith (to a believer) is an attitude of certainty toward a belief.
@Fire Ologist
I'd like you to add your perspective to that, as I'm quite interested in it. I have a sort of faith that you may see what I did there...
In the history of Christianity, for example, the orthodoxy emphasized using reason to prove God's existence while the mystics spoke of intuition and being one with God. See the article on intuition in the Catholic encyclopedia (new advent website) for more information. I am not against reason, but there are higher levels i believe. Nous is higher than logos, dialectic above understanding
Will and Ideas refer to the metaphysical realities which our psychology comes from. In classical theism, God does not suffer. But classical freedom is refuted in that God would change if he created the world from nothing. His knowledge of himself creating would produce a change in him sunce he is one with his thoughts. If we ourselves are the ground of being, it's just will that makes the world what it is. Will guided by thoughts, but will nevertheless
This does not work because it is against karma and justice to substitute atonment. Get your theology right
That's a beautiful sentiment
It gets points for sanity though.
Afaik, faith is "devotional" make-believe (i.e. suspension of disbelief in superstitions, fairytales and/or myths) and, in extremis, delusion (i.e. "leap of faith" (e.g.) faith healing, willing martyrdom, jihadism, religious zionism ... denialism), and thereby usually incompatible with discursive reasoning, or rationality in other words, a path of least cognitive effort that's universally accessible, especially to pre-school children and even cretins.
Sometimes and it gets points for reforming sinners. But for all you know Jesus will come back someday and say "i felt no pain on the cross and i give you no merits. Be damned for the sins you confessed to". Christians have no evidence that won't happen
Why do you say "usually"? Just curious
I find that irrationality isn't always incompatible with rationality (e.g. conative/desirous, sublime, absurd, tragicomic ... feelings)
Feelings are something that people exclude from God or Allah. They are "holy" or too "sublime" for feelings, for the mushy. All that is holy is only one, that's what holy means. Feelings are what is alive in anything
It's interesting how music arises different "Gods" in the mind in the way art does.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cW4pNx4FjXo&pp=ygUQMzAwMCB5ZWFyIG1lbG9keQ%3D%3D
This sounds like a God that longs. Not Aquinas's God
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OBB5-bP6qs&pp=ygUYZ3JlZ29yaWFuIGNsYXJ2b3VlIGNoYW50
That expresses God the Father
These different ways of understanding God brings to mind many religious ideas for me
I think that is a possible end result. But they're designed to smash the reservoir of constructions so that, finally freed from the chatter of thought and emotions, one might attune to the body feeling.
Will and Ideas are ideas. That is, ideas about Idea. We are all on a planet whirling around the "sol invictus", late Roman title for the sun within their planet worshipping world. (They borrowed much from Greece) The only way to speak in discursive method about things mystical/spiritual is to call the "simple" at the start. You can still imagine them and actually see ithem without the eyes. Here and now, living the now as all reality, we are biolog8cal creatures, with many organs ect. Feelings in rhe body are in predetermined sinc with the "simple" world
Afaik, it's impossible for a classical being (with classical sensorium) to be conscious of non-classic (planck-scale) phenomena. Thus, without consciousness of the wave function, "consciousness collapses the wave function" does not make sense (pace N. Bohr et al).
NB: I'm more or less an Everettian layman.
Not sure if God's existence could be proved using reason. In Kant, space and time is intuition, and God's existence is beyond reason. God belongs to the world of faith.
So classical theism is false. If God could be happy then He could be unhappy too.
:100:
I've recently discovered myself as a radical finitist. Nothing is infinite above, in, or below heaven. I think the concept itself is a self-contradictory idea that is badly attached to theological theorems
You have to deal with infinities if you accept that motion is continuous.
Why must motion be infinitily divided? How can you fit infinity in the bounds of anything finite?
If it is not then there is a situation in which the motion becomes discrete. This is against the continuum hypothesis. Therefore, any continuous motion no matter how small is infinitely divisible.
Quoting Gregory
I am not proposing that I fit an infinity in something finite but saying that any finite distance no matter how small can be divided infinitely. That is what digits are about.
Each digit represents a slice of space hence infinite space. Of all the arguments i've amassed over the years, the one that says "something can't be discrete because that implies space which implies parts/slices, and so the descent" has to go. There has to be a basic unit.
How would you describe that reforming process? Or any kind of redemption?
I am talking about the decimal part of a number. Consider a very small number with many 0 digits and a 1 at the end, like, 0.0...01, where the number of 0 digits is M. If you divide this number by 2 you get, 0.0...05 where the number of 0 digits is M+1. You can do this forever.
Quoting Gregory
Space itself is continuous. I don't understand what you are talking about here.
Quoting Gregory
There are basic units for length for example.
Any true love should take away any guilt-karma an individual might have. I remember reading that the Duns Scotus school of thought teach that all sin is finite internally although it offends an "infinite" God externally from. This idea of infinity itself is starting to bother me
Quoting MoK
There is no problem when you do it with numbers. The trouble is when infinite digits are linked to spatial slices
Well, it depends if space is continuous or discrete. Which one do you pick?
Genesis 6:6 among many others.
The One would be the ultimate source of reality, describing a unity, where I'd say the noumena is just what is beyond human knowledge. As with all forms, you can't know them by perception, but that doesn't mean they can't be known at all, whether that be by philosophical contemplation or remembering them from our former acquaintance of them while in heaven (this from Wiki at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms). In any event, that seems distinct from the noumena, which is per se unknowable, really describing a limit of knowledge (epistimological) as opposed to the underlying form of forms (ontologoical).
Discrete doesn't get lost in itself but takes the step further
The question of duality and non-duality arises. What takes precedence, the One or each consciousness living in history?
Having faith is wanting to believe something without evidence, and thus similar to hope, but a stronger sense of personal certainty, usually with less empirical evidence.
Thus faith pretty much = (hope - empirical evidence) + conviction.
That's incredibly insightful
Aquinas reinterprets that because his philosophy demanded that to suffer was a change and God was pure unchanging actuality
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for" Hebrews 11:1
So faith and hope run parallel. Maybe faith is more of mind and hope is more of heart
Basically I like it, especially recognizing the abyss, but Id chop down a bit.
Faith is a self-structured principle, that paves a path forward in the abyss.
Bridge implies you might see the other side just needing a bridge you dont see to get there. I see the abyss all around with no other side to bridge towards in sight. So the faith we build is solely in the face of the unknown, of emptiness, of nothing else but our choice.
Because I happen to have faith, I see its structure as a gift, not so much because of me. When I said self-structured Im recognizing that I have to gather all of the inputs to build the output here called faith. But because of the particular faith I have, I dont take as much credit for my own gathering - I give more credit to structure than my structuring. But its all by my choice, so it all collapses back to me in the abyss. The faith, the path, is a gift (for me) or it is a style or phenomenological structure in terms of someone elses faith.
What of the creator who has faith in their work working beforehand?
But what I did was take Nietzsche's equation for man (a rope over an abyss) and said faith is very much the same. I find it an interesting parallel.
We ARE the presence of faith, the existence of faith, in life.
The bridge threw me off (ironically) your point.
I like the tightrope over an abyss, because even though its a tightrope, you dont really care much about whats holding the rope up on each side, theres just a tightrope and the abyss.
To me, the rope itself creates the distance below it, so we are, simultaneously, the rope that creates the distance and so we are the abyss (we manufacture our own isolation by just being). We build our own need for a bridge or a path, that is never just there, (unless something reaches out of the abyss and grabs us). Nothing grabbed Nietzsche from the abyss. He only had himself. If he wanted a path or a faith or a bridge, he alone had to construct it whole-cloth, like an artist does. Which is why I respect his philosophy above most others. He saw that we build both the abyss and if we want a bridge, we build that too.
I only differ from him (and its a huge difference) in that I dont associate faith in the church with laws and hell and hierarchies and priests and self-denial. Theres nothing special at all about the pope because hes a pope. He might be special, but Id have to know him personally like anyone else might be special. But pope is just a game.
But just because a law is given doesnt mean I cant make it my own. I can conquer whatever I want. Even Nietzsche had to learn to speak German once before he could build his art. Anyone claiming they know another honest mans faith is deceiving themselves. No one can know anyone, not even themselves. And post-modern social construction theories, thats all todays over-rated reified masking, and todays slave morality. Layers upon layers of lies and more self-defeating, self anesthetizing, opiates to cover the abyss. Own your own shit, whatever that shit may be, and celebrate when you want to celebrate.
Faith is essential to being a person. The question is not do you believe? Because we all do. The question is what do you believe? Reason is essential too but reason is more like the rope, having form (logic and language), and believing is more like the abyss. Some people wont let go of the rope. Others think they can see things in the abyss and are delusional (possibly me). But the existentialists, Nietzsche, just called it what it was - absurd, nauseating, solitary - meaning standing in the face of absolute meaninglessness, the abyss.
We stand on the edge of everything. We are the first limit in the limitless. We are the first fleeting form, and as soon as we grasp that, we must lose it all and start over.
Faith is a philosophy with all the questions left out.
Isn't it that there are nothing but questions for faith? Certainty does away with faith. Isn't faith reallying a doubting that accepts the state of doubt with hope?
For those who are honest, faith is a hope and a wish.
Faith doesn't give you knowledge or truth. You must work hard to keep up your faith in something you believe in.
When it is found out, what you believed in turned out to be illusion or false later, your faith will be broken or evaporate into the thin air.
If the space is discrete then it means that there is a gap between two points in space. The gap is the absence of anything or nothing. So there are two arguments here against the existence of the gap: 1) The motion has to be discrete if there is a gap. But discrete motion at least within physicalism is not possible since a particle that is subject to motion and exists in the first point cannot possibly cause another particle in the second point because of the gap. 2) If the gap is nothing then two points must be immediate.
As Hegel says in the lesser logic, you must think of the continuous mixed with the discrete in order to understand either one. The continuous is illogical I say. There nothing between two discretes but they are close enough to allow movement between them, contral Leibniz's monads
That is correct. Any real number has decimal and integer parts each is a set of digits, 0 to 9 for example. Digits are of course discrete while the number is continuous.
Quoting Gregory
I don't think so. I already presented two arguments against the existence of the gap.
Math can only do so much. There is a gap and there isn't a gap. There is separation but not such that there is no smooth motion. Sometimes philosophy and logic have to step in where math fails
I said what I should have said.
Any argument you provide for continuity i can and have countered. Something has to give.
Ok.
Thanks for bringing this up. True. Let's distinguish between the two according to Chabad:
Emunah: Emunah, however, is an innate conviction, a perception of truth that transcends, rather than evades, reason.
Bitachon: Generally translated as trust, bitachon is a powerful sense of optimism and confidence based not on reason or experience, but on emunah. You know that G?d is good and Hes the only one in charge, and therefore you have no fears or frets.
A very useful distinction to draw out. I'd say that I have emunah, but not bitachon so much. Personally, I wouldn't regard either bitachon or emunah as chosen within my own psychology. Regarding emunah, the belief/conviction came to me under a certain set of circumstances. I suppose ideally true emunah would manifest in bitachon but I'm not quite there yet.
If you want to try to ground your bitachon/emunah rationally I would never try to argue against that because, as you correctly note, bitachon/emunah is conducive to psychological well-being.
Faith is subjecting a belief to its consequences.
Pragmatism versus idealism.
Nicely done. Can you provide an example?
What if you found a real contradiction at the heart of all you believe. Do you 1) go with faith, or 2) go with dialetheism
Or 3) go with both, or 4th neither
Sure. I believe in God because to not leaves me with a belief that we have no higher purpose for being here, that this conversation is just the crazy end result of billions of pool balls bouncing off each other.
The consequence of my belief is meaning and purpose, I'm not just a cosmic coincidence awaiting a return to dust.
The issue for me isn't whether you choose faith or science, so long as you know it's a choice.
Well, the consequence of my disbelief in any "higher meaning and purpose" is the meaning and purpose of flourishing here and now Life is just a cosmic coincidence that consecrates living lucidly from dust to dust.
i.e. make-believe (opiate) vs knowledge (surgery)
Honestly, a planed existence awaiting an eternal reward sounds rather meaningless to me. The story of the existence would be meaningful Im sure.
"There are, he [Bergson] says, 'two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object: the second that we enter into it.'" Bertrand Russell in Mystcism and Logic
If the good in the world is seen as united, as a body of goodness bringing good to the world, we could say it is the historical manifestation of Plato's "Form of the Good". In mystical moments the truth cannot be contained by the mind and is interpreted as infinite. Beliefs and docttines cone about by Interpetatiom.
Everyone has the right to form there own interpretations. This is a natural right. A peaceful society is all that can limit it
They certainly require faith. They may or may not enhance it, if thats what you mean. Ideally, for the sake of the religion, they would enhance faith.
Quoting Tom Storm
Elizabeth Rose Struhs.
"Members of her small and tightly-knit religious group were present when the diabetic eight-year-old died, singing and praying to God to heal her" while withholding her insulin. In this case the consequence of their belief was the death of a child and 14 folk being convicted of manslaughter.
Accepting the results of science is an important part of being a modern adult. Medicine and those who create them go back far back into haze of history. They are venerable. However, i don't see why the law of the excluded middle is violated when something supported science can't be reconciled with philosophy. How can you tell me that physic equations should be allowed to be rewinded back 14 *billion* years. We can't even form an idea of a hundred thousand properly, let alone a billion. And how can you know all the forces that were acting in the universe, say 10 billions years? Are you really going to say you know all the universal factors acting at time 10 billion BC? Inuition and reason go hand and hand. Reason by itself is insanity, pure will
At the very least, give your faith pause and reconsider. Before the child dies.
An odd post. Not at all sure why you linked my post to the law of excluded middle, and why that insulin ought be respected for being ancient and venerable rather than effective. Nor did I tell you that "physic(sic.) equations should be allowed to be rewinded back 14 *billion* years", whatever that might mean. We do have a clear conception of "billion". I do not claim to know all the forces acting on the universe, now or previously. Reason, intuition and will are quite distinct things.
But whatever you are smoking, can I have a toke?
You don't seem to have a burning desire to know truth. Or maybe you do. Maybe you are satisfied. Smaller size truths like those found by science can't make for a substitute philosophy however.
"Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the purely logical realm, it is insight that first arriverà at what is new." Bertrand Russel in Mysticism and Logic
Reason and will are indeed different faculties. The former is the "I' in, or as, each person. But will is in complete control of reason
I've noticed that for some folk the desire to know the truth burns so hot that, perhaps in order to quench the burning, they grasp firmly to falsehood.
If reason is controlled by will, even yet truth controls both.
Whether truth is subjective, or instead, objective has been answered differetly throughout history. If it lives only in minds then truth is subjective. But material objects follow the "law of Nature" as essentially logic. Logic can't be taken out of any practice performed by a human. (But in mystcism, logic will have to be tamprred with in order to express insights of the mystical) And when thoughts agree with the law inside each one, then truth becomes objective
That's what objective means. I don't think you have a proper appreciation of what philosophy is about
Quoting Banno
Faith can work miracles. A good mind believes in miracles
A better mind explains them.
(How long are we playing this game for?)
Can they explain the origin of the universe? Science has a real problem with origin when the practical side of a scientist turns speculative.
'A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is. Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realize the unimportence of time is the gate to wisdom.. Whoever wishes to see the world truly, to rise in thought above the tyranny of practical desires, must learn to overcome the difference of attitude towards past and future and to survey the whole stream of time in one comprehensive vision."
Why save people by science from death if they can't go out and philosophy afterwards?
Thanks for the conversation
Who is "they"? Is there someone you think can explain the origin of the universe? You?
It seems odd for you to quote Russell, of all people, while apparently maintaining the inadequacies of science.
Quoting Gregory
I hope you found it helpful.
Thank you. The notion of choice is interesting here. I tend to think that mostly we can't help the beliefs we are drawn to, much like sexual attraction.
Quoting Banno
Yes, Ive watched a few people die because they refused treatment, believing that their faith in God would heal them. One of these people, Malcolm, was a homeless man who had gangrene in his knee. He refused treatment even after his bones snapped and he was admitted to the hospital unable to walk. 'I pray and have faith,' he would tell me. He died.
Quoting Gregory
I know this isnt directed at me, but what exactly is a burning desire to know the truth? About what, specifically? The meaning of life? The nature of reality? All of the above? Truth has never been a primary preoccupation of mine. I tend to think of it as consisting of provisional facts - statements that work within our current practices and inquiries but remain open to revision as our understanding and circumstances change. I dont believe we can access some "special" reality beyond the one we experience, no matter what the anecdotes, religions, or some philosophers conclude.
A desire for facts and a desire for truth are not necessarily the same thing. There is something spiritual, which nothing other than that reality is mystical.
Spiritual, philosophical, mystical.. these are the same thing seen from different angles. Doesn't "phenomena" imply that it is mystical, and doesn't mystical imply miracles (miracles from the spiritual)?
Certainly some people believe this. As long as they play nice with others, it doesn't matter to me.
Quoting Gregory
I doubt it. Is this important?
i.e. self-availing, self-unfolding, self-emptying :zip:
All of which could have been avoided had their belief been evaluated for its consequences.
I'm not sure how the above occurs under my description of faith.
But yes, looking for the cure for diabetes through prayer won't work, nor will looking for the meaning of life in the laboratory work.
I'm arguing a pragmatism. You're not going to find where it's not pragmatic.
Then don't choose to belive in eternal rewards. I've not dictated a theology.
It's not as if reason evades the faithful more then it does the faithless. I can provide the same scientific explanations you do. It's not like I suffer a brain fog clear minded scientists don't.
If you experience a fantastical event and use it to provide meaning to your life or to inspire you to be a better person, how is your mind lesser than the one who explains the event away as a statistical anomaly? Is the fidelity to science the measure of the better mind?
So have I, including some people quite close to me. I was a believer at first. Then I started asking questions that were deemed to be "unhelpful". It took a few years, but that was that, in the end. Now look at me!
Two (possibly unhelpful) comments. First, I still have to respect the choice they made. The people close to me who made that choice caused me pain and anger at the time, but still, they have the right to choose. Does a child of 8 have the same right, I wonder? But the people who watched and sang were not merely bystanders in the grip of apathy.
Second, it seems to me that the soldier or fireman who chooses to risk death to save someone must have some faith on a similar level. A faith that the risk is worth it, perhaps. At some level, if there is something that we live for and that we will face death for, it may not be the same as religious faith, but it occupies the same place in our lives. Even to have no faith in anything (if that's possible) is to have a faith of a kind. Is this what the existentialists meant by commitment.
Rational? Pre-rational? Certainly faith is not a choice like choosing the right car or which item on the menu one fancies this evening. Perhaps it's not a choice at all, but the ground of all choices - the values within which reason can sift the options.
Quoting Hanover
"Explaining away" is not necessarily what science does, but what science is sometimes used to do. The wonder of a rainbow is not lessened, but increased by knowing the scientific accound of it.
I get that awe is an emotion, God or no God. I also don't proselytize. If you've found meaning in science, then you don't need to be told you're missing out.
The rainbow has special theological significance, so maybe it's why it was chosen. Genesis 9:12-15.
"Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life."
That us, the nectar of life will never cause death.
What I mean is that the things that truly nurture, sustain, and bring joy or meaning to life (the "nectar of life") are inherently life-affirming and will not lead to harm or destruction. It's a belief that true sources of vitality, whether they be love, wisdom, or purpose, cannot lead to negativity or death in a spiritual or metaphorical sense. Instead, they nourish the soul, promote growth, and enrich our existence.
And you see light from the sun scattered by water droplets through a process called refraction. So did I, but I also try to see burning bushes unconsumed everywhere I look.
And no, there was no flood, and God did not speak. I'm just trying to stop the responders who will insist upon pointing out the obvious literal absurdities before they begin.
https://www.psychofuturia.com/best-philosophy-for-life/
I didnt suggest that you were dictating a theology. I simply expressed my view. To be clear, a cosmic coincidence awaiting a return to dust also sounds rather meaningless to me. Meaning is in the stories, whether religious or secular.
What it means is that my being here under a purely causative explanation will have occurred without purpose, but just the result of various reactions over time (a cosmic coincidence) that will eventually result in my death and return to my constituive parts (decayed orderly cellular composition back to dust).
The land of Palestine doesn't really flood, but Mesopotamia does flood which is why I believe the account is originally Mesopotamian. It's also mentioned in Epic of Gilgamesh which was written many centuries before the Bible (~2100 BC) where the flood plays a major role and Gilgamesh actually goes to visit the flood's only survivor who was granted immortality by the Gods (a Mesopotamian Noah). I believe that there is strong evidence for a vast regional flood around 27 or 2800 BC.
Obviously when an ancient writer describes the entire world being flooded he can't possibly know or mean the entire globe.
Regarding God speaking, I don't know what that would mean. How could anyone ever confirm what exactly God's voice is?
EDIT: And Abraham is originally from Ur in Mesopotamia according to the Bible.
Yes, lech lecha, another parable.
I highly recommend Nahum Sarna's work on Genesis if you're interested in exploring a little further. It left me convinced that many of these Genesis stories are Mesopotamian in origin brought down to Israel and repurposed.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out.
The historical analysis, the authorship, the evolution is all super interesting, as is how it became to be looked upon as a for source dictating norms.
It's devotional use is an entirely different matter.
I'm suggesting that stories give things meaning. For example, if you ask a theologian why God created the Moon, they might say its purpose is to control Earths tidesassuming they are aware of the science. The scientific explanation itself has a narrative structure, offering meaning and coherence, regardless of any theological interpretation layered onto it.
I suppose, but I don't know whether it needs to be. I always like to know how old the prayers or psalms I'm reading are and it'll bug me if I don't know. The historical context gives it more meaning to me.
Well, is that so? I think it worth considering the logic of faithful propositions. Can we think of the adults in Elizabeth Rose Struhs' life as putting their faith to the test? Are they checking to see if their faith is justified? Well, no. It is open to them to conclude, not that god was not willing to save Elizabeth Rose Struhs, but that one or more amongst them did not have sufficient faith to satisfy god's needs; that their faith was insufficient; or that god is further testing their faith in him by court trial and prison sentence, as he did for Job.
There are no circumstances where their faith must be "rationally" rejected.
It's this incapacity to reconsider that marks an act of faith.
So faith might be seen as subjecting a belief to its consequences, except that nothing can be learned here, in that the belief cannot be shown to be in error.
And this is the culpability of faith, when it encourages folk to cruelty.
its how we think and approach knowledge that truly shapes our journey.
You are treating purpose as something you find. It isn't. Rather, it is what you do.
People, are forever trying to fit faith into secular choices so I am bound to disagree. It's an equivocation. But I certainly understand your point. To me taking an informed risk is not faith. Mostly it's taking a punt, that the skills, training, equipment, knowledge and physical strength you have as a fireman or solider will make the activity a success, knowing full well that you could die. I don't see this functioning as faith, but I can see how poetically it can be made to fit. For me using the word "faith" outside of a Christian or Islamic religious contexts is problematic.
Quoting Ludwig V
My own personal stance is that I don't respect people's choices if I consider the choice to be poorly founded and certain to fail.
Quoting Banno
Which is pretty much my problem with faith. There is no act so barbaric that it can't be justified by an appeal to faith. As a way of deciding action, it is very poor and entirely unaccountable.
Yes; and yet by some it is elevated to such heights that it is seen as the greatest virtue.
:angry:
I agree, but not as to the purpose of the moon. I do think a scientist would tell you a bird flies south in the winter in order to eat, breed, etc. That is, a purposeful teleological explanation is required to make sense of that. Just telling me how the bird reacts to cold and the chemical processes within the bird causing its wings to flap would be insufficient as an explanation.
Teleological explanations become necessary with biological organisms.
We explain this apparent purposeful behavior with evolution, suggesting that the urges toward particular purposes being caused by the death to those that rejected it.
But I suppose if you make evolution uncontradictory in the sense that all that exists is by definition most suitable for survival, then you'd have a complete explanation, with the ironic result being that disbelief in natural causes is more advantageous than strict adherence to scientific fact.
Funny result.
Why so? That makes no sense to me.
Quoting Tom Storm
Well, I don't care that much about the word. I would happily talk about commitment, but then insist of calling whatever you think Christians and Muslims have by the same name. Because I don't see what makes those specific religious contexts special, philosophically speaking.
Quoting Tom Storm
Sometimes people take a punt against the odds, or not knowing (or caring) what the odds are. On the other hand, the people we are talking about consider their choice to be well founded and likely to succeed. That's what faith does.
Quoting Tom Storm
But will you allow them to make their choices? Or, better, at what point are you prepared to intervene and prevent people acting in accordance with their faith, even if you consider their choices to be poorly founded and certain to fail? (There are problems like vaccine scepticism, where private choices affect the rest of us.)
Quoting Tom Storm
Well, that is indeed a serious issue. Private choices, like refusing medical treatment, are one thing. Forbidding medical treatment to others, is another.
Quoting Hanover
I didn't say I found meaning in science - just wonder, and a satisfaction that there is some order in the world. But I certainly do not feel that I'm missing out. On the contrary, I think that those who think that scientific explanations obscure the wonder in the world are missing out.
Quoting Hanover
I'm glad that stuff was not to be taken seriously. But now I don't know what to make of your repeating it. Ah well, perhaps I'll just enjoy the mystery.
We're in complete agreement that the choice not to treat the cancer is the wrong one.
We're also most likely in agreement that Mengele's brand of science is the wrong one. Both faith and science have things not to be proud of.
This is to say we reach agreement, faith or no faith, in the vast number of instances. I care about the consequences of my faith, and if I learn that death results from my decisions, I'd not do it again. I've not said I'd just pray for the best and damn the torpedoes.
Nor have you said the exploration of truth, damn the torpedoes, is something you're committed to. The difference would be easy if it were stark, but our day to decisions are likely very similar.
The substantial difference arises in attitude and worldview. And it's a choice. If you find that commitment to a scientific worldview offers you greater fulfilment than otherwise, have at it. What I dispute is that it's not a matter of choice. That you believe as you do because it's a matter of inherent constitution is not something I agree with.
Not at all.
An AI recalls Yuval Noah Harari's argument for me that Homo sapiens' survival and dominance were largely due to their ability to create and believe in shared fictionsstories, myths, and collective beliefs that allowed large groups to cooperate.
Unlike other human species (like Neanderthals), who mainly relied on direct personal relationships, Homo sapiens could unite thousands or even millions of people under abstract ideas, such as religions, nations, money, and laws. These shared fictions helped create trust and large-scale collaboration, giving Homo sapiens an evolutionary advantage.
So in a way, our survival and success depended not just on raw intelligence but on our ability to believe in things that don't physically exist, like gods, borders, and economies.
Quite so. And it seems we agree that the belief is not of much import, it's the acts, what one does, that is to be counted and evaluated.
But I will push back against being characterised as seeing science as a replacement for faith in some religious doctrine. Science describes how things are, it doesn't tell you what to do about how things are.
Rather, we can't know what to do, and yet have to act anyway. The only thing I can offer by way of consolation is something like Tolstoy's three questions.
Devotion is a personal matter, but if one hasn't actually read the whole book then I don't know one does it. Christianity is good with this, but with Judaism the focus is often more on the Talmud.
For reasons I have explained: that it is not properly comparable. I understand that you disagree, many do, particularly those from Christian backgrounds.
Quoting Ludwig V
Disagree - faith is blind, as it says in Hebrews 11 "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
The fireman has foresight: knowledge of how buildings react to fire, an understanding of possible floor plans, specialized training, experience, and equipment. If anything, he possesses reasonable confidence that his actions can succeed, and this confidence is supported by demonstrable knowledge and equipment that can be shown to others. On the other hand, no such supporting evidence exists for gods. A fireman who relies solely on faith will probably face grave consequences. If he survives and is seen to take a reckless risk (which is uncommon today), he would likely face disciplinary action
Quoting Ludwig V
Where possible, and depending on the level of risk, I would advocate for authorities to intervene. In Australia, we sometimes have the ability to do this. I dont generally agree that we should allow people to act solely based on what they believe to be right. Religion doesn't get a free pass. However, this is a complex issue, the doorway to which leads to a labyrinth of nuanced considerations.
Most of the global religions were the science of a former age, along with medicine, engineering, politics and history. We're just sporting around on the shoulders of those giants.
So?
So what...
Indeed and often demonstrates that the shoulders of those giants are not resting on good foundations and cannot bear the weight of progress.
Did you think all the suffering and struggle was just the lead up to this glorious moment in the history of science? Guess which ancient religion, preserved in Christianity, that you got that idea from.
It's odd how folk keep imputing scientism to what I have said. First and now.
Again, science does not tell us what to do.
I guess folk as so used to thinking in terms of science versus religion that the idea of questioning both as a guide to ethics doesn't occur to them.
The law tells you what to do. Our law is a descendant of religious law. All the stuff we have separated out was fused back then.
But, and over, that, if the law is unethical, you ought not do what the law says.
Hence, the law does not tell you what you ought do.
Quoting Banno
That's all true. Barbarity and false virtue, blessed in the dogmatic mask of some religion, happens.
But is that all faith is to you both, or just some misuse of faith that corrupts only some people?
Does absolute faith corrupt absolutely? If that is what you think, I wonder if I could change your mind?
Because I see the opposite in what springs from faith. Equating barbarity and false virtue with faith is a much more, let's say, particular view of faith than I've generally experienced. Looks like the TV version, or maybe from a sociology class, or anthropology class. Not from an actual church, or most actual churches and mosques and synagogues. Lot's of good, rational, faith-going people, exist and do things because of their faith everyday. For centuries, since people started writing, maybe because of words themselves - faith driving the discussions among people. Delivered us all to our currently enlightened state. Are you saying they all, because they would base their actions and justifications on some religious faith, they've all just strayed so far from the same reality you and I experience today that all faith is about is justifying things like barbarity and false virtue in the name of their religious beliefs?
Or is that just one small point in a broader understanding of "faith"?
You can't pull some lemonade out of "faith in God" at all? Even on a psychological or social level?
Do all opiates of the masses lead only to wife and child abuse, barbarity and praise of barbarity?
I think that misses everything about faith.
Quoting Banno
This is all confused to me. It sounds like you are overthrowing the law, but using the law to do it, so I don't know the function of "law" for you.
You talk about the writing of the laws by whatever means codified, then pose an unethical law, and from this conclude "you ought not do what the law says."
And this was in response to Frank saying Quoting frank
But your determination of "unethical" can only come by appealing to some other law. So the law is still telling you what to do.
The determination of "unethical" is done here by seeing that one law (which tells you what to do) is in conflict with another law (which also tells you what to do). You replaced ought with another ought, not a refutation of ought.
If you said the law was just silly, or the law was impossible to understand so there is nothing to follow, you could say "hence the law does not tell you what you ought to do." But you said "the law is unethical" - so you are still looking to some law, some ethic, to tell you what to do.
The law always tells you what to do. That's what a law is, what it does.
The question is only "what is the law", and separate from whatever answer you get, there is what you actually do, following the law or not, or some other law. But if there is a law, it tells you what to do.
It's the act that counts when evaluating the objective value of your citizenship, but you spend most of your time with yourself, so it makes sense to evaluate your beliefs upon what subjective fulfillment it provides.
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
You have heard of the Euthyphro? Is an act good becasue it is the law, or is it the law becasue it is good? You seem to be saying that what is good and what is the law are the very same. Yet there are bad laws.
Perhaps you are thinking of divine command theory as the source of the ultimate law, or perhaps some form of deontology. But recall that there are alternatives that do not explain what is good in terms of what is commanded. Consequentialism is one alternative. But better in my view is seeking after virtue.
Laws present us with a codified and tested guide to what we might do. And following those laws is a good idea. But if a law leads to turpitude, it ought not be followed.
What is legal and what is good are very different things.
Of course, believe whatever makes you feel good - whatever gets you through the night. (Should I link to the John Lennon song? Is it still sufficiently well known?) I'll work hard to set aside any jokes about onanism.
But be aware that what others see and are aware of, and so all that they can judge, are our actions. So it might be best to give them due regard.
That's precisely correct.
So I have to assume nothing tells you what to do, since you are a man of science, and since you can't use faith to build authority behind the law, and since such authority will never come from science. It would be nonsensical to uncover the facade of a faith community making moral law, and then turn around fabricate some other ethical, moral code anyway (and why would anyone care to follow laws they didn't have to make in the first place).
But you seem to think faith justifies praise of barbarity, so you have a moral code where elevating barbarity is bad enough to be useful to denigrate the faithful. And so you think barbarity is immoral, and false praise immoral - where did these laws come from anyway? They sound like the bible just as much as the bible does to me.
If you want to denigrate faith as a pastime, that's fine, but if you want to be consistent, just admit that just like faith, morality and ethics make no sense to you, because they can't be weighed, or measured or proven sound, or logically derived, or tested or falsified. Why ought I not follow an unethical law anyway? Why can't I follow whatever I want?
No-faith may be a blessing in disguise.
Curious that some folk have such difficulty with this: that what is good and what is commanded are not the very same thing. But consider: of whatever is commanded, it makes sense to ask "is that good?".
It's pretty naive to suppose, unargued, that the only form ethics can take is that of a series of commandments.
I wonder where such a view might originate.
How about just one good person, who believes in God, has faith, and is a rational, good, fun, functioning, contributing member of society? Ever met one of those? If you have, go figure, all that despite the plague of faith.
You sound to me like you have no idea what faith is. And no curiosity.
That is all off topic. Law speak is more akin to science. You need reason to sift through laws and commands, like reason navigates us through physical laws and necessities.
I thought we were talking about faith.
There are good people of faith.
I haven't said otherwise.
I have argued that they are not good in virtue of or due to their faith, and that faith is capable of abomination.
Quoting Fire Ologist
So you are affronted, and feel the need to denigrate me, rather than to address the arguments presented. You are not obligated to reply to me, nor to read my posts. If it makes you uncomfortable, go do something else.
You seemed interested in the topic, since you responded to Frank raising it. You argued that what is good is what is the law, or something along those lines. But if you want to leave that topic, I'm happy.
You just stated it. You didn't argue it.
Quoting Banno
You haven't addressed mine.
Why fabricate ethics, good, and laws at all? Why do you do that if you can only base your actions on reason and science (which can not tell you what to do)? If science cannot tell you what to do, how are you not uncomfortable with any ethics, any assessment of some platonic "good"?
You may have been unable to recognise the argument.
I pointed out and gave an example of faith, defined as subjecting a belief to its consequences, leading to dreadful and terrible consequences.
Hence it does not follow that acts done in faith are always good. And so it cannot be that acts are good in virtue of being done in faith.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Fabricate? Platonic good? We have no choice but to act. And I have been at pains to say that our actions are not determined by reason and science. If I did not address you argument, it was becasue I did not recognise that it was proposed to be an argument.
I agree. Not all acts done in faith are good. Im not saying an act is good because it is an act of faith. An act is what it is.
But if some acts done in faith ARE good, then it doesnt follow that all acts done in faith are bad.
You say you are not arguing that all acts done in faith are bad, but by the way you talk about faith (willfully resistant to reason, used to justify and praise badness), you still seem to be building a case that all faith leads to no good. Ive seen nothing even neutral, let alone good about faith in your estimation of it.
But that is demonstrably false. Tons of real charity, life giving sacrifice, happiness, comfort, all brought into the world, daily, for thousands of years, directly in the hope and belief in things only known in faith. Tons of goodness because of faith and religion.
All of the pain and suffering and barbarity and lies and badness - it was always already there as it remains. Faith didnt cause it. Science doesnt cause it either. Science helps some of it; faith does too.
Im not even really trying to argue faith is good. Just trying to keep straight what it is from what it is not, and recognize faith as necessary - you really dont believe in anything that you havent already proven? Of course you have some beliefs that are not yet proven. You are interested in philosophy, so I know you dont know a lot of things for sure, yet you must act anyway like anyone else. You have your beliefs, like everyone else. Beliefs are a necessity, and some of them are a good.
Why say reason is an enemy of faith, when you are a reasonable person who occasionally acts on faith like everyone must? I think you are selling faith short, to your own disillusionment with organized religion.
Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue.
Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues.
The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated.
I don't agree. I hope other also disagree.
:smirk:
Quoting Tom Storm
Waste of grey matter. :pray:
Quoting Hanover
are avoided by modern biologists.
:up: :up:
My point was that Hammurabi was both king and head of the national religion. He was seen as transmitting laws that originated with a Babylonian divinity. The very idea of law comes from religion.
Therefore Banno's comment that religion tells you what to do while science doesn't is just kind of naive about our religious heritage. Religion was pervasive social technology.
And as climate change sets in and civilization struggles to cope with the volatility, our ability to communicate who we are to the people who live 5000 years from now will probably come down to this ancient capability wrapped up in what we call religion.
H'm I'm not sure what to make of the last sentence there. But I think you are missing my point. The fireman (person?) heading into a burning building has lots of equipment and training, not to mention protocols behind him. They cannot sort all that out for themselves. They need to have faith - to trust, if you prefer - that all of that is as it should be and that their project is worthwhile. You and I might want to say that they need to trust in science and reason. My point is that, so far as I can see, that trust is hard to distinguish from the trust of a believer in whatever they believe, whether it be God, or luck, or the stars. I realize that's heretical, but the question does not just go away.
Quoting Tom Storm
Could you possibly steer me to where you explained? I would very much like to see what you say.
Quoting Banno
I think you are over-simplifying, or at last taking for granted the context in which we evaluate beliefs. First, there is an issue about what counts as evidence. Classic example, belief in a creator God. Someone like Dawkins will not agree with his religious opponent about what is to count as evidence. Who decides? Second, evidence does not grow on trees. We have to learn what counts as evidence for what. If we don't trust what we have learnt, we are sunk. Second, not all propositions can be neatly parcelled with their evidence. Methodological principles, such as the experimental method or the principle of sufficient reason come to mind. In addition, scientists don't approach their issues with a blank sheet of paper. They take for granted, trust, well-established part of science and build on them to refine, extend or revise what is known.
Quoting Banno
Well, I'm not clear about the differences here. I'm inclined to go further and say that faith just is commitment, But either way, I agree that whether faith, trust, commitment, dedication are good or bad things depends on what they are in or to. Evaluating cases - given the absence of the usual processes of evidence, etc. will come down to evaluating outcomes. This can be tricky, but we seem to be able to carry out evaluations quite effectively in some cases at least. The "not in my name" defence is a complication, however.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I would agree with that. But saying that neither faith nor science didn't cause the bad things that have been done in their name does concede much to the claims of those who have faith. Some Christians, at least, do claim that their faith enables them to lead better lives. Similarly with science. More than that, people do claim their faith, whether in religion or science, is the motivation for their actions. Others of the same faith may reject that claim on the grounds that their understanding of their faith is not "true". But can we necessarily accept that excuse?
Quoting Banno
I agree with the first sentence. But given the difficulty in establishing everything required to provide a full justification of what we do, don't we have to trust our authoritative sources and/or our common sense in order to act at the time we need to? For the second sentence, I'm not sure what you mean. People do cite reason and science as well as their religion as justifications for their actions. Do you mean that they are always mistaken? Or do you mean that there is some additional element - perhaps something like motivation - that is needed?
Quoting Tom Storm
There is no way to asses a faith, so far as I can see, but by its fruits. Religious faiths come out with a pretty mixed record. Are we sure that science and reason (Enlightenment) comes out much better?
Anything anyone thinks without balancing it with their own experience, without reason, is foolish. Thats not good faith.
Quoting Banno
Magnanimous of you to say. Doesnt go far enough. Perhaps you dont have to trust anyone for anything. Certainly trust can be broken, so when it is, does that mean we should shoot for a world where we dont have to trust anyone? Trustworthiness is the virtue; trusting is more like, being vulnerable.
Quoting Banno
But the story of Abraham does not tell us how to show faith - Jews and Christians dont need to do any violence ever, based on faith (those who say and do otherwise, like you, misunderstand all of it). Isaac lived. Abraham fathered children who, like him, knew God, as countless as the stars, just as God said he would. The story of Abraham means that God will justify your faith in him. We can trust God no matter what. Its not about, what crazy murder can someone commit. At all. Abraham was rational, he trusted God, and was right and justified.
Im not going to defend the prosecution of God with you here.
I will defend faith. Anyone who thinks abandoning your own reason is ever right or good, is a fool, or not a functioning person. Faith is not opposed to reason.
If a person performs some ritual, to praise God and bring blessings, they are using reason throughout, as necessary to complete any task successfully. Just because you dont see God and dont see blessings, doesnt mean they are not there, or that the faithful person is not seeing something you dont.
So you still havent found one good thing about faith. How belief in certain things, like Santa Clause, or justice, or some other persons faith in you, might actually be an important, even necessary part of improving the world. Not even on a raw, practical, people managing their hard lives level.
Fine, but then, good luck working whatever muscle allows people to trust each other, and good luck building a world where trust between two people is not needed. Good luck building love.
Faith is not opposed to reason. Thats a shallow, essentialist view of faith, creating a use function and truth value suited towards insulting other intelligences.
You could just trust me about it, but I hope you use your own reason and figure out a deeper, broader significance to faith than you currently display.
Biblical interpretation is a field unto itself, and your interpretation based upon what you believe it means from a casual reading isn't really helpful without citation to sources. What you've done is just chosen the least generous read for whatever reason.
For the many diverging views on the story: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac#:~:text=According%20to%20Irving%20Greenberg%20the,sacrifices%20were%20the%20norm%20worldwide.
Isaac was the offspring of a 90 year old Sara who God told Abraham he'd provide to her. This is why I've never been impressed by Kierkegaard's claim Issac's binding was a great act of faith. Miracles were abundant back then and a God that could make good on impregnating a post-menopausal Sara (and, yes, the text mentions that) probably should be trusted with whatever request he might make.
I'd also point out that by some estimates, Isaac was in his mid-20s and Jewish sources put him at 37 at the time of the binding. https://versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/how-old-was-isaac-when-he-went-to-be-sacrificed
Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born, meaning the 37 year old son must have been compliant when his 137 year old pops tied him up. My money would have been on the 37 year old in that slug fest. This speaks to a level of consent, particularly considering the text doesn't describe a struggle.
Which is all to say, stop with the literalism. These stories were not meant for such analysis. And stop with the sympathy for the characters. They aren't real. It's like feeling sorry for the fox who couldn't get the grapes. The fox wasn't real. He talked for God sake. Isaac wasn't real. Nuclear powered Viagra couldn't have made that happen, and I'll save the description of what Sara's physical response might have looked like.
I was recently told by an 80 year old that it gets better every year. :grimace:
While I duly appreciate the comment and will, as always, uphold it in full, wanted to draw attention to certain possibilities of how at least some well known myths might have nevertheless developed form historical truths (maybe).
The flood was previously mentioned in the thread this as possibly having been adopted from the Mesopotamians. On one hand, the flood myth is actually very wide spread, to include ancient Greek myths of how Zeus flooded the lands to punish humanity. Here pertinent to the Western hemisphere (to include migrations to and from it), though, is the so far viable Black Sea deluge hypothesis which could have been a historical fact that can thereby account for all flood myths both west and east of the Black Sea.
This along the lines of how the Jonah and the Whale fable could potentially have in fact been Jonah being swallowed up in full by a great white shark in the Mediterranean sea. Great whites used to get bigger than they typically get today (due to our fishing). A large enough great white could swallow a person full in one go, so that the person remains alive and in one piece. Sharks are also known to regurgitate unpleasant eatings, so were the dude to start punching and kicking inside the sharks stomach, the shark would have likely regurgitated the human whole, and yet living. And the Mediterranean sea is upheld by at least some experts to be a nursery where great whites give birth. And, technically, in Hebrew its not a whale but expressed as being a "large fish".
No such possible account would be literalism. Quite obviously. But if any such account would be true, neither would the myths which developed from these accounts and which have taken on a life of their own be completely concocted out of thin air. Which isn't to say the same must apply to all myths out there. Anyway. Musings.
Probably true, but I heard it flatlines at 99.
Makes sense the tales would come from real events. The best horror movies exploit our deepest fears. The Nile floods enough that it brings fear that one day it will consume the city. Something like that.
Is it reasonable to truss up your son and ready the fire? Read this again, and reconsider:
No, this behaviour is abominable, unjustifiable.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Madmen rationally justify their acts. What is described in Genesis 22 is madness.
Quoting Hanover
Indeed, bending over backwards to justify the unjustifiable. In the place of all those words, see a man preparing a fire, fettering his son and taking a knife to his throat. Judge that.
Stop with the literalism, becasue the literal story is of an horrendous act. One needs sophistry to move beyond that.
Faith then is the believe in a set of common values, without there necessarily being any justification other then the fact that a group of people have agreed to them.
It doesn't have anything to do with 'truth' in the empirical sense, it is future oriented, i.e. more about what society one wants to create... more about 'what should be', rather than about 'what is'.
It's a way to avoid prisoners dilemmas. It only works if people suspend there own short term self-interest for the longer term common good, which in the end is more beneficial for everybody than if people just all would pursue the own interest... a leap of faith.
There's no argument here for that interpretation. You say religion is the believe in a set of common values, then in the next sentence replace "religion" with "faith".
Its essentially about obedience. Abraham demonstrates unwavering obedience, carrying out God's command without expressing fear or doubt. His commitment to the task is so great that he even deceives his son with carefully chosen words, ultimately resulting in divine reward.
Quoting Fire Ologist
One challenge with religious faith is its inherent exclusivity to the specific tradition it embraces. Your defensiveness and rather ungenerous interpretation of what Banno is saying may be a demonstration of this.
Quoting Hanover
Frightening, when it comes to interpreting a story like this for obedient followers.
Faith is the belief in those values from the personal perspective.
There is no argument, it is description of what happens.
Those values are not necessary, let alone peculiar, to religion. Nationalism is an obvious alternative. Both are somewhat parochial, even anachronistic.
This thread is at least in part an exploration of the difference between faith and mere belief. Saying that faith is just a belief in some set of values ignores quite a bit of what has already been said about faith.
The literal story is of a 37 year old man previously birthed from a 90 year old mother and of a father who bargained directly with God over the survival of Sodom and Gomorrah. And in the end, this grown man survived, having two children of his own, the youngest having birthed the entirety of the Jewish people.
But let's order this story for you: God promises Abraham and Sara a child and explicitly promises him this child's descendants will inherit land (Canaan) and will be a great nation. All this happens, including a child being born miraculously.
Would it not be foretold by these facts that Isaac could not have died, considering God made an explicit covenant with Abraham that Isaac was the future progenitor of Israel?
The story is literally preposterous, yet you want to imagine you were standing on the mountain side that day in shock among this crazy cast of characters in this absurdist reality with jaw on the floor watching a horrendous act?
Did the fox ever get fed or did he die of hunger for failure of Aesop to feed him? That's what we ought focus on.
The difference is that belief is the more encompassing term, also including empirical beliefs about what is. Faith is a type of belief, a subset... about values, about what should be... things that cannot simply be derived from what is.
That was my point.
I said "poetically" because I believe that using the word "faith" outside of a religious context serves as a literary or evocative expression rather than a precise or useful descriptor.
So we clearly disagree on this. I understand your point, which many religious people also make and I find it unconvincing. I don't agree that faith is a synonym for commitment.
Firefighters do not rely on faith in their equipment any more than passengers rely on faith when boarding a plane. We have ample evidence to justify our confidence in both aviation and firefighting, as both fields are underpinned by proven safety records and reliable procedures. Where is this good reasoning and evidence when someone uses faith to justify faith healing ?
Quoting Ludwig V
We can evaluate faith by examining the ideas it justifies. When faith allows children to die becasue the people believe god will heal and medicine is unnecessary, we can see how poor that chocie is. I'm not advocating for reason or science here; I'm simply asserting that faith is a poor pathway to truth. When individuals claim on faith that black people are inferiora view I've encountered among some Reformed Christians in South Africathey offer no reasoning, merely justifying bigotry. However, if they were to use eugenics to support their views, then we could engage in a rational discussion about the matter and the efficacy of the failed science of eugenics.
My point is that faith is a poor way to arrive at truth because there is nothing it can't justify. Which is why I've generally said if you have good reasons for believing in something, you don't need faith. For me faith is best understood as the excuse people give for a belief when they don't have good reasons.
Moreover, such deceptions are somehow admirable?
Or are these comments just designed to mitigate the discomfort of taking the story literally? Indeed, some fairly extreme rationalisation is needed to maintain that a god who loves us and one that demands child sacrifice are the very same.
So the stories are indeed preposterous, as you say. The lesson one is supposed to take away is, as says, thoughtless obedience. This is not admirable.
Sure, but then neither is faith in all its meanings always equivalent to unquestioning obedience to some authority or else in some authoritative given - this as per the Abraham example as written.
As remarked early on, in common speech one and one's spouse are said to be faithful - full of faith - toward one another. Or as another example, having faith in humanity, or else one's fellow man. In neither of these contexts is faith taken to be about blind obedience to authority. Nor is it about mere belief.
I'll venture the notion that faith is about a certain form of trust - a trust in X that can neither be empirically nor logically evidenced. Belief (also closely associated to the notion of trust) can and most always should be justifiable in order to be maintained - as is the case in JTB. But faith eludes this possibility in practice.
Form there, the concept or else experience of faith can then bifurcate into authoritarian doctrines and usages, one the one hand, and on the other into a certain sense of hope-as-acted-upon-conviction regarding what is and will be, one for which one cannot find any steady ground to provide justification for.
Here's one extreme but good example: I don't just believe that solipsism is bullshit, I have and have always had a stringent acted-upon-conviction that it is. In sprite of this, I acknowledge that so far no philosophy has managed to demonstrate why solipsism is in fact false. In this sense, then, we all have and life by our faith that we are not solipsists. No blind obedience to anything required to have and uphold this one example of faith.
Or course, loud mouth authoritarians in religious circles are gonna claim sole knowledge about and ownership of what "true faith" is really all about. After all, it can rather fluidly serve authoritarian purposes. But disparaging the very occurrence of faith in all circumstances on this ground is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I'll add that it is not OK to have faith in things that blatantly contradict reality - to have faith that humans once upon a time walked along side dinosaurs, for example. But when it comes to having faith in one's romantic partner, or one's fellow man, or that one is not a solipsism - and I take it that the list can be much longer - when such faith is not contradicted by any empirical evidence or logic is just common sense (even if one cannot prove that one's spouse has not cheated and will not cheat, or that human nature is not determined to be callous, etc.).
Yea, opinionated of me, but I sand by what I've just said.
You raise a good point about language use which I think is one reason why we get confused about faith. We often use the term "faith" with cavalier imprecision. Sometimes all we mean is that the evidence points in a certain direction. To me, "faith" serves more as a poetic or metaphorical expression than as an accurate description of certainty. Our language abounds with figurative expressions. Just as we say we're "drowning in paperwork" or "surfing the web" to capture a broader meaning, "faith" may also be used to convey a sense of confidence rather than strictly referring to an ineffable religious experience.
There's also the matter of scale. I have a reasonable expectation that my plane wont crash (although perhaps this expectation has diminished in the U.S. under Trump?). In contrast, using faith to justify the belief that the world was created by a magic sky wizard -the literalist's deity- operates on an entirely different level. How can these two phenomena be meaningfully compared? Its not merely that faith is a poor analogy for reasonable expectation; it's also about the magnitude of the claim being justified. The assertion that we can know the will and actions of a world-creating entity is significantly different from an empirically grounded confidence that air travel is safe. Perhaps the scale of the claim says something about why faith is a necessary concept for some.
It's been interpreted to mean that human sacrifice is forbidden. But you're the one looking at the art. See what you will. Speaking of art, I was at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art recently. What do you make of this?
Quoting Hanover
Someone's made a model of my desk...
To me, it again has a lot to do with things such as this:
Quoting javra
Genesis II onward is replete with logical contradictions - which one is supposed to blindly overlook so as maintain one's faith in ... precisely what Genesis II onward claims. You've got this "omnipresent" being that is walking the earth. How exactly does that work??? Is the earth walked on part of the walking being, the "Lord"??? The same earth walking being is also said to be "omniscient" but is taken aback by this serpent (who is not yet slithering on earth) entering the picture, then gets pissed of as hell at everyone for not obeying him. Um, not quite rationally valid to then affirm this Lord as being omniscient. This same Lord is also omnipotent ... but had no power over what the serpent, Eve, and Adam did. And so forth.
Faith here isn't about trust in that which one cannot yet prove or soundly justify. Faith here is self-imposed blindness (as metaphors go, not physical blindness but a self-imposed blindness of the soul else intellect). And, just as with a faith in dinosaurs and humans once mingling, its at these junctures that I take faith to become deleterious. As I previously commented in this thread:
"Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God." - Luther
I get it. You, like many others, have very strong intuitions about how things should be. And when this intuition (moral system?) conflicts with the Bible it must be very frustrating for you.
Kierkegaard saw something profound in it. You see nothing. If I see nothing in Guernica, does that say something about the painting? Or about me?
So... you think you do not have very strong intuitions about how things should be?
Then why did you respond to my post?
I saw quite a bit in the story, on which I have been expounding.
It was my reading of Kierkegaard that first brought this line of thinking to me. The Knight of Faith is not someone I would look up to.
It was worthwhile then?
I have intuitions. I make judgments, for sure.
Consider that only a few pages before this mess with Abraham and Isaac God floods the world and kills countless people. We can start there. What do you think would have been better? I think about this sometimes. Maybe he should have sent angels down and forced those evil men to attend moral philosophy courses. We can go down this rabbit hole. We can rewrite the Bible as we would have done things.
The story of Noah is a garbled version of an episode out of the epic of Gilgamesh.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Cool. So it's not that people make judgements that is problematic when you say"
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
So your point remains obscure.
I agree that the flood story is derived from the Gilgamesh story. There are too many parallels to ignore.
You insist that all align to your judgment. I'm the more skeptical one. I acknowledge that much is beyond me. How do you figure God should have handled the flood story? We can begin writing Banno's Bible.
:lol: I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the garage today and unfortunately it still resembles a contemporary piece of art.
Then again, for many, faith simply boils down to the conviction that the word of God is absolute. What exactly God or this very word is remains elusive, save for those who have faith in this very absolute, and very much authoritarian, word of God. This in contrast to all other people out there. Thereby granting these faith-endowed folk the ability to discard any empirical facts, reasoning, or common-sense ethical considerations regarding the good and goodness which in any way stand in the way of their obedience to this very word. Else they get punished by the tyrant (literally, absolute ruler and dictator).
No, all this doesnt make sense to me either. But, yes, it happens.
And while I still maintain that faith as concept and experience has been hijacked by such people to the detriment of what it signifies among humanity at large, I nevertheless wanted to more explicitly acknowledge this darker aspect of faith as the term is often employed. (And I say this as one who for my own reasons believes in what it commonly termed the divine ... with the notion of the Good taking center stage.)
Yes, I do agree, and I see others are posting about the varying uses of the term "faith." And that's likely the source of much of the debate. I suppose this thread might have taken a more focused course if objections were phrased as "the sort of faith i disagree with is..." or "biblical passages interpreted as promoting obedience as a virtue are concerning because...," but that would have been less fun probably.
Cobbler's awls. No, I hope for a bit of conversation, some intelligent disagreement. I'm not insisting on agreement so much as enjoying disagreement.
"Pikuach nefesh (Hebrew: ????? ???), which means "saving a soul" or "saving a life," is the principle in Halakha (Jewish law) that the preservation of human life overrides virtually any other religious rule of Judaism."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh
I find it funny that you take serious issue with the Isaac story -- a story where no one dies, yet seem to ignore entirely the deluge where countless die painful deaths just a few pages earlier. Surely that should be the bigger matter.
In the Book of Hebrews the writer says Abraham thought God would resurrect Isaac. The command was still to murder
It's not the Isaac story either. I don't see how I'm anymore offtopic than you are in mentioning the Isaac story.
Noah also trusts in God.
NT. Different tradition. The story has many interpretations among Christians even, but certainly compared to Jews.
Noah builds the ark on trust alone, but you'd have thought others would have thought something was up when the polar bears and penguins and koala bears all converged in the middle east. They'd have thought maybe Noah was on to something. Literalism demands such questions, right?
:100: :up:
The gathering of the animals onto the ark also happens in Gilgamesh iirc.
Is your issue with God or Abraham?
How do you know that it's unjustified? Like I said earlier, you're more certain than I am. The only suffering here is Abraham's inferred psychological suffering which you seem to be extremely concerned with.
Unparalleled profundity.
I don't think it is a bad thing to be clear.
Quoting Banno
I don't think you really understand what faith is if you believe that you should evaluate what faith asks you to do by yet another standard. Faith is the standard, there's nothing besides. That is I think precisely the point of the binding of Isaac, that you sacrifice what may be in your personal interest for the greater good.
Why is faith the greater good? Because it is what preserves the social order, and that is a prerequisite without which individuals can't attain their interests to begin with.
If you believe inflicting suffering is the standard to measure behaviours to, then that is your faith.
Fascism it is, then.
The problem is universality, the idea that the values of a certain group should apply to everyone... and hence everyone can justifiably be held accountable for not adhering to these values, even if they don't believe in them.
Plato... Christianity.
Suit yourself.
If religion or any other common understanding of how to realise this is lacking, then the personal interest of the populace will not be served by default.
But that is hard to explain to 'Mercans.
And off topic.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Replying her as this is off topic - fair enough. Present circumstances place the point in high relief. I've in mind something along the lines of John Rawls as modified by Martha Nussbaum, adopting a capabilities approach.
I'm European.
I get it, trust works... until it doesn't.
Are you saying Isaac deserved the death penalty for a crime/sin? Otherwise he was innocent and surely suffered, as his father suddenly bound him.
So the question is whether faith plays any role in reason, in the life of the mind, and in philosophy
Speaking of interpreting works to work for you, I recently learned of the 2017 genocide in Myanmar. It was only a little surprising that Buddhist monks were behind it. I was far more appalled that Facebook played an instrumental role, and they were fully aware of what was going on.
How can Buddhist teachings be twisted to justify fucking ethnic cleansing? Rather easily it turns out.
Have faith and see what you're told to see.
Such religious fever happens in all cultures because each religion can't make everyone it touches good. I'm wondering about basic faith as a state in learning though. When mathemticians started doubting parts of Euclid, did that doubt require some kind of intellectual faith in order to go on?
I agree with that if you mean by faith the starting-point of reason. So I wouldn't say that theology is irrational, since it starts from belief in God and attempts work out rational doctrines from there. Even astrology includes a certain rationality. But that makes both doctrines vulberable to rational criticism.
Quoting Hanover
The trouble with these stories is that they hover between the literal and the metaphorical. That's what makes them myths.
Quoting Hanover
If we don't sympathize with the characters, the story becomes pointless.
Quoting Banno
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here. But it is true that I have been neglecting the approval rating that is usually implicit in classifyinng some commitment as a faith. For myself, I am happy to say that whether faith is a virtue depends on what you have faith in and/or what your faith leads you to do. That requires some common basis for assessment. But it doesn't seem too much to say that actions like the ritual murder of one's son, the pointless infliction of suffering on an innocent person, or the wanton destruction of a civilization fall into that category.
There's a group of related words here which it would be good to sort out. Faith, trust, loyalty commitment. All of them have a dark side, which perhaps should have correlated terms. Obsession might be one of them.
Quoting Banno
The let-out clauses (Abraham didn't believe God would make him do it, God never intended him to do it) undermine the idea that the take-away is total obedience. But it may be that the point of the story lies completely elsewhere:-
If the intended take-away is that God does not require human sacrifice, the story makes sense. The message is reinforced in later books.
Both accounts seriously criticize the action.
See Wikipedia - Human Sacrifice
I can find no way out of believing that the story of Job is outrageous. God inflicts all that suffering on him because of a bet with Satan, to show off how faithful his believers are. Truly, not acceptable. Is it possible that it would have been acceptable in the culture of his time? Even so, not acceptable.
The Flood at least has a comprehensible reason, though it still seems to me to be a gross over-reaction.
Quoting javra
That makes sense.
Isn't this Chinese morality?
I think you're overlooking that ideals are pictures of what we want to be rather than what we are. It's the sheep-like culture that idealizes individuality. It's the independent minded people who prize self sacrifice for the community. To understand culture, look for the oppositions and contradictions.
The old trope that faith leads to murder. I'm pretty sure secular nations have gone to war as well. Ukraine looms larger than Myanmar.
Job is unique in that we can't situate it within any time or place unlike virtually all the other books. I've long considered it thought experiment/theodicy in agreement with some early rabbinic commentators.
Job is needed in canon because it bucks the general biblical trend of associating bad deeds with suffering/misfortune. It's true as a general trend but it's not all inclusive. Without Job the canon would be lacking. The righteous/blameless do suffer and sometimes terribly and without any known reason or justification.
Job also lays out the acceptable limits of suffering - Job questions God, cries out to him, laments the day of his birth, but he never curses God or tells God that he is wrong.
Book of Job also puts humanity in its place epistemically. As humans our perspectives are limited and biased and to draw such broad and universal judgments such as which suffering is ultimately "justified" and which is "unjustified" is beyond us. The book stands against man's hubrism and his tendency of all encompassing judgment. In the end Job is rewarded.
Quoting Gregory
No. I was only taking issue with Banno's idea that we can clearly know which suffering is justified and which is not.
Quoting Banno
On a surface reading, the lesson would simply be obedience, like when teaching this story to a child, because a child is thoughtless or incapable of reasoning and knowing what to do. To an adult, the same lesson is trust, capable of reason and knowing what to do, but able to trust someone else's reasons. So obedience is part of the story, but if one concludes it's the only lesson, then much is missed.
Today's first reading at Catholic Mass is about Abraham and Isaac, and, we hundreds of millions hear this:
The Lord God took Abram outside and said,
Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.
Just so, he added, shall your descendants be.
Abram put his faith in the LORD,
who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
- Genesis 15:5-6
This is essential background to the story of Abraham. He had no child at the time and was promised many descendants by God.
Then, later, Abraham and Sara have a child, a child born when thought impossible, but nevertheless a first of many promised descendants.
So next essential thing is that Isaac was most precious to Abraham. He loved him and did everything a good father would, everyday, to keep him safe and raise him. We know Abraham loved Isaac because he was distressed about Ishmael, his other son, and needed to know he would be cared for as well, so of course we know Abraham was a good father and loved his children. Love is essential.
And it is essential that Abraham was sane and rational throughout the story.
Otherwise, without love of his son, or without his mind and reason, the killing of Isaac could not be a sacrifice for Abraham. If Abraham was nuts and somehow didn't know what he was doing, then he wasn't sacrificing a cherished, beloved son; he was acting out some psychosis. That wouldn't be anything other than a tragic accident, and couldn't yield any lesson we can't learn from looking at much other human behavior. Abraham had to love Isaac and know what he was doing for the killing of Isaac to be a sacrifice made by trusting God. And, indeed, a MASSIVE sacrifice.
But despite his love for Isaac, the precious little boy who asked Abraham such a great question on the way to the deed, Abraham stayed faithful to his trust in God, above his own heart.
He found reason to believe God will make good on all of His promises in some other way.
That was the sacrifice - not the act of a madman; not someone blindly obedient - it was a fully informed decision to, despite all else, trust God.
Abraham in his heart trusted God to care for his descendants, even though he could not possibly understand how anymore, since he was killing his single legitimate descendent.
Last, it is essential to the story that God intercedes and saves Isaac.
Abraham showed what obedience and trust and faith are; God showed what obedience, trust and faith in Him are - salvation from death, progeny that number the stars. And Abraham's progeny are the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims at the very least.
Abraham loved Isaac, but trusted God above all else, and because of who God is, Abraham was given Isaac, and the fatherhood of history.
And for further context besides the father of descendents, the Abram/Isaac story is made a part of the Book of Genesis with Adam and Eve. So it shows us God asking himself, why would I ever trust a man again? Why would God bother to talk to any of us. Trust is two-way. God trusted Adam and Eve with the keys to paradise, with one instruction - don't drive faster than 55 miles per hour or you will die - and Adam and Eve decided to trust some snake and try driving 100 miles an hour for themselves - and then they ran and hid from God and needed clothing to stay hidden when God found them, and they blamed the snake and blamed each other for what was their own choice. It was certainly reasonable for God not to trust Abraham's faith, and reasonable to test Abraham, to see if any one of us people could ever be trusted again.
Abraham had reason to trust God - God made Isaac possible in the first place. Luckily, for all of us, Abraham figured out the most rational thing to do in every case, is trust God.
That's the story to me. Not one hint of blind obedience or irrational murderers.
"Obedience" is an adolescent or a slave's word for what a consenting adult does in every act directed towards some purpose. We make our actions ours, using our reasons and willing them, and then enacting our own law accordingly. Call it obedience, or call it enacting your own will - these are the same thing if your will is the will of another. If you trust another, you can say you are obeying another, or just say you are trusting another and take more responsibility for whatever you are doing.
But I need to clarify one last thing. I still do not think faith is opposed to reason; but faith approaches the same world from a different direction; faith is other than reason, and can confound reason. But reason is always there (allowing one to distinguish whether one can trust someone else to conduct a certain action, or one can't, or shouldn't trust someone else.
And little Isaac turned out to be okay. I have faith that you, Banno, will one day be able to ask him yourself if he holds that day against God or his father.
You brought up the practice of interpreting religious doctrine. The Myanmar monks are an example of how useful that practice can be, and of how drastic reinterpretations can be. If you know anything about Buddhism you may appreciate how antithetical ethnic cleansing is to the tradition. Traditions change of course. A key tenet of Buddhism is that everything changes.
If you're convinced that you're all good, how will you notice the signs that you're starting to turn into a Nazi due to bitterness or whatever. It's better to know that you're capable of becoming a monster so you can take steps to change course. You have to start with accepting that you have that dark side. Kierkegaard was right.
Were something along these lines to have in fact occurred, the event would then make far more sense to me.
Again, I get it, its a very heretical interpretation of events. Given by someone who does NOT know the bible like the back of his hand. The heretic that I am, though, I will fall back on the bible / torah having been written by imperfect men via their own less than perfectly objective and, hence, biased interpretations of events, such that that part about El intervening in Abrahams killing of Issac could well be an untrue written account of the events which actually transpired.
Since this is a philosophy forum and not a church schooling, I thought it worth sharing this interpretation alongside those previously offered.
The Bible was written by men over an extended period of time and it was not originally written as a book of values and norms. How the Bible became holy is a whole different analysis. This is also why literalist interpretations without reference to other commentaries result in interpretations never accepted by any tradition.
Norms and values are learned and known from living in a society. It's common that very religious people have never read much of the Bible. It's also the case that most very law abiding people have never read legal texts. The written word is often reserved for experts who are called upon when questions about the rules arise (priests, rabbis, lawyers, etc.).
In other words, values and norms precede text and the text eventually relied upon for thhe norms might be ad hoc, meaning the text has been made holy, so now we interpret it to say what we knew to be right and wrong already. This is not disingenuous interpretation. It's just a manner to give authority to moral claims. The meaning of the bible will always be its use, so even if it says "murder your mama," but it's used to protect all mothers from harm, it means how it's used, a dictate about protection of mothers.
Problematic to this analysis is the 19th century Christian fundamentalist position that held that the meaning of the Bible is avaliable to anyone who can read. It's the belief in "perspicuity " that God made the text plain and understandable by all, in contrast to Catholic and certain other Protestant traditions.
We battle with this strawman here constantly, where biblical objectors assume this peculiar brand of Christianity is the prevailing (and really only) view and then they offer their two cents on the meaning of every biblical passage. It can't be stated often enough that if perspicuity is rejected (which I do), then a 4 corners literalist interpretation is irrelevant
I don't think it's heretical. It's natural to retroject our own 21st century moral views to biblical characters.
In Abraham's day though, and continuing many centuries later, human sacrifice was a fairly common and acceptable practice in the ancient near east. It was thought to appease the Gods and bring good harvest and divine favor. So maybe this God asked for it as well. Yet he stops Abraham at the last moment. Much of the Bible looks barbaric from the eyes of a modern human, yet the world was a very different place back then. Maybe our descendents thousands of years later will judge us much the same. Abraham is only human, a man of his time - not some perfect Jesus-figure.
My stance generally orients on the mythoi we live by (irrespective of whether we happen to be theists, atheists, or something in-between) by virtue of partaking of our common culture.
By analogy, the ancient Greek understanding of Zeus varies greatly. From Heraclitus's notion of Zeus to mythoi such as that of Leda and the swan. In certain interpretations of the latter Zeus, who takes the form of a swan, doesn't seduce Leda but instead rapes her. Greeks who then revered 'Zeus as rapist' would then align their own ethics as individuals with the ideal which they here revered - thereby raping others themselves.
I'm not intending to make a thesis out of this complete with references. My main point being that the stories we tell ourselves and emotively idealize end up having a large sway on our own individual ethos. With these stories often enough in today's culture emerging from that which was written in the Torah / Bible.
Not interpreting these stories ethically but instead interpreting them in manners that, for one example, reinforces authoritarian interests by claiming these authoritarian interpretations to in fact be the so called literal word of God then, in turn, reinforces, in this one example, tyrannical societal structures. Which stand in direct conflict with democratic ideals - that can also come about via certain interpretations of biblical stories. God being Love as one such motif that comes to mind - cliched though it may sound to many.
As previously hinted at, I've myself no issue with people being spiritual. But spirituality does not translate into an unquestioning acceptance of what authority figures, especially those who are authoritarian in character, command you to do and believe. And in my mind set, nor ought it to so equate.
(I don's know if there was an interaction between El and Abraham. But, if there was, its why I uphold the interpretation previously provided: its ethos is an ideal I could look up to, even if I often fall far short of it; rather than being something which conflicts with what is good and right. This in my own ethos and, I venture to say, in most others' as well.)
I'm very glad you believe so. Thank you for so mentioning. As to retrojecting values on the past, to a certain extent this can only be true, irrespective of the values currently held. One can however say that I'm biassed by the notion of the Good of itself being an absolute and determinate facet of all cosmic being. This would enter into a completely different realm of discussion than that of "faith" per se. Abrahamically appraised, though, if Elohim, the archangels, the seraphim, etc. are indeed good, my own inclination is to believe that they all in their own ways align with the Good. (With the latter in certain interpretations potentially being associated with, if not fully equated to, G-d).
The oddest thing is why anyone with faith would object to the claim that The Binding of Isaac is essentially about obedience. If you truly believe theres a God and God is good, why would you hesitate to obey them? The need for trust to be earned demonstrates the separation. Its like denying that its about blind obedience is an admission that you dont really believe.
We shouldn't assume that the Hebrew Scripture writers were unfamiliar with angst and doubt. The very question you ask is, I believe, why the story of Abraham was written and became part of the canon. Kierkegaard has a good book about it. :smile:
This is simply to renege on your responsibility to decide if an act is right or wrong, to hand that most central of judgements over to someone else. To look the other way.
What God does to Job is ethically wrong.
What follows is that if god is loving, then the story of Job is not about god. Or that it's part of an iron-age morality of servitude that we might transcend.
A better lesson would be, rather than accepting one's place, not to accept injustice and to work toward making the world more just.
That argument might hold if there were agreement amongst the learned. There isn't.
However,
And by this standard the stories of the Binding and of Job show culpability.
I tend to think of it very much like that, but I find there's a lot to talk about here. The line I've bolded is a good starting point:
It's not entirely a poor analogy. I agree that "scale" is a problem here, but you can correct for that in pursuit of communication, maybe. Let me try to explain (none of this is fully thought through):
The first major difference is this: When I get on the plain I do this fully well knowing that plains can crash. I do not need re-assurance that this plain doesn't crash. I usually don't even think of the possibility, which I'm very much aware of and furthermore wouldn't deny in the moment, either. I have no fear of flying, and I'd be perfectly fine watching, say, an "Airplane" movie on a plane (which might not be appropriate to air on a flight). There's some underlying principle at work; part of it personality, part of it experience (if I'd survived a prior crash, psychology otherwise being equal, I might have a different mindset).
At the core of this, there's just lived habit. Something I don't need to talk about. I'm far more worried about getting airsick (something I've experienced multiple times) than a crash. Why? Experience, I think. It's more imaginable than an airplane crash. Reason, I think, is secondary here, and it works because we tend to experience rare thing less often (though one might be unlucky).
Now, if my psychology were different, and I'd be prone to worrying about crashes I might be inclined to use calming rituals to get over it, find people talking about crashes in the lobby unsettling, etc. I might over time develop a state of knowing-despite-not-knowing, an epistemic buffer between primal worrying and operating on a daily basis - a lifestyle that includes stuff like habituated selective attention and certain modes of integrating new knowledge into this practical cognitive flow.
Now this is limited in two ways: it's limited to a single topic (aviation), and it's personal (the rituals are for me only). And in this way we have little comparison here.
Now I'm fairly sure I have certain more comprehensive thought-rituals like that; thought rituals that don't only comprise the topic of aviation. But it's not accessible to "discoursive consciousness": it's vague and intuitive and there beneath all the daily flow of surface thoughts. And I think this sort of thing is necessary. And I wouldn't be surprised if believers pick up on that and call that "faith".
A computing metaphor would be the OS of your consciousness. Everyone has their own perosnal operation system. And to that effect I actually don't think the analogy is a bad one. Everyone has their own sense of how the world works, as expressed in their daily functioning. But so far it's entirely personal.
The question is how your personal OS tags into your social surroundings; are you faithful, deluded, seeking? What's the relationship between how your mind works, how your daily surroundings work socially, how others see you, how you see yoursef?
I'm a homegrown atheist with Roman-Catholic parents, who went to school in Austria, had compulsory (opt-out system) religious education in school, which was the only time our class was divided between Catholics and Protestants (with the odd student who didn't attend either class, either because they opted out - parental consent needed, or because their religion [or denomination in very rare cases] wasn't covered locally). Now Austria is and has been my entire life a very secular country: that means the overarching daily life does not involve religion: religion is segmented off into its own meaningful province. There's a weak default assumption that church membership implies believe, but surprises are no big thing and change little. That is: I had to explain that I'm an atheist on occasion, and that's always been fine. The funny thing is that it's always also been fine in religious context; I've been to confession if it was part of religious education (optional; I could have refused without parental consent) and told the priest flat out that I was just here to bide my time, and we chatted. Similarly, I underwent "confirmation" - a catholic sacrement establishing your faith - while being open about my atheism in the preperation group. It was no big deal.
Why am I talking about this at length here? Well, because I've grown up in that sort of environment, I'm actually more familiar with the "God-language" as presented by the local Roman-Catholic church than I am with any language that might express my inner compass better. This is a mismatch in what I can think and understand (myself) to what I can express (the other).
The second thing of note here is the lack of hostility towards me-as-atheist has left me with a neutral view of faith. The secularity of the society around me also ensured there's enough commonality in what counts as rational between those within a denomination and those without. (The late seventies/early eighties were also big on the ecomene - so there was already a widespread different-paths-same-goal mentality around, which meant different aprroaches to the rationality of it all to begin with.) I'm fairly sure that, since I didn't distance myself, a lot of the Christians (see above - confession, confirmation) might have thought of my "atheism" as a path that leads to God through doubt. Nobody was ever impatient or pushy. People from back then I considered truly "faithful" (in the religious sense) had a calm and... serenity? to them I could never match. I'm the slightly nervous, always ironic type.
When the ideology that surrounds you is pretty familiar in its verbage, but is decidedly not what you intuit and makes no sense, but what you intuit has little to no verbage attached to it (in your mind), it's easy to externalise faith as what others do. However, there really is something that is missing - and that's a layer of social integration, a sense of ontological security - I'm living in an absurd world that nobody can explain to me. But at the same time, I have my thought habits I'm fine with. A gambler's mindset perhaps? That would work if I could see win-conditions...
Basically, to the extent that me being an "unbeliever" is relevant, I'm living in a world with an ideology I don't share; I'm living without ideological validation, and without the language to explain myself. Because of my above experiences, I've never sought out sub-groups to integrate into - so now I have a lived substratus of praxis, very little ideology I feel like defending (some relativism, but not really fervently), and a generally ironic attitude towards the world.
To some degree there might well be something like proto-faith here, who knows? The problem is I don't attach to abstracts very well. I have my favourites (relativism, phenomenology - for example), but it's more like a best-of list than something I deeply identify with. If what I have is faith-like, then it lacks an obvious target.
If fiath is "faith in..." then my "in" remains a question mark. I certainly don't have faith in airplanes; I know they can crash. And they can certainly crash with me in them. If they do? Bad luck. So what do I have faith in here, then? Luck, since I just typed "bad luck"? Maybe. But, see, there's no elaborate ideological system built around that. You just learn to live in a world where bad things can happen - one way or another.
Take marital faith as an example: you having "faith" in your spouse implies having internalised the rules of living around you. You know what marriage is, what you should do, what you should want, what you can expect. It's not just the person; it's also the social role - the lived praxis of being married. You can make your own rules, but they'll start out as deviations from a learned default. And the faith in your spouse has a both a target and a form in a lived-through social institution which you perpetuate and modify just by living "normally". And when things go wrong, you work it out.
But your faith has a target, and it has meaning in a specific institutional context; one you participate in. Similarly, having faith in God is meaningful in a particular social context. How much you internalised is an issue here. But with no such institution to appeal to what is the meaning of my putative faith? Where do I get it from?
I have the personal level, same as more or less everyone, sure. But beyond that? If we're both bottles that contain liquid, I just kinda stood out in the rain, while others might have filled under the tap, or even with a funnel... Not sure how much of this makes sense; I guess I see the biggest issues being social. How much social control and legitimisation, from where, from how many sources? How much in-group/out-group conflicts do you encounter?
So is the analogy a good one or a bad one? I feel like you can tilt it this way and that; an attempt to build a bridge, or an attempt to solidify positions (e.g. relgion vs science - not a popular conflict around me). So what is faith?
It's an interesting question, but in my daily life it's really just a word I don't use often (I did in this thread, for obvious reasons). And that means when talking on the topic I have little at stake, but it's also never homeground. So do I have faith in... something? Maybe. Then what follows from that?
...to the extent of performing an abominable act. That the decision was as you suggest "fully informed" only serves to add to the affront.
Had Abraham acted as suggests, the story might have had some merit.
And we might follow on from reply to you to ask who it is to whom you owe obedience.
Neither of these is acceptable.
I said the story was about obedience. It was a test of faith that required obedience or it would not play out.
God could have tested obedience many ways. Why did God promise descendants, tell Abraham to kill the first descendent, then save him from death? The story is about more than obedience. Its about what or who we freely choose to obey. We cant be blind and discern what or who to obey.
Why did God not let Isaac die? One could say the test could not be over until Isaac was dead.
Abraham was blind to how sacrificing his beloved son was going to work out for him, and his son. He had to obey Gods command to sacrifice his son if he wanted to find out. But Abraham had faith, and fully believed that sacrificing Isaac was good and justified, because God said to do it, and Abraham trusted God, absolutely (obviously absolutely - you dont get more absolute in your trust than Abraham did). Thats not blind faith - thats trusting that whatever God gives you to see, or takes away from your sight, in the end, He will justify, and it will be good in your eyes as well.
Quoting praxis
Did Abraham have absolutely no evidence that God would make good on his word? Abraham was given Isaac when Isaac was thought to be impossible because Sara was old. God had a proven track record. So Abraham had reason to trust God. Thats not blind either.
It is precisely because Abraham was not blind about his choices that only a dramatic test, like killing your only son, would actually test Abrahams trust. Anyone willing to trust blindly has no idea what they are trusting or even why they are trusting.
Blind faith, if that is all you think faith is, is not the faith I see, or I have. God, according to the Bible, wants us to know him, not emptiness and blindness.
Blind faith in God is not faith in anything.
Faith is faith in. To know in what, we must be fully informed and see.
So if your argument is that Abraham was fully informed, then the story does not apply to us.
And we are back to having to decide without knowing all the facts.
What affront? Are Abraham or Isaac complaining? All were safe and sound at the end of the story. Sounds like you just cant stomach the brutality of human kind. Were a bitch to wrangle my friend. All we need is to trust God and no one gets hurt. Thats all in the same story that affronts you.
Quoting Banno
Ok, Ill concede fully informed was imprecise. Abraham knew what he was doing, he wasnt blind. He didnt know how God could make good out any of it, but he trusted God would make good.
There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain they know the will of god.
prima facie, trussing up your son, placing him on a pile of wood and holding a knife to his throat is abuse. It takes a good lawyer to explain this away. Even our @Hanover is not up to the task. But the various churches have been quite adept at hiring good lawyers in cases of child abuse.
Trust in god does lead to people being hurt.
Why would anyone need to read a book about something so obvious?
So you don't have faith in anything? Even in the human race?
Quoting Dawnstorm
Nothing much.
For me, we are creatures of prediction and habit. If a particular framing helps us make sense of the world, we tend to stick with it. In reality, any number of fantasies could probably serve this purpose for us.
Many believers find it important to argue that secular people also live by faith, probably as a way to equalize the discussion. They do not want to be seen as irrational or as relying upon magical thinking.
I believe quite a few things. I trust in quite a few folk. But in neither case would my belief or trust be unbounded. There is a point at which I would be willing to say "This is wrong".
That point has been sorely tested at times, and sometimes I got it wrong.
There is a place for doubt as well as faith.
Really? Youve conducted this survey and know thats a fact? I know a bunch of real softies, no danger at all, who would say they know what God wants.
There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain there is no God. How many of those folks turned up on your survey of people who know the will of God?
There are few folks who have sacrificed their lives to save others who did not believe in God.
We can throw people in the buckets we like and the buckets we dont like all day.
Quoting Banno
Or change the subject to child abuse lawyering, which has nothing to do with Isaac or the story.
You just wont give an inch.
I havent moved you one tiny bit.
Seems to me you think religion is at best, a waste of time, but more likely, a bad thing, that leads to all kinds of harm; that God certainly does not exist; and that faith, of any sort, is a weakness and the better life would have no faith in anything, because having faith is weakness, and prone to irrationality.
Thats what I see as your basic point. I see only your negative account of faith.
Do you have anything positive to say about faith itself?
Not faith in God, or religion. Just faith in other people - what is left of faith, to you?
From your "about" page:
And yet you say of me, "You just wont give an inch".
There's nought so queer as folk.
That does make some sense. Still, I balk at a story of a supposedly loving God destroying the life of one of their followers for a bet? But I think it's unlikely that we could possibly agree on an intepretation of this, or any other story, in the Bible. I'm reading a collection of ancient texts written over a period of 1,000 years in various circumstances and for various purposes. You are reading the Word of God. But I have to say, some of the stories in the Old Testament remind me of some of the Greek stories, in which the gods do not behave in a particularly moral way and from which the lesson seems to be that the gods frequently mess about with us, either because they don't care or because they are actively hostile.
Quoting frank
I'll sign up to that. Kierkegaard was very perceptive in many ways. The conviction that one knows the will of God is the most dangerous religious belief of them all. Perhaps God was right to try to prevent us from coming to know (or think we know) good and evil.
Quoting Fire Ologist
From the fact that some religious people have conducted horrors because they believed in God. I don't think anyone would argue that it follows that all religious have, or ever would, conduct horrors because they believe in God. But I do think it follows that religious belief does not prevent people from conducting horrors and can provide a motivation for them to do so.
Quoting Fire Ologist
There are plenty of other, similar motivations for conducting horrors - nationalism/patriotism, for example. I'm aware that some religious people think that atheists are more likely to conduct horrors than religious people. But I don't know of empirical evidence that that's the case.
Read this: https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vayera/the-binding-of-isaac/
After reading it, summarily reject all it says and tell me how horrified you are at the binding of Isaac. That's the process we've followed going on a couple of years here.
The Torah was accepted as the holy source of righteousness well after there were already accepted rules of righteousness. That means no interpretation would change those already accepted norms. How that was done was through rabbinic interpretations and reliance upon Talmudic law, a law of equal priority to the Torah, supposedly handed down at the same time as the written word, high atop Mt. Sinai.
This is just to say if you want to know the law in Georgia regarding X, you can't just read the statutes, but you need to read the case law and Constitution as well, all together.
To those who think child murder is advocated by the Bible, point me in the direction of that church so I can see it. Fortunately all churches I know of have misinterpreted their own sacred texts in a way that saves children. Thank goodness for their ineptitude.,
Tyranny can exist under any political system, including democracy. Tocqueville discusses the tyranny of the majority. Plato's philosopher king supposedly had the wisdom to rule and was to be selected by qualification, not democratic vote, which more emulates how religious leaders are chosen. I'm not in favor of theocracy, and I'm fully supportive of the state's power being supreme, but our recent elections hardly yielded a Solomon.
This isn't between man and man -- that we can judge. It's between man and God.
Let's say that there is some force out there. If a man dies young, has that force wronged him? How many years is a man owed on this Earth? Is man owed a painless existence? You tell me.
That's not what I recall. I will happily accept the essay you point to as a valid interpretation.
I offer another interpretation, were the actions described are seen as obscene, and were we look on the faith Abraham placed in the Lord even to the point of committing an abomination, and are asked whether as mere humans we ought follow our beliefs with such confidence. Because we might be wrong.
"After the trial in which God was found guilty of abandoning his people, a dark and profound silence fell upon the room. A few moments later, the men realised it was time for the sacred Jewish ritual of evening prayer."
Or Cromwell's "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
It was between Abraham and Isaac.
Dont leaves us hanging.
You were blaming God.
Quoting Banno
If you want to blame Abraham or Isaac they are humans so they can bear blame.
Dangerous?
Can I quote you on that?
So long as you don't do it to my face...
It is written that Joseph lives to 120 but apparently his ancestors lived much longer. It's crossed my mind to point the finger at God for that one. Feels like Joseph got kinda ripped off.
Quoting Ludwig V
I assure you that I'm reading it as a collection of ancient texts written over a ~1000 year period. Maybe once in a while I see an interesting bit that captures my attention and gets me thinking about how the authors could have written such a thing, but overall it is absolutely a collection of texts written over that time. And if we follow that historical view, we see that "God is love" is at an the tail end of that timeline. Initially, God is quite a bit terrifying because, let's face it, reality is often be terrifying -- and man has the potential to make it even more terrifying than it needs to be through his actions.
It's not just natural, it is inevitable. A part of the human condition is that we each decide what we do next, so in your words we must each "take on the role of God".
That's the odd thing about "ought" - even if someone else tells you how things "ought" be, it is up to you to decide if they are right.
Men can be seen as little Gods in a sense.
Sure. I certainly acknowledge that from a human perspective what happened to Job is terrifying and troublesome. Yet our perspective is not the full picture and it lacks finality. We do not know what comes after this life.
What I meant about being obvious is that if a person and God are separate there will be fear and doubt, and if theres no separation, if a person is one with God, there wont be fear and doubt. What could be more obvious than that?
OK. We are on the same page, in that respect at least. I can even see that the New Testament presents a rather different conception of God from the one in the Old Testament. It's how Christians fit the two testaments together. I get the point that reality is terrifying and gods that reflect that aspect of reality seem entirely appropriate in any pantheon. But the terrors in reality do not reflect any moral laws, so is it likely that such a god would play a part in these stories in these books?
I'm interested in this business about total obedience and total trust. Both Abraham and Job raise it. The fact that both are rewarded muddies the issue, I think. Risking something for massive rewards is different from risking something irrespective of any possible reward. I also am deeply suspicious of a God who feels the need to subject his followers to such extreme tests.
I think it comes back to the Euthyphro problem. Do the gods love piety because it is good, or is it just that piety is what the gods love. Putting it another way, if God asks me to do something, should I do it because God knows what is good better than me? That is faith, but conditional faith. Or should I do it because anything that God asks is good just because he asks it? That is total (blind) faith. I'm with @Banno on this. Blind faith is not a good idea.
Even if you take a strong line and stipulate that anything that God asks is, by necessity, good, one has to bear in mind that one may be deceived in thinking that it is God and not some demon that is asking you to sacrifice your son.
Quoting frank
If someone disagrees with you about doctrine, we do not just have a disagreement. The other is a heretic and any means to change their tune are justified. If someone does not accept Christ, say, the difference is not just a difference, but justifies any means to convert them. Do I have to recount examples?
I'm not saying there are not non-religious examples of the same behaviour. Any radical conviction (faith) can be the basis violence and cruelty.
Quoting Banno
It's not all that odd. If someone tells you how things are, it is up to you to decide whether to believe them.
('m not suggesting that the two decisions are the same - just that there is a parallel between the "is" and "ought" in these language-games.
Quoting J
Erasing fears and doubts is always tempting but not always appropriate. One the whole, I would think that a father that didn't feel such doubts wouldn't be a very good test for God and, perhaps, not a very good father - and we are told that Abraham loved Isaac very much.
Oh. But in the ancient world people usually respected foreign gods. If you visited a foreign town, you would first go pay respect to their gods and then go about your business.
Religious intolerance (the idea of false gods) came later. It's not so much about knowing divine will as believing that there is only one true divinity, which might be related to psychological integration.
It is true that pagan polytheism was a lot more hospitable than monotheism is. Sometimes they found parallels, as in Jupiter/Zeus, Poseidon/Neptune, Aphrodite/Venus. Sometimes they adopted foreign gods. Atheism wasn't the main problem then - though some mad philosophers denied they were real. On the other hand, the Romans eradicated the old Druidical religion in Britain and Gaul. But that was because they were so dead set on resisting them. I agree that monotheism seems to be more radical. Whether that belief is a matter of psychological integration is a question far beyond me. The Jews were very special, even unique in the ancient world.
Well, Hitler came to power in a democracy not by force but, to simplify history, by vote.
Democracy is not "rule by the majority as mob" (what the USA seems to be currently exhibiting ... debatable, but all the same ...), It could never sustain itself if it were, instead becoming a dictatorship. Nor is democracy defined by voting. Democracy, instead, is any variant of a rather elaborate system which keeps the tyrannical drives of all participants and parties at bay via a non-hypocritical system of checks and balances of power. This is the only way a democracy can remain - be it that of ancient Athens or any non-Orwellian so-called democracy of today. I say this because some self-termed democracies - I'll here point fingers at Russia - are as non-democratic in practice as all official self-termed communisms of at least Europe were non-communistic in practice. (Addressing communism as politics rather than as economy: The comradeship of fellow brethren (or siblings) - of fellow comrades - in a given nation all working cooperatively together in a commonly upheld community never, ever, occurred.The only place were communism can be viably stated to have occurred is in the kibbutz - and nowhere else.) ((Unlike democracy as just described, communism is a bit too optimist in regards to human nature at large for its own good.))
All these being issues and perspectives regarding politics. But having so expressed, I yet maintain that (non-Orwellian) "democracy" is, and can only be, at direct odds with tyranny and tyrannical governance.
And again, the mythoi we tell ourselves - such as the mythos that the world is a dog-eat-dog reality (to here address a non-religious/spiritual mythos) - will have a large impact on our personal ethos as individual humans. The dog-eat-dog motif, for example, directly leads to tyrannical wants and desires - and directly opposes the possibility of a cooperative humanity in which agape plays a large role in society.
The Abraham story pushes the idea that unity with God is achieved through blind obedience. Unity with God is the carrot and obedience is the goal. Shouldn't unity with God be the goal?
Good question.
In many ways it parallels with the dichotomy between the often heard prescription that one ought to fear God (at least as this phrasing is most commonly understood) wherein there is a necessary duality, else division, between the other which one fears and oneself, a necessary duality that will persist for as long as the fear persists and the far less touted love God, which then not only allows for but is a calling toward a unity of (sentient) being (this being one loosely appraised definition of love) with that which one loves, in this one case, God.
Obedience of that authority as other which one fears vs. love and hence oneness (in most any of its senses) with that absolute goodness which one loves.
Or, in a more Christianity-specific mindset, the difference between fearing and thereby obeying Christ as ones God and being someone who holds and thereby upholds Christs spirit within in most anything one does. But I get the nagging suspicion that being like Christ in ones character and nature is a bit too heretical a perspective for most self-proclaimed Christians out there. Which kind of insinuates that being un-Christ-like is the typical calling of most Christians.
Perhaps the point might have been expressed better. If someone says the cat is on the mat, there is a fact of the matter that we can check against - take a look and see. If someone says that cat ought be on the mat, there is no similar process available for us. We must instead decide.
Faith in God or some atheistic ideologyboth equally dangerous. Those who feel certain there is no God and those who feel certain there is a God and that they know the will of that God and who believe they are justified in force-feeding their beliefs to others are equally ideologues, and thus equally dangerous.
Can you show any instances humanism, secularism, rationalism, or existentialism being as equally dangerous as religions have been throughout history?
Hitler used religious rhetoric so how can that be counted as atheistic?
Marxism is an economic and political ideology, and socialism isnt incompatible with religious belief.
Funny you reject the actual atheistic ideologies as ideologies and pretend that Nazism and Marxism are necessarily atheistic.
Ah, yes - the fact of the matter. To be sure, if it is a question whether the cat ought to be on the mat, there is no fact of the matter. How could there be? But we (each of us) have to decide both, for ourselvees. Nussbaum remarks somewhere in "The Fragility of Goodness" that if someone does something seriouslly morally appalling, we do not understand them - their actions make no sense. The penalty of breaking the laws of logic is nonsense. That is also the penalty of breaking the moral laws. There's another parallel. (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting. I've mislaid my copy of Nussbaum's book).
Quoting Sam26
Yes. I would have cited that case and perhaps added the presuppositonalists. But I understand that there are also Christians who think that the existence of God is an empirical proposition - as does Dawkins. There's also the question how these propositions fit alongside the classical a priori beliefs - are they the same or a distinct class. It all gets very muddy.
If you define democracy as non-ttyranical, then it must you're saying something about a term, not a political system.
Suppose you have a non-tyranical monarchy, would it be a democracy?
Your joking? My definition of democracy was this:
Quoting javra
Which is very much a political system.
Quoting Hanover
About as much as a triangular square would be. Which is to say, no.
Well, that the cat ought be on the mat is either true, or it is false... unless you have some alternative?
It would be interesting to juxtapose Nussbaum's comment with Arendt's banality of evil.
Another thread, perhaps.
Marxism is explicitly atheistic, even anti-theistic. Hitler's may have used quasi-religios rhetoric, but nazism is not explicitly or specifically theistic.
I don't "reject the actual atheistic ideologies as ideologies "I have no idea what led you to think thatI don't know what it even means. My only point was that ideologies whether religious or not, being based on some dogma or other, are one of the main problems which plague humanity.
Quoting Janus
:100:
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
In fact, we don't cannot know that anything "comes after this life". We do know, however, that we have to live this life together is inevitable; thus, Hillel the Elder's response to the request to say the whole meaning of the Torah while standing on one foot: Notice the Rabbi did not say "have faith"...
If that's true, then there is at least one moral fact. So I would have to defuse it somehow. I can think of various tactics which might answer.
EDIT: I should have said "Whether it is true or false, there is at least one moral fact."
Quoting Banno
Yes, indeed. It would certainly make one think.
Quoting Banno
I agree.
That sounds like the British "constitution".
It is true from the cat's sleepy perspective, false from the perspective of the visitor to the house. Can you derive a contradiction from that?
True that. But the British constitutional monarchy is such that the mon-arch (the sole ruler) is a figurehead which has no real power to rule anything. Sort of nullifying the sole rulership aspect of the political enterprise.
That wasnt exactly your original point. You initially said that faith in God or some atheistic ideology (humanism, secularism, rationalism, or existentialism) were equally dangerous.
I guess humanism, secularism, rationalism, and existentialism are so tame that you dont count them as ideologies and consider them merely philosophical perspectives. Yet you count religions as ideologies.
Not always. You won't always have clear cut rational options. Sometimes faith will appear, then go. Normally logic is virtuous, but there are times of higher consciousness wherein another set of laws influence
Usually.
You already did that when you specified "non-tyrannical", didn't you?
You are looking at it through the wrong lens. The elected Government is a buffer, taking the risk of popular unpopularity and taking the rap when the populace want a change of Government. In exchange, the monarchy gets security and lots and lots of influence and money - oh, and avoids all the boring part of running the country.
The people are enabled to get rid of unpopular rulers without a revolution.
Managed democracy. Perfect. What's not to like?
Just a thought-experiment for fun.
So we might justifiably go off-topic ourselves, a little bit.
There are moral truths, at least, in that some statements are both moral and true. I usually use "Don't kick puppies for fun" as a trite example. "Don't kick puppies for fun" is true. If someone disagrees, that's not so much about the truth of the sentence as about their moral character - that is, they are wrong.
By the same reasoning, the sentence is not something that needs justification. might count it as a given, a hinge, or a bedrock belief.
We might, heading back to the topic of this tread, ponder if it is an act of faith. I think it more an act of common decency. Thoughts?
Commands aren't truth apt.
Quoting Ludwig V
The point I intended to make is that the British constitutional monarchy as it currently stands is not a monarchy proper. To call it a functional monarchy - which as term pretty explicitly specifies a governance under a sole absolute ruler, generally termed a king (far rarer a queen) - is akin to calling todays Russia a functional democracy. And I hope we can agree that if we start calling a rose a dog it yet remains a rose in its characteristics. Hence, a non-tyrannical monarchy being akin to a triangular square, or a married bachelor - this even if the sole absolute ruler is taken to be benevolent (by some of his/her subjects at least).
Quoting Ludwig V
Im not going to say this is the way it actually is - dont know enough about the situation to know - but, given the way you so far put things, it all sounds a bit too much like freeloading to me. That might be something not to like.
So you are saying that it is not true that we ought not kick puppies?
That we cannot make the inference - If one does what one ought not, then one is culpable; it is true that one ought not kick puppies; therefore those who kick puppies are culpable?
No, I'm saying that commands aren't truth apt.
Quoting Banno
This is the same as asserting that one ought not kick puppies. Asserting that is just another way to phrase the command, "Don't kick puppies."
And commands are not truth apt.
Meaning is use. Of what use is asserting that "It's wrong to kick puppies" other than to say, "Don't kick puppies.". Tractatus.
...as part of an inference. And an inference depends on truth values.
One ought not kick puppies.
John kicked a puppy
John did what he ought not.
If "One ought not kick puppies" has no truth value, it cannot guide us in such inferences.
But it can, so it does.
From what reasoning did you infer that it's wrong to kick puppies?
I don't think you're catching my little argument. :blush:
We don't. That's kinda the point.
You're saying morality rests upon a foundation of true statements. I think it's the other way around. Moral sensibility comes first. Statements are an after thought, and beyond specialized philosophical domains, they have no use. The command has use, so it's the command that's meaningful.
I agree. Quoting frank
What do you mean by "wrong"?
So is believing "One ought not kick puppies" an act of faith?
So we have social prohibitions that are not acts of faith.
That kinda fucks up Devine Command Theory.
No, it's a matter of feelings.
Quoting frank
Well, yes, but it's more than that. It's not just my or your feelings here - we all agree that kicking puppies is not an honourable activity. Why?
It depends how you define your terms. There's a tricky problem here about sovereignty, specifically about the status of the person or body that makes the law. That person or body, it seems, cannot be subject to the law, because what it says or decides is the law (by definition). So you could say that the body that makes the law, is sovereign and therefore tyrannical. That leads to the conclusion that all societies that have a legal system are tyrannies. That is very problematic, unless one is an anarchist. There are two criteria that are used to distinguish between tyrants and sovereigns. One is that they are benevolent, at least in the sense that they try to do what is right. The other is that they are subject to the law.
The other issue here is that the British Constitution is uniquely (so far as I know) idiosyncratic. Nothing quite fits the standard categories. That's because there is no constitution - single coherent structure - that arranges everything. There is a collection of laws and customs, created in response to specific problems, that sort of manage to keep everything more or less working together. Nobody thinks it is a rational system. It depends entirely on everybody involved making the system work. Trump would have a field day with it.
Quoting javra
There are arguments that it is not just ree-loading. The British monarch is an embodiment or symbol of the continuity of the state. That means that Governments can come and go, but there is always continuity underpinning the changes. The monarch also has many ceremonial duties, demonstrating that the state is above and beyond the government of the day. Some countries assign that role to a President. Ireland (Eire), I believe, is one of them.
Morality isn't a matter of public agreement. It's something you were born with. This is the Persian view. This is the problem with arguing with Christianity, it's got at least 4 different cultural perspectives on morality in it. Some of them directly conflict. This makes it a very dynamic and flexible religion.
While the US High Court apparently agrees, this seems to me to be quite mistaken. Subjecting oneself to one's own judgement is simple consistency.
Quoting Ludwig V
On the contrary, such an ad hoc approach to social engineering is quite rational, as Popper argued in The Poverty of Historicism. By not adhering to a fixed constitution, the British system allows for more responsive, piecemeal reforms rather than trying to impose a grand, all-encompassing plan.
I disagree. "Morality" develops over time, as one learns from and interacts with others. It's about becoming a better person - about developing values and virtues...
Indeed.
I don't see how a moral statement can be considered truth-apt. I believe morality is rooted in emotion (though I don't necessarily subscribe to emotivism or expressivism) and also involves intersubjective agreements - cultural values.
However, if we accept the foundational principle of preventing or minimizing suffering, it seems possible to establish objective approaches that promote this principle, even though disagreements over definitions are inevitable.
This is the ancient Jewish view, just substitute "interaction with others" with interaction with God's word. It has strengths and weaknesses like all views.
You can't teach a child right from wrong.
What was his view?
But how do you know which direction to grow in? An external set of rules? Or things you were born knowing (as in Meno's Paradox).
Bootstrapping.
A computer bootstraps from ROM. You're not a blank slate. Some things are innate, and brought out by experience.
:up:
I'm not a fan of the "truth-apt" language. I look at truth, and other concepts like knowledge in terms of their use (language games), so my take is very broad. I'm very much a Wittgensteinian in this sense. I don't think I would agree that morality is rooted in emotion. Although there is obviously an emotional component. I think generally morality is rooted in the harm done, i.e., X is immoral because of the harm it causes. However, this is not always the case I'm sure there are exceptions. I agree that it does involve "intersubjective agreements" and "cultural values," but I also think there is an objective component to moral values.
And yet they are. It goes with the territory of "statement"
:down: :down:
When you say "morality is about harm done," it seems to me thsi is expressing an emotional reaction to harm. How does harm become objective? I can see hwo if you accept harm as a presupposition, you can then set objective steps towards its minimization.
Quoting Banno
Can you show me how stealing is wrong is truth apt?
Odd.
It is true that stealing is wrong.
"Stealing is wrong" is false.
And if they are not truth apt they cannot participate in rationalising our actions. They cannot, for example be used in syllogisms, such as "Stealing is wrong, one ought not do what is wrong, therefore one ought not steal".
A lot of people are running around claiming that democracy is broken. There is a suggestion that we need a "strong man" leader. I could write a bitter speech about that, and about the strong men who have so far emerged. None of them seem to be strong enough to stand up to democractic scrutiny, so they are not strong enough to satisfy me.
Quoting Banno
It seems that there are indeed moral truths. On the other hand, while I agree that anyone who disagrees shows something about their moral character, I don't think the same applies to a statement like "Water consists of H2O". Someone who disagrees with that reveals their cognitive incompetence.
Moral truths, we could say, are in a different category from facts of the matter. The difference is that moral truths have an illocutionary (?) force. "One ought not to kick puppies" implies "Do not kick puppies". Hume was not wrong IMO. If you doubt him, see Aristotle "Reason, by itself, moves nothing" (NE VI, I think). Moral values, like other kinds of value, are what move human beings.
That might reconcile the argument between you and @frank.
Quoting Banno
I really don't follow the idea that "one ought not kick puppies" needs no justification. I would agree that a more general principle such as "one ought not to torment beings weaker than oneself" or "bullying is wrong" is not subject to justification.
The terms "given" and "bedrock" and "hinge" are all different. The latter, on my understanding are protected in a given debate, but might not be protected in a differently framed debate. The same applies fo "given", except that, like an axiom, it usually means a starting-point for a ratiocination. "Bedrock" seems more like an absolute to me - unquestionable in all contexts. So I'm broadly with you and @Sam26 on this.
I hesitate to say that accepting such statements is an act of faith, although they do seem to be related. Basic religious beliefs do seem to be functioning in this territory, but doubt and disbelief are not ruled out, which would make them different from "given" and "bedrock" and "hinge". But, since one can be true to (faithful to?) one's principles or not, I'm inclined to think that they fit in well with faith.
PS I have to sign out now.
Yep. The force of some statements is "Things are thus". We change the words to match how the world is. The force of some other statements is "Things should be thus", and we change the world to fit the words. That's why you can't get an ought form an is - there's a change in direction, an about-face.
That "one ought not kick puppies" needs no justification does not mean it cannot be justified, as you suggest in terms of more general rules. It's just that if someone is told not to kick the pup, and they ask "Why not?", they are missing something important, which is not found in "Becasue bullying is wrong" but seen in what they think it OK to do.
Quoting Ludwig V
Good.
But stealing may be permissible in certain circumstances or not harmful and even do good. How do you make the journey from such a statement (which seems to reflect context, preference and emotion) into truth?
I don't hold to the view that Wittgensteinian hinges are necessarily absolute. In fact, most of them are not. For example, the rules of chess are hinges and they aren't absolute (absolute meaning they can't be other than they are). Most are contingent.
Lord, preserve us from strong men.
Maybe I was overly literal in the words' etymological meaning: with both tyrant and monarch being loose synonyms for despot, i.e. a single ruler with absolute power, in their etymological sense. With that acknowledged:
There of course are exceptions to most every generalization, and Im by now confident that you will disagree with what I have to say. But with all of humankinds history to look back on, I dont find your two criteria indicative of what was and in many an area still is. The mythos of the noncorrupt and benevolent sovereign is much like the mythos that nobility is of noble character. I grant that my knowledge of history is not encyclopedic, but, given the span of human history I know of, most of the time things have not worked out this way.
So I more than greatly doubt your claim that these two criteria distinguish tyrants from sovereigns in practice - if that is indeed what you intended to say. Can you substantiate what you've here expressed beyond references to a) mythoi regarding what sovereignty is and ought to be and b) the potential historical exception that breaks the rule?
But the writing of law is our societal idiosyncracy. Some cultures just have their elders speak their laws, and some may just know them from watching the behavior of others. Verification is achieved by just watching what people do.
In fact, societal laws are known by the vast number without ever having read a legal book. Even those who believe morality arises from its appearance in the Bible must admit they know morality despite never having read the Bible.
Substitute "law" for "morality" in all cases. It's no different in terms of how it's verifiable.
As @frank noted some time ago. The morality/legality distinction is not something universal. That's just our peculiar state/religion distinction we've created. The Torah, for example, provides the direction for everything. It all comes from God in that tradition.
How this links to the OP is the question. We can have morality, law, social norms, etiquette, manners and all such things without any belief in a higher power. Wolves and chickens have their complex social roles too.
The foundation of these norms is the metapysical question. Do we have them just to facilitate survival and therefore ingrained in our DNA? Or do they come from a higher source of wisdom directing us toward higher purpose? If you choose the latter, you have no way of asserting that than faith. The consequence of denying the higher power is to be a complex wolf or chicken though. That worldview is lesser i'd submit.
Yes, but my point, perhaps badly worded, is that if the statement 'stealing is wrong' amounts to no more than the emotivist's "boo stealing!" This can't be truth-apt. I'm not convinced yet that the emotivist is wrong about this.
We can still argue that stealing often leads to social disharmony and suffering and if we find this discomforting the inference is obvious.
I bet you hate emotivism. :wink:
Including infectious disease control. It's like a blueprint for a civilization in a little package.
Good point. I should have thought of it.
Quoting javra
I would agree with you. There's a tendency to use "tyrant" and "sovereign" as boo/hoorah words. I was reporting what people have said. I did not intend to endorse it.
Quoting Banno
I take your point. But I think it is a bit more complicated than you seem to think. I agree that it is probably true that most people do refrain from kicking puppies without being explicitly taught not to. On the whole, it seems that people do manage to understand what the rules are without explicit instruction, from observing what goes on around them.
However, there used to be a practice, I'm told, of some children, of picking the wings off flies and then watching their futile buzzing with amusement. Suppose we came across such a case. They are deficient in their understanding. Or, small children often treat their siblings or companion animals in ways that are cruel, not because they are wicked, but because they don't understand what they are doing. So we need to teach them. That might be authoritarian - "don't do that, or else" - or it might be persuasive - and that's where the arguments/justifications come in.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm not sure about preference and emotion, but truth is certainly context-dependent.
Quoting Sam26
It's not unusual for Wittgenstein to express a point in several different ways. I'm never sure that's because he is drawing our attention to subtleties or because he wants to avoid getting trapped into a fixed form dogma. So I don't have a problem with what you say.
Quoting Banno
I agree. I expressed my point badly.
Quoting Hanover
By what criterion? What's wrong with being a complex wolf or chicken? Why do you have to create a hierarchy here?
Quoting Hanover
Yes. That and the prospect of enforcement are the difference between law and morality. Yet I agree that they blur into each other - as in "you ought to obey the law" as a moral, not just a prudential, rule.
Quoting Tom Storm
Emotions are not simply "expressions" like "ouch!" or "boo". They include a cognitive element, which is identified when we say "I am angry because..." or "I am afraid of..." "boo stealing" includes the belief that the addressee has taken possession of something that does not belong to them. Yet if I were to characterize your anger as true, I would be understood as saying, not that your anger is justified, but that it is real, not pretended. When the belief driving an emotion is false, we talk of the emotion as irrational or inappropriate. So emotions are indeed not themselves true or false, but have are validated or not by a claim that is true or false.
I don't like emotions or descriptions as an understanding of moral rules. Yet they include - are related to both. So a compatibilist answer is required. Perhaps something ike this. Moral rules encode our expectations and requirements of people's behaviour. There are facts of the matter whether certain rules do encode our expectations and requirements. But we do not respond to people following or violating those rules in the same way as we respond to "plain" - morally neutral - facts of the matter.
Maybe, but Im not sure. For me, emotional reactions are likely to be preconcpetual, prelinguistic experiences to which we apply post-hoc rationalizations. "I am angry because..." what follows is the post-hoc part. I've often held that human preferences are primarily directed by affective states, with rational deliberation serving as a post-hoc justification rather than the initial determinant of choice.
Quoting Ludwig V
You can be an emotivist and a compatibilist. I'm not sure what your points mean in relation to emotivism. Can you clarify this?
No specific "atheistic ideology" was mentioned in your initial claim that atheistic ideologies are equally as dangerous as religious ideologies so I mentioned a few. Granted some are less ideological than others so I'll focus on what I think may be considered the most ideological.
Humanism has a consistent framework with a core set of beliefs that can guide action, it's prescriptive, and it can certainly foster a group identity. It may be 'tame' because it's open to revision, doesn't require strict adherence to specific doctrines, and encourages critical thinking and individual autonomy.
On the other hand, Stalin promoted humanist rhetoric while carrying out violent purges, and it seemed to effectively motivate the population. Fuck, I hate it when I'm wrong.
They can be reasoned with if you take a conventional view of morality, i.e. it is true that we agreed (as a society) that stealing is wrong... you don't need the moral statements themselves to be truth apt.
Maybe it's just a convention, wouldn't that be the most obvious answer?
Yep. "stealing is immoral" is a much harder problem.
Quoting Hanover
Why are they the only options? What are the other options? And these two do not appear to be mutually exclusive.
Ok, but then my point still stands. One can't derive any consequent from "boo stealing!". At the very least a moral statement worthy of the name needs to apply to more than just oneself. That you don't like chocolate ice cream is not a reason for you to stop others eating chocolate ice cream. That one ought not kick puppies is a reason for you to stop others kicking puppies. "One ought not kick puppies" is different to "Boo puppy kicking".
But Abraham, on the other hand, might have not collected the wood, might not have trussed his son or held the knife. He may have done otherwise. On this account it is Abraham, not god, who is to blame.
I agree with this.
A pathway to developing moral systems via emotivism would probably involve arguments about cooperation: a code of conduct that provides safety and predictability, because most humans feel more comfortable that way. Or something like this.
No, it really is not. "one ought not kick puppies" means "I think one ought not kick puppies". Nothing more. It means the speaker believes it to be true, referring to nothing further.
But see, for example, Exodus 32:7-14.
God says he will destroy those who built the golden calf. Moses tells God that will make him look bad to the Egyptians if he does that and it will contradict God's covenant to provide the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the promised land.
"Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened."
Moses changed God's mind. Quite the lawyer. This seems to indicate God is a tempermental sort, fortunately willing to be talked down. As in, don't forget your promises and don't go looking like a crazy man. Such reasoning prevailed upon God.
Your reference to God lacking free will is based upon a logical analysis of what omnibenevolence requires, and inserts more modern concerns about perfection and freedom. it's not based upon a reading of the text about this particular God (Yahweh).
While I do know the Jewish view is that angels lack free will, my understanding is that human free will comes from the fact that humans were created in God's image (part of the Creation story). That is, freedom is part of a divine nature.
I don't know your analysis of God having free will holds, but it's certainly not an issue directly addressed in the text.
What I'm pointing out here also harkens back to what I said earlier. This is a text about the ancient Hebrews and their covenant with God and their eventual receiving of the promised land. Any event that interferes with that ends the book or at least greatly changes it's theme.
If Abraham kills Isaac, there will be no Jacob (aka "Israel"). The next passage would then be: " And so now God fucked up, having talked Abraham into killing what was supposed to be the forefather of the Jewish people. Ho hum, let's now talk about Ishmael, Abrahams other bastard child Sarah cast off into the wilderness."
Since it's just a book of fiction, it's perfectly fine to conclude some parts are inconsistent, undeveloped, confusing, non-sense, or whatever. It's not like the world's most well written story.
For example, know why Moses never entered the promised land? The Jews questioned whether it was safe because their scouts saw Nephilim there and it pissed God off that they would question the soundness of his directive to enter.
The Nephilim are giants, half angel, half mortal. They were the reason for Noah's flood (the unholy offspring of gods fucking women) to kill them all off. As in wtf?
I did say this
Quoting Janus
which I think clearly shows that what I had in mind were dogmatic ideologies, whether atheistic or theistic. It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem.
Emotional reactions will always be a part of moral and immoral actions, but it's not the guiding principle behind moral action. One could imagine a person not responding emotionally and yet able to recognize that a particular action is immoral. Why? Because most people recognize that certain actions are objectively immoral. The example that illustrates this point is the following: Imagine a person cutting off the arm of another without good reason. The harm done to the person is objective, viz., the blood loss, the arm on the ground, the screams, and the reactions of family and friends. All of these components are objective and clearly objective. This is true whether you respond emotionally or not. And where there is a question as to the harm done, which clearly happens, then we can debate whether or not there is harm. One can see the objective harm in stealing, lying, betrayal, etc. By the way each of these (stealing, lying, and betrayal) have nuances that people debate about, but that's just the nature of the subject. It's not always clear that harm has been done, so we shouldn't always be absolutist about these things. But generally speaking, we can say these actions are immoral.
We might also add that when confronted with two evils, choose to do the least amount of harm (the principle of harm) based on the facts available to you.
There's a significant difference between faith in authority and forced obedience (imposition).
I tend to think that enlightenment values would more or less immunize someone from blind faith in authority because at the heart of it is the imperative to think for yourself. So how could Stalin effectively use enlightenment rhetoric to support totalitarian control?
I have a somewhat different idea of emotions. Emotional reactions are reactions to something, some state of affairs, fact, whatever. That's what I call the object of the emotion - what it is about. So, for me, emotional reactions are the emotions. (You seem to be positing that the emotion is something orther than the reactions). If I react to the scoring of a goal with joy or disappointment, the goal is neither post-hoc nor a rationalization.
I disintinguish betweem emotions and moods. Anxiety and depression sometimes have emotions - some specific thing that I am anxious or depressed about. But sometimes they do not, and then they influence how I respond to specific objects or events. They affect how we interpret everything. As Wittgenstine said "The world of the happy man is quite different from the world of a sad man".
Quoting Tom Storm
Looking at it again, I'm not sure that it really makes sense. It was just an off-the-cuff thing.
Quoting Banno
Isn't there a complication about this, that the emotions have two functions, one is to express how we feel
(*Boo!", "Hurrah!") and the other to describe what it provoking the feeling - the object of the emotion. One could compare the concept of stealing which describes an action, but also expresses an evaluation of it.
Quoting Banno
Yes. And if it is about how we want things to be, then it is about our values.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Hanover
I didn't know that. I shall add it to my list of justifications of God's action in the OT, together with his reason for forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge, for the Flood, for punishing Job. No doubt there are others. The God of the OT is a rather different creature from the God of the NT.
Quoting Janus
Yes. Perhaps more cautiously, it is the confidence that one knows what the absolute authority is telling us that is the danger.
Without in any way denying this, in parallel, what Ive previously termed the dark side of faith can also manifest thusly:
The conviction that the stance which one holds and proclaims is superlative to - and thereby unaffected by - any rational or empirical evidence to the contrary. This in itself could be contextualized via the notion of hinges - in the sense that ones stability, or else integrity, of being will here hinge on ones never being wrong in what one upholds, irrespective of the evidence.
And I'll contest that the ability to so maintain in turn establishes what is loosely termed strong men, who then can become a cult-of-personality to all those they impose their authoritarian authority upon. (So stated because not all sources of authority will be authoritarian - be it an encyclopedia or some specialist in some scientific field, etc.)
I guess thats where we differ. I dont believe any preference we have or decision we make is independent of our affective state. Reasoning is post hoc and the reasoning we find compelling or "satisfying" is shaped by how we feel about it. Emotion doesnt always manifest as tears or laughter; rather, it forms the underlying foundation of our identity and preferences.
Note, I am not an emotivist, I might become one on further investigation but for now I think it is an interesting way of looking at morality. I do think emotion is critical to who we are.
Quoting Sam26
An emotivist would likely respond that even though the physical harm of cutting off the arm is indisputable, the leap to labeling the act as "objectively immoral" still rests on subjective emotional responses rather than inherent moral facts. Your description of screams and reactions illustrates the observable consequences of the act, but it is our emotional reaction to these consequencesour feelings of horror and disapprovalthat ultimately drives our moral judgment. In other words, while the physical harm is objective, the construction of this act as immoral is not derived from the harm itself but from the shared emotional attitudes that society cultivates in response to such violence. And humans (within time and place), seem to share fears, horrors, anxieties.
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't currently make those sorts of distinctions. Mood is affect. Anxiety is affect. Enjoying music is affect.
Quoting Ludwig V
Sure. But we can also say that the world of the happy man A is quite different from the happy man B.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, I am suggesting that emotion shapes our identify and may be the foundational platform over which our identity (choices, decisions, preferences) is constructed.
That seems about right.
Quoting Tom Storm
I would argue that as soon as you describe the physical consequences of the act as harmful, you have made a moral judgement - or at least a value judgment. Harm is deleterious, by definition.
I suppose you would say that fears, horrors etc. are shared, you would say that they are not objective, but inter-subjective. But that sharing is one of the features of objectivity, so that seems like a cop-out,
Quoting Tom Storm
I suppose we can. But the point that happiness and sadness are attitudes that shape our judgements stands.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't think that emotion is one thing. It is a collection of different reactions to the world we live in. It seems very odd to deny that the world we live is not the foundation of your choices, etc.
There's also a reason that what was once called subjectivism, then emotivism, is now commonly called by philosophers non-cognitivism - names that grew as folk expounding on the topic found it necessary to take more and more into account to defend the basic sentiment that ethics is about how we feel about things, and not so much about what we think about things.
One major problem here is the separation of what we feel and what we think is no where near as clear and clean a cut as this approach supposes. Another is that what we think and feel tend to the private or subjective, with all the accompanying difficulties.
We have been encouraged to look to use - not to think, but to look. There is a difference between looking around and seeing how things are, a comparatively passive activity, and looking around to see how things might be changed, both aesthetically and ethically - a far more active process. The activities being undertaken in these two contrasting cases are quite distinct.
By looking to what we might do, we bypass the opacity of thinking and feeling, refocusing instead on our acts of volition, and how we might change things. Fundamentally, ethics and aesthetics are about what we might do.
The difference is neatly summed up in Anscombe's list of things from the shop. While the words may be the same, there are two very different uses for the list. We might take the list to the shop and purchase the things on it; in which case we change the world to fit the list; or we might write the things we purchased out in a list, perhaps as a receipt, and so change the list to match the world. The difference here is not in the list but in our intent.
All this by way of suggesting that it might be our intent that is important in ethical situations rather than our emotional response.
Apart from forced obedience imposition may also include brainwashing, resulting in faith in authority.
Quoting praxis
It is well known that Stalin's most effective strategy was the cultivation of fear in the populace, and the imposition of punishment on transgressors.
Quoting Ludwig V
Would you not say that one must first have faith that the authority is absolute before one could presume to serve it?
So dismiss thinking and feeling and focus on what we do. This is a recipe for understanding morality?
Morality is about what we think and feel about what we do.
Intention? Sometimes we might seek to do good and unwittingly cause bad outcomes, is that what you have in mind?
Very Jewish sentiment. Catholics require faith and works. Protestants receive salvation from faith alone.
I really don't care. Seems parochial.
To this effect:
If one intends to save a life (and has good enough reason to believe oneself capable of so doing) but accidentally kills it (say in the process of giving CPR or first aid), ought the person be deemed good or bad? Most of us would say "good", and the law generally agrees. (e.g., in California there's the so-called "Good Samaritan law" which applies to just this kind of thing. It's in large part based on intent.)
Conversely:
If one intends to murder another but accidentally benefits the other in the process of so trying to murder but failing (say by alleviating them of a malignant tumor, for example), ought the person who intended to murder be deemed good or bad? Most would say "bad".
This offered in the context of intents vs. doings.
And, of course, one can always actively intention X while emotively disliking so doing. Here I figure things could get relatively complex. But we still judge ethical standing on the intentioning and not on the emotive state of being. If one intentions the saving of a life by giving mouth to mouth resuscitation while being disgusted by the vomit, for example, the actively engaged in intentioning is nevertheless what counts.
Quoting Banno
I'm not a philosopher, so here is my obtuse response:
Can't it be said that it is emotions and attitudes that ultimately drive our doing? What we do is a reflection of what we feel and value, and moral language itself is an expression of approval or disapproval rather than a statement of fact.
Yes. I had in mind the possibility, for example, of someone believing that God is the final authority, but suitably cautious about thinking that they know the mind of God when it comes to what to do.
Give us an argument for why morality isn't emotion first and foremost. So far you've just offered hand waving.
Why should there be only one thing that "drives" our actions or has the "primary role"?
Isn't it entirely possible for that some act be emotional disgusting or repugnant, and yet you ought do it? Ever changed a nappy? Isn't it a commonplace that you often ought do things in defiance of how you feel? What is courage? And see 's examples. The very same actions can be commendable or culpable.
Ethics as the study of interplay between intent and action, in a social context.
Allen murdered Shelley's son. Murder is wrong because of the way the community reacts to it, and that reaction is emotional.
One act of abuse is like a pebble in a pond, sending out waves of grief, and rage, and pain through the community. Those waves travel down through time, echoes upon echoes of the original sin.
You sure about that 'because'?
First off, murder is unlawful killing. Some ways of killing are not unlawful. Is murder wrong becasue it is killing or becasue it is against the law?
Further, if the community reacts with glee, that makes it OK? Civilised countries have outlawed capital punishment, becasue they consider it immoral.
It's always a bit more complicated...
Yea. I said "first and foremost" to try to ward off the impression that there is no more to it than emotion. Emotion is the wind in that particular sail, though. Don't have any comment on weird interpretations of murder or nappies. :grin:
The emotivism wouldnt say murder is wrong because of the communitys emotional reaction as if that were a causal explanation. Instead, theyd say calling murder "wrong" is an expression of the communitys emotional reaction.
As I understand it, the emotivist maintains that moral judgments arent factual statements about the world; theyre expressions of approval or disapproval. So when people say "murder is wrong," theyre not stating an objective fact but expressing their collective condemnation, foudned in emotions like grief, outrage, and fear. The status of murder on this view, is not an inherent property of the act but a reflection of how people feel about the act. And this is contingent upon culture language and experince. WHich is why peopel tend to share emotional reactions (for the most part).
Quoting Banno
Good point. I guess the response here might be that an emotivist might acknowledge that we may sometimes be compelled to act contrary to our immediate emotions, but would deny that there is an objective "ought" beyond how we feel about it.
Yes, changing a nappy might be disgusting, but if you care about the child, that feeling of care outweighs the disgust. The "ought" in that case is just another emotional response. One that wins out over revulsion.
Hence non-cognitivism rather then emotivism, and the implication that one must think about the situation and not only about one's emotional response. One doesn't just feel, one thinks about consequences, and hence about what one wants to be the case. Setting this out as just (no more than...) an emotional response does not do it justice.
And what is the place of the word "objective" here? Would it be OK to assert that there is an "ought" in "one ought change the baby's nappy" but no ought in "objectively, one ought change the baby's nappy"?
Looking at these issues in terms of intent and action and consequences gives us a much more viable framework than "emotion". It moves from doing what you want to doing what you should, and hence away from mere egoism.
How we understand the doing -- the action -- is tied to the thoughts and feelings of the doer.
If you're alone on an island it's the same thing. The social aspect of morality is better explained by potent emotion rather than dead propositions.
In other words, as already mentioned, expressions of emotions arent truth-bearing. These statements fail where they must function as propositions to maintain meaning and inferential coherence. (This was pointed out in the Frege-Geach Problem.) These kinds of statements (Stealing is wrong akin to Boo to stealing,) cannot account for the logical role moral statements play in our ethical reasoning. Emotional statements lack whats needed for validity. Emotional statements, again, lack a truth value.
There have been various attempts to address this issue, but in my opinion, they fail.
Could be something, could be nothing.
Quoting 180 Proof
An excellent answer to an obnoxious gentile; they only need to behave themselves and avoid idolatry. I'm sure after making this remark everyone cheered and then Hillel returned to Torah study or forming halakha.
Now explain Hegel to me standing on one foot.
:up:
We just have two different views of the nature of morality. I'm with Augustine, 'Love and do what you will.'. It's not about propositions, it's about love.
But these differences are what make the topic interesting, right?
That makes sense. It is not fundamentalism, The question it seems to leave me with though is: 'What use is an authority if you don't know what they want you to do?".
So it's worth noting that while in the Isaac binding story Abraham exhibits this stringent faith, in the Sodom & Gomorrah story he does bargain with God. He bargains God down to 10 righteous men which are not able to be found in Sodom & Gomorrah so the cities burn.
Job is excellent in his book. He does question God. He laments the day of his birth. Yet he never curses or renounces God. He tows the line. So Job does question God yet his righteousness maintains. His reward at the end, I think, seems like it's almost tacked on and it's covered very briefly. I never read Job as expecting a reward. Personally, the notion of being adequately compensated/"rewarded" after one's family dies seems absurd to me so I always took it as perhaps some reward in the next life.
Job is timeless. Righteous men suffer for seemingly no reason all the time. Job provides a model, and that model -- that example -- makes room for questioning and lamenting.
It's a call to think about the way you see people. Do you judge by appearances? Do you assume that if someone is sick and poor, that they must have done something to deserve this? Or do you understand that it can happen to anyone of us?
Indeed. As I understand it the emotivist doesn't believe in oughts or ought nots since they are just expressions of your preferences which are emotionally driven. When you say murder is wrong you are saying 'boo murder'.
In other words emotivism is not a normative ethical system that prescribes how one ought to act. It's is a theory about the nature of moral language and moral judgments. It seeks to explain where moral claims come from (namely, our emotions) instead of establish moral rules or duties.
Is it correct? I'm not sure. I'm mulling it over.
I don't think morality can be derived from any logical arguments. In fact, logic is as likely to be the ally of evil as much as good.
Good comes seeing ourselves in one another. That's probably the most mystical answer.
I don't see why it would be considered a good theory, but that's my view. I see much of philosophy as useless or poor epistemology, and emotivism is just one such theory.
Quoting frank
Logic plays an important role, but it's not the only way we justify our beliefs, it's just one of many ways. Again, as I commented to @Tom Storm an overarching view of epistemology is extremely important and Wittgenstein's ideas go a long way in answering such questions. There are many different ways we justify beliefs (many different language games), and understanding these language games helps us get the fly out of the fly-bottle. I don't agree with Wittgenstein's metaphysics, but his linguistic analysis is still the best along with Austin.
I agree that logic doesn't differentiate between good and evil, but that doesn't mean it's not useful in these discussions. Part of the problem is that we rely too much on logic, as if it's the only source of our justifications. It reminds me of people who continually rely on science as if it's the only good source of knowledge. It may in some cases be more precise, but it depends on what we're trying to answer.
With morals, we learn them from those around us, the date of their creation lost to time. It's the reason people seem to know the morals of their culture. They just saw others doing the same thing.
If you want to make the argument that morals are not relative to time, place, and the peculiarities of different cultures, you can, but you're going to have argue either some mystical creator of morality or you're going to have argue something inherent within the constitution of the human DNA that demands them.
It simply makes no sense to speak of the world of forms, where the good exists outside the existence of humanity if you take a fully secular view of this. If a tree falls in the woods and there are no humans in existence anywhere, it does not matter. Mattering is a human concern. It is not a concern for whatever deer took a tree to the head.
On the other hand, if God says the tree falling in the woods matters (i.e. it is either good or bad), then it matters, even if there is no human anywhere to assess it.
I think there is a place for the mystical, but I disagree that moral arguments depend on some mystical God/creator/lawgiver. I think a very strong argument can be made that there is an objectivity to much of moral reasoning even if you remove the mystical. This isn't to say that culture, history, emotion, empathy, etc. don't play a part, they're just not the foundation that supports the argument. The problem is that people seem to want clarity and precision, and it isn't going to be found. There will always be grey areas needing more clarity because our knowledge is limited.
There obviously have been attempts at creating objective criteria or principles to determine what is moral (Utlilitarianism, Kantianism, etc.), but they do have feel of being post hoc, meaning we first list out what we know to be moral and immoral and then we try to arrive at what explains our list. That is, we know murder and stealing are wrong, and then we come up with reasons for why we must think that.
The second question, and the one I touched on above, what dictates the objective? Are you saying it's wrong to murder because human DNA demands that as a social rule? What are you ultimately referencing to prove something is good. With law, you point to the law. With morality, what to you point to?
It seems to me one can here only point to the Good, of a platonic / neoplatonic repute. It by entailment would be a) a completely fixed aspect of all being and b) completely impartial relative to the whims of individual egos or cohorts of these, this in all respects (be these egos deities or not), thereby being (non-physically) perfectly objective.
Oh wait, it's mysticalish of me to so say. Never mind, then.
Provided one accepts that morality is about how people feel, that's perfectly true. That means that the concept of murder has two components - a description of the act and the evaluation of it. It is wrongful intentional killing. "Boo-word" does not capture the description, though "boo-stealing" does.
Quoting frank
That shouldn't be surprising. Logic is about truth and falsity. Morality is about good and bad. Yet moral principles can be consistent or inconsistent with each other. But that doesn't mean they can't both be true at the same time; it means that one cannot conform to both at the same time. Compare "Bring me a red flower" and "Bring me a blue flower".
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
That's very generous of you. For me, the promise of a reward in the next life is not an incentive. But I rather think that Job, as a believer, might well have been incentivised by such a promise - or perhaps by the expectation of such a reward, even if it was not promised. I've noticed that the OT frequently mentions the rewards that one who keeps God's commandments can expect (and the punishments that are frequently dished out). It's old-fashined stick and carrot persuasion.
Quoting Janus
The answer is, of course, that such an authority is not much use. Do you think that applies to God? I fear it does. The ancient Greeks understood that oracles were unreliable, in the sense that the interpretation of them was not always easy. Curiously, they don't seem to have regarded that as a problem - it was just how things were.
Quoting Sam26
Expressions of emotions aren't truth-bearing. But the terms for emotions are not just expressions. They contain a description as well. Anger at a late train is about the proposition that the train is late; if it turns out that the train is not late, the emotion does not necessarily disappear, but it become inappropriate and quite likely to disappear when the truth is revealed. And so on. On my view, moral statements normally include an expression of disapproval and an imperative to do or not do the action they are are about. Three distinct components, each which can be assessed in its own appropriate way. Expressions can be appropriate or inappropriate; commands can be obeyed or not; descriptions, of course, can be true or not.
Emotions are more complex than descriptions, and moral statement are more complex than emotions.
Quoting Banno
We could perhaps say that moral statements are logically more complex than emotions.
Quoting Tom Storm
You could describe it like that. But the reason that the feeling of care outweighs the disgust is that changing the nappy is more important than one's disgust. One doesn't just throw the disgust and the care into a set of scales and see which wins.
Quoting Banno
Yes, there is a logic to morality. It's just not the logic of truth and falsity - though it does depend on it. The facts of the case make a different and those are to be established in the way that is appropriate to facts.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes. That's true. Thinking and feeling and doing are all part of what the action is. So is the on-looker's reaction.
You point out the harm done. Even in courts when accessing a lawsuit e.g., they focus on the harm, and if you show harm, then in many cases you win the case. It's not difficult in most cases to objectively demonstrate the harm done when lying (to relationships) murdering, stealing, and a host of other actions. To me, this seems rather obvious. How do we access the harm? We give the evidence or reasons to support the conclusion. The evidence usually comes in the form of testimony, reasoning, sensory experience, etc.
Yes, the placebo effect is real. Believe it or not, it works even if the doctor expresses some uncertainty about whether the placebo will work or not; which is good, because it means that you don't have to deceive patients in order to administer it. There's a theory that what really does the work is the sympathetic attention.
But over-confidence can wreck your attempts just as much as under-confidence. Telling the difference is hard.
But what of ethics?
If mattering is a human concern and there are no humans in existence anywhere, how could what God says matter?
A poor argument, if that's what this is. Devine command and evolutionary necessity do not cover all the options. This also makes the mistake of thinking that morals are found, not made - discovered, not intended.
A group of humans sits around a primordial campfire chewing on bison. One of them says, "Hey! Why don't we do some morals?"
The rest of the group stares and one says, "What?"
They all go back to chewing.
Yes, I think this may well be the critical matter - "made" by our actions.
What is your response against the view that if we make morality together by doing, how do we evaluate this? Is not selecting a foundation, say virtue ethics or Nussbaum's capability framework, essentially a preference and we might instead chose negative values instead like Trumpism, say, which may seem to like virtue when seen from the perspective of others. What is the way we settle these matters. Is it just old fashioned consequences regarding harm and barriers to eudaimonia?
Poignant. Jesus would go to the Pharisees and bitch at them for making a show of their rituals while not caring at all about to the poor. He ignored Jewish customs, he showed his ass at the Temple. That's why it's ironic that people associate him with moralizing. He didn't care for rules. He saw them as easily subverted on the way to exploiting people.
Moral rules don't help normal people. They exist for the soul purpose of condemnation. Only those who were born to condemn care about moral realism.
Following the commandments generally does yield good results. Those who stray generally pay a price and bad deeds can carry a nasty ripple effect. It seems to me that modern moral philosophy (at least as I was taught it) has largely lost this connection. Instead, modern morality is often associated with sacrifice or inconvenience for the agent, like sacrificing one's own happiness for the multitude. Or following stringent rules because they are rational.
It here sounds like you're referring to something like karma, rather than a deity's judgments.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
That's what taxes are all about, right? One's giving of one's own profits for the common good, this at least within genuine democracies. Here, I tend to agree with Mr. Franklin when he said:
Morality is not algorithmic.
Same answer for . There's no criteria, like virtue ethics or capability framework, that will work in all cases for all questions; and yet we have to do the evaluation, so we have an iterative process, but in which each iteration changes the rule being iterated. So the list of virtues and the list of capabilities changes over time.
What is the way we settle these matters? Well, that's part of these matters.
Nice.
I think we're in agreement:
Quoting frank
Or maybe we could just call it the nature of reality.
Quoting javra
I wasn't thinking of taxes. I had in mind the idea that the "moral" thing to do is to maximize the pleasure/utility of the masses and to give no special regard for e.g. one's own family. It is to demand the impossible - complete impartiality towards the entire world. To regard even one's own son or daughter as simply another moral unit no different from a stranger.
Atleast taxes can benefit the taxpayer.
Too many criminals getting away with their crimes in this world for me to consider it the nature of reality. But perhaps you've addressed "reality" as something which goes beyond the physical and the lives lived in it ...
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Which would be a perversion of goodness to be sure. But then isn't this a scarecrow to the commonplace decency that all adults need to give something of their own well-being for the benefit of the community they pertain to? I for one example know of many that detest jury duty when selected for it - even though there can be no such thing as jury-of-one's-peers in its absence. As far as I can tell, the sense of community has be lacking, or else slowly degrading, for some time. This, at least, in my neck of the woods.
Just the physical.
Bad behavior ruins relationships. Impulsive amoral men make bad friends and cannot be trusted around partners. You can behave like a selfish asshole but it's probably gonna have a cost so you better get really, really good at hiding it. If you're gonna skew the scales you better be able to trick everyone.
It can work for a time, but probably not forever. People talk.
Quoting javra
I'm not sure what you mean by scarecrow, but yes, I agree that community is important and that there's some collective responsibility towards it. A strong community serves you and your family.
Things matter to God.
Like not mixing linen and wool (sha'atnez)?
Clever soul/sole pun.
I intend for X, so I declare lying immoral. Mustn't X be moral for lying to be immoral? The point being, how do we know the Good if not discovered? If we can make the Good, is that not subjectivism?
Is this not Utilitarianism?
Dunno. what's 'subjectivism"?
Note the "we". Not Me. So, where is us deciding what to do "subjective"?
We is first person, you and me, but it would work just as well if just me, or the members of my house, neighborhood, town, state, etc. Relativity, subjectivity, it all has the same problems. Is murder moral if we agree it is? I say not.
Me, too. So we agree on that... If we disagreed, there would be more to say.
Does that make our agreement subjective? Is our agreement relative? Or is this talk of subjective/objective relative/(...absolute?) just fluff?
Not at all sure what your point is.
Some hypothetical cavemen sat around an imaginary campfire eating anachronistic chicken piccata. Gnurt said to Glint, "you shouldn't hair drag my sister cave to cave." Glint, taking a gulp of his Pinot Gregio says "fuggitaboutit."
And Glint begets la costra nostra and Gnurt its opposite.
Such is the morality origin story.
That's true. But unless you realize that you are included in the common good, you will mistake your taxea for some kind of charity or protection money. But if one has some money, it is the result of the social structures that you live by. So your taxes give you the opportunity to make money. (And money itself is the result of the social structures you live by.)
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
But does God command them because they yield good results or do they only yield good results because God comannded them? Or, perhaps, are they a set of criteria for assessing what a good life is?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
That is a real problem, sadly neglected in conventional philosophy. I don't know how to resolve it, but I am sure that a moral/legal system that does not acknowledge and deal with it is trying to ignore fundamental aspects of human nature.
Quoting Banno
I wouldn't say it is fluff, exactly. But I do suspect that it is a false dilemma that prevents us from paying attention to what actually matters, which is the interaction between the two.
It's not utilitarianism.
:100:
:grimace:
How do you know that?
The answer to this question is contingent on how these words get defined and thereby understood.
Suppose that among its other attributes subjective necessarily entails that that specified is a) partial to only some aspects of all that is real and b) is subjected to aspects of all that is real toward which it is not partial to.
Further suppose that among its other possible attributes objective necessarily entails that that specified is a) not partial to some aspects of all that is real and b) not in any way subjected to aspects of all that is real toward which it is not partial to.
These two attributes then being necessary but insufficient definitions of each term.
Then, if there is an objective Good, all subjective beings will necessarily be subjected to it irrespective of whether they are partial to it or not. Here, one need not have an affinity toward the Good to be subjected to it. More extremely, if all subjective beings were to have a repulsion toward the Good and thereby be in full agreement that the Good is in fact bad, sooner or later the Good would end up biting them in the ass not because the Good is a ego-endowed selfhood which judges them but, instead, because here the Good is an objective aspect of reality at large to which all subjective being are thereby inevitably subjected to. Like gravity, given that it likewise in fact is objective, one might detest being so constrained and might want to fly off a tall building by flapping ones hands, but gravity will have its (metaphorical) final say in the matter all the same. Agreement on what is good is here agreement on what in fact is an objective aspect of reality at large.
If there is no objective Good, then goodness is fully subjective: If enough people agree that murdering is good, murdering thereby here becomes good for the people in question. And there is no objective realty by which to measure this goodness of murdering. In parallel, using gravity as example again, if enough people were to agree that gravity is not a universal law and further agree that it is then possible to fly by the flapping of hands given that there is nothing objective about gravity then within these cohorts people would then begin flying by the flapping of their hands.
Other definitions of subjectivity and objective might well yield different results. But the question still gets answered based on how the terms specified get to be understood.
Because that's what God is to me. Faith.
It's consequentialism. If happiness is not the consequence you wish to achieve, what is?
Both religious and non-religious people can have faith in a moral foundation. It makes no difference.
Ok, so maximal eudemonia is the goal or else consequence pursued. The pivotal intent, so to speak. Doesn't the exact same apply to all theistic peoples out there?
So the question regarding ethics at large is then not "whether or not so doing is of itself good" - it can't help but so be, and is in a way the missing link to all ethical considerations bar none - but, instead, it's the question of "what is the best approach to so doing".
I think the commandments are good in-themselves for Israel to follow and they generally bring about good results. Mosaic law is particular to Israel. Yet God also gives 7 laws to Noah intended for all of humanity way before Moses.
Yet before any of this Cain commits murder. Both Cain and God know that it is wrong. This would seem to imply a universal pre-existent moral order. Here we hear of the land being "defiled" through Cain's deed and how Abel's blood "cries out" to God from the ground. There's a lot to unpack here. And rules go back all the way to Eden.
The Mosaic commandments essentially give Israel their identity.
Would you then agree that, from within an Abrahamic perspective, the same rules of ethics would minimally go back to Gensis 1s so-called sixth day (which I so far interpret to represent the sixth cycle of events given that there were "days" prior to a solid earth's occurrence)?
The sixth day being the day in which the we therein addressed which I interpret as being Elohim (this rather than G-d, this due to G-d's entailed divine simplicity, which thereby could not be a plurality in any sense of the word) created both man and woman, woman and man, in Elohims very own [s]image[/s] likeness. This, then, necessarily before Eve was created from Adams rib; and so long before the Cain and Abel event ever took place.
Though I can imagine how what I mentioned in my previous post might sound uncouth to some, so interpreting - as per Genesis I - the creation of humankind on day six (this rather than on day seven) to me is the only way I can find of making sense of the age old question of how Cain got around to having children: Here, Cain did not have children via some form of immaculate conception nor did he have his children with Eve, his mother, but instead coupled with a women created on the sixth day when humankind at large was created. This union thereby giving rise the Jewish peoples.
This being a philosophy forum, thought Id mention this perspective. This, again, just in case what I previously mentioned might have sounded cross to some. (Hard to tell how others interpret it.)
Everything gets more complicated when you look at it closely. I wouldn't know how to unpack this.
I suppose the idea that God only realized that moral laws were necessary when people began to behave badly is ridiculous.
The rule in Eden is puzzling. Is there really supposed to be some moral lesson to be drawn from that story - presumably about some knowledge being forbidden? After all, it is hard to believe that knowledge of good and evil is a Bad Thing. It is the foundation of morality. Or is that knowledge the part of the punishment inflicted on us as a result of the transgression by Adam and Eve?
This is true not just of religions, but of nations, currencies, laws, companies, and ethics. There is no objective evidence of any of these, beyond the actual practice itself. Because they consist in the practice, and the faith that engenders and sustains it
Not withstanding some everyday uses, i.e. "I have faith the bus will come in time".
Consenting to our social institutions is not an act of faith.
The prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge is indeed puzzling. I think though, that we can zoom out, and say that the eden story presents us with a conception of reality where reality itself is wonderful and for mankind to enjoy and to flourish, yet there are certain rules that one must follow for it to endure.
Song of Solomon uses much edenic imagery; so perhaps through love we re-enter Eden in a way.
That's a very attractive view. I wouldn't deny that sometimes people make their own hell, in one way or another, but I can't accept that everyone who is having a bad time has brought it on themselves. In addition, I would want empirical evidence that following the ten commandments (or any other set of rules) always or even mostly has good results.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
That's a possible view, though I would have to treat it as a metaphor. But can we live our whole lives in that way?
This seems to conflate happiness and eudemonia with pleasure. As with happiness, Mill spent considerable time distinguishing simple pleasure from the fulfillment of happiness and Aristotle required reason and virtue for the fulfillment of eudemonia. That is (alluding to Mill), there's a significant difference between a satisfied pig and satisfied person.
My response here is just a push back on the comment regarding the ubiquity of happiness seeking by all life forms.
A faith based belief in the existence of a moral force sounds theistic, suggesting that without this moral force, it wouldn't matter if we murdered. Meaning is implanted in this belief isn't it?
Is this an analogy suggesting that "Believing that murder counts as evil is not an act of faith but simply to understand how to play the rules of society"?
Are you arguing that moral compliance is just a consent to a social institution and not an act of faith?
If I've not overstated your claim here, my response is to point out the distinction: Murder is wrong no matter what we decide. We can change the rules of football goals as we wish.
So why is murder wrong - becasue is breaches a social institution, or becasue it is a subclass of killing, and all killing wrong?
it's not faith that makes netting a ball a goal, nor faith that makes an unlawful killing a murder.
I take this as a limitation on a mortal's ability to survive knowledge of absolute truth. It is to see the face of God, so to speak. Consistent with Exodus 33:20, God tells Moses, "But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." Consistent with the Midrash that God reveals himself to Moses through a kiss and then he dies. My interpretation of the art.
As in, epiphanies we all might experience throughout our lives might change who we were into what we are.
It was the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.". There wasn't any evil at first. When Eve ate from the tree (after being forbidden to), she gained the knowledge of good and evil (and became like God in this regard just as the snake had advised.) It was a set-up.
All killing isn't wrong. Self defense, for example. The moral decree opposed to killing is limited to certain sorts of killing. The Commandment, for what it's worth, is not to murder, not not to kill. That is, the moral, not the law, was not to murder.
Regardless, change from what I said to "thou shall not stomp babies for fun." Is this just our rule, like a ball in the net counts as a goal, or is it immutable?
Yeah, the story isn't perfect, like any art. I create my own meaning to some extent.
Under your interpretation, if there was no evil when Adam and Eve ate, they didn't sin. If they didn't sin, we don't need Jesus to save humanity from the fall of man. You just fucked up a major religion.
No, it's like a Pandora story where the woman opens the box and evil enters the world, but in this story she eats some fruit she wasn't supposed to, becomes the first sinner, now she has the knowledge of good and evil, which is what the tree is called.
Do you need all your morality in terms of commandments?
The point being made is that, contrary to 's suggestion, social institutions do not rely on faith. They do depend on constitutive rules, either explicitly or implicitly. Murder, being unlawful killing, is a social institution.
Some social institutions have ethical import - one can't steal unless there is the social institution of property, for instance.
The wickedness of stomping of babies for fun is not of this sort.
So this rule is not from the hand of man. Where did it come from? Are there more of these rules not yet known?
There's a certain obsession with commandments on your part.
Did you decide that baby stomping is a bad thing all by yourself, or did you need help?
Was it just your conscience? Or the hand of man, or of God, that convinced you?
Notice that this doesn't follow? Another use of false dilemma, a pattern in your posts here. It's not that either something is the result of a constitutive rule or it is "not from the hand of man".
Another problem. The presumption seems to be that ethics is about rules. While arguably, morality might be about rules, ethics not so much. In the last page or so it was pointed out that ethics might not be algorithmic, that there might be no rules that suit all situations. Think of it this way: treating a rule as absolute is giving succour to the devil, who will delight in inventing traps in which following the rule leads to cruelty.
Alright, then to the point. We have a proscription. Where did it come from?
Quoting Banno
But there are rules in particular situations, as in not stomping babies for fun. That rule, where did it come from? Surely there was a day it was not known. How was it found?
Quoting Banno
In any scenario rules must be interpreted and considered against conflicting rules. It's not as if the followers of the absolute rules don't spend considerable time in their interpretation. Isn't that the entiety of Western jurisprudence (and rabbincal law)? Not only do we look at our rules, but also at how we've previously interpreted them, analogizing through precedence.
Ethical rules (e.g. "thou shall not kill") are not just a handful of literal words (yes, the literalism I complained of earlier), but are interpreted within the entire context of the tradition.
Why do you have such fear of misuse of moral absolutes but not of legal absolutes? The law in a nation is set forth clearly, and surely it could be misused, but you don't suggest a nation without laws is superior to one with?
The same for ethics: They are laws, interpreted through principles, reason, analogy. etc.
The distinction between ethics and law is only upon where each originated. Laws originate in the minds of men and women. Ethics either do the same or come from somewhere you've yet to identify. If, though, you think morals are human inventions, just like laws, then the moral/legal distinction collapses. They are just two sets of rules passed and codified differently, but not importantly.
There is something repugnant, something lacking, in those who refrain from stomping on the heads of babies for fun only becasue it is against the law, be that a moral or a legal code.
Quoting Hanover
proscription: from Latin proscriptionem, "a public notice; proscription, outlawry, confiscation," noun of action from past-participle stem of proscribere "publish in writing"
This by way of trying to show that the premise of your last post, is muddled.
Quoting Hanover
Well, no.
No, we see that the same. What we see differently are (1) you think ethics are interpreted differently than laws, and (2) i think ethics aren't man made, regardless of whether they are rule based or arise from conversations.
As to #1, this is our perennial dispute in these religions threads. You think religious rules are interpreted just by reading the rule ""women shalt not attend stonings" and suddenly we know the entiety of the rule.
That is, it is my position that the 613 commandments of the Hebrew Bible are part of a conversation. This literalism where you just read a set of words in isolation, non-contexualized isn't a thing in ethics or law.
You can no more read a legal rule forbidding murder without reference to other legal code sections, the dozens of prior opinions written on matter, the Constitution, and the full complexities of the people doing the interpreting. Same for ethics.
As to #2, once you've arrived at a moral decision, is your knowledge dependent on your justified belief or on your justified true belief? What makes it true? Just that you believe it.?
Then where does your emphasis on proscriptions come from.
When the US was formed they asked Thomas Jefferson to rewrite the laws of Virginia for the new country. Virginia was a big state and it was known that all the smaller states would do whatever Virginia did. Jefferson refused saying that the meaning of the law had been created by centuries of lawyers wrangling over every syllable. Jefferson said if he rewrote the law, it would condemn future generations to redoing all that wrangling.
So the law isn't words hanging in a void. Today's law has meaning forged from yesterday's problems.
It doesn't. Pleasure has as it's opposite pain. Happiness has as it's opposite suffering.
Quoting Hanover
OK. Still, that wasn't the pivotal issue addressed.
I do think it applies to God. According to general Abrahamic religious doctrine God can only be known via revelation, and the works of revelation are human works and thus cannot be considered infallible. Even if it is accepted that the voice of Gi9d was directly heard by the prophets, they are still just fallible humans, and their writings must be acknowledged to be infected by their own interpretations.
Ultimately the idea of God as authority must come down to considering some humans to be authorities, if not infallible, in their interpretations. We see the Catholic notion of the infallibility of the pope for example. I can't see how the same would not apply to the Eastern idea of spiritual enlightenment.
That moral injunction is just an expression of a healthy human disposition. There's something wrong with you if you don't think stomping babies is wrong, and arguably almost every person recognizes this fact.
What about "genocide is wrong"? Is that a hinge belief?
Not according to the God of the Old Testament.
Literalism again. Super. I'm as interested in conducting an exegesis on Amalek as you are. Suffice it to say, there is no virtue in sympathizing with the devil.
Anyway, regardless of what the Bible says, is it a hinge belief or not?
I don't think I've ever considered the idea of a "moral force" before. It's an interesting concept, but after reflecting on it, I don't see how it provides the religious with a stronger moral foundation than the non-religious. Could you clarify your perspective? Are you suggesting that the non-religious lack a moral foundation or have a weaker one?
Any declaration can be made compatible with any theory with the addition of suitable ad hoc hypotheses.
I do much prefer literalism. Especially over sophistry.
"Genocide" is not so easy to pin down as head-stomping. What says the "moral force"? Do we need "Moral Jedi" to do the interpretation?
That's correct. Though I don't know enough to pronounce on Eastern ideas, interesting though they are. I got the impression that the idea was that a guru (who is himselt Enlightened) is able to discern whether someone else is Enlightened. I think of it as something like the idea that a trained musician is better able to detect when a note is out of tune than a member of the public.
Quoting praxis
There's something odd about the idea of a moral force, if that means something that forces one to obey it. The whole point of morality is that one must obey the rules of one's own free will. But it might be more like the meaning of a moral rule.
The idea that religious people are more moral than irreligious people has been endorsed by some religious people for a long time. It is obviously very convenient for believers who wish to demonize people who disagree with them. But I don't think there is any decisive empirical evidence that it is true.
Quoting Hanover
I'm not very clear about hinge propositions, though I know they are quite popular these days. Wittgenstein doesn't give us much to go on. But my understanding is that we can choose what propositions we make the hinges of our debates. Presuppoisitionalist theologians, apparently, arbitrarily decide to mke the truth of the Bible a hinge of their reflextions and debates. That seems rather extreme, especially as it is open to anyone who disagrees with them to make a different choice. I guess they are not much interested in missionary work.
Quoting Banno
We've already got them. They come in two flavours, religious and secular. The former are called priests. The latter are called ethicists.
The act of faith here is not believing in specific rules, but belief in the relevant institution's (IFAB here) authority to will rules in and out of being, and for their intercessors, ritually outfitted with uniform, cards and whistle, to arbitrate them.
Similarly, faith is not in a rule that stomping babies is bad, but in the belief that underpins that rule, be it God/Gods, religions institutions, or the sanctity of human life.
The point remains that the enlightenment of the guru must be taken on faith, whereas a note's being out of tune can be rigorously determined. Perhaps the aesthetic quality of a piece of music or performance would be a better analogy.
As I see it to be enlightened is not to know any extraordinary propositional thing about anything but rather to be in an altered state...of equanimity for example.
But then it remains questionable that those in such states know how to guide others to personal transformation. As an analogy, aesthetic judgement and creative vision cannot be taught.
Perhaps so. Yet rigorously identifying an out-of-tune note still depends on someone knowing how to do it. And identifying the aesthetic quality of music is learnt and requires practice.
Quoting Janus
That's my impression as well. So I would have thought that identifying Enlightened people was a special case of identifying someone state of mind (mood) - anxiety, joy, etc. That's not like identifying the Word of God. And you need to learn how to do that from someone else who knows. It's a social/cultural tradition.
Quoting Janus
They cannot be taught like a mathematical calculation, which is a matter of drills and habits. But they are certainly learned and the reports of practitioners is that some people can help that process. It's a different kind of teaching for a different kind of skill. Perhaps we should not say that they are taught, but acquired through practice and that more experienced or expert practitioners can foster that process.
But also science is based on a faith in the ever-lasting. In it's foundation one finds the induction principle which has to be accepted as self-evident. (Betrand Russell explained this very well in his book "Problems of philosophy".) A simple way to understand why we regard the induction principle as self-evident is that we expect reality to be rule bound. And we expect reality to be rule bound forever. But there's nothing illogical per se about a reality where every seeming rule is just an illusion.
One distinction that is very difficult to make is between wishful thinking and intuition. If I maintain faith in the existence of Santa Clause, one might have me suspected of wishful thinking. But I assume fewer would make the same claim if I assert that conscious beings have free will. And the reason is that everyone, including those who reject the existence of free will, have an introspective sense of it. I would argue that believing in free will (Which I do) has an element of choice, and hence of faith, while also being based on intuition.
Further making clear your ethical system is emotivist at base. This isn't particualrly a dig at you -
I just cannot understand why people have such a hard time noticing that every moral claim they make is an emotional one (or maybe accepting?). There are fairly universal emotional reactions (such as the one Banno lays out here) that have infomed policy in almost every single instance there has been a policy across all of human history. Some instances notwithstanding due to overriding emotional positions, such as having a female baby being repugnant in many Asian cultures, this seems a truism and seems to make it perfectly clear that sans religion, this is how it works. Not theoretically, but literally how ethics is done. Call it a conversation? I could. But then Banno's further remarks make it clear he's not talking about ht same thing, I don't think.
Emotivism denies this, in various ways.
See John Searles work on speech acts, where he differentiates between constitutive rules that create the possibility of a certain activity, like "checkmate ends the game of chess", and regulative rules that manage existing activities, such as traffic laws. Constitutive rules create the game as suchwithout them, the game wouldnt exist.
Quoting Banno
I found these quite thought-provoking.
I'm inclined to think that faith in institutions or people is trusting that they are doing the right or appropriate institutions thing. That implies a criterion for rightness or appropriateness. One doesn't have faith in rules (whether they are constitutive or regulative rules), unless there is a criterion for assessing whether they are right or appropriate.
I think that faith that a proposition/statement is correct or true is different from that. One doesn't trust or mistrust a proposition, but one can believe it or not on grounds or not; either way faith that it is true implies that there is a criterion of truth or correctness.
https://www.patristicfaith.com/senior-contributors/an-orthodox-theory-of-knowledge-apophaticism-asceticism-and-humility/
https://www.academia.edu/45384040/An_Orthodox_Theory_of_Knowledge_The_Epistemological_and_Apologetic_Methods_of_the_Church_Fathers
Or maybe people have emotions vis-á-vis questions of value [I]because[/I] the events in question are good or bad? That is, "I feel repelled by x because x is evil," as opposed to "x is evil because I feel repelled by x."
To use the unpleasant example brought up earlier in this thread, that "being stomped" is [I]bad[/I] for infants would appear to be about as obvious of a truth of medical science as there is. We might suppose that people have negative emotions as respects "baby stomping" [I]in virtue[/I] of this fact.
However, the dedicated emotivist often ends up resorting to claims like: "being stomped isn't actually bad for babies," and defending this claim (which I think most would judge to be obviously false) by appealing to the notion that all value judgements are just statements of emotion. But that's obviously question begging.
Even if emotion always accompanied value statements, this wouldn't indicate much. Presumably, a sense of conviction also always accompanies genuine statements of knowledge (assertions of facts). Yet the fact that the two coincide hardly should suggest that "language about truth is just language about a sense of certitude and conviction," or that "truth is nothing but a subjective feeling of confidence in speakers."
As someone who was dunked in a bucket of Orthodox-Christian-blessed water shortly after birth - while Im not a Christian (being more of a pantheist / panentheist myself) - I do appreciate the quote you gave regarding the Christian Orthodox notion of faith. Cheers for it.
I agree. But ethical statements do rely on emotional positions. I do not see anything else happening when one makes such statements. The deliberation may include some ratiocination - but this would just move the ticker on the emotional position (or, more likely for humans, the reverse: the emotional is driving the reason). No one is thinking "I feel strongly that X, but reason tells me Y and so my position is Y". That seems pretty much counter to the basic concept of morality at least and is not what people mean when they make ethical statements, I don't think.
Is there another description of the "statement" aspect here? I am ignoring your "truth" Aspect as we both know how we feel about that, I'd say. I'm interested in how you think it occurs rather than what it results in.
To close off personal reply to your comments, emotivism denies that there are ethical truths. The question it seems you're answering doesn't arise.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I cannot understand how that could be hte case, without first telling me, objectively, why something is 'evil'. Given our only source of such claims is humans, .....where are we going?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This doesn't seem like a very serious discussion, at this point. The dedicated emotivist is only committing to rejecting an objective claim to wrongness. I'm more than welcome to agree that stomping babies is bad. That's my position. It doesn't rely on anything but that. I am not committed to saying anything else. It just so happens our emotive positions are the same (I addressed this earlier:
Quoting AmadeusD
This doesn't move hte needle, though. I pretty much accept both the above, and your take, but I can't see how that changes anything. The fact that lots of people have the same emotional reaction is no evidence for anything more than a collection of emotional reactions informing policy (and thereby, probably, further influencing emotional positions in future).
Basically, where's the a priori evil you need for that to not be reverse of your claim?
That's apparent. But seems to me that someone's preference for chocolate over vanilla is different to their thinking it wrong to kick pups. Part of that is that folk do not generally try to force their preference for chocolate on to others. Ethics inherently involves other folk.
Cool. It is a mistake to think of constitutive rules as an act of faith.
I'm not that familiar with emotivism, and I'm unsure if I'm one or not, but I wouldn't rule it out. So: do emotivists really make claims like that? That being stomped isn't actually bad for babies?
It seems to me that there are plenty of other ways to deal with this that actually include emotions, and not such vague "isn't bad for" language that seems ill-defined to begin with. Sounds like speaking nonsense when cornered by unintuitive rhetoric.
For example: I could say that it's pretty safe to assume that babies have a negative emotional response towards being stomped. That even if you don't have a negative emotional response towards stomping babies others have a negative emotional response towards you stomping babies, and you in turn have a negative emotional response to that response... etc.
Moral discussions seem to be... difficult. And the rhetoric surrounding it is often already steeped in an implicit morality that rhetoric than obviously can't deny:
Is murder bad? Well, yeah. It has to be. That's the way the word "murder" is used. Morals are more complex, though, and (as Banno said) an iterative process. If we think a parictular act of killing wasn't bad, we're not going to say this particular murder isn't bad; we're going to argue that it isn't murder. Then there's also the question if all killing that's wrong should count as murder or not. Imagine a society where "honour killings" are regulated and accepted, you've grown up in that society, but you've come to think of them as wrong. You wouldn't necessarily think of the act as murder: but if all the "allies" you can find come from outside your society and they do consider all "honour killings" murder you might find your stance to change. It's only partly a linguistic change: your own doubts find confirmation elsewhere, and you internalise that way thinking to some degree. But there are also nuances that you have to live with every day that might make it impossible for you to fully internalise that model. You might find you have more sympathy for someone committing an honour killing than for other forms of murder. You now have to navigate a moral path between a native and a foreign moral system. And you might find that others near you have the same problem...
What you can do is reject the concept of murder to begin with (if you can): that is, there's nothing wrong with killing under any circumstances, therefore the concept of murder makes no sense. If you can really, truly live this, you're likely a very rare specimen, and you'll likely have internalised the moral rule in a different way: as knowledge that you won't be able to convince others and that you have to be very careful who to reveal yourself to.
All of that is part of the iterative process that comprises the morals of a society.
I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that what was at issue here wasn't actually just "stomping babies", it was "stomping babies for fun". So what about stomping babies out of... oh... frustration? The single mother who needs to work and can't sleep... It's not that stomping babies is now no longer wrong; it's that the expected conversation is likely to go off on any number of possible tangents. So we're going with "for fun" - for maximum expected agreement.
But what's the source of agreement here, if not an immediate emotional response. Most likely some form of disgust or anger? (Well, my immediate emotional response is more fatigue, but I don't react to the content as much anymore as I react to a rhetoric pattern I've grown tired of. I'm always tempted by troll replies such as: "Sure it's wrong. I mean it's fun, sure, but I restrain myself; I'm a person of character after all." My actual internal response is actually quite a bit more graphic and gross, with the sarcasm being more acidic. It's a personal hang-up.)
It's not actually my intention to argue for emotivism here. I'm more a social relativist: morals are always institutionalised in a society, internalised to one degree or another, with the deepest roots going to early infancy and thus not even available for discourse. You-don't-know-it-could-be-different structures of cognition (a non-moral example would be the case structure of a language: easy to use but hard to explain unless you've looked at alternatives - most languages are nominative-accusative languages, but some are - for example - ergative-absolutive: you don't need to be able to know the difference to speak English, but it's there underlying it in the praxis. I have no such example for morality, but my base-intuition tells me that's how it works here, too - though maybe the divisions here are biological in addition to social?)
So what's the moral make-up of person who thinks stomping babies is fun? What other things are fun? Does that person accept the social prohibition? What is the self-image here? These would be important questions, and ones you can't really ask out of a putative context.
In terms of "right or wrong" in the abstract, you always need to set values, I think. For example: what values do you need to set for stomping babies to be wrong? This sort theorising is actually pretty common: we don't just learn that something is wrong, we also learn why that something is wrong, so we can make ad-hoc judgments in surprising (previously unimagined) situations. There's always some sort of legitimisation structure underlying our morality: some things are tacit, some things are explict, there's a hierarchy of relevance, etc. Some justifications are just more likely to work in praxis than others. But even what sort of moral justifications you can think of to begin with is part of your moral make-up. For example, "mine" and "yours" might be a primal impulse, but "property" is a social institution.
As I said in my first paragraph: I'm not that familiar with emotivism. It seems to me that your moral make-up is going to influence your emotions as much as your emotions influence your emotional make-up. But there was a time when all you had were emotions. Your moral make-up grew later - when you stopped crying whenever things were uncomfortable. Morality as an iterative process seems two-fold - psychological and social. You can't have one without the other. I think that maybe morality is tied in with the development of identity: a lived distinction me/others.
Changing nappies is oddly relevant here: think of it from the other perspective - toilet training. We no longer need them, and we rarely think about that. No freedom-from-nappies day. We just learned what a toilet is, and not just or even primarily in theory. We use it daily without thinking. And we don't tend to talk about it much. We certainly would bring it up if we encountered someone who, let's say, bucks the trend. There's a partitioning of time and space here that's second nature now but wasn't always. That's what morality is to me - basically toilet training (but more complex).
I agree, but I think that's just a mistake of analysis ). One has consequences we want to avoid. The other, generally, is trivial. That doesn't really change their status as mere emotional positions, though. Not to put words in your mouth, but does this mean that the level of potential consequence is a yardstick for whether a statement is ethical or not (before sighing and ignoring, check the *)
I want to know what else is going on when someone says "It is wrong to kick pups" (we can ignore the 'command' version, because its exactly the same thing foisted on to another).
If everyone said kicking pups is fine, and we did not have a widespread negative emotional reaction, we wouldn't have the ethic "don't kick pups". It seems some never got the memo anyway... *sigh*.
*Quoting Banno
It wants to, definitely, and is framed that way. But, this still doesn't move the needle. Emotional positions on how to treat others v emotional positions on what one wants to do for themselves. I do not understand a difference which would make one ethical and one not, in a sense that changes their truth-aptness or some such. The statement "One ought eat chocolate" reads the same as "One ought not kick pups". "I wouldn't, so you shouldn't" in the latter and "I do, so you should" in the former.
That isn't agreement. I said that "'stomping babies is bad for them ' is an obvious empirical fact of medical science." To say "I agree that stomping babies is bad, but this us only because of how I feel about it," is not to agree with the fact claim made.
So, I take it you actually do disagree with: "stomping babies is bad for them is an obvious empirical fact of medical science."
Second, I don't think emotions spring from the aether uncaused. Human emotions spring from human nature. Certain things are good or bad for humans because of what humans are. This is scientifically verifiable fact. Again, to deny this is to deny that medical science can tell us things like "injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them."
To say: "I agree that 'injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them,' but this is just a statement of emotion and not facts," is not really to agree. It's to deny that it is a scientific fact that injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them, and to say that it is rather a "subjective feeling" held by individuals alone. Which, I think is patently ridiculous, but others disagree.
Now, I suppose an emotivist could grant that there are facts about values, but then deny that morality has anything to do with them. That seems like an odd position though.
And note that a blanket denial of the facticity or truth-aptness of all value claims leads to pretty ridiculous conclusions. It would mean that propositions like:
"Michael Jordan was a better basketball player than your average kindergartner"
...have no truth value because they are statements of value. But that seems prima facie absurd.
I think it's important to note that people who reject emotivism do not deny that emotion plays a role in motivating people's value statements, nor is the fact that emotion plays a role in ethical decision-making evidence for emotivism. Emotivism is the claim that there is nothing else to statements of value but emotion, that such statements reduce to "hoorah" or "boohoo," but do not involve facts. However, one might as well argue that emotions are determined by facts about value, leading to a non-emotivist conclusion.
So on this view, "it is a fact of medical science that stomping babies is bad for them," being a value statement, would amount to "boohoo for baby stomping," but could not relate a fact or be based upon a fact.
No doubt, if we heard that Russia had just launched all its nuclear weapons at Europe and the US we would have a powerful emotional reaction, but this would not seem to demonstrate that "nuclear war would be bad" reduces to "boohoo for nuclear war," with there being "no fact of the matter," about whether or not nuclear war is actually bad. Likewise, to claim that, at his peak, Michael Jordan was a better basketball player than LeBron James doesn't seem to simply be a statement of "hoorah for Michael Jordan."
Sometimes the emotivist tries to bracket out a sui generis "moral goodness" from other forms of goodness. I think this makes emotivism more plausible, at least at first glance, but I also don't think the distinction is at all appropriate. However, it would at least relieves folks from having to argue that "a Corvette is a better drag racer than a Toyota Prius," has no truth-value, and that our answer would amount to "hoorah/boo-hoo for the Toyota Prius," rather than a statement of fact about which vehicle is better at drag racing.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sorry, not the same. The whole ethical problem resides in making that leap. Of course being stomped is bad for a living creature. But why should I care, asks the egoist, as long as it isn't me who's being stomped? I don't believe there are any "scientifically verifiable facts" that will help here.
I never claimed that were the same. Emotivism, at least in most of the forms I am familiar with, claims that all value statements reduce to emotion, not just "universal moral maxims."
But, referring back to our past discussions, this seems to once again be the Enlightenment demand that "if one is to do ethics or aesthetics, or to discuss values at all one must do so in the form of universal maxims."
I don't think this is an appropriate demand. I think one can investigate the "human good" without focusing on universal maxims. Perhaps such a study might produce such maxims. Perhaps not. But I hardly think it is necessary to formulate any statement of the human good in universal maxims in order to say that some things are good, or generally good ceteris paribus, for man.
Why? Because it is impossible that there be facts about human nature that demonstrate that it is bad for an egoist to be an egoist?
BTW, an egoist might very well make the same case I am making. Disciples of Rand have long justified rational egoism on empirical grounds for example (i.e., it is truly better for all if we act like rational egoists).
Perhaps not intentionally. But it's the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Why would your interlocutor agree that "stomping babies is bad" unless they equated "stomping babies is bad" with "stomping babies is bad for them"?
But you're right, it's somewhat beside the point about emotivism. I wanted to flag it because the gap between "bad = destructive/deleterious/harmful/etc." to "ethically bad" is so often leaped over as if it didn't exist.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Same question here. When you say "bad for an egoist to be an egoist," do you mean harmful/deleterious or morally bad?
Well, if they are an emotivist, presumably they agree because baby stomping has negative emotional valance for them as well, and for no reason other than this.
The conclusion I was hoping to draw was merely that at least some facts about the human good seem quite obvious, and appear to be empirically verifiable. This is not to suggest that ethics can be reduced to biology, medicine, or "science," but rather than it seems prima facie implausible that there are absolutely no facts about values as respects what is good for man in virtue of his being man.
But I'd also suggest that emotions follow from such facts. And of course, lots of moral realists have a large role for the emotions in ethics. Plato has the"spirited part of the soul," as the key ally of the rational part in ethical life. As Lewis puts it: "In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment," but rather spirit and sentiment. Ethical education then, involves habituating the passions and appetites to what is truly good, their alignment with the human good. This is the education, and particularly philosophical education, has had an aesthetic component for most of history.
I think the post-Reformation presupposition that "moral good" amounts to a sui generis "type of good" distinct from other goods is one of the more deleterious things that has happened in this history of ethics. And with this distinction often comes the demand that the unique "ethical good" be formulated in terms of universal maxims or "laws" (this focus on "laws" is a place where Reformation theology continues to dominate even secular, atheist ethics).
To be sure, what is good sometimes depends on where you stand. When a lion catches a gazelle, it is good for the lion and bad for the gazelle. I think human ethics needs to begin from a consideration of the human good, and it certainly seems like it is possible to say some things with confidence about what is good for man, the good life, happiness, etc.
I would just note that this approach was hardly unique to the Greeks or Romans either, but that a broad virtue approach defines much Buddhist, Hindu, and Chinese thought as well, and it seems far more profitable to me to begin from a consideration of general human excellence rather than trying to bracket off "moral good," particularly if this bracketing is also going to require the extreme precision needed to formulate unimpeachable laws.
The "bad" tend come up with the cheapest tactics in arguments, including "killing a baby is Evil." Well, not always.
Suppose you come upon a screen that shows you a particular contraption... that contraption houses a rabid carnivorous beast on one side, an infant on another... between them is a impenetrable barrier. However, you see a count down begins as you become the observer of this contraption. 120 seconds is on the clock. 119 now... There is only 1 button, and that button blows up the entire contraption, baby and rabid beast.
Waiting out the countdown releases the barrier between beast and baby to which the beast would eviscerate the baby alive, a very painful and traumatic way of dying although it would be fast, the baby would experience unimaginable pain and suffering...
Or you can blow up the contraption, saving the baby from unimaginable pain and suffering. Killing it in an instant.
What do you do?
Yes, this is a further step that need not necessarily be taken. Lewis' quote about courage highlights what I would say next: Universal maxims or discursive reasoning in general may not be what's required in order to transform the ethical egoist (or, I suppose, the emotivist, though I haven't given serious thought to them) into an ethically solid character. After all, a well-known authority on the subject urged, "You must be born again," and preached compassion and mercy, not rational ethics. In fact . . . metanoia is all about noesis, isn't it?
Sure, but you and I have talked about this before, and the tragedy is that none of these things we might say can have any bearing for the person who simply replies, "I couldn't care less about what's good for 'man' or the good life or what most people think is happiness. I challenge you, since you're such a fan of reasoning, to give me a single reason why I should."
I think that's exactly right. A more deflated view of reason tends to "democratize" things, devaluing the role of praxis and progress. Yet in so much ethical thought praxis is the focus, and what must come [I]prior[/I] to understanding.
Yet if man suffers from a "darkened nous," then the healing of the nous (accomplished through ascetic practice) has to come prior to a fuller understanding. I think there is an overlap here between Patristic understandings and post-modern critiques of epistemic institutions (e.g. the natural sciences, educational institutions, journalism, etc.). So long as there is still a "civil war in the soul" (Plato), or we are trapped in the "Wheel of Suffering" or "slavery in spiritual Egypt," and beset by the passions and appetites, our epistemic efforts will corrupted by our orientation towards various other goods (i.e. not the good of true understanding).
Post-modern criticism tends to look at economic interests, or the prerogatives of gender/racial identity, which corrupt judgement, but it's easy to see how these critiques could be more broadly applied at the individual level. E.g., the body builder with some level of body dysmorphia might be very intelligent and knowledgeable about steroids and stimulants, and nonetheless have their understanding clouded by their passions when considering the health risks and benefits involved.
Indeed, but I don't really see this as anymore of a challenge to ethics than persistent "flat-Earthers" are a challenge to geography.
Sometimes, it's presented as: "if we had a scientific demonstration that x was good, people would agree and do it." This appears to be Sam Harris's assumption in large parts of The Moral Landscape. I think this is obviously not the case. We have very good evidence that smoking leads to lung disease and dental issues. Smokers agree that they don't want bad teeth and lung disease, and that smoking is going to cause them to end up with these. Yet they often don't stop smoking. The same is true for unhealthy eating. Others claim these things aren't really (that) bad for us, perhaps "the darkening of the nous by the passions."
I suppose that points back to the importance of practice. Orthodox thought tends to rely heavily on medical imagery. Man is in need of healing. And sometimes illnesses themselves lead us to be unaware of our sickness (e.g. the person with a head injury who doesn't know they are acting strangely). Likewise, sometimes people doubt the treatment, and so they don't follow the doctors' advice.
The theme of "living by example" is very big in the East though. The paradigmatic example is the Desert Fathers and Mothers, who didn't run out into the desert to become authorities and teachers, but rather became authorities and teachers because of what was accomplished in the desert, which was recognized by visitors, who then told others who also came seeking wisdom (some tellings of Laozi in the wilderness are similar, or the more well documented life of Saint Francis). "You will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16).
Now, on the one hand, I think the person who answers in the affirmative has a strong case, in that they can point to what virtually all professional philosophers spend all their time doing. At the same, this wasn't always the case, the Christian and Buddhist monastic traditions being the most obvious examples. Kneeling in your cell and repeating "the Logos is without beginning or end," until all your sense of desire and self-will dissolve isn't really discursive reasoning. As Hadot and others have documented, "spiritual exercises" and asceticism were also major components of pagan philosophy and education as well.
Which leads to the question, how important is such "praxis" for doing philosophy (or theology)? Or ethics in particular? Either past practices were quite misguided or current ones are.
Glad you agree.
Quoting J
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think we can take that attitude. We're assuming that there are compelling reasons we can give a flat-earther that should convince them they're wrong, so if they aren't convinced, something else is going on that is ir- or non-rational. And I think that's right. But can we really say the same about the egoist? What are these compelling reasons we can give them -- not the reasons why behavior X or virtue Y is 'good for man', but the reasons why it should matter to the egoist, why they should change their mind about what they want to do?
You're hoping to box the egoist into the same corner that the flat-earther finds themselves in: the only way to deny the reasons is to deny reasoning itself. But what is the knockdown argument here? I wish it were as simple as "doing wicked things is bad for you, like smoking is bad for your lungs" but I hope you agree that the evidence for this, if any, is hardly knockdown. And besides, I've known many a smoker whose attitude is, "Yes, I know it's bad for my health but I enjoy smoking enough that I'm willing to pay the price." Are they being irrational? Is the egoist being irrational when they say, more or less, the same thing?
It's certainly true that judgements of moral value are different from tastes. Part, at least, of the difference is that we don't censure people who disagree with our tastes in the way that we censure those who disagree with us about moral values - and, yes, sometimes we enforce our values on others. But I've been wondering for a while now what happened to tolerance? It's all very well to discuss what "we" (humanity in general, people in Western Democracies, "right-thinking" people) agree on. But disagreements about moral are very common. Surely, sometimes, it is perfectly reasonable to accept differences of opinion? How do we distinguish those cases from simple questions of taste?
Quoting AmadeusD
So how do you distinguish between moral values and questions of taste? We happily accept that some people prefer red to white wine and vice versa, but we don't allow the same liberty to puppy-kickers. The objectivist will have an explanation. Does an emotivist even recognize the question?
This is interesting and of course contentious. I separate most of my ethical and spiritual practices from philosophy, precisely because it is very helpful to have a domain in which rationality has the last word, and we call this domain "philosophy." One can then bring one's specifically philosophical insights to bear on the other areas of one's life, and vice versa. But no two philosophers are exactly alike in this regard, seems to me.
Well, first I'd just point out that most people who embrace outlandish conspiracy theories don't reject reason. They see themselves as paragons of epistemic virtue and the "sheep" as the poor reasoners.
And so long as someone is being "rational" they are infallible as to what is truly in their in own best interest? If there is a fact of the matter about whether or not smoking is truly better for the smoker than quitting (even if this reduces to "what they would have preferred to have chosen in the future") then it seems entirely possible that someone could be "rational" and wrong.
IDK, it seems like a sort of Humean anti-realism has to be assumed for this to be a real problem, i.e., that what is good for individuals ultimately comes down to inchoate current desire.
Manosphere writers and "pick-up artist" types tend to be very rationalistic in their justifications for womanizing and adopting an entirely transactional view of human relationships, what with their constant appeals to evolutionary psychology. If someone suggests to one: "you would be happier in a loving relationship, something like Aristotle's"friendship of the good," as opposed to intentionally manipulating people in predatory "friendships of utility,'" are they necessarily giving bad advice if our womanizer doesn't currently see things that way and can produce reasons for this judgement?
I don't think so at least.
Yes but the consistent rebuttal from the Stoics to the post-moderns is that this "bracketing" isn't successful without praxis. The passions just slip in through the back door and make reason their servant.
But I agree, and I don't think we would want to say that praxis removes the need for discourse or reason. Indeed, discourse can be seen as a sort of praxis. Praxis is rather an aid to reason, not a replacement.
But putting it this way begs the question against the individual. Let's call them the Smoker for convenience. You're assuming that avoiding the risk of smoking-related death is in the best interest of the Smoker, and that they don't or won't see this. Most people certainly see it that way. But by making that assumption, you don't allow the Smoker to hold the position they in fact do hold (at least this particular person I'm talking about, who is far from imaginary). The Smoker's position is, "Look, I know all about what I'm risking. I get it that most people don't see it my way. But it just so happens that I like smoking so much that I'll accept the trade-off. You say, 'That's not in your best interest.' OK, explain to me why living a life I don't want to live -- as a non-smoker -- is in my best interest, especially if I'm perfectly willing to die young in order not to do so." The example becomes more compelling with, say, opiates rather than tobacco.
I don't see how it begs any question unless we're assuming that people are infallible about what is best for them.
No I'm not. I'm saying there is a fact of the matter about which will be truly better for them. I might very well be wrong. But you seem to be suggesting that, so long as they are being reasonable, they cannot be wrong? If 10 years later they tell me "I wish I had listened to you," is it not fair to say that I was correct in this case?
I don't get that at all. Maybe someone tells me: "I want to go to Russia right now, I'd love to see the Winter Palace."
I tell them "don't do that, you work for the State Department and they are definitely going to kidnap you, throw you in prison on trumped up charges, and hold you as a hostage."
They, knowing Russia well, have their reasons for thinking this won't happen to them. They are being 'rational' (which doesn't presuppose they aren't also deluding themselves in some way.)
But there will be a fact of the matter here. Either they will get kidnapped or they won't. If they get kidnapped, and presumably have a horrible time spending 5 years in Siberia, then I had a better idea about what was to their advantage than they did. Yet we frequently do delude ourselves. That's why people often seek advice. It's far from clear to me that individuals have special epistemic status about what is in their best interests. Maybe they are wise, maybe they aren't. Indeed, we don't let children or adolescents make all their own choices precisely because we don't think they would make choices in their own best interests, and yet I hardly think turning 18 radically alters this.
Indeed, with the smoker, I would think that it is the person who has gone through chemo and a lung transplant, or the person who has successfully quit, if anyone, who has special epistemic status vis-á-vis a the relative benefits of smoking, not the person who has yet to experience any of the downsides.
For starters, here are three statements (call this "the flat-earth analogy"):
1. There is a fact of the matter about whether using a dangerous and life-shortening drug could ever be in one's best interest.
2. And the fact is: That is not possible.
3. So anyone who asserts that it is in their best interest is wrong.
Have I understood you correctly so far?
No, I would say there is a fact of the matter as to whether some particular individual would benefit from quitting smoking.
Sort of like how you might suggest that someone could benefit from yoga or pyschotherapy without believing that all people would benefit from these. Or "therapy with MDMA can be great for some people," but "probably not for the person recovering from an addiction to similar stimulants."
I do happen to believe that it's true that at least most smokers would benefit from quitting, but that's sort of beside the point, and I might be wrong anyhow.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But my question concerned whether such an individual, in continuing to smoke, could ever be said to be acting in their best interest.
"Benefitting from something" is not the same as "acting in one's best interest," wouldn't you agree? It's important in this case because the smoker is going to want to say, "Yes, I'm quite aware that continuing to smoke isn't a benefit in the way you mean it. But nonetheless I consider to be in my best interest, because I don't rate the benefits the same way you do."
Once we get clear about that, we can look at the difference you're proposing between saying that we have reason to believe all people act in their best interest by quitting smoking, versus saying that we have reason to believe one particular individual does.
You can swap in best interest there. I don't think it's the case that people have infallible judgement as to what is in their own best interest. I think it's quite easy to find examples where it is obvious that people are fallible as to what is in their own best interest, even when they are "acting reasonably."
Quite right. We're trying to understand a case in which the person asks for a reason why they are wrong. What must we say to them?
I said your argument was question-begging because you appeared to start from the premise that the smoker had to be wrong, and then used that to show that they are wrong. But now that you've clarified what you meant, we can move on.
What we want to know now is, How can the fact of the matter related to this particular individual, Smoker, be determined? We'll need to know that, if we're going to answer their demand for a reason why smoking is not in their best interest. They say it is, you say it is not. (Or so I assume; I suppose you could be agnostic on the question, while still claiming that their reason can't hold up, but let's ignore that wrinkle for the time being.) And our ultimate goal is to discover whether it's possible to be both rational and wrong about a matter like this.
So . . . how would you propose to determine the fact of the matter concerning whether Smoker is acting in their best interest?
Again, I know little about emotivism. I read up a little since my last post, mostly because I found it hard to believe that emotivism has no theories to deal with stuff like that. I came across, for instance, Stevenson's first/second pattern analysis, but I haven't thought this through enough to be comfortable talking about this. Instead, I'll just go with my intuition: what if Dawnstorm were an emotivist?
First, that stomping babies is bad for them is not a scientific fact; it's probably a medical one. Science is to some degree at least supposed to be as value neutral as possible, but it does need its cues, as for what to do. Medicine, as a social institution, is meant to heal people, so that sets a context that sort of defines good and bad; as in health is good. This is taken from a greater social context: you ought to act in such a way that you stay healthy. And so on. So, yes, I do think it's true that "stomping babies is a fact of medicinal science" if you follow the traces of social values.
If I were an emotivist, I'd likely intutitively see the anchoring of social values during the primary socialisation as the fundamental process here. Beyond socialistion, though, there's a visceral, non-social reaction to being stomped, which I, as a baby, would express through crying (at least as long as I still can). It's not just one emotion; it's a bundle. And that bundle develops. It would not be the case that there's a simple one-to-one relation between any particular emotion and any one particular action. By the time we're able to act it's already far to complex for that.
Nevertheless, emotions don't just motivate moral statements. I don't even trust moral statements to do justice to the underlying bundle of emotions that tag you into your larger social context. And I do think that there are social facts that transcend any such time-space bound emotional bundle. As an emotivist, I'd first have to be a methodological individualist: I'd have to de-emphasise the social context in favour of emotional growth. I'd need a theory of how rationality ties into this. And so on. What would remain the same, though: moral statements are surface phenomena, secondary to lived social praxis. And values are the basic motivational structure of an agent - emotions.
One thing I'm not sure about is this: I don't think values/emotion is a one way road. "Value <--> Emotion" rather than "Emotion --> Value". That is because both your visceral emotions and your social-belonging derived emotions are constrained by facts: about (a) social realities, (b) biological bodies, and (c) biographic actions you've taken (even if by mistake, such as "stepping on someone's foot").
Still, I'm not sure I couldn't make it work. At the very least, I don't find that your argumentations dissuade me away from emotivism.
For example:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What I consider the facts here is simply that present me (I'm taking the role of the smoker) and past+present-you currently agree. But past-me probably saw this coming. What we'd need here is a theory that crosses the temporal divide: past me didn't have to suffer health problems, and present me didn't have to live a life without smoking. The different temporal positions give an obvious bias towards the present situation (which is emotionally more acute). One could say that present me has eaten well, but doesn't want to pay, for example. How do you mediate (theoretically) between the two positions? Yeah, you correctly predicted the present situation, but so did past me. It's even possible that, back then, I took this into account. Does our current agreement constitute a moral fact?
Here I imagine some random passerby overhearing the exchange and taking this as an impetus to quit smoking. A future self made more vivid by current example provided at an opportune moment in the biography. A story to be told to friends who notice he finally quit. This is the reality we live in. We're not unique - we identify with others, we imagine future outcomes one way or another, then what we didn't imagine happens and we imagine our past selves through this lense. But emotions are sort of fundamental to all these imaginings.
So we make decisions to take the bad with the good (because pure good is rare), and then when it's time to "pay up" we wish we didn't have to pay. Not such a rare occurance, and there are plenty of recipes to deal with this: askesis, the middle way... You're not going to invent the wheel. You can also just come to terms: I made my bed, so to speak.
But what's the overall theory here - when priorities change? What's the temporal aspect of morality. I don't see this as a problem for the emotivist; but I feel you have to address this if you want to say that you are "right" in this situation.
Meaning is use. How do you suggest the Hebrew Bible is interpreted by those who use it? If it is that you believe they read the words and just offer the meaning from that, you are wrong.
If your auto insurance policy says your liability limits in Georgia are $20,000, what then are those limits? The answer is $25,000. Odd.
Something else must be controlling, right. Perhaps the statute that requires minimum limits of $25,000 regardless of agreement.
Quoting Banno
If there is no moral force, then it's wrong if we say it's wrong. Just like head stomping. Right if we say it's right
Out of tune notes can be detected by electronic devices. We all think some music is better (aesthetically) than other music, but it remains that there is no objective measure.
Quoting Ludwig V
So, again there is no absolute measure. We can identify someone's state off mind, but there is always the possibility of convincing fakery. Same for identifying enlightenment. Also, it's not clear exactly what the purported enlightened state consists in. Is it a permanent state of ecstasy? Or is it simply an invincible state of equanimity? Considering neuroscience and the discovered role of neurotransmitters on mood and disposition, and the reality of dopamine and serotonin depletion, are permanent states of mind even possible?
So, I would say there is no way of definitively identifying whether someone is enlightened or even what enlightenment is. That's not so different from identifying whether something really is the word of god as far as I can tell. I agree that these matters are "social/cultural traditions", but it follows that they cannot be absolute, as is usually claimed by adherents, but are culturally relative.
Quoting Ludwig V
It is true that aesthetic appreciation and creativity can be cultivated, but since there is no objective way of identifying when they are present or of knowing just what they are, their presence or absence or degree remains a matter of personal taste, so I agree with you that the claim that they can reliably be taught is implausible. If an aspirant believes that a teacher is an "expert practitioner" then that may indeed foster their process of development, but so might other means of inspiration.
I remember reading a quote from a famous poet. I can't remember who it was, but he was addressing a question from one of his students: 'How can I tell whether my poetry is any good?". The answer was, "If you need to know that then being a poet is not for you".
It is. I am really unsure hwo you're saying it's not, and I've full understood the rest of your comment. I agree, stomping babies is bad. Whether it's for them or not doesn't change the fact that my assent to that notion is actually what matters. "Stomping babies is medically bad for them" would be an empirical fact. And yep, that's also clearly true.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You'll now be able to see that this isn't what was claimed previously. I agree with this (well, I notice this fact, rather).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, not at all. You are mixing up ethical claims with empirical claims. Ethics are, patently, not medical facts. Whether or not something being medically bad is actually bad for them is the question ethics needs to deal with. And i'm taking it you have no problem with saying ok fine, everyone agrees with that though, so what's the point? The point is that nothing supports that conclusion other than the universal agreement on it. Even that isn't 100% due to neuro-weirdnesses. Facts in the world are not ethical statements. I would not have thought we could still be mixing those up.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But not an ethical one. Perhaps this is explains my incredulity in the above.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
They could, but you have not painted one into a corner that requires it. Your position mixes up facts and values. Being "bad for" someone, bare, is what you would need to show is self-evident. But it's not. It's bad medically/physically. I am taking a relatively linguistic position here, but allowing that a mere blank space to suffice for ab objective moral/ethic would be a much odder position that to accept, but be brutally uncomfortable with the fact (on my view) that there are no moral facts. My intuition tells me there must be. It is not an easy thing to have both of these things floating around.
Is medicine not a science? What about botany, zoology, or biology more generally, which have notions of health, harm, goal-directedness, function, etc. that all involve value? What about all the social sciences? Psychology, economics, criminology, political science, etc.? These often deal with values rather explicitly.
IMHO, the demand that "real science" be "valueless science" will tend to lead towards a No True Scotsman fallacy as to what constitutes a "real science," if the emotivist goes down that route (i.e., presupposing that if a science involves value, it is not really a science). Then again, maybe they have to take this path, since a strict emotivist would also have to claim that all the value claims of these sciences are "just emotional appeals," which also doesn't seem like a good conclusion.
I would say that science tries to remain objective, not necessarily "free of value." That truth is preferable to falsify, that sounds arguments are better than appeals to emotion, that the pursuit of truth is more desirable than falsifying your data to meet your aims, etc. are all statements of value that science cannot live without.
Whereas, IMO, if we go in the direction of "science says the universe is meaningless and valueless" we have left science for the realm of (often quite dogmatic) philosophy, and at any rate "emotivism must be true because 'science says' goodness doesn't exist," seems to be a pretty hard case to make, no?
But to return to medicine, are the value statements of medicine just statements of emotion? If we are to stick to a strick emotivism, they have to be. Yet, for my part, I hardly want to say that both sides of something like the anti-vaccine debate are just speaking about their emotions, etc.
This doesn't seem like emotivism anymore though. In this case, moral statements wouldn't just be expressions of emotion or sentiment ("boo-hoo" or "hoorah.")
That emotion is involved (even deeply) in our value statements is not the thesis of emotivism. Plato agreed with that. The emotivist thesis is that there is nothing else, no facts, to moral statements, just expressions of sentiments. But there is a common fallacy in discussions, both here and even in academia, that somehow showing that emotion is involved in value judgements, or even inextricably linked to them, somehow is solid evidence of emotivism. It isn't. If emotivism is to be a unique thesis, it's that there is nothing but emotion (no facts) related to value statements, not that emotion plays a role in moral statements.
Well, let me just start by asking, can people ever be wrong about their own choices? Or are we always infallible as to our own choices as respects what is best for us, and if we later regret our choices they are only bad choices for some "future us" but not bad choices for the "us" when we decided to make them?
If we can never be wrong about what is good for us, I don't think there can be any value in philosophy or introspection. Whatever we choose is right because we currently desire to choose it (so long as we always do only what we want). But I think this is pretty clearly not always the case. A last shot of tequila isn't good for me when I drink it at 3 AM, but bad when I awake five hours later with a terrible hangover. And it isn't good and bad for different people, past me and future me.
Yet if this is the case, and someone had said to me "it would not be good for you to drink that tequila," it seems obvious that they would be right (and that I would be wrong if I insisted on drinking it).
The time valuing question is interesting. I have thought of it before. There are all sorts of interesting issues there. For one, in the case of the smoker, the young smoker is epistemically in a much worse place to judge the relative suffering of chemotherapy, having their teeth pulled, and having great difficulty breathing, whereas both the older and younger one probably have about equal epistemic status as to the suffering of having to quit smoking and to go without it (indeed, the future cancer patient has probably had to quit smoking already and lived without smoking). Smoking is an interesting case because neither I, nor any of the people I know who have quit, particularly miss it (maybe some social elements of it), but perhaps some people really do enjoy it immensely.
Yet I think the time value question is only really relevant if we're committed to a certain sort of ethics, something like utilitarianism. On this view, the person who successfully quits smoking in March and then gets hit by a bus and killed in June has perhaps simply missed out on some utils of pleasure and "lived a worse life."
On other views of ethics I think the timing issue becomes much less of a problem. In particular, while there might very well be people who make hyper-rational judgements in favor of smoking, I think I can speak for the vast majority of nicotine addicts in saying that we don't quit because it is unpleasant and we have a strong appetite for the drug, not because we think it is a wholly rational pursuit (and we might very well delude ourselves as to the relative health risks as well, this sort of thing is common after all, and well documented in psychology and medicine). Yet, if we have an ethics that prizes self-determination and our capacity to "choose what we think is truly best," regardless of hardships, and the capacity to submit the appetites and passions to the shaping of reason (of what we think is truly best; Plato's image of the charioteer of reason training the horses of the passions and appetites in the Phaedrus), then it will be a victory for us to be able to overcome our appetites in this way (even as a sort of ascetic training), even if Lady Fortuna intervenes and we get hit by a bus in June. I suppose it depends on the value that one puts on reflexive/internal freedom in ethics as opposed to pleasure/pain.
Yes, it's an empirical fact about what is good or bad for humans. Hence, an empirical fact about value. To say, "yes, but it cannot possibly be an 'ethical fact' because it is an empirical fact," is, IMHO just question begging for the emotivist. It's to set: "there are no empirical facts about value," up as a presupposition, and then when this is revealed to be implausible, to retreat to "there are no empirical facts about 'ethical value.'"
My challenge would be: what makes medical facts about the human good "non-ethical?" They certainly seem ethical to me. They seem related to the human good and human happiness, which are the subject of ethics.
I am certainly aware that, from the Enlightenment on, thinkers have indeed separated "moral good," from all other sorts of good. IMHO, this is a grave mistake that leads to emotivism. But I also don't think there are compelling arguments for this separation. It was made on largely theological grounds. Protestant voluntarist theology was uncomfortable with the idea that anything could be good or bad for things "by nature" because this would seem to constrain divine freedom (as well as Euthyphro dilemma concerns about 'God having to do what is Good, and the Good thus being above God.') Hence, it broke off "moral good," as a discrete sphere of goodness.
This isn't how ethics worked for most of history though, in or out of the West. The human good was investigated empirically, just as the good of sheep is investigated by the shepherd in this way.
Strangely, this theological division seems to remain extremely dominant precisely in atheist philosophy, although maybe that makes sense since some forms of atheism just seem like the old voluntarist theology with man swapped in for God as the sui generis source of all meaning and value in the universe.
See above. I would need to be convinced that a study of the human good cannot involve empirical facts. You seem to be taking "there are no facts about (ethical) values" as a starting point." But that seems just be assuming the very thing in question.
Medicine certainly seems to tell us something about the human good and human happiness. So does psychology. Either these deal in facts or they don't. I think it's pretty obvious that they do deal in facts.
I'd agree that an "ethical good," that is cut off from all empirical realities in inchoate. It's essentially the castration of the Good. But that's precisely why it is a terrible move for ethics.The emotivists' case is made easy for them by Enlightenment ethics, which allows for the presuppositions that ethics is not about the happiness of man, but rather about some sort of mysterious "moral good."
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
This is more or less the same point I was making. "Being against my best interest" is an ethical term; "being medically bad for me" is a scientific term. The two almost always coincide. But if someone says they do not, in their particular case, they could be right. They could also be wrong, of course, but the point is that it's an open question that needs to be decided by some other means than an equation of medical with ethical terms that claims self-evidence.
I didn't want to ignore your other reply here. I certainly agree. We can imagine -- perhaps with difficulty! -- a kind of ideal human in whom rationality and praxis achieve a balance, revealing that the activity of philosophy (i.e., rational discourse) is indeed a praxis as well, moreover a praxis of a particular kind that is self-implementing. Philosophy doesn't merely lead to or delineate a praxis, but is itself that praxis, at least in part.
Goodness is a general principle, so we shouldn't expect that it can be reduced to health. But nor is health, or facts about what promotes or hinders health, unrelated to the "good of man" or "living a good life" (the proper study of ethics IMO, nor "moral goodness" as something discrete). Facts about health do not fail to have any ethical valance.
That "some facts about the human good fall under the preview of established empirical sciences," would also not imply, "all facts about ethics reduce to facts about established empirical sciences."
At any rate, I think this distinction is only threatening to what I'm saying if one already assumes the premise: "ethical good is a sui generis sort of goodness discrete from other goods sought by man." I'd rather say that health, psychological health, etc., are principles, facets of the good life.
I think health is a good analogy because there are very many components and causes of health, and we would hardly want to reduce health itself to any one of them. Health is not just avoiding heavy metal poisoning, but certainly the effects of ingesting heavy metals (facts) bear of health. So too health and the good life.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes to both of these, and I think this points a way forward. Our Smoker has, I'm assuming, taken into account the facts about health in arriving at their decision. Had they not, they'd merely be an idiot. And yet we find that the Smoker has made a life/best interest decision (i.e., an ethical decision) in contravention of the health facts. How is this possible?
It's just as you say: Health facts, and probably any other facts as well, are facets or factors that must be weighed in making ethical decisions -- or at least, that's how I'll interpret your term "ethical valance." But they do not, in and of themselves, determine the outcome. What you call "the good life" (which is as good a term as any) is more than this, broader than this.
So what we really want to know is how to make these decisions correctly. That's what I've been holding out for in this whole discussion -- we need to start by recognizing the gap between knowledge and value as a problem, not something that can be leapt over with false equations. Only then can we begin to ask what I think are the right questions: How do we come to understand ethical values (informed, to be sure, with practical knowledge such as medicine) and apply them to our own lives?
:up:
Yes, there is a great deal of uncertainty here, in part because man, as a social and cultural animal, always has his good filtered through social and historical context. Often, the people we might expect to be the happiest: celebrities, sports stars, wealthy heirs, etc., are, by their own admission, completely miserable. And often, what we think will make us happy fails to do so, or things we greatly fear and strive to avoid lead to our happiness.
I think this is actually the knock-down argument against strict forms of emotivism. If statements about the human good and human flourishing were just statements of current emotion, then it should be impossible for us to ever be wrong about such non-factual declarations. They would be "true for us" so long as they accurately reflect our emotions. Yet I think the experience of regret, of "being wrong about what is good for us," is a ubiquitous human experience we grapple with throughout our lives (the "extra shots of tequila" late in the party just being a common short-term example here). The idea that "I am always right about what is good for me or others," or that there is no right or wrong here, seems very implausible, although it is certainly aided by positing an "ethical good" distinct from all other goods (I think this is because such an "ethical good" is incoherent, since it is divorced from our lives).
Now, if an "emotivist" replies: "that is no issue, because I allow that we can be wrong about how our acts will shape our future emotional states," I think they are actually no longer an emotivist. They are something more like a utilitarian. They think that different "emotional states" are preferable to others and that the good reduces to promoting "good states" and reducing the risk of "bad ones." I think this latter view is overly reductive, but it's better than emotivism.
Well, given the original topic of this thread, I think it's worth noting that the reception of Aristotle in later antiquity, Stoicism, Platonism, Christianity, and much Islamic thought tended to instead center on the idea that the real goal of ethics is to "become like onto God" (as much as is possible for man).
Perhaps this end does more to answer the emotivists' likely question of "but why is happiness or flourishing good?" Yet, I think this sort of consideration is not what one starts with in ethics. Ethics is better thought of as the study of human flourishing or happiness. Consideration of the summum bonum, if it exists, must come later, as an end and not the starting point (and certainly not something that all goods are reduced to). If the summum bonum did not involve happiness, it is hard to see why it is the summum bonum. For instance, Hegel puts freedom above happiness, but he can do so because someone who is truly free will also obviously choose what makes them happy, so the latter goal is inclusive of the former (and indeed acts to assure its attainment).
I'm a sociologist by formal training, though I never went down that path professionally and it's now a few decades in the past, but I'm quite familiar with the value discussion, and the funny thing is that my personal position on this topic is that value free science is an unreachable ideal that nevertheless may have some function when you strive for it, though you have to stay vigilant and not pat yourself on the back for being all-out unbiased (you're not). Writing this post was a little weird in that respect; I was trying to put on an emotivist hat while wondering to what degree I am one. As I said before, I'm not that familiar with emotivism.
That's a huge topic, though, and not all of it is relevant here. The scientist should be disintered (i.e. not take sides when different factions want different outcomes). The question of positivism (e.g. Popper vs. Habermas for the social sciences). And so on. What I was going for:
"Stomping babies is bad for them," may be a medical fact based on the medical ethos. The associated scientific facts need to be phrased quite differently: the not yet hardened skull is more vulnerable to boots, for example. (I'm hardly an expert.) But more than that, the appeal to "facts of science" looks like an appeal to either authority or objectivity. It's also unneccessary: common-sense "knowledge" will tell you everything relevant here, and science doesn't contradict it. And the value judgement "bad" in "stomping babies is bad for them," is used to fudge over the actual facts - and this works partly because of the ethos inherent in medicine.
In sociologogy, for example, you come across studies that are arranged in a way that they just echo common sense knowledge without adding anything of value. I wish I had examples, but it's too long ago. People get away with this because, as one of my professors said, more papers are written than read these days. A lot of market research works that way. I've worked in market research, and my impression is that a lot of the clients demand suggestive phrasing (or presence in group discussions, etc.) - methodology that will render the results useless. I suspect at least some know and don't care; they're after legitimisation rather than knowledge.
In most contexts, saying "stomping babies is bad for them," is a scientific fact is perfectly fine. Here, I think it fudges the topic (if the topic is emotivism). When you're doing science, you need to be very clear about the facts: define you terms, provide the data, etc. When you do that for above sentence you'll likely lose the point your trying to make.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Eh, first there's methodological naturalism, which is useful or not, depending on the science. As for "goodness", the most central related sociological concepts would be norms and sanctions, no? (I might be forgetting something obvious.) Rival theories often won't accept each other's set-ups - and that's part of the conversation. It's, IMO, necessary, as sociological knowledge always involves man-made meanings. You can't expect the one true way, here. And that's why how we look at social facts must always be carefully contextualised.
So for example, I might say "Stomping babies is bad," is a fact within the institution of medicine, as practised in predictable roles. So if I were interested in how the "goodness/badness of baby stomping" plays out here, I could. But what I pay attention to and how I approach the matter requires some theoretic background, and that could include emotivist influence if I were so inclined. I've always felt that, in the social sciences, you shouldn't suppress your bias - you should lay it open.
Of course, here I'm talking about a "social fact" (a topic for sociology, not medicine). The medical facts are about young bodies and what stomping does to them. The social facts are about... what? How we treat wounded bodies? How we react emotionally to the source of the wound, and we allow ourselves the luxury (not that often during an operation, I'd say). Values frame other values; it's complex.
So, then, what's the purpose of "stomping babies is bad"? To prevent as many babies from being hurt? To legitimise your anger? To explain your sadness? As I said above: it's a bundle. And it's a bundle you can tie up in very many different ways.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah, I've taken off my emotivist hat here. This is where I'd need to read up on emotivism more. What I'd want to know is how they deal with these topics:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's their way of expressing themselves. But just like, as you say, other people recognise the role of emotion, I would imagine emotivists have their own way to handle things like habits, norms, legitimisation rhetoric, etc. I expect them to unravel the threads starting with emotion, here, of course, so that everything follows from there. (Stevenson's first/second pattern analysis seems to hint at that, from my limited skimming of wikipedia so far.) When you come from sociology and develop an affinity for the hermeneutic approaches, you're kind of used to navigate and translate between theories. No two sociologists see eye to eye, in my experience. There was a running joke at the institute I studied at: Two sociologists, four opinions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah, I've never smoked, but I've encountered plenty of smokers who knew smoking was bad for them but smoked anyway. They weren't the ones who thought they should quite either. What role does "bad" play here I wonder? I amost addressed this, but decided against this. My post was long and unfocussed enough, as it is.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I have no real way to approach this question. My intuitive response is a joke: "Can anyone ever be right about their own choices? Being wrong is easy." I don't mean it like that, but this is underscored by my intuition. I think I might think of "right" as "provisionally unproblematic" or something? Not really saying much here; just trying to uncover my bias here - unsystematically.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Does emotivism say whatever we choose is right? Surely they're aware of conflicting emotions? In some ways, "right" seems like a magic spell to quiet that inner war. We want decision making to be easier than it is.
I think it's worth separating out the goal of avoiding bias (attaining objectivity) and the idea that "real/proper" science involves excluding value and goal-directedness from the considerations of science. The latter obviously is not a norm of the social sciences (else concepts like "utility" in economics would be total nonstarters) nor is it a norm in the life sciences. The demand that the goal-directedness of life, or consciousness (which is value-laden) be somehow "outside the realm of 'real' science," seems philosophically loaded to me, perhaps in a problematic way for our discussion if it [I] presupposes[/I] moral anti-realism
Do you think one has to adopt a position like eliminitive materialism or epiphenomenalism in order to being doing proper objective science? Or is it allowable for consciousness and intentionality (and thus value judgements) to be part of an explanation of natural phenomena, without these being presumed to be fully reducible to "mindless mechanism?"
"Methodological naturalism," is one of those very fuzzy terms that means very different things to different people, but I think it is very fair to say that it is often used as a way to say "this preferred metaphysics must be treated as 'scientific.'" I think the overwhelming majority of life scientists would accept the label, but they obviously have differing views about teleonomy, reductionism, and the role of consciousness in explanations of biology.
IDK, if I am reading this correctly, then it seems like the presupposition that "real facts don't include value" is doing the heavy lifting here. It seems like you're saying that an explanation from the medical sciences (involving value) is "fudging over the (real) facts" and is not "real science" precisely because "real facts cannot involve values in this way." Do I have that right?
If so, isn't that just assuming the very thing is question? I don't think it works to support emotivism by starting with the premise that "real facts" don't involve value without begging the question. Not only that, but such a presupposition would mean that an opponent can never offer any empirical data to the contrary, since to be a real empirical fact simply is to exclude reference to values. Hence, to be compelling, I think a defense of emotivism would need to find a way to disallow medical science, psychology , parts of neuroscience, etc. as "real science" on some grounds other than "they include value."
I'd agree that we don't really need to appeal to science here though, I just used it as an example arbiter of empirically accessible facts. Nor do we need to look at the sociology of science. Things like "it is bad to have your hand slammed in a car door," or "it is bad for a fox to have its leg ripped off by a trap," etc. seem obvious enough. "There are no facts about what is good or bad for people," is something that even people who express this belief do not seem to actually believe with any conviction (sort of like radical skepticism). They do not act as if they believe it is true (IMO, because it is too implausible to actually commit to).
How can one be wrong when making a judgement about something which has no truth value, where there is no fact in play? For instance, how can one "buy a bad car," if cars are never really good or bad? One can certainly say "boohoo to my past purchasing decisions," but you cannot have been wrong about a goodness that doesn't exist.
I actually think that eliminitave realism is of very limited use in social siences. Take sociology: the discipline was established by Emile Durkheim with an eye to Comtean positivism. The methodology was pretty much all about statistics (e.g. the suicide rate). And the intent was to proof that social facts exist, so to establish the discipline in academia. Later, we have Max Weber introduce the concept of "verstehen" (via a methodoly of "ideal types"). This put the knolwedgable agent on the table and would set off the interpretative branch of sociology: sociologists were very much aware that to understand action is to use their own intuition. Alfred Schütz would update Weber's approach with Husserl's phenomenology, and that is where I directed most of my attention. However, I was always aware of an unfortunate split of macro and micro sociology; either big systems (developed mostly in America by Merton and Parsons; also setting off from Weber, but in a different direction) or situational interaction. So I eventually stumbled on Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration, which attempted to unify the strands by rooting both in spacetime via input from geography. I really liked that.
All that to say: I'm very firmly on the side of intentionality here. I'd say ignoring this isn't an option in the social sciences at the very least, though it might be useful elsewhere (not an expert).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's probably due to the way I put things, but, no, I don't actually even care much about what "real science" is supposed to be. What facts need above all is a modicum of precision, and that's something that words like "bad" almost never allow. What I'm saying is that the scientific facts tell you nothing that your fussy-wussy intuition doesn't also tell you, so there's little point in appealing to the facts. It doesn't really matter how much damage a boot at a certain velocity can do. You can appeal to facts, but you gain nothing by appealing to science here.
And medicine isn't only science; it's also applied technology. Biology itself, for example, is more about basic research. In its application it has to feed into stuff like medicine, farming, breeding... even outdated stuff like, say, phrenology. So when you present "stomping baby is bad for them," as a fact here, it's ambiguous between the precise effect on the body, the ethical environment of treatment, and so on. But if you were to resolve those ambiguities it gets harder to see the point.
I'm not really 100 % sure what I mean myself. Maybe I was saying that science is red herring here?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You're addressing something here that's always been bothering me. I certainly think breeding should fall under natural selection, but I see it as problematic to incorporate it easily. For example, what little experience I have with evolutionary psychology didn't impress me too much. Douglas Adam's puddle analogy comes to mind here.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm honestly quite confused right now. A car that doesn't move is a bad car, but if we didn't want the car to be a car then it could be something else, which it always is - beyond the judging. I think what I'm going for is insconsistence-despite-continuity or something? If I ever figure this out and have the time (not likely today or tommorrow - depending on your timezone maybe even the day after tommorrow) I'll be back - unless someone else says it better (which has preamted quite a lot of posts from me).
The catch is in "objective". We all think we know what it means. Can we say that electronic devices provide a bridge between the objective and the subjective in this case? Or do they supersede the subjective opinions? Who's to say?
Quoting Janus
This time the catch is in "absolute". It looks as iif you are looking for a measure that cannot be "faked", or perhaps a measure that cannot be wrong. The only measure that cannot be wrong is one that is true by definition. But since anyone can make a definition, could that not be considered at best arbitrary and very likely subjective.
Quoting Janus
My problem here is "definitively". But there's a deeper problem, that being unenlightended and incompetent, I don't see any basis for over-ruling the practices of those who are enlightened and competent.
Quoting Janus
That's a good start to a philosophical discussion about the question. Whether that was the poet's intention is unanswerable without more information.
Quoting AmadeusD
But don't we at least know that if there are moral facts, they must be a different kind/category/language game from factual/scientific facts? That would be a possible basis for making progress with this.
Yes. But that value neautrality has moral implications. So it might well lead people to think that describing animals that are screaming in pain as "vocalizing" is more objective because morally neutral. But being morally neutral about that fact has moral implications, because it implies indifference.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. It does seem to be a fact that human beings evaluate (attribute values to) certain objective facts. But they do select which facts to attribute moral values to, and so distinguish within the domain in ways that are not defined within the domain.
As you know, this is the "virtue ethics" side of the coin -- the "good life for me" side -- while the "deontological ethics" side emphasizes the good for others. I'm assuming you agree that these really are two sides of the same coin -- that is, they don't actually represent two different conceptions of how to think about right and wrong. They are merely two different emphases, two different ways of describing the same project. And yet it is quite difficult to explain in a systematic way how the two descriptions complement each other. We want to say that there is no flourishing without altruism, and no altruism that doesn't result in flourishing. But why?
The question of ethical motivation looms large here: Which conception of ethics is more likely to motivate me to pursue the good life? Should I see it as an opportunity to do good for my fellow beings, leading to my own flourishing, or should I see it as an opportunity to flourish and be happy, which of course, on this theory, is impossible without doing good for my fellow beings? Selfish or altruistic -- which is the better motivator? I think a completely satisfactory ethics will be able to show how this apparent antinomy is dissolved. Perhaps we'll need to separate motivation as mere efficacy from correct motivation, i.e. the right reasons, the right sentiments.
Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no doubt you mean aesthetic comparisons in which the stylistic "rules" differ.
Electronic devices can tell you whether a note is in tune. They can't tell you whether some degree of out-of-tuneness is desirable or not, aesthetically. So yes, a tuner can overrule a subjective judgment like "that passage was played in tune," but not a subjective aesthetic judgment. That requires some stylistic agreement about tuning in a particular genre.
BTW -- if you ever heard a piece of music, in any genre, played constantly and strictly in tune, you'd hate it! Robot music.
I didn't write what I said accurately enough. I was thinking only of judgements within an established practice, not of comparisons between styles.
Quoting J
I agree with that. Just to cover some other possible comments, disagreements within a style are not impossible, indeed, they are likely common place, but they require agreements in the background. This is was distinguishes aesthetics and ethics from questions of taste. About those, it has been know for at least two thousand years, there is no disputing. (Normally). This is why I think that to classify these judgements as subjective just because they don't conform to the paradigms of objectivity just confuses them with questions of taste.
Quoting J
I'm pretty sure I have, although it can be hard to be sure. The same is true for a robotic beat. Yet that can be used for effect, as well. People are work so hard to keep the beat and keep the tuning and yet we find that we relish those tiny irregularities that give life to the music.
Counter-examples:
Tattoos, breast augmentation, SRS.
Might be in your best interest and might be medically harmful.
Yes, that's a useful distinction. We've all run into the individual who seems to believe that their taste is the automatic arbiter of what counts as good. (Or, even less plausibly, that they like everything that is good!).
My apologies, as you can see, I removed a large portion of my post because I had written it on my phone in a very broken up manner and I realized the whole part about evolution, etc., wasn't even responding to your position. This is the problem when you can only see the last two paragraphs you wrote :rofl:, I guess my mind just kept going in one direction.
I don't have time for a detailed response now, but I just wanted to comment on two things:
I agree with this one some things. I don't think this is always true though. Just for example, health is at least part of the human good and living a good life. I think that part is obvious. What promotes good health is often not that obvious, and we rely on the medical sciences, neuroscience, biology, etc. to inform our opinions here. Isaac Newton's consumption of mercury to boost his health is probably a fine example; it wasn't obvious what a an absolutely terrible idea this was, even to a genius like Newton. Other examples, like the existence of externalities in economics, or the pernicious effects of price floors and price ceilings abound. Having basic access to food is part of the human good and early price ceiling schemes, e.g. during the French Revolution, led directly to massive food scarcity, having the opposite of the intended effect.
Yes, there is context dependence. St. Thomas uses the example of walking. Walking is generally good for health. Walking is not good for the health of a man with with a broken leg. Lentils are generally healthy. They are not healthy if you are allergic to lentils.
A good car runs, as you say. This context sensitivity doesn't make ethics impossible. It only makes it impossible to reduce to a moral calculus. This is why, IMHO, the ethics of the Enlightenment and afterwards are deeply flawed. They demand that, for there to be any ethics at all, it must be formulated in universal maxims, or that goodness be univocal, such that we can have a "moral calculus" whereby we assign some discrete amount of "goodness points" to different acts or things.
Indeed, the focus on acts is also part of the problem. People are primarily good or free, not acts. Just as there is never motion with nothing (no thing) moving, human acts are parasitic for their existence on men. Hence, while it is sometimes useful to speak of the freedom or goodness of acts, desires, appetites, etc., I think it is better to speak of men, lives, and societies.
Thanks; confidence isn't my strong suit. For every post I finish, there are probably two I don't, and for every three posts I finish and post there's probably one I don't post. That might motivate me to post more... or not. Time will tell. But this cheered me up.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah, I agree. I think I was focussed on baby stomping here.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Actually, after some thinking, I think I was "barking up the wrong tree".
You were asking how one can be "wrong when making a judgement about something which has no truth value, where there is no fact in play?" (Last post I was replying to.) And that's a good question.
A question of my own: would an emotivist agree that you could derive a fact about value from a fact about emotion? For example, if I said "boo to baby stomping," would it be a fact that "Dawnstorm feels negatively about baby stomping"? If so, there's plenty to be wrong about when you consider the path from internalised attitudes to aquired social values as instantiated in a specific situation and actualised in the decision-making process: you can be wrong about the item in question (e.g. the car), about the social value attached (e.g. I thought cars were supposed to be faster), about my attitude (e.g. I though I want a fast car, but I really just want to outdo my neighbour), about my projection (e.g. I thought going really fast with a car would be fun, but it's scary), and so on. And then you can be wrong how any of that inter-relates (e.g. I knew going really fast would be scary but I thought I'd get a kick out of being scared).
Even apparently simple things are pretty complex if you drill down.
As for this:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm a relativist, so yeah, I agree pretty much. Who in this thread is likely going to disagree that "baby stomping is bad"? The force of the rhetoric derives in part of the extremety of the act. The variance in reaction is fairly low. What underlies this? An absolute moral principle? An anthropological constant (we're a social species)? A social contract of some sort? And off we go in abstract land.
But this type of rhetoric is also a good example of how morals proliferate. The target here is not the protection of babies: it's a meta ethical stance, with the problem being that some people want there to be a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, etc. more than others. Part of this thread is ritualistic: we affirm our stances and solve little. That's not all there is, but it's certainly there. We're topicalising a well-known divide and portraying our stances. Little will change. We re-iterate the moral landscape.
This, I think, is what it would mean for "people" to matter: we stop talking and take a long, hard look at us right now. But then I would think this; I'm a relativist after all.
In the end, I'm fine talking acts.
Religious and Political Faith is both an Idea and a Feeling that motivates people to do what is not necessarily in their own self-interest, but in the interest of the Faith Community. The FC typically divides society into US vs THEM (e.g. Jews vs Gentiles, or Aryans vs Jews, or Catholics vs Heretics). Military and Religious "soldiers" are indoctrinated into an in-group vs out-group mentality, which allows them to treat outsiders without fellow-feeling. :sad:
That wasn't actually my post, but I'll still respond: The Oxford Very Short Introductions are sort of hit or miss, but the one on "Objectivity" is quite good. One of the points the author makes is that it is far from obvious that the most accurate and true way to describe something like the Holocaust or American slavery would be to "pump out all considerations of subjectivity." Similarly, is the reality and truth of World War II most fully and accurately covered in a "map of all the particles involved, their positions, trajectories, and velocities?" Even ignoring the dubious reductionist premises that would support such a claim, it would seem that even if consciousness were merely "epiphenomenal" (a position I think is very difficult to defend), such a description would still miss very much indeed. The premises that "objectivity approaches truth at the limit," and that "objectivity and truth exclude value" are ones I think we have good reason to be skeptical of at any rate.
If the truth is properly absolute, then it is not simply "the objective." The absolute, to be truly absolute, must encompass both reality and appearances, for appearances are part of reality, they are "really" appearances. The absolute includes all perspectives, not a privileged perspective. Absolute good then, must include and be present in all relative good, or even what merely appears to be good (a point Plato makes, and whereof St. Thomas says that all good things, or even what only seems good, is good through the Good, for him, the Triune God).
I am a big believer in human's potential for freedom as self-determination. However, I do also think that it is tricky to speak of us "selecting" value, if this is to imply that this is wholly a matter of choice, or that goodness is primarily always "in us" (in our selections) and not "in things." This would be to agree with Protagoras, that "man is the measure of all things," at least where value is concerned. But I would maintain that it is bad for a fox to have a limb torn off by a trap regardless of what people think.
Likewise, that being burned alive is, in general, bad for man, is not a value judgement me "come to decide upon." It is a value enforced on us anytime we stick our hand in a flame. We might be strong of will, like Gaius Mucius Cordus, and stick our hand in a fire and let it burn as a means of securing some greater good, but this doesn't negate the way in which "what man is" and "what things are" (e.g. fire) play a determinant role in values. And if "being like God" is the limit of conceivable goodness, then this limit case is not something man chooses.
This question reminds me of a quote I really like and I'll tag because it is a response to emotivism:
Another thing that occurred to me is that the case for emotivism often relies heavily on debunking arguments rather than positive arguments. That is, rather than show that emotivism must be true,emotivist arguments tend to proceed by attempting to show that no value judgement can be correct. Sometimes such arguments can be quite nuanced. Sometimes they seem quite facile, e.g. the claim that there can be no such thing as a "good artifact" simply because people sometimes want an artifact for something other than its intended purpose, or that catching a gazelle cannot be "good for a lion" because it is "bad for the gazelle."
I think a very common assumption at work in such debunking arguments (the nuanced and the simple) is that "goodness" must be predicated univocally and not analogicallythat for goodness to exist at all, it must exist according to some sort of fixed scale of magnitude.
But I think it's obvious that "good can be said in many ways." In the same way, we might say that "tuna is healthy" because it is a food that promotes human health (an analogy of attribution, where health is most properly predicated of the living human, and the "healthyness" of related things is parasitic on this health). "Healthy bloodwork" works in the same way. Bloodwork is not healthy per se, it is a symptom of health. Yet clearly, the prepared tuna, being dead, is not healthy as respects the health of the tuna. We cannot use the terms "healthy" or "good" univocally, yet neither does that mean that each use of "good" is entirely equivocal.
I don't think this is quite right. Our faith in institutions and privileged people is in the belief that their powers are legitimate. "Doing the wrong thing" might call that legitimacy into question. But the faith is in legitimacy, and moreover in how that legitimacy was granted.
If we believe in the legitimate authority of a king or president, the fact that this individual is the legitimate king or president may or may not be a matter of faith. But the fact that royal succession or winning a fair election bestows kingly or presidential powers must be an article of faith.
I used to be quite fond of that passage too, and while I still think there's a lot of truth in it (equating "it's sublime" with "I have sublime feelings" is clearly wrong), I have to ask: Exactly how does Coleridge know that the waterfall is sublime rather than pretty? By what faculty do we "render things their due esteem?" I don't remember Lewis trying to answer that, other than reasserting the tradition that claims to be able to do so.
That's a good example. Medically assisted suicide is an even better one. It is (normally regarded as) medically unhelpful (even in contradiction with) standard medical ethics. nevertheless, it may be in one's best interests, IMO.
Further to our exchange about music, you may or may not have encountered the classic piece in traditional philosophy for this - Hume - Standard of Taste. It puts his analysis into a different context from the usual subjectivist interpretation. On the other hand, it is based on a naive empiricism that doesn't attend to the extent to which social and cultural context affects these questions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Thanks for this reply. I must apologize that I don't have time to do it justice right now. But this is true. In fact, I would say that in order to ensure clarity of use, "good" should always be thought of in its context - especially the context of the noun to which the adjective is attached.
I don't remember reading this, thanks.
This is nice. Very clear key to your thinking.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
. The statements of medicine are simply not ethical statements (unless you mean the specific domain of medical ethics, which is not facts about injury and damage, but guidelines informing action.. which is the proper domain of ethics, as I understand). They have truth aptness and they're interesting, and often dynamic, but they do not seem to be ethical unless you constrain 'ethical' to whatever specific superficial goal is in mind... "stem the loss of blood", "don't induce diabetes" etc. in which case, obviously you can derive an ought from an is, but that's cheating.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I am unsure what, though, and it's certainly not a roadmap by any means. There always remains some X factor of 'wisdom' involved in delivering medicine, and more thoroughly in attempting to live a happy life (as you've used that concept, I'll address it) viz. most often people are happiest not doing what is medically optimal. Or even expressly doing what is not medically optimal.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Would it be non-ethical to serve alcohol? Some say so, but thats an extreme position that I think misunderstands ethics. I'm sure you'd agree, that such extreme principle is probably not teh best way to go - bu it would be a fairly logical resutl of understanding medical facts as ethical. They can be informative, and they can bear weight, I should think, on ethical reasoning but I can't see how they could arbitrate much of anything. If someone wants their leg broke, they want it broke.
Quoting Ludwig V
Enjoying red wine isn't an ethical question. This truly strikes me a bizarre objection. The entire point of ethics is that it delineates actions which effect other people from actions which don't, either do much of anyhing, or have any tangible externalities.
I'd be happy to consider and see if I have an intuition about a like example that might seem like a bullet to bite, but here the domain of discussion answers the issue.
He just refers to past tradition, but I think this is a fair move because the essay is focused on ethics rather than aesthetics, and more so on following out some of the conclusions that the denial of goodness and beauty (and truth) leads to. I think the introductory section is there just to shed light on what a consequential move it is to simply presuppose emotivism and the Anglo-empiricist view of goodness, love, and beauty as wholly internal, "subjective" states related to inchoate feeling/sentiment.
I think it's worth noting though that attacks on the reality of beauty, like those on goodness and truth, tend to also largely rely on debunking arguments. This also often involves shifting the burden of proof entirely onto the other side, demanding that the existence of the contents of consciousness be demonstrated within the confines of what are generally strict "empiricist" premises if these are to be considered fully real. Whereas, one could just as well say: "if your epistemic premises make it impossible to account for goodness, beauty, and truth, or consciousness itself, then they are clearly deficient, and they are self-undermining to the extent that they cannot represent themselves as being "true" or "truly good" premises to begin with."
I know you're plenty aware of the history here. Lewis is responding more to the earlier, Victorian paradigm, already in stark decline when he is writing, which had a strong faith in "natural science" as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Such a paradigm is still popular (e.g. in some of the "New Atheists") and, through inertia, might be even remain the dominant paradigm in secular K-12 education, but it has long been abandoned by the empiricist intellectuals themselves, who moved on to positivism, and from there into deflationary views of truth, more "post-modern" directions, etc. The fact is that "truth" found itself every bit as liable to failing to "cash out" in radical empiricist terms as goodness and beauty.
But truth lives on as "prediction." A theory is "useful" a proxy for the old "truth" so long as it is predictive. Of course, prediction needs to be defined in terms of mathematics, but mathematics and logic are now themselves a great multiplicity of "systems" which can only be selected for on the grounds of "usefulness." One certainly cannot answer the question of logical nihilism using strictly empiricist restrictions on evidence for instance.
Given the empiricist premises, it would seem the goodness, beauty, and the existence of consciousness can only be "justified" if they can be "usefully predictive." I don't know what that means for beauty if it is "sought for its own sake." Yet even the all-pervasive appeals to "pragmatism" and "use" presuppose some good by which "usefulness" is measured, and that things might really be "truly more or less useful" compared to one another. However, barring any "real good," these pragmatic standards ultimately have to be defined in terms of "use" themselves, bottoming out somewhere in an unjustified assertion of usefulness.
Anyhow, I would just ask: are the empiricists' premises inviolable? They certainty aren't justified by empiricism themselves. Second, is the burden of proof shifting fair?
When the eliminitivist says, "give me a complete theory explaining consciousness or I am justified in denying it," is this a fair move? Is it fair that they demand that any such "complete theory" be given in terms of their own reductive assumptions, and explained in terms that would seem to make such an explanation impossible from the outset?
The emotivist is normally doing something very similar. "Show me the empiricist explanation of beauty, ideally reducing it to mathematics or prediction, or it is illusory." Yet if beauty, truth, and goodness are "illusory" they certainly aren't illusory in the way a stick appears bent in water, and it seems fair turn around and demand an account of how such an "illusion" occurs.
The interminable debates between eliminativists/behaviorists and panpsychists are perhaps instructive here, in that their empiricists presuppositions seem to make the debate irresolvable, despite both positions being prima facie absurd. "Show you are 'conscious' and that everything you do cannot be reduced to empirical observations of behavior (but also the only evidence we will allow is empirical observations of behavior)," says the eliminativist. The pansychists says, "what do you mean its 'implausible' that each half of your skull is its own mind, or that a room with five people is its own mind? Just look at the empirical data, tell me where it shows any delineation between discrete private minds! The idea that 'our thoughts are our own,' is just superstition that relies on beetle boxes!"
I suppose the topic of beauty is also deeply tied to views of nature. D.T. Suzuki writes:
There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expanse broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in satori [the potential for enlightenment] that is quite precious and well-worth striving after.
Wordsworth writes in Expostulation and Reply
[i]And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.[/i]
Dante claims of nature at the beginning of the Paradiso that:
[i]The glory of the One Who moves all things
penetrates all the universe, reflecting
in one part more and in another less.[/i]
These are all "empirical reports" in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience. And they're clearly relevant to conceptions of beauty and nature. Yet the debunking arguments tend to demand that passages like these be translated into "predictive hypotheses" or mathematics to "demonstrate a real beauty."
Yet any strong notion of "truth" itself is subject to such debunking, given the empiricist starting premises. The empiricist premises are also what allow Hume's Problem of Induction to be a real problem (he was not the first person to think of the ramifications of underdetermination, just the first to do so in a context where presupposing nominalism, a deflated notion of cause, and a denial of any human capacity for real abstraction or noesis could fly under the radar as implicit assumptions). Yet with this, and related arguments, hardly anything can be said to be "known." Given this context, it can hardly be a particularly strong argument against beauty that it cannot be "known" according to the empiricists criteria, this problem ends up being true for virtually everything and anything. Using these same criteria, we might very well argue that the difference between a dedicated eliminitivist, a panpsychist, a positivist, a post-modern, etc. is itself just emotion.
Anyhow, one recent treatment of the aesthetical question I like is D.C. Schindler's [I]Love and the Postmodern Predicament[/I]
Or a longer, in-depth review: https://lonergan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/LoveModernpredicamentSummary.pdf
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'll take this as a proxy for several of the arguments you make, and reply, "No, it isn't a fair move." I believe the eliminativist is thinking something like this: "Well, it's very unlikely, according to me, that consciousness 'exists' in the way that non-eliminativists believe it does, so I'd need a complete scientific explanation of consciousness as that kind of existing thing before I could even entertain the idea. And in the absence of such a theory, my agnosticism turns to outright denial." So the reply should be: "Open your mind. We know just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness. A 'compete theory' may be a long way away. In the meantime, just say you don't know -- neither do I!"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. For instance, I could have phrased my question about Coleridge and the waterfall in a much more hostile way, implying, "Obviously, a non-emotivist account of 'sublimity' isn't available; Coleridge was merely reflecting the beliefs of his time; so when I challenge you to explain the 'faculty' by which he recognized sublimity, my tongue is firmly in my cheek. Obviously there is no such faculty." Whereas, as I hope was clear, my question was a genuine one: It's very important that we understand how values like beauty and moral goodness are recognized -- and very difficult to give a good account of this. I think you're overestimating the power of the "give me a predictive hypothesis" request, but yes, we do want to be able to say more than "Tradition says so" or "it's empirical too."
On that question . . . is it empirical? You say of Wordsworth, Dante, and Suzuki, "These are all 'empirical reports' in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience." Perhaps in a very broad sense -- they are reports concerning things outside our own mind -- but not in a way that's going to help us. If Wordsworth's "a motion and a spirit" is "out there" in the same way that the color of his famous daffodils is, then a number of tough questions are raised. Most of them reduce to the one I posed: We know, more or less, what faculty allows us to see daffodils as yellow. What is the faculty that allows us to see the waterfall as sublime? To ask this question is not to defer to scientism. There's nothing wrong with asking for a reasonable explanation here, as long as we don't pre-certify what sorts of entities and processes will count, as scientism does. In fact, a close reading of the Suzuki passage suggests a possible line of inquiry. Satori and enlightenment may be the highest development of the very faculty we're asking about.
Isn't this conclusion you're suggesting, that we allow that we all know almost nothing of consciousness, or some of its most obvious contents (e.g., goodness, beauty, etc.), only reached by granting the eliminitivist his (radical) empiricist premises as inviolable? For instance, the phenomenologist thinks she can say something about consciousness. This skeptical resolution would require that, in disputes between the phenomenologist and the eliminitivist, we must presuppose that the eliminitivist's definition of what constitutes "good evidence" and epistemic warrant are correct and the phenomenologist's are somehow deficient. That is, if we are to know anything about consciousness, it must proceed according to the radical empiricist's premises.
Yet as noted above, I think the past century of philosophy demonstrates pretty well that, if one starts with the radical empiricists' premises, essentially nothing can be known, including the validity/choice-worthiness of those same premises. So, why exactly am I going to want to grant epistemic premises that have proven to be self-refuting?
I focus on science because the common response here is that: "these are the premises required for science." I don't think that's true though. There are many conceptualizations of the sciences that allow for the same methodology and don't need to make the radical empiricists' assumptions.
On traditional accounts, the intellect, by which we are capable of abstraction and an understanding of principles (Goodness and Beauty being the most general principles). The denial of universals (nominalism), and thus of any such faculty, is of course a metaphysical position, but it is also certainly something that tends to be assumed in the Anglo-empiricist tradition (particularly by "anti-metaphysical" thinkers).
So, the reasoning goes: "We won't deal in metaphysics. We will just be properly skeptical, which means we start our work without any assumption that universals exist, that there is any 'first-philosophy,' that there is an intellect, etc." But I think it's pretty obvious that, in practice, this "initial skepticism" just amounts to assuming nominalism, etc. Moreover, the methodological tools developed are based on these assumption, so that even when realist theories are taken up by analytic/empiricist thought, they face a rather significant problem of "hostile translation" and "conceptual blindness," (e.g., this is something Klima's paper on the butchering of Aristotelian essences in some formats is good on.)
But the "traditional accounts" have hardly been dormant, and they've been continually updated according to what the sciences can tell us about our perceptual and intellectual faculties. It's just that engagement between this area of philosophy and the multiple offshoots of the Anglo-empiricist tradition is generally one-way.
Perhaps, although my "apologetic" approach is based on interchanges here and similar venues, where the demand that values (aesthetic or otherwise) be shoehorned into something like a "predictive model" or "testable hypothesis" in order to be justified seems quite common. This is why I like Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape so much as an entry point, despite my disagreements with its core assumptions. Harris at least underscores how it is prima facie implausible that the sciences don't tell us anything about "what is good for man" or "what is good for horses," etc.
I don't think so. I deliberately said that we know "just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness" because a) I believe it's true, and b) there's no reason we can't meet the eliminativist somewhat on their own ground. Really, my suggested reply amounts to "You're not being scientific, by your own lights." I'm not sure it would do much good to start laying out a phenomenology of consciousness for them, in this context. . . though as you note, we can say a great deal about consciousness phenomenologically, and many believe (as I think you and I do) that the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of consciousness' not being eliminable.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yeah, I know. But does that really satisfy you as an explanation? It doesn't me. As a (very) short cut to what I mean, imagine that we accept the idea of a faculty called intellect which is cognitively able to do all the things we'd like it to do -- recognize values, identify universals, uncover logical principles, whatever you'd like to add to the list. Does this get us one step closer to answering our question? What is this faculty, and how does it do what it does? Just giving it a name doesn't help. Moreover, we can't just say, "Well, you're asking for a scientific explanation and that's not appropriate." What we lack is any real explanation at all, if we try to go beyond mere assertions that "since we do recognize values et al., then there must be a faculty that allows us to do so," which is question-begging.
Wanted to add that focus on a hypothesis ability to predict is, to my mind unfortunately, too often prioritized over a hypothesis explanatory power this especially in philosophy.
The first strictly addresses techne (i.e., the making or doing something (namely, that of a valid prediction)), whereas the second is about episteme (i.e., the understanding of what is) and to me it seems obvious that there can be no techne in the absence of episteme, such that episteme is of paramount importance, with techne being only secondary..
For example, in this context it can be asked, "Does the phenomenologist or the eliminativist provide more explanatory power as regards the totality of what is?" While I'm sure that argument galore as to this question's answer could ensue, to my best understanding it remains the case that the eliminativist will not be able to explain most anything as regards awareness per se. And without awareness, there cannot be any form of empiricism.
False.
True, or even in regular life. It's extremely common to confuse correlation with causation, with the result that predictions may be 100% correct but have no explanatory power whatsoever.
Quoting javra
The only eliminativist I've really spent much time on is Daniel Dennett, because he's extremely good at discussing science and can almost always put the eliminativist case with vigor and humor. He would, of course, disagree with you. I believe he would say that consciousness and awareness are user illusions -- as is, indeed, the user him/herself! When your materialism goes that deep, it's hard to know what to say in reply. Dennett is able to provide very plausible stories about how these illusions work. I even find his evolutionary explanations for the illusion of consciousness to be logical enough. But his assumptions are such that we can't ask him, "But why does it have to be an illusion in the first place?" Or rather, we can, but I think would say, "Because the material world is the only thing that exists."
Though I'm familiar with the argument, I haven't read Dennett's works first hand myself, so I'm not sure how he would argue this illusion might work when replied to thusly:
"Consciousness" is (I think we'd all agree) a very concept-laden term - such that what some might interpret by the term might in fact not be. I grant this. But there can be no notion of consciousness devoid of all awareness.
And, as to "awareness being an illusion", an illusion relative to what if not to awareness itself?
"Illusion" - if its to be at all cogent as term - can only mean "misapprehension, i.e. a mistaken understanding (else: a mistaken seeming)". So, I'd take it that for wrong-apprehension to occur there must then by entailment yet be an ontically occurring apprehension, an understanding, by ...
And here again I ask by what else if not by an ontically actual and hence real awareness (or, as @Count Timothy von Icarus might say, "by the intellect", which is awareness-endowed by the very fact of being that which understands).
Illusion devoid of an ontically real awareness to which the illusion applies is, I argue, at best nonsensical (and at worst, possibly willfully dishonest).
I see. I guess the difference is that I wouldn't grant them the "scientific." On their account, the vast bulk of the social sciences might be seen as falling outside the purview of "science." Or, on your more radically empiricist accounts, the vast bulk of books published in the sciences also fail to be "scientific," on the grounds that they are "metaphysical speculation," or "naively realist."
I don't get this critique, because existing work goes way beyond giving it a name. The original criticism of the via antiqua was that it was too technical, too detailed, and too complex. It's a broad area, but just consider the role of signs in the communication of form (doctrina signorum). I think we might criticize C.S. Peirce or John Deely on several grounds, lack of organization, etc., but "lack of detail and explanation" hardly seems like it should be one of them. It just isn't an explanation in terms of prediction and mechanism.
And so too for explanations of form, perception, abstraction, etc. There are indeed works that try to avoid committing too much to extremely detailed expositions, and I think this is sometimes actually to their credit. Not all topics admit of the same degree of specificity. Robert Sokolowski's The Phenomenology of the Human Person is a great example. That's an expansion on Aquinas, Aristotle, Husserl, and modern cognitive science. It goes far beyond naming, it's just that it also makes no attempt to remain committed to the empiricist presuppositions of what explanation must look like. The D.C. Schindler book I referenced, while high level and focused more on the practical role of beauty, is also not short on explanation.
I don't see why not. This would depend entirely on how "scientific explanation" is defined. If attempts to provide a metaphysics of knowledge are shot down on the grounds that "a good explanation is scientific" and that "scientific explanations" avoid metaphysics (which normally amounts to just assuming certain metaphysical stances), this seems like it could equally be deemed question begging.
And let's be clear, the emotivist is also offering an explanation. They don't deny the experience of goodness, beauty, and truth tout court. Rather, they positively claim that these specifically involve irrational processes within the human person, and do not directly involve the things judged to be beautiful, etc.
Yet if they say: "A rainbow cannot be beautiful per se, because it's just water droplets, light, and refraction," we might very well ask "how does the body, which is also mostly water, and is supposedly also nothing but chemicals and energy accomplish the feat of producing beauty, which the rainbow is incapable of in virtue of its being composed of chemicals and energy?" Or: "Why is it implausible that a human body could be beautiful, but plausible that it produces all beauty?" "Why are 'ensembles of particles' incapable of possessing beauty, but fully capable of experiencing it?" The emotivist claim is no less extraordinary from the perspective of the reductive paradigm. In some ways, it is more extraordinary, because now beauty cannot be some sort of emergent property of things' roles in their context, or some non-mathematical property of being that has been missed by our methods, but must instead be a sui generis product produced wholly within the skulls of individual men.
:up: I largely agree, although I do think it is sometimes the case that techne can involve phenomena that are not well-understood (e.g. early heat engines and heat, early radios and EM fields, etc.). Techne is in some sense the proof of episteme, and what "objectifies" it in the world (in the same way that Hegel says that institutions serve to objectify morality).
You could probably draw an analogy to the ethical and aesthetic life in terms of praxis and theoria.
While still upholding the primacy of episteme over techne in their importance, I do agree with this. :up:
And in keeping with this, I often enough think that Francis Bacon would have been better off stating "understanding is power" - this rather than "knowledge is power". But then it gets to be contingent on how one understands and translates the term "scientia".
The human good is not reducible to health, but it involves health. There certainly seem to be facts about what is good for organisms in virtue of their nature. It is not good for some fish to be placed in saltwater, just as it is not good for man to be placed in a container with inadequate oxygen levels. These statements might be taken ceteris paribus, since well-being is most properly predicated of beings, i.e., organisms, and "good" is only said secondarily of external things or the environment.
An appropriate amount of oxygen is said to be both "good" and "healthy," in virtue of how it promotes man's well-being and health respectively, for instance. If being crammed into some space with low oxygen allows a man to reach some greater goal, like skydiving from the edge of space, perhaps it is choice-worthy. This doesn't obviate the fact that there is an minimal atmospheric oxygen level that one can categorize as good or healthy vis-a-vis man in general. If this were not the case, it would imply that there is no "fact of the matter" as to whether or not oxygen affects the human good, which seems absurd.
If ethics is the study of the human good, human flourishing, or "living a good life," there will be many such facts that are relevant.
What's the objection here? A demand for absolute certainty and precision? There is also a sort of practical wisdom that comes into architecture, aircraft design, launching satellites, raising sheep, etc. But that doesn't mean there are facts relevant to how to do these successfully. No measurement reaches absolute precision or certainty. It might not be obvious whether a car needs a new radiator, or just a repair and for the coolant to be bled to let out air, but there is a fact of the matter. Bleeding the coolant will work to stop the coolant warning from tripping or it won't. It will also be a fact that very many things, e.g. shooting the head gasket with a rifle, won't fix the car, and can be ruled out.
I'd just repeat that well-being isn't reducible to health, but neither are they unrelated. "Good" or "healthy" is primarily said of men, and then said of things like alcohol insomuch as they promote, are signs of, symptoms of, etc. health or well-being in men. All men are different, and so we shouldn't expect to be able to formulate universal maxims, except in extreme cases. There are clearly levels of alcohol consumption that are going to virtually always be "too much," unless we think up extremely bizarre scenarios (e.g. "aliens will blow up the planet unless you can finish 15 liters of whiskey in the next hour!"). But neither is the relationship between alcohol and well-being amongst men random and unknowable. It is regular and knowable.
That "alcoholism" is not good for well-being is something that can at least be established ceteris paribus, and you might be able to go further when you consider our capacity for freedom and self-determination and how chemical dependency and addiction undermines this capacity.
Picture God as a sort of luminous orb. Western scholasticism became an attempt to write down everything it could say about the orb, starting from "natural theology" and revelation (primarily Holy Scripture), and then deducing all the facts one could syllogize from this. This produced a lot of facts and statements.
But along comes Luther, and he says: "No, no, no, you're all wrong. You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Come stand over here. I stand here, and I've written down everything I can see, and this is the correct way to put it."
But along comes Calvin. And he says "no, you're both wrong, come stand here!" And then Zwingli shows up, and he says... etc.
The Orthodox say: "Don't even try to write anything down. Pursue the ascetical life and the sacraments, engage in praktikos, that you might go inside/become the orb, and then you shall understand."
And so it is for beauty too. This is implicit in the three stages of knowing in the Desert Fathers, which still dominates Orthodox philosophy. First there is ascetical discipline, the sacraments, and the development of virtue. Then there is knowledge of the divine through finite things, as signs and exemplars. This is different from the instrumental knowledge of finite things that Bacon prioritizes. It is not knowledge of their practical uses, but primarily knowledge of their beauty and their role in the whole. And last comes theology/theoria, theosis/deification.
There are some similarities here with non-Christian Eastern philosophy as well obviously (e.g. the Zen quote I shared earlier).
(Actually, this theme is still very strong in the West through the High Middle Ages, with St. Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, and even St. Thomas. "Knowing by becoming" was a key idea of Boethius as well. But the Orthodox tend to see this period as the "setting the stage" for later divergence. Personally, I think they set the divergence too early and are overly critical of early scholasticism, primarily because this is when the political schism between East and West becomes more acute, and they are still angry over the Sack of Constantinople (1204).)
Yes. What I meant was, if we object on the grounds that what's being asked for is a scientific explanation, and that's not appropriate, our interlocutor can reply, "Fine, give me any kind of explanation." And in way, the burden is then on us to explain why what we offer counts as explanatory.
This ties in to your other point, about how to bring in "intellect" as explanatory. You're right that there's a lot more than mere naming going on, and I was too dismissive about that. But I worry about explanations that aren't lawlike (aka objective), to a degree. This is where, for me, hermeneutics comes in. You mentioned the human sciences, which I think are indeed scientific but often by way of hermeneutical understanding. Same, perhaps, with the study of value -- we need a way to legitimate an interpretation as explanatory. Well, a huge topic, so I'll stop.
Certainly can, but there's no reason to suppose someone who doesn't think so is wrong. This is my entire point (and I think most of the discussion is happening, inadvertently, on a level above this). What objectivity is there to the claim that health is constitutive (even partly) of "the good for man"? It may well be that elimination is the best thing for man (at an extreme). There's no arguments which could counter this, to my knowledge, so I think there's a lot of presupposition going on. But in general, I would agree, that and did say as much. It will bear a lot of weigh in ethical reasoning, but not ethical concepts I don't think.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is incorrect, as I see. It is bad for the body of a fish to be placed in saltwater (salmon notwithstanding). This is does not carry an ethical claim and so the bare assertion actually requires some prior justification (this, perhaps, being hte level issue noted above). It may be that fish don't experience in the sense required for ethical consideration. I'm not aware one way or the other, but certainly its a reasonable assumption (even on a 50/50 basis) of a lower fish like a guppy or plecostomus.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That something is said, doesn't make it so. It is good for a man to continue breathing oxygen (and in turn, continue living). This still doesn't become an ethical claim. It is merely medical fact, aimed at a chosen goal. I can't see that this is an ethical claim. It's 'good' in terms of a specific goal. Maybe you're not stating that you see ethics as tied to specific goals. Though, if that's the case, everything is up for grabs.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If my response were agreed with (not that it should,just illustrating) then your claim is clearly not an ethical one. The objection is that you're calling a mere fact an ethical statement. Its an is, not an ought. Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There clearly are. Maybe you've misspoken here? But again, they aren't ethical facts. So, I'm unsure how your initial question (in this quote) could be answered. The objection hasn't even been addressed.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And non-ethical (as yet, on your account). Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yep. Still failing to see how this is an ethical statement (i've cut the quote because I don't think your point requires that justification. The above stands to reason).
I think this is the hardest question for someone like Dennett to answer. At best, he can say that awareness is not at all like what we think it's like, or doesn't have the moving parts we think it has, or doesn't lead to the conclusions about reality that we think it does . . . and on and on. But to call the experience itself an illusion does seem to require a viewpoint for which it is illusory. And that viewpoint, in turn, is either non-illusory, or an illusory product itself, in which case we move to Level 3, ad infinitum.
Which is pretty much your criticism too, and I think it's valid.
That said, with someone as smart and philosophically experienced as Dennett, I find it helpful to at least try to see it their way. I believe it comes down, once again, to an unshakable faith in physicalism. What Dennett means by "illusion" is "something that looks like it's non-physical."
By my counts, quite validly expressed!
And, in keeping with this thread's theme: yes, there is a distinct difference between "faith" at large and that particular type of faith which is "unshakable" - this irrespective of the rational or, in this case, experiential evidence to the contrary.
Quoting J
Within this context which you mention, the notion of "illusion" almost begins to make sense. (Save for the "looks like" part :razz: , which, again, would logically entail an awareness which so sees.) In earnest, however, I admire your willingness to see things from others' perspectives.
Since I take it you've read Dennett first-hand, did Dennett ever get around to defining what "the physical" actually is in his philosophical writings? This so as to validly distinguish it from that which would then be "the illusion of non-physicality".
The issue brings to mind Thomas Huxley - with the nickname of "Darwin's bulldog", who first coined the term "agnostic", and who was a worthwhile philosopher in his own right - whose works I have read. A quote from him, here with emphasis on the subject of physicalism / materialism:
In the introduction to Brainstorms, an early work, Dennett says this:
This doesn't quite answer your question, but it was the first passage I came across. I'll try to find some others. It doesn't give us a definition of "the physical," but the context would indicate that so-called mental events are correctly described as brain events, without remainder. To think otherwise would mean postulating something that can have no physical reality, and ergo is illusory.
Notice that this is supposed to be "very modest and undoctrinaire"! In some of his later books Dennett was less modest about the implications of his project, and I think probably changed his mind about whether "descriptions and predications" concerning so-called mental events could remain neutral about physicalism. But even at this early stage of his writing, we can see how the reduction of the mental to the physical is perceived very innocently -- nothing doctrinaire about it, just common sense for us scientists, folks!
I don't know what to tell you. The idea that ethics is primarily the study of human well-being and flourishing, and human excellence, is not my invention, it goes back to Plato and Aristotle, but is also mirrored in Confucius and Indian thinkers. It's the core assumption of a text you can unconfusedly refer to as the [I]Ethics[/I] in the field to this day. If "alcoholism is bad for man's well-being" it's a fact of ethical import under such a subject.
How would you define the field of ethics?
I've only read Consciousness Explained cover to cover, and in that he seemed actually somewhat circumspect, even though he does start by putting rather extreme limits on what could count as evidence in a theory of consciousness. However, I do recall that his response to Nagel re "the experience of being a bat," was something to the effect that nothing in the difference between "what it is like to be a bat versus a man" could be "theoretically interesting," which to me just suggest an impoverished notion of theory and knowledge. He was less circumspect in later talks and seemed to be pushing a notion that could possibly run afoul of Hemple's Dilemma (i.e. if something is real, it is, by definition, included in what is physical).
The difficulty is that "physical," like the "methodological naturalism" mentioned earlier in this thread, is that they can be pushed very far in different directions. Some forms of physicalism with "strong emergence" of a discrete "mental realm" can start to look like dualism (which always involved interaction, it just never explained it well). Aristotelian form (and potency) can easily be conceived of as "physical," but form is also fundamentally Intellect in many receptions of Aristotle. Things like economic recessions don't seem like they should be "non-physical" but they certainly do seem like they are incorporeal (without body), which causes problems for some forms of physicalism but not others.
Open questions like: "Is information physical?" and "if so is it "basic" on par with matter and energy, or even more basic?" also show the possibility for divergence. A physicalism where matter and energy emerge from information is very different from one where information is illusory.
Fair enough, on your explication here, as to how we could be at an impasse. That said, I think I did point this out (perhaps implicitly) earlier in the exchange:
Ethics are to do with how we act, specifically, as regards other people (or organisms, I guess). Ethics aren't about human flourishing any more than the rules of football are about scoring touchdowns/goals (depending on your hemisphere). Even expanded concepts of ethics are about how to deal with A.I, aliens, non-existent people, people who can't feel etc.. etc. There are no ethical theories on how best to do any thing. The fact that the above gives us literally no basis to assert anything as 'true' is exactly why being an ethical objectivist is ridiculous, in my view. You have to do something else to get anything like objectivism.
Yes, it doesn't address what physicality per se is. But this theme brings to mind how water can be described via, and predicated on, the structure of two elements. It also brings to mind the fact that such description and predication neither changes a) the reality that water can be wet (a liquid) at room temperature whereas the two gases cannot nor b) the reality that there is no known explanation for why H2O ceases to be strictly gaseous at room temperature, this unlike compounds such as CO2 (predictable thought it is, this quality of H2O, and of other compounds in general, nevertheless being blatant hocus-pocus events that are often overlooked as so being, as though theyve been in some way explained).
And this, to me, in some ways parallels to the mind-brain dichotomy. There still remains a difference between mind and brain (e.g., the second can be touched, smelled, seen, even tasted; the first cant - to skip on a long list of maybe more pertinent examples), and there is still no viable explanation of how or why the two correlate. Save that, unlike chemical compounds, the mind holds properties that are commonly understood to be immaterial.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, exactly so. Hence, were something like the One to in fact be real, it would then need to be deemed physical due to the necessity of anything real being strictly physical. And what an odd form of physicalism that would be.
I would want to amend this and say that ethics has to do with how we should act.
1. Ethics are to do with how we act
2. Ethics has to do with how we should act
So consider the descriptive claim, "He carried out X act." All such claims are ethical claims on (1) but not on (2), and because not every such claim is an ethical claim, therefore (1) must be false. Would you agree with that? That ethics has a normative quality?
(Of course you might respond by saying that (1) describes but does not define ethics. Still, I would say that (2) gives us a better description and certainly a better definition.)
Further, if someone (such as yourself) thinks that there are no true or false claims about how we should act, then they would say that the "ethics" represented by (2) is a pseudoscience. Maybe you would say that.
One might directly attack the implicit epistemology and try to get them to defend it, but another approach is to simply point out facts such as the following:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
...and this is the approach I described <here>. So for example, if "burning out one's eyes" is bad, and everyone knows it is bad, then any epistemology worth its salt must account for this fact. It is no good to engage in the dubious practice of trying to bootstrap an independent epistemology from the ground up and then claim that this homemade epistemology is so well built that anything which lies outside of it must fail the test of knowledge. Or in other words, we are left with the question, "Is Hume's novel epistemology more secure, or is the universal attestation that burning out one's eyes is bad more secure?" It seems clear that the latter is more secure, and that Hume et al. have the burden of proof in showing that we would be more rational to accept their idiosyncratic epistemology rather than accept the claim that burning out one's eyes is bad.
(The underlying claims here are things like
Nothing in your second post does anything but elucidate, in apparently sober terms, the emotional valence of ethical considerations.
You've leapfrogged hte entire problem, and gone with accepting "good" and "bad" as they are, where they lie. Not doing ethics, anyway, as whether something is good or bad has nothing to do with whether that should arbitrate our actions.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Err nope. There's no relationship between the two, but habit. If you want to invoke some kind of causation between an act and ipso facto good and bad (bare, not for some particular goal i.e not having your eyes burned out) then you've got your entire task still in front of you. I'm waiting.
Perhaps I just wrote it badly. It wasn't intended as an objection, exactly. The question was genuine - how does emotivism distinguish between emotions that are reactions to judgements of taste and emotions that are reactions to judgements of ethical value? It is true, though, that the answer was not obvious to me, and I might have had objections to any answer offered.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, that's the standard account. There's a lot to it. The trouble is that the border country between actions that affect other people and those that don't is hotly contested.
After writing this post, I found this - Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I sense that this is not quite the same question as the question what rules are required for us to live well together. Should I distinguish between ethics and morality? If not, how to these two questions fit together?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This was most enlightening. But I think you are being a bit demanding when you comlain that empiricists conduct their critique on some other basis that empiricism. What other basis could they have used? On the other hand, you are justified in pointing out the weakness of the traditional empirical doctrines. These seemed to have survived much better than I thought they would twenty years ago.
Burden of proof arguments don't seem to be very productive. Obviously each side prefers the burden of proof to be on the other and there's no judge to make a ruling. It is better to try to work out what the two sides agree on and frame the debate from there.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. People very often misunderstand what an illusion is, mistaking illusions for hallucinations or dreams.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quite so. But surely, these days, we are all acutely aware that how we experience things is heavily structured and conditioned by our approach, in the fullest sense. I suggesting that our conceptions of beauty and nature will affect how we experience things as beautiful or not, as our conception of nature affects how we experience that.
I wonder if it is possible that beauty is in the eye (and brain) of the beholder and connected to objective reality?
.. and this is where I begin to part company with you. What little I understand about the concept of the transcendentals does not enthuse me. I've not yet understood how it helps me to understand Beauty, Goodness and Truth. I have an obstinate conviction that if they exist at all, they exist in the everyday world that I actually live in.
Quoting J
When you say "are recognized", I conclude that we need to let go of the philosophy for a while and watch what actually goes on, allowing the phenomena, in some sense of the word, to show us how beauty and moral goodness are recognized. (Unless you think that we all already know...) The account (in whatever form seems appropriate) should then follow without too much difficulty.
Quoting J
Oh, I do agree that slapping a label on the multifarious business of coming to understand these things does not help.
So, going back to your question - Quoting J
Considering specific incidents looks like a much more productive approach than discussing the transcendentals, so this is a good question. I'm sure one could conjure up an answer from what he says elsewhere about why the waterfall is sublime. It would function as an ostenstive definition.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a most helpful remark. It shows something of what taking part in the practice/language game requires.
In general, I agree, but the denial of value tout court, which amounts to a denial that anything can be said to be truly good or bad for man or individual men, is a particularly implausible claim, somewhat on par with radical skepticism. I think it's fair for us to shift the burden of proof onto the radical skeptic, to ask why they don't drive into oncomming traffic, since nothing can be known about it, or why they drive on the road heading east to New York to get to New York, instead of west, despite their claims that, ultimately, nothing can be known about how to get from one place to another. The radical skeptic doesn't even act like they believe their own thesis.
So too the anti-realist. They don't act as if they have recognized that any notion of what is "good for them" reduces to irrational sentiment. Indeed, in my experience, anti-realists tend to be more politically radical than average and care a great deal about bolstering one irrational sentiment over another.
But beliefs that seem "impossible to truly believe" (i.e. for actions to correspond to stated belief) seem like they should require particular justification.
Yes, that would be Schindler's contention. He draws a lot of scholasticism, where the adage was "everything is received in the mode of the receiver."
Well, this is the difficulty. The Doctrine of Transcendentals is among the most difficult in the classical metaphysical tradition, but also, with the Analogia Entis, its beating heart. Schindler's book is among the more accessible, but it still isn't perfect. The SEP article on it is, unfortunately, IMHO, not very good.
But the bolded is not at variance with the doctrine. What is transcendent is not absent from what it transcends, rather it goes beyond them. And when we talk about transcending, we are mostly talking about transcending the categories (although finite being as well).
I won't head down this path, except to say that I think the easiest path to understanding the Doctrine is to understand why Plato thinks (the pursuit of) the Good is properly what unifies the human being, and then understanding how Aristotle extends this connection between Goodness and unity to help deny why any thing is a thing (a discrete whole, a being) at all, and thus also a "one" a "unity."
I prefer specific examples too. But let me say two things about this one: First, we might indeed delve into Coleridge's life and world to come up with an answer, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. Perhaps I should have bolded "know". Is Coleridge's opinion a justified true belief? Or some other kind of knowledge? This generalizes to anyone with this opinion, of course, not just Coleridge.
Second, I approach this example with a bias. I strongly suspect that the waterfall really is a sublime sight. (Yes, I've changed the terms slightly so as to allow "sight" a role.) So, far from a debunking question, I'm asking for a theory that can confirm my bias: I want to be on firm ground when I say that the sight of the waterfall is sublime, or that the Beatles wrote great songs, etc. But, as I said above, such a theory is notoriously difficult to construct. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep working on it, though.
If you don't do this, it seems to me that you will either resume the search for the Great Dictionary that will settle the matter, or keep re-invoking various traditions to support your position. But that's not nearly as interesting as looking at the practices themselves, trying to understand their structure and what they might commit us to.
Dennett's particular flavor of physicalism is strongly epistemological. He's not so much trying to say that there are no experiences that correspond to "mental events" or "qualia," but rather that everything we think we know about them is wrong. We keep assuming that our privileged first-person stance gives us insight into another realm that must be non-physical, but since there is no such realm, something else must be going on. The experiences we have must be re-thought as experiences of the physical. And of course Dennett is well aware that phrases like "re-thought" and even "experience" also require non-mentalistic reconstructions.
Almost none of that is true, especially about the first-person stance, IMO, but I want to give Dennett a fair hearing so we can see what a sample version of physicalism is up against.
I acknowledge this. To me, however, it does raise the question: Can there be anything epistemic without there being something ontic* which the epistemic references?
I so far take philosophical relativism to implicitly, if not also explicitly, make just this claim. A different topic maybe, but I'll argue that upholding an affirmative answer to this question can only result in a logical contradiction: at the same time and in the same respect there both a) is an ontic actuality which the epistemic addresses (namely, the ontic actuality of there in fact not being any ontic actualities - this being a sort of meta-level ontic-actuality) and b) is not any ontic actuality which the epistemic addresses ... This might be better formulated, but the same logical contradictions seems to remain irrespective of adjustments.
The stance of physicalism does seem to presuposes that everything ontically actual, and hence real, is physical. Such that any epistemological account (regarding what is) seems to pivot upon this very bedrock assumption of what the ontic is, even if its kept utterly tacit in the arguments provided.
But on what would the necessary "wrongness of non-physicalism" be grounded? (My own take so far is that physicalism provides a maximal explanatory power to those who are physicalists - and that it's due to this teleological motivation alone (namely, the intent to best understand) that physicalism is so stringently upheld and maintained.)
------
* "The ontic" being that which ontology studies (this via any of various epistemologies).
100% agree, but as I tried to point out earlier it's also worth pointing out that the tradition that progresses from Hume seems to largely agree that its own epistemology (and the associated metaphysics it lets in through the back door):
A. Can achieve knowledge of almost nothing (e.g. Hume's Problem of Induction and the very many similar arguments from underdetermination from Wittgenstein, Quine, etc.)
B. That it cannot justify its own premises or know that its epistemology leads to truth (indeed, the tradition largely leans into denying truth as much more than a token after WWII).
C. The tradition also tends towards a sort of logical nihilism, since, leaving no room for intuition/noesis, they are left with an infinite space of possible "games" vis-á-vis logic and mathematics.
D. Because of points A-C, even in its less advanced (we might say not-yet-terminal) phase, the epistemology has become rather obviously self-undermining, and eventually reaches the point of being straightforwardly self-refuting.
The less advanced stages tend to try to counter these problems with an appeal to the successes and authority of "science," but this has myriad problems as well. First, because there is an extremely long gap between the emergence of the "new science" and the technological and economic divergence between the West and other developed states it tries to take credit for. Second, because places where rationalism was dominant kept pace with technological and economic development just as well. Third, because, while there are certainly scientific luminaries who embraced this epistemology, there were also plenty who rejected it, and yet this doesn't seem to have affected their capacity to be major scientific contributors.
If "good" is taken to mean "choice-worthy," as it often is, this seems to be incoherent. "That something is choice-worthy has nothing to do with how we should choose," is like saying "if something is has great heat, it cannot tell us if we should affirm that it is hot."
Aristotle offers up the definition that the good is that towards which all things strive (as their end/goal). I don't know how ethics is even coherent as a subject matter, even to advance anti-realism, if the "good" cannot be related to goals and ends. What would "good" mean then?
I don't think we are actually in much disagreement. I am certainly aware of the tradition that makes ethics the study of a unique "moral good." I even agree with the contention that this makes anti-realism very plausible, or even makes the subject incoherent.
However, seems to be diverging from even the post-Enlightenment tradition that I disagree with given the assertion that "if something is better it tells us nothing about whether or not we should choose it over the worse" or that ethics cannot relate to ends/goals. Maybe he can clarify what he thinks ethics is or under what conditions, if any, it could be coherent.
Sure, didn't mean to butt in. Just a suggestion to avoid getting too hung up on a "proper" use of the term.
I've never understood this. How is it different from the "dormative power" of a sleeping pill? What makes something worthy of being chosen? Isn't whatever that is -- call it X-- what we should be talking about, rather than the fact that X makes something worthy of being chosen?
If I choose to read an interesting book, that book is, arguably, choice-worthy. But why? I honestly don't see how calling out its choice-worthiness gets us anywhere. You can't mean that being chosen is any sort of moral criterion. So how does "good" get brought in here? What is it about the book that would make my choice a worthy one?
It sounds like Socrates and Euthyphro. Is piety whatever the gods love, or do they love it because it is pious? Is something good because it is choice-worthy, or is it choice-worthy because it is good?
Frustrated with my own inability to grasp this, I searched for "choice-worthy" online and . . . well, is there anyone besides Aristotelians who uses this term? I looked at the Nich. Ethics and I find the assertion that "every choice aims at some good." Really? Surely he doesn't mean "good" in the way we're using it. I choose a sharp knife to better cut someone's throat; a good choice, indeed, but hardly germane. And yes, I see how something could be chosen for its own sake -- a "final end" -- but that still doesn't tell us what makes it worthy.
I dunno . . . I would genuinely be grateful if you could explain this.
While I hope Im not intruding on the discussion, I thought at least parts of this might be of use to the issue (these being some personal perspectives interjected with what I take to be staple aspects of the philosophy of ethics at large):
A synonym of good is beneficial. We always select what we select to do deeming it beneficial to us. This is quite arguably a universal to all choices made and all those with an ability to so chose. Going to the dentist because it is beneficial, even if deemed unpleasant. Etc.
Ethics come into play in the context of whether or not that which we deem to be beneficial to us in fact actually is so or not. If it in fact is beneficial, then it is the correct - aka the right - thing to do. If it in fact is not beneficial to us (either in the short or long term when considered in terms of overall outcome), then it is the incorrect - aka the wrong - thing to do.
Theres of course much which could then be considered in this calculus of what is the right vs. the wrong thing to do. Including taking into account others actions and reactions to what one does (or does not) do.
This calculus then ultimately ending in the possible metaphysical notion of there being an ontically real but yet to be actualized, ultimate beneficiality to aim toward one that is of itself validly obtainable in principle (this, again, at some future time rather than in the here and now), hence being correct or true, hence being right and this irrespective of peoples perspectives pro or contra which could be worded as a complete and perfect eudemonia or else wellbeing.
This, whatever it might be in its details, then being what would be termed the (objective) Good which would then hold ontic presence, hence be real, as a telos (teloi, final causes, always being givens that await to be actualized in the future that, at such, are likewise always concurrent with that which they teleologically effect - in this case the very sentience which innately seeks optimal wellbeing).
As to why the Good is not yet actualized, simplistically, this can be explained via our ignorance and our capacity to choose wrongs (in the erroneous belief that they are beneficial when, in fact, they are not).
Not at all, as far as I'm concerned. It's the agora!
Quoting javra
This seems like a good window onto virtue ethics, and the way you go on to elaborate it also makes sense. So could we say that something is "choice-worthy" if it's in fact beneficial to us? I'd be happy with that but, problem is, we've only deferred the question of what is in fact beneficial to us. That's why I'm questioning whether -- or admitting my ignorance about -- how bringing in choice-worthiness helps matters. Why not leave it out entirely and just say what you said, above?
In truth, I'm not intimately familiar with the philosophical use of "choice-worthiness" ... but I take it to specify that which makes one alternative among the two or more we're faced with worthy of being chosen.
So understood, choice-worthiness would then be an intrinsic aspect of ethics - for it is that which we presume to make a given alternative worthy of being chosen which determines our ethical standing in so choosing. Hence, we always chose what we assume to be beneficial/good to us. But only if our reasons for the choice made (to include teleological reasons) are correct, hence right, will our choice then be ethical.
For instance, the murderer chooses to murder in the pursuit of that happiness which accompanies so successfully murdering. Here, to successfully murder will be good relative to the murderer's character due to the murderer deeming this beneficial to him/herself (maybe on account of the euphoric thrill thereby obtained in so doing and getting away with it). But we sane people deem this to be an unethical choice due to knowing full well that it leads, sooner or later, to everyone's reduced eudemonia/wellbeing (including the murderer's). We sane people thereby know this choice to murder to be a blatant wrong - rather than being a right / correct choice to make - and this in almost all conceivable scenarios imaginable we might care to hypothesize. To this extent making murder objectively wrong (although I could play devils advocate to this and provide examples where murder might be the lesser of the available wrongs and, in this manner, not be the unethical choice to make).
This then can be contrasted to choosing chocolate vs. vanilla ice-cream. Unless there's allergies or other outstanding factors involved, choosing one one or another will make virtually no difference whatsoever to the telos of optimal eudemonia. Here, though we yet choose based on what we deem to be most beneficial for us, our choice will not readily fall into the category of "ethics".
All the same, devoid of the criteria of choice-worthiness (as previously defined), I don't yet understand how any comportment or deed can be appraised as being either ethical/virtuous or not. Conversely, the activity of entities we deem devoid of any ability to choose - rocks as one clear example, such as when they result in an avalanche - we neither appraise as ethical or unethical. Such that it (at least so seems to me) is only via what we deem "worthy of being chosen" that any determination can be made as to the ethics concerned or the ethos we adopt.
------
Quoting J
BTW, I neglected to say this initially, but thanks for these comments. Theyre appreciated!
Isn't that simply part of what pseudoscience means, namely, "Not a science"?
Given that you didn't address it, I assume you agree that better represents ethics than (1). In that case we have some simple questions to consider:
1. Do you act?
2. If so, do you act for some rhyme or reason?
3. If so, are those rhymes and reasons altogether different than those which guide other people's acts?
This goes back to our discussion in the other thread. You claimed that . I pointed out that , you went on to say that simply have different aims and different 'goods', and then I pointed out that . You did not respond to the claim that food is (deemed) good by all.
Ergo, anyone who acts is already engaged in ethics. The objection that the good is arbitrary and differs with each person is empirically false. If I put a hot coal next to your eyeball I know that you will shrink back, because I understand your (normative) ethics. I know you believe that burning out one's eyes is bad, even if you claim it isn't.
It's odd that you would include the word "arguably," as it defeats your point. And do you think that the book is choice-worthy because it is interesting, or because it was chosen?
This is your objection:
And your unargued assertion is simply false. To say that something is good or choice-worthy is more than saying nothing at all. One can say why it is good or choice-worthy, but things are good/choice-worthy for different reasons. In no way does one need to say why something is good in order to say that it is good.
Quoting J
defined 'good' as 'choice-worthy.' It does not follow that whatever one chooses is choice-worthy (which is the thesis you are grasping at, and which requires dropping your "arguably"). Everyone themselves knows that not every choice they have made was good/choice-worthy. When you regret something you say, "I thought it was choice-worthy but in fact it wasn't. I chose what was not good."
Your objection is like, "If you think a bachelor is an unmarried man, then is something a bachelor because it is an unmarried man, or is it an unmarried man because it is a bachelor?"
Quoting J
So the better way to put your argument is, "If I choose to read a book then that book is choice-worthy." What an Aristotelian would say is, "Anyone who chooses X deems X to be good at the time they choose it." But what is deemed to be good and what is good are not the same thing, and anyone who has ever regretted anything has experienced this fact. They might apologize as follows, "It seemed like a good idea at the time..."
(Note that the shorthand I prefer is "desirable," but choice-worthy is not too far different. Good qua ethics is rooted in the object of "a non-hypothetical ought-judgment.")
Which a Christian would probably attribute to the unreliability of human reason, tainted as it is by sin, would they not? But then, from the Christian point of view, what is good is not really a matter of choice, is it?
Well, do you feel the same way about "healthy?" When we say that both lentils and eggs are "healthy" are we making the mistake of Molière's doctor? Should we always try to specify the exact way in which they produce health? And the same for running and weight lifting, which are also said to be healthy, but for different reasons, or bloodwork?
The benefit of referring to "health" is that this is the general principle that unifies lentils, running, eggs, weightlifting, etc., in that all promote health. I suppose a reductionist might deny that there is any such thing as health and insist that each be explained in terms of their specific interactions with the human body. Yet such an explanation will invariably also rely on principles, and each instantiation of a principle is different, and so the same demand can be made over and over, in a slide towards multiplicity.
For example, "milk thistle is healthy." What do we mean by healthy in this particular case? "It improves liver health?" What exactly does that entail? "It makes enzymes more efficient?" The same demand that was made of "health" can be made of "efficiency." Why not use the precise biochemical description of how this "efficiency" is achieved in this particular instance and then tie that back to liver function? But that will also invoke principles. And so on.
You could do the same thing with the principle of "lift" as applied to dragonfly wings, helicopter rotors, a delta wing plane, canards, a bi-plane, hawks, etc., since the principle is realized in different ways in each instance, the dynamics of each control surface are different, etc.
The epistemic notions at work at in the post at the bottom of: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/979851
To demand that everything be explained in terms of particulars becomes, at the limit, to make explanation impossible. Goodness is among the most general principles, and it is ends/goals by which proper beings (i.e. not just heaps) are unified and "one," (making a one from a many). This is complicated stuff, the transcendentals. This is why we often find it useful and easier to speak in terms of less general principles, such as health, etc., or to speak of goodness with qualification, e.g. "the best car here for drag racing," as opposed to "the best car without qualification" (if the options are a Ferrari and a VW Rabbit, there is an obvious fact, whereas since good is said primarily of men the goodness of an artifact like a car will tend to be filtered through the needs of a particular man, and a Rabbit might be better if you park in a city or don't want high insurance costs).
"Choiceworthy" is a particular rendering of the Greek, but I am aware of no major ethics which doesn't equate "good" with "what ought to be chosen," so I don't see the real difference here. It seems bizarre to me that someone could be a moral realist and not think we should do what is good. In virtue of what would it be "good" then?
You can see this in the English "desirable." When we speak of "desirable" outcomes in medicine, education, etc., we do not tend to mean "whatever people currently happen to desire." If this was true, dropping out of school would be a highly "desirable" outcome because kids clearly desire it. We mean what is truly worthy of desire, as in "choice-worthy," or "good." Many English uses of desirable become incoherent if it just means "what is desired." A similar association still remains with "reasonable" to a lesser extent.
I think your argument has two primary thrusts -- first, that some terms, such as "healthy" and "good," refer to general principles that unite many specific instances, drawing out what they have in common. Thus we can call something healthy without, in each case, needing to specify in exactly what way "healthy" applies. And second, that "choice-worthy" is an example of such a term.
In general, I have no objection to the first point. Universals are fine with me. Though we should be careful when we say:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not sure what limit you're thinking of, but the demand for explanation of a given use of a universal or principle is surely OK, isn't it? Perhaps what you mean is that an appeal to particulars as a way of constructing the explanation of a universal is going in the wrong direction. Given a principle, though, we can always ask that its use be explained in any given instance of its application.
My problems arise with the second point. I'm still not seeing how "choice-worthy" is the same kind of principle or universal as "healthy" and "good". If you'll accept some crude definitions:
healthy = conducive to optimum bodily performance or longevity
good = conducive to spiritual growth, flourishing, and compassion for others
choice-worthy = ?
(The first two definitions aren't meant to be clearly correct; they just represent the kind of filling-out we do when we want to use these terms as universals. You can adjust them as you see fit.)
But what about "choice-worthy"? What is the comparable way of indicating the kinds of qualities or features that it means to describe? I'm at a loss to understand how "choice-worthy" indicates anything other than "a good thing to choose" -- and this doesn't add anything to our knowledge about values, in the way that the definitions of "healthy" and "good" do. So I still feel I'm not getting it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So the difference would be that most other ethics don't use "choice-worthy" as a conceptual building block. Sure, a Kantian or a utilitarian would agree that we ought to choose what's good, but that's almost in passing. They might say that the good is choice-worthy, but not that "choice-worthy" defines the good, or can be of any help to us in further understanding what is good. Sorry, but it still sounds like Euthyphro trying to defend his use of "pious."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes! But what is that quality which, like "health" or "goodness", we can point to as "worthy of desire"? As far as I can see, it still has to be defined apart from choice, which makes "choice-worthy" akin to "dormative power".
One more shot at explaining my puzzlement:
Anything that is good is choice-worthy.
"Good" means "choice-worthy."
The first statement seems fine. It's not a definition, it's merely a description, a rule, if you like, about how to understand the conceptual connection. The second is a definition, and I can't make sense of it. Now if all you mean is the first, descriptive statement, then my puzzlement is at an end, and I agree. But if the second . . . I still don't get it.
Well, you've spent a lot of time on this, and if you feel you've said all you can, feel free to let it go.
It's fine to ask why a particular thing might be considered healthy, or to inquire into what "health" is. What makes explanation impossible is if we are to demand that all universals in an explanation be reduced to particulars. For instance, if you ask "what makes lentils healthy," the explanation is surely going to invoke a number of other principles and universals.
It's going about things in the wrong way in that, while particulars are better known to us directly, principles are better known in themselves. We all have an idea what health is, how we might apply it across plants and animals, etc. Now, if you go outside most places you can find plenty of insects. They are better known to us in that we can go right out and observe them. But there are millions upon millions of insect species, and what it means for each to be healthy varies by species. And this is, in part, why the principle health is better known in itself.
If the Good is "that towards which all things strive," then it ends up implying "choice-worthy." Something is choice-worthy vis-á-vis some end if it leads to that end. I wouldn't say "good" is synonymous with "conducive to spiritual growth, flourishing, and compassion for others." A "good knife" is presumably one that cuts well, which isn't directly related to flourishing. A "good knife to give a child," might be a dull knife though. The end matters. Flourishing (happiness) is associated with the Good in that it is sought for its own sake, whereas other things (e.g. cutting things with a knife, buying a knife, driving somewhere) are all sought for the sake of something else (Chapter I of the Ethics).
Whereof you get quotes like St. Maximus' "Nothing... is evil. It is not food that is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of children but unchastity, not material things but avarice, not glory but vainglory. It is only the misuse of things that is evil, not the things themselves.
The relation to the ultimate end determines goodness, but we also speak of goodness vis-á-vis particular, finite ends. The F-15 has been a suburb fighter airframe for instance, but whether fighter aircraft are generally a means to good ends is a different question.
So to your later question, something is choice-worthy according to some end (and the end itself can also be considered choice-worthy or not).
I don't see how this is the case. Utilitarianism is about what is good for its own sake, which is what we should pursue, which is the same thing as saying it is choice-worthy. It's not just that there is no ethics where what is good is not considered desirable/choice-worthy, it's also unclear to me how one could even argue that something is "best" but ought not be sought (except as qualified by pragmatic concerns, i.e., "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.") That would be saying: "the worse is preferable (more choice-worthy) to the better," which seems like a contradiction in terms. Hence, "no one knowingly chooses the worse over the better but for weakness of will or some other constraint."
To use David Bentley Hart's example, even Milton's Satan has to say "evil be thou my good," because it would be incoherent to say "evil be thou evil to me," and then to pursue it. Even in self-harm, self-harm is considered to be an end worth pursuing.
But I agree that something isn't good because it is choice-worthy. A thing is good relative to leading to some end, and choice-worthy if that end is sought (if the end itself is good). The two converge though. If God and theosis are the "highest good" then it follows that they should be pursued above all else, and thus are most choice-worthy.
In a similar way, we might talk about things being good or bad for a plant (helping or hindering its natural ends) but a plant cannot be said to be choosing.
Can you find any way that Socrates is now incorrect, in this passage? As best I can read it, it's the exact same argument, pointing out the exact same flaws. But see what you think.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Then, following Euthyphro, you would have to withdraw your definition of "good" as "choice-worthy." But again, if all you're saying is "Anything that is good is choice-worthy" (a fact rather than a definition; "anything that has X, also has Y"), we have no disagreement. Your original language, "If 'good' is taken to mean 'choice-worthy' as it often is . . ." certainly seems to be definitional, but perhaps you were merely offering a synonym.
Then we have no disagreement. I only framed it in that way because, as respects ethical decision-making for finite ends, you can use the two almost interchangeably since what is better will be more choice-worthy than what is worse (unless the "worse" is better vis-á-vis some other end that is also sought). It is easier to talk about what is choice-worthy IMO because it avoids getting into the metaphysics of Goodness.
The Euthyphro dilemma seems different to me. That respects if something is good because it is chosen or if it is chosen because it is good (that something would not be good unless it is chosen, which makes the choosing inscrutable). The answer of Protestant voluntarism is the former (God's will being inscrutable), the answer of classical metaphysics is that God is Goodness itself, and that all finite goods are good by participation in this Good, which requires a detour through the metaphysics of Goodness to properly explain. But both would allow that what is more good ought to be chosen over what is less good (i.e. that it is "more desirable" even if we don't currently desire it).
Yay! :grin:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And here too, no problem -- because we're both saying that being choice-worthy depends on something else. We can't use choice-worthiness itself as an explanatory element ("Well, I chose it because it was choice-worthy.") Nor desire either, of course.
Right. For the intellectually honest inquirer, this should be basic.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If the two terms are to be used interchangeably, then what we have is a definition, namely a definition of goodness qua ethical deliberation.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, it is entirely different. The vague appeal to Euthyphro is just more hand-waving:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting J
The sophistical fallacy persists. "Everything that is chosen is eo ipso choice-worthy, therefore choice-worthiness cannot be an explanation for choosing." Any honest interlocutor should be able to recognize that the antecedent is false. It's as if @J hasn't the faintest idea what the word "worth" means. He might also fallaciously claim that there is nothing explanatory about the claim, "I paid 100 dollars for it because it is worth 100 dollars."
...Note how it is also myopic to relegate the whole discussion to retrospect, for ethics also involves suggestions like, "You should pay $100 for it because it is worth $100." The fallacy loses even its prima facie purchase on this sort of future-looking counsel.
(This forum is riddled with Moliere/Poquelin's shoddy logic.)
It would only be voluntary in a corporate sense, "in Adam." Original Sin flows from a choice, namely Adam's choice. Christian metaphysics is going to see humanity as a kind of corporate/bodily entity, such that the actions of one bear on another.
J's premise is that anything that is chosen is choice-worthy (and therefore "good"). Again, this is false, and it results in the fallacy that choice-worthiness (and goodness) cannot be an explanation for choosing (and that worth cannot be an explanation for a valuation).
Your word "because" is too ambiguous for the disagreement. If we restrict ourselves to the sphere of ethical deliberation,* then what is good is what is choice-worthy. They mean the same thing in that context, and choice-worthiness is meant to function as a semantic explanation of goodness (qua ethical deliberation). An Aristotelian could equally agree that an ethical choice isn't good because it is choice-worthy. Rather, the goodness of an ethical choice is its choice-worthiness. Similarly, someone is not an unmarried man because he is a bachelor. Rather, an unmarried man is a bachelor.
Euthyphro subordinates an essence (piety) to an opinion (god-loved). If someone said that whatever is chosen is good then you could parallel the Euthyphro. But no one has said that. "Chosen" and "choice-worthy" are not the same thing. This is a strawman.
* Or simply [s]ethical[/s] deliberation simpliciter.
:up:
Yes, I agree. The connection only breaks down as we move out of the human ethical sphere. Hence the example of plants. Something might be "good or bad" for a plant, but living things that possess only a vegetative soul do not really participate in choices (and arguably even those with a sensitive soul don't rise to the level of "choosing" in the way that those with an intellect do).
But I think this highlights something helpful, which is that, without something that is chosen for itself, goodness (and choice-worthyness) dissolves into an endless multiplicity. In this case, anything is only ever good as respects some end, and that end is only ever good as respects some other end, etc., in an infinite regress. IMHO, this is why appeals to "pragmatism" to paper over epistemic and moral relativism/nihilism are ultimately flawed.
Likewise, if Hume is right and all desire ultimately rests on what is irrational, then man cannot determine or prioritize his own desires based on which are "truly best." All we will have is Nietzsche's clash of desires. Yet the desire for truth and "what is truly best" supposes a sort of intellectual desire. Such intellectual desire goes beyond all sensuous appetite and the passion. It has to. It must be able to ask of any and all appetites or passions "but is it good that I should feel this way?"
To me, this capacity for intellectual desire seems obviously essential to meaningful freedom and self-determination. We need something like Harry Frankfurt's second-order volitions, the ability to desire to have (or not have) other desires. Else we would simply be impelled forwards by inchoate and unfathomable desires (unfathomable because they cannot be known and chosen as "truly good.") As R. Scott Bakker puts it, we would be slaves to a "darkness that comes before" the light of intellect.
Moreover, if many disparate goods are sought for their own sake we still face a multiplicity problem. Yet if we are ordered to an infinite (or highest) good (actual or merely ens rationis), there is no such difficulty. This desire for an infinite good is exactly what we find in man at any rate. Even atheists such as Leopardi come to this conclusion. There is no finite end to desire, but instead the desire to "be gods." Yet its also unclear why, if materialism is true, such a desire for the infinite should exist. All desire should find full satisfaction in accessible goods.
David Bentley Hart has a pretty good essay on the phenomenology of this, looking at the idea as presented by Nicholas of Cusa (and to a lesser extent St. Gregory of Nyssa) in "You Are Gods." It ends:
Which is not to say that this phenomenology and analysis of rationality leads to the specific revelations of Christianity. It might lead as well to Neoplatonism, some forms of Romanticism, New Age syncretism, etc. Rather, it shows that the atheistic assumptions best represented by Hume, that the human desire for an infinite good can simply be dismissed as a sort of confused mathematical induction on finite goods (e.g. just adding +1 to the goodness of some beneficent father figure without end) fails to really take the issue seriously, both the presence of the infinite good as an intentional object (if not an actuality), and its role in making goodness a coherent unity. The latter is what allows for any rational agency that doesn't ultimately bottom out in inchoate, unknown desire, i.e. the capacity to choose things because they are truly best and are known as such.
But there are more obvious examples. I made a reasoned choice about buying a van off Carvana. I wasn't able to look under it when I picked it up. When we put it up on the lift it was leaking transmission fluid everywhere; the transmission had been fixed up just enough to get it to be able to drive off the lot. Clearly, my reasoned choice about my best interests was wrong.
Yes, I agree. :up:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, and I think a big part of this conversation is to repel, "Morality as a set of hypothetical imperatives." That is an important ingredient, and I can see that you were speaking to it earlier.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, and attendantly, when we make a choice we are deeming our election choice-worthy, but we could also come to regret (or confirm) it a minute, hour, or year later. Choice-worthiness is an important and non-vacuous concept. (As is goodness!)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, and precisely insofar as the infinite or highest good places the goods which are sought for their own sake into a hierarchy, or at least subordinates them to the highest good.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That is a good quote. It reminds me of Gaudium et Spes:
Quoting Gaudium et Spes, #22
-
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
An interesting idea.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, and we can even say this, particularly the bolded proposition:
Quoting Leontiskos
So J's vacuity argument could be applied to an assertion like, "At the time I chose X I deemed X to be choice-worthy." But this is a very narrow assertion, and is very far from what is required to sustain J's conclusions.
In general the fact of human regret throws the subjectivist's thesis into confusion. If nothing were good beyond my desires, or beyond what I deem good, then regret as well as second-order volitions would be impossible.
Interesting take on this is Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety. He is without mercy on Luthor, Catholic dogma, and others as they proceed fail to explain at all ("thought gets nothing") how the actions of the one (Adam, the first sinner) bear upon another, and here I assume you mean the rest of us, "the race" as Kierkegaard puts it. As it traditionally stands, no sense can be made at all out of this "original sin" unless there is a connecting similarity between us and Adam, meaning Adam's sin must be our own sin and a way that makes some sense. Otherwise Adam stands entirely apart from the rest of us.
You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate his analysis. Many think Kierkegaard went too far. Seminaries try to keep clear because of just this kind of thinking: the sin of all humanity lies with its fixation of all that is not God, bluntly put, and this fixation is culture itself, religious culture especially. Of course, being fixated on God has to do with one's spiritual constitution, and Heidegger will use this (not giving due credit at all. Called K a religious writer, pejoratively) in Being and TIme. But what Heidegger will call dasein, Kierkegaard, arguably, calls inherited sin, keeping in mind that MOST of dasein is language and culture (we are mostly "the they").
IME, "faith" is a path (bias/habit à la iek's 'ideology') of least cognitive effort:
1. (worldview) folk belief fantasy that impossible things (can) happen (e.g. supernaturals, spirits, superstitions, magic).
2. (religion) unconditional obedience (devotion, self-sacrifices) to hearsay accounts (e.g. myths, rituals, laws) about a deity (i.e. an "absolute" authority).
What about faith in oneself or faith in ones ability, this has nothing to do with religious faith, and inspires confidence in outcome.
For example I have faith that I will beat my friend at tennis tomorrow. This faith is grounded on my ability. Perhaps I could substitute the word faith with confidence yet this would merely be linguistic.
Indeed, thats generally what I recommend. If you have a good reason for believing something, you dont need faith. Reasonable confidence in ones skill and training based on evidence is not the same as faith. Some theists attempt an equivocation fallacy by equating faith in God with faith in things like air travel.
Yes they do. Faith that something exists (i.e. god) without any proof is the religious type and not much different to saying I have faith that it will not rain tomorrow. Its speculative.
The speculation that it will not rain tomorrow has two outcomes either it will or it wont yet faith had nothing to do with the outcome because the result is natural either way.
To believe in the supernatural without proof and faith alone is to immunise yourself against empirical scrutiny as the believer has no obligation to provide proof as to the deitys existence (which may or may not exist).
But what does faith have to do with the deitys existence when it either exists or doesnt ? Does it merely leverage ones bet that it does exist ? If so is this not futile ?
What about it? That's nothing to do with the thread topic and mere equivocation.
Quoting Tom Storm
:up: :up:
The OP asks what faith is so I provided my example which is faith in oneself. Faith does not necessarily have to have religious connotations as such.
Quoting Tom Storm
If you identify a difference use, you don't get to just declare your use correct and the alternative use incorrect. The OP asks what is faith, and it's clear it's used differently by different groups.
That is, you're as much guilty of the equivocation as they are if there is no agreed upon definition.
What you've identified is the Jerusalem/Athens distinction, where the former holds to more traditional Judaic/Hebrew Bible (OT) views and the latter is more Hellenstic. https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/three-ways-to-think-about-athens-and-jerusalem/?srsltid=AfmBOooWxM6LOKIjLvfZUHucvTbwFRRRsre7eNMfS4Lep2Q7vGkUzRRR
Old school faith versus philosphical reasoning is a way to think about this distinction, and it should come as no surprise you would be biased towards the Athens approach.
Faith in the OT was trust in the power of God, not in a belief in God without evidence. Thematic throughout the OT is the Hebrews following and trusting in God and their prospering and their doubting God and straying and their being punished.
They did not wander in the desert for 40 years and have Socratic debates about what God is, what "the good" is, or whether he could exist. His existence was a given, and it was based upon their seeing plagues, seas parting, and manna falling from heaven. Even after the empirical evidence (the miracles) ceased, God's existence was never challenged, but only the extent of his power was challenged.
So, yes to a biblically based theist, they would refer to faith in the same way as theyd say they trust the plane will land safely in the sense they trust a bigger plan being in place, but they don't actually ask if God exists. That matter is foundational.
Not really. I agree the word is used differently. I'm explaining why I make a distinction and advocating for my preference. This is a site devoted to hairsplitting definitions, so I dont think this was remotely off track.
But let's look at the example again. Comparing faith in God with faith in plane flight, say, seems to conflate two very different things. When an evangelical says (as they often do; and Ive heard this from Catholics too), But you atheists live by faith all the time, theyre committing an equivocation fallacy.
Theyre comparing faith in air travel (something we can demonstrate exists, something based on empirical evidence, engineering, and training) with belief in a god, which is an idea we cant even properly define. That seems like faulty reasoning to me.
When I board a plane, Im not taking a leap of faith in the same sense that a theist might use the word. I know that airplanes are real physical objects, built through well-understood principles of aerodynamics. I know that pilots are trained extensively, undergo certification, and are subject to routine evaluation. I know that aircraft are maintained by engineers following strict protocols, that the air traffic control system is in place to coordinate safe routes, and that there are black boxes and regulatory investigations when things go wrong. All of this is grounded in observable, repeatable, testable processes.
So when I "trust" a plane to get me to my destination, it's not a blind or metaphysical faithit's a reasonable confidence based on experience, statistics, and a mountain of evidence. Thats a far cry from faith in a deity, which lacks comparable foundations. Equating the two just muddies the waters.
I think these differences are worth pointing out since they are overlooked by some theists.
I think they are mean you too have foundational beliefs that lack empirical proof, like causality and the existence of other minds. If causality isn't provable, it's equally as logically to assert teleological explanations are valid.
To the extent you have faith that a plane won't crash, that's just probabilistic reasoning, so I'd agree that's not really faith. That's just playing the odds.
In my experience (and Ive debated many in person), they generally point to specific things like flight, crossing roads, or the efficacy of medicine. The more philosophically inclined ones - presuppositionalist Christians - are more likely to take the path you mentioned. Yes, we all hold presuppositions.
The claim atheists live by faith too trades on a confusion about what faith means. Atheists acknowledge basic assumptions but generally would treat these as provisional and open to revision, not sacred truths. Foundational beliefs like causality are not equivalent to teleological or theistic explanations, because they dont posit an agent or a purpose we must subscribe to without evidence.
I wonder if it's even that. As long as we don't have "fear of flying", aren't we just going along our way without giving it much thought? Like crossing the road (a car could run me over), walking on sidewalks (a flower pot could fall on my head) etc.
We do engage in probablistic reasoning on occasion, like when we look at a cloudy sky and wonder if we should take an umbrella. But even then a large part of the decision might be not wanting to carry around that inconvenient thing. (I'd think how much anticipation of potential effect translates into imagining the event and thus making it more or less acute at the moment of decision also plays a role. For example, I'd be more inclined to worry about a planecrash, if I've survived one before - but the difference isn't a re-evaluation of the risk, it's likely a greater vividness in imagination.)
I feel like "playing the odds" is as much an ex-post interpretation of our day-to-day conduct as "having faith". And as such I could accept something like "I have faith in God (or a bigger plan, or whatever), and you have faith in statistics," as a provisional resting point to figure out what's going on. But it's difficult for me to see beyond that point: I don't know what faith is supposed to do here. I can't really pin down the common ground. Whether you have faith in God or not, whether I believe in odds or not, planes crash, and when we're in a crashing plane that sucks (I'd probably be at least a little distracted from fear of dying by being horribly airsick - a blessing?). And for me that's all there really is to say about this.
So would you say, I arrive somewhere else after a branching point, or I just stop and settle down on the branching point (I could sell people lemonade as they pass by towards their teleological or stochastic destinations)? Or if we include the social aspect, am I just going off-road, since I don't get along with the way that people maintain the roads? (Is this metaphor even useful?)
The thing is this: it's my experience that whether my outlook seems to me to align with someone else's is not something I can predict from the single information of whether they believe in God or not. I'm far more likely to find common ground with, say, a Christian fideist than with say Christopher Hitchens. How, if at all, is this meaningful?
I do find the question of what faith is intellectually interesting (hence I'm here in this thread). But I don't find it impacts my day-to-day life much at all, except when it comes to the rhetoric involved. Let's say I'm sitting next to a priest in a crashing plane; if he we trying to calm with the usual rhetoric I wouldn't doubt his good intentions, but it wouldn't calm me - it'd be a nuisance. I'd spend my last few minutes on earth humouring a theist. (But then, that's just the life of an atheist in a predominantly theist country. In a predominantly theist but also predominantly secular country, the irony of the matter is that you usually don't have to confront that rhetoric - with the exception being moments of crisis, which is also when you're least likely to have the mental energy to spare to deal with this. People who find God-talk calming don't tend to understand this, or at least there doesn't seem to be a contingency plan for such situations in place [if I can't say this, what else is there to say?]).
Very often "you have faith, too" is a genuine attempt at finding common ground. It's probably here where there's a practical interest beyond just the intellectual curiosity. But depending on where you are more often, equally often, or less often it's also an attempt to errect a barrier and either lure you over or use you as foil to solidify the barrier. (I'm in a less-often place. It seems I'm lucky.)
:100: :up:
It was an unreasonable claim in teh discussion. That is simply not how food is characterized. It is necessary to survive. Colloquially referring to this as 'good' is a psychological trick and not an ethical claim. Come on now.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yessir - I wasn't purposefully dodging it. My response was tactical and addressing that wasn't needed.
Quoting Leontiskos
Bit of a non sequitur going on here. I would want to know your motivation from 2 to 3 there - or perhaps, what you would expect one to say and what you think that might mean.
The good is arbitrary. There is no arbiter. There are things people like, and things people don't like. The pervasiveness of any given view doesn't lend it any supremacy in a meta conversation about it's worth. It works. That doesn't say anything about its rightness. It should be clear from my babblings on any of these sorts of threads that I'm not entirely comfortable emotionally/intuitively with this. I'm much closer to wanting somethign in the realm of waht I feel you're failing to support. But, intellectually it's pretty simple to me - there is no arbiter of good and bad. For htis reason, either we need to change the conversation into something more subjective but still somehow measurable (i.e something like individual desire divided by the general harm/good it would do for the chosen cultural goals of that time and place in question) to talk ab out how best to act in given times and palces or to simply accept that ethics is properly a conversation about how conflicting views of good and bad must cooperate.
Saying, That seems like faulty reasoning to me, is not a substantial argument. If you want to demonstrate an equivocation, then you must identify the two different term-concepts being used and show that they are relevantly different. If you want to contest a claim about airplanes, then you ultimately have to give your definition of faith, show how that definition does not apply to airplanes, and then be prepared to defend your own definition.
The airplane analogy does not strike me as ideal, but consider this story. I have a friend who is very non-religious. When she gets on an airplane, she closes her eyes and says, I believe it can fly, I believe it can fly, I believe it can fly! She tells the person seated next to her that if you dont believe, then it wont work. She is joking, of course, but she is not making an anti-religious dig. She is just having a bit of fun, and it would not be funny if there were nothing true about it. She has no idea how airplanes fly. She has no first-hand knowledge of, Engineering protocols, air traffic control systems, and black boxes. And you probably dont, either. Scientists themselves continue to dispute the explanation for lift. In fact there are a surprising number of people who avoid flying. If you ask them why, they might literally tell you something about a lack of trust/faith in airplanes. For all these reasons, the word faith is naturally suited to airplanes, and it seems like your dispute may be with the English dictionary and English language use rather than with the word faith. The prima facie evidence is certainly against your view that the word faith is not applicable to air travel, given the way in which it is spontaneously used in that context. If space travel becomes popularly accessible the word faith will be naturally applied in that context even more than it is applied to air travel. Using faith in such contexts is surely not an equivocal use, as the difference between the money bank and the river bank is.
That fits with my experience, for I have found that polemical atheists always beg the question with regard to the concept of faith. I usually let them define the word, show them that they themselves are committed to such a concept, and then wait for them to renege on their definition, which they always do. Its not surprising that their belief that the word or concept of faith only ever operates in religious contexts is impossible to sustain. This is because the polemical atheist uses faith as a purely pejorative term, when in fact in common use it is not a purely pejorative term. . If the atheist abandons pejoration and tries to define it in a serious way then he will inevitably lose his debate. In reality the distinction between the religious and the non-religious is not nearly as simplistic as such an atheist wants to believe.
Note that the pejorative argument looks like this:
1. Religious faith is irrational
2. Faith in airplanes is not irrational
3. Therefore, faith in airplanes is not religious faith there is an equivocation occurring
Thats all these atheists are doing in their head to draw the conclusion about an equivocation, and this argument is the foundation of any argument that is built atop it.
-
We can actually parallel the two propositions quite easily:
[*] Presence of faith, presence of assent (where assent flows solely from faith)
[*] Presence of faith which is not necessary for assent (overdetermination)
[/list]
A fear of flying attaches to 1a. Atheism attaches to 1b. Tom Storms approach to flying is represented by 2a. My approach to God's existence is represented by 2b. And as said, 3b is a more recent phenomenon. 3a can characterize flying, but it would also tend to characterize the non-professional who is traveling in space or is traveling in a deep sea submarine.
This helps show why it is wrong to assume that faith necessarily attaches or necessarily does not attach to a material proposition. In fact the same proposition can be held with different modes of assent. 2a is not the only possibility for airplanes, and 1b/3b are not the only possibilities for God.
(As I recall, Josef Pieper's treatise on faith is rather good on this question. The beginning can be found <here>.)
So you are claiming that food isn't good, it is necessary to survive. But I would point out that people call food good in part because it is necessary to survive. Both are true at the same time. And food is a sound counterexample to your claim that good is arbitrary and that what is good for a Christian is different from what is good for a Muslim. If Christians and Muslims both deem food good then that claim is false.
Quoting AmadeusD
You are avoiding answering the question. If you answer the question in the affirmative then your claim about arbitrariness is consistent with your answer. If you answer the question in the negative then your claim about arbitrariness is inconsistent with your answer. And I think we both know that the correct answer to (3) is, "No." If the rhymes and reasons are not altogether different, then their products will not be arbitrary across individuals.
Quoting AmadeusD
Is there an arbiter of true and false? Do we need an arbiter before we can see that 2+2=4? If no arbiter is needed elsewhere, then why would it be needed in ethics?
-
Quoting AmadeusD
I would suggest, "Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble," by Peter L. P. Simpson. A link can be found <here>.
In my experience there is great variability in atheists' willingness to countenance radical skepticism, e.g. a denial of the intuitions underwriting logic, a denial of causality, taking the "Problem of Induction" (or other arguments from underdetermination) seriously, or skepticism re the authority of reason and argument in general. For instance, the "New Atheists" tend to dismiss this sort of skepticism out of hand, and I would guess that those who tend to embrace it more fully would tend towards agnosticism (since they allow that they cannot know much of anything, or that "knowing" is something more affective).
The question of teleology is sort of a fraught one. I don't think it is that simple. There are at least plausible arguments that causation degenerates into, at most, Hume's constant conjunction (which opens up the Problem of Induction question) without final causes (or that it must simply be eliminated, e.g. Russell). And these arguments don't even tend to come from the advocates of telos, at least not exclusively. Many of the most famous ones come from those who assiduously want to foreclose on final causality and have then realized that there is "nothing left" to causes and "reasons" except coorelation vis-á-vis "sense data."
Maybe notmaybe mechanistic causation can survive alone without being eliminated. Either way, the suppositions that the world we happen to find before us "just is" and that this assertion of brute fact, the dismissal of the Fine Tuning Problem, glossing over the epistemic and metaphysical issues that arise from materialism's representationalism and its positing of a "being outside intelligibility," or the sorts of plausibility issues brought up by Nagel in his "Mind and Cosmos" (just for example), has never struck me as just "following the empirical facts," or in any sense "obvious." In some sense, it's a demand to close empirical inquiry re explanationthe positive claim that it [I]must[/I] end at the wall of "it just is, for no reason at all." And in deterministic versions of materialism, it leads to the sorts of conclusions Will Durant highlightse.g. that every last letter of Hamlet came into being because it "just did," the result of a causeless Rube-Goldberg machine that exists "for no reason at all," and so too for all our emotions, loves, and dreams.
There is a sort of collapse of the intelligibility of causes, or "reasons," that comes with the removal of final causality, whereas the removal of formal causality seems to reduce causation to mere correlation. Yet even with some notion of formal (not uncommon in contemporary philosophy of physics these days, e.g. ontic structural realism), we are still left with no explanation of this form. It still "just is." Everything, the history of the cosmos and our lives, as well as the cosmos's quiddity, "what it is," or the nature of "efficient causal mechanisms" (e.g. "natural laws") ultimately has to bottom out in "for no reason at all." Aside from this difficulty, there is the seemingly obvious fact that final causality is at work in living organisms, or at least in us. Denials of this in the form eliminativism and epiphenomenalism have their own plausibility issues, and at the very least they don't seem "obvious."
This is of course not to say final cause does not have its own problems. Final causes have to end somewhere, and they will either bottom out in the inscrutable, just like the denial of final causes, or they will ascend to the infinite and ineffable. The dilemma then, seems to leave us straddling a chasm. On one end we face the inchoate and inscrutable, "it just is," which arises out of the denial of telos (or which is a feature of extreme voluntarist Protestant theology, from which modern athiesm largely historically evolved). On the other end we have the ineffable, the infinite, whose essence seems inherently unknowable, and which can only be probed by discursive reason through the apophatic via negativa.
But I would tend to follow Charles Taylor in "A Secular Age" here. If the answer to this long running quagmire seems "obvious" and without difficulty, this will tend to be because one has been "spun" in a closed position to the other frame. This tends to involve having avoided the issues that dominate the middle ground. It is, at the very least, not something that seems obvious to a great deal of thoughtful people who have dedicated their lives to the question. And, with Charles Taylor, I would agree that the pivot to either of the "closed" positions in either the "immanent frame" or the "transcendent frame" often tends to result more from moral and aesthetic judgement re the cosmos and conceptions of nature, than from arguments about the actual facts in question. Karen Armstrong's "Sacred Nature" is a pretty good work on these different framings across different cultures.
Maybe it is even so that things "just are " Yet, I've never been able the fathom how this assertion, when taken as obvious, doesn't need to rely on the same sort of dogmatism at work in the assertions of people of a "simple faith." This is particularly true when it is supported with "science says this is so," or "one cannot possibly have understood modern cosmology and think there are any issues here" (cosmologists debate this sort of thing all the time). At least the fundamentalist is actually correct about what their authority has said in this case (even if we would tend to give the authority far less credence).
You mentioned David Bentley Hart in your other post. His first two essays in "You Are Gods," do a decent job laying out the metaphysical and phenomenological arguments for the claim that any rational (and thus any truly free) agent must be oriented towards the infinite. Nicolas of Cusa is one of his big sources here. And ties into notions of final causality in that a chain of final causes that stops short of the infinite seems to require bottoming out in inchoate impulse.
For one, one cannot rank actions according to what is "truly best" without a "highest good" by which to order them. Barring this, all actions are only ordered to some end that must be justified and judged good according to some other finite end, and so on, in an infinite regress. But since finite creatures cannot consider an infinite number of standards in a finite time, judgement must end in the irrational.
Sure. Something I think is misguided. But I understand that this doesn't sit perfectly.
Quoting Leontiskos
You've done nothing to support this. It is necessary (as we both know, empirically). That htis is good is totally arbitrary. Unless you've made some claim before entering the discussion, which means "good" is to be interpreted as "that which is necessary for survival" or something similar. Have you?
Quoting Leontiskos
No. I'm telling you it was non sequitur. Feel how you want to about that. But it was loaded and I wanted clarification as to what you had loaded into it. If you don't want to give it, that's fine. I wont engage.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't even know quite what you were getting at mate. Perhaps read my comments in better faith. I wanted clarification, and I do not take anything you've said here on board because its jumping hte gun something fierce.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not in the strict sense of those words. We have theories that apply to different facets of life, and in some of them we get T and F values. In some we don't. Logic (pure logic, so not applicable to most things in the world) has a convenient status here, but real life isn't that simple. Heck, language can't even account for Truth and Falsity correctly or consistently.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm sorry, are you trying to suggest that Ethics is a mathematical function? If so we have no basis for discussion. Otherwise, I can't tell what you're getting at in this reply.
Quoting Leontiskos
It isn't. But if you want 'good' and 'bad' to mean much of anything, you need one. I don't claim they do, so I don't need one.
Quoting Leontiskos
In the first section, he outlines almost exactly what I've suggested Ethics functions 'as'.
"The prudential ought rests for its force on the facts about the contingent desires and interests people have, and just tells one what one ought to do if one is to satisfy them."
I find nothing further on which would counter this position. It's arbitrary. Obviously. If you'd like to point me somewhere in the article, more than happy to review and adjust.
It's never been explained that way in any ethics (or morality) courses i've taken or seen. It is always described as "right" and "wrong" action. "Good" and "bad" are noted to be arbiters of that. But arbiters of 'good' and 'bad' are literally nowhere to be seen, except within agreements between people. Is this clearer?
I think @J is on the right track.
Ethics is not coherent. But that doesn't make it not useful. Flippant Eg: Virtue Ethics is an absolutely ridiculous concept. "Do what improves your character" is one of the dumbest, vaguest and unhelpful concepts society could instantiate.
But, nevertheless, it is a very effective way for people to review their actions and views with some circumspection. We can't really expect more from humans without God, so "As far as it goes" virtue ethics is successful. It just doesn't go far, because it can't do what Ethics, proper, wants: Arbitrate between "right" and "Wrong" actions.
Perhaps we just understand what's going on differently. Seems a common thing among "ethicists". For people on a forum throwing pseudo-essays around, it's almost assuredly some of hte issue.
NB: I do think these types of discussions are the dead-end of Ethics. They can be fun, but they are the inevitable result of cordially disagreeing about what should be done. There is, usually, no answer which isn't goal-oriented. The goal, itself, can't be assessed in the same way.
Quoting Ludwig V
Totally fair enough.
Quoting Ludwig V
I may not understand the question, but this strikes me as "How does one delineate between water from a spring, and water from a lake?" Well, you don't. You delineate their sources. AS you've done, fairly clearly. There's no reason to go further. However...
Quoting Ludwig V
is certainly true. I think this is where people decide to be "hard line" in their ethical view. Usually, without actually examining it. Such is life.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think so. Ethics is the study of moral views, as far as I understand. So ethics is assessing action, and morality is the basis for the actions in the first place. An ethical view would necessarily inform your moral views. I can see a clear difference, but I have also understood arguments that they are not actually distinct. Such is life, lol.
One thing to note, that I think its a truism, applied to any and all exchanges i'm having here"
Not "good" is not at all the same as "not good". I do not think this is being noticed.
Sorry I missed this. I like your arguments.
You're talking, I guess, about epistemic parity; that trusting a plane to fly without understanding how it works is the same as believing in God without understanding or good evidence.
You may have something here about the nature of ignorance. If someone has no knowledge about something then their belief in it may not be justified personally. Not sure this is the same as faith at work.
And even if someone is ignorant of physics and pilots, they still know - based on experience and knowledge of the world - that planes hardly ever crash. Thats not blind faith, thats pattern recognition based on observable outcomes.
In relation to planes, if a person wants to, they can readily establish evidence which can be tested empirically and demonstrated almost without fail. Not so God.
There's also a difference between metaphysical commitments (God) and evidence based trust (flight). Getting onto a plane assumes an empirically grounded system works, and if it didnt, youd change your belief based on evidence (e.g., planes started crashing). Faith in God, however, is often immune to counter-evidence, which seems to be a key philosophical difference here.
Quoting Leontiskos
So the argument I made is this:
Religious faith: Belief without (or despite) evidence.
Trust in airplanes: Belief grounded in consistent, observable evidence.
The difference isn't just about whether a belief is rational it's about how the belief is formed and justified.
Its not simply this ones irrational, this ones not. The key point is what justifies the belief. Faith in airplanes is based on statistics, experience, and reliable expert systems. Religious faith, by contrast, is typically belief without that kind of empirical support.
But thank you for your response, very interesting.
This is hard work. :wink:
The way these are set out don't really make sense to me.
Take 2a for instance. I would not agree that this is set out in a useful way. I would say instead, "whether I believe that a plane can fly or not, there is consistent, observable evidence that they do fly safely (almost always)." And if I want to understand how, I can learn all about it and even make planes which work. I don't think faith is a useful word here. Belief is better.
Quoting Leontiskos
To me this reads as: "I do not have faith that God exists, but I have faith God exists." Using assent doesnt change the underlying issue: without evidence or rational support, it still functions as faith.
If I say my plane will fly, this is a probabilistic claim based on consitent observation. God exists is a metaphysical claim not supported by empirical observation. Isn't "assenting" to both as if they have the same epistemic weight a category mistake?
Now this brings us to evidence for God and you might consider there to be enough reasons to make God as real as plane flight. For some Aquinas' Five Ways might suffice. Which brings us to a separate area.
Out of interest, are there any forms of atheism you feel more warmly towards and if so, why?
I count many theists as friends and there are many atheists I dislike for their dogma and intolerance.
Thank you, but although we agree that "choice-worthy" isn't helpful, it doesn't follow from this that:
Quoting AmadeusD
That's a whole other question.
Let me try to preempt something before addressing such posts.
If we are going to do real philosophical work then we have to have real definitions. What almost always happens in these discussions is that the atheist builds their petitio principii right into their definition of faith. This is how the atheist ends up defining faith:
This goes back to what I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
We can literally see this within this thread. I will limit myself to your definition and avoid drawing in other atheists or unbelievers:
Quoting Tom Storm
This is just another form of "irrational assent." To believe something without (or despite) evidence is irrational. So it's no wonder that you come to the conclusion that believers are irrational. It is built into your very definition of faith.
But this is not how dictionaries, philosophers, or religious traditions define faith. It is a false definition. More to the point, it is a pejorative/biased definition, and without real definitions we cannot do real philosophical work. The essay by Joseph Pieper that I referenced gets to the heart of this.
So before any real philosophical work can be done, you need to find a definition of faith that isn't reducible to irrational assent. Along the same lines, atheists are not allowed to make ad hoc distinctions between religious faith and non-religious faith (because this depends on the same exact petitio principii). made a similar point very succinctly.
(If it makes it easier to understand, think about the fact that if we are to conduct an investigation into the question of whether believers are rational, we cannot begin by assuming our conclusion. Our starting point must be neutral.)
I have not made the argument that believers are irrational. I'm merely discussing the uses of the word faith and my belief that theists often use it indiscriminately when comparing their religious faith to a non faith based confidence in something demonstrable.
But I'll mull over your reasoning. I am open to changing my thinking on most things. Perhaps I am wrong on this and if I am I'll change my mind.
Incidentally, Im not an atheist whos deeply invested in the role of reasoning in debates about God. As Ive said here several times, I think religious belief or atheism are like sexual attractionyou cant help what youre attracted to. People tend to use reasoning as post hoc justifications. That doesnt mean I dont hear the arguments or engage in debate from time to time.
GEnerally agreed they don't follow. But you can't get to the idea of an arbiter of good and bad from the fact that some actions are "choice-worthy" because good and bad don't come into that, prima facie.
But granted that its proponents do make that equation, we can see how the pieces are arranged on the board. I wouldn't say it's wrong, just not very perspicuous.
Your question, I believe, is more from the point of view of ordinary language: How come something that's worthy of choice therefore ought to be chosen? Don't we need an additional factor to take us over the bridge between "worthy" and "obligatory"? If "choice-worthy" isn't defined as above, then I agree with you.
I have a pretty serious issue with this (and this might relate to your later comment on ordinary language). I cannot understand "choice-worthy" as anything other than an expression of preference. Nothing besides seems to arbitrate what would and wouldn't come under that head.
This does paint me into a partial corner though: I should, really, be committed to accepting the phrase as ethical, while maintaining that ethical statements are emotional ones. Perhaps that the right resolution for someone of my bent.
If we do stick with ordinary usage, we can find examples on both sides. Sometimes we say, "This non-dairy ice cream is worthy of my choice because it's especially creamy and gooey and that's what I like." Or we might say, "You betrayed your partner. That was not a worthy choice, and you shouldn't have made it." I don't know how far we can push this kind of analysis, other than to point out that the "worth" part of "worthy" can, and does, have more than one meaning.
"Preference" is problematic in the same way. You can stipulate that it means "something I like to choose," or you can say it means "what I do in fact choose, regardless of my personal preferences." You'll find usages supporting either interpretation.
Hmm. While I think I'm following your intent, these aren't different claims for our purposes. The latter requires the addition of "because I disapprove" to support the obvious disapproval therein. You think it wasn't choice-worthy and in this case for someone else so there's a second level of preference involved there. But nothing but hte person's opinion makes their disapproval hold any water, I'd think. I don't think we can find examples that support both interpretations. A preference is, definitionally, something subjectively preferred. Not something 'chosen'. That may be why you're seeing a cross-reading available where I do not.
But I don't recognize your usage. As I said, it cannot be found in dictionaries, among philosophers of religion, or within religious bodies. So it seems to be a kind of pejorative derived from interpreting religious believers against their own testimony.
In other words, if you start the discussion by defining "faith" as "Belief without (or despite) evidence," then my response is simple: I am not familiar with this term "faith," I have never encountered this term, "faith,"* and I don't know any religious believers or philosophers of religion who use this term "faith." What dictionaries, religious people, and generally non-biased people mean by 'faith' is not "Belief without (or despite) evidence."
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay, sounds good. Pieper's treatment is very good. He also has a book-length treatment. All of the work I did in <this post> is based on Pieper's definition, which is empirically derived via actual usage. Pejorative definitions preclude true philosophical work like that.
* I have never encountered it in the wild; only in the mouths of a subset of atheists and unbelievers.
If this were true one would discover what a good therapy for liver cancer is solely by investigating people's opinions instead of by studying livers. The Wright Brothers would have had to develop a successful, good flying machine by studying people's opinions instead of aerodynamics. Farmers would likewise learn their trade by studying opinions about wheat instead of wheat. One would learn that wet, mossy logs are bad for starting fires and that dry tinder and kindling is good only though talking, not through the practice of starting fires.
More problematic, we'd have to explain all these opinions re goodness vis-á-vis ends. If they don't tie back to the things themselves, e.g., that dry hemlock and birch bark burn easily and that mossy wet oak doesn't burn easily, then these opinions would have to spring from aether uncaused. You'd need some explanation for why "being chemicals and energy" makes it impossible for wood to be "good for anything" per se, but the human being, itself also just chemicals and energy, is capable of the sui generis capacity to project the illusory goodness of things vis-á-vis different ends onto the whole world, such that "hammers are better for driving nails than tissues," seems to be an obvious empirical fact.
But it's a radically skeptical position, and frankly farcical, to claim:
"Tissues aren't actually any worse for driving nails than hammers,"
"Having its leg ripped off in a trap isn't bad for a fox" or
"Being lit on fire isn't bad for children."
This is why the more convincing moral skeptic doesn't try to claim that nothing is truly good or bad relative to different ends, which leads to absurdity (e.g. an F-150 is equally as good of a boat or plane as it is a truck). They instead point out that ends like "driving in nails" and "having a plane that flies," are not sought for their own sake. They are only choice-worthy vis-á-vis some other end. Driving in a nail is good relative to securing a shelf. Securing a shelf is only good relative to some other end. Driving a nail into your own hand isn't good. What is good as respects some end is empirical (else science and experience cannot tell us how to accomplish goals), but then each end also has to be justified in terms of some other end.
The skeptic, to have a claim that is more plausible than "stomping my cat isn't bad for it," needs to claim something like "all ends are ordered to other ends," and this ordering, since it cannot extend ad infinitum, must always bottom out in irrational impulse. On the other hand, there is the fairly dominant idea that what all men seek, they seek for the sake of being happy/flourishing (eudaimonia), and that this end is "sought for its own sake," securing an ultimate human end by which all other human ends (and means towards those ends) are judged "good" or "choiceworthy."
So, there are lots of attacks here. One can deny that man (or any organism) has any nature at all, meaning that happiness is unique and sui generis for each individual. I think this is patently ridiculous, since it's obvious that some things are always bad for people, but people have argued for relativism on the idea that man essentially creates himself and his values out of the air. The weakness here is that this sort of self-creation narrative, aside from challenging empirical experience, also tends to assume what it sets out to prove.
Hume's view, from whence we get the "is-ought gap " is another popular one. It essentially begs the question on this though because Hume presupposes his answer in how he defines reason in the Treatise, essentially declaring by fiat that rational appetites do not exist (i.e., that there are only sensible appetites). That Hume often is guilty of demonstrable question begging (e.g. the assault on causes) by presupposing definitions that contain his conclusion has certainly not affected the popularity of his arguments though. But I think it's more relevant that, if Hume is right, it isn't just emotivism or sentimentalism that follows, but that man cannot have a rational nature at all and that man cannot possess a rational, self-determining freedom in any sense, since all action always bottoms out in inchoate impulse that lies prior to the reach of his dessicated conception of reason.
Anyhow, like the radical skeptic, the moral anti-realists seems absolutely incapable of actually acting like they believe their stated position. , you make a great many posts about things being "better" or "superior" or "worse," for instance, e.g. "indigenous ways of knowing," or the justness of special indigenous privileges, etc.
I'd argue that if a philosophical position requires rejecting obvious truisms like "it is bad for children to be lit on fire," and it is literally impossible to act like one actually believes it with the courage or their convictions (i.e. for its form to inform the mind), that's a clear sign of deficiency and we should question the epistemic standards that lead to such an untoward judgement.
Are there many radical skeptics on this forum or anywhere? Relativist are not all radical skeptics. A relativist is likely to believe that truth or justification, especially in areas like morality, knowledge, or culture, is relative to some framework, such as a cultural context, language, or conceptual scheme.
No doubt, some relativists also accept that causing suffering is not a good thing. Theres nothing stopping a relativist from having empathy, or from feeling bad when they cause suffering.
A radical skeptic, on the other hand, denies the very possibility of knowledge. That view is much less commonly heard and I don't really understand it.
Just because someone is a moral anti-realist doesnt mean they are unconcerned with the suffering of people or animals. Moral anti-realism simply denies the existence of objective, independent moral truths, but this doesnt make suffering any less important within the contingent frameworks that people care about. Anti-realists could still care deeply about reducing suffering, because their moral beliefs are shaped by social, emotional, or cultural factors that give them strong reasons to act compassionately. Although it is interesting that most people seem to be reasonably comfortable letting people die by the millions in other countries and not do a thing to help.
I doubt that there are moral facts, but (like most people) Ive inherited a range of dispositions from my culture and upbringing, shaping my emotional responses, which inform actions and moral preferences. These might have been quite different in other circumstances.
This is the dividing line between subjectivism and objectivism in ethics. The subjectivist (you, perhaps?) wants to say that the usage of words like "worthy" or "good" or "right" can be correct only when they express personal opinions. Someone who uses these words to refer to alleged standards that "arbitrate," as you put it, between preferences is using them incorrectly. The objectivist, on the other hand (me, for instance), believes that both subjective and objective usages of value words are fine; both have their contexts; both say meaningful things. The objectivist believes, as the subjectivist does not, that when value words are used in a specifically ethical context (as opposed to "I prefer this ice cream" contexts), they refer to actual objective (or intersubjective) realities that can influence preferences, not merely reflect them.
Quoting AmadeusD
We can change the example to the 1st person to avoid this: "I made X choice; it was not a worthy choice; I should not have made it." But again, I much prefer using more value-oriented words than "choice-worthy", for the reasons we've already discussed. Better to say, "It was wrong; I shouldn't have done it."
Quoting AmadeusD
Well, yeah, but language isn't that easily corralled. Consider the similar case of "want". Some people argue that "You did X because you wanted to do X" is always the case (in non-coercive circumstances), because we only do what we want to do. But in real life it's much more subtle, hence the distinction between "want" and "will," or "want" and "choose." I can will something, or choose something, as my final decision in a complicated matter, without in the least "wanting" to do it. I may not even necessarily want to do the "right thing", as a category -- I just believe I should.
So, the distinction between "prefer" and "choose" follows a similar course. We often have to discriminate between something we'd prefer, subjectively, all things being equal, versus something we would never feel that way about, all things being equal, but feel we must choose, under these circumstances. Perhaps there's a better pair of words to use that reflects the distinction, but at any rate I believe the distinction is an important one.
I'd be interested to know whether you think this sort of distinction can be preserved from an ethical-subjectivist point of view. It seems to me that it can, but tell me what you think.
All moral theorists are relativists to some degree. You can see straightforward analysis of relativism in cultural norms way back in Herodotus for instance. The Greeks would accept no amount of payment to eat their dead and were offended by the very notion. They must burn them on pyres. The Callatiae would accept no amount of money not to eat their dead, and were disgusted by the notion of burning them.
We might allow that it is cruel to randomly circumcise a child in the context of Japanese culture without any medical justification, where it serves no real purpose, but that circumcision might be beneficial in the context of Jewish or Muslim society where it is a ubiquitous mark of group identity. The problem for pernicious forms of relativism is that they make everything relative. Thus, they have no way to criticize even the most extreme social practices foisted on children, e.g. female circumcision, foot binding, etc. Because the "culture" becomes the absolutized measure of morality, there is no way to step back and ask: "even if foot binding is beneficial for Chinese women as a mark of status, wouldn't they (and Chinese culture writ large) be better off (more flourishing) without this custom?"
Relativism doesn't require anti-realism. When relativism is paired with anti-realism, you end up with a multiplicity of absolute cultural standards, and find yourself saying things like: "if every third child is brutally tortured to death at age 3, we cannot really say if this is bad for human flourishing or not."
Sure. They just deny that the suffering of people or animals can actually be bad for them as a matter of fact. A total denial of facts about values equates to saying that the following statements:
...are neither true nor false (or true only relative to ultimately arbitrary cultural norms).
Nor does relativism actually seem to be coherent when it makes the "culture" the ultimate arbiter of morality. It could just as well be the individual. Nor is the relativists' common appeal to "tolerance" as a universal value in the face of relativism free from the problems of self-refutation.
Anyhow, I think arguments for this sort of relativism are often (but perhaps not always) incredibly facile.
Yep. :up:
I tried to get at the same idea . @AmadeusD claimed that food isn't good, it's just necessary for survival. I pointed out that a primary reason people call food "good" is because it is necessary for survival. The ability of food to nourish our bodies is not "arbitrary opinion," and I think someone would be hard pressed to argue that the desire to be alive rather than to be dead is just "arbitrary opinion."
I really don't think it's that. The anti-realist is happy to acknowledge the fact that suffering is bad for the beings concerned, in the sense that it's painful, undesirable, etc., but only in that sense. The anti-realist denies that this makes a difference to him/her, i.e., there is no further moral conclusion to be drawn. The words "bad/good" carry no ethical implications, on this view; there are particular facts about what is bad or good for X in the sense specified above, but no moral facts about how this may generalize, or how we ought to behave as a result.
I guess the philosophical world is divided between those who believe that "good/beneficial/conducive to happiness/healthful/pleasurable for me" is what "morally good" means, and those who conceive of moral good as above and beyond the personal. I'm not sure how to bridge the division.
If an "anti-realist" re values acknowledges that there areobjective facts about values then they are not an anti-realist. The question of egoism, or of man as Homo oeconomicus, is really a question about the human good, human nature, and the nature of common goods, not the existence of facts about values. One cannot address those questions without first moving beyond an all-encompassing anti-realism.
It takes a particular (and IMO strange) view of "ethics" to say such "facts about value" are not related to ethics (and so presumably, not related to human happiness?). It seems to me that the anti-realist often engages in something like a "No True Scotsman" argument here. "No, that's a fact about values, maybe even a fact about human flourishing, but it isn't really ethical." With the demand then being that to be "truly ethical" or "moral" such facts must be facts about a sui generis moral good that is excluded, almost by definition, for being meaningful to anyone, ever, outside of some raw, sterile impulse towards "duty."
No, they often think that, due to human nature, "good/beneficial/conducive to happiness/healthful/pleasurable for me" extends beyond the personal. To say it doesn't is to deny that common goods exist or are an important part of human flourishing. It's to say all apparent common goods, the good of a good marriage, of family, of citizenship, etc. are really just conglomerations of individual goods reducible to the individual benefit each member derives from their participation in what is common.
Obviously, a great deal of moral theorists disagree with this reductionist line. It's only a very particular view in the Anglo/liberal tradition that insists upon the "atomized individual in the 'state of nature'" as the absolute starting point of moral analysis, and so ends up with Homo oeconomicus, the "rational" self-interested utility maximizing voluntarist agent who must be somehow "made to have an ethics that extends beyond the individual." And of course, such extensions always fail, because the presuppositions have already made man atomized and cut off from any truly common good.
But I think you struggle with getting beyond egoism in particular because you think that, provided the egoist keeps on affirming that they are better off being an egoist, then this simply must be true (i.e. they are infallible about what is to their own benefit). If someone says "I don't currently prefer x," then it cannot possibly be the case that they would truly be better off learning to prefer x. That is, "good for me" gets defined in terms of current desire.
I don't know why we should think this is true though. It is demonstrably false in children, who often have extremely strong attractions to things that will make them miserable, and biological maturation does not ensure rational self-government or wisdom.
It was not always thus. The modern tendency to make no distinction between the rational and sensible appetites obfuscates that Humes dictum that reason is, and ought only be, the slave of the passions,1 is an inversion of Virgils last words to Dante in the Commedia: "now is your will upright, wholesome and free, and not to heed its pleasure would be wrong." For Dante (and most of the pre-modern tradition), our pursuit of our own pleasure only becomes good (and ultimately, properly good for us) after the souls faculties have been purified through repentance (a self-conscious turn towards the good as good) and purgation (ascetic training and habituation) and the higher faculties have asserted their proper authority over the lower faculties.
I mentioned in the liberalism thread about how liberalism tries to project its norms into the past (or to dismiss anything that cannot be assimilated as mere religious dogma). But there is definitely a radical disconnect. "Reason as a slave to the passions," is quite literally a good summary of the condition of the damned in Dante's Hell. And so, to whatever extent Dante and co. is right, the drive to manufacture Homo oeconomicus is literally a drive towards slavery.
But you've introduced the term "values" into my quote, and that's something which the anti-realist doesn't countenance. The anti-realist doesn't think there are objective facts about values, simply because something is conducive to happiness or its opposite. Of what value are those? they might ask. The anti-realist understands the moral realist (I think correctly) to be speaking about a type of value that can be seen to be good for everyone -- indeed, obligatory. It is this that the anti-realist denies.
Now I suppose that you could redefine an anti-realist as (only) someone who not only denies objective facts about moral values, but objective facts about the value of anything whatever. But that seems way too stringent. I think the classic anti-realist position would be that lots of things are good and bad for various people, given various considerations, but there are no over-arching values that would mandate, or even allow, a choice among them.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Personally, I don't agree with the egoist at all. I agree with you: No one is infallible about what is to their own benefit, as human history sadly attests. But what I'm claiming is that the egoist/moral anti-realist is not being irrational, and there is no argument you can make to the contrary, on the basis of objective values. It's not that the anti-realist has to say, "I know for a fact that my egoism is good for me. I can't be wrong about that." They can just say, "Well, this is the way it looks to me, and you have yet to show me an argument for all these 'common values' and 'human flourishings' and 'ethics that extend beyond the personal.' All you're doing is asserting your belief in them and claiming that, if I could only see them, I'd like them too. Perhaps, perhaps not."
Let me be clear, again: I think this character is dead wrong. But they're not going to find out they're wrong through philosophy or argumentation. I think you hold some spiritual beliefs? Then you know what I'm talking about. Jesus, to pick an example we both know, did not offer the Seminar on the Mount, providing his followers with knockdown arguments for being virtuous. Insofar as he discussed praxis at all, he seems to have recommended metanoia as a priority.
Well, this is often how it is framed. "Statements about value are not truth-apt, they are emotional expressions." If one wants to limit this to a special sort of "moral value," then one has to argue the point that such a delineation is preferable.
But they aren't "being rational?" At least not on many views of rationality. Rather, they are denying the very possibility of rational freedom and rational action, at least as classically conceived. If we are incapable of desiring the good because it is known as good (i.e. a denial of the existence of Aquina's "rational appetites," or Plato's "desires of the rational part of the soul) then it seems to follow that all actions bottom out in irrational impulse.
Aside from this difficulty, there is also the phenomenological argument for the fact that man does possess an infinite appetite for goodness. We cannot identify any finite end to which we say "this is it, this is where I find absolute rest." This finding is, at the very least, all over phenomenology (including atheist phenomenology). Can someone claim: "I lack such desire?" Sure. Whether we believe them is another thing, but at any rate, that wouldn't show much. They need to claim that all men lack this desire, or that it is somehow confused or illusory, otherwise their condition is just a particular sort of spiritual illness.
How is this an argument for the ethical non-realist to become a realist? They merely reply, "Not at all. Nothing of the sort 'seems to follow.' My actions are neither irrational nor impulsive. I'm not aware of 'denying the very possibility of rational freedom' -- how so? Such a view of my actions comes with extremely heavy philosophical baggage, and you would have to show me why this must be the case. On the contrary, I choose what I rationally believe is best for me. Certainly I may be wrong, in any given instance. But how is that either irrational or immoral?"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This isn't ringing any bells. Where would I find it? Or could you give the argument, briefly?
I don't know what you mean, I included the argument right below the quoted section. They can advance their own competing definition of "rational action." Apparently "rational action" for them won't entail knowing why one acts and believing it to be truly best. It will involve ordering some irrational desires to others, ordering some finite ends to others, thinking this through a bit, and then halting the process of judgement at whatever point they feel is adequate. But this isn't "doing and willing what is good because it is known as good," it is rational only in the sense that discursive reasoning has been used to some degree to enable irrational passions that are not themselves justified or known as Good.
I suppose they can say it is "rational" if all "rational" is to mean is "using some faculty of ratio." It's not really self-determining. The entire process is, by definition, driven by "whatever desires the agent just so happens to possess." One cannot have justified second-order volitions because whether or not it is good to have (or not have) a desire can only be judged against some other inchoate desire.
It's like if you created an AI probe and sent it into space with the commandment "harvest resources and reproduce." Ok, it might do some computations as it decides how best to accomplish the goal it just so happens to have. It is "rational" in this sense. But if it cannot ask: "but is it truly good that I reproduce" then it is in an important sense unfree and not self-determining. It is rational and free just within the limits of slavishly driving itself towards instinct.
But the main widely Humean responses to this I am aware of just bite the bullet and say: "yup, I'm not free in that richer sense. No one is. We're ultimately just appetite machines." Which of course opens up the rebuttal that one should only agree with them or even argue with them in good faith if one feels like. There is, strictly speaking, nothing better about falsity than truth.
Sorry if I missed it. Do you mean this?:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I didn't see an argument here, just an assertion. How do we get from "not desiring the good because it is known as good" to "all actions bottom out [are motivated by] irrational impulse"?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Help me see this. Why does the moral anti-realist not know why they act as they do?
Sorry, it's in the quote right below the section you quoted if that wasn't clear.
And obviously, the classical view of freedom is aspirational. It is not something someone perfectly attains, but rather we become more free as we get closer to it. Since we cannot always be mindful of our actionssome action is more automatic, not a matter of rational deliberation and self-conscious reflectionfreedom also involves the way we intentionally train our habits and tastes (and this intentional habituation be subject to self-conscious deliberation). Likewise, the ways in which we shape our environment and institutions can enable (or retard) our capacity for self-determination.
The Humean egoist cannot rationally order their appetites and desires towards "what is truly known as best" in this way because they have eliminated the rational appetites for Goodness (will) and Truth (intellect), reducing the whole of the rational soul to its lowest faculty, discursive ratio. They might justify a second-order volition. Perhaps they master their appetite for food in order to achieve a low body fat percentage in the hopes that it will make them attractive to the opposite sex. They can order one irrational desire (for food) to another (sex), but they cannot turn around and ask: "what is the truly best way for my appetites to be ordered?" (I mean, they can, since they have these rational appetites, it's just that according to their anthropology this would make no sense). Hume himself tries to resolve this by appealing to a sort of universal human sentiment, and we can order ourselves to this "sentiment of decency," but one might suppose that this "sentiment," mere irrational feeling, is just the rational appetites, only impoverished by a deflated understanding of the rational soul.
Take sex. They want to have sex. Why? If they haven't totally erased any sense of human nature they might appeal to this. But this is just awareness that one has a desire and that one plans to act on it. It isn't a self-reflective conscious understanding of the act as truly good. To ask: "is it truly good that I possess this appetite to this degree?" requires some standard by which our own appetites are judged. If we have a rational desire for the Good as such, this is the obvious benchmark. Denying this, irrational appetites can only be ordered to other irrational appetites. It's like our AI probe that has had the desire to reproduce inserted in it. It didn't choose this desire. It doesn't know it as good and assent to it. Its "rationality" is a slave to the irrational, and in this way it is limited by its own finitude. Whereas, ordered to an infinite good, the rational soul can always ask on anything: "but is it truly best?" or: "is it really true?" and in so doing transcend current belief and desire.
Isn't this a distortion of what moral anti-realists actually claim? Doesn't this have a touch of William Lane Craig? "Atheists can't say child murder is wrong!"
Take the example of saying its bad for a child to ingest lead. A moral anti-realist can fully accept such a statement as true within a framework of widely shared human concerns, like health, harm reduction, and wellbeing. They can use empirical facts about human biology and psychology to explain why lead is harmful and why we should act to prevent exposure, without appealing to moral facts "out there" or "mind independent".
I suspect that those who are theists already have a bright shining star of transcendence to guide them towards an objective morality - the matter is settled for them - presumably The Good emanates from God's nature.
In what sense? You haven't truly specified a sense at all. What is occurring is hand-waving.
Quoting J
If the anti-realist wants to actually abandon the concept of 'bad', then they should abandon the word. And the fact that you depend on the word proves that you haven't abandoned the concept. What you are saying is, "I am going to use the word 'bad' but I am not going to mean bad by it." That's nonsense. 'Bad' cannot be used without meaning bad, and if someone does not want to mean badness then they should not use the word 'bad'. Else we are just equivocating between a private language and a public language.
Or, "I will not say that X is bad, only that it is painful. And by 'painful' I am not connoting, in any way, 'bad'." Again, quite nonsensical. If one truly wanted to stop denoting or connoting badness, then they would use words that do not denote or connote badness. But if they do that then Count's point is even more obviously true, namely:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And if we are honest, this entails that they are unconcerned with the suffering of people and animals. If you cannot say that suffering is bad then you are not "concerned" with it in the relevant way.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Oh, OK, I thought that was a quote from somebody else!
I think this argument runs into trouble from the start, with this:
But why? Why assume that, absent a belief in objective moral values, all the anti-realist is left with is pleasure or positive sentiment? Bottoming out in irrational impulse? Why can't the judgment that an end is good, although relative, be rooted in rational argument? True, at a certain point they will have to say some version of "Here my spade is turned" . . . but so does the moral realist. I don't see how this is less rational, more sentiment-based. And remember, the anti-realist doesn't countenance bringing in "ultimate" values at all. For them, that is irrational and sentiment-based. As you say:
But surely the anti-realist can simply agree with this, but insist that the whole process is not therefore rendered irrational. The anti-realist doesn't acknowledge these entities at all, so can hardly be called to task for being "irrational" by not adding them into the calculative mix. Wrong, perhaps (I think so) -- but not irrational.
We both know that a great deal depends on how "rationality" is construed. You have a picture of what it means to be rational that is extremely specific, and tightly bound to one particular philosophical tradition. I don't think we should assume that the anti-realist shares this picture, nor (and I hope you agree) that this picture is uncontroversially the correct one.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I have to say, this sounds like a straw man. I suppose there are some immoral or amoral people who are this clueless, but an intelligent and compassionate moral anti-realist can do much better. "I have a desire to have sex with this person. Will this desire lead to healthy and harmonious consequences? Will it hurt others? Does it fit the other priorities of my life? Why do I want to act as I do?" In other words, you can be self-reflective and try to consciously understand the meaning and consequences of your actions without even asking the question, Is it truly good?
I'm probably being repetitive now, but I'll say again: To truly understand what the moral anti-realist is saying, you have to start by understanding that they don't believe in something called "the truly good." Just for the sake of comprehension, try granting them that position and then seeing whether you still think their actions are "irrational impulses."
Consider a list of concepts:
It looks to me that these all say the same thing, and they are distinctions without a difference. Someone like @J will claim that, for the moral anti-realist, animal suffering is bad but not truly bad. What is that supposed to mean? After the hundreds of posts I have read, it really looks like he has no idea what he means by that.
This is why these conversations tend to lack rigor. Unless someone can spell out the difference between 'bad' and 'truly bad', they need to stop making the distinction while pretending that they have done something substantive.
I would contend that the moral anti-realist cannot say that animal suffering is truly bad; that 'truly bad' adds nothing at all to 'bad'; and therefore that the moral anti-realist cannot say that animal suffering is bad. Of course, they can redefine 'bad' to mean something that it does not mean, but in that case they have not said that animal suffering is bad. They have only said that animal suffering is "bad."
What is "truly bad" supposed to mean?
Sure they do. But then they aren't strictly anti-realists about all values. Let's look at emotivism, which is probably the most popular form of anti-realism. The bumper sticker version of that is: "claims about value don't have truth values. They are merely pronouncements of emotion, 'hooray for x,' or 'boohoo for x.'"
If someone says: "lead is truly bad for children and it is objectively bad for them to suffer heavy mental poisoning," (i.e. their statement concerns fact and not merely "boohoo for lead poisoning") they are defaulting on strict anti-realism.
You and J are both making an appeal to slander here, which seems to me like an appeal to emotion. "What you're saying about anti-realists is mean," but then defending the position by introduction realism vis-a-vis value claims. But I already said that, to their credit, strict anti-realists virtually never act like they actually believe their own position.
Well this probably the kicker. You'll have to explain what makes a fact specifically "moral." IMO, the health is, ceteris paribus, beneficial for human flourishing and that there are facts about the promotion of health makes those facts "moral." I imagine that part of the disagreement here is that you would like to say that "moral facts" must deal with some sort of sui generis "moral good" that in unrelated to things like health, etc.
I don't think such a division makes sense, but at the very least it needs to be justified. Second, I don't think a rejection of a transcendent Good constitutes anti-realism. This would make Sam Harris an anti-realist. Anti-realism should mean something like emotivism. It means there aren't facts about value, talk about value is boo-hoo and hoorah. Saying "goodness reduces to this material thing," like brain states (Harris) isn't saying facts about goodness don't exist for instance.
Quoting J
"Ought to be chosen" != "Obligatory"
If it did, your argument would be sound. Your own example illustrates the same fact:
Quoting J
If "worthy" meant "obligatory," then you would be saying, "You betrayed your partner. That was not an obligatory choice,..."
(As an aside, "choice-worthy" != "ought to be chosen." We know this given the fact that we can identify multiple options as choice-worthy, even if we cannot choose them all. Semantic equivalence is not as common as your approach presupposes.)
It wasn't meant to be a realistic depiction of their phenomenology. But you seem to just be using loose synonyms for good here, and having your anti-realist appeal to those. Why is a "healthy and harmonious" relationship preferable? If it is rationally known as a goal, it is for some reason. Why do they want to be "respectful" or "kind," etc.?
If it cannot be because "it is truly good," it has to bottom out somewhere else. Nowhere did I imply anti-realists are incapable of introspection. What they are incapable of is grounding their actions in a rational appetite. Hume, for his part, would say we prefer "harmonious and healthy" relationships and "kindness," etc. because of an innate, irrational prosocial sentiment. But of course, such a sentiment only justifies ethical behavior if you personally feel more strongly about the sentiment then about violating it.
In a way, that's right. From the point of view of moral realists like you and me, these terms are barely adequate, and don't go far enough to capture what seems vital to the moral uses of "good" and "right." But the anti-realist doesn't have to grant us that conceptual ontology. They don't see objective moral values as real. So "loose synonyms" from our point of view would be "what there is in the realm of moral discourse" for them. It's the best available, as they see it. And to be fair, we can hardly claim that every moral anti-realist must therefore make a botch of their ethical life. I've seen far too many examples to the contrary, and I'm sure you have too.
This highlights a really important point about the divide between realists and anti-realists. Neither side can simply legislate that the other is wrong about ontology. That would take us way outside of ethics. And I'd further claim that, this being so, each can maintain that their stance is reasonable/rational. The rationality -- or lack of it -- is not the problem.
So how do bedrock disputes about the ontology of values get settled, if not by rational argument? Well, as I was saying before . . . this calls for metanoia, not dialectics.
Bedtime here . . . be well!
Yep. It is swapping out "good" for "harmonious" and ignoring the fact that you have the exact same problem that you began with.
This is of course because "harmonious" connotes goodness. It's like saying, "Oh, I would never serve you peanuts. Here is a Thai noodle dish." "But this Thai noodle dish has peanuts in it!" "Well yes, but the name of the dish isn't 'peanuts', so it shouldn't affect your allergy."
Note that this is yet another case in which @J takes exception at the way in which some other group is being represented and then purports to be representing that group. But we have logically consistent moral anti-realists on the forum, such as Michael, and they wouldn't touch the words 'bad' and 'good' with a ten foot pole, nor would they claim that things like pain or harmony have any force in justifying practical syllogisms. They would not claim to have any rational justification for preventing animal suffering. So I don't see that @J's logically inconsistent portrayal is even an accurate representation of moral anti-realism.
It is worth noting that this is your whole project: Pyrrhonian skepticism in the service of non-rational "metanoia" towards some end. You are saying, I think, "No moral position is any more rational than any other moral position, so let's all stop arguing and just work on ...metanoia." Supposing we stopped with the dialectics, how would we go about the metanoia?
(The curiosity here is that if you go tell a Greek speaker that metanoia has nothing to do with rational argument and dialogue, they would look at you like you're from Mars. I suspect you are anachronistically infusing Protestant fideism into a Greek term.)
Is slamming your own hand in a car door over and over until every bone in it is broken "rational?" What if you have a very strong desire to do it, and you explain: "why yes, I know it will hurt, and I know having a mangled hand will be inconvenient, and that physical therapy will be expensive. I have thought of all that through. I have balanced the variables. I am being rational. I still think the joy I would derive from slamming my hand in the door is such that it makes all this worth it."
Per your thoughts on smoking, this is "rationally" slamming your hand in a door until you cripple it. The only difference is that the desired action seems even less intuitively desirable. So long as the person seems to be making "informed consent" then it is "rational," by this standard, to pursue completely irrational desire, even up to the level of maiming oneself. On this view, the person with alien limb syndrome who has their own arm amputated isn't sick, they are just making a rational judgement based on strong desire. But they're desire to have a limb removed cannot be particularly irrational, since all desire is irrational.
I suppose the anti-realist can claim rationality in this extremely deflated sense. That doesn't make randomly crushing your hand rational in the classical sense, and it certainly doesn't make slavishly following "whatever desires I feel really strongly, but in a thoughtful way" self-determining freedom.
At any rate, you haven't responded to the argument at all. You've just said: "no 'rational' means this other, much more deflated thing." Ok, saying we accept that, the anti-realist is still quite incapable of the freedom the realist is pointing towards because they have no coherent way to order or transcend current desire. Nietzsche saw this, and it's why he makes everything simply a battle, the warring "congress of souls" vying for power in each soul.
This just seems like: "you must default to the deflated "rationality" of "informed consent" or else you will be guilty of 'metaphysics' and not being polite." But any ethics worth its salt does tie to metaphysics. Chopping philosophy up into sui generis spaces and denying metaphysics its space as first philosophy is often just a way for nominalists, etc. to simply engage in question begging on metaphysics.
"Oh look, we'll start without presupposing anything about metaphysics, and that just so happens to mean doing all of ethics, philosophy of language, etc. as rigid nominalists to avoid presuppositions!" Neat how that works.
Of course there are limit cases, examples of behavior that is so contrary to good judgment that we would call it irrational even if the person involved claimed to have good reasons for it. But to deny objective ethical values is not such an example -- if it is even a behavior at all. In what way is the moral anti-realist engaging in what we could only call crazy behavior, such as doing a horrible and unnecessary injury to oneself, over and over? This example is hopelessly tendentious, and makes the moral anti-realist out to be either stupid or insane. I know you don't really believe that, you have too much good sense yourself!
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Let me repeat a sentence from above:
You seem to have taken this to mean that we can't argue about metaphysics, and must simply agree with any ontological position anyone takes. This isn't what I meant. I meant that I, as a realist about values, can't declare, without argument (legislate), to the anti-realist, "Your position doesn't hold up because you don't countenance objective values." Nor can the anti-realist say to me, "Your position doesn't hold up because you believe in items that don't exist," and expect me simply to accept it. For either of us to take such a stance, we'd just be claiming, without argument, that the other is working from false premises. And this may be true. But to show that it is true, we must (temporarily!) move away from ethical argument and talk metaphysics and ontology.
Indeed, that's what I would recommend in this conversation, should we pursue it. I think you're saying that the moral anti-realist has accepted mistaken premises about what is rational, and what sorts of items exist. Their metaphysics, in short, is faulty. I'm not sure about their version of rationality being wrong, thought it is certainly different from yours. And I quite agree that they fail to countenance entities -- more-or-less objective ethical values -- that I believe exist. So isn't this what we'd need to discuss with them? And in a manner that doesn't simply repeat, over and over, how wrong they are?
Why don't you explain what you think makes a choice "rational?" Apparently it's something like "informed consent and discursive reasoning + some level of 'good judgement.'" What is the criteria for the last part? "You know it when you see it?"
Barring early death, smoking will almost invariably cause lung disease to some degree and dental disease. I have never seen a lifetime smoker with good teeth (barring veneers). Maybe extreme outliers exist, but to "rationally choose to smoke," is pretty much to choose lung and dental disease on account of some good impulse. Why is destroying your hand in pursuit of irrational pleasure "irrational" and obvious "bad judgement," but destroying your lungs in pursuit of irrational pleasure fully "rational?"
Here is the thing, I think someone could rationally justify tobacco use. Soldiers often use smokeless tobacco to stay awake. Keeping awake on watch, or keeping focus as you pour over signals intelligence might very well be justifiable as "truly good," but then it isn't justified as: "I have this irrational sensible appetite and have thought long and hard about the costs of indulging it and decided to indulge it as irrational, to simply order some sensible appetites against others" Likewise, someone with alien limb syndrome might very well see amputation as truly better, because the irrational sensation of foreigness distracts them from truly choiceworthy ends. But this isn't the same as lopping off a limb in a judgement that ultimately bottoms out in impulse.
Second, I'd disagree that statements like:
"There is no fact of the matter as to whether or not it is good (or good for children) to torture and rape them. All we an say is "boo-hoo" and "hoorah: to such acts," are not contrary to "good judgement."
To deny that anything is truly better or worse than anything else is to deny that truth is truly preferable to falsify, good argument to bad argument, good faith to bad faith. It is to say that these are always only "good" as conditioned to some end, such that, depending on our impulses, they might not always be good. Sometimes falsity is better than truth, it just depends on what suits us at the moment.
This isn't "rationality" except by some extremely deflated definition. It's quite literally misology, the ruin of reason.
Whew, you don't ask much, do you? :wink:
Let's say I could do this, cogently and succinctly, in a paragraph or two. (I don't think I could -- I doubt if there is a single answer -- but let's say I succeeded.) And let's say you then explained your own answer, perhaps derived from the Aristotelian tradition. We might find that the two explanations differed in some substantial ways.
What would you suggest we do then, given these differing explanations?
This is a rational choice: I take the Beethoven CD.
That's an irrational choice: I take the Bach CD.
Yes, I can.
There can be countless factors that I may consider and take into account.
My point is, that every factor refers to what I like the most. I like good feelings and dislike bad feelings.
I like to help people, I dislike extreme egoism. I like to be alive and dislike dying. I like atheism better than theism. Like, like, like ... In the end it's always about liking A better than B.
All these factors can be set in a formula -- approximately. Not exactly, that would be utilitaristic. Feelings cannot be measured exactly, just approximately. I will give every comparison a "good-feeling" quotient:
Beethoven-music versus Bach-music -> 5 : 1 (I like all of Ludwig's symphonies)
Beethoven-CD-price-99$ versus Bach-CD-price-1$ -> 2 : 4 (I like to save money)
Beethoven-CD-on-Amazon versus Bach-CD-in-small-shop -> 0 : 5 (I dislike Bezos)
and so on ...
Summary so far: 7 : 10
So, in the end, choosing Bach will generate more joy. Therefore it's rational to take Bach.
Ah okay well that makes sense then, have a good day
It's tough to make this work with examples of altruism and self-sacrifice. You'd have to stretch the meaning of "joy" awfully far. Jane throws herself on a grenade to save innocent others. Does this have to be irrational, given that "good feelings" hardly enter into the picture? And yet it's the sort of action we admire as an outcome of practical moral reasoning.
Agreed. Plus, it also tends to generate an inappropriate tautology where "whatever one does" is "what gives one the most positive sentiment/pleasure." This will tend to exclude the very apparent phenomena of "weakness of will," or "losing one's temper," etc. We cannot understand St. Paul in Romans 7 when he says: "I do the very thing that I hate," because it would seem that he must love what he does more than he hates it in virtue of the fact that he has chosen to do it. Part of the problem here stems from the collapse of the sensible and rational appetites, although there are some ways to fix it without invoking this distinction.
I think we could acknowledge that losing one's temper, and other semi-involuntary acts, are not covered by the thesis "we always choose what we like," on the grounds that they aren't really choices. This would just involve changing "whatever one does" to "whatever one does deliberately/thoughtfully/ voluntarily" et al. But it leaves unresolved the general problem you point out. It's very hard to get clear on whether the "what I choose = what I like" equivalence is supposed to be a discovery of empirical psychology, or a stipulation about how to use the words. @Quk's response, if they make one, to the question about altruism may help clarify how they mean that equation.
I read the posts more as cost-benefit calculations (as in rational choice theory). It's not all that hard to account for altruism: even if there's no benefit to be had, there are still costs to minimise. It's just a matter of priorities. I though "joy" was just the word used in the context of Beethoven vs. Bach, while "good feelings" vs. "bad feelings" is the more general model. I'd like to append that in situations where there are no good feelings involved, it's likely "bad feelings" vs. "worse feelings". That said there might be some marginal good feelings in throwing yourself on a grenade: "I'll be remembered a hero!" As you say, it's the stuff we admire, and some people might enjoy the prospect of being admired.
Given how quickly granades explode, I wager there won't be much time for deliberation, though.
Yes, that's reasonable, otherwise you start thinking in terms of joyous martyrdom or some such. But even "bad" vs. "worse" is problematic. Should we imagine a self-sacrificing hero (with, as you say, a bit more time to cogitate than a grenade would allow) saying to herself, "I'll feel really bad if these innocent people die. I will feel nothing at all if I sacrifice myself to save them, since I'll be dead. So I'm choosing to feel nothing rather than feel really bad"? Maybe. But it would be a very subterranean level of cogitation, as it were; what usually goes through a hero's mind is thoughts of duty and compassion, I would imagine, not how rotten they'll feel if they funk it. I'm inclined to say that it's only plausible if, for independent reasons, we've already decided to rule out genuinely altruistic motives as incompatible with the "what I choose = what I like" equation. Then we can say, "She thinks she's acting from altruistic motives but here's what's really going on -- it's what she likes, even if she doesn't realize it."
One other point: "what I like" doesn't have to be construed as "what makes me happy" or "what feels good." It can also mean "what I value and stand for in my life, on grounds quite other than pleasant sensations." People do like doing the right thing, as they conceive it. On this construal, we can almost make sense of the situation above as being about "what she likes": She is so committed to living her life as a certain sort of person -- the sort who will make the heroic choice here -- that she would find that life literally unlivable if she fails to do so. So it's no longer a choice between "feeling really bad" and "not feeling anything." It's now between two sorts of unlivability -- death, and moral disgrace -- one of which at least will spare the innocents.
When we start to describe ethical actions with this sort of language, though, I think it's time to just drop the whole "what I like" idea, and go back to the usual discourse about values, right and wrong, etc.
I think the word "rational" comes from "ratio".
For example, "1/2", "1:2", "5/4", "5 versus 4", "A/B" are ratios.
When I try to make a rational decision, I compare and evaluate the ratio of A to B.
For instance, Beethoven/Bach, folk/jazz, folk/blues, Picasso/Rembrandt, islam/christianity, islam/buddhism, chistianity/hinduism, Tuesday/Monday, summer/winter, winter/spring, Harris/Trump, apple/orange, headache/cholera, airplane/bus, bus/ship, Florida/California, marxism/capitalism, anarchy/monarchy, Joe/Jack, female/male, Asia/Africa, Asia/Australia, thriller/comedy, altruism/egoism etc.
Whatever I choose, in the end I choose from two options. If there are multiple choices -- three, for instance -- I compare A with B, B with C, C with A. So each single step handles two options; not more, not less.
And whatever I choose in the end, I choose the one that I like better than the other.
I assume our mental system consists of two subsystems: The first includes qualities; these are qualia, emotions, feelings, senses, impressions. The second subsystem is a computer; it calculates the direction I need to go when I cross the street; it computes the number of days till Christmas. This computer contains no qualities, i.e. no emotions etc. This calculator is the assistant of the first subsystem, the emotional one. The evolution probably developed the emotional subsystem first and added the second subsystem later.
This calculator, this second subsystem, does the rational work.
The first subsystem contains the emotions.
If I were to make a rational decision just to reach another rational goal, I would be caught in an infinite regress. I would be trapped in a mathematical bubble without any feelings, impressions, emotions. I wouldn't be a living creature; I would be a robot.
Therefore this calculator only makes sense if its results are used outside its mathematical bubble, namely in the emotional subsystem.
What do I do in my life? What do I want to do? I do what I like. I don't like pain. So I try to avoid pain. I don't like to die, so I try to stay alive. I want to kiss Mary, so I ask her if I may. I don't like to kill Joe, so I won't do it. I like the story of religion A or ideology B, there I feel at home, so I support this instead of the other. There is no meta religion or meta ideology that determines which religion or ideology is the best for everyone or that tells which one is absolutely correct. There is no absolutism. Everything is relative. X in relation to Y. And if it's about life and not about math, the goal is not math but good quality, i.e. aim at joy, good feelings, happiness. It's that simple.
I can't describe what a good feeling is. It's just there. It's one of the qualia. Qualitative properties like red, sweet, loud, sad, joyous etc. cannot be described in words. They existed before language was invented. They are themselves.
Now, rational decisions can be linked with each other and the whole network may become very complex. For example:
What do I like better?
[Beethoven or Bach]
[[Beethoven] on Tuesday or Sunday]
[[[Beethoven] on Sunday] with red wine or white wine]
... and so on.
It may get so complex that a final rational decision is impossible within the next five minutes or weeks or years.
Intuitive decisions can help sometimes.
I guess intuition is a set of instructions stored in memory. If an instruction is successful, it gets stored for later quick reuse. Very efficient. Many of them are also stored in our genes probably. But all in all they too can be considered rational, I think, because the one instruction was just more successful than the other. So do it this way, as stored in memory, in the genes, in intuition.
Well, there are two things going on. One is how we make decisions based on value (where rational choice comes in), and the other is where value comes from (e.g. "feelings" - rational choice theory doesn't demand that feelings be the source of values, just that you have values).
But what values does a "truly altruistic person" have? "I want others to be happy"? And in what terms would you describe the value? If you want to describe the value with respect to rationality, rational choice can probably achieve that, but they'd need recourse to other values. And there are pretty much only two options open I can see: some sort of structuralism - it's all circular, values feed into other values etc. Or values come from something other than rational thought (e.g. we are "social animals").
A rational choice theorist who decides values derive ultimately from feelings would likely describe "genuniely altruistic feelings" in terms of feeling - maing others feel good feels good. And I don't see how that would devalue altruism. Or differently put: if making other people feel good didn't make you feel good, would you be "genuinely altruistic"? Maybe. But "genuine altruism" is a loaded term here. You need to be aware that a rational choice theory might describe that differently from you.
Again, rational choice theory isn't something I read widely. At university I've written a paper about the sociology of suicide; one approach was rational choice - it was, I think, my least favourite approach. I don't remember the name of either the author or the book anymore, but that was my most in-depth reading of a rational-choice point of view. I went with summaries for the rest of my studies. All this to say, it's never been my expertise. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
Quoting J
Yes, as I said, "bad" vs. "worse". Where there's no gain, you minimise cost. Ultimately it's "feelings"; they needn't be pleasant. That's a misconception. You can rescue a modicum of pleasantness by, say, attaching it to the hero concept. Some people can feel at peace if they take a role with only lousy prospects, but it's socially valued. Identification is a powerful enabler.
Turn this around, the same person who might be touched by the heroism eulogy might berate her for being reckless while drunk in the bar and missing her. Where there's a tension field between feelings you can use rational thought to establish a legitimisation structure, so you can feel good about doing the right thing. "I was drunk; I didn't mean it." And then you put some emotional weight behind "objective morality" so you can feel good about yourself.
I think people are too messy to be rational when choosing. That said, rational thought does play its part; we just need to pin down "where".
I'd have to think about whether these are indeed the only two options, but in any case I'm happy to go with the second: Values are discovered, not deduced. The idea, which is common among many philosophers, that values can be apodictically derived from first principles or definitions, doesn't seem plausible to me. The only thing that might come close would be the Kantian notion that the process of practical reason may be deduced from a metaphysics of autonomy, but that isn't quite the same thing. Also, the example of "we are social animals" is usually meant in a reductionist way (values aren't what we think they are, but rather reduce to . . . ), and I'm not speaking of that sort of discovery, if it is one, at all.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Take mine with pepper!
Quoting Dawnstorm
That's an important question. It harks back to the distinction I was making between the various ways we can understand "what I like" or "feeling good." I might derive no pleasure whatsoever from doing something altruistic that I believe it's my responsibility to do. But in the wider, quality-of-my-life sense, trying to do this sort of thing is "what I like." Trouble is, I don't like it because of any specific feeling I expect to arise from it. I like it because I believe it's morally right. It accords with my values. That's where I think the whole "ultimately it's feelings" view breaks down. (Not to say that being kind never feels good. Of course it does!)
Let's say that's a description of "genuine altruism." Would your view entail that such a person couldn't actually exist -- or at best would be in denial about what they were feeling?
I agree with Dawnstorm's comment:
Quoting Dawnstorm
But they cannot be total non-choices, right? Otherwise it wouldn't make sense to punish people for most assault cases where they lost their temper or to blame people for adultery if they were compelled by strong urges, etc. We'd be powerless against our vices and baser impulses if they could deprive us of choice.
Now, when a man acts on impulse and throws a punch in rage, or commits adultery when in the throes of lust, we normally say something like what you said. Such acts are "semi-involuntary." And we say this not because one appetite or passion is pitted against another. If this was the case, then we would also say that a man [I]not[/I] cheating on his wife was also "semi-involuntary" if his lust is in conflict with his desire to do the right thing. Likewise, we don't say "my not punching my boss in the face for insulting me was semi-involuntary because my anger conflicted with what I thought was best."
Instead, we tend to speak of a suppression of choice when some passion or appetite overwhelms our self-reflective grasp of what is best. And this is precisely why it doesn't make sense to collapse the rational and lower appetites into one hodgepodge stew, Nietzsche's "congress of souls. And that is precisely how I'd answer your question re rational action.
Of course, our desire for "goodness as such" is always being subverted by competing impulses and desires, lack of cognitive resources, and ignorance, and that's why the development of rational freedom and self-governance is aspirational and something that must be cultivated.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, that's how it looks to me.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is interesting. True, we wouldn't call it "semi-involuntary," but we might very well offer an explanation that deprived the individual of considerable freedom of choice. Depends how much stock you put in deep-psychological explanations that bypass conscious reasons. To my thinking, they're often accurate, but not necessarily, and shouldn't be the default mode of explaining. Yet it's always important to ask, Exactly how much free choice did X have, in a given situation?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Indeed not. Your talent for a striking phrase can get the better of you sometimes, though! Is this really the best and fairest way to characterize what Humeans and other anti-rationalists are doing? The question is very difficult, and no good philosopher is willing to settle for a hodgepodge, certainly not Hume himself.
If you use the word "self-deception" you presuppose the possibility of a fight "X against X". Self versus self.
I don't think that's possible.
In my view, a human consists of multiple active instances. Nobody ever found any "I"-core in the skull, spine or in the mind. I guess there's no central X. Particularly, there's no X that could fight against X. There are many instances: A, B, C ... zillions of them. When there is a fight, it's a fight D vs Z, or X vs G etc.
In my mind there may be an instance "L" that aims at having sex with a strange lady. And there's another instance "E" that aims at the loyality with my wife. (These examples are not autobiographical; I'm not married, hehe.) So when there is a fight, it isn't X vs X. It's L vs E -- in this example.
I think rationality must refer to the respective instance which is calculating the ratio of the current options.
When there is an occassion to have sex with a strange lady, and all ratios with other options are evaluated -- including time, duration, place, intensity, long-term consequences etc. -- then it's a rational decision of instance "L" to do it.
What's the rational decision of "E"? That instance comes to the rational conclusion it's better to stay loyal due to the wonderful long-term effects of being loyal.
Now there's another instance "T" that evaluates the ratio of L's choice to E's choice.
And so on.
The cascade of ratios gets bigger and bigger, so we often get confused and make decisions that will be, in summary, not optimal. -- Luckily, we are brain owners; we are able to learn from our mistakes. We keep improving our rational network.
What do you mean by "lower"?
Is appetite not an essential phenomenon in life?
What is love in your view? Is it something lower or something higher?
What is happiness? Is it in category "high" or category "low"?
What's a computer? High or low?
Is a bird lower than an elephant?
I've never understood this high/low idea. Is it a religious idea?
In my view, instinct, desire, love, hate etc. are so essential important phenomena; they make the difference between a living creature and a robot.
Is your religion a machine?
I have trouble answering this question for two reasons: (a) I'm not quite sure I understand your model (more later), and (b) I'm not exactly sure what my view amounts in philosophical terms (here I've been role-playing myself as rational choice theorist, while earlier in this thread I've been roleplaying myself as emotivist).
So let me try:
Quoting J
This seems to seperate the motivation from the deed in some way. I think you'd need to elaborate on the how more here: for example, I can do something that helps you, but out of purely instrumental considerations. Is this altruism? My instinct would be to say "no", but under a social contract model, all altruism could be described like that, so it's not quite off the table. Do you see my confusion here?
The second thing is that the emphasis on duty makes it seem like morals as rule-following. This does sort of clash with my view: people who accept a duty do so either because they're forced to, or because they internalised their "position" in society. If you "believe its your responsibility" it's likely the latter.
And third, it feels like you view "it's ultimately feelings" as feelings being the envisioned pay off. That's not the only role they have. Feelings are supposed to underly *any* value; therefore also any attachment to duty or responsibility you might have.
Quoting J
I can't read this line without seeing feelings front and center: "quality of my life"? "What I like"? Take feelings away and liking stuff is impossible, and quality of life becomes irrelevant to your praxis.
Do you maybe instinctively translate feelings to something like the Freudian id? I envision something more like a structuring personality principle that underlies it all. More like a constant flow that only makes itself known when there's turbulence.
Quoting J
This to me has no meaning outside specific theories. "Morally right" is a variable that has different content in different theories; different theories craft different formulae for it; and some theories have little use for it at all (maybe as a macro further out). Since I'm not quite sure where you're coming from, this is something I suspend my interpretation on when reading, until I have a better grasp and can make educated guesses.
Quoting J
So now: do you have a better grasp why I don't quite understand your description? If I'm unsure what "genuine altruism" is, I can't judge whether it "actually exists". For better or worse:
I believe there are people who feel good when making others feel good. I believe there are people who feel good about doing their duty, which includes making other people feel good. I believe this can but needn't occur in the same person. The label "genuine altruism" is an intrusion here: it doesn't order the field, but adds a semantic problem I can do without. I'm open to the possibility that I'm missing something, but if I'm missing something here it's likely because it's not usually within my relevance horizon, and thus to see it would require painstaking bottom-up construction with many false starts. Or alternatively an epiphany.
I hope I haven't made things worse.
Not at all. This is a very thoughtful and responsive post. I'll try to reply in stages.
Quoting Dawnstorm
No, not on my understanding (which I should say is very influenced by Thomas Nagel's The Possibility of Altruism). Something is altruistic when it is motivated by the belief that the plight of others, all by itself, gives me a reason to act.
Quoting Dawnstorm
I know. The only word I can think of which is as disreputable as "duty" in the ethical lexicon would be "sin." You'll notice that I didn't in fact use the word "duty," because I hate it too. I prefer "responsibility." But to your point . . . I don't know whether ethics has to involve rule-following, but it probably does have to involve acting on reasons or principles. And these are often in direct conflict with our feelings.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yes. It would be unfair to the advocate of "it's ultimately feelings" to construe them as meaning "I expect to feel a certain way after I've helped you." Feelings should be seen as the motivator, not the pay-off, in order to make this view robust. The idea is that, at bottom, I feel a certain way about my responsibility (as I conceive it), and this provides the motivation for my action.
Quoting Dawnstorm
I agree that "quality of life" is hazy. I'll think more about a better way to talk about the attachment a person feels to a certain self-presentation of their values.
And "like" can also be questioned. Could you say more, though, about why you construe "like" to involve a feeling? Is this based on usage, or are you analyzing what "like" would have to mean, in order for it to say something meaningful?
Quoting Dawnstorm
Does using my Nagel-derived concept, above, help any? I think the key point is that altruism takes the other person's situation, all by itself, without any appeal to how the altruist feels, as a reason for action. You may well believe that such a thing is impossible, of course, depending on what role you give reasons in ethical deliberation. If they wouldn't be reasons without some corresponding motivating feelings, then my and Nagel's account wouldn't fly for you.
I'm unfamiliar with Nagel's position on altruism, so I just read some summeries and skimmed others. First, I note that every commenter seems to have different takeaway (which makes it harder for me to grasp), and to top it off the most detailed, text-adjecent summary I read was in German, so I don't what the appropriate words in English are (and anyway, it was fairly long, so I just skimmed it, but it's definitely interesting at the very least).
What I got out of it is quite akin to us being social animals: to realise the other is a person is to realise that I am a person, the realisation of which is unpersonal and objective, and so the motivation towards altruism isn't direct (like say hunger) but derived from abstracted facts. Not sure how close this is to Nagel's postion; as I said I just skimmed it, and the specifics were very convoluted and in some parts hard to understand (especially on a skim).
To this I say, this feels to be... off topic? Let me backtrack to another question you asked, at that point, because I think it's relevant:
Quoting J
"Like" to me expresses an emotional attachment. It doesn't just involve feeling, it is feeling something. I think the problem comes with isolating as "feelings" spurts of our emotional flow we recognise, but that's almost certainly describing feelings by reference to exceptional states. Instead of, say, "happiness" we should look at "comfort". This is a sort of baseline that renders you able to act. You notice comfort only in transitional stages, if it's an ongoing state it becomes part of the background until disrupted. But it's important to the upkeep of routine.
This is, for example, a huge problem for social justice movements: to even be understood you need to make people realise what it is like to live in constant discomfort. And then, to be actionable, a majority needs to give up part of their comfort to accommodate a minorty. How do you motivate something like this on a huge scale, when it's easy to maintain comfort by simple dismissal (say of "being trans" as confused).
So, for example, I don't much like vanilla ice cream; I don't dislike it, but there are almost always alternatives I prefer. As I talk about this on here, I'm not in a position where I have access to icecream, so it's not situationally relevant. It's still true, as a general matter of fact, about me. It's also a trivial fact, so if you were to tell me that, no, I do actually like vanilla ice cream, I'm mistaken, I'd be puzzled, but I wouldn't experience any huge change in my emotional state. There's no disruption in the general comfort level - that'd be even true if I were currently uncomfortable somehow. However, if you were then to insist on this fact, and make a bigger deal out of it than I ever could, I'd likely get uncomfortable with this conversation. So while me liking or not liking vanilla ice cream would be involved here, it'd be very marginally - I'd be uncomfortable with this situation. However, the presence of "vanilla ice cream" as topic could create an association such that I'd further on experience a modicum of discomfort when faced with vanilla ice cream, that would re-inforce and worsen my reaction to vanilla ice cream, and to the extent that I'm unaware of this, you may now be right, and I'm actually mistaken in some small part, at least under one consideration: an underappreciate amount of dislike towards vanilla ice cream has little to do with its properties.
So, yeah, if emotivists say that every action is directly motived by an isolatable and easily categorisable desire, and Nagel says that isn't so, then I'm with Nagel. Beyond that, I haven't thought my intuitions through enough to say one way or another how feelings factor in. But take them away, away you're left with... what? Instructions? Elaborate if-then decision trees?
So:
Quoting J
I wouldn't expect an appeal during the carrying out of the situation, not as a default. That comes in later, when others ask why you did something, and then the most likely reply is going to be "because he needed X" or some such. It's inefficient to observe yourself too much; but neverless any action necessarily integrates into your daily comfort flow - only exceptional or challenged decision get the appeal treatment, and the appeal is usually going to be targeted towards what flies. This is not to say that people are insincere; they need to be comfortable either with their justifications or their duplicity (or whatever I'm not thinking of right now). Acts, justifications, social sanctioning... all feedback and modify your comfort flow such that they may make future actions more or less likely. But the comfort-flow itself is just there: it's not usually available for legitimisation or reflexion. Especially in routine situation your comfort level will usually remain an unacknowledged necessary condition of making value judgements. It might come up during a crisis (too strong a word; I'm thinking of any break of routine here, no matter how big or small) or when challenged - but often a set of social macros (any ethical position you might name) will obscure it even then.
Again, and this is important, I'm trying to explain my intuition. I haven't thought this through to my satisfaction (and probably never will, since I'm hard to satisfy).
That's fair enough to Nagel. The important thing is that this motivation is 1) also impersonal, in the sense that it provides reasons for anyone to act, not just me; and 2) it can be stated without reference to my (or anyone's) personal feelings or preferences.
Quoting Dawnstorm
That's in part, I believe, why Nagel called his book The Possibility of Altruism. If we do eliminate feelings, even understood very broadly as you do, what could be left? What in the world could motivate me to take an unpleasant, difficult action, at no benefit whatsoever to myself, if not a strong "passion" which tells me I "should"? That is Hume's position, more or less. In contrast, Nagel argues for reasons as motivators -- beliefs, truths, entailments, arguments, the whole deal.
That is what I think myself. Given certain values (which are not generated in this way at all), we then want to know how to apply them. And the answer will be: as your reason dictates. On this view, reasons can create feelings, strong feelings, which can then help us do the right thing. But the reverse is not true. Reasons are either valid or invalid or somewhere in between, without reference to what my personal feelings or inclinations might be. This is of course why it is often so hard to "let reason be your guide."
(And if it worked out so neatly in practice, we'd have no ethical quandaries! Believe me, I know this is not like working a decision-tree.)
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yes, that's all I meant by "appeal" -- theoretical, not in medias res.
Quoting Dawnstorm
No doubt true. What we want to know is, what happens when an ethical choice arises that forces us to scrutinize our normal patterns of comfort and legitimization? Is the only tool at our disposal yet another look at the question of comfort? Or can I bypass how I may personally feel (again, taking "feel" in its broadest sense, to include like, prefer, etc.), ask for reasons, and let the comfort chips fall where they may?
This is extremely difficult to think through without an example; and I'm not even sure what would count as an example.
My hunch is that scrutinising your normal patterns of comfort is one of most uncomfortable things you can do in a moral context. You threaten your self image; you threaten your sense of the-way-things-are. Different people may have different tolarance level over all, and intra-personally the tolerance levels may vary by topic. "Asking for reasons" works because of this: you'd rather sacrifice some comfort-at-issue than the comfort-of-knowing-what-you-do-is-right. "Asking for reasons" quells existential anxiety (provided you find acceptable answers). You believe in God, you believe in rationality, you believe that people are basically good... anything to preserve the modicum of routine you need.
I haven't read the the rest of this, because I want you to not make this same mistake over, and over, leading me to ignore: This is the not the same assessment as what one ought to do. This is a different consideration, based on the essentially arbitrary goal of 'curing liver cancer' or whatever you want to be done, in the abstract. Whether or not one should do X is not hte same as whether X would achieve such and such a goal. This is why it already seemed obvious to me we're not talking about hte same 'good' and I do not take yours as 'ethical'. I may well come back to the rest of that as I can see Leontiskos has replied also, so might feel the need to put somethign in. But it seems your basis is off from the way I see things (and this seems, to me, patent, not subtle). Its very hard to go through making the same criticism at each point.
Quoting J
Fairly committed emotivist, so yes.
Fwiw, I am aware of that line between O and S ethics. I am discussing it.
Quoting J
Which expresses that person's personal, internal assessment of their behaviour. There is nothing close to objective about even the assessment mechanism here. This is why these uses of value words are misleading imo, not just inapt.
Quoting J
There must be, as I am not seeing a distinction in your elucidations. I see different uses of two words to mean the same thing in disparate circumstances. No worries with that, but it, to me, reflects an emotivist bent. That's fine, I suppose.
Quoting J
That would seem somewhat contradictory. Choices and preferences are distinct. They don't need compartmentalizing.
Quoting Leontiskos
Which tells us nothing ethical. I have tried to be extremely clear, but for some reason both you and Timothy seem to think "This is good, because X" is the same as "This is good". You're either subtly rejecting objectivist ethics, or you're wildly confused from where I'm standing...
Well, that might be so. Are you meaning to say that this is characteristic of all 1st-personal judgments? That is, if I say, "My statement was incorrect," that is equally personal and internal, with no pretense to objectivity? I suspect that's not what you mean. Rather, in this case you believe that there cannot be an objective assessment mechanism here, unlike a judgment about, say, accuracy. But that's assuming the conclusion, no?
Quoting AmadeusD
The pair in question is "prefer" and "choose". The distinction -- which I agree is hard to put in clear terms -- is between an action I actually like, or enjoy, or grok, or whatever other word we use to express a Humean passion, and an action that has none of these characteristics but that I do because I believe I should -- that it's the right thing to do. As above, we have to be careful not to start by assuming that the latter type of action is impossible, on theoretical grounds. I guess, if nothing comes to mind when you ask yourself for a personal example, it might be hard to characterize further. But I would have said that we all know the difference between doing something we really want to do -- have positive feelings about -- versus doing something quite repugnant, yet morally necessary as we see it.
Concerning what "ought to do" means: I wish I could agree with those who believe that we can derive an "ought" from an "is", ethically. This would involve going from a foundational, definitional understanding of what a human being is, to rational deductions about values which carry with them obligations (as opposed to reasons) for action. It would make things much simpler. But I agree with you that the ethical "ought" resists this deductive understanding. For me, one of the most interesting questions in meta-ethics is: Given this basic difference of opinion, is there any way that the two versions of ethics can really talk to each other? Or must we always be talking past each other? I think a real conversation would have to involve a very active curiosity about how to live into the opposite position, a kind of understanding from within.
Not quite, but I think this comes into something about when we can even apply the note 'correct'. If it's a question of reportage, then there's a rubric in place. I think the problem of perception means we can never be objective even in this case, but I note a serious difference between that statement when referring to, for instance, the fact of a Cat being in the room at the time (and wrongly saying it wasn't) or making a claim about, for instance, the worth of a policy which you perhaps misunderstood initially. In the latter, its just your position (now). In the former, you can be wrong. That you think your interpretation was off, is what's motivated the latter. That you can now see a Cat in the room motivates the former. They seem different to me. "I was wrong' doesn't actually seem to properly capture either issue, though, so we mayyy be talking past each other.
Quoting J
Right, so you're delineating desire and practicality. Fair enough. I still cannot understand the choice being 'not preferable' and still the correct choice, all things considered. Plenty of choices fit "undesired" though, which again, boils back to an emotional output in my view. Though, I seems you're trying to say in the one case, it's emotional and in the other not. Hmm. I don't know that I see the distinction.
Quoting J
Sure. Based on our emotional statements about the things in question. That seems baked in here.
Quoting J
This seems true. I have never had an objectivist say something I considered particularly rational about the basis for such a view. I assume the reverse is true.
Not for me. If subjectivism or emotivism about ethics were obviously irrational, it would have been dismissed centuries ago. Again, I wish it were that simple.
Interestingly, I think this is right -- finding a basis for ethical values does indeed do these things -- but at the same time it can't settle the question. Because . . . if we accept all this and find that our anxiety is indeed quelled, and our routine preserved, we may still find ourselves asking, "But is this enough? Is this what 'doing good' really means?" That the question can be meaningfully asked at all seems to put it in a different category from, say, "OK, I've demonstrated the Pythagorean theorem, but is that enough? Do I really understand what a right triangle is?" I'd say that question was meaningless, but the ethical question doesn't seem to be like that.
I'm the opposite. Intuitively, I assume there must be something more. But I cannot find even a coherent articulation of what that 'something more' could even be. I wish I could find it (maybe this amounts to the same thing lol - but I want my intuition to work, instead of be a clear instance of evolutionary illusion.
Quoting J
Plenty of examples of why this is patently not the case! Divine Command theory being one.
Really? I think "hodgepodge stew" might be guilty of not going far enough. A stew is, after all, a whole, and fairly inseparable. For Hume, we're a "bundle." As he says in the Treatise: "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."
Or take Nietzsche:
IDK, anti-realists and voluntarist have their view. I think it's wrong, but I also don't think they're [I]really[/I] just realists and intellectualists in disguise.
If Goodness cannot be [I]known[/I]if there is nothing [I]to know[/I]and if facts, truth, can never dictate action, then one cannot have an ethics where ends are ultimately informed by the intellect. The intellect becomes limited to a subservient role in orienting behavior towards positive sensation and sentiment (positive, but not [I]known as good[/I]). I do think Hume is quite right about this. I think Hume is rarely wrong about tracking down where his assumption lead (I just don't know why we'd accept many of his assumptions).
Plato is also in agreement with Hume here. This is precisely what the soul is like when "reason is a slave of the passions," right down to the epistemic concerns. The disagreement lies in Plato's belief that this does not represent the totality of human experience or the limits of the rational soul.
But isnt this more or less how ethics already works in practice? Morality, as we experience and debate it, seems less like the discovery of timeless metaphysical truths and more like a code of conduct that is shaped by competing preferences, traditions, and values among different groups.
People argue, negotiate, and revise ethical standards using a mix of emotional intuitions, shared values, facts, and reasoning. Ethical reasoning isnt absent just because theres no fixed Good out there to be discovered. Instead, we appeal to consistency, consequences, fairness, or human flourishing -not because we know the good in some absolute sense, but because thats how humans justify and improve their moral norms.
Do we need more than this?
I agree that this is what is happening. Though, I add that the majority of people don't think this is what's happening. They think that morality is objective, and they've got the goods (or, they can get the goods). This is, in my view, the problem. There's no issue with differing views, cajoling, adjusting, compromising etc. etc.. But when your interlocutor's don't believe this is acceptable because other views are ipso facto reprehensible, it's not a discussion or anything. Luckily, overall, the Law does this well and so people can cry into their cereal about it, i guess.
You may be right about this.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, that is a problem.
I guess on a philosophy forum, there's bound to be people who, generally theists of a stripe, believe in foundational guarantors of all thingswhether it be The One or some other ground of being.
Of course you and I could be wrong too. :wink:
"I'm not going to read your posts past the first sentence or actually engage with any arguments at all. But my position is very strong. No, I can't positively articulate it either. I will write posts consisting of just the word 'wrong' though."
I address the ordering of ends to other ends, and the question of ultimate ends/ends sought for their own sake in the next paragraph. So the "mistake," was perhaps trying to take the time to work up from the simple to the more difficult.
Then again, why should am I expecting that someone who declares that there is no good or bad, so no good or bad argument, or good or bad faith discussion, to act otherwise? I suppose you're "living your truth" in emotivism, because it does seem to be "true for you." Afterall, what possible arguments or explanation could I offer that could constitute "good" arguments? On the upside, I also cannot possibly have "bad" arguments either.
And thus, when you make your moral pronouncements (which seems to be in most posts) about all the flaws of "Wokeness," I take it that this is just meant to articulate something like "boo-hoo for Wokeness." It cannot mean that it is truly bad to accept such beliefs at least.
I am not really sure what you think a "fixed" or "transcendent" good is here. However, an ethics based on facts about human flourishing is not anti-realism. Sam Harris, for instance, is not an anti-realist. He has an ethics based on knowledge about Goodness (which he has a fairly reductionist account of, claiming it to be "certain sets of possible brain states.") By contrast, the Good for the Aristotlian tradition (and much of the pre-modern tradition) is a principle like "fairness" or more specifically "lift" or "entropy," etc. It is an extremely general principle though, hence the large role for intuition and (properly oriented) emotion in ethics. You and @J both have denied goodness as a possible principle for ethics, but then turned to "fairness," "harmonious relationships," and "justice." I am not really sure what the difference here is supposed to be, such that the latter are more acceptable, since these are also very general principles.
An anti-realist says there are absolutely no facts about fairness, consistency, consequences, or human flourishing that have any bearing on which ends ought to be preferred. How exactly do you propose "facts and reasoning" to guide ethics if there are no facts that have a bearing on which ends are choice-worthy? Wouldn't the facts necessarily be nothing but window dressing on a contest of emotions, and ultimately, power? Facts select means, not ends in anti-realism.
On something like the emotivist view, where ethical discussion is just "noises people make to signal emotional states vis-á-vis certain actions," what exactly could constitute "good or bad argument" or "good or bad faith" in argument? It seems to me that ethical debate is nothing but ritualized power struggle at this point. There are no relevant "facts of the matter" to guide one's conclusions. No choices can ever be "more right" or "more wrong."
Your appeal to "fairness" and "human flourishing" to mediate arguments presupposes these are choice-worthy and knowable. I'd agree they are. But then we aren't talking about the situation I was describing. Presumably, "consequences" can guide ethical decision-making because some consequences are more choice-worthy than others. If they aren't, then I'm not sure about that either.
Now hold on here! :smile: This is Hume on perception, not the moral ordering of the rational and lower appetites. Read the quote in context.
I was speaking to his denial of a strong self. However, it is directly relevant to his view of reason in context. Sense experience is where we discover "good" and "bad," which are known as correlated together by a wholly discursive reason.
He says reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will. (3.3.2.1) Reason might allow us to connect irrational sensations of pain and pleasure with different sense objects, but it [could not] be by [reasons] means that objects are able to affect us. (3.3.2.3)
What is the claim here, that Hume really does have a use for "rational appetites?" I think it's fairly obvious if you read those sections that he doesn't.
I actually don't know what that is. Could you explain the context? Thanks.
No. Rather, I don't see a way to use "good for human beings" to generate "I ought to do X." That's because I see "good for human beings" as only one dimension of ethics, not the first principle from which all else may be deduced.
Right, the human good is a particular instance of the more general principle. Harris allows this too, expanding well-being to "all conscious creatures."
I didn't know that. I think better of him for it.
But are you saying that the basis of virtue ethics is not "fulfilling the human good"? I thought that was the first principle for humans. That's what I doubt can generate the ethical "ought".
Yes, it's a piece of the puzzle, and I'm unsure how it fits. What I've not been addressing much is the social aspect. You acquire your moral values while growing up: you construct them out of observations when people punish or praise, when people pay attention to you and ignore you, and so on. There are rules or rules of thumb you know. You learn the when and where and who of it. People get divvied up into insiders and outsiders. And so on.
An insider can explain local morals to an outsider:
a) purely discriptive: This is how we do it here.
b) prescriptive, territorial: This is how we do it here; I will not tolerate deviance.
c) prescriptive, superiority: This is how it's done, but you barbarians don't know this.
d) prescriptive, universalist: This is how it's done; it's obvious; since you do it differently, you're evil.
e) prescriptive, exceptionalist: This is how we do it, because we're special.
And so on.
These sort of differences in attitude make a difference in how morals spread and change. Morals are socially "alive" - what we do is... "cell activity"? That is whenever we invoke a local moral, we interpret it in this specific interpretation, have an attitude towards its validity, feel it's biographical relevance more or less strongly, etc. All the while we evaluate how it turns out, etc. Our actions, attitudes, etc. are part of the social life flow of morals. In terms of moral conflicts, we go from intrapersonal to interpersonal. Interpersonal can occur within a sub-culture, within a culture but between subcultures, between cultures and so on. Intrapersonal conflicts can be the result of conflicts between two subcultures, both of which the person in question identifies with. Being part of multiple subcultures that don't overlap often can allow to "regionalise": if you wish for a superregional right in that case, you need to "climb up the abstraction ladder" - find a principle that accounts for both.
The result is that there are sentences like "murder is wrong," that say nothing at all if not interpreted. You'll rarely find people saying "yeah I murdered him; but I did so in self-defence," you'll hear "yeah, I killed him, but it wasn't murder, it was self-defense." The shared abstraction could be something like "some killing is wrong." This can be a problem when traditional values clash with more widely accepted values (and often enshrined in law). Think "honour killings", as an example.
Within any sort of social conflict, any act or utterance is taking a stance (or refusing to, or hesitating to...). Anxiety, in this context, will adversly affect your "power to influence the outcome". So I'd expect people who are more certain to contribute more to the moral landscape, by sheer force of conviction.
Basically, I view morality as a process, and what it's "based" on is a bit chicken/egg.
Sure, but I would choose "fairness" and "Justice" as they are understood intersubjectively.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Isn't it the case that an anti-realist denies that there are objective moral facts that determine which ends ought to be preferred? However, an anti-realist might still acknowledge that there are facts about fairness, consistency, consequences, or human flourishing, they just hold that these facts do not have objective normative force.
I might appeal to fairness or facts as dependent on contingent human attitudes or practices, rather than being intrinsically normative.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure Sam is not an anti-realist but his position seems different to what I was describing - he maintains that that moral truths exist and can be known through science.
I may well not be responding to you again if this is your response to someone pointing out that your entire premise is wrong in their view, and so did not literally waste their time reading what (and now I have read it, this is true) amounts to a rehashing of the same wrong-headed position (from my view). Why would I do that? Why would you want me to do that? Not something I want to be dragged in to. I suggest, if you have any interest in engaging with me in future, to seriously rethink how you've responded to this. If you don't, that's fine. I am merely giving you my terms.
Now, that aside...
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
1. One which actually goes any length toward establishing an ethical truth, if that's your goal**. You have not even begun to do so, as pointed out (and exactly why there's not a lot of reason for me to pursue your posts beyond that). That you think (perhaps?) that you have done so doesn't butter bread for me my guy.
2. You are, again, failing to delineate between "that which will result in X" and "that which ought to be done". You are arguing about something I am both (in this thread, anyway) not interested in, and don't really disagree with you about. The words "bad" and "good" have multiple meanings. You are not using an Ethical meaning. You are using a practical, empirical meaning. That you are not noticing this, despite it being pointed out several times is odd. That you are then, insulting and childish, instead of trying to clarify, is also odd. Why not actually figure out what I'm saying here? You clearly don't get it. There's nothing wrong with that - but then coming at me with immature retorts isn't helpful.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Putting aside this incredibly silly and unfounded side-swipe, yes. That's correct. What's your problem with that? I make arguments as anyone else does. They are either effective, or they're not. Has it helped you understand my positions? Then it might be good. If all I've done is make people think less of me, there are two options:
1. They are bad arguments (or my positions are insensible); or
2. You hold positions that don't allow for you to be generous to certain other positions.
**Arguments being 'good' is not ethical. They are effective, or they are not. A good (i.e effective) argument for racism doesn't make it ethically good. This is not complicated, I don't think. Can you let me know what's not landing here? I think i've been sufficiently clear and patient.
Divine Command theory holds that ethical statements are beholden to a revealed truth about a creator deity, essentially. Not always exactly that, but it means there is a prescriptive ethical system which cannot be jiggered with. Its easy, simple and does not require any kind of deliberation.
That said, Divine Command makes an interesting case. Is it irrational, exactly? Should it be dismissed? I could imagine a nuanced version that might pass muster. But if it refers to what some in the States call "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" religion, then no, not intellectually respectable.
The descriptions you give seem pretty accurate to me, as a kind of sociology of moral behavior. As a philosopher, I'm not really entitled to an opinion about it, as I haven't studied these questions.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Here, however, we enter philosophical territory, starting with the scare-quotes around "based"! Why the quotes? Do you mean to question whether there is a true basis for moral behavior, apart from social upbringing and norms? A fair question, but say more about the chicken/egg aspect.
The post you are replying to specifically addresses this vis-á-vis the question of ultimate ends/ends that are sought for their own sake. Ends are ordered to other ends. They either go on in an infinite regress, bottom out in irrational desires, or they are ordered to something sought for its own sake (e.g. happiness).
Can you explain what it would mean for something to be "ethically good" on your understanding of the term? Under what conditions can something be good in this sense?
Do you not find it ironic that simply explicitly calling out what your own statements imply about your own words seems like an insult or "side-swipe" to you? Those are your conclusions, I don't see how it is untoward to point them out.
In particular, I don't see how it is any more rude than simply responding: "Wrong." to posts.
Wouldn't a good argument be one that leads to truth? This definition of "good argument" reduces philosophy and science to nothing more than a power struggle or popularity contest. A "good argument" in science, or "good evidence" would then be simply "whatever combination of argument and evidence convinces people of a position, regardless of its truth."
Now to be fair, I would agree that we can sometimes speak of arguments being better or worse in terms of their efficacy, but this isn't primarily what makes arguments or evidence good or bad.
A very good question. I am not convinced it's a coherent concept. It's like something being "factually Good". Just seems a nonsense to me. To me, I guess "good" would, in an ethical sense, be a relative term. "good for..." makes more sense than "good" bare to me.
Perhaps we need to invoke something like Coherence theory to allow this to not be a total nonsense in practice, rather than on paper. This way, several views could be totally reasonable on an ethical issue and several actions could be acceptable (even as between conflicting views, holistically speaking).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, because that's not what you did. You made insinuations which I did not either say, or imply elsewhere. That passage spoke more to what you make of my views than anything else. I was probably too harsh, but it was well out of place. Further insinuating that all you did was report on my views seems... well, i'm just going to say it: dishonest. I'm not fussed as to whether you'd cop to that or not.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Unless you have a succinct, universal definition of Truth I wouldn't think so. PLenty of arguments aren't geared toward truth anyway, and persuasion instead. So, no, i'd disagree.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This seems to be the case, yes. In the real world - not particularly my view. A good argument works. It doesn't have to be 'true'.
Okay.
Quoting AmadeusD
So you are claiming that things which enable us to survive, such as food, are not generally considered to be good? When I say that people call food good in part because it allows them to survive, and you disagree, I don't see that I am the one making the controversial claim. It seems obvious that one of the reasons we call food good is because it enables us to survive. I'm wondering if you sincerely disagree with that claim.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, I asked a simple question and you've avoided answering it twice now. The question is, "If so, are those rhymes and reasons altogether different than those which guide other people's acts?" If you need clarification on any of the words in the question, feel free to ask. I need an answer to that question.
Quoting AmadeusD
It's not necessary to know what someone is getting at before answering their question. If that were the case then no one would have answered any of Socrates' questions whatsoever.
Quoting AmadeusD
Right, and given that we can talk about true and false without an arbiter, I see no reason why we can't talk about good and bad without an arbiter.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
I'm sorry, but this is another avoided question. Do we need an arbiter before we can see that 2+2=4?
-
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
So does it then follow that we also need an arbiter of the terms in "2+2=4" if they are to mean anything? Again, if we don't need an arbiter to interpret or know the claim that 2+2=4, then it's not clear why we need an arbiter to know that food is good. The whole "arbiter" argument requires some explanation.
Quoting AmadeusD
Right, that's why I pointed you to the article. He captures your position very clearly before arguing against it. You've recognized how accurately he captures your position, and that's a good start.
No, no, no, no. LOL. I haven't said or intimated this. You probably need be a bit more precise in how you're reading me:
Obviously that's how things are generally considered. What I am saying, is that what people are doing is saying that "X is good for..." So, "food is good" is not what's being conveyed. "the good" is what we're talking about, so a different arena. If you mean to say you think when people say something like "food is good" that this is tout court; no qualification, then I disagree. I don't think people have that type of view.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is literally all i had said. People call food good because it performs a necessary function towards a certain goal. If that's your definition of "good" cool. It's not any common one. "Good" tends to require reason. "I will survive" is a fact, not a reason. "Surviving is good, to me" is perfectly acceptable response, though, so maybe you actually mean to say something like this? Not making a lot of sense otherwise...
Quoting Leontiskos
I can only repeat my previous reply. It's not a reasonable question, because I didn't intimate it was in question. You're not getting an answer. The question is ridiculous. What people? What acts? What reasons? Probably I eat for hte same reasons as other people, but there's very little chance I do some of my more personal things for the same reasons as others. The answer you want is a fugazi imo. "yes" tells you nothing whatsoever except that I think I know why everyone does everything they do, and "No" tells you nothing but "I am special". These are not part of our discussion and I am telling you, point blank period, the question is not helpful for what you want to know. Given that I am the source of what you want to know, I'm happy to just not respond if you re-ask this one. Take that as you wish.
Quoting Leontiskos
Then, I did answer it. You just didn't appreciate my response, i take it. That's fine.
Quoting Leontiskos
Then you think "true" and "false" are synonymous with "good" and "bad". I both disagree and find it silly.
Quoting Leontiskos
We have infinite arbiters of that equation, given we accept the definitions. two items, and two other items make four items. If you want to change the words that's fine, but they arbitrate the same issue.
Quoting Leontiskos
It doesn't, as I see. You've not provided an objection to it. We cannot talk about truth and falsity (in situ) without an arbiter. We can only speculate, or talk conceptually. something must indicate that whatever proposition is, in fact, true or false, if we are to take those views (well, without conceding assumption, lets say, which is usually how its done). We can talk about good and bad, but to actually ascribe that to anything is a matter of personal view. There is nothing in this thread that goes against that, other than reaches for versions of Divine Command.
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps you've missed, but I addressed this. He fails (on my view). YOu pointed me to an article. I read it. It was woefully inadequate to counter what I'm positing (on my view). There we are... You seem to want everything you put forward to result in a change of my mind. You'd need to present something which affects my views to do so rather than discussing them (which is much fun - and you're good at it). I am not complaining, but there's nothing in any of this exchange that would go toward giving me areason to adjust the priors involved. I am all ears, even if you have to assume I am not. I am getting a very interesting, and appreciated understanding of your views. Nothing to sneeze at. It's good stuff.
Sort of. Talking about the morality of social groupings rather than the morality of a person has had my hyper-aware of the metaphor I use. A base is something you build on. A person's morality has its base in the earliest learning process. Here "base" is adequate. But I view the morality of a social grouping more like a flow, metaphorically a river maybe, and under that perspective each person turns into a spring that feeds into a river (and those rivers run together - I wonder if, given enough time, I can extend the metaphor to include the sea?). But even that is a problem, because the flow is bi-directional, as people is all that there are: you learn, imperfectly, from your parents, but by the time you grow up you've made it your own. So the flow-metaphor isn't quite right either... Basically, I just got confused by the metaphors we use.
Quoting J
You take your morality from society and in turn become part of the morality-distribution-sytem of a society. From a simple-to-complex point of view, what you want has to come first, but by the time you're developed enough to want things, you've also already aquired some of the morality of your parents. Then transfer this to a historical point of view: was there ever a "first" moment, really? How far back can we go and still recognise morality in an interaction? When does an I-want-this-and-you-want-this-and-we-can't-both-have-it situation gain moral overtones? When do we have something to pass on to the next generation? It's hard to imagine a morally "naive" situation. And it's hard to imagine a grouping who *didn't* learn morality from their parents' generation, given they necessarily live at the same time (or babies don't survive). It's hard to imagine a first moral generation.
So even though people call food good without any explicit qualification, you are reinterpreting everyone to be saying something else, namely that "food is good for such-and-such"?
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
It's literally not all you had said. In fact you contradicted that claim. Here is the exchange:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
...you literally said that, "Food is good," is an unreasonable claim, that this is not how food is characterized, and that what we should say is that it is necessary to survive. It seems like you've done a 180 degree turn on most of these previous claims.
Quoting AmadeusD
If you can't give truthful answers to questions posed to you, I'm not sure why you're on a philosophy forum. Your desire to understand where a question is going before answering it is a form of post hoc rationalization, where instead of simply giving a truthful answer you tailor your answer in a defensive manner in order to try to achieve some ulterior goal within the conversation. Consider your response:
Quoting AmadeusD
...That's a bit like playing chess and then saying, "I'm not going to move until you tell me your strategy, so that I know where I should move." That's not how chess or philosophy works, and avoiding giving truthful answers for fear of being wrong is a great way to never be wrong, and to never learn anything. If you think someone will draw a false inference from an answer then you give the answer, see if a false inference is drawn, and then address the false inference. You don't refuse to answer.
Quoting AmadeusD
. Besides, who made you the arbiter of what is and is not part of the discussion? The reason you won't answer the question is because it shows your claim about the arbitrariness of the good to be false. If we all call food good for the same reason then your claim that predications of goodness are arbitrary is clearly seen to be false. One only refuses to move when they are at a loss. :razz:
Quoting AmadeusD
This is a good example of a false inference. It simply does not follow from what I've said that true/false must be synonymous with good/bad, and "I find it silly" is in no way an argument for that odd claim.
Quoting AmadeusD
But you are unduly stretching the meaning of the word "arbiter." The claim here that whatever it is that indicates that 2+2=4 is true is an arbiter is simply a misuse of the word "arbiter." I take it that we both know, if we are using words accurately, that it is not an arbiter that makes 2+2=4 true.
Quoting AmadeusD
You've given no indication whatsoever that you read beyond the first page of the article. You haven't addressed or presented any of the arguments or points in the article.
In general, your fiat declarations of victory are not convincing, to say the least. If you are short on time, then delay the post. Don't make unsubstantial posts lacking argumentation and then declare victory.
100%. Not just this, It is actually what people mean. Ask them. "It's tastes good". "It will keep me alive". Only in a romantic moment of poetics would someone claim food was "good" tout court. Are you suggesting that is actually what they mean? It would be bizarre if that tradition ("good food") related to something other than what is referred to in the various instances it is uttered (well-cooked, tasty, healthy etc..). This is a pretty ubiquitous way of speaking about things (i.e not completing a commonly-intuited phrase to save time - an extreme modern version is "I can't..." in the face of a difficult conversation).
Quoting Leontiskos
The quote you exchange shows exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.
Quoting AmadeusD
Exactly what I claimed, is exactly what I said. This is going to make the rest of this reply pretty ridiculous...
Quoting Leontiskos
Quite frankly, sit the whole way down. This type of charge is utterly beneath you. You are wrong and I've just shown that clearly.
Quoting Leontiskos
I knew you'd say this, instead of answering. Ironic.
Quoting Leontiskos
You lie about such. Why would I bother?
Quoting Leontiskos
If you think this, not only is it clear you've not paid attention, it is clear you are just giving up because nothing I've said leads to the conclusion you drew before we even exchanged. Not my circus.
Quoting Leontiskos
False. If this is your position, I don't care. People refuse to answer shitty questions. As they should.
Quoting Leontiskos
It does (give it a few days, and re-read the entire exchange. I dare you). It wasn't an argument. I find it silly and clearly wrong.
Quoting Leontiskos
If you had paid any attention to my response, you'd know I don't agree with that. what the hell is going on dude - you're responding to my comments as if they are something other than what i've said.
I've not declared anything. I simply think you've failed to do what you are claiming to have done (and, in fact, you are just claiming that I must, secretly, accept your position)... It's sort of the opposite of what's being claimed, and its not something that can be 'gotten on with' as it were. I think this may be the end of this conversation if so. I imagine if we spoke in person or over the phone, this wouldn't be the case.
If I may pluck this statement out of its somewhat cantankerous conversational context :wink: . . .
You seem to be saying that, if something is sought for its own sake (by me, let's say), then I ought to seek it -- that this generates the moral ought. Or is it that, if I am seeking it for its own sake, then I ought to continue to seek it? This appears definitionally obvious to you, I'm guessing, but clearly others don't understand why. Nor do I. Why does it follow? Where does the obligation come in?
Faith is a subclass of beliefs, of cognitive dispositions about propositions, that have at least in part an element of trust in an authority mixed up therein. E.g., my belief that '1 + 1 = 2' is true does not have any element of trust in an authority to render, even as purported, it as true or false and so it is non-faith based belief; whereas my belief that 'smoking causes cancer' is true does have an element of trust in an authority (namely scientific and medical institutions) to render, even as purported, it as true or false and so it is a faith-based belief.
That amounts to the same thing**. We don't want to do things we feel are wrong. "I felt I had to" would present an issue. Is that's a more interesting avenue?
**after a bit of regression. Why do you think it's wrong? Because you don't want/like the outcome, i suppose.
I realize it would do, from your point of view, but I'm saying that even if one accepted the idea of a genuine, non-subjective sense of "wrong," it doesn't help generate an ought. As it happens, I do think there are objective/intersubjective values, quite apart from my personal opinions about them. But I don't agree with @Count Timothy von Icarus and others that this creates a moral obligation simpliciter that can be expressed as "you ought to do X."
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, that's a different case. Is it clear to you that it's even an ethical statement? I'm not sure. It sounds like a psychological description that could apply to many things, ethical or not. But I understand what you're trying to capture -- the sense that doing the right thing feels compelling, at a level below (or above) rational justification. Would an ethical subjectivist need to challenge that, do you think, and argue that the feeling is just that, a feeling, and doesn't point beyond itself?
Ok, that's fair. Now, I have been trying to present a largely Aristotlian ethics for the sake of simplicity, but I think it's worth noting that Aristotle's notion of goodness is ultimately quite compatible with Platonism and medieval Christian and Muslim philosophy, as well as most earlier Pagan ethics. It is, as far as I am aware, not that far off the notions underpinning the dominant historical ethics of India and China. All of these look at goodness in terms of ends, and look to ethics as the study of ends, particularly human ends (happiness/flourishing), and human excellences (virtues) which enable the individual and social attainment of such ends.
Your complaint has been that this is not "real ethics" because it doesn't deal with "ethical/moral good," a concept which you say you cannot define or provide a single example of, and which you say seems "incoherent." You fault the Aristotelian view for dealing in "empirical goods" which suggests to me that you also think that "real ethics" must deal with some sort of a priori innate knowledge.
Either way, is this a fair demand? "For an ethics to be compelling and to be real ethics, it must match my definition of a sui generis moral good which I cannot define, nor give examples of, and which I have no clear notion of, given that I think my concept is itself wholly unintelligible."
Wouldn't it rather be the case that Aristotle, Confucius, Aquinas, Cicero, Al Farabi, etc.'s possession of an actually intelligible notion of goodness and the human good is point in their favor, not a knock against them?
How about this, why don't you try defining "moral ought" and "moral good" in the sense you are using them?
I think you should probably take Alasdair MacIntyre's thesis as much more plausible after exchanges like these. Apparently, you think "moral goodness" doesn't necessarily depend on ends and that the will doesn't seek goodness as an appetite (as truly desirable) but rather that "if something is 'morally good,' there is a unique 'moral ought' that denotes that some end should be sought as an end for no reason (e.g. it being desirable) except that it is 'morally good.'
Since you think the egoist has very strong, rational arguments for not pursuing this "moral good," I can only assume that you think such a good isn't "good" in virtue of being ordered to truly desirable ends, but rather that we have some sort of "moral ought" to desire things that are "morally good," or else some duty to perform them even though they aren't actually desirable.
I struggle to conceive of what "good" is even supposed to denote in this context except the sort of bare, inscrutable "thou shalt" that underpins voluntarist divine command theories. It's obviously not the normal use of the word "good," which denotes orientation towards some (desired) end. When we say "this is a good car," we do not mean "thou shalt desire/choose this car" for instance. When someone is a "good guitar player," we also don't tend to mean "they play guitar in accordance with the 'thou shalt.'"
That is, you seem to be saying: "things are not good because they are truly desirable, but rather 'because something is 'morally good' the will has a sui generis 'moral ought' to seek it.'"
Here is my challenge: explain in virtue of what something is "morally good" in this way in a non-circular manner. Explain why something ought to be sought as an end because it is "morally good."
To me the questions:
Why ought men try to be happy instead of miserable?
Why ought we prefer truth to falsity?
Why ought we prefer the better to the worse?
Why ought organisms try to survive and reproduce (i.e. fulfill their natural ends)?
...just make me want me to ask: "what do you think 'ought' means/derives from?" Because it starts to look a lot like "you ought do what is 'morally good' and something is 'morally good' because it is what ought be done."
Can you explain [I]any[/I] derivation of such a "moral ought?"
I've had occasion to say this before, but it bears repeating: I really appreciate your willingness to consider these questions with the care and thoroughness that you do.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, not as an absolute, non-hypothetical obligation. I don't think that can be done. When I say to you (anyone), "I think you ought to do X," what I mean is, "If you accept the values A, B, C, which you tell me you do, then you ought to do X." A lot of the unclarity around this discussion comes from denying the difference, epistemologically, between knowing what is of value, and knowing what one ought to do. You believe they involve the same process -- rationality, broadly -- and I do not. I think that recognizing moral (and aesthetic) values is non-rational -- people can't be shown them rationally -- and involves techniques that are at base experiential. However, once there is agreement on such values, the question of what one ought to do, given those values, becomes tractable.
Is this any help?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, there's a third alternative, as I tried to outline above. There's nothing sui generis about the moral ought. It's a good old hypothetical imperative.* Where all the confusion comes in, is when we also try to claim that values are transparent to the rational mind in this way. This inevitably leads to the idea that values themselves could be "derived" in some way, from first premises. As I understand the question, they can't -- but that doesn't mean that everyone's perception/intuition/experience of values is equally correct. It's quite possible to perceive incorrectly. This is not a brief for ethical relativism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm afraid that the whole set-up with "ends" is part of the rationalist tradition about values which I find suspect. I hold "compassion" to be one of the key virtues. Do I believe that acting compassionately is an end in itself? In a way; it can't be rationally justified, anyway. But does that mean that no further ethical dilemmas can be posed -- that it will always be obvious what the compassionate choice is? Certainly not. So, in your terms, would you want to say that this represents an "end"? I honestly don't know how we should think about that.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Maybe I understand you here. But doesn't MacIntyre say that Classical terms like "goodness" have lost their original meanings, in the modern context? And that therefore we shouldn't use them, unless we use them as the Greeks did? But that presupposes that conceptual development is precluded by a fixed vocabulary. Let's say I deny that "the will seeks goodness as an appetite (as truly desirable)." Wouldn't MacIntyre say that I am simply wrong about the will and about goodness, based on the only coherent meanings the words can have, i.e., their Classical roots? I don't find that thesis plausible, no, but I agree with him, and with you, that a thorough understanding of the conceptual development of key philosophical terms is important.
* I'm deliberately ignoring the Kantian categorical imperative in this discussion, since I don't think it represents the kind of "ought" you're interested in. I think there's a lot to be said for the cat. imp., but that's because it is procedural. It doesn't claim to generate the content of ethics. Anyway, a whole other discussion.
Ergo:
Quoting Leontiskos
(Michael consistently does this same thing. He argues against morality, but when you ask him what he means by "morality" he admits that he has no definition. And yet when you offer a definition he says, "That's not the definition of morality." @J is in much the same boat, but he doesn't even have a grasp of logical argumentation in the first place and therefore his plight is a bit more pronounced.)
A good approach. :up:
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
This is the sort of thing you do, and it has nothing to do with argumentation or philosophy. These are not arguments. You need to learn to give arguments for your claims. Obviously I am not the first to tell you this, nor will I be the last.
Honestly, I would suggest that you study the question of what an argument is, and then begin discerning whether your posts contain any (or how many they contain, and of what quality). There are a very large number of people on TPF who don't know what an argument is, so this is not specific to you. Understood aright, that question is not elementary; it is vastly interesting.
Here's the sober truth: You are not a moral realist. Here is SEP:
Quoting Moral Realism | SEP
Wake up, dude. Time to stop asserting things you know to be false. The reason you are constantly arguing against moral realism is because you don't believe it. You don't believe that there are factually true moral claims. Why pretend otherwise? Why deceptively play both sides and pretend to be what you are not? You will do yourself and everyone else a huge favor if you simply admit that you are not a moral realist. Until that happens the whole conversation is built on a pretense/lie, and that lie will continue to color all of the strange edifice built atop it.
To his great credit, @Bob Ross attempted exactly that, and he is right that a substantial rebuttal of his explanation is lacking. In fact I don't know that I have seen anyone else on TPF attempt to give a precise definition of what they mean by "faith." Usually it goes <more like this>.
I think I arrived at this view through Bertrand Russell, who said: "Where there is evidence, no one speaks of 'faith'. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence."
I guess faith is one of those words that can be used in different ways and means different things to different people.
What do you understand faith to be?
@Banno sorry mate - what do you think of this definition? If I am wrong about faith is it
because I am wrong about the nature of belief? "An element of trust in authority" would count many of our beliefs as faith based. Is faith simply a trust in something we can't fully verify ourselves?
To the first, every philosopher is entitled to their own bedrock definitions, if they're not absurd, and this is not. All we can say in response is, That is not how I define the term. There could then be a discussion about each person's reasons for selecting their preferred definition.
To the second, I'm not sure what Count T thinks about this. You think what is of personal value cannot be universalized or objectified further. I'm more of the opinion that values can only be known subjectively, but that reasons for action may be presented rationally. And to say that "values can only be known subjectively" is not the same thing as saying "they cannot be misperceived or misunderstood, because they are strictly personal."
Doesn't it seem problematic that your conception of "ought" makes it impossible to develop a single example of it?
It's a strange definition of "ought" that can be divorced from value. Suppose you brought me two Toyota Siennas from the same year, with the same trim, and said you needed a family commuter vehicle. I look them both over and say one is rusted, leaking transmission fluid, and might have a bad head gasket and the other looks great. "Vehicle #2 is the better one."
And you turn around and say: "ok, but you haven't told me which one I ought to pick."
"What? I just told you #2 is better in every way. It's the same exact van, just well-maintained and not broken."
"Yes, I understand that. But where is the connection between 'best' and 'ought?' How do you move between them?"
If x is best, then from the perspective of ethical decision-making x is most choice-worthy, which means x ought to be picked. Whether this is simply definitional, or whether it requires some sort of first principle of syteresis to the effect of "we ought choose the better over the worse," has never really interested me that much. They both seem hard to object to. Provided anything can be "truly better" then it does not make sense to choose what is "truly worse," unless one is making a decision based on some [I]other[/I] end that the worse option ranks better on.
But then you say you believe in "objective values," yet your entire argument seems to rest on such values actually being epistemically inaccessible.
If "rational" is reduced to "nothing but discursive (linguistic/formal) ratio," as it so often is in modern thought, then virtually nothing can be known rationally. When I say that Goodness can be sought and known as such, I do not mean "entirely in the context of discursive (linguistic) reasoning." Definitions of knowledge that focus exclusively on discursive justification are extremely impoverished. They are particularly deficient for ethics, where "knowing by becoming" (e.g. Boethius' Consolation) is very important.
See below:
It's a strange accident of philosophical history that the empiricist tradition has largely convinced itself that it cannot know much of anything (including the validity of its own epistemic standards), but has stalwartly refused to turn around and challenge its dogmatic epistemic presuppositions, or its deflation of human rationality into just the [I]lower[/I] faculty of just the intellect. Post-moderns, for their part, seem happy to lend the empiricists the rope they use to hang themselves with.
If you want an interesting experiment, try explaining Wittgenstein's rule following argument to people who don't really care about philosophy. Kripke's example with "quaddition" and "quus," is an easy way to present it. I have found that most people think it is, frankly, pretty stupid. They tend to think you are trolling them. As Mill once said: "one would need to have made some significant advances in philosophy to believe such a thing."
Because, when you ask people: "how are you sure that you are doing addition and not quaddition?" they rightly say that: "well, I would know." And if you press them on "third person verification," they're likely to say "something being one way and verifying that it is one way are not the same thing. When I tell a lie, it doesn't cease to be a lie just because no one can tell if I am lying or not."
You know, because people [I]understand[/I] addition. Just like they understand ethics, or what a cat is. Discursive justification is a sign of truth, a means of communicating truth, etc.Ratio is how the intellect progresses from truth to truth. Completely eliminating understanding from the equation (and the whole of phenomenal experience) as "unobservable" doesn't just make ethics "non-rational," it makes everything "non-rational." Without intellectus all you have is rule following (rule following that cannot ever constitute understanding of its own rules).
Excellent. Living is a natural end of organisms. Organisms are constantly at work trying to maintain their form against entropytrying to survive. However, is it the only natural end? Does human happiness and flourishing consist solely in staying alive?
Survival isn't the number one priority of even the brutes. For instance, the bee will sacrifice itself (quite gruesomely) for the good of the hive in pursuit of its ends. In terms of the "metaphysics of goodness," it is ends that make things more fully "one." Ends makes any thing anything at all, instead of an arbitrary heap. Chemicals are unified by their role in organelles, organelles are part of an organic whole in cells, cells are unified in tissue, which in turn plays a role in the whole body of an organism. The goal-directedness of life is precisely why Aristotle has living things as most properly beings (plural). By contrast, a rock is largely a heap of external causes, and when we break a rock in half we have two rocks (whereas if we break a cat in half we have a corpse).
MacIntyre's thesis isn't that the old usages are arbitrarily to be preferred. They are to be preferred because the modern usages are incoherent and collapse into emotivism.
Is a definition of "ethics" and "good" that makes it impossible to demonstrate a single example of such an "ethical good" or to even explain under what conditions something could be said to be "ethically good" or a "moral ought" not absurd?
Pace your claims to be a moral realist, you seem to think that in ethical matters "any definition is as good as any other." Perhaps this stems from the ethics of liberalism where everyone is entitled to "their own truth" and the bourgeois metaphysics where "things are allowed to be true so long as they prevent nothing else from being so" (such an ethics is, IMO self-refuting however). The same would apply for an anti-realism vis-a-vis universals. If someone wants to define a tiger as "an aquatic reptile," there would be an impasse so long as the person can defend "tigers are an aquatic reptile" with a straight face and some standard of "rationality."
If such a definition seems absurd to some, the words of the Big Lebowski hold: "well, that's just like, your opinion man."
But that isn't realism. Realism implies that not all definitions are equal. It does not entail a single canonical usage of "good" (indeed, we might distinguish between many types of good by looking at the same concept from different directions). It does, however, imply some isomorphism between definitions, else we are dealing with equivocal terms. There would be situations where "good" could be predicated of the same thing, in the same context, and the statement would be both true and false owing to this eqivocity (as opposed to this sort of issue being soluble through distinctions, as in cases of analogical predication).
Part of the problem here is that, if one adopts a throughgoing nominalism, it might indeed be impossible to be a consistent "moral realist." I think there is a strong argument to be made that MacIntyre's thesis might apply more broadly to metaphysics, and that the collapse into emotivism has metaphysical roots. Certainly, we have gone from a context where there was a strong metaphysical grounding and exploration of Goodness, to one where ethics is attempted largely is isolation from metaphysics (much the way logic has become detached from metaphysics, making some debates in logic, e.g. logical nihilism, essentially insoluble and difficult to even define).
Someone like @J or Michael will distinguish the moral ought from the non-moral ought, and when you press them on what is meant by "the moral ought" they will be reduced to the exact same problems that plagued them in the first place.
This goes back to your ethical/deliberative definition of good as "choice-worthy," or the definition of good as that which all things seek (i.e. a kind of desirability). "Ought" is no less conceptually complex and multivalent, and if we do not recognize the analogical nature of such terms we fall into univocal fallacies. For example, the univocal move where one distinguishes the moral ought from the non-moral ought and yet has no idea what they claim to mean by "the moral ought."
This all goes back to my reference to Simpson's paper.
Much of what we call our knowledge consists in beliefs which are culturally accepted as facts so there is an element of faith of course. The assumption is that if had the time we could check the sources of such facts ourselves, that we have good reason to accept the findings and observations of experts, of scientists and scholars, and thus have good reason to believe in their truth. So there is also reasoning to the most plausible conclusion in play and such knowledge is not merely faith-based.
In matters where there is no possibility of seeing for oneself the beliefs are entirely faith-based. Especially when there seems no reason to belie e that the pronouncements of authorities, for example religious authorities, are themselves faith-based. So the degree of faith at play in our beliefs is on a spectrum from no faith to pure faith.
That's a pretty standard pejorative (and unserious) usage. You won't find anything about emotion over evidence in dictionaries.
You've alluded to something like this before, but I really don't follow. I believe I've said quite a bit about the ethical good and the moral ought, focusing on the important (to me) epistemological distinction between value and obligation. But I may well be missing what you mean. If you have the patience, could you say more about the absurdity?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But I said just the opposite! "This is not a brief for ethical relativism."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think I was careful to rule out absurd definitions. There is no standard of rationality that either one of us would acknowledge which could make this straw definition non-absurd.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Of course they aren't. That's why I said, "There could then be a discussion about each person's reasons for selecting their preferred definition." It might well turn out that one set of reasons is the more convincing.
This last comment suggests some possibly useful paths to explore. I've often had the sense that your (and other neo-Aristotelians') conception of how to arrive at truth is what we might call "armchair" -- an apodictic, or at least deductive, process that one person, using premises believed to be reliable, could carry out completely on their own. There isn't a lively sense that other thinkers and traditions could be useful, could offer reasons and perspectives that would perhaps alter even those bedrock premises fruitfully. The truth is seen as already out there, waiting to be deduced. So perhaps the better phrase is "philosophy as a mathematical process."
Let me try to put this in terms that may be congenial to you. You may be familiar with the Lonergan scholar Michael H. McCarthy. And I'm guessing you admire Lonergan himself very much -- he and MacIntyre are often mentioned in the same contexts. This solo approach to dialectic, according to McCarthy, is what Lonergan called "dogmatic." He deplored "the search for an algorithmic method to eliminate philosophical disagreement." As McCarthy writes (and I'm not sure how much of this paraphrases Lonergan):
This seems beautifully put, to me. It's essentially the same process I find Peirce and Habermas recommending. We simply cannot arrive at truth without taking the other's views into consideration. And "to take into consideration" does not mean to argue against them, on the assumption they are probably wrong. That is the dogmatism Lonergan rejected. That does not create "a critical center." As for Habermas, he would probably say something like, "Yes, let's sit down and see if we can understand each other before trying to form a judgment on the issue." With all respect, Timothy, that doesn't involve thinking your interlocutors are on the level of The Big Lebowski. I certainly hope you don't feel that I see you that way.
But, sigh, this is a Philosophy Forum, so I guess that proposing less argument will never be popular.
:smile:
But you are doubtless unable to answer the question, "What is an absurd definition?" You keep making claims that you are unable to explain, and using words that you are unable to define.
Quoting J
That one person has stronger metaphysical superglue? :wink:
I said no nor never implied such things: my definition was clear. A faith-based belief can have any degree of certitude (just like non-faith-based ones); for faith is a matter of the origin of the verification of a proposition's truth or falsity.
E.g.,:
1. If I believe that "1 + 1 = 2" because I was told this is the case from my math teacher and I trust that they know what they are doing but I myself have not verified through my own application of math that it is true, then this belief is mixed up with trust in an external authority and thusly is faith-based; and this proposition I am not absolutely certain is true (for there is always a level of uncertainty in trust as a source of verification).
2. If I believe that "1 + 1 = 2" because I understand the math behind it, independently of anyone or institution, then this is a non-faith-based belief because there is no external authority required to believe it; and this proposition I am absolutely certain is true (for one can deduce its truth from the basic axioms of math and logic).
3. If I do a scientific experiment myself about the causation between smoking and cancer and I believe "smoking can cause cancer" solely because of it, then this is a non-faith-based belief; and this proposition I am not absolutely certain of (for science never affords absolute certitude).
4. If I believe "smoking can cause cancer" because I trust the many medical and scientific institutions which purport it as true (given the articles and what not that are published), then this is a faith-based belief; and this proposition I am not absolutely certain of (ditto).
I haven't been following this discussion. I've pretty much said what I thought already. So my answer here may well be out of context.
Quoting Bob Ross
We might agree that faith is a type of belief. Adjusting Moore, it would be odd to claim that one has faith in something that one does not believe.
I'd prefer to call it a propositional attitude rather than a disposition. A belief is a belief that..., and thereafter hangs something with a truth value. The disposition to occasionally scratch your arse does not much seem to count as a belief. The truth value is salient here.
We use the same word - "faith" - on the one hand for a conviction that such-and-such is true, and on the other for a trust or confidence in something or someone. The prototypical examples of faith in this second sense in contrast to mere belief are those in which fidelity, loyalty, or trust come to the fore. Too have faith, as Kierkegaard pointed out, is to take a leap.
While that might involve some authority, there is no reason to suppose that it must. And indeed, faith in a friend or faith in love look to be counter instances, were authority is not involved.
Bob differentiates between faith-based and non-faith-based beliefs. It's not clear that this is helpful. Taking his own example, I would not characterise a belief that smoking causes cancer as being faith-based. Sure, we are putting some trust in the experts who study such things, but we can go and look at their results for ourselves if we have doubts. The evidence is there. Contrast this with the priest who insists that the bread is Jesus's flesh. The evidence does not support the priest's contention and indeed is contrary to it. This is a much stronger example of faith at work than the scientists' contention that smoking causes cancer.
Hence my earlier suggestion that faith is seen most clearly when one believe despite the evidence.
There is a rhetorical ploy at play here, where faith is used to account for belief both in something evident - that smoking causes cancer - and also for something contrary to the evidence - the bread is flesh; and these as if they were of a kind. As if the faith in transubstantiation were no more than a variation on the scientific method. There simply a fair amount of such bull in this thread.
The appeal to authority doesn't cut it for me.
Fair enough: that is what I meant by disposition, but I get your point.
By authority, I dont mean only entities which have power or rights to judge another; but, rather, entities, namely agents and institutions, that are considered properly equipped to do or divulge something.
E.g., in friendship, I might have faith in my friend that they will show up to pick me up at 5:00 PM; and this demonstrates that I trust them to pick me up and this is because I consider them as properly equipped to pick me up. Likewise, I might not believe they are properly equipped to pick me up but that they will try to anyways (viz., I have faith they will try to pick me up); and this is just to say I find them properly equipped to put in the effort to try despite lacking the resources to do it.
I would guess that for you this is too broad of a definition of authority; as I would imagine you are envisioning authorities in the sense of some governing entity. I am not opposed to using a different term for what I am describing if a better one were to find its way into my ears.
1. This, in principle, is true; however the source of the verification of the belief is what determines if that belief is faith-based and not if in principle the proposition could be verified in a non-faith-based manner. E.g., if I believe 1 + 1 = 2 because my math teacher told me so, without verifying it myself, then this is purely faith-based even though in principle I could verify it if I knew basic math.
2. If you concede there is trust in the experts involved in your belief that smoking causes cancer and you grant my definition of faith, then your belief that smoking causes cancer is at least in part a matter of faith. This doesnt mean it is invalid or on par with every other belief that is faith-based.
3. With science, we cannot, oftentimes, go look for ourselves in such a manner as to verify the entire study or purported facts as true independently of trusting the institution or experts involved in the studies or determining those purported facts.
Whether or not a belief has an element of faith in it is separate from whether or not the evidence for believing is credible or sufficient to warrant that belief.
Good point.
Quoting Banno
That's clear. Thanks.
I'm not seeing that this is useful, nor how it makes a difference, nor indeed how it might count against what I wrote.
Quoting Bob Ross
But I do not grant your definition of faith. While the belief that smoking causes cancer need not be faith-based, the belief that a piece of bread is flesh must be faith based. Again, the marker for faith is belief despite the evidence, not because of it. Hence, Quoting Bob Ross
is mistaken.
That's all? For all my efforts? At least let me know if you agree, and if not, perhaps where and why.
Or was your aim just to drag me back into this mud wrestle, for your amusement?
:wink:
It is also worth mentioning that your definition, contrary to what you wrote before, has nothing to do per se with trust in anything at all: I can have a believe despite the evidence without trusting anyone that it is true (e.g., believing I can fly because it makes me feel good).
No. I said the marker of faith is holding on to a belief - that your friend will pick you up or that the bread is flesh - despite the evidence.
We are not talking past each other. I am directly challenging your account. You would strain to a similarity between the physician's claim that cancer causes mortality and the priest's, that the bread is flesh. The first can be help true on the evidence, the second is contrary to it. The second is an epitome of faith, and shows your account remiss.
The Russell quote seems to provide a polemical definition of faith.
My original issue with faith is that Christians often tell me that choosing to fly in a plane is an act of faith equivalent to belief in God. To me, this seems wrong on a couple of counts. First, we can demonstrate that planes exist. Second, they almost always fly safely. God, on the other hand, is a confused idea. Even within a single religion, people can't seem to agree on what God is or what God wants. And then there's the problem of proof, which in this context exists solely in making inferences of a certain kind.
But the reason I asked you about this is because how language is used seems to be a critical point in discussions of faith. I've been told that my understanding of faith is mistaken. The claim is that we all have faith of some kind, and that when we say faith is belief without evidence, we are oversimplifying or misrepresenting how the word is used. Sounds to me like there are multiple uses of the word faith going on, and theyre not all equivalent.
Quoting Bob Ross
Forget the New Atheists - that was a publishing gimmick. I think this definition of faith has been used by freethinkers for many decades. It was certainly the one Russell used, long before Hitchens and company were being polemicists. I was using it back in the 1980's.
Your definition is clear. I'm trying to rethink mine based on feedback from theists.
Yep.
The slippery slope. You need faith to fly a plane, so why not have faith in the Trinity - as if these were on par.
There are multiple uses of the word "faith", and no single definition will account for all. This is so for all complex terms. However we see faith most clearly where the faithful are most provoked, by martyrdom or by doubt. And that shows most clearly the distinction between faith and mere belief.
Do you see that this is also pejorative?
Quoting Tom Storm
Russell strikes me as an anti-Christian polemicist, not in the sense that that was his sole gig, but in the sense that he regularly engaged in anti-Christian polemicism.
Quoting Tom Storm
Have you looked at Pieper's essay? If you want to know what a group means by faith, you have to look at sources from that group. In this case the way that group (Christians) use the word is entirely consonant with historical and lexical usage.
The closest thing you will find in an actual dictionary to, "Belief without evidence," is, "Belief without proof," but it should go without saying that proof and evidence are rather different beasts. The first question you need to ask yourself is, "How do I figure out what a word means?"
Sure, I can see that it's inflammatory. But polemicists aren't always wrong. Being polemical can be a kind of poetry.
As a theist, you would of course see it as pejorative. But you and other theists also use polemics and pejorative language when talking about atheists, so as far as that goes, it seems to be open season. Both camps often convinced that the other is obtuse, irrational and wrongheaded.
Quoting Leontiskos
I started it but struggled with it. It's prolix, and I would need some hours to step out the argument with notes, which I dont have time for. But I appreciate the piece being included and may get around to it. We've ended up in a debate about whose usage is correct, and, unsurprisingly, we've landed where the theist thinks their usage is correct, and the freethinker thinks theirs is.
It is, factually, a pejorative. It is the usage of the word in a negative or disapproving way.
Quoting Tom Storm
Pejoratives are useful in echo chambers, but to use them in arguments against the opposition is the logical fallacy of begging the question.
Quoting Tom Storm
Fair enough. Thanks for giving it a shot.
Quoting Tom Storm
No, not really. I've pointed to dictionaries, philosophy of religion, historical usage, etc. You've appealed to members of your echo chamber. That's a rather big difference.
You might be right - although I don't recall appealing to an echo chamber.
Quoting Leontiskos
I find this interesting. Now bear with me, I'm not a philosopher, so this is just how it looks to me.
What seems missing from your summary of this discussion is exploration of evidence. Doesn't that leave out the key element?
From the atheist perspective - lets start with the top example:
Religious faith is considered irrational because god can't be demonstrated and there is no good reason to believe in a god.
Faith in airplanes is not irrational because we can demonstrate that they exist and that people fly safely every second of the day.
Therefore, faith in airplanes is not unwarranted.
Now, I grant you that the question of whether one believes in God or not generally comes down to whether one is convinced by certain arguments. If someone doesn't share particular presuppositions and beliefs, then the argument is going to land very differently.
I am referring to AmadeusD's contention that the "good" and "ought" of most ethics is not a true "moral good" or "moral ought" (which you seemed to be agreeing with?), while nonetheless being unable to describe or give examples of what such a "moral good" or "moral ought" would even entail.
Just framing ethics in terms of human flourishing, as Harris does, already gets you to the possibility of a science of human welfare at the individual and social level, but the older definition also has a quite robust metaphysical underpinning. By contrast, the other definition being offered up is a je ne sais quoi that is even being presented by its advocate as "unintelligible." That's not a contest between two definitions, one of these is a non-definition, a shrug.
It's strange to me that someone would accept facts about values, and facts about human flourishing, but not ethics on the grounds that the aforementioned are not properly "moral." Yet this is even stranger if what constitutes "moral" cannot be stated.
How is an ethics where it is [I]impossible[/I] to derive any oughts not a brief for relativism though? What's the idea: "There are facts about what is good and evil, but this tells us nothing about what one ought to do?" If such facts tell us nothing about what to do, then the result is relativismall acts are equally correct responses to "facts of values."
But as I pointed out, this seems bizarre to me. "This car is better in every way, and cheaper," doesn't provoke the response "ok, so this one is clearly better, but I don't know which I ought to pick, the better or the worse?"
Yeah, fair enough. I knew I should take the time to think up an at least plausible definition, but I think it still makes the point. What's the criteria for "absurdity" here? "You just know it when you see it?" Good philosophy doesn't just remove absurdities and keep whatever else remains as a matter of opinion, so there has to be a strong criteria either way.
But the example jumps to mind because this is actually the sort of thing nominalists on this board have defended. Nothing is really anything, everything is just a soup of "patterns" and "constraints" given names, etc. My point would be this: any thoroughgoing nominalism like this is probably going to entail moral anti-realism. It's essentially an anti-realism that is metaphysically prior to ethics.
Anyhow, this insight might be helpful: that you think "ought" must imply "obligation" is perhaps indictive of the problem I mentioned about an ethical tradition that ultimately grows out of voluntarism. When someone gives relationship advice and says "you should ask her out," they do not mean "you have an obligation to ask her out." Nor does "this place's pizza is the best, you ought to try it," mean "you have an obligation to eat this pizza because it is good." Obligation and duty are one reason why it might be good to do something. That you can find no connection between "x is best" and "you should choose x," would seem to lie in this idea you have that any "ought" must be in the context of some sort of command, a "thou shalt."
As for the rest of the post accusing me of being dogmatic, I just don't see it. I consider disparate systems of ethical thought all the time. In this thread, I tried to explain my position. The repeated objection has been "that isn't a moral/ethical good/ought" or that "x is best" cannot generate the "moral ought" for "choose x." When I ask what this "moral/ethical good/ought" is, the answer is that it's impossible to give an example and the very idea is probably unintelligible (Amadeus) or that it is unknowable and inaccessible to reason, but might perhaps be experienced (you). These are not definitions though.
One of us has a definition. The Good is "that at at which all things aim." I am not dogmatically rejecting any other definitions (indeed, I asked for them), I am pointing out that the objections in this thread are based on no definitions at all.
Tigers being "aquatic reptiles" might be "absurd," but there is certainly a dialogue to be had about why it is wrong, and why "tigers are large stripped cats" is better. This conservation seems more to me like "tigers aren't large stripped cats because real tigers are x." And then to the question: "what is this x that real tiger possess?" the answer is: "I don't know, it probably doesn't exist" or "x exists but it is inaccessible to reason."
:up:
It's perhaps indictive of the voluntarism underpinning the ethics (and metaphysics) of command (law) and obedience (duty). I think this is why anti-realists so often claim that divine command theory is a good theory of ethics, and what any "real ethics" would look like, if only God existed.
Duty and natural law aren't situated in anything broader here, they ultimately spring from the inscrutable Will, and so there is no role for [I]desire[/I]. You don't have eros leading up and agape descending (two movements in a unity). There is rather a unidirectional impetus, be it coming from God, from the irrational sensible appetites and sentiments (Hume), or from a sort of bare human will (early Sarte, some readings of Nietzsche).
I'm not huge on deconstruction and post-structuralism, but I think Byung-Chul Han is spot on here in partly locating the "deflation of everything" and disappearance of Eros in the ever growing inflation of the self. I find it interesting that this same critique comes from different directions, because it's one made by C.S. Lewis, D.C. Schindler, etc. too.
I think of Bertrand Russell as an anti-Christian polemicist who would not be considered an objective source in these discussions.
Quoting Tom Storm
Only the key element of your definition of faith. See:
Quoting Leontiskos
If we have no common point of departure, then we will just talk past each other by using different definitions of 'faith'. That's why I proposed Pieper as a common point of departure which is rigorous and academic (and perhaps too academic for your palette).
So we could try to oversimplify a complex word with appeal to a dictionary. The definition that Bob Ross gave can be related to an entry in the Cambridge Dictionary, "a high degree of trust or confidence in something or someone."
Quoting Tom Storm
But this is little more than prejudice. I have read Aquinas on faith, Avery Dulles' historical survey of faith, Pieper's essay on faith, Martin Laird's dissertation-derived book on faith, Ratzinger's treatment, and various academic encyclopedias on the topic. It's a very well-developed topic. Bertrand Russell strikes the informed like a drunk 3rd grader stumbling into a post-graduate seminar. It's a remarkable combination of ignorance, arrogance, and irrationality.
Why irrationality? Because suppose you ask the question, "There are 2.4 billion people in the world who are Christians. Why are they Christians?" The answer, "Because they are emotional and irrational," is just plain stupid. It's not an intellectually serious answer. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists would get a good laugh out of that sort of intellectual unseriousness. It is evidence of ignorance of human psychology, basic sociological dynamics, and even the principle of sufficient reason as applied to beliefs. People who think 2.4 billion humans basically form beliefs in the absence of evidence or contrary to evidence simply don't understand the first thing about human psychology. They are so biased against religion that they adopt psychologically absurd theories. They are conspiracy theorists.
There are a few different ways to approach the topic of faith. Here are some:
If your starting point for comparing religious faith to airplane faith is to blandly assert that "there is no good reason to believe in god," then it's pretty clear that your protestations against being grouped with the New Atheists are entirely without merit, and you're engaged in nothing more than (3). If that is your starting point then you're not taking the topic seriously. What you need to do is recognize that religious people are human beings, that human beings are not merely irrational, and then you need to generate a sincere interest in understanding why they believe the things they do. Until that happens dialogue is a non-starter.
Yep. From earlier:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It happens too often on TPF.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This road has been traveled in the past and @J doesn't seem to have an answer.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Michael certainly resonates with this Anscombian genealogy, but I think J may be better characterized by Simpson's genealogy. I think Kant is really the antecedent to J's skepticism. The ice of Kantian morality is not thick enough to support those living in the 21st century. But it's certainly possible that J's views are more theologically informed.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yep.
In general the moral anti-realists of TPF don't know what to do with the modern subjective/objective distinction, but I think you are also right that there is something one-dimensional and brittle about the way they conceive of the possibility of morality. Morality in the modern period is like a tree which lost all its antifragility as its roots dried up. Morality became this autonomous being, sequestered from everyday life and incompatible with mundane decisions. It atrophied and died in quarantine.
With that said, there are more productive ways to approach such difficulties. First we define morality as that which pertains to rational action, at which point we can try to relate various subdivisions: categorical/exceptionless moral norms, non-hypothetical ought-judgments, weighted moral values or "ceteris paribus rules," and hypothetical imperatives. The tendency among our moral anti-realists is to reduce moral norms to the first subdivision: categorical/exceptionless norms, probably because this is the most potent kind of moral norm. Its potency also makes it the hardest to justify, and therefore it is understandable that someone who reduces all of morality to the most potent variety of morality also comes to the conclusion that morality itself is impossible to justify, and that morality is therefore little more than a pipe dream.
But there may be a second reason we tend to focus on that first subdivision. Presumably liberalism and individualism make us very sensitive to impositions, and this is why we have become even more sensitive to categorical/exceptionless norms. Modern man is like the prey whose only predator is the categorical/exceptionless norm, and therefore he has a tendency to be overattentive to it, over-scrutinizing it (and then, unsurprisingly, depriving it of existence). Morality thus becomes a defensive game rather than a comprehensive approach "permeating all aspects of life." The question J is always ultimately asking is, "What right have you to impose your rationality/morality on others?" If he were to yield to realism and real definitions he would have to forfeit that schtick, and of course if tigers are real then they might eat you.
Perhaps the pedagogical approach in these dialogues is to abandon the categorical/exceptionless subdivision for a time and develop the natural roots of morality. (I think this is the direction you are taking things.) Absent divine commands, that subdivision cannot be sustained without deeper roots of the more natural and pragmatic forms of morality.
(This is to say that the definition which eludes J and AmadeusD is bound up with categorical/exceptionless moral norms. The idea is that morality is really about rules which admit of no exceptions (and this flows simultaneously from both Kant and divine command theory). The exceptionless character of the rules makes them autonomous, sovereign, untethered to any ulterior considerations, particularly prudential ones. To give a reason for an exceptionless rule is almost inevitably to undermine the exceptionlessness of the rule itself. It's not an unworthy puzzle, and I think it comes down to the same issue of ratiocination vs intellection. ...And nevermind the fact that J's pluralism will balk at the idea of intellection, even though his mystical "metanoia" is quite similar to it.)
I dont recall saying religious people arent human beings. I thought you disliked rhetorical stunts like this.
I was simply asking that we consider evidence in regard to the difference between faith and belief.
Quoting Leontiskos
I was saying that atheists find 'faith' used to justify a belief in god as irrational the concept we are discussing. I did not make the argument that, beyond this, all Christians are emotional and irrational.
Quoting Leontiskos
This may be true, but we werent talking about human psychology, nor have I argued what youve written here, so its a bit of a red herring.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not sure if this is an appeal to authority or if youre saying that you only read writers who are Christians, mostly Catholics. Either way, this does not mean that you are right about faith. It just means that you have a very specific frame you wish to prosecute here. But I have already said you may be right about this, I wanted to have the conversation and not be shut down with "I know better". Nor is it helpful to be told what kind of atheist I am, or who would laugh at me, since these are just rhetorical tricks, which are worthy of David Bentley Hart entertaining though he is.
Quoting Leontiskos
My background is in sociology, and my staff teams have psychologists, anthropologists, health science graduates. Most of them would agree with me on faith. It comes up. But I wouldnt presume to offer this as justification for my own position.
Quoting Leontiskos
Maybe this is the case. Perhaps our differences are too great.
Thank you, I've enjoyed the discussion immensely and am interested to learn more about the use of and limitations of the word faith. I'm just not sure it's you who can assist right now.
I'd be interested to know what a good secular philosopher would say about this discussion.
Are there any atheists you respect, or do you think the position is irredeemably unjustifiable?
So, at the risk of becoming boring, if I trust that a plane will fly me somewhere safely because of empirical evidence that they do, almost without fail, would it be fair to call this 'faith' in flying? How does this compare to faith that God is a real?
I feel the framing is geared towards conflict from the get go. We're invited to emphasise the difference. What, in ongoing social praxis, does it even mean to "trust that a plane will fly me somewhere safely"? That's certainly the expectation I have when I get on a plane, but it's rarely topical in the moment. I don't worry that the plane will crash: I get on it, and then, if I don't plummet with it, I get off it again.
Similarly, the focus on "faith that god is real" seems off, too. That's just the point of departure for atheists, but that's usually not what faith is about for Christians (at least not those I know, most of whom are Roman Catholic). Faith in God comes with a sense of being taken care of, I feel. God knows what's best. So, in the context of flying, if I get on a plane, and I have faith in God, that's going to cover both landing safely (thanks), and crashing (if that's the divine plan...). So as an atheist, I know that planes can crash, and I know that planes can crash with me in them, so if I am in a plane that crashes I have no more resources. If it becomes clear that the plane will not land safely, the only way is down. A theist may have a slightly better time in the last moments, via praying.
So what are we comparing here to begin with? I'm aware that this is a common talking point of apologists. See? I have faith, too. But there's something very real I don't have here. What, despite being frightened, would an apologist expect of me while in a crashing plane? What do I invoke? That - I think - is what we'd need to target. "Bad luck?" "Cursing the neglectful maintanence staff? The suits who don't want to invest?" What sort of narrative do they think we have here?
Clearly, both theists and atheists don't expect to crash when they get on a plane, and clearly both can find themselves in a crashing plane, and not quite as clearly but still somewhat transparently, both know that they can find themselves in a crashing plane before they get on. When the expectation isn't met, then what? If faith in God has an effect in such a situation, what do I have in its place, and what is its effect? What would the apologist expect here?
For me, it'd likely be a mix of fear and air sickness; I wouldn't be surprised if airsickness would be at the forefront of my mind ("Air sickness sucks, but at least it won't last long," is also a type of humour that I can see asserting itself in such a situation.)
Theists often say to atheists, You guys live by faith tooevery time you fly. I wouldnt have thought to compare those two ideas myself.
I raised it because it seems like an equivocation.
The point is you dont need faith that planes fly; the empirical evidence of their capabilities is so strong that to doubt this would be irrational.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Evangelicals I sometimes converse with tell me, God is real. I ask how they know that. They say, 'my faith tells me it's true." Its not my argument; Im just responding to it.
Quoting Dawnstorm
We are comparing faith in the truth of a particular God with a reasonable expectation and belief in successful plane flight and, particularly, the role of evidence in both.
Quoting Dawnstorm
The discussion has nothing to do with how anyone feels while on a plane or if, in rare instances, one may crash.
Similarly, there's evidence that planes sometimes crash. How many people check statistics to make an informed decision? So what's rational here? Your motivation? The act when analysed later?
I don't think you're wrong here; I just think that emphasising rationality like that feels wrong. So:
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I know. The version I'm familiar with is "...that the ceiling won't crash down on you." Same thing.
If this is an equivocation, I think, it's one that arises when theists and atheist meet on the topic of God, and that situation isn't an ideal frame, because the ideal self-image of both parties tends to remain implied. I think it needs to be put on the table.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I know. But I think that including this could maybe tease out what the evangelist means when he says you have faith, too. If I have faith that a plane won't crash, but I find myself in a plane that does crash: how does he think I would behave? Denial? The plane doesn't crash, I'll be fine. Confusion? "My plane, my plane, why have you forsaken me?" A faith that isn't tested in a situation of crisis doesn't seem to amount to much, so invoking a crisis situation (and one I'm fully aware of when I board a plane) might help understand where their coming from - at least in a way that insisting on your rationality won't.
So:
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, but it's divvied up as "theists have faith in God," and "atheists have faith that planes won't crash". So rather than insisting on me having "reasonable expectations", I'd rather question if theists don't also have "faith that planes won't crash" in the sense that atheist do. If they're honest interlocutors you could maybe tease out if they'd use the word on themselves, or if "faith in God" somehow supersedes here and makes a difference. If you make the comparison uncritically, you're ending up with a lopsided comparison.
Or differently put: is there a difference in reasonable expactions of succesful airplane flight between theists and atheists? If no, whey invoke the comparison. If yes, what is it? Can they explain, or is it an intuitive half-understood thing.
Basically, you're comparing a circumstance that only has a place in the self-image of one of you with a situation that, I would imagine, has a place in the self-image of both (that is both theists and atheists can imagine themselves in a crashing plane, but only theists can imagine themselves believing in God.)
If it turns out that the theist, once contemplating this, thinks what you really have faith in isn't "flying" but, say, "luck" (anything closer to the abstraction level of "faith in God") then it seems to me that the evidence-question could take the backseat, and it's really about different modes of ordering and interpreting experience.
Quoting Tom Storm
This is just an aside: I've got a degree in sociology, but have been out of the loop for 25 to 30 years, now, but the theoretical background that fit me the most back then would have been Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. If you're familiar with this, I'm probably leaning towards looking at a conflict situation from the point of view of routine and a personal need for ontological security. Where do your time-space paths intersect, and where do they diverge? What motivates the comparison here for either of you? Do you generally leave these situations with predictable outcomes? A typical social situation with typical outcome for both parties. Rarely any surprise. A game of metaphysical ping pong.
OK, this helps. I don't know if I've got @AmadeusD right, but I think the position you're describing would be something like: When we say "ought" in an ethical context, we mean "I ought to do this if I hold certain values and wish to achieve them." I took him to mean that asking for a further, special "moral ought" -- which would be categorical, and which would also specify the values -- is a mistake. If that's what he meant, then clearly he can't give any examples because he thinks there aren't any. Is that absurd? Or am I still not getting it?
Turning to my own thoughts: I don't think you can generate a moral ought from an "is" -- or a definition, or a first premise. I'm not sure how that fits into the situation you describe. Perhaps you think it must be absurd to claim to be a moral realist and yet not base values on rational premises? I don't see that, but please say more about it, if that's what you mean.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure they're properly moral. But they don't generate an ought. Being moral is not rationally obligatory.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Ought to do if what?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm afraid it's still not categorical, because you're assuming a desire for a car. What would be bizarre would be this: "I want a good car, and this car is better in every way, but I don't know which to pick." Again, the difference between a value and an "ought."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is good. It's true that a deontological approach will tend to emphasize the obligatory concepts involved in ethics. But I don't think knowing "what is best" in ethics (which, from the standpoint of a non-Aristotelian, doesn't at all resemble knowing what a good car is) can result in the statement, "Therefore, you should do what is best."
Let's stay with your car example. You agree, I'm sure, that it's reasonable for a person to say, "Yes, I quite see that this is the best car, but as I don't want a car, I won't buy it." However, you don't think it's reasonable for a person to say, "Yes, I quite see that this action X is the best thing to do, ethically, but as I'm not interested in the ethical good, I won't do it." That's probably where our conceptions differ. You think that to be a human generates an automatic interest in a single best way to live -- or, perhaps, that it's impossible for a human not to want the best way to live, however misguided they may be. Would that it were so!
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the dogmatism -- though that may be too strong -- lies in your insistence that only "providing a definition" will further the discussion, which in turn implies that the entire subject is capable of such definitions. Some of your interlocutors don't believe it is. I'm not that skeptical, but I do think the "dueling definitions" method is not the only way to approach a deep philosophical subject. For instance, my reply to your request for a definition of capital-G Good would be, "There is no single definition. The term is used in a variety of contexts and intentions, especially within ethics. Let's look at some of them and see what we can learn." Is that really such an illegitimate starting point?
The other issue of dogmatism here -- and forgive me if this is too harsh -- is that I often get the sense that you think any position that contradicts Aristotle or the Scholastics must be wrong -- that this is your starting point. I'm sure you try to be fair, but the (strong) preference is apparent. You believe Aristotle & Co. discovered all the important philosophical truths long ago. But please correct me if this is ungenerous.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Of course, as I said. Reasons can always be compared and judged.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Again, the quest for definitions. I really wouldn't approach such a conversation by trying to find some essence that a real tiger possesses. I might say, "Here are the problems I see with your concept of a tiger [if I saw any]. Let's see if we can work our way toward a better understanding."
What is your definition of "faith"? So far, it sounds like it is "believing something despite the evidence".
To be fair, I do think that there is a prominent sense colloquially where confused theists will explain faith in this manner; but I think if we are iron manning the position then what they really mean is that some propositions that they believe as true they could not completely verify themselves but, rather, they trusted some authority, in this case God, to tell them. This isnt really what it strictly means to have no good reasons, but people will describe it that way colloquially (sometimes).
It is also worth mentioning, to @Bannos point, we do see instances of religious people that may find that there good evidence that proposition X is false but yet they believe it is true because God has revealed it to them; but it is important to note that this is still trust in God which is based in some sort of evidence, of which they at least believe is good and sufficient, that God is trustworthy to reveal it.
If you believe, even in part, that the airplane will not crash because you trust the pilots to do their job (e.g., without drinking on the job, without making an improper turn, etc.); then that belief is in part faith-based: it has an element of faith mixed up in it. However, if you believe that the airplane will fly just fine because you are in expert in airplane manufacturing and you inspected the plane beforehand, then this is a non-faith-based belief.
It is important to note that this distinction doesnt appear cleanly in practical life: odds are, e.g., even if you are an expert on airplane manufacturing that your beliefs accredited from your learning and experience which make you an expert have faith mixed up in them since you probably are not capable of verifying, all the way down (so to speak), those beliefs without appealing to trust in some authority.
Of course, a theist is going to say we can demonstrate God exists: you are just begging the question. If we are talking about faith as trust in an authority for our belief about a proposition, then IF God exists then certainly God would have the authority to tell us quite a bit about reality (if He so chooses)---right? You dont have to accept that God exists to accept that God WOULD BE a credible source of information BUT THAT one would have to trust in God as the source, at least in part, of the truths which they believe because God revealed it to them.
I am assuming you are referring to statistics here; but statistics are faith-based. You have to trust that the people that conducted the stats did it in an unbiased, professional, honest, and proper way to determine them.
I am not familiar enough with Russell to comment; but in common life it seems like New Atheism is to blame for people commonly thinking of faith as belief without or despite evidence: this has never been the common understanding in the literature of faith (by my lights) if we are iron manning theism that depends on divine revelation.
It is also worth mentioning that not all forms of theism are faith-based, just like how not all forms of theism are religions, since someone might not believe that God has revealed anything to them; so they dont have any faith in God even though they believe God exists.
When your first move is to just to assume that 2.4 billion people are irrational, you've obviously implied that 2.4 billion people are not rational human beings.
Quoting Tom Storm
"I think religion is irrational therefore everyone who is religious is irrational; and I think faith in airplanes is rational therefore everyone who is afraid of flying is irrational."
Talk about thinking the world revolves around you! What about the billions of people who disagree with you on both scores? Just because you think something is irrational doesn't make it irrational. Heck, you couldn't even make it through a popular level treatise on the lexical nature of the word 'faith'. Maybe you need to dial down the faith you have in yourself?
Quoting Tom Storm
Again, to think that the billions of people who disagree with you on both scores are uninterested in evidence is wildly naive and bigoted. I'm not sure how else to put it.
Quoting Tom Storm
Why are you giving the atheist view if you don't agree with it? It's pretty clear that you yourself agree with that view. Your earlier definition of faith was similarly pejorative and irrational. (And in any case, I have no idea what atheism has to do with flying.)
If you are going to define faith as believing things without reason/evidence, then you've implicitly called all those who engage in faith irrational.
Quoting Tom Storm
So you want to imply that 2.4 billion people are foundationally irrational while prescinding from the facts of human psychology, because "we weren't talking about human psychology"? :roll: :zip:
Quoting Tom Storm
But that's all you've been doing the whole time, saying, "I know better." I've asked you to be serious, objective, look at dictionaries, philosophy of religion, history, and I even provided an essay that delves into all of these aspects.
Quoting Tom Storm
Faith in atheists is a rather odd approach. What sources do you trust? Are there encyclopedias that you trust? Publishing houses? Dictionaries? That's how you should proceed. For example, if you trust SEP then you should consult it. If you trust Oxford University Press then you should consult it.
As far as self-proclaimed atheists qua atheists, Austin Dacey is the only one I have read in this vein. Dacey is not irrational enough to believe that 2.4 billion people are just believing things without evidence, but the same is true of any atheist with half a brain.
But consulting atheists about religious faith is like telling your wife that she believes X and X is irrational, and then when she objects, instead of consulting her about her beliefs you go consult someone who fundamentally dislikes her. There are probably people who fundamentally dislike her and yet remain objective, but that would still be a weird-ass approach to assessing your wife's beliefs. She would probably slap you, and you would probably deserve it.
When you define religious faith as belief without evidence, you are saying that it is a form of irrationality. When you say that religious faith is a form of irrationality, you are committing yourself to the claim that the billions of religious believers are foundationally irrational in a central part of their life. And now combine this with a remarkable ignorance of religious traditions and theology.
That's a mind-boggling level of bigotry. Off the charts. I recognize that there are some unfortunate areas of the world where this level of anti-religious bigotry is not only socially acceptable, but is actively fostered. In those locales anti-religious bigots can pass themselves off as polite, respectable, reasonable, etc. Nevertheless, the level of bigotry which glibly states that billions of people are foundationally irrational is not polite, respectable, or reasonable. It is problematic; it is insulting to religious people; and it is insulting to all rational human beings who are opposed to bigotry. I am not impressed.
"In order to be truly x, x must belong to category y."
"In virtue of what can any x be y? What makes x a member of y?"
"No clue. Membership in y is unintelligible."
That doesn't seem problematic to you?
You seem to be saying that people can positively, correctly identify x as "truly, monstrously evil," but that this says absolutely nothing about whether one should or should not do x. What exactly do you think "goodness" or "evil" consists in then? (apparently nothing related to practical reason, which you seem to be rejecting).
What I find especially strange though is the contention that if one hypothetically accepts values, then oughts can be generated. So "if you hypothetically value y, and x is y, you should do x because it is y," works. And this is paired with the realist claim that things can be "truly good." But then you also claim that x being truly good can never generate an ought (yet accepting that x is good hypothetically can). What's the difference?
I can't even parse what you're trying to say here to be honest. Obviously the example involves car shopping. I chose it instead of something like "prudence is better than recklessness," to foreclose on the question "but is prudence really better?" which would be beside the point. An example about prudence being better than recklessness would be more general. It's the same thing thought. "Better" implies "you should choose this over what is worse."
Your claim is that "x is best" never implies "do x," and then you also seem to be saying that it is perfectly "rational" to choose the worse over the better. "Better" and "value" apparently have nothing to do with what should be chosen.
I'd just ask "in virtue of what is anything good?" Define what makes something good? What makes something better or worse?
In virtue of what is a practical judgement "rational" when one chooses the worse over the better?
What is "practical reason" given that facts about values have no bearing on how one should act?
I am not dogmatically sticking to Aristotle here, I am pointing out that your particular position is incoherent and you don't seem to understand what you mean by terms like "good," "better," "moral," or "ought."
I don't know why you think of yourself as a Kantian because from the Kantian perspective claiming that "x is good and y is evil, but this tells us nothing about whether we should do x or y" is gibberish. A Kantian does not say "it is good to treat everyone as an ends and not a means," and then scratch their head as to whether or not this can "generate an ought" whereby they should treat people as ends. Likewise, when Buddhists say it is better to avoid attachments and desire, they do not also mean "but the doesn't (cannot) suggest that you should avoid these things." Nor does Confucius, when he lauds filial piety, think that what he says indicates nothing about how people should treat their fathers.
There are good criticisms of Aristotlian ethics that have helped it develop. I am aware of none, however, that grant Aristotle facts about what is truly best, but then rely on the notion that the one cannot move from "x is better then y," to "so choose x," or that it is perfectly "rational" to choose the worse over the better. This is like claiming that "x is true and y is false," tells us nothing about which we should affirm (indeed, it seems to imply this is so).
Quoting Leontiskos
If it is not reasonable , would you then say that it is without evidence, and therefore irrational?
I can't tell whether your righteous indignation is genuine or just a performance. We're simply having a conversation about faith here. If that's enough to make you throw around insults and accusations so conspicuously, it suggests you might be struggling with the subject matter more than you're letting on. Is this a case of attack being the best defence?
I always assumed that engaging in philosophy means being open to challenging discussions and differing viewpoints. If disagreement feels like a personal attack to you, perhaps it's time to reflect on your commitment to philosophical inquiry. If you feel the need to twist other peoples arguments to justify such antipathy, perhaps you need to draw on your Christianity more deeply and find some compassion for those unlike yourself who are only asking questions. Its not all about you, Brother.
Ok, well that seems a more reasonable explanation.
Quoting Bob Ross
So this is probably at the nub of our difference here. I generally hold that faith isnt a useful term outside of the religious use. But I see that perhaps my position here is unorthodox. For me its about a reasonable confidence given empirical results of flight. There is no need for faith.
But thank you for helping me rethink my position. As I said to Leon much earlier, I may well be wrong about this; Im just trying to talk this through.
I don't think 2.4 billion people are believing things without evidence. And we'd need to include other religions like 1.9 billion Muslims and 1.2 billion Hindus too. My view is that people believe in God for many reasons (faith not being the best of them), but mostly people hold the religion and values of their culture and upbringing.
I recall talking to some apartheid-era South Africans who had it on faith that black people were inferior to white people. Thats the problem with an appeal to faith there is nothing that can't be justified using an appeal to faith, since it is not about evidence. As per Hebrews 11: 'Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.'
Quoting Leontiskos
Cool. Thanks, I will check him out.
I dont think we should continue a conversation about faith since youve determined that Im an unreasonable interlocutor, and so this can only go, even further, to shit.
This didn't come up on my notifications. Odd.
Starting a discussion with a definition is usually a mistake. It turns the conversation into a fight over whose definition is right. No stipulation will capture all the uses and implications of an interesting term. And for any stipulation, a counterexample is easy to find. Better to map the ground the term coversby setting it alongside related ideasthan to try to trap it in a formula.
So instead I've been doing some mapping. "believing something despite the evidence" is part of that, since it sets out one extreme of faith - that one demonstrates great faith if one continues to believe despite what is evident.
We could do more along those lines, but the adversarial tone of these threads does not lend itself to that sort of thing.
The fact of the matter is that when you pretend to use a word, but you have no idea what you mean by that word, you are engaged in a form of sophistry. When you say something and someone asks, "What do you mean by that?," and you answer, "I don't know what I mean," then the onus is on you to backpedal and rework your argument. You can't just pretend to say things; you can't just use words that have no meaning, even to you. That's the point about (nominal) definitions.
Beyond that and as I've noted before:
Quoting Leontiskos
If you really want to further the conversation you should set out your own account of morality, or your so-called "moral realism." Merely contradicting and opposing things that Count says isn't yet philosophy in any meaningful way. It's the Monty Python argument skit.
If so, then let's step this out.
It's hardly surprising that an atheist would consider religion to be wrong about reality and the world, just as you would consider the millions, perhaps a billion atheists to be wrong (possibly irrational) too.
But why stop at your precious 2.4 billion folks? Why not all the other billions of people from all the other religions?
I assume many Christians would hold that the 1.9 billion Muslims and 1.2 billion Hindus hold erroneous if not irrational beliefs.
So what?
I think faith is a bad pathway to truth. I'm talking about faith, not faiths. So we differ on this, and you appear to think you have transcendence and scholarship on your side. Isn't this what philosophy is aboutconversations about positions that are different from our own?
If I'm wrong, there is nothing at stake here. I'm grappling with this material like anyone else.
As I said to Mr Ross - Quoting Tom Storm
I hold a rather complex view on why people follow religions, and I spend a significant amount of time with theists (mainly Catholics). I am partial to Father Richard Rohr (no doubt a heretic to some) and to Thomas Merton. I consider spirituality to be a significant part of many people's lives.
But that doesn't mean I won't attempt to test views and thinking on a philosophy forum to see what works and what doesn't.
It's raining, so I'll play with the notion of faith a bit more.
An exercise from J. L. Austin is to look up a key term in a dictionary, then look up each main word in the definitions given, so as to build up a list of the sorts of concepts relating to the key term.
Here's "Faith" from dictionary.com.
noun
confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another's ability.
belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
a system of religious belief:
the Christian faith;
the Jewish faith.
the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.
I asked ChatGPT to find the main terms here and then list them. Here's the chat.
The summary is
When I expressed surprise that "certainty" was no amongst the terms, GPTChat replied:
Just to be clear, ChatGPT was used here in order to cut the amount of work involved in Austin's method, which he envisioned as being done by a team of nerds in the confines of a few rooms in Oxford - after his experiences during the war... There will be the usual replies disparaging GPT, with most of which I would probably agree. But this is to indulge in an ad hominem (ad LLMinem?) in order to avoid engaging with the material - and this is exactly the sort of activity where a LLM might be useful in saving us some of the drudge.
How does this help? Well, your account was that faith involves trust in an authority. If this were so then we might expect to find "trust and "authority" amongst the main words found. While "trust" is there, "authority" isn't.
Anyway, I'll stop there for a bit. Breakfast time.
Oh and just to be clear, this is the sort of activity I suggest may be of more use than simply stipulating definitions.
Fascinating!
Quoting Banno
Curious. Am I wrong to want to include 'evidence'?
Notice the "But once the definition of faith shifts toward loyalty, duty, trust, or group belonging, "evidence" falls away and isn't part of the conceptual structure anymore"? This begins to show our differences in emphasis with the theists hereabouts. This is probably what causes Leon such indigestion.
To do you a favor. :lol:
Quoting Tom Storm
Faith[sub]ath[/sub] is a bad pathway to truth. The point is that if you can't stop appealing faith[sub]ath[/sub] then you're just begging the question. You are committing fallacies, over and over. Pointing to the 2.4 billion was an attempt to help someone who isn't great at spotting their own logical fallacies. If you want to rise up to intellectual seriousness you will have to consider the idea that religious faith isn't faith[sub]ath[/sub].
https://www.inphoproject.org/idea/1569.html
or here:
https://www.hypershelf.org/sep/20/?doc=faith
This is ironic, Tom. "Conviction" is here translating elenchos, which in many translations is rendered as 'evidence.'
For example, the King James Version, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." This is a standard text for Christian treatments of faith.
You havent attempted to respond to this:
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, you're the only one doing the insulting. I wonder why you feel this is necessary?
Provide some arguments. Dig in and show us how it is done. Make it easy for the dumb, uneducated atheist.
Quoting Leontiskos
Good that's better - I got this off the Revised Standard Version. But no doubt there are endless arguments about which translations are correct, etc.
That has been my instinct for much of this. Interesting.
Well, no. For example, pointing out that your bigotry flies in the face of human psychology is both an insult and an argument. It shows that you are not taking this topic seriously and it is an argument for why faith[sub]ath[/sub] is a facile concept.
Quoting Tom Storm
It's nothing more than another fallacious appeal to faith[sub]ath[/sub]. In a technical sense bigotry is basically just a whole lot of question-begging assertions.
Quoting Tom Storm
I just told you why: because your whole approach to this topic is absurd and bigoted. That's why you're being insulted.
Quoting Tom Storm
I gave you a link to a Greek lexicon. We don't have to limit ourselves to Biblical translations.
(I have Banno on ignore, but he is apparently still engaged in his habit of appealing to ChatGPT. Not sure why that sub-par approach is necessary when we have dictionaries and lexical studies to hand.)
This is an unaddressed aspect, worthy of some contemplation. Faith is about community, about "us" and "them"... as can be seen in this very thread. And community links to identity, going towards the defensive offensiveness seen in the posts on this page.
Quoting Leontiskos
The problem is that you're just demonstrating that many Christians can't argue in good faith - they have to belittle and cajole and bully when challenged.
At least, I would think this if I were bigoted against Christians. :wink:
What I actually think is that you are trying the best you can to engage with this and with a view you don't or can't accept and this is what it looks like. As it happens, I'm trying the best I can to think this through as well.
So what are the take home messages here, apart from, 'Never start a land war in Asia?"
:lol:
Did you take a look at the SEP article on Faith? Even a quick glance will show that the issue is far from settled, especially amongst the believers.
If one has a mental set such that one is convinced that one must hold to a specified belief no matter what, then of corse on cannot enter into a discussion on those issues "in good faith", as you said. That is, when one's back is against the wall, one cannot back down, and so must resort to insult and affront.
So what you have done here is not only to argue against the rationality of faith, but to demonstrate it by eliciting the responses above. This was never an open discussion, at least for some participants.
Consider this in relation to the recent chats hereabouts concerning liberalism.
Thoughts?
Yes, this is instructive. And corresponds to the fact that among my Christian friends there is a range of views about what faith is and whether people really have faith and whether it is reliable. My views are also formed by talking to Christians.
Quoting Banno
Indeed. I am quite interested in dogma and it seems particularly prevalent in religion and politics.
My friend, a Catholic priest called John, has often said (paraphrasing Dr Johnson, I think) that "Faith is the last bastion of the scoundrel.' He has spend decades fighting Catholic bulldogs on such views as, "I have it on faith that gays will burn in hell."
Anti-religious bigots are a dime a dozen. I am happy to oppose them on occasion. Your whole approach here is, "Religious faith is irrational. Prove me wrong." I almost never agree to those sorts of terms, given the question-begging nature of the challenge. That's why I pointed out the unseriousness of your a priori stance. So I guess you can just get back to me when you find a more objective source than Bertrand Russell, or when you at least have the intellectual seriousness to look for some objective sources.
Imagine if we treated anti-religious bigotry the same way we treat anti-homosexual bigotry? Banno would have been banned years ago.
This is another example of your unseriousness. On the pejorative definition of faith[sub]ath[/sub], anyone who believes something without evidence must be engaged in faith. This is silly, lexically speaking. On this view, for example, someone who has been hypnotized to believe something is engaged in faith; someone who appeals to their instincts is engaged in faith; and the victims of "inception" are also engaged in faith. This is all linguistic nonsense, of course. More generally, "faith" becomes a synonym for "stupidity," and the word loses all unique lexical value. It's a fancy form of name-calling which also bastardizes natural language.
---
My ethics professor had his doctorate in linguistics, not philosophy. At the time I found that odd, but I no longer do. Those who are careful with language are good philosophers, and those who are careless with language are bad philosophers. This is why those who study linguistics or philology are so often better philosophers than those who study philosophy. Those who do not respect language, and bend it to their whims, also tend towards sophistry and a kind of intellectual unseriousness and/or dishonesty.
Now that's a good point and I can't find anything to disagree with.
Religious traditions themselves emphasise believing without seeing. For example, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" John 20:29. So pointing to the irrational structure of faith is not ignorance, but honest engagement with what religion itself sometimes claims.
The analysis over the last few pages shows that there is more involved in faith than just belief despite the evidence. But belief despite the evidence is a part of faith. Calling faith "irrational" isn't automatically an insult, since rational belief is belief proportioned to evidence. If a belief is maintained without sufficient evidence, there's perhaps little of concern. If a belief is maintained when the evidence indicates it is incorrect, then thats an issue.
Another part of this might be a difference in the level of uncertainty with which one is comfortable. I'm happy to leave things undecided, an attribute that might well be common to agnostics. But I suppose if uncertainty causes discomfort, believing without evidence would be an aid to digestion.
It seems you are perhaps bigoted against atheists, perceiving them all as monstrous amalgamations of the worst traits of Dawkins and Hitchens.
Quoting Leontiskos
I havent argued that, its far too totalising. I would say that many religious believers hold irrational beliefs, but so do many political adherents.
Quoting Leontiskos
Im not seeking authority figures to follow; I leave that to zealots and fundamentalists.
Quoting Leontiskos
That would be a bad argument. Try these. If you take it on faith that black people are inferior to white people, you are holding an irrational belief. If you take it on faith that women are inferior to men, you are holding an irrational belief. If you take it on faith that LGBTQ+ individuals are morally corrupt, you are holding an irrational belief. If you take it on faith that people of another religion are damned, you are holding an irrational belief. If you take it on faith that any group is inherently superior or inferior without evidence, you are holding an irrational belief. All of these views I regularly hear from theists.
Quoting Banno
I wouldnt always call faith itself irrational, (and maybe my wording is lacking precision) but its often used to justify many of the irrational ideas listed above. Ive spoken with numerous Muslims and Christians over the years who, when unable to find sound reasons for their beliefs (which are often bigotries), simply appeal to faith.
Are all expressions of faith wonky in precisely this way? I would think not. But it seems clear to me that faith can have many problematic uses.
Yep. The sort of immorality spoken of earlier in this thread and elsewhere, exemplified by the Binding of Issac, is a case in point - where a blatantly wicked act is excused on grounds of faith.
Leon has put on the same performance previously, directed at myself, and at others. In the end, it's sad.
Have I claimed that the central act of atheism is a form of irrationality? Of course not. You are reaching.
Quoting Tom Storm
What does that have to do with anything? It has no logical bearing on the point I made.
Quoting Tom Storm
You have avoided objective arguments for the meaning of "faith" like the plague. That's not intellectually honest.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's how definitions work. If you define faith as belief without evidence then instances of belief without evidence are faith. I'm not sure how to make this any easier for you.
So what do we mean with "irrational", here?
I can see three related but distinct meanings:
(a) If you thought about it rationally, you'd come to a different conclusion.
(b) Rational thought cannot help here; the subject matter is meaningfully decided in different ways
(c) Rational thought isn't involved in the genesis of the belief
For example, I think, if a Christian fideist would use the word "irrational", they might appeal to (b) above.
Thoughts?
I took a glance at the SEP entry on the epistemology of religion. I haven't read far, but it certainly opens with a discussion of the relevance of evidence to religious faith:
As per my examples.
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Dawnstorm
Well it would depend how it's being used.
Thanks, this discussion has gone all over the shop. My original problem with faith was those who use the word to describe a reasonable confidence that a plane will fly when we have empirical grounds not to doubt this.
But I don't think there's anything I need to add to this one for now.
Lets see what Wittgenstein has to say about reason and religious faith.
Nevertheless, Wittgenstein is a lousy linguist, usually pulling things out of thin air. Pieper is an example of someone who is much more attentive to natural language.
A thought.
The most important, the most consequential, is faith in yourself. Believing that you can do it - whatever it is.
Yep. Here's 240:
Faith, again, is epitomised by belief continuing when the other things you know and the have heard and seen show your belief to be wrong. It's when the belief is challenged that the faithful continue in that belief.
(addenda: This is where things held on faith differ from basic or hinge beliefs. A hinge is consistent with one's other beliefs. )
Father O'Hara was a priest who participated in a Symposium on Science and Religion in 1930, who apparently argued for Catholic Doctrine on scientific grounds - that is, that science shows certain Catholic teachings to be physically provable. This Wittgenstein characterised as "superstitious", an odd choice of wording. I gather he is thinking of the "reasoning" behind, say, accepting that a horseshoe brings good luck, as one has not had bad luck since hanging it on the wall - a combination of confirmation bias and poor sampling. The reasons for the belief are misguided. For Wittgenstein, this source of belief seems to have lacked sincerity.
This is contrasted with the "Lev", who believes quite sincerely, and regardless of what occurs. Here, arguably, Wittgenstein understood the belief of the Lev to be incommensurable to those of an Oxford Scholar, that there were few if any grounds on which one might claim that a conversation between Lev and Philosopher shared some common ground.
This again brings out the issue of the commensurability of language games, no small issue. My own view follows Davidson here, that we must always have sufficient common ground for some degree of commensurability, in order to understand each other at all.
But this is a whole other area.
There's a good read at Wittgenstein on the Gulf Between Believers and Non-Believers
See, you're doing it again. If it is mixed up with trust in authority it may be somewhat faith-based., whereas a belief which is entirely following an authority with no evidence to support such following is simply faith-based. Your thinking on this lacks nuance.
This is real argument, which is great. This is what this thread needs much more of.
Quoting Janus
I don't think this is linguistically correct, though.
You give two separate conditions:
1. The belief that "if we had the time we could [directly verify the claim]."
2. The possibility of seeing for oneself.
You are basically claiming that if (1) or (2) are present then less faith or belief is involved. There is no real problem with any of this, philosophically or logically. But there is also nothing necessary about it, philosophically or logically. Linguistically an act of faith or belief does not exclude (1) or (2), nor does either condition "water down" the faith-component of some assent.
Suppose you stop at a gas station to ask for directions to the beach. The cashier gives you directions, you believe her, and you get back into your car to drive to the beach.
But now consider two possibilities, both premised on the fact that there were local maps available for sale in the gas station:
A. You do not notice the maps for sale
B. You do notice the maps for sale.
According to your thesis, even if you do not buy or consult a map, your assent to the cashier's directions is still less faith-based on (B) than on (A). This is because on (B) conditions (1) and (2) are true.
But I don't think that's actually correct. When you get back into the car and use the cashier's directions to drive to the beach, your act is faith-based whether (A) or (B) is true, and I don't see that (A) would make it more faith-based. Someone could equally argue the opposite, namely that (B) would make it more faith-based (because there is a more explicit decision in favor of trust). So again, philosophically we can argue these fine points, but linguistically the faith-based nature of the act isn't affected or altered by (B).
(The atheist will want to make a lot of hay out of (2), but that focus is extra-linguistic. It is a philosophically investigable issue, but it is not an outcome of the natural language analysis.)
I don't see that we are talking about linguistics, but rather about the logics of different kinds of faith. If we have good reason to think that the authority we are trusting is presenting facts which are based on actual observation and evidence, not mere opinion, then our trusting of such an authority is not merely faith-based but is also a matter of rational inference.
If we have no good reason to think the authority we are trusting is presenting facts which are based on actual observation and evidence then our trusting of that authority would not be merely faith-based. As I see it this puts trusting in authority on a continuum between pure faith or blind faith and faith accompanied by ever-stronger rational support.
This is the basic difference between faith in science and faith in religion. By the way I'm not saying faith in religion is wrong; it is fine for some people, for those who are in need of it for whatever reason, and is no problem provided it is not misunderstood as being fact. To misunderstood articles of faith as facts is the essence of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is dangerous because it is totally irrational.
The meaning of a word is a matter of linguistics, not logic.
Quoting Janus
No one believes authorities who they do not believe are credible. Once you recognize this you begin to see why acts of faith are not without evidence (i.e. you begin to consider motives of credibility).
Quoting Janus
Typo?
If we have no good reason to think someone is credible then we do not believe them, and we do not take them to be an authority.
Quoting Janus
What is the basic difference?
Sure, trust is a part of faith, but not the whole.
So, what's the bit extra?
I've given my account: that faith continues where trust it is not justified.
Quoting Leontiskos
We all know what the words evidence and faith mean. The question is as to whether one has a rational view of what constitutes evidence. I cannot see any reason to believe that mere scripture, for example, constitutes even historical, let alone say ontological evidence for anything.
Take as example the miracles figures such as Gautama and Christ are believed by some to have performed. The fact that it is said in a scripture that they were performed is not evidence that they were in fact performed.
Lol - I take it that you haven't been following this thread very closely.
I made all sorts of unaddressed points in my last two posts to you. Feel free to go back and address some of them. Here is the most pointed:
Quoting Leontiskos
So you are saying, "The basic difference between faith in science and faith in religion is that evidence is observation-based or reason-based whereas faith need not be."
I'm not following that. I would encourage you to take your time in setting this out. The reason I brought up Pieper was to encourage people to take more time and effort with this topic.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Janus
Quoting Leontiskos
Lol - You're changing the subject again, just like you did <here>. You made a claim about "the basic difference between faith in science and faith in religion," and now you're playing dumb, pretending that no such claim was made. You are equivocating, talking about differences between other things than the original topic (i.e. different kinds of faith).
Quoting Janus
No shit. Why don't you remedy that incoherence?
Quoting Janus
The sophistic bullshit is all yours, darling. My post shows it all. Ante up and do some real philosophy. :roll:
Yes, I did that, so why not attempt to address that instead of pretending that I said something purportedly encapsulated in a nonsense sentence?
Here is the claim again in case you find you have the resources to address it:
Quoting Janus
What I say there is clear. If you think it is not correct, then say why. I'm losing patience.
I pointed you to this question:
Quoting Leontiskos
What was I asking you? What claim of yours elicited that question of mine? Go back and have a look. :roll:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Janus
Quoting Leontiskos
-
(This is a pretty standard conversation with an anti-religious person, or in Janus' case, a person who holds an anti-religious position. Even answering for their own claims becomes far too burdensome.)
claims that critics bring a hostile definition of faith into the debate. But religious tradition itself prizes faith most where reason gives out when fear, torture, or death provide every ground to recant. Faith is celebrated precisely because it defies evidence and reason under pressure. The critics aren't inventing a pejorative meaning; they're taking religion at its own word.
He has failed to address this. He has indeed failed to address much of anything, preferring to denigrate those with whom he disagrees, rather than to engage with them. See the discussion with over the last few pages.
There is plenty of space for a richer rejoinder, along several lines. My attempt...
1. Faith is not believing without evidence so much as believing without conclusive proof. This is a common argument, along the lines of @Tom Storm's plane, somewhat downplayed. We do believe things without conclusive proof - arguably religious belief fits here.
2. Faith is a reasonable response to a sort of evidence that is different to the evidence seen in science. It's arguably a reasonable response to existential shock - the surprise that there is something rather than nothing; or to ethical problems, giving a reason for what one does with one's life.
3. Faith concerns trust and loyalty, rather than belief. More of what we do rather than what we think.
Something like that. There are counters to each, of course, and no doubt counters to those counters.
But that's not what we see here.
Did I start a thread on the defense of faith against New Atheist types? Nope. This is a thread about the meaning of faith, and when folks like Tom or yourself offer definitions without any arguments or reasons, you are not doing philosophy. The fact that the petitio principii includes psychologically incoherent assumptions makes it even worse. "Leontiskos has the burden of proof to show that faith is not irrational," is not a real argument. It is similar to your unfalsifiability sophistry. Arguing against such is pointless. Accepting their question-begging burden of proof would be insane.
Besides, you know full well that what you are engaged in <here> is bullshit. I'm sad to see you engage in that sort of thing, given that you are capable of more.
(I'm sure Banno is doing his standard troll gig. I have him on ignore as I've said.)
This agrees with what I was saying, so I am confused as to what you are critiquing of mine. A purely faith-based belief would, indeed, be one which is purely based off of trusting an authority; but, as I noted before, this is very rare in practical life. Most of the time we have a little of both faith and non-faith mixed up in the belief.
I find this account GPT gave to be fitting in terms of the resources it has available and its current ability to "reason". It is right that faith arises when there isn't certainty and necessarily so because every instance of trust in another as a source of truth is inherently to verify something through a means which one cannot deduce the truth therefrom; however, this is also true of some non-faith based beliefs: it can be the case that one verifies through a means that does not require trust in another and yet the verification method does not necessitate the conclusion (e.g., performing an experiment, examining the condition of a car oneself as an expert, etc.).
The strength of my theory is that, unlike yours, it accounts for all the main uses you had GPT outline by providing the precise definition which can be found hazily in each. Even with people who use 'faith' in the sense of 'a belief of which there is no evidence to support it', this oftentimes is convertible to 'a pure act of trusting an authority that something is true' which is perfectly coherent with my definition.
Ok, but what do you take 'faith' to be? Do you not have a precise definition? If not, then it seems like you are just working with vague intuitions you have.
As I see it it's very simple. I said science is predominately evidence based and religion is purely faith-based. The first claim at least is uncontroversial, so I don't need to argue for that.
Religion is based on scripture and personal anecdote, and I cannot see how scripture and personal anecdote could constitute reliable evidence for the existence of God, or miracles performed by founders etc. So, if you disagree then you need to provide convincing evidence and argument to support the contention that scripture does provide good evidence for such beliefs.
As far as I am concerned if you cannot do that there is nothing further to be said. And note again I'm not saying there is anything wrong with people having faith where there is no evidence, so I'm not even sure what your beef with what I have been saying is..
Yes, I understand where you are coming from; as I used to also be in a similar mindset. After all, this is what the new atheism movement has produced throughout our culture (and, to fair, it is a response to poor argumentation and reasoning which common theism has offered). The layman theist tends to emphasize faith as juxtaposed to belief or knowledge and brings it up mostly when they are referring to what is really a high degree of faith of which this belief is based on; and, naturally, the layman atheist latches onto this disposition and becomes the counter-disposition, equally flawed and vague, that faith is a useless concept which only refers to blind belief that only makes sense within the context of religion.
Most of the time when I hear a layman theist and atheist debate, I think they both are getting at something that is correct but the ideas are malformed and malnourished; and eachs consciousness is developed parasitically on the other: their view is worked out through a response to the others view.
However, if we challenge ourselves to rise above these futile disputes and ask ourselves what is faith?, I think we find that it really is about trust in an authority; and we all do have beliefs that are conceived out of high concentrations of faith. For example, imagine you have a friend, Bob, who throughout your entire life has only been honest with you, even when there were grave consequences for telling the truth, and you are about to put your hand in a bucket of liquid that you think is water because you have some chemical on your hand that is burning your skin. Imagine Bob yells at you that this harmless water is really some dangerous liquid which will spontaneously combust with the chemical on your hand if you put it in. Imagine, because of the urgency to get the chemical off your skin (to avoid further pain and damage) you cannot reasonably test nor verify directly what this liquid is in the bucket and you dont have time to sit down and hear an elaborate spiel about how Bob knows it will combust. Would you put your hand in or trust Bob and find some other way to get the chemical off? I would bet you would trust Bob, given his serious track record of honesty; and this belief that the liquid will harm instead of help would be an act of pure faith. Is this pure faith irrational? I dont think so; because the evidence to support having that pure faith, in this case, adds up. Bob always tells you the truth and has even has commonly done it when he knew he would get in serious trouble for doing so; and he never lies even to make a practical joke. This seems to be a rational and smart move to trust Bob when making this quick judgment call.
I'll try again. Any "precise" definition of a complex term will miss some of that term's common uses. Hence, no such definition can capture the full use of the term.
Instead, we might map out the extent of the term, seeing what is usually included, what is excluded, and when and why. Think of this as mapping out the family resemblance involved, and as an empirical exercise, and certainly not some vague personal intuition.
Alternately, we might stipulate a definition, in which case others might stipulate a different definition, and no progress is made. And in addition, any stipulated definition will omit some of the uses to which the term is put, or leave itself open to counter-instances.
So in place of a definition, we might look for a map of the use of the term, which is what the ChatGPT exercise is a first go at. It is not a definition. Hence, Quoting Banno
I asked if "authority" occurs anywhere...
While your definition may capture one aspect of faith, it does not exhaust the meaning of faith as such. "Trust" and "belief" can operate without explicit reference to an authority. It seems you are stipulating a typical case (e.g., religious faith) and treating it as the essence, while ordinary usage is broader and looser.
No, you said, "This is the basic difference between faith in science and faith in religion," and that's what I asked about. The question is and has always been about the difference between faith in science and faith in religion. You keep evading it.
Quoting Janus
Authority is relevant to faith as adherence to doctrines or beliefs, but not so much to the two other clusters.
Another Austinian tool is to consider when a concept goes astray. Three infelicities for faith as trust in a person or thing are misplaced trust, hollow trust and pretend trust. For faith as adherence to doctrines or beliefs, we have false, shallow and divided faith. For faith as moral commitment or fidelity, we have broken faith, conditional faith and misapplied faith.
It offered the following tabulation:
I then asked about faith under duress. It replied that speech acts reveal their character most clearly when they are tested, and that "Keeping faith" under easy conditions tells us little; under duress, the act's full force or failure becomes visible. It then offered:
A couple of observations. Firstly that this is a fairy competent application of the sort of method Austin advocated for understanding concepts. But this sort of linguistic analysis is perhaps something at which one might expect an LLM to excel. Secondly, it's clear that "Faith proves itself or reveals itself as fake when it costs something." If we are looking for a way to differentiate faith form trust or belief or commitment, this must be at last part of it.
You haven't attempted to address the claim I made that scriptural testimony is not evidence for anything. Scriptures are stories the truth of which we have no way of determining. And if they claim miracles then we have good reason to doubt them. I've explained what evidence I think there is for science. now it's up to you to explain how scripture could constitute evidence or else admit that it's entirely faith-based. If you fail to address that I'm not going to respond again.
You distort what I say to try to make it look incoherent and then when I point out your error you refuse to acknowledge it and keep repeating the same demands for explanation of something I haven't claimed. You did the same in the other thread where I was not claiming that anything was absolutely unfalsifiable but rather that certain theories and claims seem to be such, given that in our present state of knowledge we cannot imagine what could possibly falsify them. What an irony it is that you accuse me of evading.
"Leontiskos has demanded an explanation for X, but I have not claimed X."
What is X? What is this thing you speak about? Please tell me. :roll:
I'm actually getting pretty tired of your dishonesty of late. Why don't you either tell me what X is or else just admit how silly your last page of posts has been.
Or is it just Leon collapsing under pressure? While true faith is confirmed under pressure, bad faith is exposed.
But it doesn't even make sense there. For example, Janus implies that <People have faith in authorities who they have no reason to believe are credible>. That whole idea is incoherent, and it underlies these New Atheist-type arguments.
The paradox of these fringe debates is that the atheist who is infallibly certain that religious faith is irrational cannot be engaged rationally (and that level of certitude almost always results in them refusing to give arguments for their thesis in the first place). On the other hand, the 99% of people who can be engaged rationally do not hold that religious faith is foundationally or definitionally irrational. Therefore you can't ever argue about whether religious faith is irrational, because the tiny percentage of militant atheists are dogmatic and unwilling to offer arguments, whereas the rest of humankind doesn't hold to the thesis in question at all. So it's pointless with either group.
Were they able to unfold their reasoning, we would see that the rational error that such atheists or quasi-atheists generally make is to conflate subjective grounds/evidence with objective grounds/evidence. They effectively mean to say, "Well I admit he has reasons to believe, but they aren't good reasons." Thus the argument is little more than
I have limited access to internet at the moment, but there is a famous miracle (of Fatima?) where the sun stood still, or moved backwards for a time, or was blotted out for a time, or something like that. The idea is something like this, "The prophet predicted abnormal activity of the sun to occur at such-and-such a time. That activity occurred. Therefore the prophet is truly in contact with a higher power." (This is an example of how we vet someone's abilities, and the logic is much broader than prophecy or foretelling.)
The atheist will say something like, "Yes, they believed they saw the sun behave abnormally, and therefore they had 'evidence' that the prophet was a true prophet, but it was not good evidence, because they should have [reasoned the way I reason about such phenomena]." Or in other words, "Well I admit he has reasons to believe, but they aren't good reasons."
The philosophical and scientific problem with the atheist's approach is that there is nothing principled or rigorous about his method. Legitimate epistemological theories have identifiable criteria. "If I think it's a poor reason then it's a poor reason," is not a legitimate epistemological theory. An atheist can certainly hold the belief that, "All religious beliefs are based on insufficient evidence," but there is nothing philosophical, scientific, or rigorous about this assertion/dogma.
More simply, the militant atheist is too vain to admit that there are rational beliefs which he would nevertheless disagree with, and it is literally impossible to argue with someone who can never admit that something he disbelieves believe might be rational. Incidentally, this is why there is a strong correlation between militant atheists and unintelligence, and this in turn is why their professional colleagues ask them to pipe down lest onlookers begin to perceive the whole field as being possessed of such unintelligence.
I wondered about that too. Your aphorism seems very apt.
Nicely written. I don't really have a problem with this. When I have debated God with others it is usually fundamentalists so my approach is perfectly adequate for those purposes. Those arguments are just about creating larger conversations through the smash and grab of polemics. Of course it's not philosophy and it doesn't need to be. The sophisticated religious people I know (who are generally Catholic clergy) would never use faith as a justification and they are often suspicious of Christians who reference faith. For reasons you have described.
I've been an atheist since the 1970's. In relation to the New Atheists - I haven't read their works. I have little interest in Harris, Dawkins or Hitchens. Was Dennett one too? Actually I read God is not Great - Hitch was a polemicist. And we need that. But I'm not really a customer. My atheism was informed by various freethinkers prior to 1990 and by reading Christians like Bishop Shelby Spong, Richard Rohr and David Bently Hart and others. For me atheism isn't a positive claim that god doesn't exist. It is simply that I am not convinced. To me belief in God is similar to a sexual attraction - you can't help who you are drawn to. The arguments in my experince generally come post hoc.
Quoting Bob Ross
Another nicely expressed and accurate assessment.
Quoting Bob Ross
I have to confess I am not good with thought experiments. I would say here that faith isn't a great word for what's happening - I would say that I have a reasonable confidence in Bob's judgments because he has empirically demonstrated himself as reliable over many years. A more poetic expression for this could be "faith in" but I don't see the need to use it myself and it lacks precision.
However if Bob said to me, 'wash your hands in this water and you will be cured of any cancer because the water has been impregnated with a new anti-cancer vaccine', I would not accept his word because the claim requires much more than trust. It is an extraordinary claim. I might even avoid touching the water because it might well have something in it that is not safe. An unusual claim like this would come with warning bells.
To be honest, this discussion of faith has me thinking that my use is mostly ok and when I am talking with someone who says they have it on faith that homosexuals are corrupt, I can safely tell them that they are using faith as a justification for bigotry and for a lack of evidence. This is not the same as saying all examples of faith are inadequate, nor is it an attempt to say religious people are deluded.
No; I don't think so. That's the point of what I'm calling out in this Ethical thinking. There literally isn't a conception of ought that isn't highly problematic for someone who claims ethical truth. It doesn't exist on my view, so I couldn't even begin to provide an example of same. I'm trying to say you can't either, i guess. I did give an example on my terms though, so If that's what you're saying - you literally quoted one? Unsure, given your reply here.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's a definition of 'ought' which relies on value. I just do not accept there are any objective values to be found. Therefore, no 'ought' which is not beholden to it's speaker's values specifically can be found either. We simply don't lay out the value to which our "ought" is in pursuit when we speak about our proposed oughts.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus (following comments pertinent to this whole example/discussion section)
You are simply not telling me the part of ".... as a family/commuter vehicle. It is less likely to break down, and it is more likely to achieve your goal with some efficiency and economic spark (as opposed to #1, anyway))" in your response. So, when I come back and say "you haven't told me why i ought to choose it" that's highly disingenuous. The implicature in your response couldn't be other than you are trying to help me achieve the goal i told you about with the economic assumption added, reasonably, on the fly. I don't need to ask that question. Anyone who did either forgot what they asked, or is being difficult.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
To me, "best" is absolutely meaningless here. What is that referring to? I essentially agree with the form here, but "best" is not the right way to arbitrate imo, without the preceding value against which to make that judgement. And there, we have subjective value as the only possible source for that judgement (again, setting aside Divine Command and similar revelatory external systems to which only adherence matters).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Can you point this out? I do not. I may have misspoken, but the position is that I absolutely reject objective values, intellectually. They are no where to be found, and I can't even find a coherent reason for thinking they exist.
But intuitively I cannot get away from the proposition they must be here somewhere to be found which I take to be a psychologically evolutionary thing. I hope that clarifies. I do not believe in object values. At all.
Only within the group in agreement at the time the agreement/s subsist. As soon as you disagree with the value, that becomes impossible yet again, for the members disagreeing. Those agreeing have their work cut out for them - much like cultists (I tend to think this is the basis for cults. And the fact that objective values can't be found, the basis for most of their dissolution).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I just reject these contentions. "goodness" cannot be found by becoming Good without first defining that Good in its own terms. That is a cat chasing it's tail, looking for it's mother. If your position is truly the above, then you're describing exactly what I see as an ethical system - but you're omitting the priors (values) that actually get anyone to "good" (i think!).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This, down to where you tag me again I cannot make much of unfortunately. Not that there's nothing interesting there, but it seems to me this is someone using words like 'good' 'become', "knowledge" , "knowing" and several others in ways that are entirely alien to me and don't give me any sense of what's being got at. Seems new agey type ranting. Those words seem to rest on literally nothing that could elucidate them in situ, and as I understand these sorts of positions, they rely on some kind of "self-evident" aspect of the concepts in play. I think I reject these in terms of a discussion about Ethics of hte kind we're having. Its some cool poetic stuff, but I am not seeing anything as regards some justification for an "ought" that isn't entirely in line with my own, so far
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Obviously not. But it is the only 1 or 0 choice we have that i can see. The only possible "this or that, and there's one right answer" type thing. Then again, i've been truly suicidal and I am not particularly happy I didn't follow through. It's neutral to me, because that was the 'correct' move at the time given my values. So I'm not entirely convinced this is a particularly interesting example anymore, but it does do something different like you say.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a non-rational, and arguably non deliberative being. Are we wanting to conflate them? Bees don't, assumably, have ethical systems. They simply react. Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Similarly insensible to me as the quoted passages. This seems to be uses of words that can't do anything in the phrases they're used in (what is "one" doing here?)
I guess at-base I want to know why you think human deliberation is somehow totally askance from other physical things. We are just aggregates of forces, after all - the emergence of deliberation doesn't seem all that relevant to metaethics - it seems an accident.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Precisely the type of incoherent phrases I cannot understand in the ways we wanted to me.
Quoting J
Yes. That is my position, in basic form.
Quoting J
I agree. I may have misspoken if I was objecting to this earlier. Quoting J
Could you elucidate? I've been looking for something of that order for two decades. Quoting J
No, it's a moral one. It's about culpability. Ethics is prior, as I understand it, to actualizing a moral position.
Quoting J
I think so, and that is roughly my position on it.
Quoting J
Not so. Your further comment essentially brings up what I think the next step is. Which is just justification, not actually coming to any moral view.
*sigh* Ah well. I just disagree with you man - not that deep. I've laid out arguments, you've failed to have me stray from them and that's how things work when you have competing views (and, arguably, talk directly past each other as it seems on review).
You see it otherwise. Ok, that's your take. So be it. Onward... Hopefully we can continue to come together in other threads nevertheless.
I've done my best to canvas replies and see if there's a good way to respond. If I've missed anything someone wants comment on, please do tell. I am rushing through these pings before leaving work.
To be clear, the reason I wanted you to consider and answer (3) is as follows:
1. We all make moral judgments (in the sense of non-hypothetical ought-judgments)
2. Our moral judgments are able to be evaluated, both by ourselves in retrospect, and by others
3. We respect these evaluations, or at least some of them
4. Therefore, ought-claims have force
5. Therefore, the "rhymes and reasons" are not arbitrary
Quoting AmadeusD
So suppose your wife tells you, "You shouldn't have done that," or, "You should do this," and suppose you respect her evaluation (i.e. 3). What follows is (4): ought-claims have force for you.
(I think what you are more truly opposed to are categorical/exceptionless norms.)
That's a fairly big step. You, Michael, and others claim that you don't think people are being coherent when they make ought-claims. I would point out that something which is incoherent or non-existent cannot have force, and yet ought-claims do have force; therefore they cannot be incoherent or non-existent.
Now you might say, "Sure, my wife's ought-claims have force for me, but that doesn't make them objective or even universal. Either she knows my own values well enough to counsel me, or else we self-consciously share a set of values upon which we reason together. Either way the objectivity needn't extend beyond the two of us." That's a fair answer, but I would contend that you and your wife are also potentially open to the suggestions and advice of every other person on Earth, and that this would be odd if there were not some sort of value-continuity between the two of you and other people. That is, ought-claims of others who do not know you at all and who therefore do not know your idiosyncrasies and "arbitrary" values nevertheless have force for you (even if that force is quite small or is merely potential and defeasible). Hence the point about food: there are all sorts of values that everyone holds in common, and the general "oughts" which flow from these common values will also be common.
To give a concrete example, suppose you travel to a foreign city and begin to drink water from a drinking fountain. Someone warns you not to drink the water. Whether or not you accede to their suggestion, you give it due consideration. Now I don't know why you would give a perfect stranger's ought-claim due consideration if all values are arbitrary. Instead I would say that, like the food example, the stranger knows and shares one of your own values even though he does not know you, and this is why his ought-claim is worthy of consideration.
and
Quoting Leontiskos
No. My wife's assessment of x is worthy of my consideration, because statistically, it has been beneficial practically speaking, or has stroked my ego in some way that makes me "enjoy" hearing what she has to say. There's nothing about hte "ought" part that I care about. If she says "you shouldn't have done that" I don't give a shit. What I want to know is "why are you telling me?"
My wife and I are married because we share values and appreciate each other's point of view (to the degree of perhaps altering each other's values, and at times, that is shared - but definitely not always). That is not, in any way, to say I care what my wife thinks i should do at any given time. It is an hilarious coincidence that we rarely violate each other's expectations in this way. And we do, castastrophicly at times. We just brute accept it on the basis neither of us means any harm.
The reason old mate in the foreign country's "Don't drink the water" might be worthy of consideration is the factual situation of his familiarity with something I am not familiar. He might also want me to dehydrate. It doesn't matter, because the facts lead me to think "Maybe this guy/gal knows something I don't". Where's the "ought" coming into this?
So I see both of those quoted notions as non sequiturs given the above. There is nothing in our respecting other people's evaluations the makes that motivators anything but arbitrary (at base). They will, in all cases, rely on personal values. And we reject the vast, vast majority of them unless they reflect our own in which case pure ego is at play.
It seems you've just left out which values my wife and old mate are adhering to in their "ought" statements. If they aren't shared, why would I have any interest? If they are shared, then it boils down to "I agree with myself, through you".
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think 'common' helps in the argument against my claim of "no true oughts". It just means lots of people agree on some oughts. That's fine. Is the suggestion here that if several people agree on a value, it is no longer arbitrary? This setting to one side that I imagine most examples you could proffer are not moral.
I also reject the notion that anything incoherent cannot have psychological force. That is patently untrue. Maybe that explains our disagreement?
This isn't really true if we are talking about the scientific beliefs the average person has. The average person cannot verify or at least has not verified themselves the vast majority of what is the scientific body of knowledge: it is by-at-large mainly faith in the scientific institutions that make people believe. E.g., when we hear about how black holes work, we don't verify any of that ourselves in any meaningful sense: we trust the source that is telling us because we find the scientific institution and the expert-at-hand credible. Whereas with math or logic, e.g., if one understands the axioms and formulas then they don't have to take the mathematician or logician's word for it: they can a priori verify it from their armchairs.
Likewise, religion is not purely faith-based: it is predominantly faith-based for most of the average people out there.
For both, they require mostly evidence for or against trusting the source of knowledge for the claims.
The bit of truth that I think you are conveying, in imprecise terms, is that science tends to involve purported evidence that has less speculation in it and more empirical grounds; but still this is controversial. I would argue that the arguments for God's existence are more certain than a theory determinable through the scientific method because they involve reasoning about the necessary consequences of the existence of things which are presupposed in science to begin with. E.g., the argument from change derives God's existence from change which is presupposed for the scientific method: there is no experiment one can perform to verify that every effect has a cause.
Banno, I am not asking for a historical account of what faith means; and I understand you seem to take a pluralist account of faith. I am wondering what you think faith means, if not just as it relates to the kind of faith in question in our beliefs about the world around us. We can't make headway if you won't commit to some meaning of the word faith.
Let me grant you that there are N valid definitions of faith: which one, out of the N, would you say pertains most closely to what we are discussing and what definition does it have? Is the kind of faith in science a different type of faith than in religion?
That would be a good challenge for me. I'll try. Give me a few days.
So when a complete stranger warns you not to drink the water, you don't see any 'ought' involved in this?
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't believe anyone has claimed that moral judgments do not rely on values. This is a big part of your ignoratio elenchus.
Quoting AmadeusD
Exactly, but you do have interest, and therefore according to your own reasoning here your interest indicates a shared value. The fact that you think a complete stranger has a shared value with you shows that the values of complete strangers are not arbitrary.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes. I am claiming that
You might say, "I and everyone else on Earth share the value of wanting to avoid poisonous water, but that value is still arbitrary. Everyone on Earth may share the value, but that does not make it non-arbitrary."
I don't see a need to enter into the debate on universal vs. objective. My point is that at least some values are shared by all humans, and this is all that is required for morality to exist. If this were not true then the complete stranger's warning would have no force for you. But it does have force for you, and therefore it is true that there are fundamentally shared values.
A bit loaded (not on purpose). On my conception of an "ought", yeah, sure. But its an empirically descriptive ought, not a moral one. "If you want to not get a tummy bug, you ought not drink the water (based on several assumptions)" Nothing moral here, in my view.
On your terms, though, where an 'ought' is moral, ipso facto (from what I can tell.. If that's wrong, sorry) then no, not at all. I'm not seeing any ought. This isn't meant to be rude, but I did ask you to point out where it is. I cannot see it beyond a mechanistic if/then.
Quoting Leontiskos
personal, subjective values. No fallacy here, my man. You are just not quite grasping what I'm saying. Obviously, any non-religious ethical system is based on 'values'. But they are arbitrary as far as "moral" goes. I take it you think you've beaten this by showing food helps us survive. It sure does. That is not moral, on my view so takes me no closer to understanding what your contention is, really.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, it doesn't, as far as I am concerned/can tell. Would you be able to tell me how that makes it non-arbitrary? It would also be arbitrary for me to take on that person's advice. If they had said "go ahead, drink the water" the case remains the same.
Quoting Leontiskos
This seems a total non sequitur (think I've pointed that out before). Cannot understand how this is the case... What's going on for you there?
Quoting J
Nice, thank you!
Your final paragraph does not make sense to me, due to hte above positions.
I dunno, Bob. I've given you much more about what I think faith means than just a five word definition. I've also shown how faith is at its most apparent when challenged. But you seem discontent.
So one last time, faith involves trust, adherence to a belief, and commitment, and is shown most clearly when the faithful are under pressure.
If you can't work with that, then so be it.
It's pretty clear that "faith" doesn't apply to belief in science in the way you suppose it does.
Here's a nice tabulation from ChatGPT:
Seems pretty clear to me. There's a big difference in what one is doing, in each case.
But it's not a mechanistic if/then. More precisely, it's not a hypothetical imperative. He didn't say, "Don't drink the water if you don't want to get sick." He said, "Don't drink the water." Or, "Don't drink the water because you don't want to get sick." I am envisioning the stranger who is telling you what to do, which is why I spoke explicitly about non-hypothetical ought-judgments. If we wanted to be pedantic, we could have him tell you, "Even though we are complete strangers, I know what you value, and therefore you ought not drink the water." You could respond, "You have no idea what I value. All values are arbitrary - what the Christian values has nothing to do with what the Muslim values," and go on to ignore him and drink the water. But you don't do that. Think about the fact that you don't do that!
(What he delivers to you is a non-hypothetical ought-judgment, which I explain in detail <here>. Also see my first paragraph <here>, which anticipates what you've now done.)
Quoting AmadeusD
Saying, "That is not moral" doesn't mean anything if you can't tell us what the word 'moral' in your sentence is supposed to mean. In fact I have said precisely what I mean by 'moral':
Quoting Leontiskos
...and it is clear that the non-hypothetical ought-judgments of complete strangers still have force for us. The word "moral" is completely unnecessary, and given the way people in this thread want to use that word while refusing to say what they mean by it, it perhaps should be left out of the discussion.
Quoting AmadeusD
Did you read the rest of the post? Here it is again:
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm sympathetic, but this is patently false.
If I want to die, I might very well seek out poisonous beverages.
I have elsewhere argued at some length about the reasonableness of assuming that anyone you come across desires to continue living, absent evidence to the contrary. But it's still an assumption. I wouldn't call it an "arbitrary" assumption, anymore than I would call the desire to continue living "arbitrary". But neither would I call either of them universal, because they plainly are not.
So happy to see you, Srap. :up:
My point is that the ought-claims of complete strangers have force for us, and this jibes with your claim about the "reasonableness of assuming." I don't think my universality claim needs to be exceptionless in order for my conclusion to be valid.
It would help me to know where you think we disagree with regard to the more central moral premises, here. I want to make sure that we don't end up quibbling over a minor point.
(Short on time, sorry if that is an inadequate response.)
I don't believe @Banno or @Janus are even attempting to give a clear definition of what faith is. Instead, they are using notions without clarifying what the idea of it is that we should use for the discussion. I agree that anyone that believes faith is belief despite the evidence is deploying a straw man of theism: I am just not sure if they are even committing themselves to that definition.
Ok, let's roll with it **rolls up sleeves**:
Believing, e.g., that black holes exist depends, at least in part, on trusting the scientists that are purporting those facts; so it is, in part, faith-based. No?
Why should I bother to chat with you further?
What do you mean "us", kemosabe?
If you think black holes do not exist, what do you do next?
Do you explain, predict, and revise, Investigate the objection, and use Assertive/testable claims? Then you are doing science.
DO you express loyalty, identity, hope, defend against the objection, and use declaratives, commissives, and performatives? Then that's not science.
Now go back and look at this:
Quoting Bob Ross
Which is it? What are the speech acts involved here? Science or faith?
This is fair to a certain extent: I get what you mean, but I do think it is the philosophers duty to try to rise the conversation to a level of ample clarity.
To be fair, New Atheism doesnt forward particularly new ideas; but it has made quite a bit of them notorious around these parts. A lot of what you have been saying is straight out their old text book, although I understand you are not intending it that way.
I would say this is agnosticism (viz., the suspension of judgment about a proposition); whereas atheism, traditionally, is the belief there are no gods.
I would say, even if this is true to some extent, it is irrelevant to theology. Either one has good reasons to believe God exists or not.
That is fair: most people do operate this way, and Nietzsche calls it the Ass arriving most beautiful and brave.
Having this reasonable confidence in Bob is trustno? You trust him. Right?
Theres a lot to unpack here; but the most important note I would make is that you are suggesting that some claims cannot be validly believed through trust in an authority; and to me anything in principle is on the table. If there are sufficient reasons to trust the authority, then one should believe it; and if there isnt, then one shouldnt. However, to say that some claims are extraordinary (which is straight out of Hitchens playbook btw) that cannot be, even in principle, verified other than through a belief devoid of trustwell, I dont know what that kind of claim would look like.
The reason you might not put your hands in the water (given your version of the thought experiment) is that you dont believe Bob is qualified properly for you to trust him in this regard. Imagine, e.g., Bob was an expertcertifieddoctor that pioneered this new anti-cancer vaccine and was ultra-truthful (like before in my version of the hypothetical): would you trust him then?
This doesnt make any sense on multiple different levels.
Firstly, if they have it on valid faith, in principle, then it would be warranted to believe it; and you are implying it would be irrational for them to.
Secondly, homosexuality, traditionally, being immoral has nothing to do with corruption per se: it has to do with a person practicing in alignment with a sexual orientation that is bad; and it is bad because it goes against the nature qua essence of a human.
Thirdly, saying it is bigotry and that there is a lack of evidence to support homosexuality as being immoral just begs the question. For me, for example, I do think there is good evidence to support homosexuality as a sexual orientation as being bad and practicing it as, subsequently, immoral.
Yes, but they have every reason to believe that the currently accepted canon of scientific knowledge is based on actual observation, experiment and honest and accurate reporting by scientists. That this is so is evidenced by the great advances in technologies we see all around us.
Quoting Bob Ross
The source of knowledge for established science is observation and experiment. What is the source of knowledge for religion?
We can rightly trust that the scientists have done the observing and experimenting, and we can rightly trust that the religious authorities have done the reading and studying of the religious texts. The question is as to what is the source contained in the religious texts if not faith in revelation? Would you call that knowledge? Would you say it is based on evidence or logic?
Quoting Bob Ross
Really? And what is the good evidence you refer to?
Quoting Bob Ross
Is that your "evidence"? That being homosexual is a bad orientation because it goes against the "nature qua essence of a human"? Are you an expert on human nature and the essence of being human, Bob? You don't think that might be a tad presumptuous?
I think you mean it doesn't appeal to you, and that's fine. It's the next step of universalizing what doesn't appeal to you personally where you go wrong.
It's been sad to watch your thinking going downhill, Bob.
False. We've been through this, but the etymology doesn't quite allow for this.
"A-gnostic" means "no knowledge". It is the position that we cannot know whether or not God exists. Atheist is literally A-theism. "no theism". That's literally it. In any case, i set out months ago why your use of the word is unhelpful. Not your fault - lots of people think that. But it is the reason these silly debates occur. I am not trying to blow smoke up my own arse - i gave a table that covers the etymology, use and the four possible positions very well.
"strong atheism" seems to be a modern invention to allow people to make the anti-theist claim you want to roll into atheism. I reject. Anti-theism is anti-theism. Not atheism.
I gave the argument in <this post>, and particularly in the final paragraph. Give that a read and let me know if I am incorrect in claiming that, "you give it due consideration."
Perhaps learning about conversational implicatures might help you along here? "because i assume you don't want to get sick" is the only plausible furthering of your suggestion, I think.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is not at all clear, and if that's baked into your examples you're hiding the ball the whole way through. At no stage was it clear I was being commanded to do anything in either example. I am being remonstrated with, at best. If my response was "I don't care, I am happy to get sick" then the entire thing falls apart.
Quoting Leontiskos
I literally did do this when I was in Egypt, so I don't quite know why you would make such a blatantly unsupportable claim?
Quoting Leontiskos
Nope. That's what you think, and are not convincing me of. That's fine.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's fine. I've already told you that "ought" need be unpacked there, and you've not done it other than to circle back to "that's morality!". I disagree. You're not doing what you think here - just letting me know you have a differing view. Though, I also see the question in this, so:
Morality: The debate between right and wrong.
It is not "right" not to poison oneself with foreign water and more than it's "right" to eat an apple over an orange. You need an actual reason to make that move to "optimal" which is also, not moral, on these terms. I think you are incorrectly describing morality. And we're allowed different conceptions.
Quoting Leontiskos
can. Again, totally unsupportable by anything but your intuition to this effect. Fine. i don't share it, nor does my experience support my assent.
There's also the issue of "some" being the more reasonable version, and the discussion of why those "some" and in what circumstances those "some" appear to us as forceful would reveal the underlying arbitrary values one is simply ignorant of in the decision-making process because they are so well-trodded we need not re-assess them every time we come into a new decision to be made (probably true for morality on my terms also). If one has a moral deliberation, rather than personal heuristics, every time one encounters a decision to be made (on either of our conceptions) then we would get precisely no where. One must make their moral principles known, and then embody them - not discuss them - to be effective. The justification is internal. Obviously.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yep. Question remains :) I do, now, understand we could almost certainly not come to terms on this matter.
How was I hiding the ball? I said it at the very outset:
Quoting Leontiskos
You've misrepresented the argument by interpreting a moral judgment as a hypothetical ought-judgment. I agree: if the argument is misrepresented in that way then it is invalid. But the argument was never about hypothetical imperatives.
Quoting AmadeusD
So you are telling me that when you were in Egypt someone told you not to drink the water, and you did not give their utterance any (due) consideration? Their utterance had no force on your decision process?
Quoting AmadeusD
I'm not sure what you are supposed to be arguing here. Are you claiming that it is impossible for a complete stranger to tell you not to drink water?
Quoting AmadeusD
But I have done it, namely in the thread that I have referenced multiple times.
Quoting AmadeusD
As I've said, I have no use for the word "morality." You can't even say what you mean by it, so I see no point in using it.
Quoting AmadeusD
The thesis you seem to be proposing is this:
Is that accurate or not? If not, please tell me what you are saying when you say, "Can."
In so far as the evidence affords. But theres a limit.
Quoting Bob Ross
Its 1980s Carl Sagan, I think. New Atheism is just packaging the free thought arguments of earlier times.
If someone says they have a puppy at home I would have no reason to doubt this. But it could be untrue. However is someone says they have a dragon at home Im going to need robust evidence. Thats all I am saying. For the most part, the more extraordinary the claim the more important the quality of that evidence is.
Quoting Bob Ross
Valid faith? Are you saying faith is uneven? How does one determine which faith claim is valid and which one is not?
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes. I dont believe in gods. Doesnt mean I know there are no gods. Most atheists today distinguish between a belief claim and a knowledge claim. Some are more certain about particular gods such as Zuess or Yahweh.
I think I was quite clear:
Quoting Leontiskos
is not clearly imbedded in the example. I understand your following (in this post) justification for why I should have assumed this - my point is that your example doesn't rise to that level. I'm unsure that's a tractable issue.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ok, so in this case we agree. We are just seeing different things.
Quoting Leontiskos
I understand that you think this. I am unsure what else to say. It was inadequate to me.
Quoting Leontiskos
What the fuck dude????:
Quoting AmadeusD
"right" and "wrong" are definitely arbitrary in the sense you want to use them to support a moral system of the type piecemeal described here. If you sense of "right" and "wrong" is essentially goal-oriented in the sense that any old goal can give us a moral "right" then that's fine, and exactly how I've described my views. If it's something else, I may need some help.
Quoting Leontiskos
Roughly, yes, as the Egypt example (of which I confirm your description) would show, in some degree. Sometimes people will, upon context, prove forceful in terms of my valuing their opinion. This is still not getting me toward a moral decision, as I see it. How could it be "wrong" for me to ignore old mate? Given I didn't get sick, I can't see even a post hoc way to get there. I am now back to supremely enjoying this exchange, fwiw.
:up:
Okay, but it's an important issue. If we don't mean the same thing by 'morality' then we will be talking past each other.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sure.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sorry, my bad.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't find this a helpful definition. This is because instead of one ambiguous term ('morality'), we now have two ('right' and 'wrong'). You yourself immediately put the two key terms of your definition into scare quotes, which is bad news for us if we want a precise definition.
Again, I have been talking about non-hypothetical ought-judgments. An example of this is, "Do not drink that water!"
I think we need a clearly defined subject if we are to discuss it. I think "non-hypothetical ought-judgments" are very clearly defined. I wrote an entire OP on the subject. I don't think, "The debate between right and wrong," is clearly defined, and therefore I don't think we can have a discussion about it until it is further clarified.
Let me give the argument again:
Quoting Leontiskos
Let me clarify the argument a bit and also dispense entirely with the word 'morality':
1c. We all make non-hypothetical ought-judgments (NHs for short - plural)
2c. Our NHs are able to be evaluated, both by ourselves in retrospect, and by others
3c. These evaluations are themselves NHs
4c. We respect these evaluative NHs, or at least some of them
5c. Therefore, at least some evaluative NHs have force
6c. Therefore, the "rhymes and reasons" are not arbitrary
5c is really my primary conclusion. I realize that this argument will be difficult to follow if one does not understand what an NH is, and that understanding will require looking at the thread where I lay it out.
Supposing you want to disagree, you have a few options here:
1. Decide that the conclusions pertain to 'morality' and then dispute the argument
2. Decide that the conclusions do not pertain to 'morality' and then agree with the argument
3. Decide that the conclusions do not pertain to 'morality' but then dispute the argument anyway
Let me give an example using the water case:
A) You decide to drink water, raising it to your lips (1c)
B) A complete stranger tells you not to drink the water (2c, 3c, 5c)
C) You decide not to drink the water, or at the very least you give the stranger's utterance due consideration (4c)
Note that by giving the stranger's utterance due consideration you "respect it." One need not agree with an evaluative NH in order to respect it. Hopefully that example helps illustrate the argument, even if you want to say that you would not give the stranger's utterance due consideration.
The validity of 5c is really the crux, and I don't claim that I have given sufficient argumentation for it, but I also don't want to do too much work in a single post. The sense of 5c crucially requires that we understand what an NH is, and that we do not conflate a non-hypothetical ought-judgment with a hypothetical ought-judgment. Again, this terminology is explained in my thread.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, good. Your thesis is very close to 5c, so that's good. Perhaps I need more reasoning to justify 5c; perhaps I need more reasoning beyond 5c to reach a substantial conclusion; and perhaps the argument is sufficient as it stands.
Quoting AmadeusD
Glad to hear it.
Yeah, definitely. I think we have been to some degree. Initially it was grating, but now I see it clearly, it's interesting and revealing :)
Quoting Leontiskos
That's fair. And I think if that clarification were universalizable, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
But my conception is a generally accepted take, not just mine (it is hte first dictionary definition, and what Google's AI throws out)
That said:
"There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions, even within philosophy."
Two forms are given. We may be speaking about two distinct uses of the same word. Mine is definitely descriptive. I use "morality" to describe the systems by which groups co-operate. It is observational, and not "moral" in the normative sense. It just is what people do to get on with each other. No need for any kind of objective or actual value. Just agreed behavioural norms and boundaries (though, obviously, at some point htis will boil down to values. The problem is there are no homogeneous societies** of that kind other than cults).
"descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct endorsed by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior
whereas I think you may be using a proscriptive/normative form:
"normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be endorsed by all rational people."
I suppose at base, **I don't think version 2 obtains in the real world - we just talk about hypothetical imperatives of that kind. Kant wakes from his slumber...
Quoting Leontiskos
I understand. I even (to some degree) agree. I just don't think this butters your bread, I guess. Fwiw, I wrote this before reading the following "option" table. So, there we go LOL.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think either could be true, but I see a much bigger problem. On what basis are you justifying that conclusion as a moral one? How can it be "right" or "wrong" particularly when you cannot(or don't, i'm unsure) sufficiently define those terms? I fully agree that ambiguity of those terms is a problem - in fact, I think it's fatal.
Yes, but I would say the impasse is alive and well. :razz:
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, but you've defined morality as, "The debate between right and wrong," and I'm not sure how a debate could be descriptive. In fact I don't really understand how the word morality is supposed to refer to a debate at all. But these are your definitions, so I leave them to you. I've dropped the word 'morality' entirely from my argument.
Quoting AmadeusD
According to what dictionary?
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, my definition of an NH is certainly normative. That's true.
Quoting AmadeusD
That's your definition, not mine. As I said, I don't know what you mean by 'right' and 'wrong', so if your definition is to be meaningful you would need to spell that out. Here is what I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
Now apparently you want me to decide whether my conclusions pertain to your definition of "morality." I can't really do that, given that I don't know what you mean by 'right' and 'wrong'. I would suggest that you read the OP where I explain what a non-hypothetical ought-judgment is, and then try to figure out if it relates to your own concept of morality (whatever that concept is). I stopped using the word 'moral' in my argument in this thread (if we can't agree on what a word means then why would we use it at all?), but in my OP I do use that word and explain what I mean by it. If you have a special desire to use the word m-o-r-a-l in our conversation, you could look there for an alternative definition. Nevertheless, I make no use at all of the words "right" and "wrong" in that OP. I myself don't see why any of the three words are necessary at all, especially if we are using them equivocally between us.
If you do decide on option #2 or #3 and say that my argument does not pertain to 'morality', then I would expect at least a syllogism with a middle term that looks something like:
I think the only recourse for @J is to say that the decision to do nothing at all does not count as a decision, or equivalently, that the claim, "x is best (among all options)" is not taking into consideration the option where one does nothing.
J would then be saying something like <"x is best" never implies "do x" because I might choose to do nothing at all>.
The response to this objection is to simply note that the decision to do nothing is itself a decision. The error here is very closely related to the conflation between a non-hypothetical ought-judgment and a hypothetical ought-judgment where, despite the evidence, the moral non-realist will claim that every piece of advice is merely hypothetical. For example, the moral non-realist wants to say, "Sometimes people will say that the Toyota is the best car to buy if I want to buy a car, but they will never simply tell me that I should buy a Toyota. They will never tell me, 'This is what you should do, all things considered.'" (They will never speak the following words non-hypothetically: "Don't drink the water!")
What's really interesting about this is that the moral non-realist claims that morality is not real, and yet he must ultimately change reality itself in order to hold this position, namely by changing all the patent instances of non-hypothetical ought-judgments into hypothetical ought-judgments. He must pretend that all advice is only intended hypothetically, even his own advice, and even his own advice to himself.
Relatedly:
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a misreading. @Count Timothy von Icarus is saying that humans will choose what they deem best, not that humans will choose what Count deems best. You are the one who is apparently committed to the (contradictory) idea that humans will not choose what they deem best.
Words like "good," "bad," "best," "worst," "desirable," "undesirable," etc., do not function ad unum (towards one thing). That's why we argue about what is best even without disagreeing on whether we ought to choose the best. If we did not agree that we ought to choose the best then there would be no point in arguing about what is best. This goes hand in hand with your misunderstanding of the choice-worthy.
No one does. That's my entire point lol. Quoting Leontiskos
Again, not really. This is a widely accepted conception of morality. It is what people talk about when discussing morality. Given the first reply above this one, it seems pretty clear that either morality doesn't exist or you and I are trying to talk about something else, in some sense. So, I find it quite hard to discuss on the basis of well, I conceive Morality as X (you are still talking about morality, despite the claim to have dropped it... there would be no discussion here if you weren't) and that is something other than "right" and "wrong". If you wish to change the concept of morality to be more logically acceptable, sure, that's fine, and I have no real argument against that position - but my experiences tell me you are simply wrong about how these types o utterances affect people.
Quoting Leontiskos
Oxford Languages, Cambridge and several AI models.
This seems to get close to what you're wanting to do here, but i still note phrases like this:
"obligatory concerns with others welfare, rights, fairness, and justice, as well as the reasoning, judgment, emotions, and actions that spring from those concerns."
These will never be universalizable. So I think you cannot have your cake (about psychological morality, as it were) and still think it can be universalizable or unassailable. If we're both essentially saying that this is the case, we're good. I can't quite grasp where your commitment is in terms of the applicability of your system - seems you want it to apply to everyone, without fail and not susceptible to empirical considerations.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, no, it's not, really. This is what the sum total of my experience of moral discourse (and several courses) has taught me. For me, 'morality' functions as something else precisely because I think this conception is fatally flawed (as noted earlier):
Quoting AmadeusD
I couldn't possibly hold a view i've noted has a fatal flaw, could I?
Quoting Leontiskos
Nope. I am simply pointing out that your conception is not at all what people consider when they speak about morality. For this reason, I find it completely inapt to be held under that label as something intended to be interpersonal.
Quoting Leontiskos
I've done this. It doesn't. I've been at rather extreme pains to point out why I think that conception is both functionally a bit silly, and not what you claim it to be. Being wrong, on my part, wouldn't mean I haven't given those answers.
Quoting Leontiskos
Which is why the above. I have been insufficiently clear that this was a motivator, but I found it to be pretty obvious in our exchanges, that I am lambasting your jettison of those terms, and then further lambasting your use of NHO as some kind of "universal" replacement whcih I thnk it is not.
Quoting Leontiskos
Because this is precisely what people mean when they speak about morality. "That's immoral!" means "that's wrong" or bad. And that's clearly an emotional plea. That's another conversation though..
Quoting Leontiskos
I'll reverse this section, because it is extremely important to notice that these words are required if you want to talk about morality about actions. That is literally what morality is - the discussion of right and wrong actions. Even your take imports that to ignore a NHO would be 'wrong'. You don't use that word, but without it you have no basis to claim any kind of coherence between the theory and actual actions. We can simply kill ourselves, and there's no valence to it.
I agree with the problem in terms - but those terms, being so ambiguous, are a fatal flaw in there being a stable concept of morality beyond this (which anyone with half a brain can understand the intent of, even without decent definitions. We all conceive those words clearly for ourselves). If you are trying to entirely overhaul the concept of morality to fit something people do not usually talk about under that head, so be it. Its just not in any way convincing to me and doesn't seem to pertain to anything one would normally consider moral. Not sure why you're trying to avoid that word, though. It is hte basis of what we're discussing after all..
Quoting Leontiskos
It requires a concept of right and wrong. Yours doesn't even attempt one, other than a potentially hidden 'right' in following what you deduce to be an 'ought'. But that is tautological.
So you want to criticize people who use the words "right" and "wrong," because you think the words are meaningless. And then when I avoid using these words that you deem to be meaningless, you criticize me for not using them? It seems like you've erected a game where I lose by default even before I begin.
Quoting AmadeusD
What "conception"? You yourself claim that your definition of morality is meaningless, and therefore there is no conception. If it is not meaningless, then you should tell me what the conception is.
Quoting AmadeusD
Again, in order to determine whether something exists one must explain what they are talking about. If you say, "Morality is about right and wrong and I have no idea what right and wrong mean," then we have no candidate which could exist or not exist.
Quoting AmadeusD
So <here> is the Cambridge entry, which is publicly accessible. It says nothing about debates and nothing about "wrong," although the word "right" does occur in a few entries. So it looks like your definition does not come from Cambridge dictionary, unless you are using an older version?
Quoting AmadeusD
What is its fatal flaw? That it doesn't mean anything?
I don't generally find it useful to argue other peoples positions for them, but I did that here:
Quoting Leontiskos
So presumably you want to say that something is moral if it is obligatory, and that this means that it must be done. On this view a moral norm is therefore a categorical/exceptionless norm.
But the problem here is making that first subdivision the whole of morality. In everyday life it just isn't. For example:
Quoting AmadeusD
First note that the claim, "That's [inadmissible]" is a NH, and every negative NH entails the claim, "You should not do that." Thus, "Note that a non-hypothetical judgment is not the same thing as a categorical imperative. We could say that all categorical imperatives are non-hypothetical judgments, but not all non-hypothetical judgments are categorical imperatives" ().
Now suppose someone becomes a vegetarian because they don't want to cause animal suffering. Nevertheless, one day they are starving and they find a live mouse caught in a live trap. They eat the mouse to stay alive and yet nevertheless continue to consider themselves a vegetarian. Your view is apparently that in order for them to hold the norm, "It is immoral to eat meat," they must wield that norm as a categorical/exceptionless norm. But this is a strawman. It's not how morality is viewed in real life. In real life if a vegetarian allows certain exceptions to their rule this does not disqualify their vegetarianism from being of a moral nature.
You have not been able to say what you mean by morality (or by "right" and "wrong" - the words you use to define morality). So I've offered you a definition, namely one that pertains to categorical/exceptionless norms. You might claim that this is not your definition of morality, but I can hardly be faulted at this point for providing you with a definition, given that you have continually failed to give a clear definition yourself. This definition of morality is incomplete. It is not colloquially adequate. If it were colloquially adequate then the vegetarian in question would not be acting morally in admitting exceptions, but everyone thinks they are acting in a morally-infused manner even if they admit exceptions.
If you want to reduce non-hypothetical ought-judgments (a.k.a. NHs) to categorical/exceptionless norms, you could do it even though it requires a bit of bastardizing. We could construe the vegetarian eating the mouse as saying, "Given the unique circumstances I am in, one should categorically/exceptionlessly eat the mouse, even though one should not eat the mouse in alternative circumstances." Again, this is in fact conflating two different subdivisions of morality, but someone who is intent on categorical/exceptionless norms might want to try to construe it that way.
Quoting AmadeusD
I am not following this, and I am especially curious to know what your third sentence is supposed to mean.
The language problem here is generalizable:
So many of the recent discussions on TPF have hinged on the burden of proof. You are basically saying that you don't know what morality (or else right/wrong) means, and that I have the burden of proof to explain what it means. I then say, "Okay, I will just avoid that word altogether," and you object. That is the especially problematic objection on your part. If someone knows what they mean by a word, then they don't need to use that word. And if someone wants to object, then they must be able to say what they mean by the words contained within their objection.
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't think you can claim that you "conceive of the words clearly" while simultaneously being unable to say what you mean by them. The whole crux here is that you do not conceive of the words 'right' and 'wrong' clearly.
Quoting AmadeusD
No real discussion is merely about words. The token m-o-r-a-l-i-t-y is not the basis of our discussion. Discussions are about concepts, and a token with no attached concept is not a word at all. The I-know-not-what is not a basis for anything, for it has no content.
Quoting AmadeusD
Wrong: "Not correct" (Cambridge)
On that definition the non-hypothetical ought-judgment, "Do not drink the water!" is a claim about what is wrong/incorrect. ...But now you will want to say that it is about wrong but not about "moral wrong," and the whole circle will repeat itself...
Part of what that thread is getting at is this. Everyone takes themselves to be doing and seeking things that are right and not wrong, good and not bad. A non-hypothetical ought-judgment is always about what ought to be done, and you could say that what ought to be done is the right thing to do. When we critique ourselves or experience regrets, we are judging that the action we thought was right was in fact wrong; or the action we thought was good was in fact bad; or the action we thought ought to be done in fact oughtn't have been done. That's the basis of morality, and everyone is engaged in it. A categorical/exceptionless norm is just a special kind of moral premise, one that not everyone accepts.* Nevertheless, to say, "I don't believe in morality because I don't believe in categorical/exceptionless norms," is not right, given that morality is not reducible to categorical/exceptionless norms. Just because someone is fascinated or even obsessed with the notion of categorical/exceptionless norms does not mean that this is all morality is.
Maybe the easiest way to see this is to note that civil law is a moral construct which nevertheless does not necessarily contain categorical/exceptionless norms.
* And moral judgments derived from categorical/exceptionless norms are just one species of moral judgments / non-hypothetical ought-judgments.
As far as I can tell, genuinely, you believe 'faith' has a plurality of meanings and that it has to do with (1) trust and (2) believing despite the evidence.
In my example, it was of a person who isnt doing the science: it is laymen that is believing that the information from the article(s) are true. This is a red herring.
Notwithstanding that science itself requires faith, the laymen, when believing the article about black holes, is trusting the source as credible information and, yes, is not doing science.
This is a false dichotomy under my view, but you already know that. What I was asking is that if you believe that faith has to do with trust, and thats what you said before, then a person that believes something about black holes because they find an article to be a credible source of information on the topic is believing on faithnot science.
This is just a giant begging of the question. My point was that your beliefs about scientific propositions are largely faith-based, whether you like it or not, just like how religious propositions are largely faith-based. Now whether or not the evidence supporting religious propositions are as robust and plausible than the evidence for science is a separate question.
The source of knowledge for you establishing scientific truths as true is evidence about whether or not to trust the authorities that purport the scientific facts. This is true for religion as well.
Now:
Not all of religious truths are purely revelation; but for the ones that are this would require that one believes that the witnesses of the revelations are credible to be testifying to what they saw and that the evidence, empirically and historically, surrounding the event point sufficiently to the plausibility of the event being revelation.
Am I saying that I believe there are good reasons to believe in that divine revelation has happened? No. What I am saying is that the kind of belief you formulated about science is the same kind of belief that religious people formulate about their religious views. The conversation shifts from religion is about this blind faith while science is about the scientific method to both scientific and religious knowledge that I could have are faith-based by-at-large, but is there good evidence for either?. Instead of debating faith vs. science we correctly thereby pivot into a discussion about the evidence for each.
Both involve evidence and logic: thats never been unique to scienceever. Theres tons of studies outside of religion that are also based on evidence and logichistory, ethics, logic, math, psychology, etc.
Lol. I am an Aristotelian/Thomist on ethics. To get into this, we would have to get into each others metaethical, normative ethical, and applied ethical positions; and I am not sure you are open to that.
Are you a moral realist?
Agnosticism traditionally refers to the suspension of judgment, and your etymological-style definition is a rather new emergence in colloquial spheres. At the end of the day, I don't really care as long as the terms are clarified at the beginning of the discussion.
Everyone who has faith in an authority has reasons to believe the authority is credible. No one who has faith in an authority lacks reasons to believe the authority is credible.
Else, see where I critique in detail the basis you gave for considering some faith-assents to be less faith-based.
Very fair, but that isn't my position. My position is that "wrong" and "right" are ambiguous, amorphous and probably indefinable terms which create a problem for morality to do what it purports to do. Your concept is askance from this, but it seems tp want the same security people find in :
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
You could and I assume that's the transition your system wants to make. But that is not the way 'right' tends to be used, so I think a theory which violates the normal use of these words can't be helpful. Perhaps that's where my back is up.. I can't relate to it, at all, despite it being relatively sound in form. It doens't speak to me about right and wrong, and therefore doesn't seem to be a moral system. It's a system for making decisions based on data towards what can, in most instances, be considered arbitrary ends. I know you feel that a collective agreement shifts that. I do not, so impasse there for sure .
I'm pretty confident in my ability to persuade someone regarding moral truths (I might begin with things like pain, suffering, empathy, the Golden Rule etc.). In a highly speculative context like TPF, where everyone is running around claiming they don't believe in morality, I tend to show them that they do actually believe in it, regardless of how they conceive of it. For example, in my recent thread hardly anyone claimed that racism is not wrong. I think once we see that morality pertains to action and action is inevitable, then it is easy to see how morality is inevitable.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well, this goes back to my claim that morality has force, and if something does not exist or is incoherent then it can have no force. You might like the chat between Sam Harris and Tom Holland that I posted recently. If Holland is even half-right then Christianity dramatically overhauled the moral conscience of the West. So I want to say that it does what it purports to do, even if you question how exactly it does it.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think you are right that my thread does not present a moral system, in the sense of Aristotelian ethics or Utilitarianism or Kantian deontology, or something like that. Instead, it's about the breadth of the moral sphere - it's about which actions are generically moral and which actions aren't.
It's more like this. Suppose someone claims that colors do not exist. The thread is like arguing that everyone thinks colors exist, even those who claim that they do not exist. Excepting those with visual problems, everyone gets up in the morning and thinks they see color. Maybe it doesn't, but the fact that everyone, including my potential interlocutor, thinks it does apparently bears on the question. Even if everyone sees somewhat different colors, it still seems like color exists.
I suspect that even you, when you look back on a bad mistake you've made in life, could catch yourself half-consciously saying, "That was the wrong thing to do." If so, then I'd say you used the "unintelligible" word in a perfectly ordinary and intelligible way, morally judging a past action.
No, no. People use those words and I have no criticism of that. I criticise using those words to defend a moral theory (you have neglected this, which has its own problems, but not why the above is occurring).
When you avoid using them, I want to know why you think this is 'moral' if it doesn't have to do with right and wrong (our impasse addressed in my response immediately prior in the other thread. It is a plain disagreement in terms I think).
Quoting Leontiskos
That it is the tension, and systems for resolving tension, between right and wrong. That is a conception, regardless of whether it has particular meaning. I do not know how your objections here get off the ground. I don't defend that conception as a coherent theory - it just, plain and simple, is what people mean when they speak about morality. It is defined as such in several places.
Quoting Leontiskos
What? No. That I don't understand this the way those who defend that conception do has nothing to do with whether it exists. It exists, and is 'used' constantly by most people. That is what people mean when they say 'moral'. It is 'right'. What they mean you are free to interrogate. I did, found it wanting, and rejected it as a coherent theory. So, the option remains that morality doesn't exist on those terms. I take it you more-or-less feel the same and want to propose a system on other terms. That's fine. No one will understand you to be talking about morality - as I clearly do not.
Quoting Leontiskos
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/morality here it is, and the first entry contains exactly my conception in slightly more verbose terms. I take things like "action" or "behaviour" are built into the discussion and do not need re-stating every time.
Quoting Leontiskos
That right and wrong are insufficiently clear to be useful for the definition of morality. I had thought, in several places, this was explicitly clear. I think it needs to be clarified again:
My system of morality is not something you have asked about. What i consider right and wrong is bespoke, as I take it to be for everyone. That doesn't mean people's 'right' can't overlap, or that the ydon't regularly do so - that is how morality works.
But I couldn't possibly argue that anyone else need care what I think. If right and wrong are just so, no theory can move someone. That is my contention. We just do our best to find people with whom our bespoke boundaries work well. There is some force in this - societies have a profound effect on what people think is right and wrong, personally. But there are no universals there, imo.
Quoting Leontiskos
Hmmm, it doesn't seem to prima facie as I see it. "That's inadmissible" is a pure observation. There is no imperative in that statement. There is, hiding, the potential for the next move to be prescriptive. This is purely descriptive. That utterance doesn't even require that someone intended to admit the item in question. Just that someone noted it wasn't admissible. Herein lies the problem with almost all 'ought's, even NH ones. "That's inadmissible. Don't attempt to admit it, as you will be admonished by the court and waste your client's money" for instance. I might just disagree that it's inadmissible. I disagreed with the Egyptian gentleman in his assessment of my drinking water in Egypt. But in any case, there's nothing in it that makes any action 'correct' or 'right' other than in terms of some arbitrary end (other than, as noted, death).
Maybe I find it extremely hard to understand where the notion that these sorts of values are universal comes from, or that shared values provides morality per se, rather than a working execution or moral concepts which may be quite disparate (and in fact, need be given the ambiguity of 'right' and 'wrong'. But there's intuition there).
yeah, nice. And I think the fatal objection here is that this isn't how morality is thought of. It is better, though, i'll absolutely give you that.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a good analogy. And I think its perfectly parallel with morality. I do not think colours exist in the sense that they inhere in objects. I also do not think morality exists in that it inheres in the universe. We make our own, and you want a universal one (i have already admitted I do think morality exists, but on different terms than universal ones).
Quoting Leontiskos
Unhelpful is probably as far as I can get there. "bad" in terms of having been mistaken, perhaps. But not a moral bad or wrong on any of yours, mine or the general conception of moral.
You have simply equated faith and trust in authority, then argued that every instance of trust in authority must thereby be an instance of faith.
A bullshit argument.
Faith involves trust but is not just trust. It includes something more. I've set this out in detail in my previous posts.
The mark of faith is that when challenged, one's commitment is not to be subject to reevaluation, but to be defended.
The mark of rationality and science is when challenged, not to simply defend, but reevaluating and reassessing one's commitment.
"Good" is predicated relative to ends. Sustaining their own life is, in general, an end all humans (and all organisms) share. However, it is not the only end sought by people, and other ends might be prioritized above survival. In the case of suicides, an end to suffering is generally sought as a good that is more desirable than life. Likewise, people sacrifice themselves for various causes, just as individual bees will sacrifice themselves when their hive is under attack, or as many mammalian mothers will engage in fights they have little success of winning to defend their young.
Ethics as the study of ends can look to ends sought by most people, or ends sought by man by nature. But there is the question: "are these natural or common ends themselves aligned to any higher good?"
I think Aristotle and others who have followed him can make a strong case that eudaimonia (flourishing/happiness) is a unifying end (and one that incorporates shared, social/common goods). But I would say most anti-realists (and this certainly has been the case in this thread) make the mistake of jumping immediately to trying to orient all ends to a poorly defined highest good as a sui generis "moral good." Everything then becomes an exercise is "debunking" this sui generis "moral good" and "ethical ought."
For example, the person who suffers and wants to die offers a counterexample to "poison water is bad." So too, if we claim that: "it is bad for children to have heavy metals dumped into their water," is a fact of medical science that has clear relevance to human flourishing, the counterexample can be offered up: "but what if some insane dictator ordered that every child have their blood tested and then tortured and enslaved all of those with lead and mercury levels that were too low?"
But moral realism doesn't require that good is predicated univocaly, or that there be some sort of "moral calculus" by which different things can be rated in terms of "goodness points." This is a fever dream of an ethics that has already become incoherent.
More to the point, such debunking always seems to end up relying on the fact that people do recognize value, that they are aware of facts about human flourishing. The suicide counter-example relies on the value-laden fact that suffering is bad and that people might rationally seek death as an ends to avoid it. Otherwise, there would be no reason to say that "poison water might be good for some people," unless we turn to begging the question and claiming that "good" is just whatever people currently desire (i.e. it is just an expression of desire/emotion). Likewise, the heavy metals counter example relies on the value-laden fact that being enslaved and tortured is even less conducive to human flourishing than heavy metal poisoning.
Of course, it is only obvious that this makes poisonous beverages good in some cases if one has already assumed that "good" is equivalent with "what is currently desired." In the West, one of the great figures in ethics, Socrates, does drink poison. He does so in pursuit of a higher end. It is presumably that this end is truly choiceworthy that makes the act good, not that he wants to drink the poison. If simply wanting to drink poison made it good for us, then the jilted lover who impulsively drinks poison to get back at the person who spurned them would be equally as wise as Socrates. Socrates and Madame Bovary would be the same sort of story, the story of a rational actor maximizing their utility based on the information available to them. Sydney Carton's reflection upon choosing to sacrifice himself to save another, that "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known," in Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" has a much different meaning if it is simply the standard operating procedure of Homo oecononimicus.
My hunch is that moral anti-realism has become so popular because of the positive indoctrination in liberalism's anthropology that most people growing up in the West receive. Liberty is the voluntarist "capacity to do what one wants." Skepticism about ultimate aims and tolerance are pillars of the ideology. These two ideas combine to give the individual special epistemic status, if not outright infallibility vis-á-vis their own best interests (so long as they are "adults" and aren't suffering from "severe mental illness," two terms that are also subject to a lot of shaping by liberal anthropology).
This strikes me as a deficient definition. For one, it would imply that Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, etc. must have been motivated by a lack of faith because their experiences led to them challenging their existing religious beliefs and obedience to religious authority. Likewise, this would imply that when a Muslim converts to Christianity, or when Christians change denominations, this move should involve a decrease in faith.
Now, to be sure, such changes do involve a lack of faith in the original tradition, denomination, etc. However, one often hears of cases like a lukewarm Christian converting to Islam and becoming much more dedicated to the spiritual life in the process (or vice versa). This is a move from faith to greater faith (often based on evidence).
Moreover, in Martin Luther's case we have a clear example of someone who, when faced with evidence that challenged his beliefs (e.g. his consequential trip to Rome, his observation of how indulgences were handled locally, his study of Scripture and St. Augustine, etc.) did not defend those beliefs, but rather, as you say: "rationally reconsidered them." Luther's rebellion was not a matter of losing or gaining faith, so much as a reconsideration of what he thought faith implied.
Indeed, the hallmark of Western theology during and after the Reformation was an extreme focus on evidence and a discursive justification of warrant. This is how theology often became focused on collecting doctrinal "proof texts" to support beliefs, or on signs and wonders to give credence to some tradition. Likewise, Calvin wasn't led to TULIP through a refusal to countenance evidence contrary to his faith, but rather by a forensic analysis of the evidence, which to him implied TULIP.
Probably the most common critique that Eastern Christians level against the inheritors of Latin Christendom is that they are too focused on evidence, discursive justification, forensic analysis, and legalism. We can see this sort of issue replicated today in terms of "critical readings" of Scripture in Western theology. Jean-Claude Larchet is representative of the Eastern tradition when he argues that critical readings are deficient because their extreme focus on forensic analysis and the methodologies of the secular academy lead to a way of reading Scripture that destroys the unity of the text.
Likewise, argument against Protestantism on historical grounds, that its "fruit" has been a tremendous splintering of the church into thousands of different heresies and the dominance of athiesm in its old heartland, are arguments based on observation (often supported with statistics and historical analysis).
Similarly, the fixing of the Jewish and Christian Canons involved a lot of appeals to evidence and discursive justification.
Okay, interesting. To be honest, I was not at all expecting you to admit that you possess a moral system, and therefore I had not thought to ask.
Your thesis here seems to be that you have a moral system and your wife has a moral system and everyone else has a moral system, and that none of these moral systems really interact with or shape one another (e.g. you say the Christian and the Muslim have different values and that's that). For example, you presumably don't think moral argument is really possible. This is actually an important support for your arbitrariness notion, and I think it is incorrect. Lets revisit my argument and example:
Quoting Leontiskos
Note that the example is precisely about (moral) interaction between moral systems or moral agents. (A), (B), and (C) each represent a different NH, and there is a causal connection or influence from one to the next. What this means is that our moral systems are not quarantined off each from the other. When (A) leads to (B) and (B) leads to (C) you and the Egyptian are influencing each others actions and moral judgments. Even if (C2) is substituted where you instead decide to drink the water, (C2) is still a different NH than (A) given that (C2) includes the consideration of (B) whereas (A) does not.
The respect and force of 4c and 5c represent transitions between NHs and considerations that inform NHs. If the rhymes and reasons were arbitrary then none of this interaction between moral systems would be possible, and there would be no respect or force.
Specifically, my contention is that
Quoting AmadeusD
I'm not convinced that something which is incoherent can be described as a unity. The only way to rigorously define a system which is thought to be incoherent is to delineate its contradictions. An incoherence is a mishmash, and thus if the description does not point up the mishmash it is not a description of an incoherent system.
Quoting AmadeusD
Continuing, an incoherent "thing" is not an (existent) thing at all. Instead it must be two or more existent things that contradict or fail to cohere with one another.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sort of. I think the complexity of morality can be reasonably construed as coherent. See for example Objection 3, which anticipates your position exactly.
Quoting AmadeusD
With respect, "A set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character," actually strikes me as considerably different than, "The debate between right and wrong."
Quoting AmadeusD
First, by [inadmissible] I was substituting for your own words, namely immoral/wrong/bad. Second, an NH need not be an imperative or a prescription. For example, when you regret a past action and judge that you should have acted otherwise, you are engaged in a non-hypothetical ought-judgment, but not an imperative or a prescription.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sure, and I've never disagreed with this.
Quoting AmadeusD
(A) requires that you think drinking water is right. (B) requires that the Egyptian thinks it is not right. (C) requires that you are persuaded that it is not right. (C2) requires that you are not persuaded that it is not right.
(If you want you can substitute "the right thing to do" instead of "right".)
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, and we could dive deep into Srap's skeptical response. A simpler approach might be to note that in (B) the man assumes a shared value (which is apparently assumed to be universal, given that you are complete strangers). And if you give his NH due consideration then you yourself are assuming a shared value (which is apparently assumed to be universal, given that you are complete strangers). Hence the analogy with color, where even the person who says there are no existent colors still believes in colors on another level.
(Again, one could claim that the Egyptian never assumes a shared value and never utters a non-hypothetical ought-judgment, but only ever utters hypothetical ought-judgments. I don't think this is empirically true. I think humans are constantly engaged in NHs. I think NHs really exist.)
But guilt hurts, right? It can really hurt. Up to a point you can chose whether you're going to face it or not, but you can't make the guilt go away by changing your morals, right?
No quite, but that they do so brute. There's no particularly convincing principle that would ensure people are moved by anyone else's moral views, but to become closer to avoid rejection (I assume you would agree that this is visible in social groups whereby the opinion of the group prevents members from dissenting at risk of either ejection or abuse). There's development, but it seems lateral to me. So maybe I'm being a little hasty, and merely positing that moral progess isn't coherent.
Quoting Leontiskos
This makes no sense to me. There's nothing in your argument that makes the agreement/disagreement non-arbitrary and prescriptive. Its a description of two independent systems happening to overlap. I understand that this creates what you're calling 'force' but it is plainly self-referential and it is your own system which is influencing you to give a toss about old mate's suggestion. I do thikn I've been over this though, so if we plum disagree that this creates what you're suggesting, I can't see we can go further.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ah. Well, i think that's silly. The first seems correct. The second is non sequitur in a sense. That we influence each other's values doesn't give me a reason to think there are any moral facts about the interactions. All we do is describe them, post-hoc. That could be wrong, but it is why I can't get on with the transition being made to the conclusion here. I agree, there are substantially shared values and I'd be an idiot to deny that - but that this makes interpersonal communication moral doesn't work for me. We can only predict people's responses to NHOs with respect to their pre-existing values. The "influence" you speak of only seems to occur in intellectual exchanges, not moral ones. And there, rarely, as this exchange is showing hehehe.
Quoting Leontiskos
I have done so, though, plenty of times, throughout this exchange: The reliance on "right" and "wrong" are incoherent in a theory which requires that they are set by the theory itself. And this is described, at least in my version of morality, clearly. It seems implicit in the standard tellings ("system for delineating right and wrong" and all similarly-worded concepts).
Basically, the tautology of a " moral 'right' " means that, while we can describe people's morality, as it occurs, we cannot predict it because these terms gives us nothing with which we could apply some rule/law/principle to aught but our own sense of morality. We can only predict it statistically. I do not think this provides us 'force' in the way you speak of it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Understandable. The former is simply the result of the latter, and given there is no universal moral system, that seems implicit, and hte only thing available for discussion. Perhaps I should have noted this.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is plainly hypothetical?
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see this moving my comment on the structure of that exchange. B to C is a matter of fact. Would this apply to whether or not to go outside without an umbrella? Would you say that someone saying "Hey, its raining, take an umbrella" and you doing so, means that was a morally forceful suggestion? I don't, so I can't apply it here either (again, other than over a 'death'. So your (A) being simple, yeah, I think drinking water is good. Not poisoned water, though. So I want to avoid death, not poisoned water per se. I realise that's a bit recursive, but I think it illustrates that the point is the 'ought' is about avoiding death. If death isn't a possible outcome, then the suggestion is arbitrary in a moral sense (for me, and on
my understanding of common conceptions)).
Quoting Leontiskos
Or, I am considered their values as compared to mine and understanding whether or not, in the exact context, their value might be more practically effective. Is that still moral, to you?
Quoting Leontiskos
As do I. just don't see them as moral propositions.
Quoting frank
Yes. I was a sociopath for several years, partially to achieve this.
Right. I guess Banno's argument would be pretty good if faith-based assents were never altered. Except to believe that you would have to be living under a rock. Banno speaks of bullshit arguments, and yet his own arguments fall over like a feinting goat at the faintest movement of a mouse. No cow-tipping required. :smile:
Quoting Bob Ross
Indeed. :up:
Apologetics can be interesting when one has an interlocutor who has a sincere intellectual openness to the subject. When such an interlocutor is lacking it is helpful to supplement the exercise by reading an author who possesses the intellectual openness and subtlety of mind needed to genuinely explore such topics. Let me recommend a few such treatments, as I think you might enjoy that deeper intellectual stimulation.
The first is Josef Piepers treatise on faith which I referenced at the end of <this post>, or else his longer book-length treatment on the same subject. Another is Joseph Ratzingers more existential and highly accessible treatment found in the opening chapters of his Introduction to Christianity. A third, more difficult text, is John Henry Newmans Grammar of Assent, which Anthony Kenny calls a classic of epistemology in its own right that has much to say of general philosophical interest about the nature of belief, in secular as well as religious contexts. (Wittgenstein compared his On Certainty to Newmans great work.) And then there is of course Aquinas justly famous treatments, particularly at the beginning of the Secundae Secondae of the Summa Theologiae. I am sure one could find other penetrating treatments of the subject, but those are a few that I have found valuable. I suspect you would resonate with Pieper more than the others at this stage of the game.
Tell me if this is this a fair characterization of your view. You seem to think that values (or else moral premises) are brute, in that they cannot be generated or corrupted. Everyone has them, but nothing guarantees that one person's set of values will overlap with another person's, and the values never change. So we can mutually influence people who have overlapping values, but we cannot mutually influence people who do not have overlapping values. ...Something like that?
Quoting AmadeusD
Good, I agree.
Quoting AmadeusD
The second clause is a premise, so it is not claimed to have followed from something.
Quoting AmadeusD
The conclusion of my syllogism was, "Therefore, there must be substantially shared values." It sounds like you agree with the conclusion, but you think it does not lead to some other, unmentioned conclusion.
Quoting AmadeusD
[s]Well do you think moral influence occurs rarely or not at all? It can't be both.[/s]
Edit: Sorry, I misread this. I guess I would want to know your criteria for determining whether moral influence has occurred.
Quoting AmadeusD
If you haven't shown the two or more parts that fail to cohere with one another, then I don't think you've shown anything to be incoherent. I am saying that if something is incoherent, then there must be two parts that can be shown to fail to cohere. Can you isolate those two parts and show why they fail to cohere? Or do you want to proffer an entirely different understanding of incoherence than the one I have offered?
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay.
Quoting AmadeusD
Do you think regrets are hypothetical? I give reasons for why I think they are not in my OP.
Quoting AmadeusD
I mean, he changed your mind about what the right action is. You thought it was right (or at least permissible) to drink the water, and he led you to believe that it is not right (i.e. not the right thing to do). You told me that we need to use words like "right" and "wrong" if we are to talk about morality, and now I am using those words. So given the criterion you provided, it seems that when you are persuaded that it is not right to drink the water you have been morally persuaded (especially given that this issue potentially bears on death, and therefore fulfills the criterion you add below).
Quoting AmadeusD
(NB: feel free to disregard this request for an argument. See below.)
Okay, but why not? Do you have an argument? What is a morally forceful suggestion and when does some suggestion fail to count as one? Else, see Objection 2.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, thanks. You've answered my question about an argument, so disregard that. You are saying
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay.
Quoting AmadeusD
We may need to circle back to this, because it is an important claim on your part. In the first place I would want to say that it seems like you are considering borrowing from the Egyptian's "more practically effective value." If I am right in this, then it seems that your values or value-hierarchy has been influenced by the Egyptian. But my inquiry at the very beginning of this post now becomes important.
For me and I think for most people (B) is a moral NH. As you imply, the Egyptian may be offering an NH that will save my life, and we commonly take that sort of NH to be moral.
(Sorry, I think I missed . That is helpful and provides some clarification for me.)
You shouldn't have to do that if morals are a choice. Morals seem to come from outside, that was my point.
I don't think so, overall, but i'll be specific.
Quoting Leontiskos
Values constantly change. This is another reason its somewhat arbitrary, even on some shared value basis (on my view, obviously). This says to me the overall thrust of this conception is not what I'm going for.. but...
Quoting Leontiskos
That seems right.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yeah. I can't see the point of the argument if its just to assert that we have shared values. Obviously we do, even if we didn't know that empirically. I can assume anyone striving to stay alive shares that avlue with me, whether i know htem personally or not.
Quoting Leontiskos
This seems true on any view of anything moral lol. So, yes.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a tricky one, because it causes me to have considered how other minds can access other minds. I think it would be extremely hard to ever tell but the criteria would be if you've influenced another's values. Then, their values, being the basis for their moral system, subsequently influences their action. Does that make sense? I still have no idea how you'd know, in the event, other than verbal report.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm unsure whether or not, on this, but for the sake of ease i'll attempt this, regardless:
If "right" and "wrong" are to inform moral systems (all common understandings seem to think so - so this isn't a comment on your system, which i take to be non-moral, and instead a better concept that morality for describing behaviour anyway) then that supposed fact is contradicted by the obvious fact that 'right' and 'wrong' give us nothing which could inform the system as they are too ambiguous and essentially self-referential. This is why i say 'brute' in the face of people's use of those words. If someone says "My moral system rests on "right and wrong"" and hten I ask "What do they mean" they will tell me the same thing in a different word order. Recursive, perhaps, and a dead-end rather than incoherent.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. You can only regret something on the hypothetical basis something else could have been done. I note that you say all human acts are moral. I can't get on with that. If that's the case, there's no discussion. That's just how it is, and no version would move that needle. They all apply to all acts. Fair, but not what I would assent to, I don't think. Rubbing my nose is not moral.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think those words are usable here. It was either a helpful, or non-helpful action for me to take toward myself. Again, if you take all acts to be moral, fine. I don't take myself acting toward myself to be a moral act. But I also don't quite understand what's being said here - perhaps that[s because (as outlined above) changing someone's action isn't a moral influence, but an empirical one. My values aren't involved in whether or not I act on such and such (that I have incorrectly assessed) and someone's putting my assessment right. My values remain exactly the same, but the data is fixed. In the Egypt example, had I perhaps not even known that drinking water in Egypt could lead to sickness, all he's done is given me information in a really weird form (that socially, I can understand).
Quoting Leontiskos
And they make no sense in this context, to me. Yay!!! LOL.
Quoting Leontiskos
I take it your answer is, 'yes' then?
I see nothing moral in it. It's information exchange. No one's values are involved. In fact, I may refuse the umbrella based on my values.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't know what this would mean. I don't think the concept obtains, in reality. I think you can make morally forceful arguments about what you think is right and wrong to potentially influence another's values. Suggestions about acts don't do this.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not quite. The point is more to delineate between types of suggestion. If death is a possible outcome, then even the suggestion to avoid a behaviour is moral given the 1 or 0 nature of death. In other contexts, only the suggestion to shift the value underlying an action would be a moral suggestion as there are disparate and potentially infinite possible outcomes/attitudes. But that certainly comes close.
Quoting Leontiskos
You are, and I concede this point. If I have changed my value assessment, then he's influenced me morally. But coming back to the example, he's just given me information by inference. he knows something I don't. My values didn't change.
Quoting frank
I understand they seem to, but there's no way to assess this beyond "people influence each other". If that's morality for you, all good. Then we're on the same page. There's no particular reason to be moved by that (or, more properly, those influences). This is just a description of what happens, not a principle for moral thinking). I think....
There is though. It could be that aliens are beaming the moral thoughts into your head. "People influence each other" is just a stab at satisfying a particular worldview.
So leaving behind what we don't know (just read Plato's apology, it's all about acknowledging what I don't know), all we have is that morality seems to have an external ground. It doesn't seem like something I'm making up, it's more something I become aware of through experience.
We can just leave it at that. No need to make peace with a worldview. Is there?
No, there isn't, but we're discussing it, so why not take stabs?
I don't feel morality comes from without, and never have, besides watching religious people go about their business. My experience tells me, more, and more than people are making shit up morally as they go. Only my interactions on TRP, with my wife and one of my brothers seems to indicate any notion of stable, well-developed moral thinking and all three are quite different to one another (I should add, i am ignoring "group" morals here, for which I have different assessments and different experiences).
Do you experience morality that way? Can you change your morality notions on a whim?
@Banno
Ok, so, to you, faith is 'trust in an authority to verify the truth or falsity of a claim in a manner where it is dogmatic'. Is that right?
I've never encountered any serious theist that considers faith to be essentially about never allowing their beliefs (of that type) to be reevaluated.
Let's amend my example: imagine that this person who believes some fact about black holes based solely on trusting a scientific article is dogmatic about it such that they refuse to reevaluate their belief in the aforesaid fact [about black holes]: are they, then, according to you, acting with faith?
Thank you for the recommendations! I will check those out.
Is the word 'assent' in this post mean anything different than 'to agree or affirm'? I get the feeling it is doing more work here in your explanation than I am appreciating.
They inform your actions? What does that mean?
It's just that there isn't much power in your should because you can change it anytime you want. There's no should. It's just you doing whatever you do.
As long as you act out of love, it's ok.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree. It's not offered as a definition, as I hoped was clear from the previous few pages, where I indulged Austin's method in order to set out the place of "faith" in our language games. It is offered as a way to distinguish faith from trust.
Your reply is that some folk reevaluate some of their beliefs, and yet are still claimed to be faithful. You suggest that the figures of the reformation as counterexamples. But as you yourself point out, Luther and Calvin were not faithful to Catholicism.
There is no claim here that the faithful never make use of an evidence base or change their beliefs.
Quoting Bob Ross
Again, no. First becasue faith is not restricted to trust in authority, and second becasue any definition fo that sort will be inadequate, so should not be used.
And again, the argument is not that theist never allowing their beliefs to be reevaluated. The mark of faith is that a belief is maintained under duress. It's extraordinary that this is questioned. This aligns with traditional religious narratives such as Abraham, Job, and Acts of the Martyrs.
Empirically, faith can involve personal conviction, existential commitment, moral vision not merely obedience to authority. Philosophically, any definition that makes faith into mere dogmatism misses the performative dimension the way it plays out as loyalty, endurance, and identity.
Faith, unlike ordinary belief or trust, is best understood through its persistence under conditions of strain, doubt, or suffering. It is not a rigid refusal to change, nor merely trust in authority, but a form of commitment that reveals itself when it is hardest to maintain. Definitions that ignore this pragmatic and temporal dimension fail to capture the lived meaning of faith.
Seems odd that religious folk seek to deny this.
@Banno
I think the problem is that your approach doesn't even attempt to rise to the level of a conception from intuitions; and for me it has to in order to have a robust theory.
Maintaining a belief (in general) under duress is wildly different than this:
Maintaining a belief that one believes they have good evidence to believe under duress is noble; but maintaining the belief because they have committed themselves to never subjected it to reevaluation is dogmatic and ignoble.
Your counter-examples are interesting though; for example, Job, prima facie, seems like he had good reasons to believe God had forsaken him and the moral of the story is to have unwavering faith. My response to this, is that:
1. Faith here is being used in terms of having trust in an authority, and more specifically a kind of unwavering faith that is despite the evidence: "unwavering" faith is a subtype of faith; and
2. Prima facie, Job, unless I am misremembering, should not have had faith, given the context in Job, that God had not forsaken him because his faith was against good counter-evidence (of distrusting the authority); and
3. Job, when taken literally, is an example of God being immoral because He discusses with and allows Satan to inflict evil on Job for a bet that has been placed between them. This is not like an allowance of evil in the sense of allowing the possibility of tornadoes given natural laws: this is a purposeful allowance of evil when it is completely unnecessary. This, under my view, when taken literally, is immoral of God and is impossible of God: God cannot will the bad of something and definitely cannot place a wager in that manner. God cannot nor would not use a bad means like Satan to prove a point about Job (let alone kill off his entire innocent family to prove a point); and
4. On a deeper note, I think we can know that God cannot forsake things and that evil is a privation. Consequently, these, if true, would be good evidence to support an unwavering faith of God even in terrible times (assuming that God didn't place a wager and allow Satan to do it in that kind of sense or something similar).
True, but this doesn't imply having faith despite the evidence: it implies having good reasons to have the faith and not bending to will of others or to just any willy-nilly counter-fact that may place doubt in their minds. There some doubts I might have about the security of flying, but I wave them off not because I am dogmatically faithful to flying being secure but, rather, because I know my reasons against do not rationally outweigh the reasons for.
1) I would say faith is not an emotion or a thought (although faith comes in the form of thoughts, it's just not a thought itself) and the general use of the word faith supports this. One general phrasing is to have faith, which either means it's some understanding/knowledge/acceptance of something or that it's an attribute of a person (which is generally what I lean to, that it's an attribute of acceptance of something). This brings up an interesting idea with faith, which is that the idea of faith as acceptance and of belief can be very different. Some might argue that faith is belief despite reasonable doubt (or some may say that it is belief past reasonable doubt but within the boundaries of our ability to deny it and justify a lack of faith in ourselves) but I generally think that faith is the acceptance of the idea whether or not we could reasonably doubt it as long as it is within our ability to deny it. It often comes from 2 factors: some reason that it could be true and some reason why it would explain something were it true/would help us if we believed and it was true.
2) I believe (although I am not very knowledgable in the subject) that koans are used to invite the subject to meditation and considering the problem but not to be answered. So, this would mean that it would be to bring out faith if the purpose of the meditation is to bring out faith.
3) Faith that the distinct philosophical and religious ideas had purpose and value in their own domains, for sure. I think it was mostly just the idea that the may to make the separate ideas most practical was to keep them within their own domains, otherwise things often get difficult to reconcile. In that way (considering a shift to most philosophical thinking), it could definitely be viewed as an acceptance of the fact that the things are hard to reconcile but choosing to have faith in the religious concepts (and philosophical concepts!) anyway.
4) If creativity is the attribute of being able to create something (often something which could not be true) and faith is the attribute of being able to accept something that you know might not be true, then I would say no, as you are not necessarily creating the thing if you have faith/believing it if you created it (of course, there are some people who have faith in their creations, but it is not always the case).
5) I think courage comes out of faith but the two are distinct. Courage is the attribute of being willing to do something despite fear and faith can be used to counter fear (ie. faith that something will work out, faith that it is worth it, etc.) but faith is not the same thing as courage.
6) As for whether faith, hope, and love are always intertwined, I would say that it makes sense that this could be a possible topic for discussion (salvation and these attributes) because they are not always necessarily intertwined. Faith often does not affect hope (the desire that something that might not occur will occur/vice versa) as you could desire something to happen while still denying that it will happen, and the opposite is true as well (you could accept that something will happen and desire it to not happen). I don't view hope as only existing where there is a possibility of whatever is hoped for happening or not in the mind of the person who is hoping for it, if that makes sense. I would say that, like faith, it is within our ability to deny it (meaning that the two are similar in some ways but not always intertwined). For love, which has to do with belief because of the fact that you cannot truly love something you don't believe in, in this context I would say that it is always within faith (but obviously not the same as faith). In the Christian context you gave, I would say that faith is in the possibility of salvation, hope is within it and love is connected to hope and faith through the overall context.
:up:
Some of them will involve things that are worth thinking about or arguing about, which is of course what true inquiry should involve.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, that's pretty much it. "The same proposition can be held with different modes of assent." A Thomist would say that assent is a more generic act, and that we can assent to a proposition in different ways, such as by faith, or demonstration, or opinion, or probabilistic reasoning, etc. So an act of faith involves assent, but assent does not necessarily involve an act of faith. For example, <2a. I do not have faith that the airplane will fly, but I assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly"> must involve some non-faith basis for assent. Tom Storm was reducing all non-faith-based assents to one category, which is incorrect, but I was just illustrating the different possibilities regarding faith and assent, with the existence of God and airplanes (i.e. his chosen examples).
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay. What I'm trying to do is figure out what your position or argument is so that I can interact with it and critique it. For example, you said:
Quoting AmadeusD
I read this as saying
My point is that the interaction with a complete stranger, such as the Egyptian, seems to show that we do have common values, and that there is therefore a morality common to all human beings. Do you agree that if there are some values which we all share, then there is a moral system that is common to all human beings, namely the system based on those shared values?
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, good, and that partially answers the question I just asked.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, that is a good answer. That's what I had assumed as well. Now,
When I write a syllogism in that way it is almost always <{Premise 1}; {Premise 2}; {Conclusion}>.
Quoting AmadeusD
Right, and that makes perfect sense to me if we are conceiving morality and especially right and wrong in terms of categorical/exceptionless moral norms. I've highlighted this a few times, but again:
Quoting Leontiskos
The idea here is that a notion like that of a categorical/exceptionless wrong is incoherent because by its very nature it cannot be rationally justified, and that which is rationally proposed yet with no hope of rational justification is incoherent (because it cannot be rational and non-rational at the same time).
I think yours is a fair critique of categorical/exceptionless norms, but I don't think morality is reducible to categorical/exceptionless norms.
Quoting AmadeusD
...continuing my last point, the same thing applies to "right." When 'right' is conceived of as categorical/exceptionless, then we get the same problem, but it is equally true that 'right' is not reducible to categorical/exceptionless obligation.
Natural language itself seems to support me. Suppose you bring the water to your lips, the Egyptian says something that seems like a negative NH (for maybe he is speaking a foreign language or trying to bypass a language barrier), and then your friend who is also about to drink water says to you, "I don't know if this is the right thing to do." Now if that word really made no sense to you in that context, your friend's utterance would make no sense to you. But I would expect that such an utterance is meaningful to you, precisely because 'right' is not as nonsensical as you are claiming.
Quoting AmadeusD
I would agree that to regret act X requires that X was contingent, but I don't see that this implies that the regret is hypothetical. A hypothetical regret would be something like, "I regret X if..." Similarly, every non-hypothetical ought-judgment is contingent given that something else could be done, and yet this does not make it a hypothetical judgment.
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree:
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting AmadeusD
To be clear, I take all (human) acts to be moral (in the sense specified in my OP). Nevertheless, I am granting for the sake of argument your claim that moral acts tend to be conceived as grave acts, such as acts that pertain to the possibility of death. I address those ideas in Objection 2 and especially Objection 5 of my OP. Objection 5 is basically saying, "You can do that if you want so long as you recognize the Sorites paradox involved." On that conception of morality morality will be "incoherent" in the same way that a Sorites paradox is "incoherent."
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, this is great reasoning.
My idea here is something like this: our acts of "data-gathering" are evaluative and value-driven. That idea goes fairly deep, but we can simplify it. We can say that we usually trust ourselves and our own faculties of knowledge, and that when you formed the judgment to drink the water you were trusting your own faculties of knowledge (and that this involves valuing your own faculties of knowledge). When the Egyptian utters his NH you are required to weigh your own faculties of knowledge against the Egyptian's faculties of knowledge (in the particular circumstance). Whether you choose (C) or (C2) depends on whether you decide to trust your initial judgment (and your own faculties) or his judgment (and his faculties). Of course your own faculties are also involved in judging whether to accept his NH, but the point stands, namely that there is a question of whether to value your initial judgment or the Egyptian's judgmentyour unaided faculties of knowledge or the Egyptian's faculties of knowledge. Even after possessing the data a choice must still be made between (C) and (C2), and at least one of those options will involve a shifting of values.
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree with the first sentence and I don't quite understand the second sentence. "Suggestion" is a vague word, given that we could either include or exclude suggestions from counting as NHs. Given that suggestions are usually thought of as hypothetical, I would tend to agree with the second sentence.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, and I am happy with that. It is stronger than the interpretation I ventured.
It looks like you have a kind of (inclusive) dichotomy, .
Note that I would prefer 'NH' to 'suggestion' given the ambiguity of 'suggestion.'
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay. Again, this is a crucially important claim, and I tried to critique it above.
Quoting AmadeusD
This relates to regret, too. We can recalibrate our own moral system, and yet we don't seem to do so arbitrarily. Often we seem to be either responding to consequences in real life, or else trying to make our moral system more internally consistent. I think these considerations are also precisely what are operative when we interact with other moral agents and influence one another's values (e.g. real life consequences, logical consistency, etc.).
I want to say that this is the truer statement:
Faith is always resistant to certain things that direct inference is not resistant to, whether it is religious or not.
Intuitions?
Fucksake.
I'll leave you to it.
I'm not sure that we can identify a clear distinction between faith and trust on this basis.
But I do think that there is an important difference between trusting or having faith in something or someone based on an evaluation of them - which we will and should change if the evidence changes and being faithful to them because we have promised to do so. In the latter case, we are expected to stick to the promise even if circumstances change. A faithful friend remains a friend even when one does something wrong, but one trusts a car only as long as it works for me. But this is not a hard and fast distinction. If my friend defrauds me of my pension, it is hard to remain a friend, and one may continue to trust a car even when it has ceased to be reliable.
The relevance of this is that adopting a religion may involve accepting certain beliefs, but it also involves adopting a way of life, promising to abide by the relevant laws and customs. Those promises commit one to more than just assenting to propositions, whether on the basis of evidence or not. If philosophy can only discern truth and falsity, it may be constitutionally difficult for it to recognize what a religion is about.
Of course, faith can be broken, for example when a trusted friend proves to be a fraud. No matter if the friend promised that they would be forever loyal to us, we assumed and believed that such a promise was made in silence, and therefore it is this promise that is in fact broken, puting at risk our faith in friendship in general.
Consider:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/emunah-biblical-faith/
The idea, insofar as biblically based faith is concerned, it relates heavily upon trust. It's how one might have faith in a king or leader. You do as he says because you have trust in his wisdom and knowledge, but the faith is not in just a raw belief he exists. If you're simply saying you believe your land has a king even though you've never seen him or his castle, that's a sort of faith, but hardly worth talking about and not the "faith" of the OT.
A theme of the OT is the Israelites following God's direction and being rewarded and failing to follow and being punished. The message is that following God leads to prosperity. From that, one is faithful to God.
This faithfulness is based upon a covenant between God and his people, meaning adhering to the promise to follow results in his honoring his promise to protect. This compares perhaps to a marital covenant, where faithfulness is the expectation for the continuation of the relationship.
This sort of faith is not the epistemic category of justification we use philosophically. As in, we might know things empirically, rationally, intuitively, or by faith alone, and whatever others ways we may suggest.
The meaning of "faith" continued to evolve from the OT (as in trust despite failure or without response), but it seems to maintain the covenantal aspect throughout time.
The point being that "faith" as an epistemic justification that needs justification, which is the atheist's response to the theist (as in "how is your bold belief in God justified without further justification) is not something theists are terribly concerned about.
The challenge I set before is to ask about faith's limits, to probe the point at which it becomes wrong to maintain one's faith. I used two examples: the Binding of Isaac and the murder of Elizabeth Rose Struhs. Trussing up your son, placing him on a pile of wood, and holding a knife to his throat is abuse, as is wilfully denying a child her insulin.
The difference between faith and trust is shown when one's beliefs are challenged. But there is a point at which faith becomes incorrigible.
, 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.
Immoral behavior is never justified, whether driven by a faith in God or otherwise. Let's not specially plead concern here, as if it's more common that bombs are dropped by the religious than the secular.
There's no way to control that.
There's a good case for saying that if such promises are entirely one-sided, they are flawed. God does propose a covenant with Israel. But it is a pretty much one-sided deal - take it or else! On the other hand, friendship is not a partnership contract - voided when it's terms are violated. It's more complicated than that.
Quoting Banno
I wouldn't disagree. Faith and loyalty can be misplaced and lead one astray. I've always liked Aristotle's interpretation of virtue as a balance between extremes.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I've never quite understood what such actions are intended to achieve. They are good at attracting attention and causing chaos. But they certainly don't seem to be particularly successful at winning wars.
I wouldn't clasify faith as a virtue. I would classify it as an integrity toward maintaining the virtues and trusting that adherence to the virtues will result in positive results.
We're obviously pulling terminology from different traditions here (The Good versus God), so it's hard to make this perfectuly equivalent, but the best amalgamation I can create for an apt analogy would be to say that the Good is to God as Virtues are to Moral Decrees. Faith requires we trust in God because we should trust that doing the right thing results in a more perfect world. There is no possibility that following God will result in slamming airplanes into buildings because that is not following God. That is following (at best) a profound misunderstanding of God.
This holds true for the virtues as well. We shouldn't allow our trust in the virtues to allow us to slam planes into buildings either, perhaps under a misunderstanding of what wisdom (or some other virtue) dictates.
This is to say we're speaking in truths here on this abstract of a level and we can't entertain that maybe faith in God, faith in the Good, or faith in the virtues will ever be a bad thing. Faith in those things are necessarily good. What is bad is when we have a misapprehension of God, the Good, or the virtues.
My point here is that I pick up on your suggestion that faith in God may not be good in all instances, but that's not an issue with God. That's an issue with misdefining God in order to justify one's personal sense of evil. If the 911 terrorists had screamed that their attack was in the name of the Good or that it was in the name of virtue, it would not cause damage to those concepts. It would just mean the terrorists have hijacked (pun intended) certain terms and ideas for their evil purposes.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's interesting to me how canons shape religions. The early rabbis excluded texts like I and II Maccabees, but the Church found them acceptable. I can think of several plausible reasons for rabbinic exclusion. One would be the legacy of the Hasmoneans, who persecuted (but also cooperated with) the Pharisees. Another might be that the militarism and martyrdom of these texts didn't fit well with the destruction wrought by the two Jewish-Roman wars and Bar Kokhba spurred by Jewish messianism. It's fine to glorify violence and military struggle against a floundering Seleucid empire, not so much with the Romans. The Hasmoneans have an ambiguous legacy today among Jews.
Or the reason for exclusion could have just been that the books were written late, but so was much of Daniel.
Esther was hotly debated for canon among the Jews. Jewish Esther is a considerably different text from Septuagint Esther; in ours, there is no mention of the divine, and she is a less pious figure than Greek Esther. They're considerably different compositions.
Indeed, it's not included in the Aristotelian virtues are typically listed as things courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, mildness, truthfulness, wit, and friendliness, Indeed, it's not included. The Aristotelian virtues are typically listed as things like courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, mildness, truthfulness, wit, and friendliness, together with artistry, prudence, intuition, knowledge, and wisdom. with artistry, prudence, intuition, knowledge, and wisdom. The Christian virtues, on the other hand, are typically faith, hope, love, justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude... Faith almost always coming first.
So the Christians amongst us might demur. At the least you will admit that there are those who count faith as a virtue.
There are also those who see their faith as a reason to commit what we see as unspeakable acts.
Those who stood around Elizabeth Struhs, praying as she died, perhaps had faith that their god would not let her die. Some of them perhaps still think that their god allowed her to die in order to further test their faith through the due process of the law and imprisonment. There is an approach to faith that does not only does not allow reconsideration, but actively seeks to reject reassessing one' s beliefs.
So while you may not wish to count faith as a virtue, others will not agree.
You mention misdefining god, or perhaps misunderstanding god's will. The obvious problem is the ubiquitous one that it is not entirely obvious to everyone what god's will is, and further there is no possibility of any objectively agreed standard here. While it might suit your narrative to claim terrorists "hijacked... certain terms and ideas for their evil purposes", this is not clear; on the face of it, al-Qaeda is a faith-based organisation. It doesn't, for example, recruit Catholics.
All this by way of showing that there is an element of special pleading in your suggestion that those who commit abominations in the name of faith are misusing the term.
It really, truly does not, as far as I can tell. If your definition is just "shared values" sure, but you could've just said that in your first reply and be done with it. That's like saying "God did it".
I Do think I have been very clear, and specific on that point particularly. I don't even think 'value' came into that discussion about Egyptian waterman. Maybe you cannot conceptualize this, as you would have approached the situation another way, but I did not even involve my values. I ascertained whether someone has knowledge I want (WANT...not need). That's fine.
Quoting Leontiskos
No. There is no reason to jump from shared value to shared system. This speaks to why, in all the political threads, I am banging on about sorting out shared goals before talking about how to get to them. I imagine the Muslim and Xtian would have a decent conversation about shared goals. Achieving htem though? Shit show. So the idea that values lead to systems is wrong to me.
Quoting Leontiskos
Hopefully I've given the rest of hte answer above LOL.
Quoting Leontiskos
As long as there's an addition that the changed value leads to changed action (but, it is crucial to keep in mind i may not share the value which I have inspired - I imagine this will be a big spanner).
Quoting Leontiskos
This is needless. I have expressed my take on your system several times. It is non-moral, and a better way of thinking about actions than morality is.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yeah. This seems clear - I think that is what everyone is talking about ,when they talk about morality. If the idea is to reduce "morality" to some shared value system, again, that's fine, but I doubt it would be very helpful for instance cross culturally. These are still going to be socially-restricted systems. I understand that you're trying to "tease out" that I'm objecting to exceptionless norms. I am not. I am objecting to your system being considered moral. It doesn't seem to relate to morals, in the standard sense, as far as I can tell. This obviously rests on the fact that there are disparate concepts of morality. I just took the middle ground on that, and used "relatability" as a metric for whether or not you could even call what you're talking about morality and have people understand you. I do not know that you could. But I prefer it to any 'moral' systems I've seen (other than my own, obviously). So, in light of that, I have to say I can't quiiiiiite grok what the last couple of exchanges have really been debating. Perhaps you have clarification to come. Onward..
Quoting Leontiskos
This does not seem to be what most people think is the case. I agree with you, though. Neither of us seems to think there are any exceptionless norms (even speaking 'ideal'ly). That's good. But, that's not what most moralists are talking about, as best I can tell. Even the "relativist" kind want to draw unassailable lines in the sand. Incoherent, as you say. I thikn we need to have the discussion in light of these facts - 'right' and 'wrong' are not considered ambiguous to most.
Quoting Leontiskos
It doesn't. I would ask what they mean by 'right' and they're going to give me a teleological argument about ends and how the drinking wont achieve those ends. Is the 'shared value' something as bogus-ly amorphous as 'success'? Maybe. But I find that unhelpful and would ask more questions. Perhaps I am unusual.
Quoting Leontiskos
Is different to "Means what they intended to me"(I think) which it wouldn't, in the circumstances. It's meaningful as context rather than as a indicator of what the speaker means. I am just not stupid, so know what they intended via context and biography.
If, upon noting to them the incoherence, they didn't resile from the use of 'right' I'd have an 'argument' in front of me(though, for social reasons, wouldn't engage it). As it happens, I've made this challenge several times and people, generally, do resile and switch to something like "not optimal" or "unhelpful". I am not sure what that means for them, but for me, it means they understand that 'right' cannot mean 'agreed-value-pointing' (i.e if done/agreed, points in the direct of an agreed value).
Quoting Leontiskos
It couldn't possibly be otherwise as I see it. I see your argument, and it's a good one as to understanding hte difference between events and deliberations. But it is plainly true that the 'moment' has passed - nothing could change the decision. It would be hypothetically-derived even if you want to call the regret 'live', as it were. Personally, I only regret actions I could have avoided, at the time. Where that isn't available, I do not feel regret, but something more akin to despair. I do not feel guilty about things I can't see that I could've done differently. It just sucks, in hindsight. Again, maybe i'm peculiar.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's not my claim. That's just what my system leaves behind. I do not think most people have this in mind. They simply have "acts towards others" in mind. So I've not address the following about the objections (though, some Sorities can be solved quite easily hehe).
Quoting Leontiskos
Cool. That sorts out a lot of where we're disagreeing, i guess.
Quoting Leontiskos
I see what's going on here. Hmm. I want to say that this is an inherent property of any deliberation, and not something we could take into account as a choice of value. We would be paralyzed without it. Maybe that's a cop out. If it is, I may need to concede something rather fundamental, but I haven't push that far through my thinking yet.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not quite. What I am comparing is my knowledge about, lets say NYC, with a gap in my knowledge about Cairo. This man is likely experiencing a reversal of those mental spaces. His values tell him to help me. My knowledge gap tells me to fill it. So, there's a way your description is correct, but I don't thikn it quite captures what's happening. We're not actually comparing each other's knowledge at all. There is a trust involved, though it is not personal. It is actually quite discriminatory. "You live here. You fill gap. Yay". His choice to tell me is absolutely a moral choice. My decision to listen doesn't seem to be, whether or not I do the thing. There is also the question whether or not my decision to not trust my own faculties is the moral one, and not the one about listening to A or B in terms of a response to rejecting my own faculties.
Quoting Leontiskos
This seems bang on. Feels good, too.
Quoting Leontiskos
Fair enough. That's reasonable.
Quoting Leontiskos
Generally, it seems that way. But i can, and do (for fun) arbitrarily get myself into certain moral positions. My wife does not like this exercise. LOL.
Quoting Leontiskos
Probably, yes.
What is meant by Christian faith as being a virtue I suppose is a commitment to the truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ, which might just be a statement that the highest virtue is to believe in what is right and just and true. It might correlate to the first commandment, which is that one should have no other gods before God or perhaps the second forbidding idolotry.
But that's one of many ways "faith" might be defined, which is the question of this thread.
The Aristotlian virtues are are more specific, isolating particular aspects of a person worth fostering. It's the difficulty in translating precisely the language of Athens to the language of Jerusalem.
Quoting Banno
The special pleading arises in supposing one ideology is for some reason immune from the problems of another and giving it a pass and suggesting the other is hopelessly dangerous. If we should examine each of the tens of thousands of bullets suspended in air, now in midflight, and place each under the microscope to decipher what anger is embeded in each of them, I'd suspect that remarkably few have thoughts of God and ancient theologies within them. Many I'm sure are filled with irrationality and raging hate caused by the mundane existence of individuals without compass, but I'd suspect a very good number, at least those that come in the largest flurries, are filled with secular interests being advanced under some guise of justice or righteousness. The hail of gunfire in Ukraine, for example, is a better example of mass destruction than 9/11. What intention do you suppose is impregnated in those bullets, the advancement of Christianity, Judaism, Islam? That doesn't seem right. Probably a drive for natural resources, the rebuilding of a fallen empire, or a a diversion from a failing economy? Secular interests that is.
I can't really see much of a difference from an atheistic perspective between the Good and God. God is rejected under this model as an outdated attempt to create a referrent for a concept that need not have one. This is to say that what I call the dictates of God you call the dictates of Good, yet you just find my language oddly clinging to the past in insisting upon an ontological existence for my holy being. Why speak of God when we can just speak of the Good without imposing upon ourselves the superflous baggage of the supernatural, right? But isn't it your view that what those two terms mean once you've purged the latter of its mystical nonsense is the exact same thing?
The point being we both cling to a moral realism, refusing to suggest that the stomping of babies is right if we happen to all agree it is. And we're willing to die perhaps to defend those babies from their stomping. Yet for some reason your declarations of righteousness and your fight to the death to protect those innocents isn't zealousness. It's heroism. You believe you can properly scream "Praise be the Good" as you save those infants and you will pose no danger because you are right in your views, unlike al-Qaeda when they screamed pretty much the same thing as they exacted not their heroism, but their terror.
This isn't to suggest we're all right, but just have different perspectives. I hold the opposite of that in fact. I agree you should fight to the death to save the babies from their stomping. I'll charge the stompers by your side. I'll just be screaming about God and you the Good.
My point is that if the danger is certainty towards one's ideology, then that exists whether your ideology is the promotion of the Good or of God. To allow that rule of dangerousness to only apply to God and not the Good is an example of special pleading, granting your brand of certainty immunity for no good reason.
That's' one way to approach the OP, but not the only way. One alternative is, instead of merely choosing this or that stipulation, to cast about and see how the word is used.
The flying bullets is a neat game. But perhaps the issue isn't how many bullets were fired by anger and how may by faith, but in acknowledging that at least some were fired in faith.
But perhaps you and I agree were others will differ. Do we agree that it is the actions, not the thoughts of the actor, that have the main moral import?
And especially, that an act is done in good faith is insufficient for it to be counted as a good act, or a being the right thing to do.
I think plenty are fired on the basis of faith, but my point was to push back on the idea that faith based beliefs are particularly dangerous by comparison. And to completely purge of bias, if we're going to acknowledge that some bullets are fired on the basis of faith, we must also acknowledge that a good many bullets never make their way to flight due to those of faith. To suggest otherwise sort of characterizes the religious as muzzled pit bulls, inherently dangerous but made safe if properly controlled and surveilled. Some are actually good actors through and through.
Quoting Banno
I am generally sympathetic to this view because it comports with my personal religious views because prioritizing act over intent is typical of the more ancient belief systems, but like an old tie, it seems to have come back in style. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, which makes the point that trying to do right but fucking everything up isn't something you can be excused from.
One reason you find this sort of reasoning in older moral systems is that what is considered right and wrong is often more clearly laid out, sometimes being very rule oriented. If we can say X, Y, and Z are wrong, we leave less to our own personal evaluation, and so we needn't evaluate our intent when we evaluate the act. For example, if the rule is "thou shalt not lie," then you can't lie. If you do lie, but you do it for a variety of kind hearted reasons, it doesn't matter. You lied. We don't get into some complex calculus of trying to figure out when it's ok to lie and then trying to justify later when everything fucks up that we made a good faith effort at doing the math and it saying we could lie, but it turns out we probably shouldn't have.
There are limits to this concept though, because I do see a difference between a bad act committed as the result of incompetence versus malice. My wife serving me spoiled meat because she failed to check the expiration date is quite a different event than her serving it up because I failed to fold the laundry. By the same token, if she serves me up what she thought was spoiled meat in order to punish me for my poor housekeeping, but it was actually now perfectly aged and of even higher quality, I don't think she gets an award for being such a good spouse.
It reminds me of the movie Taxi Driver, where a failed assassination attempt on a presidential candidate resulted in the return of a child prostitute to her parents and the would be assassin becoming a hero. I still see something pretty bad about the would be assassin's behavior, even though he did bring Jodie Foster back to her parents where she could go on and make more movies.
Yes. When Christians talk about the virtue of faith they are not talking about generic faith. They are not saying, for example, that every act of faith-assent is virtuous. They are saying that faith in the true God is virtuous.
Aquinas says this explicitly, "The faith of which [Aristotle] speaks is based on human reasoning in a conclusion which does not follow, of necessity, from its premisses; and which is subject to be false: hence such like faith is not a virtue" (ST II-II.4.5.ad2). Faith in a guarantor who is capable of falsehood is not a virtue, but God is the First Truth (i.e. it is God's "truthfulness" that causes divine faith to be virtuous).
Classically, none of the theological virtues (viz. faith, hope, and love) are natural virtues. That is, none attain to virtue in Aristotle's strict sense unless their object is God.
Or else Pieper:
Nicely put.
Quoting Hanover
Not so sure about that .
The Russian Orthodox Church, particularly under Patriarch Kirill, provides critical religious justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The church has framed the conflict as a "holy war" aimed at defending "Holy Russia" and protecting it from Western influences. Christian nationalism is central to Putin and Trump, it would seem. I would not underestimate the role of the Orthodox church in Putin's Russkiy Mir empire building. Identifying as a Orthodox Christian has been central to his project.
It's true that religion can be exploited by corrupt individuals to sway voters and soldiers: figures like Putin and Trump have utilized religious narratives to bolster their political agendas. This manipulation doesn't render religion any less dangerous; on the contrary, it often provides the anger, motivation, and justification for atrocities, even if the underlying motives may be rooted in nihilistic greed.
That said, I wouldn't argue that religion is the sole source of abject cruelty on our planet. It's merely one of the major players.
Indeed; int might not so often be the reason, but as you point out it is often used as an excuse, for doing things we know we ought not.
For many, it is uncomfortable to draw attention to that aspect of faith.
It's really not. It's like pointing out that governments can do evil things and thinking that only anarchists remain comfortable because they swore off government.
That religion has done some really bad things isn't debatable.
It's also not really debatable that government and religions are political entities. People and power create. Sometimes they create good. Sometimes not.
My response all along has been the special pleading of religion as evil, not denying it can be evil.
For what it's worth, I think your take on this is fair.
That's simply not what I read in the responses to my posts here.
If you have located someone willing to argue the strawman, defeating them only proves you've found the weakest form of the argument to defeat. It doesn't suggest anything more philosophically as to what faith based beliefs entail.
The best I can decipher is you wish to generalize a psychological profile to those of faith, pointing out they're a particularly dangerous sort.
That's not philosophy. That's sociology. I'll defer to the studies whatever they might say. Regardless of what sociological studies say Christians, for example, typically are does not mean they logically must be.
And that's the philosophy question. That Christians or whoever might suck at higher rates than atheists isn't because of their religion. It's just because they suck.
Not pop psychology, but perhaps actual psychology. If it is the case that religious based reasoning does not dictate an evil propensity yet the empirical evidence shows the religious are more evil than their atheist counterparts, then some explanation as to why might be interesting.
For example, if I'm a Satanist, it might be that my evil ways are dictated by my ideology, and so you could rightly criticize Satanism. But if I'm a Christian and my evil ways are not dictated by my ideology, you can't rightly criticize my Christianity. If you can show, however, that Christians are disproportionately evil (even though there's nothing in their ideology that entails that evil (as there is with Satanism)), then I'd be interested in knowing what that is.
Buit that interest isn't a philosophical question. It's a psychological or sociological one. Maybe all Republicans are great dancers. If they are, I'd want to know why because it doesn't seem like dancing ability should arise from that belief system. It also doesn't seem like joining the Republican party will make me a great dancer.
Anti-religious bigotry has now taken on a life of its own, but the underlying tradition here is Enlightenment Rationalism. It was the Enlightenment's "Sapere Aude" which attempted to sideline faithreligious or otherwise. That tradition targeted faith itself, not Christianity per se. The anti-religious in this thread are mostly just involved in begging the question. Although some Enlightenment thinkers managed more than simply begging the question, there were nevertheless 18th century figures who already saw the folly, such as J. G. Hamann. Namely, they saw that "rationalism" possessed no foundationhistorical or otherwiseupon which to stand. It is little more than borrowed capital pretending to assert itself as sovereign.
Enlightenment Rationalism was an interesting idea, but nowadays Hamann's critique has become common knowledge, namely that the project was a failure and a conceited naivete. Even many of the Enlightenment thinkers themselves quickly recognized how unstable and flighty their so-called "rationalism" was.* Logical Positivism was the last real gasp of air from that tradition, and so it's not surprising that the descendants of Russell are still sporting Enlightenment bumper stickers.
But the whole "faith is bad" propaganda campaign is an unkempt grandchild of that tradition.
(Curiously, Anglophone moral anti-realism flows out of Enlightenment thinking, and this is the place where Banno is perhaps most schizophrenic: affirming moral realism without having any substantial foundation or rationale for that stance. That's a clear symptom of Enlightenment-style thinking. Interlocutors of such moral realists are inevitably tempted to call that form of moral realism "faith-based" (in the anti-religious, pejorative sense).)
* Enlightenment Rationalism crashed and burned so hard that we are now left with the opposite extreme: strong reactions against the idea that reason has any efficacy whatsoever as a political force.
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 doesnt tell us what faith is. It doesnt 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 Im sure you dont 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 wouldnt say.
Quoting Banno
Right, you never do, but you keep talking anyway.
If you arent 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??
Its 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.
Its 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 shouldnt 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 dont see meanings of words, meanings in your mind to define as you speak about those words (ie faith), thats fine, but I say to you, without essential definitions, without discernible, perceptible distinctions between things in mind, you cant speak.
You arent communicating, or you are lying, if you say you dont see the meaning of the definition of faith here:
Quoting Banno
It doesnt 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.
Its 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 . . .?
Its 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 cant avoid the essence we speak of and speak of this and not that. We cant 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 cant 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 dont 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 beliefsbeliefs 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 Im forced to mostly respond on your terms again. Because you dont 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 didnt say that. Im 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, its how you think, not me. And I can see how that would distort my meaning. I dont drink the Wittegensteinian cool-aid, as thirstily.
Im 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 cant 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 arent addressing what I said. You are recharacterizing with new elements, adding concepts to what Im saying and in so doing, not seeing the essence of what Im 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 doesnt address what I am saying either.
Just because we can identify words to use without knowing definitions doesnt mean definitions arent there. So this is, to me, is a non-sequitur, or a fallacious argument. It doesnt 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 dont 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 dont) 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 dont 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 dont 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 dont make sense in some simple and naive manner as well, they are astray. We cant 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 dont want to see how you cant throw away the ladder and communicate.
You dont want to communicate, just pontificate.
Dont 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 dont. If they know what they mean by it then they will be able to tell you what they mean by it. If they dont 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 doesnt seem to understand hes 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. Its 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 cant 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 havent really gotten to the arguments. Im just trying to establish trust and grounds for a genuine exchange, where he looks at everything like its 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 Bannos use/definition of faith). Didnt 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 Bannos religion. Fell from grace by recanting.
I would feel like Im being mean-spirited, but I dont think my thoughts register in the lofty heights of Bannos 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 intellectwhich 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 wont 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 dont 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). Its 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 socksinstead 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 dont disagree with what you are saying, I dont think youve 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. Thats correct to me. Its not all faith involves so I have no reason to celebrate. But its 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 its 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.
Im 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 dont have the time, energy, brains or education to do it, but its 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 didnt think you could understand me, so why bother.
Second, There are fifty things prior to my posts with Leon that you didnt 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.
Thats 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. Its just not a very developed concept.
If we can identify something we must have some conception of it and couldnt 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 dont think anyone would say its inherently irrational.
See for example and the claims that began this part of the thread.
Im 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 dont get it. Tom doesnt 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 its 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 Toms last post above.
Im 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.
Its a question of degree, not some sort of difference in kind, between a stipulated definition or a more solid definition. So its all the same thing - a definition.
If we define faith as not corned beef we have a sort of silly limit case. But thats 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. Im much closer to something permanent and indisputable that might actually also function (use) to allow for communication to happen.
The stipulated definition isnt innocuous in my view. Its 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 havent 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
Its painfully obvious that faith is the most abused aspect of religion, isnt 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.
Lets 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 Im 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?
Ill 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 were required to mention when AI is used, which is why I mentioned it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Its a strange idea that people are entirely rational.
You dont 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."
Youre 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. Shouldnt 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. Whats 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 dont 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.
Its 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 dont see God. When they see other things I see, I am amazed at how perfectly they can see them without seeing God.
Atheists dont seem amazed at how believers see some things as exactly they do, but also still see God. Atheists seem to think if someone doesnt agree with them, about God, then that person isnt 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.
Theres 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 dont 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 Ive 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 dont think theres much difference in the lives of atheists or believers when it comes to moral commitment or awareness of lifes 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, Ive read most of the thread youve recommended and skimmed the rest of it. Ive also read Why Liberalism Failed, as I mentioned. Im still curious why its 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 dont 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 dont 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 guardin a funny wayand the wine didnt 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 dont understand your and Fires 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 dont 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 isnt 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. Thats 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? Lets 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 dont know what you are talking about when you say rigid version of God.
Plenty of people dont understand God at all, and none of us understand all of God, but lets 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 Ive been assuming you think ecumenical impulses are good and rigid is bad, so maybe I misread that.
I dont 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. Lifes 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. Im 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 lifes 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. Its not philosophy anymore. Its theology, or the metaphysics and ontology of faith in God.
I just realized my frustration with many atheists over subjects relating God and faith: Its 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 isnt always helpful and often ends with disparaging the other persons 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.
Its like you were drawing a self-portrait.
For the others, like me and Leon. :lol:
-
Youve been over-duly considered, and Id still consider you again, but Id 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 youve given.
Quoting Banno
Youve given us all back something to consider here thats 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 dont 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 theists thoughts about God and religion - concerned about those peoples 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?
Im 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 its 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. Thats the only kind of science there is.
I like philosophy as a blend of physics with the metaphysical/logical/linguistic. I dont 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 weve all gone astray again.
I have no problem making the goal discussions of more falsifiable science here on TPF. We wont 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.
Im good with that here on TPF.
Cant 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?
Lets say this thread is not what is faith, but what is my wife? What is Fires 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 shes 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, lets say, less open to attack. But when I personally talk about God, like when I talk about my wife, Id rather talk about the lived experiences, the particulars as I know them. Thats the good stuff in that topic, to me - the only really interesting stuff. Logic itself might seem trivial when discussing my wifes 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 Im 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 cant help but want to try and redirect things and stop the bleeding, but I only hope I dont make matters worse.
Here is the problem:
Quoting Banno
Scientists dont seem to trust theists even when they are not talking about God.
Banno, is it possible you are a little biased against me?
Maybe Im 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? Dont 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 cant 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 dont 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 didnt seem like a wise ass remark - just an honest judgement, probably against me.
So I respond - does anything Ive said here, which is all from my heart, resonate with you?
If the answer is no, please explain because I dont 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 wed 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 wasnt understanding it. The father eventually got angry and intoned something like, Ive 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 dont see the things they do, especially when theyve been patient and tried to demonstrate the reasoning. And it doesnt 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 isnt too difficult.
I think faith involves is somewhat different than faith is but its a distinction that isnt 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 isnt 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 Im 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 thats 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 Platos 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. Isnt 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, youre not actually a bystander.
And as for Cartesian anxietyits 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. Its not that its solely a matter of personal opinion. Its that levels of reality correspond with levels of being and knowing. What do you think was taught in Platos 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.
Theres a variety of methods for dating ancient documents and theyre reported to be quite accurate. Personally I would consider the content of the document a one piece of evidence.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Its 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 experienceone 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, Its not just on trust, Lord. Those who havent 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 dont 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, weve 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. Id 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 isnt as impactful as some terrorist?
I simply dont see all acts of faith as bad.
I know you arent 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 dont do the math. That is still the same thing as an act of faith. Such belief still involves faith because the person doesnt have the evidence and didnt use reason to form their belief. This is like when you trust someone giving you directions on the side of the road. You dont 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 dont 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 cant 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 cant just conclude that because you dont see the evidence doesnt 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 its the social aspect that makes faith necessary.
You didnt address the more substantive parts.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Therefore belief based on insufficient evidence happens everyday.
You admitted that. Doesnt 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 Im sure with great success.
Quoting Banno
Thats my point!
You sound like a man of faith now.
(And if you dont know the consequences, you didnt have sufficient evidence - same behavior - so you cant avoid my point that way.)
Quoting Fire Ologist
Apparently so might you:
Quoting Banno
So if both are true, we cant 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. Im 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 ones 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 arguments 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 havent 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 faithnot 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 theyre 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 fineprovided 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 elseburning one's incense to Caesarand 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 atheists 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 Lefts excessive seriousness, it's humorless, puritanical enforcement of political and cultural "wokeness." On the other hand, they claim the Left doesnt 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 ironybut 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, doesnt 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?
Ill take a stab. The problem is, there are serious things to talk about. Lightness and sarcasm break the tension, but dont resolve it. Its not that groups dont read the classics or follow tradition, its that they mock it, and maybe never tried to understand it, which would require they take it seriously.
I dont 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 Counts 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 didnt think you noticed.
Id 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 dont 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?
Im just happy I got you to admit faith of itself has no necessary good or bad to it. (Which Im not sure you really believe.)
Quoting Banno
I guess well 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.")
Im not asking about theism. Never really brought up God first in this whole thread. I cant seem to make you believe that I think there are non-theological ways to understand and act on, faith. And we havent 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.
Ive 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. Thats 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 doesnt sound neither good nor bad to me.
So the question is what do you think?
Me supposing you understand me wont 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 dont know, or can do something you cant 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 its 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. Its two acts now, so we have more work to do before we can start judging faith based on God and Abrahams 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.
Dont 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.
Youre 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. Thats 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.
Dont be such a sour puss on those who are trying to love their neighbors as themselves.
Because, like I said, maybe you cant.
Youve 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 didnt 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
Im happy for you that you have such certainty in your life about religion. Its 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 dont feel any worse treated than usual, and Id still love to hear Bannos response. I thought we were on to something interesting.
But Ill 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 dont 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 dont think I could be any clearer about why I said it. There is nothing you need to infer.
Id 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. Lets 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 someones 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 havent 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 thats been said, most of which has involved stories of irrational peoples 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 ones approach to, or questioning of our origin, creation, purpose. If one is to make any progress beyond, I/we dont know. Science and philosophy cant 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 dont assume God is a 'real' being. Meaning that God isnt 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 ones being, or self. Or another way of describing this is that if one accepts that there is a divinity within ones 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, Im not denying this, but rather saying that this intellectual enquiry is not fundamental to the practice. In a real sense it doesnt matter what God, or Cosmogony one follows (within reason), one takes ones 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 doesnt necessarily come before these other motivating factors. But yes for the novice it is advisable to join an established school, or broaden ones 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 dont 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 dont 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, its 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 its 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 its 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 dont deny that it may be possible for the intellect to bridge this divide given the appropriate circumstances. But I cant 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 havent seen any evidence of this yet.
I dont 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 isnt 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 dont spend much time with atheists these days, but I used to. Many are, frankly, dull zealots. That said, the more thoughtful ones today typically dont outright deny the existence of God, after all, that would be a positive claim, and one that cant 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 anyones 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?
Youre 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?
Thats odd, you seem to be asking for empirical evidence in guiding one in how to live ones 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 dont mean, havent worked it out yet. But rather we are entirely unable to see, we dont 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 ones 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 ones self in a normal life and play a role in society and family. While retaining ones insight achieved in ones 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 dont 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 dont 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 whos 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 didnt 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 dont 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. Ive 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 sayalthough the extraordinary, uncanny nature of such experiences naturally seems to lead people to extraordinary, uncanny speculations. However such speculations have nothing cogent to support thempeople simply believe whatever it is they feel moved to believe. And that's all finewe all believe whatever it is we feel moved to believe, if we are one of those given to believingor else we suspend judgement, remain skeptical if that is our bent.
Does it matter? I would say noall that really matters is how we live our liveshow 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 Ive 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 Ill keep it in perspective because intellectually this is the right thing to do?'
If its something else, well thats fine, provided it fulfills the tasks that we ascribe to God. If its something else and it doesnt fulfill its tasks, then its 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 dont 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.
Were 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 Gods 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 followers faith in a guru is of the same nature as a patients 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 saints, 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 isnt so much in the external world, but internally. In a sense, one is offering up ones liberty, freedom to follow selfish thoughts and desires. To put others 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 Ive 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 Ive said before, if faith just means trust, then Id 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 its 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 Im 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 Im 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 associatess 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 its 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 its 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, Im tempted to add "as men can be" (because those expressions can sound as a personification or a metonym).
By the way, Im 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 peoples 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 ones 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
Im 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, its about how we feel about peoples dispositions to act in certain ways. It doesnt matter whether what I feel about these people is based on affection or on material interest.
The emotion Im talking about when talking about faith is epistemic not affective. Its 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 didnt 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 persons 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. Thats why Im 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
Im 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 doesnt make any sense to claim that there is a logic implication between S and P.
Quoting Leontiskos
Im 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, Im 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 shouldnt be confused with logic implications. If I believe that an apple is on the table because I see an apple on the table, that doesnt 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 didnt 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 Im 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? Thats 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. Whats 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, Im 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 Im pointing at a basic categorical mistake you are committing. Its 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), doesnt mean that a logic implication holds about what is believed and the source of this information. Stating a logic implication doesnt 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 its 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 Im 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, Im 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 its 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 doesnt 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 doesnt 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 doesnt 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 cant 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, Im 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 (Id also add conscious) process of forming a belief. A sharp knife dirty with blood found hidden in Xs 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" doesnt 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. Its 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 (Id 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 doesnt 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
-
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.