I had a sort of transcendent experience many years ago, that I wrote down after, and concluded:
All acceptance is by faith. Not blind faith as "trust," but faith as _an absolute commitment_, and when you make the latter, you realize it is the former.
This was specific to me and a given personal element of course, but it was the day I realized that faith was a legitimate thing that had far less relationship to 'belief' than I'd realized.
To affirm anything without a sufficient reason amounts to affirming that anything can be true without sufficient reason, therefore the negation of anything can also be true without a sufficient reason everything, including the opposite of what is affirmed, therefore contradiction. In short, every belief (insofar as it involves certainty) that cannot be proven is self-negating. We may be practically justified in making assumptions about facts (as possibilities), but we are not justified in asserting that a particular possibility is true (a fact) without a sufficient reason; this would imply not only that the possibility is true, but that we know that the possibility is true. https://culturalanalysisnet.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/derivation-of-the-principle-of-sufficient-reason-from-the-law-of-non-contradiction/
1. If I 'believe' that the freezing point of water is 41 degrees Fahrenheit - that is merely a false notion obtained from undisciplined observation. The actual answer can be known - I have just accidentally or purposely dwelt in ignorance.
2. If I believe that there is a galaxy out there in the universe which is shaped like a zebra and has black and white banding, and is 60,000 light years across - that is a conclusion in ignorance which has no existential meaning to one's immediate being. Nor can I prove or disprove it.
3. If I slow my car down, beyond standard driver practice, at a an intersection I have never crossed before, and do not have sufficient data to know that I should, I enact a baseless belief out of perhaps an excess of precaution.
4. If I derive a suspicion about a significant aspect of life which bears immediate benefit, salience, and life meaning - that is not the same as 'affirming that anything can be true without sufficient reason' - For instance, I cannot prove that intent is woven into the fabric of DNA life existing on this planet - I cannot prove that my deceased father is still an aware being in some state - but the evidence for both hints strongly that way, but not near to any kind of finality. It is existentially important that I ponder suspicion on these things, unlike the zebra galaxy.
To deny a human being #4, under the logical calculus of #1 is not science nor epistemology, it is brazen disregard for one's fellow being - under the pretense of science. The denial of an answer, itself is also a belief. It is a religion of negative reactance. But one which bears a license to be proselytized to all.
This is a hard lesson our 1972 skeptics have had to learn. And why their religious answers are failing to turn out to be sound left and right now.
Just to clarify, I agree with the distinction you make between Faith and Belief. Construing religion as a belief system was a failure of Faith, indeed a rejection of Faith. My understanding of Faith is that it is necessarily Good Faith (Bad Faith is not Faith, but Belief), and Good Faith implies both the acceptance of uncertainty and openness to new ideas, openness to humanising interaction with others, and openness to experiences we regard as spiritual, without dogmatic certainty in either affirmation nor denial.
All knowledge is (logically) equivocal: the law of excluded middle. Let X be any proposition. You either know X to be true or you do not, and there are no intermedia states of knowing X, no half knowledge. Note that knowledge of X demands certainty, because if you are not certain it is is still only a calculated assumption, a compelling suspicion, but not knowledge of X. You may know P, Q and R, all which count as evidence for X, but if you are missing Z (some other necessary condition of X being true) then you do not possess the knowledge of X. So returning to the original point, to affirm X as true (since ‘knowledge’ of X implies ‘certainty’ that X), is to commit a logical error. The examples you share in 2, 3 and 4 are all, on this view, not species of knowledge but assumptions with various degree of grounding in other know facts and other practical assumptions. To make a mistake on this point amounts to some form of dogmatism, and more critically, to irreconcilable conflicts between humans who confuse assumptions with incontestable facts.
I am not disagreeing with you here about existential and ethical implications of ‘negative reactance’ or denial of humanity that we see everywhere nowadays, only clarifying the terminology. I am not sure what event you are referring to in 1972, can you elaborate please?
1972 Skeptics = The year of Carl Sagan's birth of the modern skeptic movement (Michael Shermer, Steven Novella, Philip Klass, etc.)
If you have ever done Naval Gunfire Support to support US Marines in a power projection ashore sortie, you know that information and propositions are scaled in their knowledge value and accuracy. When they call 'Fire for Effect!" The result is not a mere hit or miss - but a spotter calls back your bracketing range, and you adjust your elevation and bearing to test another bracket of the objective. Eventually you get closer and closer to the target because you begin to gradually 'know' where it is - the same thing happens with Target Motion Analysis while prosecuting a submarine. Even though all your shots are technically 'misses' in gunfire support and your 'datum' submarine are technically 'wrong' - they are actually along a continuum of 'right'. If you live in a world where there are nothing but hits and misses, the enemy will have you dead before you realize how wrong that notion was.
I do not see a practical disagreement here, only different use of terms. I would describe the kind of information referred to in these examples as ‘estimates’ with various degrees of probabilistic grounding. So while you do not have the knowledge of whether you will hit or miss with a particular projectile, you may know (with analytical certainty) the range of probabilities for hits and misses in a particular situation. The concept of “truth value” when used in a fuzzy sense is a bit of a misnomer, a term of art, but in strictly logical terms it involves an equivocation between meta and object-level languages. Knowledge of the probability of X is the meta level (its object is probability, not the probable event); the knowledge of x is the object level (the object here is the probable event, not probability).
I have not read any sceptics apart from Sextus Empiricus, and the quotes of Sagan I came across did not resonate with me enough to follow that path.
I loved Sagan's books as a kid, but have not found his version of skepticism to be that accurate or helpful - especially in intelligence or strategic research. My hunches have always turned out far better than epistemological approaches. Unfortunately we commissioned an entire generation of cynics under that pseudo-wisdom of Sagan's skepticism.
Yes, - what I framed was a linear estimation, heavily and increasingly constrained. However, it has applicability into various matters we socially might call faith. They can also be heavily constrained as well (whether we admit it or not), such that our guesses may hold a veracity we would be unwise to dismiss.
Placeholder constructs are useful, when evidence points inductively in a certain direction, as long as one is willing to modify the placeholder as needed. The placeholder much like the valid zone in a bracketing fire or the estimated TMA track on a submarine. It is guaranteed to be wrong - but it is also right.
Skepticism itself is a meta-physics discussion, yes. It can address how to regard a probability of knowledge, but not what that probability is, nor how to apply it in the objective. Our modern skeptics have thrown that out the window, and used skepticism to dictate the objective as well. They have crafted a house made completely of appeal to ignorance. Nihilistic Atheism. Then claimed that science told them that it was correct. A bit of a circular logic sleight-of-hand.
Placeholders are very useful, provided we are aware of their status as placeholders. One could argue that all colloquial ideas are placeholders, open to refinement to better integrate the realm of meaning, but they can also be hijacked in support of delusion and anxiety. This is a problem only when Faith is lost and replaced by Belief, as you have pointed out.
What about 'commitment' rather than 'faith'? ... I'm never sure about 'faith' but we can commit to an ethical structure and try to act accordingly. At least most of the time haha.
Not a bad idea, save for this... commitment requires two things. The first is faith itself, as one cannot commit without faith, otherwise the commitment is but prison or slavery. The second is that commitment is a plan/set of actions beyond faith itself (a plurality or addition). Ockham's Razor says 'plurality should not be posited without necessity.' So, commitment can be a deception or costume. Career criminals are committed to their craft. :-)
I had a sort of transcendent experience many years ago, that I wrote down after, and concluded:
All acceptance is by faith. Not blind faith as "trust," but faith as _an absolute commitment_, and when you make the latter, you realize it is the former.
This was specific to me and a given personal element of course, but it was the day I realized that faith was a legitimate thing that had far less relationship to 'belief' than I'd realized.
I've also seen your F. Scott Fitzgerald quote attributed to O. Welles as a definition of... doublethink!
To affirm anything without a sufficient reason amounts to affirming that anything can be true without sufficient reason, therefore the negation of anything can also be true without a sufficient reason everything, including the opposite of what is affirmed, therefore contradiction. In short, every belief (insofar as it involves certainty) that cannot be proven is self-negating. We may be practically justified in making assumptions about facts (as possibilities), but we are not justified in asserting that a particular possibility is true (a fact) without a sufficient reason; this would imply not only that the possibility is true, but that we know that the possibility is true. https://culturalanalysisnet.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/derivation-of-the-principle-of-sufficient-reason-from-the-law-of-non-contradiction/
You are treating all knowledge as equivocal.
1. If I 'believe' that the freezing point of water is 41 degrees Fahrenheit - that is merely a false notion obtained from undisciplined observation. The actual answer can be known - I have just accidentally or purposely dwelt in ignorance.
2. If I believe that there is a galaxy out there in the universe which is shaped like a zebra and has black and white banding, and is 60,000 light years across - that is a conclusion in ignorance which has no existential meaning to one's immediate being. Nor can I prove or disprove it.
3. If I slow my car down, beyond standard driver practice, at a an intersection I have never crossed before, and do not have sufficient data to know that I should, I enact a baseless belief out of perhaps an excess of precaution.
4. If I derive a suspicion about a significant aspect of life which bears immediate benefit, salience, and life meaning - that is not the same as 'affirming that anything can be true without sufficient reason' - For instance, I cannot prove that intent is woven into the fabric of DNA life existing on this planet - I cannot prove that my deceased father is still an aware being in some state - but the evidence for both hints strongly that way, but not near to any kind of finality. It is existentially important that I ponder suspicion on these things, unlike the zebra galaxy.
To deny a human being #4, under the logical calculus of #1 is not science nor epistemology, it is brazen disregard for one's fellow being - under the pretense of science. The denial of an answer, itself is also a belief. It is a religion of negative reactance. But one which bears a license to be proselytized to all.
This is a hard lesson our 1972 skeptics have had to learn. And why their religious answers are failing to turn out to be sound left and right now.
Just to clarify, I agree with the distinction you make between Faith and Belief. Construing religion as a belief system was a failure of Faith, indeed a rejection of Faith. My understanding of Faith is that it is necessarily Good Faith (Bad Faith is not Faith, but Belief), and Good Faith implies both the acceptance of uncertainty and openness to new ideas, openness to humanising interaction with others, and openness to experiences we regard as spiritual, without dogmatic certainty in either affirmation nor denial.
All knowledge is (logically) equivocal: the law of excluded middle. Let X be any proposition. You either know X to be true or you do not, and there are no intermedia states of knowing X, no half knowledge. Note that knowledge of X demands certainty, because if you are not certain it is is still only a calculated assumption, a compelling suspicion, but not knowledge of X. You may know P, Q and R, all which count as evidence for X, but if you are missing Z (some other necessary condition of X being true) then you do not possess the knowledge of X. So returning to the original point, to affirm X as true (since ‘knowledge’ of X implies ‘certainty’ that X), is to commit a logical error. The examples you share in 2, 3 and 4 are all, on this view, not species of knowledge but assumptions with various degree of grounding in other know facts and other practical assumptions. To make a mistake on this point amounts to some form of dogmatism, and more critically, to irreconcilable conflicts between humans who confuse assumptions with incontestable facts.
I am not disagreeing with you here about existential and ethical implications of ‘negative reactance’ or denial of humanity that we see everywhere nowadays, only clarifying the terminology. I am not sure what event you are referring to in 1972, can you elaborate please?
1972 Skeptics = The year of Carl Sagan's birth of the modern skeptic movement (Michael Shermer, Steven Novella, Philip Klass, etc.)
If you have ever done Naval Gunfire Support to support US Marines in a power projection ashore sortie, you know that information and propositions are scaled in their knowledge value and accuracy. When they call 'Fire for Effect!" The result is not a mere hit or miss - but a spotter calls back your bracketing range, and you adjust your elevation and bearing to test another bracket of the objective. Eventually you get closer and closer to the target because you begin to gradually 'know' where it is - the same thing happens with Target Motion Analysis while prosecuting a submarine. Even though all your shots are technically 'misses' in gunfire support and your 'datum' submarine are technically 'wrong' - they are actually along a continuum of 'right'. If you live in a world where there are nothing but hits and misses, the enemy will have you dead before you realize how wrong that notion was.
I do not see a practical disagreement here, only different use of terms. I would describe the kind of information referred to in these examples as ‘estimates’ with various degrees of probabilistic grounding. So while you do not have the knowledge of whether you will hit or miss with a particular projectile, you may know (with analytical certainty) the range of probabilities for hits and misses in a particular situation. The concept of “truth value” when used in a fuzzy sense is a bit of a misnomer, a term of art, but in strictly logical terms it involves an equivocation between meta and object-level languages. Knowledge of the probability of X is the meta level (its object is probability, not the probable event); the knowledge of x is the object level (the object here is the probable event, not probability).
I have not read any sceptics apart from Sextus Empiricus, and the quotes of Sagan I came across did not resonate with me enough to follow that path.
I loved Sagan's books as a kid, but have not found his version of skepticism to be that accurate or helpful - especially in intelligence or strategic research. My hunches have always turned out far better than epistemological approaches. Unfortunately we commissioned an entire generation of cynics under that pseudo-wisdom of Sagan's skepticism.
Yes, - what I framed was a linear estimation, heavily and increasingly constrained. However, it has applicability into various matters we socially might call faith. They can also be heavily constrained as well (whether we admit it or not), such that our guesses may hold a veracity we would be unwise to dismiss.
Placeholder constructs are useful, when evidence points inductively in a certain direction, as long as one is willing to modify the placeholder as needed. The placeholder much like the valid zone in a bracketing fire or the estimated TMA track on a submarine. It is guaranteed to be wrong - but it is also right.
Skepticism itself is a meta-physics discussion, yes. It can address how to regard a probability of knowledge, but not what that probability is, nor how to apply it in the objective. Our modern skeptics have thrown that out the window, and used skepticism to dictate the objective as well. They have crafted a house made completely of appeal to ignorance. Nihilistic Atheism. Then claimed that science told them that it was correct. A bit of a circular logic sleight-of-hand.
Hence the purpose of my blogsite. :-)
Placeholders are very useful, provided we are aware of their status as placeholders. One could argue that all colloquial ideas are placeholders, open to refinement to better integrate the realm of meaning, but they can also be hijacked in support of delusion and anxiety. This is a problem only when Faith is lost and replaced by Belief, as you have pointed out.
What about 'commitment' rather than 'faith'? ... I'm never sure about 'faith' but we can commit to an ethical structure and try to act accordingly. At least most of the time haha.
Not a bad idea, save for this... commitment requires two things. The first is faith itself, as one cannot commit without faith, otherwise the commitment is but prison or slavery. The second is that commitment is a plan/set of actions beyond faith itself (a plurality or addition). Ockham's Razor says 'plurality should not be posited without necessity.' So, commitment can be a deception or costume. Career criminals are committed to their craft. :-)
Mmmm but the content/personal ethics [or lack of] of the faith isnt the point is it? Thx for your response.
This is brilliant.