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/
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.
What Constitutes Belief?
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/
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.
This is brilliant.