knowledge is merely one of faith's children

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

If I admit that I am trusting my senses when I claim to know something, doesn't that indicate that the knowing is dependent of the trusting? I don't see how I can dispute that.

If I claim to know that I have good reasons for trusting my senses, isn't it fair to ask, "How do I know that?"

And if the answer to the above question is, "Because they serve me well more often than not," isn't it fair to ask again, "How do I know that?"

So, what would be your answer to that last question? My answer would be, "Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know that (in the ultimate sense), but I trust my senses anyway, at least with respect to such relatively simple matters. In fact, I don't seem to have any other reasonable option."

Why don't I have good reason to think that I do not have any other reasonable option? I can't think of any. Can you?

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

If I admit that I am trusting my senses when I claim to know something, doesn't that indicate that the knowing is dependent of the trusting? I don't see how I can dispute that.

If I claim to know that I have good reasons for trusting my senses, isn't it fair to ask, "How do I know that?"

And if the answer to the above question is, "Because they serve me well more often than not," isn't it fair to ask again, "How do I know that?"

So, what would be your answer to that last question? My answer would be, "Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know that (in the ultimate sense), but I trust my senses anyway, at least with respect to such relatively simple matters. In fact, I don't seem to have any other reasonable option."

Indeed, and I know that I have no other reasonable option, too. Since any other option, reasonable or not (ESP?) would depend for verification on my senses.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Why don't I have good reason to think that I do not have any other reasonable option? I can't think of any. Can you?

I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Would you please rephrase the question? There's a double negative in there, and I can't make sense of it. When I try to reduce it, it comes out, "Why do I have good reason to think that I have any other reasonable option?" That doesn't make sense to me either. Maybe you could re-state it as a proposition.

In any case, may I politely point out that you did not answer my question?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Indeed, and I know that I have no other reasonable option, too. Since any other option, reasonable or not (ESP?) would depend for verification on my senses.

Now, this sounds like you agree with the proposition, but I am reluctant to conclude that!

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

Now, this sounds like you agree with the proposition, but I am reluctant to conclude that!

Why would you conclude that? Look, the end of the line is that faith is not a kind of verification, nor is it an alternative to verification. Faith is a kind of belief, and so, faith requires verification. No belief can be "based" on faith (although it may be caused by faith) because faith is, itself, a kind of belief. So, to say something like, by belief is based on faith, is really to say that my belief is based on belief. Or, I believe because I believe. And, I don't find that reassuring. Carried to extremes it end up in fanaticism.

@Dichanthelium,

Doesn't priority fit in here somewhere?

I seem to remember somewhere that Riga is the capital city of one of the Baltic states. Thing is, I can't remember which one. Oh well. If someone asks me where Riga is, and I haven't looked it up, I'll say "Um, I think it's Latvia, but I'm not sure. I know it's one of those three, though". But I probably won't look it up, I mean it doesn't matter to me. Well, I'm a world traveler and when I can't travel I do a lot of armchair traveling, so maybe I'm more likely to look it up than someone who doesn't have the travel bug, but still, it's low on the priority list.

On the other hand, I got an e-mail from a colleague today about disinfectant body washes. I treat a lot of children for recurrent infections with this bug MRSA. Part of the treatment is periodic body washes with an antiseptic called hexachlorophene (Phisohex). We just found out that it's on backorder, so the question came up as to whether it's sufficient to use chlorhexidine (Hibiclens) as an alternative. Well, THIS matters. Right? I mean I've got to make professional, clinical decisions for kids here, and worse yet there are public health implications. So what have I been doing all day but reading an assload of journal articles about this stuff, and I've sent off an e-mail to one of the world authorities on this subject to get his opinion.

You see, the truth matters more when, well, when it matters more. And I'm going to leave less to faith when the issue is important to me. Knowledge as a functional entity rests in confidence, but our requirement for confidence is a case-by-case matter.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Why would you conclude that? Look, the end of the line is that faith is not a kind of verification, nor is it an alternative to verification. Faith is a kind of belief, and so, faith requires verification. No belief can be "based" on faith (although it may be caused by faith) because faith is, itself, a kind of belief. So, to say something like, by belief is based on faith, is really to say that my belief is based on belief. Or, I believe because I believe. And, I don't find that reassuring. Carried to extremes it end up in fanaticism.

The issue is the merits of the argument, not whether or not the argument leads us into reassurance or fanaticism. Would you reject a logical conclusion just because you thought you might not like the consequences of accepting the logic?

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

The issue is the merits of the argument, not whether or not the argument leads us into reassurance or fanaticism. Would you reject a logical conclusion just because you thought you might not like the consequences of accepting the logic?

I agree. It was just an afterthought. Ignore it if you like. I have addressed the merits of the argument. But don't ignore my objections to the argument on its account. For that would be to commit the strawman fallacy.

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Would you please rephrase the question? There's a double negative in there, and I can't make sense of it. When I try to reduce it, it comes out, "Why do I have good reason to think that I have any other reasonable option?" That doesn't make sense to me either. Maybe you could re-state it as a proposition.

In any case, may I politely point out that you did not answer my question?

I meant that I have good reason to believe there is no other reasonable option. Sorry for the obscurity.

What was your question?

But, in any case, let me ask you a question. What does "faith based" or "rests on faith" mean?
Faith, after all, is a form of belief. As such, it cannot be a reason for anything that you believe, since as I have just pointed out, it is itself a form of belief. So, if you think that knowledge rests on faith, what does that mean? That you know only because you believe that you know? How could that be true?

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

Higher ordered thinking has to do with our states of thoughts and consciousness. You cannot just open a book to verify thinking of this type.

I call facts in the nature of the capital of the U.S. is Washington DC factoids because they can be looked it up in a reference guide, and it takes no actual knowledge of Washington DC to come to the conclusion it is the capital of the country. These things either are or they are not. There are no shades of gray in between. How can this type of knowledge be faith dependent?

The earth is round is trivial in today's world. Once upon a time it wasn't, but now it is.

What would "actual knowledge" of Washington D.C. be? But, could you give me some example of the kind of knowledge you think is not a "factoid"?

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Doesn't priority fit in here somewhere?

I seem to remember somewhere that Riga is the capital city of one of the Baltic states. ...

On the other hand, I got an e-mail from a colleague today about disinfectant body washes. ...so the question came up as to whether it's sufficient to use chlorhexidine (Hibiclens) as an alternative. Well, THIS matters. Right? ...

You see, the truth matters more when, well, when it matters more. And I'm going to leave less to faith when the issue is important to me. Knowledge as a functional entity rests in confidence, but our requirement for confidence is a case-by-case matter.

I think I agree with all of that, with one caveat. We seek to verify more thoroughly in cases that have higher priority. But, I would argue, no matter how far we go in trying to verify something, we always end up trusting something or somebody. It's not that we "leave less to faith," in such critical matters. It's that we take special pains to recognize precisely what we are placing our faith in. If I want to verify that I am correct in adopting a course of action that has enormous implications, I may look up the question in twenty different scientific journals that are universally acknowledged as reliable. If they all say the same thing, then I quite logically conclude that the course of action is justifiable. But this verification process still boils down to me deciding to trust something or somebody. I have faith in my colleagues who have appropriate credentials. I have faith in those published sources, and my ability to read them and understand them. I have faith in the notion that a concensus of opinion among well-educated people generally reflects reliability in the proposition.

But it still all boils down to faith in something or somebody.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

I meant that I have good reason to believe there is no other reasonable option. Sorry for the obscurity.

What was your question?

But, in any case, let me ask you a question. What does "faith based" or "rests on faith" mean?
Faith, after all, is a form of belief. As such, it cannot be a reason for anything that you believe, since as I have just pointed out, it is itself a form of belief. So, if you think that knowledge rests on faith, what does that mean? That you know only because you believe that you know? How could that be true?

I don't know how to reply without repeating what I already said, so it looks like we are probably using the same terms but with different meanings or implications that somehow are not coming to the surface. This dynamic is really fascinating to me. It happens a lot, doesn't it? Usually between two parties that are living inside of separate paradigms. Probably, it has been thoroughly investigated in a Philosophy of Language or Philosophy of Communication setting.

It's possible, though, that we can get out of this loop if we take small steps, one at a time. Not that we will necessarily agree, but we might, at least, understand exactly what we disagree about. Let's try this:

Do you define "knowledge" as "possession of information that cannot possibly be false."? And if not, would you offer an alternate definition?

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

Do you define "knowledge" as "possession of information that cannot possibly be false."? And if not, would you offer an alternate definition?

That cannot be the definition of knowledge. As civilization has evolved much of our knowledge of concepts has been proven false, and replaced with new knowledge that does a better job of explaining observations. The geocentric model of the solar system was replaced by the heliocentric model, and the Newtonian physics were replaced by the theory of relativity.

Here is my definition: information that is true according to the observations and perceptions currently available. But even that isn't a great definition.

@Theaetetus,

... what are the categories of knowledge? ... for instance:

- metaphysical knowledge (e.g., a paradigm that shapes and constrains scientific investigation; mereology)
- methodical knowledge (e.g., the scientific method; the pragmatic method)
- historical knowledge (e.g., science [the accumulation of independently verified experimentation]; world history)
- theoretical knowledge (e.g., the predictions of a scientific theory)
- scientific knowledge (e.g., first-hand application of the scientific method)
- pragmatic knowledge (e.g., pragmatic meanings; pragmatic truths)
- mythic knowledge (e.g., orthopraxic meanings; orthopraxic truths)
- skill knowledge (e.g., how to independently verify an experiment; how to ride a bike)

... and what degrees of belief and/or faith are required in each category?

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

That cannot be the definition of knowledge. As civilization has evolved much of our knowledge of concepts has been proven false, and replaced with new knowledge that does a better job of explaining observations. The geocentric model of the solar system was replaced by the heliocentric model, and the Newtonian physics were replaced by the theory of relativity.

Here is my definition: information that is true according to the observations and perceptions currently available. But even that isn't a great definition.

I think your definition is closer to what most of us would agree on, but it occurs to me that we may need to segregate "What I know" from "What we know" or from "What is known." The reason I say this is because the expressions "What we know" and "What is known" contain hidden presuppositions, namely, that "I know what we know" or "I know what is known." That may or may not be true, so it seems to me that we would be better off to avoid the ambiguity that it introduces.

If this is acceptable, then, maybe we could agree to define "my knowing" rather than "knowledge."

"My knowing," then, could be definined, preliminarily, as "my possession of information that I believe to be true based on my current observations and perceptions."

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium;43968 wrote:

it still all boils down to faith in something or somebody.

If that's your argument, though, then you have to accept the well-trod reductio ad absurdum that Descartes toyed with. It's only a matter of faith that you have feet if you're not looking directly at them, right?

And if that's the case, then you can argue that the only thing we KNOW is what we're looking directly at. Unless, of course, our eyes can deceive us as in the case of mirages, or what we think we see when we're dreaming. We have a sense called proprioception, by which we know our feet are there, and where they are in space; but on the other hand people can get phantom limb syndrome so that sense may not be reliable either.

We all know this argument. But again, I think we have to divest the concept of knowledge from arguments about absolutism -- knowledge is a human thing, it's not absolute. Our ability to know, to understand, to discover, and to prove is finite.

At a more practical level, this becomes less problematic if we are less, you know, philosophical about it. We're social animals. We depend on each other. There is a degree to which knowledge is individual and a degree to which it is shared. You can use the word "faith" to describe it, but I think that's an oversimplification. The difference between faith in some religious belief as opposed to faith in a human chain of knowledge is that we're much more willing to accept all the caveats that come with that chain of knowledge.

If you tell me that Tashkent is the capital of Tajikistan, and I go around telling people that, and one day I discover that it's actually Dushanbe and not Tashkent, this isn't going to rock my world.

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

If that's your argument, though, then you have to accept the well-trod reductio ad absurdum that Descartes toyed with. ...
We all know this argument.

I'm not so sure we do! I think we live in a society that is over-run with credulity and naive realism.

Aedes wrote:

But again, I think we have to divest the concept of knowledge from arguments about absolutism -- knowledge is a human thing, it's not absolute. Our ability to know, to understand, to discover, and to prove is finite.

This is precisely the point I have been trying to make from the beginning, only instead of saying that knowledge is human and finite (descriptive), I have been trying understand exactly what it is (definitive).

Aedes wrote:

At a more practical level, this becomes less problematic if we are less, you know, philosophical about it. ...

Agreed. I would never attempt a discussion of this nature, were I not in the company of philosophers.

Aedes wrote:

You can use the word "faith" to describe it, but I think that's an oversimplification. The difference between faith in some religious belief as opposed to faith in a human chain of knowledge is that we're much more willing to accept all the caveats that come with that chain of knowledge.

I think the religious connotations of the word "faith" are the biggest problem with this proposition. What if I were to re-word the propostion:

"My knowing is a category of believing, which is a product of my trust in something or somebody."

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... what are the categories of knowledge? ... for instance:

- metaphysical knowledge (e.g., a paradigm that shapes and constrains scientific investigation; mereology)
- methodical knowledge (e.g., the scientific method; the pragmatic method)
- historical knowledge (e.g., science [the accumulation of independently verified experimentation]; world history)
- theoretical knowledge (e.g., the predictions of a scientific theory)
- scientific knowledge (e.g., first-hand application of the scientific method)
- pragmatic knowledge (e.g., pragmatic meanings; pragmatic truths)
- mythic knowledge (e.g., orthopraxic meanings; orthopraxic truths)
- skill knowledge (e.g., how to independently verify an experiment; how to ride a bike)

... and what degrees of belief and/or faith are required in each category?

Yeah, I actually started a thread on this, but no replies, yet! My categories were based on much more colloquial expressions of the different categories and not nearly as exhaustive as yours. Would you be interested in starting the thread using your categories? I could just remove mine, I suppose.

@Dichanthelium,

... nah - I'll let your thread be ... there's no reason to think my list is any better than yours ... after all, I don't think we're talking about mutually exclusive categories here - but rather categorical networks ... just watch what happens with a hypothetical chunk of "knowledge":

Let's start with mereology - "metaphysical knowledge" ... there's more than one way to carve up the world into parts wholes ... and given a particular goal and context, one way of carving up the world might have more pragmatic "truth" than another - "pragmatic knowledge" ... so you run an experiment - "skill knowledge" ... following the scientific method - "methodical knowledge" ... to see which system of parts-wholes better helps you achieve your goals, and it turns out to be system A - "scientific knowledge" ... and in so experimenting, you detect a regularity that allows you to predict that systems of parts-wholes of a certain quality are able to address said goals better than others - "theoretical knowledge" ... so you write a paper on the subject - "historical knowledge" ... because you admire Aristotle and according to the various stories of his life that's how he might have done things - "mythical knowledge".

Is that a web, or what!? Wink

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

I think I agree with all of that, with one caveat. We seek to verify more thoroughly in cases that have higher priority. But, I would argue, no matter how far we go in trying to verify something, we always end up trusting something or somebody. It's not that we "leave less to faith," in such critical matters. It's that we take special pains to recognize precisely what we are placing our faith in. If I want to verify that I am correct in adopting a course of action that has enormous implications, I may look up the question in twenty different scientific journals that are universally acknowledged as reliable. If they all say the same thing, then I quite logically conclude that the course of action is justifiable. But this verification process still boils down to me deciding to trust something or somebody. I have faith in my colleagues who have appropriate credentials. I have faith in those published sources, and my ability to read them and understand them. I have faith in the notion that a concensus of opinion among well-educated people generally reflects reliability in the proposition.

But it still all boils down to faith in something or somebody.

Yes. Informed and supported faith, which, in English, is usually called, "belief" because faith is unsupported and uninformed belief. All faith is belief, but not all belief is faith. See the difference?

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