knowledge is merely one of faith's children

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... I don't think we're talking about mutually exclusive categories here - but rather categorical networks ...

Good stuff! And it illustrates how surprisingly difficult it can be to concentrate on one discreet concept, and to refrain from diverging into closely related concepts.

But to get back to your secondary question, which is directly related to our thread, do some categories require more or less trust/ faith/ confidence...

Personally, I have a problem with purely mathematical concepts requiring faith or belief. And I have a problem with presumably inherent knowledge (if there is any such thing) requiring faith.

In other words, are there any "self-evident" truths? If there are, they would require no faith in any source. No verification process. I could just "know."

For example, one object, plus one more object, always equals two objects. That strikes me as indisputable, at least conceptually.

Now, of course, when I apply that to actual objects in "the world," I am immediately thrust back to trust in my senses: "I see one apple. Now I see another apple. Therefore, I now see two apples."

I don't know what the implications of this observation may be...

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

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?

Here is where we have the opportunity to discover one of our primary misunderstandings.

Faith (as I use the word in this context--and as the dictionary explicitly allows) is not necessarily "unsupported and uninformed belief." The proper word for that condition is "credulity." "Faith" is appropriately defined, depending on the context, as "complete trust." For example, "I have faith in the pilot of this aircraft." "I have faith in the engineer who designed this bridge, and the people who built it." In both cases, I would bet my life that my faith is well placed.

On that score, I would declare that Knowledge is certainly not (or, at least, ought never to be) one of Credulity's children. Credulity, whether in the realm of religion or science, can only give birth to self-deception, unfounded (or poorly founded) presuppositions, and pseudo-knowledge.

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

Now, of course, when I apply that to actual objects in "the world," I am immediately thrust back to trust in my senses: "I see one apple. Now I see another apple. Therefore, I now see two apples."

... not to mention mereological choices ... yes, one milliliter of water plus one milliliter of water equals two centiliters of water ... but what does one drop of water plus one drop of water equal? Wink

... here, it seems to require a non-intuitive choice of "object" ("milliliter" instead of "drop") in order to make simple arithmetic "true" of experience.

As far as things you can "just know" - how about the knowledge that sticking your hand into a fire and grasping a red-hot coal will cause you great pain? ... this would seem to circumvent your problem with having to trust in your senses because it is a truth of the senses.

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... not to mention mereological choices ... yes, one milliliter of water plus one milliliter of water equals two centiliters of water ... but what does one drop of water plus one drop of water equal? ... here, it seems to require a non-intuitive choice of "object" ("milliliter" instead of "drop") in order to make simple arithmetic "true" of experience.

As far as things you can "just know" - how about the knowledge that sticking your hand into a fire and grasping a red-hot coal will cause you great pain? ... this would seem to circumvent your problem with having to trust in your senses because it is a truth of the senses.

Okay, so do we need to specify what "realm" of knowledge we are swimming around in before we can make any sense of what we call knowledge? Does "knowledge" mean different things in different contexts? I was trying to delimit one meaning of knowledge by specifying "my knowledge." For example, "Whenever I say, I know something, I always mean that I trust something or somebody."

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

Okay, so do we need to specify what "realm" of knowledge we are swimming around in before we can make any sense of what we call knowledge? Does "knowledge" mean different things in different contexts? I was trying to delimit one meaning of knowledge by specifying "my knowledge." For example, "Whenever I say, I know something, I always mean that I trust something or somebody."

You do? But you can trust someone and be wrong because he is mistaken, or he is lying to you. But can you know something and be wrong? I don't think so. So, "I know" cannot mean that you trust someone. You may claim to know because you trust someone. But that can be a very weak reason for claiming to know because you are trusting the wrong person. And if people know that when you claim to know, all you mean is that you trust someone, it will not be long before they cease to trust you as a reliable source of knowledge.

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

Okay, so do we need to specify what "realm" of knowledge we are swimming around in before we can make any sense of what we call knowledge?

... maybe ... but maybe not ... let's start at a "ground zero" of sorts and see where it leads ... "I trust that I experience." ... can you doubt this? ... I can't ... so this is "self-evident" knowledge ... let's keep going ... "I trust that I experience both voluntarily and involuntarily. Voluntary experience I can control and so I call 'imagination'; involuntary experience I can interact with and I just call 'experience'." ... can you doubt this? ... again, I can't ... your turn Smile

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... maybe ... but maybe not ... let's start at a "ground zero" of sorts and see where it leads ... "I trust that I experience." ... can you doubt this? ... I can't ... so this is "self-evident" knowledge ... let's keep going ... "I trust that I experience both voluntarily and involuntarily. Voluntary experience I can control and so I call 'imagination'; involuntary experience I can interact with and I just call 'experience'." ... can you doubt this? ... again, I can't ... your turn

But people may experience palm trees and cool water, and it may just be a mirage in the desert. They may not be able to doubt that they are experiencing an oasis, but it still turns out to be a mirage. So the fact that you cannot doubt something shows nothing except that you are unable to doubt what you should doubt.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

But people may experience palm trees and cool water, and it may just be a mirage in the desert. They may not be able to doubt that they are experiencing an oasis, but it still turns out to be a mirage. So the fact that you cannot doubt something shows nothing except that you are unable to doubt what you should doubt.

... hey! - you skipped a bunch of steps! ... no fair!!! Wink

... anyhoo, we would have eventually gotten there ... there's only so much "ground truth" before you begin postulating things such as "other" and "reality" ... as you point out, these things can easily be doubted ... and doubt is the point at which "ground truth" ends and "belief" begins, yes? ...

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... hey! - you skipped a bunch of steps! ... no fair!!! ... anyhoo, we would have eventually gotten there ... there's only so much "ground truth" before you begin postulating things such as "other" and "reality" ... as you point out, these things can easily be doubted ... and doubt is the point at which "ground truth" ends and "belief" begins, yes? ...

I don't understand what you are getting at. We can certainly doubt our experiences, as the example I just gave you proves.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

I don't understand what you are getting at. We can certainly doubt our experiences, as the example I just gave you proves.

... we cannot doubt that we experience ... on the other hand, we can doubt that our experience corresponds to something ... thus, the knowledge that we experience is not based in belief, whereas the knowledge of what our experience corresponds to is based in belief ... as Nicholas Rescher points out:

Quote:

... we need a postulate of an objective order of mind-independent reality for at least six important reasons:

1. To preserve the distinction between true and false with respect to factual matters and to operate the idea of truth as agreement with reality
2. To preserve the distinction between appearance and reality, between our picture of reality and reality itself
3. To serve as a basis for intersubjective communication
4. To furnish the basis for a shared project of communal inquiry
5. To provide for the fallibalistic view of human knowledge
6. To sustain the causal mode of learning and inquiry and to serve as a basis for the objectivity of experience

(from Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues)

In other words, just to communicate with others, we must first believe in an external reality ... and thus in order to do science, we must first believe in an external reality (science is not science if we do not communicate our experimental results to others for independent corroboration!) ... science can give us powerful reasons for believing one thing about this external reality as opposed to believing something else - but at the end of the day just about everything we call "knowledge" sits atop a foundation of belief.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

You do? But you can trust someone and be wrong because he is mistaken, or he is lying to you. But can you know something and be wrong? I don't think so. So, "I know" cannot mean that you trust someone. You may claim to know because you trust someone. But that can be a very weak reason for claiming to know because you are trusting the wrong person. And if people know that when you claim to know, all you mean is that you trust someone, it will not be long before they cease to trust you as a reliable source of knowledge.

kennethamy, you and I have been going in these circles, and I suggested we start at the beginning and go forward in small steps because we are apparently using the same words while assigning different meanings to those words. I had recommended that we first define "knowledge," and your post, here, indicates that you define it differently than I do. So, please, can we just get clear on one fundamental point at a time?

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

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... we cannot doubt that we experience ... on the other hand, we can doubt that our experience corresponds to something ... thus, the knowledge that we experience is not based in belief, whereas the knowledge of what our experience corresponds to is based in belief ... as Nicholas Rescher points out:

(from Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues)

In other words, just to communicate with others, we must first believe in an external reality ... and thus in order to do science, we must first believe in an external reality (science is not science if we do not communicate our experimental results to others for independent corroboration!) ... science can give us powerful reasons for believing one thing about this external reality as opposed to believing something else - but at the end of the day just about everything we call "knowledge" sits atop a foundation of belief.

I have sometimes thought that I experienced something when, it turns out that I never had that experience. Sometimes people confuse something that they dreamed with something that actually happened to them. And sometimes things happen so fast that people think that something occurred which never did. There are psychological experiments that show that.

but at the end of the day just about everything we call "knowledge" sits atop a foundation of belief.

Yes, you keep insisting that is true even while I point out that our beliefs are often confirmed by sense-knowledge and logic, so that they are not just faith, which apparently is what you think they are. You really should distinguish between "faith" and "belief", since you systematically confuse them.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

I have sometimes thought that I experienced something when, it turns out that I never had that experience.

... when we started from "ground zero" we were limiting our scope to the immediate present, where you can experience things like a "thought that I experienced something when, it turns out that I never had the experience" ... the immediate-present experience you speak of is the experience of "misremembering" ... what this immediate-present experience allows us to doubt is memory ... so even our own past is something that requires some level of belief, yes? Wink

kennethamy wrote:

Yes, you keep insisting that is true even while I point out that our beliefs are often confirmed by sense-knowledge and logic, so that they are not just faith, which apparently is what you think they are. You really should distinguish between "faith" and "belief", since you systematically confuse them.

... actually, I have no problem with such a distinction ... belief in an external reality that is often predictable yet occasionally surprising; belief that my memory is a reasonably accurate representation of my past experiences; and so on ... these are all beliefs that are firmly grounded in induction ... I see a teacup and decide to take a sip - and for the most part this works (with a remote chance that I am careless and spill, or my wife beats me to it and I go wanting) ... likewise, I see a face that I remember and call the remembered name I associate with that face and (again, for the most part) receive a smile in return ... the consistency of these things (as well as the occasional inconsistency!) is what leads me to certain beliefs about them ... science is the formalization and socialization of this instinctive procedure ... on the other hand, religious faith is a whole 'nother story entirely!

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... when we started from "ground zero" we were limiting our scope to the immediate present,

The same thing can happen in the immediate present.

... actually, I have no problem with such a distinction ... belief in an external reality that is often predictable yet occasionally surprising; belief that my memory is a reasonably accurate representation of my past experiences; and so on ... these are all beliefs that are firmly grounded in induction ... I see a teacup and decide to take a sip - and for the most part this works (with a remote chance that I am careless and spill, or my wife beats me to it and I go wanting) ... likewise, I see a face that I remember and call the remembered name I associate with that face and (again, for the most part) receive a smile in return ... the consistency of these things (as well as the occasional inconsistency!) is what leads me to certain beliefs about them ... science is the formalization and socialization of this instinctive procedure ... on the other hand, religious faith is a whole 'nother story entirely!

when we started from "ground zero" we were limiting our scope to the immediate present,

The same thing can happen in the immediate present.

I don't think I understand what you are getting at in your final paragraph. My point (to repeat) is that although all faith is belief, not all belief is faith. And what you call "religious faith" is not something all those who have it maintain without supporting reasons (although some do). But I did not think that this discussion was confined to religious faith anyway. I thought the view being expressed was that all knowledge "rests" on faith. And that seems to me clearly false.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

I don't think I understand what you are getting at in your final paragraph. My point (to repeat) is that although all faith is belief, not all belief is faith. And what you call "religious faith" is not something all those who have it maintain without supporting reasons (although some do). But I did not think that this discussion was confined to religious faith anyway. I thought the view being expressed was that all knowledge "rests" on faith. And that seems to me clearly false.

... and so we're back to debating over the meaning attributed to selected arrangements of letters as opposed to the meaning itself:

faith

/feɪθ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation

http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif

[feyth] Show IPA Pronunciation

-noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. 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.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

... Dicanthelium considers the first definition, and so "belief" and "faith" are synonyms (and went as far as offering to replace "faith" with "belief" earlier in this thread) ... you consider the second definition, and so faith is the "unproved" subset of belief (as if you can "prove" a belief? - someone needs to fix that dictionary!) ... I tried to stay out of this argument by using the phrase "religious faith" in an attempt to make an uncontroversial distinction, but got caught in the quagmire anyway ... bummer ...

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... maybe ... but maybe not ... let's start at a "ground zero" of sorts and see where it leads ... "I trust that I experience." ... can you doubt this? ... I can't ... so this is "self-evident" knowledge ... let's keep going ... "I trust that I experience both voluntarily and involuntarily. Voluntary experience I can control and so I call 'imagination'; involuntary experience I can interact with and I just call 'experience'." ... can you doubt this? ... again, I can't ... your turn

I'll try to follow this one step at a time.

"I trust that I experience."

Is this the same as saying:

"I assume I exist, and I assume the world exists, and I assume that I am experiencing the phenomena of the world via my senses."

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

Is this the same as saying:

"I assume I exist, and I assume the world exists, and I assume that I am experiencing the phenomena of the world via my senses."

... nope - that's making assumptive leaps that that can only be derived from the initial statement "I trust that I experience" plus the content of that experience ... for example:

I trust that I experience and certain elements of that experience surprise me - so either I have a subconscious that can invent things that surprise me, or else there is an external reality through which I move and discover surprising things ... now, if I had a subconscious that could invent things that surprise me, here's what it would have to be capable of inventing:

- language (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and so on)
- mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, calculus, topology, and so on)
- science (particle physics, chemistry, biology, and so on)
- religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and so on)
- every book that was ever written (Nichomachean Ethics, the Bible, and so on)
- technology (bikes, cars, cell phones, and so on)
- the experience of learning something new (learning to speak, learning to read, learning to ride a bike)
- and on and on and on ...

This incredible subconscious is all seeing all knowing all powerful - a creator God ... so applying Occam's Razor, I choose to believe that there is an external reality through which I move and discover surprising things.

@paulhanke,

paulhanke wrote:

... nope - that's making assumptive leaps that that can only be derived from the initial statement "I trust that I experience" plus the content of that experience ... for example:

I trust that I experience and certain elements of that experience surprise me - so either I have a subconscious that can invent things that surprise me, or else there is an external reality through which I move and discover surprising things ... now, if I had a subconscious that could invent things that surprise me, here's what it would have to be capable of inventing:
...
This incredible subconscious is all seeing all knowing all powerful - a creator God ... so applying Occam's Razor, I choose to believe that there is an external reality through which I move and discover surprising things.

Not sure I follow the God part, but that would seem to be different discussion. In any case, I think we are agreeing that we have no choice but to begin with some kind of awareness that cannot be doubted. "I trust that I experience" is a reasonable place to start, though, I suppose one might argue that I have to have developed a concept of myself as a sentient being before I can make that statement. There is another problem. It's quite possible that the "I" is already full of pre-suppositions of what it means to be an "I" by the time he or she addresses the thought, "I trust that I experience." Then there is the problem of the definition of "trust" and "experience." Tedious, perhaps, but if we are going to agree on a starting point, it may be necessary.

@Dichanthelium,

Dichanthelium wrote:

"I trust that I experience" is a reasonable place to start, though, I suppose one might argue that I have to have developed a concept of myself as a sentient being before I can make that statement. There is another problem. It's quite possible that the "I" is already full of pre-suppositions of what it means to be an "I" by the time he or she addresses the thought, "I trust that I experience." Then there is the problem of the definition of "trust" and "experience." Tedious, perhaps, but if we are going to agree on a starting point, it may be necessary.

I don't trust that I experience, I just am. I exist as far as I can tell, according to my senses and logic. Why would I trust my experience? Am I worried that I am insane and my perceptions may not be right? I think you are making this more complicated than it is.

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

I don't trust that I experience, I just am. I exist as far as I can tell, according to my senses and logic. Why would I trust my experience? Am I worried that I am insane and my perceptions may not be right? I think you are making this more complicated than it is.

Yeah, maybe so. Okay, let's see if we can get a general agreement about what it means to know something. I am not trying to define "human knowledge." I am only trying to define what I mean when I say, "I know." Again, this whole enterprise can seem ridiculous if we restrict our concern to mundane facts, but it gets to be pretty important as we move up into political, economic and sociological issues, not to mention scietific issues.

For example, I recall quite a few people asking, "Does Iraq pose a serious threat to the security of the US?"

So, how about this: "I know" means nothing else except, "I am familiar with something or I believe something to be true." The implications are (1) My belief may involve either high or low levels of familiarity and verifiability (though we tend to reserve "know" for those higher levels of verification). (2) Since knowing is basically a form of being familiar with something or believing (being convinced of the veracity of something), the knowing cannot occur unless I put my trust in something or somebody. Even if I verify, the verification itself depends, in turn, on me putting my trust in something or somebody.

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