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Russ Abbott

Re: faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God

the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief

the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R

A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Dean Gerber

Dean,

Yes, …. Agreed. However, on my understanding of the term faith (i.e., = belief), Ms Stem has beliefs … DOES beliefs, if you will … about the world. It believes, for instance, that nothing can be moved unless something else is fixed.

Smart, your lady stem. But faithful, all the same.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Dean Gerber
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 6:22 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

We are all fortunate indeed that we have this very primitive stem brain that is extremely perceptive of and extremely knowledgeable of the mostly predictable physical world. It is not distracted by all those "higher" issues, faith, belief, Yahweh, etc., we all endlessly try to wrestle to ground. It simply does its job, which is to protest us from the consequence of our of our own actions with that physical world; and to quickly intervene when we are not paying attention and are soon to either die or be seriously harmed.

I allow my razor sharp chef's knife to fall over the edge of my counter-top toward my bare feet directly below the plunging knife. Ms. Stem jerks the proper foot, the one that would have been pierced, out of the way, using the other foot, the one that would not have been pierced, to create a stable structure against which the perfect jerk can operate. All this happens before I am even aware the knife has fallen. Ms. Stem employs some might poweful computations to figure all his out, and this case can take immediate action, the proper reflex (the leg jerk) whether I liked it or not.

I think in your case, Ms. Stem had it all figured out well before things turned critical, but she does not know how to steer your motorcycle. When she evolved to her current talent, there were no motorcycles, but there were plunging objects, and yes cliffs. Along the way, fortunately for us, and by "us" I mean our Cerebellae, she can send us messages, like "move left" (you idiot, you are about to go over a cliff). To your credit, your particular Cerebellum got the message an took appropriate actions. That goodness for that. And a special note of appreciation to Ms. Stem. Nothing for God, Yaweh, premonition, ESP, Guardian Angel or other figments of our Cerebellae.

--Dean Gerber

From: Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

I'm not prone to experiencing "premonitions". Additional factoid: I ride paranoid because they *are* out to get me.

Yet, the day before yesterday as I was heading south down to Santa Fe on the GSA1200, my premonition organ wiggled, and a voice inside my head said, "I sense danger." Like somebody who rides paranoid needs to hear that, right?

So I went from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4. Twenty seconds later at the very next traffic light in Pojoaque a northbound duelly pickup truck turned suddenly, unexpectedly left into the intersection across my path, smack ass dab right in front of me. Had the little voice in my head not spoken, I would have been grill hamburger. As it was, I had engaged that extra little bit of defense which gave the margin I needed to miss him.

We won't even go into the bit about the fat guy on the Harley who was going to follow the truck through the intersection, and who nearly fell off his bike in the process of aborting.

Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dave -

Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and more aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.

Inarguable reasoning Dave... I commend you. Unfortunately I slipped behind the curve on my self-image regarding smart+aware a while back.   It may be early onset wisdom or late-stage cynicism...

It *was* my youthful idealism that had me quite willing to hurtle down the highways with nothing between me and the road except a few feet (or inches) of air and maybe a 1/8 or less of leather.   I was supremely confident in my own smartness and awareness as the perfect antidote to all challengers.

<Anecdote> For example, one evening just after dusk 30+ years ago, I was hurtling down Interstate 17 in the right lane (like a good doobie since I was roughly traveling at the speed limit and was not passing anyone) when something made me think I needed to get into the left lane... I checked mirrors, hit my turns, looked over my shoulder, and drifted left only to realize that the right lane was no longer there (well, most of it anyway). I stopped quickly and backtracked to find that in fact over half of the right lane had sloughed off into the canyon in a mudslide. I went back "upstream" a hundred yards facing traffic with headlight and flashers in the right lane and pulled over the first two cars who I left to pass the word along and went on my way (I still had 7 hours riding ahead of me that night).

Those with "Faith" might say that "God spoke to me". I simply believe that my cultivated awareness hinted to me that something was amiss up ahead (missing guardrail in my headlights? Dark abyss below my threshold of consciousness? Had I heard or felt something over engine/road vibrations?)... Today I'm pretty sure I would just hurtle off the end of the pavement with a goofy puzzled expression of WTF?

</Anecdote>

And if the world is not interested in harming me, why did it give me a death sentence?

I'm pretty sure that despite the world's total disinterest in me (and by extension you), that death sentence is a blessing compared to some of the alternatives (read your Utopian/Dystopian literature for references). Of course, I just might be spending too much time juggling failing parents up and down the halls of nursing homes.

- Steve

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

Nick Thompson

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley

Robert,

For a pragmatist, the meaning of faith is in what it gets you do, not in its
content in the ordinary sense. So, under this understanding, Faith would
apply to behavior of people within institutions and faith would apply to
less public acts. I guess.

N

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 7:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I have
faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The expected action
can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief from pain,
reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms of divine
intervention.

But then if atheists have a faith in a non-divine universe then they also
expect non-action, hmm.

Robert C
PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some liquids).
R

On 9/24/12 5:16 PM, glen wrote:

> It does seem that we've come to some agreement on the meaning of the
> word. It seems basically centered around Nick's original usage: faith
> is a kind of short circuit for justification. Steve's "faith" only
> short circuits a little bit, whereas his "Faith" short circuits a lot.
> The same could be said of Russ'.
>
> We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less
> compressible than Faith.
>
> But I think Robert's point is somehow crucial because it gets at what
> I want. The idea that faith implies something about acting in the
> face of uncertainty.
>
> When we take something on [F|f]aith, we're implying that the truth or
> falsity of the thing we're taking on [f|F]aith has an impact on the
> outcome, whereas a mere belief can have no impact on outcome. This
> includes ends justified indeterminates like "I'll kill you because I
> have faith that God wants me to kill you." Even though we may never
> determine the truth or falsity of their article of faith, if that
> person later came to believe the negation, guilt or repentance is the
> different consequence.
>
> This sounds like the beginning of a measure we might use to
> distinguish faith from other types of thoughts. Some thoughts might be

"no-ops"

> whereas some have an effect. Even if we factor out all the
> subjectivity, intention, consciousness hoo-ha, we might be able to say
> something like: incompressible processes (all shortcuts that can be
> taken have been taken -- i.e. Faith) are less expressive (or flexible,
> or adaptable) than compressible processes. This might match up with
> other measures being used in neuroscience and/or psychology.
>
> We might also be able to apply some graph theory in the sense that
> some actions in a causal network will be more like cut points than others.
> If a graph has high connectivity, the uncertainty surrounding any
> given action matters much less than that surrounding something on the
> critical path. I know that, personally, I'd be much more likely to
> invoke and talk about "faith" when considering a cut-point action as
> opposed to one that had plenty of low-hanging fruit alternatives.
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Russ Abbott

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God

· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief

· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R

A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

Douglas Roberts-2

Re: faith

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God
· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief
· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.
That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R
A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Victoria Hughes

Re: faith

Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.

Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters, and the table-pounding.

After October 10.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?
-Doug
Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence
· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God
· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists
· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists
· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief
· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:
Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.
That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R
A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Douglas Roberts-2

Re: faith

Worksforme.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:34 PM, "Victoria Hughes" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters, and the table-pounding.
After October 10.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug
Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God
· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief
· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.
That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R
A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Victoria Hughes

Re: fripm

Fripm October 12.

When worlds collide.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:39 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Worksforme.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:34 PM, "Victoria Hughes" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters, and the table-pounding.
After October 10.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?
-Doug
Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence
· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God
· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists
· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists
· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief
· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:
Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.
That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R
A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Douglas Roberts-2

Re: fripm

Actually reading "Juggler of Worlds" right now. Second in Niven's Fleet of Worlds Ringworld prequils.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:46 PM, "Victoria Hughes" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Fripm October 12.
When worlds collide.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:39 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
Worksforme.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:34 PM, "Victoria Hughes" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters, and the table-pounding.
After October 10.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug
Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God
· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief
· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.
That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R
A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2

Doug I look forward to hearing your HAWG roll through the gates of St. Johns College. Bring Steve. N

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 11:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God

· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief

· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R

Douglas Roberts-2

Re: faith

I'm gonna need a bigger rear tire if Steve's on the back...

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug I look forward to hearing your HAWG roll through the gates of St. Johns College. Bring Steve. N

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 11:28 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?
-Doug

Sent from Android.
On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God
· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief
· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.
That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R
A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

Steve Smith

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

N -

Doug I look forward to hearing your HAWG roll through the gates of St. Johns College. Bring Steve. N

Wow! What an image!

Doug's Monster BMW Dual Sport with a bungee cord attached to my 30 year old mountain bike with a homebuilt electric motor that hasn't worked in 10 years wheezing (me wheezing, the bike clanking) along behind, slingshotting ahead as we pull through the gates. The wonders of elastic cords!

I'm (a)bating my breath to see if Doug reacts to his sleek EuroMachine being referred to by a term (HAWG) usually reserved for that symbol of (misplaced?) Murrican patriotism, the Harley Davidson.

My father bought a wartime surplus Harley when he returned from WWII, had a grand good time stripping the military paintjob and repainting it only to have two scary accidents within a few months (civilian turning left in front of him, mechanical failure in the drive sprocket) which put him off the whole business.

I didn't hear any of this until after I bought my first bike (a 2-stroke rice burner from the early 70's)... I think he was trying to put me off the idea as well... it only fueled my passion to prove him wrong of course. Going through their household possessions recently, I discovered a picture of him at 22 on that fat Hawg with a handlebar mustache that I could never match. I guess he gets the last laugh. Actually these days it is more of a giggle.

We look forward to your own return Nick... if I stay in town long enough, I might even drag my sorry ass out to St Johnnies for a slug of Joe with you guys (do they still serve Joe, or is it all fancy Italian named stuff these days?).    That was the biggest thing I missed in Italy while I was there, real coffee! (wince)

- Steve

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 11:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God

· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief

· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R

A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

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============================================================
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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: faith

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

My father bought a wartime surplus Harley when he returned from WWII, had a grand good time stripping the military paintjob and repainting it only to have two scary accidents within a few months (civilian turning left in front of him, mechanical failure in the drive sprocket) which put him off the whole business.

I was going to bring up our faith in machines to continue to work as intended, despite our contrary experience. There's nothing quite like a 2 wheeler that becomes a 1-1/2 or 1 wheeler at any velocity worth mentioning.

-- rec --

Steve Smith

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2

Doug -

I've done at least a hundred thousand miles on a bike but I'm pretty sure I've never been on the back of one. Just run the pressure up to 100lbs and set your shocks on high... it will be fine.

As an aside (imagine that), as much as I like a warm woman clutching me around the torso, I've always encouraged and taught my women to own and ride their own bikes (if they didn't come with those skills and predelections)... I mostly don't get that Hawg Troll thing (except maybe the tatoos, or the skimpy leather outfits or the whiskey-tobacco voices or ... on second thought... hmm).

Nick -

You will recognize us by the motorcycle worth more than all of my vehicles put together and the sparks flying from the tail dragging on the pavement (though I suspect Doug will bounce me off somewhere before we even get to Tesuque).

- Steve

I'm gonna need a bigger rear tire if Steve's on the back...

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Doug I look forward to hearing your HAWG roll through the gates of St. Johns College. Bring Steve. N

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 11:28 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM meeting. Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Russ,

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right? Notice that all these meanings have to do with God. If SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the word. Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here; I perhaps am not following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe. This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as listing these senses of "faith."

· the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential confidence

· the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God

· the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

· the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

· the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists

· the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment without belief

· the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list illustrates) we (in English) use the word "faith" to mean a number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with "faith" in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm concerned. But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism.

and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.

-- Russ

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

> But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
> have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part. The
> expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
> from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
> of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out. The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called "faith". That's because the word "faith" is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. "faith" is a label used to identify especially important
components. Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

> PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
> process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
> liquids). R

A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system. Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

--
glen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Steve Smith

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Roger -

And I think that is why Doug chooses a sleek German-Engineered machine over one of those big-iron sculptures you used to see on the side of the road being fiddled with... (now that they cost more than a Prius and only Doctors and Lawyers own them, that has changed a little). I have mostly been a Honda man with a few Yamahas and Suzuki's thrown in for spice.... I came within an inch of buying a Ducati Elefant once, but I've never had any of my old, worn out Jap bikes fail me! Of course, it is harder to ignore warning signs of problems on a motorcycle... if you hear a noise or feel a shimmy, you just look down, it is all right there threatening to come apart in your lap... fluid leaks end up ON you... etc. And that paranoia Dave and Doug profess, it goes double for "I wonder if I should repack that wheel bearing?".

But your point is well taken. In this discussion of "faith" (still in the subject line!), I'm amazed at how much the most faithless take on "blind faith" about such things. I marvel at the strength of materials and quality of design and workmanship on the simplest things *all the time* and I know I'm missing most of it. That 5000 lb Camp Trailer hung off the back of your truck by a 2" ball (with a 1" neck)? Amazing! Truly Amazing! And we haven't even talked about light planes (recently) yet!

- Steve

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

My father bought a wartime surplus Harley when he returned from WWII, had a grand good time stripping the military paintjob and repainting it only to have two scary accidents within a few months (civilian turning left in front of him, mechanical failure in the drive sprocket) which put him off the whole business.

I was going to bring up our faith in machines to continue to work as intended, despite our contrary experience. There's nothing quite like a 2 wheeler that becomes a 1-1/2 or 1 wheeler at any velocity worth mentioning.

-- rec --
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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glen ropella

witness as intervention (was Faith)

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Prof David West wrote at 09/22/2012 09:00 AM:

>
> On Thu, Sep 20, 2012, at 10:24 AM, glen wrote:
>
>>
>> Here's an honest and personal question to make the ethics concrete:
>> Should I have intervened?
>>
> clearly a tough question - given the state of society, the prevalence of
> guns and predisposition to use them, and the potential for alcohol or
> other substance abuse - not an easy decision. The "official" response
> is no, report it to someone who has the "authority" to intervene. I
> would have made my silent presence as witness obvious - but would not
> have actively intervened.

FWIW, that's what I did. Since the old jalopy they keep covered in
canvas is only ~ 10 ft from my side door, I'm fairly certain the
daughter, who was hiding behind the piece of junk, saw me standing there
with the door open. I have no idea if the dad saw me.

I also used that trick with a "kid" who was shooting off bottle rockets
in the field behind the house awhile back. (I say "kid" because he
looks about 20 yrs old, but has a similarly young wife and a baby. Say
what you will about hicks, at least we breed young before the
probabilities for things like autism rise too high.) A beefy, bald,
beer-bellied, yahoo elsewhere in the neighborhood began yelling about
how this is his neighborhood and if they don't stop shooting fireworks,
he was gonna come out there and break the kid's back. Yaddayaddayadda.
So, I went and stood next to them without saying anything. They all
gradually quieted down and dispersed.

It's almost like the mere fact that there was another human (as opposed
to a camera) witnessing their silliness was enough of an intervention to
re-orient their behaviors.

That goes _directly_ back to the point that population density is
probably the critical variable in discussions of how others raise their
kids.

--
glen

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: witness as intervention (was Faith)

On 9/25/12 12:39 PM, glen wrote:
> That goes _directly_ back to the point that population density is
> probably the critical variable in discussions of how others raise
> their kids.
Cuts both ways. One question is whether the quiet presence is
representative of the community or if it represents a minority view.

Consider a hypothetical female couple, well-paid, and taxpaying Stanford
and MIT PhDs, who move out to the country and home school and
telecommute. "Those boys are forced to have girly hair and their moms
vote for the communist party.." etc. Victims of that particular
majority -- it has less to distract it, so some provincial meddling
results.

Marcus

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glen ropella

Re: witness as intervention (was Faith)

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 09/25/2012 12:51 PM:
> Consider a hypothetical female couple, well-paid, and taxpaying Stanford
> and MIT PhDs, who move out to the country and home school and
> telecommute. "Those boys are forced to have girly hair and their moms
> vote for the communist party.." etc. Victims of that particular
> majority -- it has less to distract it, so some provincial meddling
> results.

Precisely. The silent witness can be interpreted by the participants.
My guess would be that this hypothetical couple would stand their ground
on the one hand (toward the meddlers) and defend their decisions and
behavior. And they'd likely, on the other hand, explain to their boys
that they might be in the minority in that community and the boys should
be prepared to recognize any sources of friction that may result.

In my context, I would seriously _love_ for the macho dad next door to
explain to me why he raises his children the way he does (something I
never had explicitly laid out by my dad ... though I came to understand
it anyway, I think -- whereas my sister still lives with that legacy on
a daily basis).

I'd also have _loved_ to see either party in the fireworks dispute to
formally launch a duel of some kind to settle their differences. It
could be anything from scouring the city ordinances to fisticuffs, for
all I care. But this shamedly quieting down and wandering off thing
struck me as evidence that both of them _knew_ they were behaving
antisocially and came to regret it.

Ultimately, the _nest_ comes down hard and ruthless on those living in it.

--
glen

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Sarbajit Roy (testing)

Re: Faith

In reply to this post by Russ Abbott

Dear Russ

1. Religion / faith is not something which can be "bought", although
the US Televangelists who buy cheap advertising on my cable TV
channels to sell me JEEEESSSSSUSSS at 4:00 a.m may disagree.

2. "Buddhism is a religion indigenous to the Indian sub-continent"
(per wikipedia).

3. BUDDHUISM is a religion exogenous to the Indian sub-continent.
(per Sarbajit)
(FYI - The word buddhu means "fool, "idiot" or "moron ")

4. Western Buddhists are buddhus who by doing deep scholarly research
on fragments of bark containing the secrets of the Wise (Amida )
Buddha allegedly written 600 years after his death in 500 BCE (or was
it 400 BCE ?) think they "know" everything. These are the same Buddhus
who after looking at a dinosaur's bones conclude that dinosaurs had a
brain in their butt.

5. A Religion / Faith has to be experienced in its setting. Shifting
the setting causes it to lose its essence in translation. In computer
terms, the software is non-portable.

6. Whatever you chose to call it, there is no such thing as "modern"
Buddhism. Western (presumably United States of America Western)
Buddhuism is the concoction of tripped out frauds (who "experienced"
India/Nepal) and ranks on the same ersatz plane as American Chopsuey
and Chicken Tikka Masala. .

PS: Does (your ?) Western Buddhism model include "rebirth" ?

Sarbajit

On 9/23/12, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I'm not really buying that. My sense of modern (and especially western)
> Buddhism seems pretty God-free.
>
> *-- Russ Abbott*
> *_____________________________________________*
> *** Professor, Computer Science*
> * California State University, Los Angeles*
>
> * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688*
> * Google voice: 747-*999-5105
> Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
> * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
> CS Wiki <http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/> and the courses I teach
> *_____________________________________________*
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 10:29 AM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Buddhism may not have "a God" but Buddhism belief has "gods" who are
>> superior beings existing at various planes of existence. Their gods,
>> called "Devas", apparently exist at the highest plane of existence
>> well above humans, and animals, and various beings condemned
>> in past lives to inhabit hell (the lowest planes). Buddhism's "demons"
>> called "Asuras" occupy another zone.
>>
>> However, in Zorastrianism, conversely the gods are called "Ahuras" and
>> the demons are called "Daevas" (root terms of devil):
>>
>> So it seems possible that all these zones / planes are actually
>> political statements referring to events in some hoary past at an
>> indeterminate location.
>> http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/religion.htm
>> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20583/20583-h/20583-h.htm
>> (page 287)
>>
>> Re: Buddhism as a religion:
>> BTW: Are we referring to "God" as "creator- God" ?
>>
>> On 9/23/12, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> > Thanks, Sarbajit. As I understand it Buddhism does not have a God. Does
>> > that mean you would not classify it as a religion?
>> >
>> > -- Russ
>> >
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>>
>

Sarbajit Roy (testing)

Re: faith

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

It would take the inverse form

Faith is absolute acceptance whereas Belief is limited/conditional acceptance.

So Russ may have belief in X without having faith in it.

eg.
"Russ believes that his old and broken down motorcycle "can" take him
from A to B, but he doesn't have faith that it "will""

On 9/24/12, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Russ,
>
> I take your point, but still, I would have a hard time composing a sentence
> of the form, " Russ has faith in X but he doesn't believe in it." Can you
> compose such a sentence for me?
>
> N
>
>
>
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf
> Of Russ Abbott
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 12:42 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
>
>
> As I understand your position the words "faith" and "belief" are synonyms.
> I
> would prefer a definition for "faith" that distinguishes it from "belief."
>
>
>
> Tory,
>
>
>
> Thanks for you comment on my posts. I'm glad you enjoy them.
>
>
>
> My definition of faith makes use of the notion of the everyday world. But
> I'm not saying that the everyday world is the same for everyone. Your
> everyday world may be different from mine. I'm just saying that believing
> that the world will continue to conform to your sense of what the everyday
> world is like is not faith; it's simple belief.
>
>
>
> Eric,
>
>
>
> I would take "having faith in something" in the colloquial sense as
> different from "faith" in a religious context, which is what I was focusing
> on.
>
>
>
>
> -- Russ
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Russ wrote, in part-
>
>
>
> Faith, I would say (in fact I did earlier)
>
>
>
>
>
> is believing something that one wouldn't otherwise believe without faith.
>
>
>
>
>
> Believing that the everyday world is the everyday world
>
>
>
>
>
> doesn't seem to me to require faith.
>
>
>
> Russ, with all due respect for the enjoyment I get from your posts, I find
> this suspiciously tautological.
>
>
>
> Who are you to define for the rest of humanity (and other sentient life
> forms) what 'the everyday world' incorporates? Numerous 'for instance'
> cases
> can immediately be made here. All you can do is define what you believe for
> yourself. You cannot extrapolate what is defensible for others to believe,
> from your own beliefs.
>
>
>
> And this statement ' Faith is believing something that one wouldn't believe
> without faith'. Hm and hm again.
>
>
>
> Eagleman's new book Incognito
> <http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928/r
> ef=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348460523&sr=1-1&keywords=incognito+by+david+
> eagleman> offers fruitful information from recent neuroscience that may
> interest others on this list. His ultimate sections bring up hard questions
> about legal and ethical issues in the face of the myriad 'zombie programs'
> that run most of our behaviour. This looks like - but is not as simplistic
> as - 'yet another pop science book.'
>
>
>
> A review David Eagleman's
> <http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/david_eaglemans.ht
> ml> "Incognito" - Brainiac
>
>
>
> Tory
>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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