Re: faith

Posted by Eric Charles on Sep 24, 2012; 12:13am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Faith-tp7580633p7580672.html

Since this thread is still going... Curt said:
"Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't have to track every one exactly."
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Exactly!

It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking, etc. It is faith when you get out of bed without checking to see that the ground is still there. The actions themselves entail the faith; they do not result from faith, they are the faith. An interesting additional issue is when we do and do not explicitly talk about the things we have faith in. It might also be an additional issue on what basis some people have faith in a "super-natural" "higher-power". (Both scare-quotes seem necessary, because pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most people have faith in things they don't have natural explanations for, but we seem to be focusing primarily on the times when those faiths overlap.) 

Eric

P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do you know Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a great article for a journal issue I am putting together.

P.P.S. The notion of "blind" faith is really very modern. Certainly it was not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was primarily supported by experiential evidence. "Behold the wonders," "experience God in every blade of grass," "check out this amazing cathedral," "our army won," etc. The fact that we sometimes meaningfully talk about "blind faith" seems to indicate that the normal meaning of the term "faith" is not inherently blind.



On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, Curt McNamara <[hidden email]> wrote:

I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?) that it would go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for a distraction from grading has drawn me back into its basin of (strange) attraction.

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't have to track every one exactly.
Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the Control of Perception.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory" onclick="window.open('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory');return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory

Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be true tomorrow. These models have been built over time by hypothesis, testing, and adjustment (toddler and stairs example).

               Curt

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Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

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