Eric,
Peirce enthusiastically ridicules the notion of a tentative belief. My guess is that he would also ridicule the notion that we can decide to believe in something. But there is some sort of experience of local belief, I think. In context A I believe X whereas in contest B I belief Y, even though the two beliefs are incoherent. So, I might believe in God when in church but not when at the pool table; or vice versa, for that matter. I guess I am beginning to conceive of a landscape of belief, where some territories are owned by some beliefs and other territories are owned by others. What philosophers try to do is the conceptual equivalent of empire building … Anschlus. To conquer the entire map with one, super ordinate, belief system. The Third Reich of the Mind. But no belief is half-hearted. It’s just that some beliefs cover a lot less territory than others.
N
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 8:12 AM
To: Russ Abbott
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith
"By 'inadequate' I mean inadequate according to that person's normal way of deciding what to believe."
But... Again I am confused... and admittedly being confused is often a step on the way to understanding...
Who have you ever known who believed in God, and that belief was not "normal", i.e. typical-for-them. I am not sure how you (as a third party) or I (as a first party) could determine which of my belief's were arrived at in the normal-way-by-which-I-arrive-at-beliefs. I also suspect that if we did arrive at such a criterion, the things I believe by faith would be quite random, and of little interest - for example, I am not sure on what basis I believe I probably missed the last episode of So You Think You Can Dance, but I believe I could probably Torrent it, and I believe it would make my wife happily, though I also believe NBC should make it available for free a bit after it airs. Which of those came by the normal means?
If we are returning to the start of this conversation (or at least what I think was the start of this thread), my belief that there is NOT a Judeo-Christian God is a bit a-typical for me, and likely by your criterion is a kind of Faith. There are lots of things I don't believe in, which other people seem to believe in (e.g., dictionaries), but I have pretty good reasons not to believe in those (e.g., the historic inaccuracy of the assertion that words have one and only one spelling).
Eric
P.S. I am not sure how crucial the word "decide" is to your point. I would argue, one does not typically "decide" what to believe. That is, the developmental process that forms the majority of our beliefs is not adequately characterized by the term "decide". Beliefs we consciously decided upon are surely a special case.
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 01:13 AM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric, For people for whom God is a normal part of their everyday world, faith is not an issue. They simply know whatever it is that they know. It's not matter of faith any more than it's a matter of faith that I'm typing on a keyboard right now.
I mentioned religion because that's where the discussion of faith started. (I think it did anyway.) But my definition of faith does not require religion; it only requires that one believe something for which one has inadequate reason for believing it -- other than one's faith that it's the case. By "inadequate" I mean inadequate according to that person's normal way of deciding what to believe. I don't want to impose any particular epidemiological perspective on anyone.
Nick, I think it's the other way around. As Eric said, faith is a subclass of belief. Faith is a belief you hold for reasons outside your normal epidemiological processes, i.e., a belief you hold that you would not hold were it not for your faith in that belief.
Steve, Your post is too long for me to comment on it here.
-- Russ Abbott
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California State University, Los Angeles
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On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:58 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[hidden email]> wrote:
But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite stuck.
There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world contains a divine being... and the everyday world is the everyday world. There are people who train hard to see God surrounding them, and there are people for whom it seems to come quite naturally (which is not to say it didn't develop, just that it came easily). For these people, by your definition, belief in God, and belief that God will continue to be with them forever, are NOT issues of faith.
Eric
P.S. I have no idea what Nick will say about "faith" vs. "belief"! I think the concepts overlap pretty obviously, i.e., faith seems like it should be a subclass of belief. On the other hand, one could treat them as two different ways of talking about the same sort of thing. If we can get past your odd claim that faith has to be religious AND that religious things are not part of everyday life, I would be very interested to know how you think the two relate.
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 12:41 AM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote: