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A lack of belief does not constitute a belief. But a lack of belief based on something constitutes a belief in your basis to disbelieve. So if you have a reason to disbelieve then you have a new belief, namely the thing that made you rule out the belief. |
This is not a criticism of you, in particular--I'm as guilty as anyone--but sometimes in these kinds of discussions, I fear that things get a little bit lost in the verbiage.
You say that "a lack of belief based on something constitutes a belief in your basis to disbelieve." Hmm... well, with the phrase "a lack of belief based on something," I wonder. In regards to my view on atheism, I would say, rather, that I have a lack of belief based on... nothing. Nothing, here, standing in for the lack of "evidence" or "sound reason," things I normally insist on for those things I believe in.
So, I think that my "lack of belief" in god is similar to your "lack of belief" in a million possible entities that no one has ever yet proposed, but that someone could propose and then insist could theoretically exist. For instance, the Sperzitt I created in my last reply.
Now, the phrase "a belief in your basis to disbelieve"... maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but I ask myself, what is my basis to disbelieve? And I guess what it is, is that I believe in my own ability to assess evidence, to reason, to make observations, etc. (Incidentally, what choice is there in that? Even someone who theoretically disbelieves in his own ability to reason will... be trusting in his ability to make that determination.)
So... it sounds to me that maybe you're suggesting that I have "faith" in my ability to do things like think critically. At which point, I start having a hard time 1) connecting your "faith" with the way the term is used in nearly all practical settings, and 2) seeing a true separation in your worldview between belief based on faith, and belief based on, well, anything else; it all starts sounding like faith.
Rather, I believe that there are different categories for belief, and that a belief based on faith is a particular category, distinct from other types. There is belief based on the evidence of your senses and your ability to reason, and, however I would ultimately wind up defining it, "faith" is something that is not that. (It could be a call on mystical forms of knowing--"the evidence of things not seen"; or, as I suggested in my TV Guide example, a belief in something that seems to be directly contradicted by the evidence of your senses; etc.)
Now, all of this will depend upon and demand certain things that come beforehand, such as that there is "sense data," that people can interpret it, and base judgements on it. And I contend that faith doesn't play any part here, because faith is a concept that has meaning once we have these necessary preconditions.
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First let me say this example is fundamentally different from what you are trying to make it analogous to. [...] The example attempts to highlight absurdity in the reasoning I'm using by showing that it produces an untenable standard when applied to an everyday example. |
Just want to touch briefly on these two comments. I wasn't consciously trying to construct a direct analogy to anything, but rather provide an accessible example to (hopefully) demonstrate the sense I have for some of the terms that we've been using.
I believe that language has its basis in our interactions with the world, and so all of these terms will ultimately have real-world applicability, whether we're talking about our position on god or television schedules.
Also, I wasn't trying to "highlight absurdity" in your reasoning; I wouldn't describe your reasoning as absurd, really. But I do think if we're going to come to philosophical conclusions, they should ultimately have something to do with life as it is actually lived. When debating skepticism with appolose, I made the point a few times that he couldn't actually live his life according to his stated beliefs (i.e. he must trust his senses all the time), and that just doesn't work for me. I want to eventually fashion a belief system that can actually, successfully be lived by.
Really, the point to my scenario was to demonstrate how I think all of these different aspects of belief/knowledge/whatever actually function.
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First let me say this example is fundamentally different from what you are trying to make it analogous to. Specifically this example used the TV Guide which has a long track record of delivering an accurate TV schedule in the vast majority of cases. With that said you do still use faith here in two ways. You have faith that no errors were made by the TV Guide staff, and you have faith that you read it correctly. Both of which are real possibilities even if in this example specifically they are minor possibilities. |
Again, this doesn't track with what I feel to be true of "faith." When you say that TV Guide has a track record, I find that track record to be a good justification of my belief that their current issue will be accurate. I don't think it's "faith" that leads me to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
You may say, "it's conceivable that the sun will not rise tomorrow morning," and I would agree with you (though, if it did not, I suspect that the responsible catastrophe would ensure that I'd never know it). Yet, I don't think that faith is involved.
For now, at least, I would use the word "trust." I'm sure that some would argue that this is a kind of semantic dodge, but I really don't think that it is. My trust, whether about the sun rising or TV Guide being accurate, is ultimately based on experience that I, myself, have had, and it's logical in the sense that it doesn't seem to contradict anything else that I believe to be true about the universe. I find "faith" at the root of beliefs that aren't based on people's own experiences, or that do seem to contradict that which is known.
Beyond that, in my example an error was made--by me, in thinking that the issue of TV Guide I was looking at was current. I'm not looking for a system of belief that is immune to error; I think that error is very well established, with a long and vibrant history in human affairs, and not leaving us anytime soon. My trust in the TV Guide incorporates the possibility of the things that you've suggested--that maybe I read too quickly, and misinterpreted something, or that TV Guide made a rare mistake--but until I have a reason to suspect that one of those things has occurred (the radio spot for the New Series), it's not something I'm going to bother investigating.
When I do have reason to suspect that my trust may be in error, for whatever reason, my response is to investigate it. And I ultimately solve the conflict in my example by acquiring new information, which allows me to readjust my various beliefs in a non-contradictory manner.
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With that said there are still cases where TV guide has gotten the information wrong, or like you show later, people can misread/misremember the information. Either way you must trust (ie have faith) that this is not one of those times. If you accept that you are trusting that this time they are correct then you are accepting my argument that you use faith to make the final leap to the conclusion of what time your show is on. |
And obviously, the bolded is where we must disagree. I submit that trust and faith are not identical, either in normal usage, or according to my earlier explanation. Or, if trust and faith are identical--if it's "all faith"--then I think we need to come up with a new term to describe the basis for a belief in things like that the sun will rise, versus the faith that some people have in abstract, ineffable beings that neither they, nor anyone else they know, have ever directly sensed in any manner. That would seem to me to be a useful distinction; one that, say, scientists would find handy when trying to cure disease or transport people to Mars.
Again, my worldview isn't one that insists that no mistakes or misjudgements can ever be made; rather, I accept such mistakes as possibilities, and work to minimize them--through finding more evidence and the continued application of reason. I don't find this process to have anything to do with "faith" as it is seemingly understood by those who advocate it.
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Faith plays a role in the exchange of information in many aspects of every day life. This is why scientific studies use large samples, confidence intervals, etc... Everyday life does not require rigorous proof, so people don't wait for it, they use probability of correctness instead, and they assess that probability from past experiences with direct observations. |
Well... I don't see that "large samples" would, according to my understanding of what you're saying, mean that these scientific studies are free from the "leaps of faith" that you insist are a part of "the exchange of information." Or, even if they were, that any one of us (say you or me) would be able to assess the results of such a scientific study without a similar leap of faith.
I think there's something to what you say about "probability of correctness," and for sure my TV Guide example wouldn't require rigorous proof... but there are things in everyday life that people take very seriously, such as attending to their professions or their healthcare (or that of loved ones), etc. And in such instances, I think that the general processes are roughly the same as in a lab, or how I approached the TV Guide conflict: people gather evidence and form certain beliefs on its basis; they trust that things will happen tomorrow as they happened yesterday, which I find neither to be "faith" nor unjustified.
When, however, they encounter evidence that seemingly conflicts with what they think they know, or what they expected to happen, they seek out means to resolve the conflict; by re-examining evidence, finding new evidence, re-assessing their reasoning, etc.
Mistakes continue to happen on every level--this isn't about being free from error. Me trying to decide what to watch; the person who mistakenly takes too much medication; scientists in the lab; we all make mistakes, and take actions in our capacity to correct for them. While there may be more or less rigour in any given setting (lab scientists being the most rigorous, having their procedures strictly defined, etc.) I find that the processes involved to be analogous. And, at minimum, I find faith to be related to deviations from that process.
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I do want to note that where it concerns your perception this is not questioning one's senses in the larger sense but the smaller sense. Questioning whether you've made a mistake in a specific instance (smaller sense) as opposed to questioning whether any input can be trusted at all (larger sense). |
Oh, but I think that it's impossible to question a mistake in a specific instance, in the manner that you're doing, without implicating the "larger sense."
For instance, if I were to say to you: "Hey, Sqrl--Designing Women is on tonight, wanna come over and watch with me?"
And you say: "Are you sure you got that right? Wasn't that cancelled, like... almost two decades ago?"
In that case, you're questioning whether I've made a mistake in a specific instance. Your observation regarding Designing Women is relevant to the specific claim I've made; it's applicability is severely limited.
But when you say: "Are you sure you got that right? After all, mistakes can be made in the 'exchange of information.'" Well, that's a critique that could be made about anything. It attacks judgement at its root.
"Hey, Sqrl--the sun will rise tomorrow!"
"Are you sure you got that right? You're just 'assess[ing] that probability from past experiences with direct observations.'"
True, but imo, it doesn't mean that "faith" is required.
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You're moving away from the argument I'm making here. I'm not trying to confine people's beliefs at all. I have no objection in someone's choice to believe something...I just take issue if they assert it as a fully logical conclusion if it isn't. To be clear on your last point I'll reiterate that I'm not advocating a constant classification of every professed belief. |
But what makes something "fully logical"? According to how I understand "logic," I find my atheistic views to be logical in this sense:
The idea that god does not exist does not seem to me to contradict anything else that I believe.
I do not believe that logic is a system that inexorably leads people to truth from scratch... I think it's a tool that we use to assess certain statements and beliefs that have their basis in sensory data, in relating them with other such statements and beliefs. Or, at least, deductive logic, where the truth of the conclusion is predicated on the truth of the premises.
Inductive reasoning--the initial development of those premises (which appolose discarded as being irrelevant)--is another ball of wax altogether... but I suspect that to try to suss induction out, a task that most professional philosophers seem to take a pass on, would take many more posts than either one of us is willing to commit to. :)
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I'm not making any demands on the way people reach a belief...only taking issue with how they characterize them to others...or specifically mischaracterize them to others. To reiterate what I said above in perhaps a new way, I'm not requiring rigorous standards to be used as a test for holding a belief. I'm saying that if you want to say "my belief is logical" then you should be able to show how others can use logic to arrive at that belief and no other. |
I've written a lot in this thread. I don't remember saying that I felt that atheism was "logical," and it doesn't sound to me like something I would say, though I suppose it's possible.
I do believe that it is proper for people to fit their beliefs to the evidence. And where a person feels he has no evidence for god (like me), that atheism is the right way to go. If we were to suppose someone who was confronted by god, like say Moses, well, I can understand his believing in god. (Though I might not, myself, believe Moses when he told me about it.)
Goodness. All these words, and probably none of it worth posting. No matter--they're written, so I might as well.
I suspect, at the minimum, that we have some fundamental disagreements as to the meaning of certain terms like "faith," "logic," "belief," "trust," etc., which makes subsequent discussion relying on those terms difficult.
The irony is that, at the same time, I get the sense that we might disagree very little on most practical applications; I expect you probably would've handled my TV Guide quandry in much the same manner as I did, and that you believe, just as I do, that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
