is a topic that i said i speak on over at joe's place; so let's see what we come up with.
knowledge. coming from the philosophical, it is something immutable. unchangeable. for instance i have knowledge that two plus two is four. this is a 'fact,' as it were, of the universe. whether i exist or not. two plus two will always be four. period.
plato speaks of this in his 'republic'; where he in a sense changes the definition of what a philosopher is. etymologically speaking; a philosopher is someone who 'loves wisdom.' plato's sense of the word becomes a person who loves the 'vision of truth.' knowledge becomes knowledge of itself. this is not a knowledge of something; for then we are limited by that thing, and only have an opinion of that thing. so thus knowledge is some sort of infallible thing that is logically impossible to be a mistake.
so it is logically impossible for two plus two not to be four.
so where does faith fit into knowledge? it doesn't. faith fits into something else...religion.
religion offers something that no philosophy is able to offer; some sort of here-after; and eternal life, a god.
god or some other divine being communicates true propositions that cannot be discovered by reason, and faith is the belief in these. that god does not reveal these propositions, but god reveals himself. faith is devotion, trust in and a commitment to. faith is the belief in god, or something metaphysical.
philosophically speaking religion has the epistemology to be foundationalist in nature. to be a foundationalist is to believe that there are certain beliefs; which are self-evident, and are accepted without evidence. there are two types of belief; those which we hold by the basis of others, and those which do not hold on the basis of others, or self-evident, or immediately.
we many not marvel in the beliefs; which stem from others, but what about those beliefs that do not stem from anything? as we look and understand our belief system; there becomes a 'chain of causation.' i believe x because of my belief in y, and so on until there becomes a starting point for the beliefs themselves. a belief or beliefs from which all others stem from. these 'starting point' beliefs are the support for all other beliefs from which they stem. the foundationalist believe that there is a structure of beliefs or our knowledge that begins in resemblance of a tree; where there is a starting point for all of our knowledge; which cannot be challenged or changed. a point from which all our other knowledge grows out of, like the branches on a tree.
now within the school of foundationalism they all agree with what i have just stated, but they will disagree with what is the foundation of our beliefs, and how the superstructure is supported. if we are to take this notion of religion, and the religious person, then the foundation of belief, the 'starting point' of which all other beliefs stem from, would be that of faith. the faith in a metaphysical, a faith in god, or the faith in your appropriate deity.
now we are able to 'build' up a logically sound, at least some what sound, metaphysical system. aristotle did it, and it became the christian view for centuries after. but in any metaphysical system the question is still there; how do you know?
mentioned before was the 'chain of caustion;' which in and of itself is a big problem. what is causality? hume speaks that causality is not a quality in any object, but rather a 'habit of association' in the mind. we understand that the sun will rise in the east, because of our habit of experiencing it rise in the east every morning. all we have to go on is our experience, and for hume, our reason is unable to go beyond this. so then there is no reason that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence.
so for hume where does god fit in, or this notion of faith? to rely on the existence of god we then have to have some sort of causality. all the arguments for the existence of god come from some argument from this. however, if we do not perceive the cause, then we do not know the cause. so how are we able to assign a cause to the universe when we have never experienced the universe as related to anything we might consider a cause? how are we able to even then ascribe moral characteristics to such a being? we cannot infer from our experience the existence of god. the order in the universe is just an empirical fact.
wow. did i go on. i through this rabling i hope i made my point between faith, knowledge, and the difference between the two; and some problems related. i have a feeling that i will need to clear some things up later.
but as for now...
[shalom...]
1.5.07
faith vs knowledge...
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11 comments:
A lot to chew on in this...
So, are you saying that knowledge exists outside us? 2+2=4 whether we are here or not to see it. Right? I just want to clarify. It is like the 3 blind men "seeing" an elephant for the first time. Each man only gets to touch a different part so interprets it based on limited knowledge. Which is what we do all the time. What we accept as commonplace now would be considered magic by people 100 years ago. The knowledge has not changed, just our interpretation of it.
And faith is not only in religion. I just want to mention that because a subset of the population would like to believe that it only exists in religion . Because of our incomplete grasp of knowledge we take some things on faith. For example I have faith my wife loves me. I do not have knowledge of this. I only have years of experiences that give me faith that it is true.
The problem I have with most believers of religion is they don't bother with causality. To use your analogy they skip the root and live only in the branches. I think if they ever bothered to trace their beliefs back to the root they would be surprised by the absurdity of it all. Of course as a non-believer I know I am in the minority. And I am fine with that. If knowledge shows me I am wrong than I have no problem adjusting. That is the scientific way. I have faith in that...
So a question...is there a difference between "knowledge" and "science?"
A great deal of science is taken on faith. Unless you are willing to duplicate every experiment used that supports a scientific theory you're taking a great deal on faith. You're essentially taking someone's word for it. I mean you read a science book and you believe everything in it without question and how are you different from someone reading the Bible and believing in it without question? And much science is theory--observable and repeatable, but...always tentatively held.
As a pragmatist, I see science and religion as equally valid ways of looking at the world and they are not mutually exclusive endeavors. And neither is free of certain biases and can become crutches or blinders.
To get back to the idea of "knowledge," I'm not sure I'm a good enough of a philosopher to actual discuss it. Does knowledge exist somewhere outside of us? I don't know and I can't say. I can guess and I can talk about it over beer and wings, even constructing arguments logical, illogical, and absurd, but other than making my argument sound "good" I' can't be sure it's a "correct" argument.
Science is our attempt to acquire knowledge.
A great deal of everything is taken on faith. I have to point out that no respectable scientist will read a science book and believe everything in it without question. People with an incomplete grasp of the scientific method may. All science is theory. At any time any part of it may be overturned by new evidence. Years of observations and experiments give us reason to believe some parts are as close to fact as can get, but we realize that may not always be true. Isn't that more exciting than blinding following dogma?
Yes, science is guilty of having bias and blinders. We are imperfect creatures after all...
i think science has a major bias right now with the whole global warming thing. just to comment on that.
but what happens when something starts out as faith, but moves to knowledge? is that possible? you say the love that your wife has for you is faith? but if your wife does certain things to show that she loves you, get you your favorite scotch, come home to you, etc. constantly; to the point that it becomes habit; don't you then have the same 'knowledge' as the sun rising in the east every day? or the 'knowledge' of a scientific experiment? taking the role of the empiricist, that we need to have an observable point of experience to deem it knowledge or not. i've never seen nor been to china, but i have 'knowledge' that it exists.
and ben, you are a good enough philosopher...
I deleted my first attempt for some lame punctuation errors...
Ok, my lack of formal training is showing. That said, I have to disagree. A series of actions over time will lead me to believe my wife loves me or not, but I maintain it does not give me knowledge. How do I know she is not doing all those things for me for another reason? Maybe she was raised to obey and serve her husband regardless of her personal feelings. I have faith I know the real answer, but I maintain in this case it is never possible to have knowledge of it. I don't think human behavior equates to a physical object, even one as big as China or the sun rising in the sky. Again, my lack of formal training is probably betraying my line of reasoning.
On the other point, I think it is pretty well documented that the planet's temperature has risen over the last century. The real question is if it is a trend or a minor blip in the long term weather patterns. We have a tendency to forgot that on a geological scale we have been around for less than an eyeblink...
Some interesting comments. Looking at the wife thing...I think this is a good analogy/example, so let's talk about it for a moment. Esp. let's compare it to the case of the sun rising everyday. What I think you have here is a functionally equivalent theory. That aren't the same, but they mean the same thing. You start with the idea "the sun will rise tomorrow" and "my wife loves me." You have a body of evidence to support both claims. Now, Joe says that you can't have knowledge of the wife's love, but the implication is that he can have knowledge that the sun will rise. Why? Because in one case we are talking about a human being and in the other we are talking about an inanimate physical object? I don't see how one thing can be called knowledge and the other couldn't. The objection that the wife could be trained to serve and obey can be countered with the objection that we can never really understand the mechanism behind the mechanism that causes the sun to rise. So basically it comes to the same thing--motive. We can observe the wife's actions and the sun's actions. We can see the "how" and the "what" they do...the wife brings home single malt and the sun affects the Earth in certain ways blah blah blah...but where's the why? Where's the cause? In the wife's case we can guess and can make a claim to knowledge...love is the cause of her actions. But in the sun's case can we know the why? What makes the sun act the way it does? We can get into scientific theory and we can reduce it to another scientific theory and so on and so forth till we get back to the theory of the creation of the universe and still we won't be able to answer the question why? Not logically or scientifically. We can theorize about it and debate about it, but all you can do from a scientific point of view is just say that the universe exists and these things, these physical laws of the universe have been true and seem to be true today and at this moment. Because without resorting to religion or philosophy you will never be able to scientifically understand the "first cause" behind the universe which set and determined the physical laws. But without knowledge of causation how can you say you have knowledge of a thing?
The earth spins on its axis and travels around the sun in an ellipse. This is fact. Unless something happens to change one of these the sun will always appear to rise. Motive is something else. It is a case of physicality versus the human mind. For the sun we can use mathematics to plot its course with remarkable precision. Enough to send a spacecraft to meet it at any point in its orbit. The mind is different. We can make reasonable guesses about what a person is going to do based on prior information. But can we truly know what goes on in another person's mind? IMHO I don't think so. There are too many variables involved so we make assumptions. And we all know what happens when we assume things about another person...
First cause is a whole other issue. For the Universe I don't think we will ever be able to know how it came to being. We exist within the Universe. There is no way for us to see outside of it so there is no way to know the first cause for sure. We can guess and make theories while drinking our favorite beer or whisky, which I highly recommend, but I don't think we will ever "know"...
Isn't that the scientific method? Making reasonable guesses based on prior information?
Measuring the effects of something is not the same as knowing a thing. The cause of things, of physical laws, is a hidden variable. It can be argued that the circumstance or cause of the universe is a constant, but we can't actually "know" that. Because as you say we can't see out of the universe to observe it. But science and most people take it on faith that the variable which allows the universe to exist as it is now is a "constant" and that it will stay constant and not change.
I'd love to bring in some quantum physics here where the outcome of an observable event seems to be dependent on the event being observed, but...I'm not sure what that would prove other than being somewhat interesting.
And your response raises interesting questions on the ability of science to be able to tell us anything about any instance that involves a human element. But maybe that's something to talk about over beer and Bushmill's...
are we not using the word 'motive' in a incorrect manner here? as a noun it means that something causes a person to act in a certain way, but as an adjective it means causing motion; as per dictionary.com so how do we want to use this word? as far as the wife issue goes, is there a motive for loving? if there is, then is it really 'love', and that is not a road i want to go down.
ben is correct with the whole 'causality' thing; at least from an empiricist point of view. if we are unable to experience the cause, we will never know.
however, through out all of this we are taking one thing for granted...that there is such a thing as knowledge
after june second, we'll have to get together for a drink...
nothing endures but change -heraclitus
i guess, what i don't want to happen is the getting away from the subject at hand right now...dealing with faith and knowledge. we've thrown a lot into these couple comments, and i don't want the forest to grow too think on us.
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