• LordOracle28
    1
    I have recently came across the question in my own mind of whether it is better to place your faith in something or someone (not religious faith) only to realize your faith was misplaced, or to simply abandon all faith to begin with?
  • Janus
    16.3k


    I would say there's faith and then there's Faith; if it can be misplaced then it is not Faith but merely faith.
  • Michael
    15.6k
    How does capitalising a letter make a difference?
  • Janus
    16.3k


    It makes the letter look bigger.
  • Wayfarer
    22.5k
    If you abandon all faith then you would not be able to use currency or insurance. Such conventions only operate on the basis of faith. When the stockmarket crashes, it is often because people often have lost faith in the values attributed to the stocks there.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349


    I think it obvious that life is basically impossible without faith. Every time you go into a shop, for example, you demonstrate faith that staff won't leap over the counter and start throwing stock at you, demand a bribe before they serve you, or strip naked and ask you to look at their mole and tell them whether it looks a bit angry. What's more the chances are that even if they did do one of those things it wouldn't stop you entering another shop at a later date with exactly the same faith. Our every interaction with others demands a degree of faith for it not to become impossible.
  • Janus
    16.3k


    You didn't bite on my previous response, so I'll elaborate. The capitalization of letters usually indicates that there is a notion of hierarchy at work; the idea of there being a higher and lower manifestation of any principle or phenomenon. The making of the letter bigger naturally associates it with the higher manifestation.
  • Michael
    15.6k


    So being punched in the stomach is painful but being waterboarded is Painful? And having a massage feels great but having sex feels Great?

    I don't buy it. That's not how the English language works. We capitalize the first letter of a word when it's at the start of a sentence or when it's a proper noun, naming an individual person, place, or organization. This isn't that kind of context.

    Just seems like pseudo-philosophical nonsense, like distinguishing between truth and Truth.

    Or maybe you're just using the word "Faith" as a short-hand to refer to faith which cannot be misplaced, in which case your claim is a truism and needlessly defying linguistic conventions.
  • Janus
    16.3k
    You don't get it; but that's OK.
  • Hanover
    12.9k
    I don't buy it. That's not how the English language works. We capitalize the first letter of a word when it's at the start of sentence or when it's a proper noun, naming an individual person, place, or organization. This isn't that kind of context.Michael

    Much like the difference between God and god, the former suggests that there is but one and the latter that there could be many. One who believes in God, but refers to gods is likely suggesting that the lesser gods are not really gods at all, but are misnamed entities.

    The suggestion is that the capitalized version is the correct, absolute version, whereas the lowercase version is a weaker, subjective version. I'm not sure how this applies to faith, but with the word truth, if one says Truth, they mean what is actual, whereas truth would refer to perhaps a subjectively accepted reality that may not be actual.

    I understand that there is but one truth, but since comments like "that might be the truth to you" abound, it can, in certain contexts, make sense to distinguish that which you believe to be true and that which is actually true to the extent it comports with reality.
  • Michael
    15.6k
    Much like the difference between God and god, the former suggests that there is but one and the latter that there could be many. One who believes in God, but refers to gods is likely suggesting that the lesser gods are not really gods at all, but are misnamed entitiesHanover

    That's just a case of "God" being a proper noun, naming a particular individual, and "god" being a common noun, denoting a member of a group.
  • Barry Etheridge
    349
    if one says Truth, they mean what is actual, whereas truth would refer to perhaps a subjectively accepted reality that may not be actual.Hanover

    If one says "truth" it cannot have a capital letter, Shirley!

    Anyway, fascinating as this orthographical diversion may be, I think the real point is that even if one accepts that a capital letter makes a distinction it's all a bit pointless if nobody knows exactly what the distinction is. Sadly the poster chose not to deal with the implied question but the literal one so we are none the wiser.
  • Janus
    16.3k


    You may reject the notions of hierarchy that I have said are at work when the first letters of certain words in certain contexts, are capitalized, and even call it "pseudo-philosophy", if you like; and in certain cases I might even agree with you; but none of that changes the fact that there is a notion of hierarchy at work in some cases of such capitalizations.
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