Of course they’re different, but their differences have nothing to do with evidence.

Rationality: the use of reason according to principles, the judgements of which are logically consistent necessarily, from which cognitions follow and its objects are given;
Faith: the condition under which judgements are contingent on mere persuasion, the principles be what they may, from which its cognitions do not necessarily follow and the possibility of its objects are not necessarily given.

In the event I don’t know what I’m talking about, or, which is equally the case, in the event what I’m talking about is too systematically evolved to be properly understood by the lesser equipped......

Rationality: the natural inclination for the discovery and use of reason;
Faith: superficial, and possibly but not necessarily unwarranted, confidence in that for which reason is used.
————— — Mww

You're just playing with words. It's fun to do. :smile:

No -Mww is making a distinction. Faith as 'confidence in that for which reason is used' applies perfectly well to currency and to insurance contracts, among many other things, and nobody wouldn't even quibble about that. What is at issue in this discussion of what is worthy of faith.

No -Mww is making a distinction. Faith as 'confidence in that for which reason is used' applies perfectly well to currency and to insurance contracts, among many other things, and nobody wouldn't even quibble about that. What is at issue in this discussion of what is worthy of faith. — Wayfarer

So, what, to you, is worthy of faith? :chin:

Well, currency, and insurance contracts, among other things.But the point I was simply reinforcing was that made by Mww, about the general meaning of the term 'faith', as distinct from the narrower meaning of 'religious belief'.

Kant's philosophy is described as 'transcendental idealism', what it is transcendental in respect of — Wayfarer

Nutshell: the Kantian transcendental is that which is purely a priori. Anything purely a priori is an object created by the conscious thinking subject, hence the idealism. That which is purely a priori is that which is thought, without regard for sensibility.

Transcendental in respect of experience.
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Kant never claims to know what anything actually is. — Wayfarer

Anything empirical, yes; all we can ever know of the empirical is its appearance, its representation as phenomenon. Nevertheless, we must be able to know something with absolute certainty, otherwise the concept is empty. Epistemology ultimately reduces to certain knowledge only for that which is thought, because the negation of thought by contradiction is impossible. It is impossible to not know of what objects you think. But that still leaves the objects of which you think, to relate to what is the case or not in physical reality, which is an empirical judgement of truth, from which follows the instantiation and/or extension of meaning in common language.
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the general meaning of the term 'faith', as distinct from the narrower meaning of 'religious belief'. — Wayfarer

What I said can be reinforced by what you said, certainly, but I personally go further and distinguish the general meaning of the one, re: faith in.... in juxtaposition to the general meaning of its complement, re: knowledge that...... Faith and belief are much too similar in subjective validity to be distinguishable from each other, and practical knowledge literally flushes both right down the figurative existential crapper.

In addition, again personally.....

what is worthy of faith. — Wayfarer

.....is a perfectly subjective condition, standing for that which one cares enough to think about, but for which knowledge is not provided. Something like that. Or not...

Ideas are certainly real. But not real in any material sense. — tim wood

Agreed. You can’t blast an idea over the centerfield wall. And you can’t call a thing round without the antecedent idea of what a “round” thing must be.

You're just playing with words. — TheMadFool

Aren’t we all?

...no exceptions taken, good stuff guys. I kinda like how this thread evolved into reason and belief… .

:up:

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Thanks for your interpretations on Kant. I agree with them, and hold similar views and interpretations.

Also, it's worth parsing (and this is by no means an exhaustive attempt) the concept of synthetic a priori knowledge (that so-called awareness which separates us from lower life forms). It seems that our consciousness allows for certain intrinsic or innate wonders about the causes of things, that exist all around us, including ourselves.

For instance, when we utter the judgement all events must have a cause, we can simply ask ourselves, why do we even have the capacity to ask such a question (why do we ask why), and what is the purpose to the asking of why (?). Some would argue that our intuition plays some sort of role in its existence (synthetic a priori judgements). In that case, it would be something that is innate and/or something that naturally exists from within our consciousness, that seemingly is universal and intrinsic to all homo-sapiens. Something a priori, that just is. I think you alluded to that.

I can't even begin to understand the nature of such human capacity or capabilities or features associated with human consciousness; I can only wonder about such things and use it to my advantage to enhance my existence (the human condition). Ironically, this same sense of wonderment does in fact have pragmatic attributes/benefits involving quality of life issues/concerns (wondering about doing, and making things better for ourselves and others), which also leads to things like the Will to survive (another topic altogether of course).

But back to the OP, I think doubt and belief are different from emergent behavior and instinct. Birds swarming, animals migrating, animals sensing nature as in tsunamis and season changes, so on and so forth seem to all come from instinctual emergent properties, rather than any sort of higher level self-awareness and volitional existence.

https://medium.com/the-explanation/animal-instinct-and-human-intelligence-the-insurmountable-gulf-bfc95ac8e759

Also, it's worth parsing (....) the concept of synthetic a priori knowledge — 3017amen

Yeah, that’s been done, much to the chagrin of continental philosophy, by Quine** mostly, insofar as the principle of necessity has no business being in conjunction with the concept of truth, and Popper*** somewhat, insofar as the a priori is merely a genetic expectation (gasp!!!), which essentially eviscerates Kantian rational epistemology.
** “Two Dogmas....”, 1953
*** “LofSD”, 1959

Nevertheless, from an Enlightenment continent perspective, the synthetic a priori....what it is, what it does and why it’s a valid predisposition, is very much worth parsing, absolutely.
—————

our consciousness allows for certain intrinsic or innate wonders — 3017amen

I’d be real careful with that notion, for the danger arises of making consciousness a causality in itself. I’d be reluctant to pursue that line of thought, myself. But if you have ideas in support of it, I’d be interested in reading them.

As for the rest, all good.

Mww!

Thanks for your reply. I want to re-state the statement that you have or had concerns about.

"It seems that our consciousness allows for certain intrinsic or innate wonder's about the causes of things, that exist all around us, including ourselves."

That's a generic statement about having a sense of wonderment (wondering) about what things causes other things to happen. What is it about that, that cause such consternation?

Aren’t we all? — Mww

Yeah but I'd like to know in what sense do we play with words?

It seems that our consciousness allows for certain intrinsic or innate wonder's about the causes of things, that exist all around us, including ourselves."

That's a generic statement about having a sense of wonderment (wondering) about what things causes other things to happen. — 3017amen

These are two distinct propositions. The second is given; the first, because it is qualified by consciousness, is not. At least not so much.

If you’d said being conscious allows...., I’d have agreed. But being conscious is not the same as consciousness. Being conscious is a state, consciousness is the quality of that state.

A sense of wonderment is a feeling; wondering is thinking; consciousness is an idea.

Philosophy is the science of nit-picking. (Grin)

I'd like to know in what sense do we play with words? — TheMadFool

Why.....in whatever sense assuages the ego, of course.

Why.....in whatever sense assuages the ego, of course. — Mww

Perhaps I'm at fault here but you took simple concepts such as faith and rationality, the clear distinction between them and turned them into something unrecognizable. All of course if you don't agree that they are distinguished solely on the basis of the requirement of evidence.

Perhaps I'm at fault here — TheMadFool

There is no fault, there is only dialectical disagreement.

Faith and rationality are certainly not simple concepts; there is a clear distinction between them; I don’t agree the distinction is based on evidence. And unrecognizable is relative.

[Kant's transcendental idealism is] Transcendental in respect of experience. — Mww

'Experience' being the sine qua non in empiricism and arguably in naturalism also.

Things in reality are real, but not all real things are in reality. Examples: ideas, seven, the meanings of words. The qualification for reality, it seems to me, is materiality, or haecceity: the "this one here", its thisness, distinguished from what it is or what it is for. — tim wood

What is real, and what exists, are not necessarily synonymous. Mathematical Platonists (which include such luminaries as Penrose and Godel) believe that mathematical objects are real. But the sense in which they're 'existent' remains moot. Nevertheless, much of the success of modern science relies on the 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences'.

I understand the current orthodoxy - : that ideas exist in minds, that minds are dependent on brains, that brains are an evolved organ, and that this provides a way that the mind can be understood through the perspective of naturalism. Many people take that for granted, but I question it, on the basis that once the mind has evolved to the point of being able to reason mathematically, then has escaped the bounds of biology. (This is *not* a creationist argument.)

Perhaps I'm at fault here but you took simple concepts such as faith and rationality, the clear distinction between them and turned them into something unrecognizable. All of course if you don't agree that they are distinguished solely on the basis of the requirement of evidence. — TheMadFool

Here's quite a good summary of key elements of the scientific method:

Modern science emerged in the seventeenth century with two fundamental ideas: planned experiments (Francis Bacon) and the mathematical representation of relations among phenomena (Galileo). This basic experimental-mathematical epistemology evolved until, in the first half of the twentieth century, it took a stringent form involving (1) a mathematical theory constituting scientific knowledge, (2) a formal operational correspondence between the theory and quantitative empirical measurements, and (3) predictions of future measurements based on the theory. The “truth” (validity) of the theory is judged based on the concordance between the predictions and the observations. While the epistemological details are subtle and require expertise relating to experimental protocol, mathematical modeling, and statistical analysis, the general notion of scientific knowledge is expressed in these three requirements.

Science is neither rationalism nor empiricism. It includes both in a particular way. In demanding quantitative predictions of future experience, science requires formulation of mathematical models whose relations can be tested against future observations. Prediction is a product of reason, but reason grounded in the empirical. Hans Reichenbach summarizes the connection: “Observation informs us about the past and the present, reason foretells the future.” — Edward Dougherty

'Evidence' has to fall within the scope of that methodology to be considered scientific. But scientific method itself operates within conditions, and those conditions by their very constitution limit what is considered 'evidence' to what is measurable according to this method. To say that is not to criticize science, but simply to draw something out that is often left unstated.

sense of wonderment is a feeling; wondering is thinking; consciousness is an idea. — Mww

What do all of them have in common?

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Oh hell...I dunno. Humanity? Intellect? Rationality? All of the above?

I understand reality to comprise all that is each in itself. — tim wood

All that is "each in itself"? What the heck does that mean?

Things in reality are real, but not all real things are in reality. — tim wood

OK, so "real things" names a bigger category than "things in reality". If therefore, there are real things, which are not part of reality, what are they a part of? Where do they exist, and by what premise do you say that they are real things?

Examples: ideas, seven, the meanings of words. — tim wood

Let's take a look at some of these things then, to see where they exist if they're not part of reality. It appears like you are talking about things which are in minds. If these things exist within minds, yet they are not in reality, am I correct to conclude that you believe that minds are not part of reality? What is a mind a part of, if it is not a part of reality? Do you think it is some sort of falsity, or fiction to say that people have minds, and minds have ideas, because all these things are not in reality?

Don't you have a problem with how ideas get into minds, if they're not there to begin with? Obviously on your account a fellow cannot just "have" an idea. — tim wood

I don't see how this follows from what I've said. I think, if it helps, that progress in mathematics and logic comprises at least in part in the discovery of ideas. (What's that saying? 'God created the integers, all else is the work of Man' ~ some dude.)

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I say ideas are products of mind, originate there, and dwell there and nowhere else. I gather you question that, which I take to mean you have some different idea of how it all works. If ideas are not constructs of mind and don't live in minds, then where do they come from and where do they live? — tim wood

There is a saying of a certain class of facts that they must be 'true in all possible worlds'. It's a very broad principle. So take for example, the law of identity, or of the excluded middle, or primitive arithmetical truths, like the Pythagorean theorem. These are, I say, discovered, not invented by the mind; were another species to evolve on another world, then they too would discover such principles.

This is part of a larger argument: is mathematics discovered or invented? Modern opinion generally supports the latter. Mathematical Platonism suggests the former. So, platonism (small p) argues that such rational principles are real, but they can only be grasped by a mind. Ergo, that they're real ideas; not dependent on your or my mind, but only graspable by a mind.

Whereas most people nowadays - I've seen it stated here many times recently - assume that ideas can be understood in terms of being 'correlated' with neural activity or in some sense as an output of the physical brain. So the mainstream view, which I'm questioning, is that the mind is a product of the brain, that mind depends on or supervenes on the brain, and the brain is the product of evolution. The efficacy of ideas can be judged by their usefulness for survival; we know when ideas are valid, because they correspond with what is 'out there'. That in a nutshell is what philosopher Thomas Nagel describes as 'neo-Darwinian materialism'.

So, regarding the real 'ideas' - they don't 'come from' anywhere, and they don't 'live' anywhere. They're not situated in 'some place'. They're real in the sense that the domain of real numbers is real. It's only figuratively 'a domain' - but it's nevertheless real, as 2 is part of it, but the square root of 2 is not.

I don't expect that to be understood, but it's the best I've got at this moment.

It appears to me that for clarity I should start to explicitly refer to the materiality that I hold is the key to admission to reality, as I think most folks do most of the time. — tim wood

I don't think most folks would agree with you. I think that most folks believe that what other people are thinking, their intentions and such, are part of reality. Are you solipsist? How do you defend yourself against deception and abuse from others, if the intentions of others are not part of reality in your belief?

Did you miss what I wrote above? — tim wood

No, I didn't miss it, but as I said, I didn't understand what you meant by "all that is each in itself". A brick is in the world, an image of a brick is in a mind. A mind is in the world. Nothing is "in itself". A molecule is in a brick. Do you think that a molecule is not part of reality because it is in something which is in the world, like an idea is in something which is in the world?

What grounds your notion of materiality? Is a wavefunction material? Is it in reality? If not then where is the material particle when its position is not being measured? I don't think you have a very practical division between what is in reality and not in reality

Minds, ideas, real, but not material, and on my understanding of reality, which calls for some materiality, not in that reality. — tim wood

This is what I question. Why does reality call for materiality in your belief? Are intentions not part of reality? Surely they have a real affect in the world, and many are external to you. But clearly intentions are not material. How can you not see that defining "reality" with "materiality" is a big mistake?

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Self-awareness.

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