No. I'm talking about something else: How faith can be problematic even for theists.

If two theists say they have faith that god exists there is no real problem between them. (Expect perhaps which God they have faith in). But any two Christians, for example, can agree on this aspect of faith with no real issues.

The problems for religious folk begin when they encounter people who use faith as a reason for bigotry. Then we come to the problem of whose faith is accurate or whether faith has any utility at all.

As I wrote of religious faith -

The fact that faith can support or reject slavery; support or reject misogyny; support or reject war; support or reject capital punishment, etc, etc, tells even the faithful that faith is unreliable, since it equally justifies contradictory beliefs. — Tom Storm

Are you suggesting no discussion about faith is meaningful without first adopting the definition that it is a revelation of something otherworldly? — ENOAH

Not at all. Discussion can be meaningful but ‘revealed truth’ is essential to it.

I agree with that part of your post. I just disagree (I think) that faith can't also contradict the existence of a god. Obviously it doesn't between Christians, they share that particular faith. But surely there can be a faith that says there's no god as well.

You're absolutely right though, about the idea that faith can support anything. Because faith isn't a method for coming to a belief, it's not a method for figuring out what's true - it's more about maintaining a belief. And you can maintain ANY belief with faith. So it's weird that it's treated as a virtue in itself.

Well, it's weird until you realise why these communities have to treat it as a virtue...

I'm still watching and judging.

But that is precisely what revealed truth means. It is the entire meaning of the Bible. It doesn’t mean you have to believe it. — Wayfarer

I've always been curious about revealed truth and faith. There's definitely a phenomenological angle you can take on it. You have a world transforming, singular, experience that reconfigures how you see everything. It's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't do much to establish a claim as it's not a move in a game of reasons, it's premising a new game. The best you can do with it is expect others to play along.

The justificatory consequences isn't the most interesting angle the above IMO. I think it makes more sense to grant that revelation is necessary for faith, and that it principally is a reconfiguration of one's world, and see what that means about the divine when taken at face value.

A world transforming, singular, experience aligns the nature of the divine with the perceptual. What you see is what you now believe. In effect, the reinterpretation is a way of seeing the same world another way, like whether a Necker Cube goes into or out of a page. Though it's odd to give faith in the divine a privileged, prior status with respect to reasons for that, as other such aspect shifts are declaratives and can in principle be refuted.

eg "The Necker cube goes into the page" is a statement of the form "The cube is on the page", you could refute the former by showing that the latter holds true. I thus don't think carving out a unique space for faith based on divine revelation is particularly coherent. It undermines its own phenomenology, as a reconfiguration of belief based upon perception.

A world transforming, singular, experience aligns the nature of the divine with the perceptual. What you see is what you now believe. In effect, the reinterpretation is a way of seeing the same world another way, like whether a Necker Cube goes into or out of a page. — fdrake

Although whether one has, or is, an immortal soul, might be rather more significant than an optical illusion.

But articles of faith are more like a premise. They aren’t something we conclude. We just know. Like the fact that my wife loves me. I just know it. I could never create a syllogism that shows “therefore wifey’s love for FireO exists.” — Fire Ologist

Pretty easily... define love then move to make the syllogism, if you need to make a syllogism to define love then do that also...

Something like:

P1: All people who consistently act with maximally positive interests, deep care, loyalty, and affection towards another person loves that person.

P2: FireO's wife acts with maximally positive interests, deep care, loyalty, and afrection towards FireOlogist

C: Therefore FireO's wife loves him.

is it possible to you for someone to know Nietzsche deeply (as you do, and I mean that) and also disagree with him? I think, if you are honest, you would say no — Fire Ologist

You mean like N did with Z?
Just because I don't detail my differences with Nietzsche doesn't mean we don't have them. I am Dionysian at my core. My first philosophy teacher noticed this and with a mild prophetic vision said that I would love him. And I do. That aside, Nietzsche is, but, one band of intensity within me.



What you said touches on something I read earlier about diaquotation and how it brings truth to something much simpler of a notion to what the sentence actually states vs all the mumbojumbo. Like my OP is kinda poorly written in the disquotational aspect. BUT what I mean, is a bit more nuanced mumbojumbo... to me, at first, I believed the OP directly states my deeper understanding but it did a pretty shitty job.

e. In effect, the reinterpretation is a way of seeing the same world another way, like whether a Necker Cube goes into or out of a page. Though it's odd to give faith in the divine a privileged, prior status with respect to reasons for that, as other such aspect shifts are declaratives and can in principle be refuted.

eg "The Necker cube goes into the page" is a statement of the form "The cube is on the page", you could refute the former by showing that the latter holds true. I thus don't think carving out a unique space for faith based on divine revelation is particularly coherent. It undermines its own phenomenology, as a reconfiguration of belief based upon perception. — fdrake

I think a better example is the duck-rabbit drawing. Is there a way to refute the correctness of the perception of one or the other figures? Doesn’t the basis for determining whether a particular interpretation of an image is an illusion itself rely on an interpretation?

144. The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically
obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.
145. One wants to say "All my experiences show that it is so". But how do they do that? For that proposition to which they point itself belongs to a particular interpretation of them.( On Certainty)

Doesn’t the basis for determining whether a particular interpretation of an image is an illusion itself rely on an interpretation? — Joshs

That's certainly true for your example, but your example is atypical. When you see a mirage in a desert that looks like a body of water, and then you arrive at where you thought the water was and it's just a pit of more sand, is it merely another "interpretation" that there isn't really water there?

I'm not sure it's right to call duckrabbit an "illusion" anyway. It's an illustration that was designed to look like a duck, and designed to look like a rabbit. Is it an illusion to perceive an illustration to be illustrating an object that it was literally designed to illustrate? I mean in a sense all illustrations can be argued to be "illusions", but that's trivial, I mean in a non trivial way - why is it an illusion to see a duck in duckrabbit?

Pretty simple syllogism, but the proselytizing on this platform by "believers" runs rampant in the constant defense of fallacious arguments. But know this... all of you who do require reason-based thought, have a severe lack of faith in God. — DifferentiatingEgg

Your argument fails under an equivocation fallacy. "Logic" references deductive (syllogistic) and inductive arguments and pragmatism. That is, even if you believe reliance upon a syllogism for God's existence is proof of lack of belief in God, it does not follow that any reliance upon reason (in terms of informal or pragmatic bases) amounts to lack of belief in God.

Your argument leads to an absurd result, suggesting that a logical basis of any type eliminates a meaningful belief in God (and it seems you define "faith" as the only way to have a meaningful belief in God). For example, if the ancient Hebrews believed in God because they observed 10 plagues, water from rocks, splitting of seas, and manna from heaven, they lacked faith, and therefore didn't have a meaningful belief because they relied upon empirical evidence? Is it not logical to rely upon such things?

Yes - it's all hard to say so maybe I'm making sense and maybe I understand you. But yes, knowing anything involves believing something, and it involves reason. It's one package. Faith allows us to know things our sense experiences may resist, or faith may allow us to assign meaning to things that may mean other things to others as well, but we are still using reason, and concepts, in minds, like any act of knowing does. — Fire Ologist

I've been thinking about this (faith = intuition) a lot since we started discussing it - I realize that may not be exactly the way you see it. It caught me by surprise. I think it's such an obvious connection that I wonder why I haven't realized it before. In this discussion we see people who don't believe that faith is a valid way to know anything. I've been in many discussions here on the forum where people say the same thing about intuition. I feel like a door has been opened with your help.

already detailed that it was equivocation to a degree.

Not exactly, a quantum of force cannot actually be weaker than it is... you and T Clark have made me consider my perspective a bit more, and what I'm coming to is that ... but say St. Thomas's Quantum of Force in faith is already this grand mountain... we can say his Faith is still as strong... but say instead of St. Thomas being 100% faith-based, he's 60% Faith and 40% logic and perhaps a lack of clarifying here has caused all sorts of equivocations, perhaps of myself even... due to the quantum of force not actually being lesser... just because a persons intellect may be divided in a 60/40 split doesn't necessarily mean that because a persons thought moves to 55/45 split that the quantum of force behind faith grew less... but that the quantum of force behind reason grew more...
there IS a nuance to it... so for some people a quantum of force of faith may not be phased by reason... — DifferentiatingEgg

Though once something becomes absolutely true via syllogism I believe they convert a part of the quantum of force behind faith into knowledge... necessarily lessening faith.

However if the syllogism is fallacious then it's not really absolute truth... and we can show Thomas and Aquinas are both fallacious arguments for God... and thus they don't actually convert faith to absolute knowledge.

But the fact remains that some part of them yearns to take God from the realm of faith to knowledge... thus something inside of them in unsatisfied with their faith...

I think a better example is the duck-rabbit drawing. Is there a way to refute the correctness of the perception of one or the other figures? — Joshs

If someone sees a duck or a rabbit, and there are no lines on the page, they are wrong.

Doesn’t the basis for determining whether a particular interpretation of an image is an illusion itself rely on an interpretation? — Joshs

Yes. The same goes for any claim, do you mean to suggest no claim can have its correctness judged? How can you possibly be correct?

Although whether one has, or is, an immortal soul, might be rather more significant than an optical illusion. — Wayfarer

Yes. Some beliefs are more significant to people than others. This remark says nothing about the phenomenology of revealed truth.

Intuition is past experience and knowledge being checked by the unconscious...

Intuition is past experience and knowledge being checked by the unconscious... — DifferentiatingEgg

I think that's a good way of looking at it. I'd like to discuss this issue further, but I think it will distract from this discussion. I plan on starting a new one to go into more detail.

Yes. The same goes for any claim, do you mean to suggest no claim can have its correctness judged? How can you possibly be correct — fdrake

Sure, correctness can be determined within the framework of intelligibility provided by an interpretation. But all interpretations ( language games) change, and there is not way to determine which language game is more correct. There is no meta-interpretation.

There is no meta-interpretation. — Joshs

Except for that claim.

Except for that claim. — fdrake

It isnt a meta claim, it’s an enactment, an awareness of being ensconced within a discursive set of practices

That translates to "a thing which was said".

no, that translates into a thing which was said within a giventime within a given context within a given normative sense of meaning. I can indulge the fantasy that I could make a claim that which will stand outside of any local discursive context, but I can also anticipate that any such utterance will change its sense for me when I reflect back on it later. That is to say, that I make use of a hypothesis that my belief in the subtle transformation over time of senses of meaning will validate itself for me. But it will only validate itself through my repeated testing of it. Such validation must then be self reflexively repeated endlessly.

no, that translates into a thing which was said within a giventime within a given context within a given normative sense of meaning. — Joshs

Every single thing which is said has those caveats! There's no extra information in the post-phenomenological gloss you provided. You've either got that you can generalise truths about all speech acts - which you're doing, and in terms of invariant deep contextual structures may I add - or you can't, and what you're saying is false.

Sure but what I think you'll end up finding is the intuitive hunch in the unconscious providing stimulus based off knowledge and faith, which ends up falling victim to Hume's Guillotine. That last leap to close the gap in knowledge being faith.

You could be doing something that seems sus to your wife, and because (fake example follows) she's been cheated on in the past, her intuition is that you're cheating on her...

When you're really just planning some awesome for her.

Every single thing which is said has those caveats! There's no extra information in the post-phenomenological gloss you provided. You've either got that you can generalise truths about all speech acts - which you're doing, and in terms of invariant deep contextual structures may I add - or you can't, and what you're saying is false — fdrake

The basis of phenomenological and post-phenomenological thinking is that the starting and ending point of factual and and ethical analysis is the present , and the present of time is a complex structure which includes within the immediate ‘now’ a historical past and anticipatory future in which the past arrives already remade. The problem realists have with this thinking is that they place the identity of the ‘now’ before difference, Existence is self-identity to them, and change is also conceived in this basis. As a result, any utterance about there beyond nothing outside local contexts of meaning creation is read as a statement of identity, an in-itself fact about change that appears self-refuting on the face of it. It is inconceivable that a meaning can in itself expresss itself own transformation, an event of transit, being the same differently. The worst of it is that the implications of post-realism appear horrifyingly nihilistic because all that is glimpsed is contradiction, incommensurability, arbitrariness, skepticism and anything goes relativism. What is colossally missed is the fact that the positions which are being so completely misread do not attempt to deny the achievements of the sciences, don’t attempt to refute them , but leave them i n place and burrow beneath them to reveal their underpinnings. In so doing, they dont leave us with skepticism , relativism and arbitrariness , but with a profoundly intricate, intimate and enriching ‘ground’ for understanding how meaninful relations to our world
works.

You said you admire Matthew Ratcliffe’s work. He is not necessarily in the ‘postmodernist’ camp, but his thinking is not far removed from it, and doesn’t seem to be compatible with yours on the issue of the relation between truth and interpretation. I could demonstrate this with a close focus on where he is going with his
project, and what it borrows from phenomenology and Heidegger.

Personally, I think a secure faith wouldn't even be phased by my assertion...

When you see a mirage in a desert that looks like a body of water, and then you arrive at where you thought the water was and it's just a pit of more sand, is it merely another "interpretation" that there isn't really water there? — flannel jesus

And where how do you arrive at your identification of a
scene as a ‘sand desert’? Is this not also an interpretation? The way we recognize a scene depends on incorporating the meager input from what is in the immediate surroundings and filling it in with expectations from memory. Those expectations organize the scene in particular ways , which is why we can be ‘fooled’ by an illusion. But if I interpret what someone says to me one way at one point in time, and then think back to what I heard and realize I heard what I expected to hear and not what they ‘actually’ said, was this mistaken interpretation an illusion? if so, then the fact that I interpret a film or novel in changing ways as I return to it over the course of my life a matter of clearing up an ‘illusion’?

Not all of this vitriol is aimed at you @Joshs, I've just been reading this for over a decade and I'm sick of having it explained to me like I've never read post-phenomenological work.

The basis of phenomenological and post-phenomenological thinking is that the starting and ending point of factual and and ethical analysis is the present , and the present of time is a complex structure which includes within the immediate ‘now’ a historical past and anticipatory future in which the past arrives already remade. The problem realists have with this thinking is that they place the identity of the ‘now’ before difference, Existence is self-identity to them, and change is also conceived in this basis. As a result, any utterance about there beyond nothing outside local contexts of meaning creation is read as a statement of identity, an in-itself fact about change that appears self-refuting on the face of it. It is inconceivable that a meaning can in itself expresss itself own transformation, an event of transit, being the same differently. The worst of it is that the implications of post-realism appear horrifyingly nihilistic because all that is glimpsed is contradiction, incommensurability, arbitrariness, skepticism and anything goes relativism. What is colossally missed is the fact that the positions which are being so completely misread do not attempt to deny the achievements of the sciences, don’t attempt to refute them , but leave them i n place and burrow beneath them to reveal their underpinnings. In so doing, they dont leave us with skepticism , relativism and arbitrariness , but with a profoundly intricate, intimate and enriching ‘ground’ for understanding how meaninful relations to our world — Joshs

You are aware of how many universal statements and definite statements about the essence of things are in this articulation of the radical contingency of everything, right?

"The basis" - as if there is one.
"starting and ending point" - as if there is a necessary duality between the two in any interpretive arc.
"is the present" - a single predication of an entire discourse which is impossible, even though you're ascribing it to an interlocutor's speech act {a reaction to their interpretation of discourse"
"is a complex structure" - this predication occurs over every discourse at every time and imbues it with
a complicated, transtemporal and transcontextual predicate. This is what you're denying your interlocutor the ability to do the sentence before.

I won't do the rest.

The problem fdrake has with this thinking is that it's utterly totalising despite pretending not to be, and can't be articulated without reducing every aspect of human comportment to a single existential-discursive structure. It's everything it claims not to be, all the time. The utter hypocrisy of the perspective is nauseating. Everything mediates everything else, "there is no ontological distinction between discourse and reality" {because the distinction is a discursive one}. It's The One with delusions of being The Many.

The proof is in the pudding, the stranglehold these soft realisms {really, discursive irrealisms} have on academic perspectives in social sciences makes it prohibitively difficult to do research requiring methodological innovation. It ends up totally isolating the disciplines that use this methodology and creating fiefdoms. People default back to broadly structuralist flavoured constructivism when they actually need to get shit done policy wise, because you can actually interpret operational variables and talk about causes {yes, unqualified causes, not mediated causes} with caveats in that framework.

It's utterly stultifying. The particularising nature of the methodology, in practice, just reminds you to do mediation analysis, then tells you you can't isolate causal variables in the wild. Everyone knows this.

Edit: and I like Ratcliffe because I get the impression he is not a stealthy reductionist of the material to its alleged existential genesis. He's a phenomenologist of disrupted bodies, and that's to his great credit.

Yes. Some beliefs are more significant to people than others. This remark says nothing about the phenomenology of revealed truth. — fdrake

Again - relativises the subject by categorising it as belief. The question was not whether one believes it were true. For the purpose of the argument, suppose it actually were true - put yourself in the position of one who believes it is. This is intended to convey its non-contingent nature. Were it true, it would be something of absolute importance, not one among other of a shifting web of 'faith convictions' and 'beliefs'. It would be as urgent as the requirement to breath.

There is no meta-interpretation. — Joshs

Speaking of convictions.....

I want to say "I love you all," but I'm not quite sure I believe that. But I wonder what would happen if I had faith that I could have faith in that? Inspired by @Vera Mont

t would be as urgent as the requirement to breath. — Wayfarer

It seems to me you're describing a psychological difference, rather than a perceptual or epistemological one. Like it's a core belief. It is, and they're often revised. Just with more pain. The possibility of a crisis or faith, a greater understanding of it, a rediscovery, evinces the non-necessity of its content for its believer. It is not essential to them, they believe it is essential. Or if it is essential, it's the same flavour of essentiality as one's upbringing or deep seated beliefs. Treated as partially constitutive of the subject, but revisable.

It seems to me you're describing a psychological difference, — fdrake

Yes, I can see how it would seem like that. But again, we're no closer to the sense in which religious revelation purports to connote insight into the unconditioned.

I want to say "I love you all," but I'm not quite sure I believe that. But I wonder what would happen if I had faith that I could have faith in that? — DifferentiatingEgg

Learn by doing, I would suggest. That would be quite a challenge, although one which at least some Christians seem to exemplify.