Just that every belief system is supported by faith. — frank

What is that belief based on?

I think that distinction is useful. But does it apply to religious beliefs? If there is a God, then religious beliefs may not come from a private psychological state. They may come from the insight that there is a God - an insight that some people happen not to have. Which gets us back where we started. — Cuthbert

Sure. I think it does. :fire: :up:

It's not meaningless (and it's not a tautology either, since it's not logically impossible for someone to come back to life, merely physically impossible as far as we know), the proposition: “When someone is dead, he cannot die (again)” is clearly true, since if someone was dead and then died, he would have died twice, which is impossible.

At least, that seems to be what Sextus is saying. — Amalac

Yes, I recall some miraculous cases of people coming back to life after pronounced dead. Would it not be the case of mistakenly pronounced death, when the person was just unconscious?

“Not legitimate” as in unreasonable. — Amalac

When someone says, not legitimate, it is usually for birth of child, I used to imagine. I am planning to get a good etymology dictionary soon.

True is considered an objective fact, not the subjective feeling of the believer. — Hanover

:fire: :up:
OK. I will go with that.

Assuming Knowledge = a Justified True Belief (K=JTB), the reason that a belief in the effectiveness of a placebo is not knowledge is because it's not True. The person had a justification (he was told by a scientist the pill would work) and he believed the person, but it wasn't true. — Hanover

From the placebo taker's point of view, it was a true knowledge? From the doctors (the giver)'s point of view, it was false knowledge. But until the placebo taker is told that it was false, to him it is true.

A premise can't be valid or invalid, only an argument can. A premise can only be true, false or meaningless.

If you say that premise is false, what's your response to this then?: — Amalac

I see some premises as arguments and some arguments as premises depending on the block of texts in the arguments. The point is that it is not coherent.

What do you mean by “not valid” here? I guess you mean illegitimate?

But why isn't it legitimate? Isn't it correct to say that a living thing can only die once? Because the only way someone could die twice would be if they died, then came back to life, and then died again, which is surely impossible right? — Amalac

Right!! Because a man cannot die twice. When already died, saying the he cannot die, sounds like some tautology or meaningless proposition to make. Not sure about not legitimate - never came across that term in the Logic books.

When socrates died, he has already died, so the premise that socrates couldn't have died when he died seems invalid. When someone is already dead, it is not valid to declare, he cannot die.
Invalid argument led to the wrong conclusion.

The point of Mathematics is the universal consistency, accuracy and infallible knowledge it gives. If it is inconsistent, then it loses its' point.

We can introduce the concept of inconsistent maths in some possible worlds for some metaphysical debates, but that world would be a world of chaos and confusion.

I thought about the nature of different beliefs, and concluded that there are two types of beliefs. I also thought about the case of Placebo regarding faith requirement for it.

1. The beliefs based on the rational or inductive knowledge such as believing that flying is a reasonably safe form of transportation or Covid vaccines will protect the takers from the infections.

2. The beliefs that have no definite rational or inductive knowledge or ground. The beliefs that come from a private psychological state, which does not require evidence, justification or proof. Religious beliefs are in this category, and only in this case, the concept of faith should be applied to the beliefs.

In the case of placebo takers believing the placebo will cure his symptoms, it is in the form of misled knowledge rather than belief. When placebo is given to the taker, he will be told what it is about, and what it will do even if it is fake. He could believe it might work, but he doesn't have to. There is no logical condition of necessity for him to believe that it might work, even if he is knowing falsely what it is supposed to do in curing his symptoms.
The point here is that he knows about it in detail in the form of knowledge, although it is false knowledge. It is no longer beliefs.

My thoughts exactly. — Wayfarer

:fire: :100:

Radiohead - Lift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBGaO89cBMI

Not 'how' in any meaningful scientific sense. There's two different creation narratives in Genesis alone. There are thousands of such creation narratives in different cultures. The Hindus have one that the universe was created from a cosmic egg, a single point, the 'bindu'. — Wayfarer

Yeah, he dropped it from the beginning of the video quite sensibly. But all the creation narratives still can be meaningful when approached by hermeneutics or analytic methods to come to some metaphysical explanations. Things can be interpreted from different perspectives. They may not be critically scientific, but still can be enormously meaningful in different ways.

Someone should tell him that. — Wayfarer

Thought it was obvious :D

Radiohead - Daydreaming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTAU7lLDZYU

That depends on who you ask. — Wayfarer

Philosophers raise issues with premises and stick to their good old arguments to come to some conclusions. The traditional philosophical method is discourse.

Physicists will stick to their observations, measurements, calculations, functions and try to make up theories to prove their hypotheses were right.

But every scientific theories are made to be proved wrong by further theories and discoveries. Don't rely on them as some eternal truths.

The point about 'God theories' is to encourage you to practice compassion and right living. Belief in God is not a scientific argument. Many scientists don't believe in God, others do, and it makes no difference to their work. — Wayfarer

God theories talk about how the universe had been created too.

find Seah Carroll a pleasant enough fellow, and he's obviously an ace in his area of expertise but I think he's philosophically pretty shallow. — Wayfarer

He is just a quantum physicist. They are not philosophers. :)
But it is interesting to hear how they see the origin of the universe. They are still all just assertions, which are not fully verified and agreed universally.

That also confirms that belief of Placebo is not faith type.

"False belief" (i.e. make-believe, delusion) is "faith". :roll: — 180 Proof

The difference between false belief and faith would be, the former will turn to feeling of anger, stupid or having been manipulated when being told it was placebo the believer was taking, whereas faith will not be easily broken by any empirical information no matter what the empirical information was. (mentioned above)

Surely they are not the same type of beliefs.

More or less how I've always done it. — 180 Proof

:fire: :up:

The trick is to philosophise at nights when everyone is asleep, or during days coffee breaks and lunch times, and the weekends. When others are busy enjoying themselves shopping dinning and galavanting around ... we philosophers would sit in the corner of the garden or a room, and entertain the deep thoughts. :)

Great posts thank you. This is what I think about the points.

I feel that there are different kinds of beliefs of different nature.  To analyse how they are different, we can ask "Why"  one believes  X.
1. Why do you believe flying is unsafe? Because I have seen, and heard the horror stories and news, sometimes air accidents and disasters have happened in the past. If they happened in the real world, it could happen in the future too.  I believe it is unsafe or it is not 100% safe to fly.
The belief is based on the inductive cases in the past. This type of belief is bound to change any time depending on the empirical evidence acquired by the believer.

2. Why do you believe in God?In this case, anything can be the reason.  It is not limited to the inductive or deductive premises or experiences. It could be totally personal, psychological and existential and even irrational.
Because I just believe in God. Because I was brought up under a religious background.  I don't know. I just know God exists.  I have had unexplainable experience that God exists.  
All these reasons are mostly psychological, and are out of boundary for rational explanation. No arguments can diminish or break this type of belief unless the believer changes his mind by his own internal thoughts based on psychological reasons.

3. In the case of Placebo, the believer is taking it on the basis that the pill will cure his symptoms just because it was given by a doctor.  The belief is false, and as soon as he knows it is a placebo, his belief will crash to nothing.  It has nothing to do with faith. It is not the case, that he doesn't know why he wants to take a placebo, but just taking it for some existential grounds, or he was brought up under the placebo taking traditional family or he just knows that placebo will cure his symptoms.   If the placebo was given by a passer-by he met in the park, he won't necessarily believe that placebo will work for him.   So placebo does not require faith. In fact it has nothing to do with faith. It is based on the placebo takers' false belief that it might work.

I can see your point. Beliefs and trusts crumble with emergence of the negative evidence and knowledge about something one believed and trusted.  

I recall when I was 15, I flew in an airplane for the first time.  Everything was fantastic and exciting.  At that age, obviously I had no knowledge about possibilities that air planes can crash, get kidnapped or even shot down from the ground military action. 

I never had an idea that an airplane is a man made machine that has thousands of parts working together, and can fail any time for unexplained reasons. Maybe I did, but was not giving any serious thought about it at the time.

Now after many times of flying and times gone by, I am aware of the possibilities of air disasters. I hate flying.  I only fly if only if I must, for work, business or visiting family in another country in really must situations only. Beliefs and trust require good rational reasons for having them in daily life. I feel that beliefs and trust in daily life are different kind from beliefs and faith in the case of religion.

In my view it is not wrong to say that the entire Philosophy from the ancient time of Thales up to now, could be defined as Analytic. The recent anglo-american analysts just made it more rigorous system.

I don’t think you understand it. Have read of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation — Wayfarer

I read it, and this is what I think about it.

I don't think I would take the MWI theory too seriously. It's like what Einstein said, that the universe is 4 dimensional, and there is no time - no past, no present, no future. In their theory maybe, but in reality, it doesn't make sense.

I don't see any practical or factual point of saying that there are many real worlds out there because of this and that evidence from the measurements and observations, if I can't walk into one, and live in there as long as I want, and come back out and try some other universe in real life experience.

I feel that one shouldn't follow any theories one hears about just because it is said by a quantum physicist or some famous scientist. One should take in what is feasible and useful for one's own thought logic. If you really think it is right, no one will stop you from believing it.

But I thought the OP video had a couple of useful and meaningful messages that I took as a good point - God theories professed by the armchair philosophy does not give anything practical or useful for the description and understanding of the universe.

Radiohead - Just

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIFLtNYI3Ls

I was under impression, philosophy is something that cost nothing. Just sit down and think about something in critical way, that is philosophy, is it not?

Not sure if it happened or not. I thought it did.
Anyways, I got some books by Delueze, Derrida and Foucault, and will be reading them. So it will be happening in my reading room for sure.

Humans are endowed with reasoning and linguistic capabilities, but when it comes to intuition, animals could be far more intuitive? Animals have higher sensory perceptive power such as smells, sights and hearings ... etc too.

Not being able to know what is going on in one's own body worsens unpredictability of one's life. I saw many 20s and 30s people who had suffered strokes, and confined in wheelchairs cared by the family and the staff in the hospice while caring for my father at the time. Youth didn't look like, it means much for any certainty in their own life at all.

This video is telling a lot more about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxvQ3Wyw2M4

Sorry, the above quote was not from a reader, but a famous physicist Raymond Frederick .

"Raymond Frederick "Ray" Streater (born 1936) is a British physicist, and professor emeritus of Applied Mathematics at King's College London. He is best known for co-authoring a text on quantum field theory, the 1964 PCT, Spin and Statistics and All That."

Another quick scan on the link page, and from the passing thought. I think it is very interesting stuff, although totally new topics to me. Will keep reading and thinking about it. As you say, no rush.

Don’t rush. It’s perplexed many of the greatest physicists of the century. — Wayfarer

I agree with the comment made by one of the readers on the MWI theory, and the Universal WaveFunctions page in the link.

"The idea of the wave-function of the universe is meaningless; we do not even know what variables it is supposed to be a function of. [...] We find the laws of Nature by reproducible experiments. The theory needs a cut, between the observer and the system, and the details of the apparatus should not appear in the theory of the system."

Just based on UWF and MWI, if one can say there are many worlds out there, that does not sound feasible at all.

I could go with the theory that the real world emerges from the previous real world every moment whenever there are new events. This sounds more realistic theory to me.

My post was just my quick interpretation from your quotes. But maybe there are more involved. Later, I will have a read the link in peace and quiet, and get back to you, what I think of it.

A replica of the world with some differences. Not a change to the world but an actually different world. — Wayfarer

It is just a matter of the criteria - how large or small the readings, how rigorous or loose the perception of the changes, and also what instruments to measure the changes of the world they are using, but it is the case that no can dispute. I know it can sound mad, but that is scientific theories for you sometimes :D

A good point on the nature of faith. It is definitely more assuring to have faiths grounded on some level of certainty, even if faith is a type of belief.

Wouldn't it mean that whatever happens in the real world, it creates a new real world from the previous state of the real world? Logically I feel it sounds ok to me. For instance, if there were a volcano explosion somewhere in the south pacific islands, then that event will definitely affect the earth's atmosphere someway. The world then will not be the same as before the event, as if nothing had happened, although depending on how large and destructive the explosion was, it may cause either just some changes on the CO2 readings and rainfall and air pollution states, or indeed it might have caused catastrophic results on the human lives killing thousands deforming the shape of the land, and destroying the towns and villages.

But one thing clear is that the world after the event will be, in the actuality a different world, prior to that event. So in the strict sense, a new world is being created every second whenever there is an event or events somewhere in the world no matter how insignificant it was, but still remains as the real world although we may not notice it.

Even with some totally different and trivial insignificant examples such as, if I moved all the books on the floor to my new bookshelves, that event has created a new world for me. Because now, all my books are facing me from the wall, rather than scattered all over on the room floor.

It sounds a fine theory to me. :D

Frustrated by humanity, God committed suicide. :sad: Who can blame him? — Pop

If he is an omnipotent being, he can revive himself instantly. :)

Personally thinking and writing on these topics teach me about basics on Epistemic and Metaphysical logics.

How does that "logical sense" relate to anything I might experience?
We get to see what power does in our lives.What does imagining having an "infinite" amount of the stuff relate to our circumstances? — Valentinus

Of course, you cannot experience Omnipotence. No one can.
It is an abstract concept, used by the debaters.

Hmmn, the creator with a death wish.
Creatures are not necessarily on board. — Valentinus

We are talking here about the scope of power - omnipotence, what it can do or cannot do in logical sense.

yeah, I suppose if you bring in some other religious God concept, and if the premise is based on that, then the whole argument could become valid, even if the conclusion could be false.