Cool. It was a favourite of my father's, and I also love it, but it takes that step too far that I so often accuse you of also taking.

There are similar things in Midgley.

And here we have "the leap of faith".

It's the standard rendering from modal logic, after Kripke. To be compared to

...it is in the relationship of being known by a rational agent that things most fully "are what they are." — Count Timothy von Icarus

...which for my money says very little.

We can confirm the list dating back 500 years, but the evidence starts to become less reliable after that. Does the record in the book count for anything, or would we consider the claims in the books to be baseless beyond 500 years? — BitconnectCarlos

How do you know that it "becomes less reliable" unless you have some other evidence with which to compare it, and that is more reliable?

There's a sense in which we can entertain the idea that matter itself changed, but I think it's an erroneous inference — Moliere

:up:

Note, though, that none of this is scientific. — Moliere

:up:

For myself I'd say that Aristotle is not a scientist in the modern sense — Moliere

:up:

And I'm not sure how the methods of metaphysics in Aristotle are somehow better than latter methods of metaphysics — Moliere

:up:

...that philosophy is not using science to give itself credibility, and it has no need to do so. — Moliere

Yep. Philosophy is not science without the maths.

Both seem to handle inferences about existence better than positing an essence — Moliere

Yep. And there is the additional problem of their never quite explaining what an essence is, at least not in a way that is anywhere near as clear as "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists".

Funnily enough I kind of welcome the resurgence, as long as we take the historical approach. — Moliere

I also welcome exegesis, but when Aristotelian ideas are toted as better than more recent stuff, together with an apparent misunderstanding of that more recent stuff, then it's worthy of comment.

If reasons "just are" causes, we'd need to revise a lot of our way of talking about them. — J

I don't agree, but saying why would be extending the topic...

Do we want to do that, or start another PM conversation including @Janus, or a new thread, or leave it?

I'll leave it unless something else happens.

:wink: Thanks. Nice. Not so much rock 'n roll though.

Check out this doco

Yeah. Sad, really, that you have bought in to Platonism. Oh well. Cheers.

Edit: A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher, author of Small is beautiful - I think we talked about him previously - has a pleasing and more modern account of such things. You might enjoy it.

Yep. Just noting that this is a bid area. We say things like "She picked the Pumpkin because she wanted to make soup"and talk of beliefs causing revolutions.

Misinterpreting again. — Wayfarer

Then write more clearly. You said "But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person", then that it might be "genuine insight", now it's levels of reality, and levels of being, whatever they are. And how do you share your "self abnegation" without getting arrested for assault?

~~

I'm wondering when you say that we understand things in the human sciences you mean that we understand human behaviour in terms of reasons not causes. — Janus

If I may, there's good arguments that reasons just are causes, from both Davidson and Anscombe, of all people. This might give pause to reconsider what sort of thing a "cause" is. It's a fraught topic.

Come on Way. That first person might still be convinced, and become a True Believer, and spend the rest of their life chanting, but they can't bring out their private experience so that it can be challenged, revised, discussed and all that other stuff we do to decide if a proposal is true or not.

And as for ‘Cartesian anxiety’—it’s not anxiety to ask for public reasons, so much as intellectual hygiene. Assertions grounded solely in subjective conviction can't demand assent from others.

So it's not evidence, it's opinion.

And note that "Perfect statement of modern moral relativism" does not address the actual argument, but instead labels it. Defensive reasoning on your part - "That's just what a heathen would say".

You're better that that.

But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person. — Wayfarer

Then by that alone, it ain't evidence. It's opinion.

I seem to recall Bill Haley and the Comets 'Rock Around the Clock' is often said to be the first bona fide world-wide rock'n'roll hit song... — Wayfarer

Nuh.

Here's the start:



a queer black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

I'll go back to what I said here:

Were I writing in opposition to myself here, I might be pointing out that faith is one amongst at least a trinity, and that when set in the context of hope and love it shines, and my arguments fall away. — Banno

Were I in your shoes, oh devout one, I'd be agreeing with Banno that faith might by itself be corrupted, and so it must not be left on it's own, but kept as a part of the whole lived experience of... whatever your pet religion is this week.

Jesus, now I'm arguing both sides. :roll:

Treating faith as a part of a "form of life", lived fully and freely, may be enough to prevent the faithful from crashing into crowds, wearing bombs in public or praying over children while denying them the medicine they need to live.

Maybe.

incidentally, about this dogma that 'faith is belief without evidence'. The believer will say that the world itself evidences divine providence. There may not be evidence in the sense of double-blind experimental data across sample populations of X thousand persons. But the testimony of sages, the proper interpretation of religious texts, and the varieties of religious experience all constitute evidence, although of course all of that may equally be disregarded. The will not to believe is just as strong as the will to believe. — Wayfarer

I don't disagree. Except that what is to count as evidence ought to be available for public scrutiny. If anything - or indeed, as some suggest, everything - can count as evidence, then evidence loses any capacity to inform our decisions, becoming irrelevant. We must differentiate conviction from justification. The testimony of sages, private interpretations of scripture, or subjective religious experience may be meaningful to the believer but fails as evidence in a public or epistemically shared sense.

So those who believe in divine providence will see it everywhere. Is that evidence, or is it projection, wishful thinking, and confirmation bias?

Resisting an unjustified belief is not "The will not to believe", it's accepting epistemic responsibility - as is believing when there is justification.

And seeing faith as involving belief without evidence is not a dogma, but a description of how faith functions in many religious contexts, where The Faithful are encouraged - indeed, extolled - to maintain their belief in the face of doubt, uncertainty, or counter-evidence.

And this last is the clincher here. It would be extraordinary to see the faithful deny this.

I'm not going for the technical explanations.

Rock is the child of blues and jazz, and these in turn needed slavery and poverty. There were plenty of both in Ancient Egypt.

So back to this: How do you know that there wasn't Rock in Thebes? Perhaps it was played in the back streets. Very little of the music from way back survives - you can hear recreations of it on line, but these are somewhat dubious.

Perhaps what was missing was the equivalent of Elvis and Bill Haley - white men to rip of the traditional music of the Nubians and turn a profit.

...

Your point?

You're a bit of a dill, really.

I'll try again. J and I are talking on a PM, not a forum page, about issues hereabouts, in order to avoid irrelevant shite posts such as these.

And he will have understood the suggestion that we keep the discussion of that question until we get through our discussion in PM.

Have you more to say on a topic that does not concern you? Please feel free to keep it to yourself.

Posts like this are a part of the reason that @J and I moved our conversation to the PMs. J. would have understood that. Butt out. nothing to do with you.

Let's see what response this post elicits. — Banno

Mmmm.

But I'm addicted, so I will.

And you will just say... what was it? That I treat every comment as a linguistic trap? Goes with the territory.

So you want to change "1. Faith involves acting on belief without sufficient evidence" to "P1: “Faith is belief in something without empirical or rational justification.” Can you see how this turns the characterisation of faith into a stipulated definition? Instead of "faith includes this" you have "faith is this". Can you see how your edit changes the emphasis to belief, and from action? But the point here is to bring out the immoral acts that are sometimes the result of faith unfettered.

So no, that's not a reasonable alteration.

Cheers.

Now if we could relate that back to your OP...

Banno, is it possible you are a little biased against me? — Fire Ologist

Of course that's possible. But on thinking about it, early on I didn't give much attention to your views simply becasue what you were attempting to say was way off. You commenced misrepresenting me from very early in this conversation. Look at . And this:

You sound to me like you have no idea what faith is. And no curiosity. — Fire Ologist

I'm offering this not as part of a "you hit me back first" argument, but to point out that sometimes biases are learned.

And I have very little time for Leon, who certainly posts in bad faith. That you fell in with him in my opinion shows poor judgement.

41 pages. The topic is not that interesting.

Why should I engage further?

Oh goodness.

Perhaps logical space is broader than just consistency? It seems we might be able to wander away from the safe shore of possible worlds out on to the ocean of impossible worlds.

Beyond the pale for some, no doubt.

But before we go there, perhaps there are two completely consistent mathematics, the one on the left in which Goldbach's Conjecture is true; and the one on the right in which it is false.

Which one is true? Which one is right? Those question ceases to make sense. They are both true and yet incompatible. Logical space ceases to look like a unified whole, resembling instead a patchwork of frameworks, each with its own truths, rules, and meanings.

I think that's wonderful. @Count Timothy von Icarus won't like it.

You are repeating the very same errors already addressed. It's not worth my time to respond yet again. Diminishing returns.

If any one else sees a problem so far unaddressed, let me know.

As long as we don't use this to settle an argument or determine that it's true for everyone — Tom Storm

Yep! That seems to be the key.

It occures to me that, were one to suppose that there is exactly one truth, then those who disagree are indeed wrong, even if you can't say why; and as such the psychology as to why they accept such wrong views might seem more important than the reasons that those views are wrong - allowing one to dismiss views contrary to one's own becasue of who proffers them.

Enter Jordan Peterson, Iain McGilchrist, and John Vervaeke.

Excellent article - thanks. What did you take away from it?

I can't help it either. — Tom Storm

:smile:

There's the argument that such talk provides broad maps of where we are in the intellectual and cultural landscape. As such it's not true or false so much as useful or indicative, and justifiable on those grounds, perhaps.

There's also the point, made a few times by a few folk, that the motivation for some position is (usually) not relevant to the validity of the position.

's Nagel, even if he is right, makes no difference to the content of the arguments involved.

That stuff about psychologising, again.

"the gladiatorial theory of philosophy" — J

"Are you not entertained?"

Entertainment is also a large part of the discussion here in the forum. It's cold outside and I can write this post between chess games and Stelaris.

I asked ChatGPT to summarise my argument in this thread. Here's the result.

Banno's argument that faith may bring about immoral acts unfolds through a critical and pragmatic lens, emphasizing the consequences of acting on belief without sufficient justification. His argument can be outlined as follows:

1. Faith involves acting on belief without sufficient evidence
Premise: Faith, particularly religious or blind faith, is often characterized by belief in something without (or beyond) empirical or rational justification.
Banno frequently targets faith that forgoes critical evaluation, emphasizing that such belief is often sustained despite contrary evidence or lack of evidence.

2. Actions based on such faith can have real-world consequences
Premise: Beliefs are not isolated—they lead to actions.
Faith is not a passive attitude but something that motivates behavior, often with social or moral implications.

3. Those consequences can be harmful or immoral
Premise: Because faith-based actions bypass critical scrutiny, they can lead to outcomes that violate ethical norms or cause real harm.
Examples alluded to in discussion:
Religious extremism
Faith-driven violence or discrimination
Obedience to divine commands (e.g., Abraham and Isaac) without moral deliberation

4. Therefore, faith is not inherently virtuous and can lead to immorality
Conclusion: Faith, contrary to popular or religious belief, is not a moral good in itself. Instead, its value depends on its consequences.
Banno argues that faith should be assessed pragmatically—by its effects in the world—not held as a virtue independent of outcomes.

Supporting moves in his argument:
He challenges interlocutors who define faith as inherently good or virtuous.
He uses philosophical and theological examples (e.g., Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac) to show how acts praised as faithful might, under ordinary moral reasoning, be considered repugnant or immoral.
He stresses that if one is "never fully informed", then acting on such incomplete faith is especially dangerous.

Meta-point: Faith resists correction
Another subtle but important part of Banno's critique is that faith-based beliefs are resistant to revision, since they are often held as immune to counterevidence.
This makes it harder to check or restrain immoral consequences once someone is acting in faith.


Summary:
Banno’s structure is a pragmatic-ethical critique:
Faith motivates action
Action has consequences
Faith bypasses critical scrutiny
Therefore, it can lead to harmful consequences
Thus, faith is not inherently good and may be a source of immorality — ChatGPT

Not too bad a rendering.

I then asked it to list replies to this argument. Here's an edit:

Others argue that faith is a rational response when evidence is lacking but action is required. They suggest that faith allows individuals to make decisions and maintain emotional stability in the face of uncertainty.

Some contributors redefine faith as trust in authority or societal systems, which is often necessary for functioning in complex societies. This interpretation challenges the notion that faith is exclusively religious or inherently prone to leading to immoral acts.

Another line of response views faith as an a-rational or experiential phenomenon that transcends empirical evidence. Participants discuss faith in terms of personal experience, intuition, or as a necessary component of certain practices like Zen koans. This perspective suggests that faith can be a meaningful and purposeful aspect of human experience, not necessarily leading to immorality.

Some forum members express concern that Banno's argument may oversimplify the concept of faith by focusing solely on its potential for harm. They advocate for a more nuanced understanding that considers the various forms and functions of faith in human life. This highlights the complexity of defining faith and the importance of context in evaluating its moral implications. — ChatGPT

Pretty nuanced.

The justification for doing this is that folk have suggested that I haven't presented an argument. Here it is, summarised by an algorithm.

In Watkins' terms evolution is both confirmable and influential. Also, it risks being show to not match the data, unlike creationism in it's various forms. As Haldane pointed out, finding a rabbit fossil in Precambrian rock formations would be a knockout. But there aren't any.

Evolution is not strictly falsifiable - only universal statements are strictly falsifiable. That was what Popper was drawing attention to in his 1974 article, "Scientific Reduction and the Essential Tension". But the many misunderstandings of that comment brought out a later retraction.

He didn't change his mind, he clarified his point.

I think... — Wayfarer

You'd be wrong. And not just in laying the blame on David Lewis.

Modal metaphysics revives and deepens problems that are as real as any in classical thought. It offers precise tools for exploring essence, necessity, and counterfactuality—concepts classical metaphysics also wrestled with. And the charge of being "verbal" reflects a deflationary bias that the modal tradition explicitly resists.

But Banno's Rule applies: It is always easier to critique something if you begin by not understanding it. Your dismissal of modal metaphysics as “verbal” is a textbook case of strategic misunderstanding. You are trying to cut off a conversation that makes you uncomfortable, that cuts against your own views.

This site seems to contain a lot of strong voices advocating theism or views related to higher consciousness or transcendence. — Tom Storm

Well, have a look at the "philosophy" section in your bookshop. If there is one, it will almost certainly be between "self-help" and “religion"...

As long as the theists are not evangelising, or abusive, I don't mind. — Tom Storm

Nor do I, except that almost universally, when one points out a flaw in their position, the comeback is a denigration of the critic rather than a response to the criticism.

So I presented here a brief and fairly obvious criticism of faith. And here we are. @Hanover was the only one to address the actual argument presented.

Speculating: I think some theists believe they have read all the right philosophy and theology and have many of the answers and that modern secular culture is debased and decadent. They're probably angry about the state of the world, and when they encounter people with views they've identified as the cause of contemporary troubles, they lash out. — Tom Storm

That would be fine on Facebook.

Ah well. They will doubtless see this conversation as me stirring the possum. Perhaps it is. But I find it difficult not to see many of their comments as disingenuous, in bad faith.

, ... isn't it a bit rich for theists to seek out a place where there will be a lot of atheists, then complain that there are too many atheists?

Just plain rude.

So you prefer simple over correct? :wink:

Possible worlds are not so hard to understand. They are just stipulated models of how things might have been. So I might not have written this post - that can be modelled as that there is a possible world in which I didn't write this post. It's that simple. We can then go on to think about the consequences - like, in that possible world, since I didn't write this post, you didn't read it. But Charlie would still be King of England.

Using this, an essence can be seen as the properties a thing must have in every possible world in which it is found.

In most cases, that definition is much the same as the "qualities that make it what it is" version. But there are important differences.

And if one is going to play with philosophical concepts, understanding logic generally, including modal logic, is going to stand you in good stead.

Basically, if you are going to follow only logics from 2000 years ago, you will not be able to engage effectively with more... recent material.

Up to you, of course.

I would claim that water was not H2O before Lavoisier. — Moliere

I'll put my reply here instead of to your PM.

I understand that it was Cavendish, not Lavoisier, who first identified water as a compound (through experiments around 1781), though Lavoisier's chemical revolution helped fix the conceptual framework.

It occurred to me on looking again that there are two readings of what you wrote - the de re and the de dicto. The sentence ‘Water is H₂O’ was not something people could assert or know before Cavendish; the term "water" did not yet rigidly refer to H₂O. So if you were saying that the word "water" could not be used to refer to H₂O before Cavendish announced his work, I agree. However, if the assertion is that prior to Cavensih's announcement, the chemical structure of water was not H₂O, it is I think in error.

There's all sorts of complexities here. The foremost is that Kripke's "Water=H₂O" is intended only for extensional contexts. While Aristotle presumably believed fish live water, he doubtless did not believe that they live in H₂O.

We should head back to the topic at hand, which is "what is real". The idea seems to be that there is an essence, a "what makes a thing what it is", and that this is of use in deciding what is real and what isn't. Along with this goes the view that there really is a difference between what is real and what is not real, such that for any x, the question "is x real" has a firm "yes" or no"no" answer.

I think that view is mistaken, for reasons I gave earlier. And I think that view is quite common amongst philosophers - at least those who are alive.

Now there is a clear and well-formulated use of "essence" that relies on modal logic, and says that an essence of some item is a property had by that item in every possible world. This appears to me, and I suspect to most folk*, as a better definition than either that the essence of a thing is determined by its participation in a Form... or that the essence of a thing is "what it is to be that thing".

Now Kripke really did throw the cat amongst the pigeons. Unit Possible World Semantics, the orthodoxy, form Russell and Quine and friends, was that essences were passé, not amenable to a decent logical analysis and best thrown out. Kripke gave essences A New Hope, redefining them in a rigid and formal way. However in so doing he moved the emphasis away from metaphysics to logic and epistemology.

And also, in doing this, Kripke (and others - "Kripke" here is shorthand for those who adopted and adapted his ideas) detached essence from natural kinds and teleology and other such notions.

So Kripke's revolution dispatched much of the previous work on modality, necessity and essences.

The result is that essences no longer are of much help in setting out what is real and what isn't.

But here are those amongst us who, bathing in the light of Plato and Aristotle, seek to reinvigorate metaphysics by bringing back the "what makes a thing what it is" version of essence. And that's pretty much were the argument here stands.

I'll leave this now, although I might come back to it and talk about water again.

Cheers.

* it's not in the philpapers survey, and perhaps it should be

:wink: Nice.

Is Pyornkrachzark a rock? Well, we have a choice here. We might say that while Pyornkrachzark is made of stone, he is not a rock, but perhaps a silicon-based life form, and no more a rock than you and I are pools of water.

Or alternately we might say that Pyornkrachzark is a rock, and that therefore the assertion "rocks do not sleep" is incorrect.

That is, we might re-asses Tim's assertion that rocks neither sleep nor wake. We have a choice here, not about whether rocks sleep so much as about how we use the word "rock".

I don't think this has an affect on the argument given, which is that accessibility does what Tim tried to do with potential, only more clearly and with less metaphysical baggage.

@J, just noticed this. I don't recognise you in the somewhat patronising description given by .

I was going to PM that, but perhaps it is better said publicly.

1. I hold X to be true
2. Therefore, I am committed to saying that Joe, who holds ~X, is holding to a falsehood

The question is, "What is Joe, according to me?" Certainly he is wrong. Is he ignorant? Possibly, depending on one's definition. Is he acting in bad faith? No, not necessarily. — Leontiskos

There's also the possibility that Joe is right and I am wrong. There might be some point in trying to understand Joe's position, to see how the arguments he uses function, to try to find some common ground.

There's an alternative to thinking that an argument is either right or wrong. Rather than framing disagreements as binary conflicts we might seek the underlying structure of the disagreement, which could lead to deeper agreement or at least mutual intelligibility.

This would involve some good will on the part of the participants, and the acceptance of what we might call "liberal" guidelines for discussion.

This seems to be what this forum is about. But we can check with @Jamal on that.

It might involve not dismissing someone as "beyond the pale"; however given the limited time and resources available to us all, there may be some folk with whom the law of diminishing returns suggests there is not much value in continuing a discussion.

Just a thought. Let's see what response this post elicits.

meh.

I've given you more consideration than your posts deserve.