Faith and Assumption

[Humodour]

That's not the same thing as faith. Based on experience, it is reasonable to assume gravity will act tomorrow like it did today. No faith needed.

 

How do you know gravity will do that? What evidence do you have that gravity will continue to act the same way every day?

 

Because somebody told you that it does? Because you learnt about it in science? Did you prove it yourself? Did you prove the things upon which your proof of gravity is based on?

 

You have faith that the proofs of gravity are true. You have faith that the fundamental laws of the universe won't change. You have faith in the people who make these laws and proofs.

 

No, faith is intimately tangled up with belief and assumption. It is part of human neural wiring to be predisposed to faith; we can't make assumptions without it; we can't decide whether one thing is more important than another, because that requires a judgement about what is more likely, what the consequences will be (something we have faith in; whether we are strong in that faith or not, and whether or not that faith is in fact misplaced).

 

Faith should not be confused with blind, inflexible devotion; while this is a subset of faith, it is not faith itself.

 

Even in mathematics, which is built upon fundamental axioms which we don't have faith are true, but instead dictate are true, we must have faith, because the higher levels of maths are built upon mounds and mounds of axioms. We often prove many of these theorems through the axioms, but not all of them. The ones we don't prove we have faith are correct; that 100's of years of peer-review aren't wrong (and sometimes they are, though this is more often the case in physics than maths).

 

For example, do you know how to prove the quadratic formula holds for the real numbers using the ordered field axioms? Take a stab at it here. It is quite fun (if you don't mind spending 10 hours doing something mind-numbing): http://www.calvin.edu/~rpruim/courses/m361...s-print-pp4.pdf

 

More often in maths, we prove things are true using theorems we've previously proved are true (either by axioms or further theorems we've proved are true by axioms). But even in this case, we often use many identities or formulae without knowing their proofs, or without knowing the proofs of the base theorems.

 

Conclusion: Faith is, in fact, a fundamental part of human nature. The fact that we have it might predisposes us to inventing and refining religion when we gather in significantly large groups, and some people might be more predisposed to faith with weak evidence than others, but religion is not inherently part of human nature, nor inherently part of faith.

Edited February 28, 2008 by Krezack

[Enoch]

Somebody's been reading his David Hume...

[Qwerty the Sir]

On your conclusion, the fact that it may be our human nature doesn't really provide any sort of justification for faith. Also, every sentence after the first one of your conclusion doesn't follow from the argument.

[Guest The Architect]

That's right.

 

More often in maths, we prove things are true using theorems we've previously proved are true (either by axioms or further theorems we've proved are true by axioms). But even in this case, we often use many identities or formulae without knowing their proofs, or without knowing the proofs of the base theorems.

 

Your first sentence says we've proved certain theorems are true using axioms, but we haven't, since like you said, we don't know those formulae proofs, or the proofs of the base theorems. What you seem to me you're saying is, truth is relative, but it's not... because it's true, in the factual definition sense, that truth is relative.

 

It's not a completely meaningless word because there are alternative definitions of truth, such as it's often used as an expression of agreement with someone about something, or when you're saying something that you're being honest and sincere about.

[Enoch]

Somebody's been reading his David Hume...

To clarify, Hume wrote that all human perception of causation was non-rational, because we couldn't observe the actual causing. We simply came to associate the two by observation ("every time I jump up, I fall down") and come to believe in causation based on our experiences (rather than logical proofs).

 

This kind of belief, though, is based on our experience interacting with the world. It's not the same as metaphysical or religious belief (which Hume was not particularly fond of).

 

Good summary Here.

Edited February 28, 2008 by Enoch

[Azure79]

Wow, this is so over my head

 

I'm just good at memorizing stuff.

[Humodour]

On your conclusion, the fact that it may be our human nature doesn't really provide any sort of justification for faith. Also, every sentence after the first one of your conclusion doesn't follow from the argument.

 

True that. Those sentences shouldn't have been in my conclusion. I never actually did debating in school nor have I taken a logic/philosophy course for argument structure. Pardon me.

 

Were you wondering how faith came to be part of human nature, evolutionarily?

 

That's right.

 

More often in maths, we prove things are true using theorems we've previously proved are true (either by axioms or further theorems we've proved are true by axioms). But even in this case, we often use many identities or formulae without knowing their proofs, or without knowing the proofs of the base theorems.

 

Your first sentence says we've proved certain theorems are true using axioms, but we haven't, since like you said, we don't know those formulae proofs, or the proofs of the base theorems. What you seem to me you're saying is, truth is relative, but it's not... because it's true, in the factual definition sense, that truth is relative.

 

It's not a completely meaningless word because there are alternative definitions of truth, such as it's often used as an expression of agreement with someone about something, or when you're saying something that you're being honest and sincere about.

 

Um?

 

Mathematics is unlike the rest of human reasoning. It is based upon ideal, perfect, axioms which we actively chose to be the basis. From these axioms we can build things, and we can prove things to be exactly true by tracing them back to the axioms.

 

Science, on the other hand, tries to identify what basic axioms the world runs on, but doesn't have any method of verifying their validity, timelessness or consistency. The best it can do is approximate what it thinks are the axioms, and hope there aren't any hidden catches (which there are; see deviation between mechanics at microscopic and macroscopic level for an example), and try to incorporate them as they appear.

 

I've personally proved a fair few theorems in the my maths degree, many of which were proved from the base axioms; it was part of my pure maths unit.

 

Somebody's been reading his David Hume...

 

Who?

 

Ah, just read your second post. Thanks!

Edited February 28, 2008 by Krezack

[Guest The Architect]

Um?

 

Mathematics is unlike the rest of human reasoning. It is based upon ideal, perfect, axioms which we actively chose to be the basis. From these axioms we can build things, and we can prove things to be exactly true by tracing them back to the axioms.

 

Science, on the other hand, tries to identify what basic axioms the world runs on, but doesn't have any method of verifying their validity, timelessness or consistency. The best it can do is approximate what it thinks are the axioms, and hope there aren't any hidden catches (which there are; see deviation between mechanics at microscopic and macroscopic level for an example), and try to incorporate them as they appear.

 

I've personally proved a fair few theorems in the my maths degree, many of which were proved from the base axioms; it was part of my pure maths unit.

 

Ah, okay, I get you now. The building of things can be traced back to the axiom in which you based the way you built the object on in the first place, hence you can prove an axiom to be true, and if you can do that, then you can use the axiom to prove the other propositions in the system to be true.

[Qwerty the Sir]

Were you wondering how faith came to be part of human nature, evolutionarily?

 

Well, I guess I'm not exactly sure faith is a part of "human nature" as much as it is an epistemic necessity. I agree with you when you say that we take most of our knowledge on faith, and that conclusions about the material world, especially those not on the present are based more on faith than observation. Yet I'm not sure you can apply evolutionary psychology to it. I think it's more of a epistemic base of thinking than a trait humans have.

[Walsingham]

*takes a moment to admire the size of brains on this forum*

[Pidesco]

*gives Walsingham his glasses*

[Humodour]

Yet I'm not sure you can apply evolutionary psychology to it. I think it's more of a epistemic base of thinking than a trait humans have.

 

I don't know. To me that separates thinking and reasoning from human nature; as though these are things we just happened to stumble upon by chance, not inevitable by-products of our evolution (a combination of reaction to stimuli, and our evolution of society and altruism, much of which occurred at about 70,000 years ago).

[Walsingham]

*gives Walsingham his glasses*

 

I just realised Im standing far too close. Now I have brain goo on my nose.