(House. "Damned If You Do".)
There are several schools of thought. Ontology, epistemology and metaphysics.
There is a wide point in the road.
We need wide points in order to allow passing. Not that everyone needs to pass. There are some who remain safely ensconced within their lane, confident that no passing lorry would ever come careening into their path, ending their life.
Bucolic. Innit?
Thinking about things is a seductive enterprise. Religion, truth, beauty. All the things that freshmen lit teachers warn you about. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." And all that dither about Keats and Yeats. Blake and Chaucer. (And then some prof throws in Blake. What to think?)
I've written before about my affection for the works of John Barth. End of the Road. Why try to rewrite another's questions?
When I read and re-read Noah Chomsky, what I find is riddled with incomplete sentences. When I think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of students that have spent their time under this incoherent sway--at one of America's most prestigious universities--I find myself choking through the mere thought that such a fascile thinker as Chomsky could have gained as great an allegiance as he has, simply for talking poop.
This post is based upon a series on television that I regularly watch. "House."
But, when I hear these words, "faith isn't based upon logic and experience" I could not but write.
Faith needn't be based upon logic and experience. Faith needn't be based upon anything.
But faith, based upon logic and experience tends towards the unassailable, neh?
Friday Astoria Oregon Tea Party Meet-up
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There's an "auto-start" video in the post below. Scroll down to hit pause.
I like the video so much that I had to have it. Hopefully, someday, video
provid...
1 hour ago
11 comments:
I don't know about faith based on logic but faith based on experience is unassailable.
House is an excellent show, and its theme song is "Teardrop" by the old "Massive Attack" group. Kind of an interesting synchronicity there, innit?
It has been my observation that many people, in trying to be waggish, associate "faith" with "make believe."
In my experience (ha), faith is based on the expected. And, as such, is necessarily at *least* partially logical and reasonable.
The problem I have with the claim that faith isn't based on logic stems from the definition, or I believe MIS-definition, of logic by those making the claim. They are equating logic with empiricism, and this is inaccurate.
Faith based on logic is what keeps you from poking high-voltage wires with screwdrivers, and from believing that 6 or 7 martinis greatly increases your reaction time while driving.
(Examples of the disconnect between that faith and that logic abound. More than a few examples abound in "America's Funniest Videos".)
There's everyday faith - that the sun will rise tomorrow, that floods will wash away some other town, that the U.S. dollar will continue to be a viable world currency and that my paycheck will continue to cover all my bills.
The other kind of faith is belief without evidence.
I've seen house a few times. It seems interesting. The main character seems to be a real butthole, but likable in some strange way. What do you think about the program?
Sorry for taking a tangent, but frankly, I don't know enough about the main point of your post to comment intelligently.
"Faith isn't based upon logic and experience".
There are three major schools of philosphy that attempt to answer the question of man's claim to knowledge.
Most schools of thought, that I know of, are easily reduced into one of these three schools.
ZZ has the most humorous take on this post...not me.
I owe a lot to my old philosophy prof, Bob Dale.
He was my mentor in my most difficult class, Critical Thinking. For a final, he asked the question; is knowledge possible?
One word answers need not apply.
What is knowable? And importantly, is what you believe knowable true? How do you compare perception—your perception—to an external perception viewing the same phenomenon?
One of the questions was, if you were to walk into a room and announce that is was raining outside, should the listener believe that it was in fact raining outside, or are there other conditions possible that would render the statement of “rain outside” false?
And simply moving to the window to see if “raindrops” were falling wasn’t sufficient.
What I did learn is that there are components of thought, valid thought that can be discerned through a reduction of whether or not the conditions of thought rely upon necessary or sufficient causes.
Is it necessary for there to be what are perceived as raindrops in order to believe—or know—that it’s raining? And what if there is a man on the roof with a hose sprinkling those below. As I walk through this shower, am I experiencing rain or the droplets from this man’s garden hose? And how am I to know the difference? It is sufficient to know that I’m getting wet. Is it necessary that I’m getting rained on?
Knowledge is knowable. And, I can prove it. Belief is possible, and chances are you know that, too.
Error is also possible. And hard to distinguish from knowledge. And that, is the crux of the biscuit.
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ZZ--
I'd agree about the martoonie equation. The high-wire thing? I think is knowable. Testable. Easily falsifiable.
Write me when you falsify it.
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BB..
Logic and empiricism stroll along the boulevard, hand in hand. I think what you may be referring to is a priori knowledge, which need to refer to experience in order to be valid. What is handy, however, is when both a priori and a posteriori knowledge agree. Yes, there are two different systems in place for this divining of knowledge. But, they aren't mutually exlusive. This is where th issue of necessary and sufficient comes into play.
Is it necessary that for a priori knowledge to be true, that it must--necessarily--be observable a posteriori?
Yes.
.
Two of the Big Questions philosophy asks are: What do we know? How do we know it? At least one philosopher said that the only way to get through those questions was to forget everything, admit that we know absolutely nothing, and start from scratch - the only things we know are those we can sense (like rain on our faces), and go from there. He built a pretty big book from that start.
Philosophy also went onto some weird tangents - the solipsists, for one. The Chinese guy,for another, who wondered if he was dreaming about being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming about being a philosopher.
I have a certain fondness for the Berkeley-Johnson gambit: "I refute it thus. Ouch!" (That last part usually gets left out of the textbooks.)
Then there's always the nagging question: Can we be sure?
I think we may sometimes have to settle for "true enough for all practical purposes". There are times when we have to let the village barber who shaves all the men who don't shave themselves worry about it on his own.
OG
I had a response. But exhaustion has set in and evicted it. Maybe it will return. If so, I'll send it here.
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