IAI_Admin OP t1_jar3eqh wrote
Abstract: In this debate, Philosopher Philip Goff, human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti, and physicists George Ellis and Carlo Rovelli debate the role of faith and belief in politics and science.
Ellis argues an element of faith is necessarily required to navigate our everyday lives, but we must question those beliefs – in science and politics as in anything else.
Chakrabarti agrees that being human necessarily involves both faith and reason – emotion and logic – and argues we must examine and interrogate the intersection of those drivers, claiming the dichotomy between science and religion does not map onto the divide between emotion and reason.
Rovelli argues it makes no sense to draw a line between so-called blind faith and provable facts. Instead, our views about the world should always be up for debate in an effort to find the best possible answer. The best of humankind, he claims, is bourn of openness and a willingness to be convinced your ideas might be wrong.
Goff claims that the only thing we have direct access to is our own conscious experiences, and that in trusting our sensory experiences we must deploy and element of faith. While he advocates for this leap of faith, he argues it’s a contradiction of trust our sensory experiences to tell us something about the world in a way we do not trust our moral, or emotional experiences, to reveal something about the world.
kevinzvilt t1_jardlox wrote
I think the leap of faith Goff is claiming is pertaining to the principle of induction rather than our sensory experiences. I don't need faith to smell a guava for example. But I do take it on faith that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has done so every day in the past.
ccattbbugg t1_jas288w wrote
This is why when indoctrinating kids there is usually long conversations about faith and what it means. As someone who was sent to church through childhood I was not alone in being confused by the concept. To use the word faith in relation to external stimuli voids that word it's current meaning. Faith is a concerted effort to believe; a kid doesn't need faith to know fun, nap time, the colour green, but a kid needs to be told to have faith in an omniscient being and to have faith in a man they have never met.
While I understand the point being made here regarding the word, using it interchangeably in this fashion is lighting a pedantic rage inside me. To me it would make more sense to say you believe your senses than to say you have faith in them.
(belief: an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.
"his belief in the value of hard work")
(faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something.)
Do you really have faith in your sensory perception? Mine tricks me al the time. However I do believe my senses most of the time.
lambentstar t1_jattwrz wrote
It’s a loaded and misused word and it makes me so angry when people use it so freely. Also raised strictly religious and left that system, but as a child faith was obedience to authority and accepting everything they told you as fact without questioning or rationale.
Contrast that to faith that a partner is honest with you, or faith (or lack thereof) in a justice system and we can quickly see that that type of faith is based on an evaluation of prior actions to determine a level of confidence. Nothing is infallible so sure, confidence requires some predictive “leap of faith”
That’s so different from faith in an unknowable, unseeable, inscrutable deity rewarding you after death, or faith requiring subservience or disregarding evidence.
HamiltonBrae t1_jaub7ff wrote
totally agree. most of the time i was thinking about this thread was about what "faith" actually means in this context. its such a loaded term when what has been talked about in this thread could use more neutral and straightforward terms. i wonder if part of the use of the word is just to make the discussion seem more exciting.
kevinzvilt t1_javwqbl wrote
>To me it would make more sense to say you believe your senses than to say you have faith in them
Yes, but let's draw a line in the sand here. Even though your senses probably do not accurately reflect objective reality, your experience of your senses is absolutely certain. So there would not be much "believing" involved.
After that... Things get a little fuzzy in terms of certainty... Less and less certain... Emotions and thoughts are the runner-up... Immediate memories... Further memories... Universal laws... And so on...
CaptainAsshat t1_jat0u9k wrote
Is that faith, or is it just an estimate using probability? Do I have faith that I can steal candy from a baby, or do I just suspect the chances are good?
To me, I don't have faith that my sensory experiences are reporting what is "real", I have just noticed if I try to impact the environment around me, it usually has a noticable effect.
To support this, think of a worm. They likely do not have a concept of faith, or the mental faculties to have faith. But they get sensory information that they use. Not because they have faith that their senses are reporting the truth, but because it their senses are the only source of ostensibly outside information that they have available, and they seem to be working correctly.
From a personal side, I had a giant retinal tear in each eye that made it look like tiny dot-like gnats were flying everywhere at all times (it was actually lots of floaters). While it was obnoxious, it did not shake my faith, I just learned to ignore the inputs that didn't seem to be correct. Then, when I actually came across a cloud of gnats, I relied on my other senses to confirm that they were, in fact, real. I didn't have to change my faith at any point, I just reacted to the inputs.
kevinzvilt t1_jatv3ib wrote
So, just to recap a little here. The principle of induction is a principle that animals have as well as humans and it is precisely that we trust or believe that if things happened a certain way repeatedly, then they will continue to do so in the future. There is not really a "reason" to expect that but there is the fact that when things happen repeatedly, we expect them to keep happening the same way.
CaptainAsshat t1_jau5edl wrote
That's an expectation derived from evidence. Thus, at least using the definitions I use, it is an antithesis of faith. Faith requires a belief in spite of a there being a lack of evidence or contradictory evidence.
The difference being, if a repeatable phenomenon does not repeat, a person's expectations simply change as the new evidence is included. This is based in proof, not faith, as faith requires some sort of apprehension or trust in something beyond the evidence. Thus, for a person using probability to influence their expectations, their understanding of the world is far more robust and flexible than one using faith.
I don't get on an airplane because I have faith in the pilot. I do it because the repeated phenomenon of planes landing safely allows me to adjust my expectations accordingly. I'd a plane crashes somewhere in the world, I would still probably be willing to get on a plane the next day, as the probability barely changes. If I had faith that airplanes don't crash, that faith would be far more shaken, as it seems that they do.
Similarly, I do not have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, as I understand that the sun is a celestial object that could be subject to any number of extremely rare astrological phenomenon that would destroy it. I do, however, expect the sun to rise, as I understand the probability of such an event is low.
kevinzvilt t1_jauexea wrote
>Similarly, I do not have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, as I understand that the sun is a celestial object that could be subject to any number of extremely rare astrological phenomenon that would destroy it.
Yes, but why do you expect astrological phenomenons to be the same tomorrow? Why do you expect gravity to function as it functions today tomorrow?
CaptainAsshat t1_jaum7y5 wrote
Evidence and my fallible estimate of probability.
small-package t1_jasa6ql wrote
You do need some amount of faith that it is, actually, a guava that you're smelling, if you were blindfolded and made to smell a variety of fruits, would you confidently be able to pick out whether any of them is guava? Or more specifically, which one it is? If you ate them all, or better yet, took the blindfold off, then you'd know for sure, but you'd actually have to look, which is the leap of faith, not a big one by any means in this case, but if you were trying to pick out, say, a political ideology that you believe in, you wouldn't be able to find it by believing that all politics are dumb, and a waste of time, youth average to take the leap and entertain the idea, whether you find what you're looking for within it or not. You've gotta open the box to find out what exactly is inside, this extends to emotional boxes as well.
kevinzvilt t1_jasymnp wrote
There's a difference here. If you want to make sure that a fruit you are holding is what was described to you as the guava fruit, then yes, you do make a certain leap of faith. But you do not need faith to actually experience a guava if that makes any sense. The sensory experience is the most certain and vivid experience that we all have.
HamiltonBrae t1_jaubi3z wrote
>if you were blindfolded and made to smell a variety of fruits, would you confidently be able to pick out whether any of them is guava?
hundred percent
HamiltonBrae t1_jarc3l7 wrote
>he argues it’s a contradiction of trust our sensory experiences to tell us something about the world in a way we do not trust our moral, or emotional experiences, to reveal something about the world.
what if i have experiences that tell me that my sensory experiences should be treated in a different way to my emotional ones in how they relate to the world? seems like the statement about what goff said oversimplified things.
obviously the knowledge we hold and act on knowledge doesnt require infallibility and so, when we think about it, its hard to actually rule out that any of our beliefs could be contradicted in the future (and this seems more likely for some beliefs than others); however, rovelli is right that anyone who wants to make sure their knowledge is as accurate as it can needs to have their ideas open for debate. neither do i think many everyday acts and things we do are adequately described psychologically or cognitively as a leap of faith.
Indigo_Sunset t1_jatantw wrote
There could be some crossover in pattern recognition behaviours that may be construed as 'leap-of-faith' adjacent. This possibly points more towards skewed expectations due to life events with a high impact influencing interpretations of stimuli, good or bad, perhaps more profoundly on the bad interpretations as a matter of experiential response.
I think we hit cognitive blindspots at times, where some thing like the idea of a 'leap of faith' has a specific impulse associated with it. Sometimes these ideas aren't so much a conscious thought process, but more of a 'taking for granted' that the next step is always there and positively reinforcing. An example might be thinking unconsciously 'I have been safe at all times in my life, therefore all times are safe' and pushing boundaries that can seem like leaps of faith in the everything-is-going-to-be-alright category, even though never consciously made.
HamiltonBrae t1_jauaoje wrote
i dunno, maybe we or i have a different definition of 'leap of faith' but the 'taking for granted' thing almost seems opposite to the idea of a leap of faith to me. this is kind of why i dont like the word faith in this context. its such a loaded and inflated term when what people mean about what is being discussed in this thread could be expressed with much clearer and more neutral words.
Thelonious_Cube t1_jatzom8 wrote
Are they equivocating on "faith" here or do they just mean "trust" and not "religious faith"?
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