date:20120924

Goddamn, Dave!  I just realized that I have faith!

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Prof David West profw...@fastmail.fmwrote:

   As another rider (only 44 years) - my faith is that every other driver
 out there is incompetent, blind, deaf, and out to get me.  I credit that
 faith with my continuing existence!


  davew


  On Sun, Sep 23, 2012, at 06:23 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 Yeah, well: that philosophy will get you dead if you are a motorcycle
 rider.  Maybe not the first year, but the longer you maintain faith that
 the other diver will stay in his lane, the more likely it becomes that you
 won't make it home one night.

  I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...

  --Doug

  On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:

   Since this thread is still going... Curt said:
  Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I
 don't have to track every one exactly.
 
 Exactly!

 It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop
 looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking, etc. It is
 faith when you get out of bed without checking to see that the ground is
 still there. The actions themselves entail the faith; they do not result
 from faith, they are the faith. An interesting additional issue is when we
 do and do not explicitly talk about the things we have faith in. It might
 also be an additional issue on what basis some people have faith in a
 super-natural higher-power. (Both scare-quotes seem necessary, because
 pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most people have faith in
 things they don't have natural explanations for, but we seem to be focusing
 primarily on the times when those faiths overlap.)

 Eric

 P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do you know
 Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a great article for a
 journal issue I am putting together.

 P.P.S. The notion of blind faith is really very modern. Certainly it was
 not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was primarily supported
 by experiential evidence. Behold the wonders, experience God in every
 blade of grass, check out this amazing cathedral, our army won, etc.
 The fact that we sometimes meaningfully talk about blind faith seems to
 indicate that the normal meaning of the term faith is not inherently
 blind.



 On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, Curt McNamara curt...@gmail.com wrote:

   I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?) that it
 would go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for a distraction from
 grading has drawn me back into its basin of (strange) attraction.

 Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't
 have to track every one exactly.
 Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the Control of
 Perception.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory

 Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be true
 tomorrow. These models have been built over time by hypothesis, testing,
 and adjustment (toddler and stairs example).

Curt

 
 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
 Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
 lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org


 

 Eric Charles
 Assistant Professor of Psychology
 Penn State University
 Altoona, PA 16601



 
 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
 Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
 lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




 --
 Doug Roberts
 drobe...@rti.org
 d...@parrot-farm.net
 http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

 505-455-7333 - Office
 505-670-8195 - Cell
  
  FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
  Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
  lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



 
 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
 Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
 lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




-- 
Doug Roberts
drobe...@rti.org
d...@parrot-farm.net
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert, 

 

Your model of intellectual life - don't speak until you look it up and shut
up afterwards - is different from mine (obviously).  I am more of a
protestant in such matters:  In matters of philosophy, each person has
ultimately to figure it out for himself.  

 

Whatever SEP might dictate, I am still interested in how Russ might compose
a sentence - faithful to his notion of faith - that speaks of faith he does
not believe in or of a belief in which he does not have faith.  I guess its
fair to say that in matters of small f faith, you are a catholic and I am a
quaker.  I really don't care about what the minister has to say;  I want to
hear from the congregation.  

 

Nick 

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 8:38 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

It wouldn't hurt to review the entry on faith in the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/). In its second
paragraph, it distinguishes between a broad definition of faith as trust or
belief and the narrower notion of religious faith (think of the email
traffic we could have saved if we'd looked this up earlier.). It goes on to
explore different models of religious faith some of which the group has
discussed and some of which it hasn't:

*   the 'purely affective' model: faith as a feeling of existential
confidence
*   the 'special knowledge' model: faith as knowledge of specific
truths, revealed by God
*   the 'belief' model: faith as belief that God exists
*   the 'trust' model: faith as belief in (trust in) God
*   the 'doxastic venture' model: faith as practical commitment beyond
the evidence to one's belief that God exists
*   the 'sub-doxastic venture' model: faith as practical commitment
without belief
*   the 'hope' model: faith as hoping-or acting in the hope that-the God
who saves exists.

In short, there's a reason baby Jesus invented Google. Every time you don't
use it to inform a discussion, an angel dies.

 

-R

 

 

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 11:44 PM, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com wrote:

Steve,

 

OK. Those seem like two distinct  meanings of faith. I was talking and
thinking of your second one.


 

-- Russ 






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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] faith

D.

 

Argumentative positioning aside, you could not get out your drive way if you
actually believed any of that.   In the first place, the world isn't
interested in harming you.  That's the hardest part.  REAllizing that they
don't love you AND they don't hate you.  THEY JUST DON'T GIVE  A S-T.  

 

 

 

n

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 10:21 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

As another rider (only 44 years) - my faith is that every other driver out
there is incompetent, blind, deaf, and out to get me.  I credit that faith
with my continuing existence!

 

 

davew

 

 

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012, at 06:23 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yeah, well: that philosophy will get you dead if you are a motorcycle rider.
Maybe not the first year, but the longer you maintain faith that the other
diver will stay in his lane, the more likely it becomes that you won't make
it home one night. 

 

I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...

 

--Doug

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:

Since this thread is still going... Curt said: 

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't
have to track every one exactly.


Exactly!

It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop
looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking, etc. It is
faith when you get out of bed without checking to see that the ground is
still there. The actions themselves entail the faith; they do not result
from faith, they are the faith. An interesting additional issue is when we
do and do not explicitly talk about the things we have faith in. It might
also be an additional issue on what basis some people have faith in a
super-natural higher-power. (Both scare-quotes seem necessary, because
pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most people have faith in
things they don't have natural explanations for, but we seem to be focusing
primarily on the times when those faiths overlap.) 

Eric

P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do you know
Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a great article for a
journal issue I am putting together.

P.P.S. The notion of blind faith is really very modern. Certainly it was
not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was primarily supported
by experiential evidence. Behold the wonders, experience God in every
blade of grass, check out this amazing cathedral, our army won, etc.
The fact that we sometimes meaningfully talk about blind faith seems to
indicate that the normal meaning of the term faith is not inherently
blind. 




On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, Curt McNamara curt...@gmail.com wrote:

I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?) that it would
go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for a distraction from grading
has drawn me back into its basin of (strange) attraction.

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't
have to track every one exactly.
Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the Control of
Perception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory

Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be true tomorrow.
These models have been built over time by hypothesis, testing, and
adjustment (toddler and stairs example).

   Curt

 

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

 



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org





 

--
Doug Roberts
drobe...@rti.org
d...@parrot-farm.net 

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins


505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

 


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] faith


Nick -

Good point, however we all probably agree that hyperbole is as common on 
this list as is cynicism.


I actually find myself leaving my driveway less and less... but not 
because I think anyone is out to get me, but in fact, as you point out, 
I'm more and more aware how much of a S--T no one gives?


I think one of the things that motivated me in my youth around riding a 
motorcycle was the actual exhiliration I felt every time I anticipated 
some numbskull's poor judgement or execution...  I feel something 
somewhat different now.  Especially realizing that as often as not, I 
*don't* anticipate them all.


- Steve


D.

Argumentative positioning aside, you could not get out your drive way 
if you actually believed any of that.   In the first place, the world 
isn't interested in harming you.  That's the hardest part.  REAllizing 
that they don't love you AND they don't hate you.  THEY JUST DON'T 
GIVE  A S---T.


n

*From:*friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] 
*On Behalf Of *Prof David West

*Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 10:21 AM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

As another rider (only 44 years) - my faith is that every other driver 
out there is incompetent, blind, deaf, and out to get me.  I credit 
that faith with my continuing existence!


davew

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012, at 06:23 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yeah, well: that philosophy will get you dead if you are a
motorcycle rider.  Maybe not the first year, but the longer you
maintain faith that the other diver will stay in his lane, the
more likely it becomes that you won't make it home one night.

I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...

--Doug

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu
mailto:e...@psu.edu wrote:

Since this thread is still going... Curt said:

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the
road. I don't have to track every one exactly.


Exactly!

It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving,
stop looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking,
etc. It is faith when you get out of bed without checking to see
that the ground is still there. The actions themselves entail the
faith; they do not result from faith, they are the faith. An
interesting additional issue is when we do and do not explicitly
talk about the things we have faith in. It might also be an
additional issue on what basis some people have faith in a
super-natural higher-power. (Both scare-quotes seem necessary,
because pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most
people have faith in things they don't have natural explanations
for, but we seem to be focusing primarily on the times when those
faiths overlap.)

Eric

P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do
you know Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a
great article for a journal issue I am putting together.

P.P.S. The notion of blind faith is really very modern.
Certainly it was not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian
God was primarily supported by experiential evidence. Behold the
wonders, experience God in every blade of grass, check out
this amazing cathedral, our army won, etc. The fact that we
sometimes meaningfully talk about blind faith seems to indicate
that the normal meaning of the term faith is not inherently blind.


On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, *Curt McNamara curt...@gmail.com
mailto:curt...@gmail.com* wrote:

I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?)
that it would go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for
a distraction from grading has drawn me back into its basin of
(strange) attraction.

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the
road. I don't have to track every one exactly.
Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the
Control of Perception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory

Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be
true tomorrow. These models have been built over time by
hypothesis, testing, and adjustment (toddler and stairs example).

   Curt

  




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps athttp://www.friam.org




Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives,

Re: [FRIAM] faith


Made sense to me.

On Sep 23, 2012, at 11:29 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Random anecdotal examples aside, my central point of faith as an  
article of a validated model vs Faith as a more consciously  
adopted element not backed up by the same type of validation seems  
pretty concise.


-- Russ Abbott
_
  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

  My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/ 
abstract=1977688

  Google voice: 747-999-5105
  Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
  vita:  sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
  CS Wiki and the courses I teach
_



On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:58 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu  
wrote:
But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite  
stuck.


There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world  
contains a divine being... and the everyday world is the everyday  
world. There are people who train hard to see God surrounding them,  
and there are people for whom it seems to come quite naturally  
(which is not to say it didn't develop, just that it came easily).  
For these people, by your definition, belief in God, and belief  
that God will continue to be with them forever, are NOT issues of  
faith.


Eric

P.S. I have no idea what Nick will say about faith vs. belief!  
I think the concepts overlap pretty obviously, i.e., faith seems  
like it should be a subclass of belief. On the other hand, one  
could treat them as two different ways of talking about the same  
sort of thing. If we can get past your odd claim that faith has to  
be religious AND that religious things are not part of everyday  
life, I would be very interested to know how you think the two  
relate.




On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 12:41 AM, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com  
wrote:

Nick,

As I understand your position the words faith and belief are  
synonyms. I would prefer a definition for faith that  
distinguishes it from belief.


Tory,

Thanks for  you comment on my posts. I'm glad you enjoy them.

My definition of faith makes use of the notion of the everyday  
world. But I'm not saying that the  
everyday  world is the same for  
everyone. Your everyday world may be different from mine. I'm just  
saying that believing that the world will continue to conform to  
your sense of what the everyday world is like is not faith; it's  
simple belief.


Eric,

I would take having faith in something in the colloquial sense as  
different from faith in a religious context, which is what I was  
focusing on.


-- Russ 



On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com 
 wrote:


Russ wrote, in part-

Faith, I would say (in fact I did earlier)

is believing something that one wouldn't otherwise believe without  
faith.


Believing that the everyday world is the everyday world

doesn't seem to me to require faith.

Russ, with all due respect for the enjoyment I get from your posts,  
I find this suspiciously tautological.


Who are you to define for the rest of humanity (and other sentient  
life forms) what 'the everyday world' incorporates? Numerous 'for  
instance' cases can immediately be made here. All you can do is  
define what you believe for yourself. You cannot extrapolate what  
is defensible for others to believe, from your own beliefs.


And this statement ' Faith is believing something that one wouldn't  
believe without faith'. Hm and hm again.


Eagleman's new book Incognito offers fruitful information from  
recent neuroscience that may interest others on this list. His  
ultimate sections bring up hard questions about legal and ethical  
issues in the face of the myriad 'zombie programs' that run most of  
our behaviour. This looks like - but is not as simplistic as - 'yet  
another pop science book.'


A review David Eagleman's Incognito - Brainiac

Tory


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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601






FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



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Re: [FRIAM] faith

Very academically stated, Tory.

What did it mean?

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.comwrote:

Made sense to me.

On Sep 23, 2012, at 11:29 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Random anecdotal examples aside, my central point of faith as an article
of a validated model vs Faith as a more consciously adopted element not
backed up by the same type of validation seems pretty concise.

*-- Russ Abbott*
*_*
* Professor, Computer Science*
* California State University, Los Angeles*

* My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688
*
* Google voice: 747-*999-5105
Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
* vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach
*_*

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:58 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:

But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite stuck.

There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world contains a
divine being... and the everyday world is the everyday world. There are
people who train hard to see God surrounding them, and there are people for
whom it seems to come quite naturally (which is not to say it didn't
develop, just that it came easily). For these people, by your definition,
belief in God, and belief that God will continue to be with them forever,
are NOT issues of faith.

Eric

P.S. I have no idea what Nick will say about faith vs. belief! I
think the concepts overlap pretty obviously, i.e., faith seems like it
should be a subclass of belief. On the other hand, one could treat them as
two different ways of talking about the same sort of thing. If we can get
past your odd claim that faith has to be religious AND that religious
things are not part of everyday life, I would be very interested to know
how you think the two relate.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 12:41 AM, *Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com*wrote:

Nick,

As I understand your position the words faith and belief
are synonyms. I would prefer a definition for faith that distinguishes it
from belief.

Tory,

Thanks for you comment on my posts. I'm glad you enjoy them.

My definition of faith makes use of the notion of the everyday world.
But I'm not saying that the everyday world is the same for everyone.
Your everyday world may be different from mine. I'm just saying that
believing that the world will continue to conform to *your *sense of
what the everyday world is like is not faith; it's simple belief.

Eric,

I would take having faith in something in the colloquial sense as
different from faith in a religious context, which is what I was focusing
on.

*-- Russ *

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Victoria Hughes
victo...@toryhughes.com #139f8eea554aa60a_139f6a3e427f43ce_ wrote:

Russ wrote, in part-

Faith, I would say (in fact I did earlier)

is believing something that one wouldn't otherwise believe without
faith.

Believing that the everyday world is the everyday world

doesn't seem to me to require faith.

Russ, with all due respect for the enjoyment I get from your posts, I
find this suspiciously tautological.

Who are you to define for the rest of humanity (and other sentient
life forms) what 'the everyday world' incorporates? Numerous 'for instance'
cases can immediately be made here. All you can do is define what you
believe for yourself. You cannot extrapolate what is defensible for others
to believe, from your own beliefs.

And this statement ' Faith is believing something that one wouldn't
believe without faith'. Hm and hm again.

Eagleman's new book
Incognitohttp://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928/ref=sr_1_1?s=booksie=UTF8qid=1348460523sr=1-1keywords=incognito+by+david+eagleman
offers
fruitful information from recent neuroscience that may interest others on
this list. His ultimate sections bring up hard questions about legal and
ethical issues in the face of the myriad 'zombie programs' that run most of
our behaviour. This looks like - but is not as simplistic as - 'yet another
pop science book.'

A review David Eagleman's Incognito -
Brainiachttp://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/david_eaglemans.html

Tory

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

Re: [FRIAM] faith

Eric, 

 

Peirce enthusiastically ridicules the notion of a tentative belief.  My guess 
is that he would also ridicule the notion that we can decide to believe  in 
something.   But there is some sort of experience of local belief, I think.  In 
 context A I believe X whereas in contest B I belief Y, even though the two 
beliefs are incoherent.  So, I might believe in God when in church but not when 
at the pool table; or vice versa, for that matter.  I guess I am beginning to 
conceive of a landscape of belief, where some territories are owned by some 
beliefs and other territories are owned by others.  What philosophers try to do 
is the conceptual equivalent of empire building … Anschlus.  To conquer the 
entire map with one, super ordinate, belief system.  The Third Reich of the 
Mind.  But no belief is half-hearted.  It’s just that some beliefs cover a lot 
less territory than others.  

 

N

 

 

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of 
ERIC P. CHARLES
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 8:12 AM
To: Russ Abbott
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

By 'inadequate' I mean inadequate according to that person's normal way of 
deciding what to believe.

But... Again I am confused... and admittedly being confused is often a step on 
the way to understanding... 

Who have you ever known who believed in God, and that belief was not normal, 
i.e. typical-for-them. I am not sure how you (as a third party) or I (as a 
first party) could determine which of my belief's were arrived at in the 
normal-way-by-which-I-arrive-at-beliefs. I also suspect that if we did arrive 
at such a criterion, the things I believe by faith would be quite random, and 
of little interest - for example, I am not sure on what basis I believe I 
probably missed the last episode of So You Think You Can Dance, but I believe I 
could probably Torrent it, and I believe it would make my wife happily, though 
I also believe NBC should make it available for free a bit after it airs. Which 
of those came by the normal means? 

If we are returning to the start of this conversation (or at least what I think 
was the start of this thread), my belief that there is NOT a Judeo-Christian 
God is a bit a-typical for me, and likely by your criterion is a kind of Faith. 
There are lots of things I don't believe in, which other people seem to believe 
in (e.g., dictionaries), but I have pretty good reasons not to believe in those 
(e.g., the historic inaccuracy of the assertion that words have one and only 
one spelling). 

Eric

P.S. I am not sure how crucial the word decide is to your point. I would 
argue, one does not typically decide what to believe. That is, the 
developmental process that forms the majority of our beliefs is not adequately 
characterized by the term decide. Beliefs we consciously decided upon are 
surely a special case. 





On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 01:13 AM, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com wrote:



Eric,  For people for whom God is a normal part of their everyday world, faith 
is not an issue. They simply know whatever it is that they know. It's not 
matter of faith any more than it's a matter of faith that I'm typing on a 
keyboard right now.

 

I mentioned religion because that's where the discussion of faith started. (I 
think it did anyway.) But my definition of faith does not require religion; it 
only requires that one believe something for which one has inadequate reason 
for believing it -- other than one's faith that it's the case. By inadequate 
I mean inadequate according to that person's normal way of deciding what to 
believe. I don't want to impose any particular epidemiological perspective on 
anyone.

 

Nick, I think it's the other way around. As Eric said, faith is a subclass of 
belief. Faith is a belief you hold for reasons outside your normal 
epidemiological processes, i.e., a belief you hold that you would not hold were 
it not for your faith in that belief.

 

Steve, Your post is too long for me to comment on it here.


 

-- Russ Abbott
_

  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

 

  My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688
  Google voice: 747-999-5105

  Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/

  vita:   http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ 
sites.google.com/site/russabbott/

  CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/  and the courses I teach
_ 





On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:58 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:

But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite stuck.

There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world contains a divine 
being... and the everyday world is the everyday world. There are people who 
train hard to see God surrounding them, and there are people for whom it seems 
to come quite naturally

Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread Roger Critchlow

I believe it was this letter, but I don't feel like spending the $18 that
Macmillan wants to let me look at it.

*Nature* 289, 344 (29 January 1981); doi:10.1038/289344e0, Motorbike
safety, G. K. MCGINTY, Redhill, Surrey, UK

The author analyzed the change in angular size of a single headlight
travelling at reasonable speeds, the time it took for a motorist to look
both ways before pulling out from a cross street, and concluded that a
single round headlight of typical size would, in fact, be below the angular
resolution of human vision at just the right moment for the motorist to
pull out directly into the motorcycle's path.  Perhaps not completely
invisible, but too small to correctly judge distance or velocity.  Not long
after, motorcycles began to appear with the double wide headlights that
have become standard equipment.

-- rec --

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Re: [FRIAM] faith

Steve, 

 

Cynics are disappointed idealists.  Somewhere, way beyond all that, is
Wisdom.   N

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 11:34 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

Nick -

Good point, however we all probably agree that hyperbole is as common on
this list as is cynicism.

I actually find myself leaving my driveway less and less... but not because
I think anyone is out to get me, but in fact, as you point out, I'm more and
more aware how much of a S--T no one gives?

I think one of the things that motivated me in my youth around riding a
motorcycle was the actual exhiliration I felt every time I anticipated some
numbskull's poor judgement or execution...  I feel something somewhat
different now.  Especially realizing that as often as not, I *don't*
anticipate them all.

- Steve

D.

 

Argumentative positioning aside, you could not get out your drive way if you
actually believed any of that.   In the first place, the world isn't
interested in harming you.  That's the hardest part.  REAllizing that they
don't love you AND they don't hate you.  THEY JUST DON'T GIVE  A S-T.  

 

 

 

n

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 10:21 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

As another rider (only 44 years) - my faith is that every other driver out
there is incompetent, blind, deaf, and out to get me.  I credit that faith
with my continuing existence!

 

 

davew

 

 

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012, at 06:23 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yeah, well: that philosophy will get you dead if you are a motorcycle rider.
Maybe not the first year, but the longer you maintain faith that the other
diver will stay in his lane, the more likely it becomes that you won't make
it home one night. 

 

I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...

 

--Doug

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:

Since this thread is still going... Curt said: 

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't
have to track every one exactly.


Exactly!

It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop
looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking, etc. It is
faith when you get out of bed without checking to see that the ground is
still there. The actions themselves entail the faith; they do not result
from faith, they are the faith. An interesting additional issue is when we
do and do not explicitly talk about the things we have faith in. It might
also be an additional issue on what basis some people have faith in a
super-natural higher-power. (Both scare-quotes seem necessary, because
pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most people have faith in
things they don't have natural explanations for, but we seem to be focusing
primarily on the times when those faiths overlap.) 

Eric

P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do you know
Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a great article for a
journal issue I am putting together.

P.P.S. The notion of blind faith is really very modern. Certainly it was
not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was primarily supported
by experiential evidence. Behold the wonders, experience God in every
blade of grass, check out this amazing cathedral, our army won, etc.
The fact that we sometimes meaningfully talk about blind faith seems to
indicate that the normal meaning of the term faith is not inherently
blind. 





On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, Curt McNamara curt...@gmail.com wrote:

I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?) that it would
go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for a distraction from grading
has drawn me back into its basin of (strange) attraction.

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't
have to track every one exactly.
Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the Control of
Perception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory

Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be true tomorrow.
These models have been built over time by hypothesis, testing, and
adjustment (toddler and stairs example).

   Curt

 

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Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

 



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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--

Re: [FRIAM] faith

That was a very wise observation, Nick.

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 9:52 AM, Nicholas Thompson 
nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote:

 Steve, 

 ** **

 Cynics are disappointed idealists.  Somewhere, way beyond all that, is
 Wisdom.   N

 ** **

 *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Steve Smith
 *Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 11:34 AM

 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

 ** **

 Nick -

 Good point, however we all probably agree that hyperbole is as common on
 this list as is cynicism.

 I actually find myself leaving my driveway less and less... but not
 because I think anyone is out to get me, but in fact, as you point out, I'm
 more and more aware how much of a S--T no one gives?

 I think one of the things that motivated me in my youth around riding a
 motorcycle was the actual exhiliration I felt every time I anticipated some
 numbskull's poor judgement or execution...  I feel something somewhat
 different now.  Especially realizing that as often as not, I *don't*
 anticipate them all.

 - Steve

 D.

  

 Argumentative positioning aside, you could not get out your drive way if
 you actually believed any of that.   In the first place, the world isn’t
 interested in harming you.  That’s the hardest part.  REAllizing that they
 don’t love you AND they don’t hate you.  THEY JUST DON’T GIVE  A S—T.  ***
 *

  

  

  

 n

  

 *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com 
 [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.comfriam-boun...@redfish.com]
 *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
 *Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 10:21 AM
 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

  

 As another rider (only 44 years) - my faith is that every other driver out
 there is incompetent, blind, deaf, and out to get me.  I credit that faith
 with my continuing existence!

  

  

 davew

  

  

 On Sun, Sep 23, 2012, at 06:23 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 Yeah, well: that philosophy will get you dead if you are a motorcycle
 rider.  Maybe not the first year, but the longer you maintain faith that
 the other diver will stay in his lane, the more likely it becomes that you
 won't make it home one night. 

  

 I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...

  

 --Doug

 On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES e...@psu.edu wrote:

 Since this thread is still going... Curt said: 

 Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I
 don't have to track every one exactly.

 
 Exactly!

 It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop
 looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking, etc. It is
 faith when you get out of bed without checking to see that the ground is
 still there. The actions themselves entail the faith; they do not result
 from faith, they are the faith. An interesting additional issue is when we
 do and do not explicitly talk about the things we have faith in. It might
 also be an additional issue on what basis some people have faith in a
 super-natural higher-power. (Both scare-quotes seem necessary, because
 pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most people have faith in
 things they don't have natural explanations for, but we seem to be focusing
 primarily on the times when those faiths overlap.)

 Eric

 P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do you know
 Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a great article for a
 journal issue I am putting together.

 P.P.S. The notion of blind faith is really very modern. Certainly it was
 not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was primarily supported
 by experiential evidence. Behold the wonders, experience God in every
 blade of grass, check out this amazing cathedral, our army won, etc.
 The fact that we sometimes meaningfully talk about blind faith seems to
 indicate that the normal meaning of the term faith is not inherently
 blind.


 


 On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, *Curt McNamara curt...@gmail.com* wrote:*
 ***

 I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?) that it
 would go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for a distraction from
 grading has drawn me back into its basin of (strange) attraction.

 Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I don't
 have to track every one exactly.
 Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the Control of
 Perception.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory

 Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be true
 tomorrow. These models have been built over time by hypothesis, testing,
 and adjustment (toddler and stairs example).

Curt

  

 

 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread lrudolph

Nick to Robert (or perhaps to Russ, I got confused):

 I guess its fair to
 say that in matters of small f faith, you are a catholic 
 and I am a quaker.  I  really don't care about what the 
 minister has to say;  I want to hear from the
 congregation.

Trusting (did you-all already differentiate trust from
faith and belief?  I may have missed it) that, when 
(a member of) the congregation speak, it *is* because
the spirit moved him/her/them to speak?  That is,
I think, integral to large-Q Quakerism.  As an apparently
small-q quaker, is it problematic to you, or neutral, or 
whatever the opposite of problematic may be?

Digression: etymologically, a problem is what is in
front of you.  I suppose that would make its opposite
that which is behind you--if you're Luther, the Devil 
(in a mass of details and a mess of ink).

Lee



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Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread Prof David West

Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and
more aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.

And if the world is not interested in harming me, why did it give me a
death sentence?

davew


On Mon, Sep 24, 2012, at 09:18 AM, Nicholas  Thompson wrote:

D.


Argumentative positioning aside, you could not get out your drive way
if you actually believed any of that.   In the first place, the world
isn’t interested in harming you.  That’s the hardest part.  REAllizing
that they don’t love you AND they don’t hate you.  THEY JUST DON’T
GIVE  A S—T.




n


From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 10:21 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith


As another rider (only 44 years) - my faith is that every other driver
out there is incompetent, blind, deaf, and out to get me.  I credit
that faith with my continuing existence!



davew



On Sun, Sep 23, 2012, at 06:23 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

  Yeah, well: that philosophy will get you dead if you are a
  motorcycle rider.  Maybe not the first year, but the longer you
  maintain faith that the other diver will stay in his lane, the
  more likely it becomes that you won't make it home one night.


I've been riding for 48 years, still alive...


--Doug

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES [1]e...@psu.edu
wrote:

Since this thread is still going... Curt said:

Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I
don't have to track every one exactly.


Exactly!
It is faith when you stop monitoring the other cars when driving, stop
looking at the ground you are about to step on when walking, etc. It is
faith when you get out of bed without checking to see that the ground
is still there. The actions themselves entail the faith; they do not
result from faith, they are the faith. An interesting additional issue
is when we do and do not explicitly talk about the things we have faith
in. It might also be an additional issue on what basis some people have
faith in a super-natural higher-power. (Both scare-quotes seem
necessary, because pretty everyone has faith in higher powers, and most
people have faith in things they don't have natural explanations for,
but we seem to be focusing primarily on the times when those faiths
overlap.)
Eric
P.S. Curt, if you are into Power's Perceptual Control Theory, do you
know Richard Marken and Warren Manell's work? They wrote a great
article for a journal issue I am putting together.
P.P.S. The notion of blind faith is really very modern. Certainly it
was not long ago that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was primarily
supported by experiential evidence. Behold the wonders, experience
God in every blade of grass, check out this amazing cathedral, our
army won, etc. The fact that we sometimes meaningfully talk about
blind faith seems to indicate that the normal meaning of the term
faith is not inherently blind.

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 12:21 AM, Curt McNamara [2]curt...@gmail.com
wrote:

I had been nicely ignoring this thread in the belief (faith?) that it
would go away without affecting me. Alas, the need for a distraction
from grading has drawn me back into its basin of (strange) attraction.
Faith: that the other drivers will stay on their side of the road. I
don't have to track every one exactly.
Action based on belief: ref. William Powers: Behavior, the Control of
Perception.
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory
Faith or belief: my mental models of the world will still be true
tomorrow. These models have been built over time by hypothesis,
testing, and adjustment (toddler and stairs example).
   Curt




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at [4]http://www.friam.org


Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Doug Roberts
[6]drobe...@rti.org
[7]d...@parrot-farm.net

[8]http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at [9]http://www.friam.org




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at [10]http://www.friam.org

References

1. mailto:e...@psu.edu
2. mailto:curt...@gmail.com
3.

Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread Robert J. Cordingley

As a novice philosopher... Is it possible 'belief' doesn't
require/expect any consequences while 'faith' does? I can believe in
God but not expect God to do anything about it. If I have faith in God,
I expect something in return depending on the model of God I have faith
in. If nothing happens I can lose faith in God but still believe in
God. (As pointed out the reverse/transposition of the form is easier to
construct.)

Robert C

On 9/23/12 11:07 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Russ,

I take your point, but still, I would have a hard time composing a
sentence of the form, Russ has faith in X but he doesn't believe in
it. Can you compose such a sentence for me?

*From:*friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]
*On Behalf Of *Russ Abbott

*Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 12:42 AM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

Nick,

As I understand your position the words faith and belief
are synonyms. I would prefer a definition for faith that
distinguishes it from belief.

Tory,

Thanks for you comment on my posts. I'm glad you enjoy them.

My definition of faith makes use of the notion of the everyday world.
But I'm not saying that the everyday world is the same for everyone.
Your everyday world may be different from mine. I'm just saying that
believing that the world will continue to conform to */_your_/ *sense
of what the everyday world is like is not faith; it's simple belief.

Eric,

I would take having faith in something in the colloquial sense as
different from faith in a religious context, which is what I was
focusing on.

/-- Russ /

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Victoria Hughes
victo...@toryhughes.com mailto:victo...@toryhughes.com wrote:

Russ wrote, in part-

Faith, I would say (in fact I did earlier)

is believing something that one wouldn't otherwise believe without faith.

Believing that the everyday world is the everyday world

doesn't seem to me to require faith.

Russ, with all due respect for the enjoyment I get from your posts, I
find this suspiciously tautological.

Who are you to define for the rest of humanity (and other sentient
life forms) what 'the everyday world' incorporates? Numerous 'for
instance' cases can immediately be made here. All you can do is define
what you believe for yourself. You cannot extrapolate what is
defensible for others to believe, from your own beliefs.

And this statement ' Faith is believing something that one wouldn't
believe without faith'. Hm and hm again.

Eagleman's new book Incognito
http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928/ref=sr_1_1?s=booksie=UTF8qid=1348460523sr=1-1keywords=incognito+by+david+eagleman offers
fruitful information from recent neuroscience that may interest others
on this list. His ultimate sections bring up hard questions about
legal and ethical issues in the face of the myriad 'zombie programs'
that run most of our behaviour. This looks like - but is not as
simplistic as - 'yet another pop science book.'

A review David Eagleman's Incognito - Brainiac
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/david_eaglemans.html

Tory

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Re: [FRIAM] faith


Dave -

Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and 
more aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.


Inarguable reasoning Dave... I commend you.  Unfortunately I slipped 
behind the curve on my self-image regarding smart+aware a while back.   
It may be early onset wisdom or late-stage cynicism...


It *was* my youthful idealism that had me quite willing to hurtle down 
the highways with nothing between me and the road except a few feet (or 
inches) of air and maybe a 1/8 or less of leather.   I was supremely 
confident in my own smartness and awareness as the perfect antidote to 
all challengers.


Anecdote For example, one evening just after dusk 30+ years ago, I was 
hurtling down Interstate 17 in the right lane (like a good doobie since 
I was roughly traveling at the speed limit and was not passing anyone) 
when something made me think I needed to get into the left lane... I 
checked mirrors, hit my turns, looked over my shoulder, and drifted left 
only to realize that the right lane was no longer there (well, most of 
it anyway).  I stopped quickly and backtracked to find that in fact over 
half of the right lane had sloughed off into the canyon in a mudslide.  
I went back upstream a hundred yards facing traffic with headlight and 
flashers in the right lane and pulled over the first two cars who I left 
to pass the word along and went on my way (I still had 7 hours riding 
ahead of me that night).


Those with Faith might say that God spoke to me.  I simply believe 
that my cultivated awareness hinted to me that something was amiss up 
ahead (missing guardrail in my headlights?  Dark abyss below my 
threshold of consciousness?  Had I heard or felt something over 
engine/road vibrations?)...  Today I'm pretty sure I would just hurtle 
off the end of the pavement with a goofy puzzled expression of WTF?


/Anecdote

And if the world is not interested in harming me, why did it give me a 
death sentence?


I'm pretty sure that despite the world's total disinterest in me (and by 
extension you), that death sentence is a blessing compared to some of 
the alternatives (read your Utopian/Dystopian literature for 
references).   Of course, I just might be spending too much time 
juggling failing parents up and down the halls of nursing homes.


- Steve



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Re: [FRIAM] faith

I'm not prone to experiencing premonitions.  Additional factoid: I ride
paranoid because they *are* out to get me.

Yet, the day before yesterday as I was heading south down to Santa Fe on
the GSA1200, my premonition organ wiggled, and a voice inside my head said,
I sense danger.  Like somebody who rides paranoid needs to hear that,
right?

So I went from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4.  Twenty seconds later at the very next
traffic light in Pojoaque a northbound duelly pickup truck turned suddenly,
unexpectedly left into the intersection across my path, smack ass dab right
in front of me.  Had the little voice in my head not spoken, I would have
been grill hamburger.  As it was, I had engaged that extra little bit of
defense which gave the margin I needed to miss him.

We won't even go into the bit about the fat guy on the Harley who was going
to follow the truck through the intersection, and who nearly fell off his
bike in the process of aborting.

Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they are
out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote:

  Dave -

Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and
 more aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.


 Inarguable reasoning Dave... I commend you.  Unfortunately I slipped
 behind the curve on my self-image regarding smart+aware a while back.   It
 may be early onset wisdom or late-stage cynicism...

 It *was* my youthful idealism that had me quite willing to hurtle down the
 highways with nothing between me and the road except a few feet (or inches)
 of air and maybe a 1/8 or less of leather.   I was supremely confident in
 my own smartness and awareness as the perfect antidote to all challengers.

 Anecdote For example, one evening just after dusk 30+ years ago, I was
 hurtling down Interstate 17 in the right lane (like a good doobie since I
 was roughly traveling at the speed limit and was not passing anyone) when
 something made me think I needed to get into the left lane... I checked
 mirrors, hit my turns, looked over my shoulder, and drifted left only to
 realize that the right lane was no longer there (well, most of it anyway).
 I stopped quickly and backtracked to find that in fact over half of the
 right lane had sloughed off into the canyon in a mudslide.  I went back
 upstream a hundred yards facing traffic with headlight and flashers in
 the right lane and pulled over the first two cars who I left to pass the
 word along and went on my way (I still had 7 hours riding ahead of me that
 night).

 Those with Faith might say that God spoke to me.  I simply believe
 that my cultivated awareness hinted to me that something was amiss up ahead
 (missing guardrail in my headlights?  Dark abyss below my threshold of
 consciousness?  Had I heard or felt something over engine/road
 vibrations?)...  Today I'm pretty sure I would just hurtle off the end of
 the pavement with a goofy puzzled expression of WTF?

 /Anecdote



  And if the world is not interested in harming me, why did it give me a
 death sentence?


 I'm pretty sure that despite the world's total disinterest in me (and by
 extension you), that death sentence is a blessing compared to some of the
 alternatives (read your Utopian/Dystopian literature for references).   Of
 course, I just might be spending too much time juggling failing parents up
 and down the halls of nursing homes.

 - Steve



 
 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
 Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
 lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




-- 
Doug Roberts
drobe...@rti.org
d...@parrot-farm.net
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Re: [FRIAM] faith


Doug -

Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's hood 
ornament!
Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they 
are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.
However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry bush, I 
contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use of 
the word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I believe 
you revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a *working 
statement* which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least 
can't be verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* of 
the statement plays well within your community (of other riders who 
subscribe to the same Faith).


I think I'm turning to butter.

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] faith

Steve,

I'm disappointed that you missed one additional opportunity to chide me
about my faith:  the imaginary voice in my head.

On a brighter note, however, at least there weren't any two-way telepathic
conversations involved.

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote:

 Doug -

 Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's hood
 ornament!

  Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they are
 out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.

 However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry bush, I
 contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use of the
 word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I believe you
 revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a *working statement*
 which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least can't be
 verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* of the
 statement plays well within your community (of other riders who subscribe
 to the same Faith).

 I think I'm turning to butter.


 - Steve





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Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread Dean Gerber

We are all fortunate indeed that we have this very primitive stem brain that is 
extremely perceptive of and extremely knowledgeable of the mostly predictable 
physical world.  It is not distracted by all those higher issues, faith, 
belief,  Yahweh, etc., we all endlessly try to wrestle to ground.  It simply 
does its job, which is to protest us from the consequence of our of our own 
actions with that physical world; and to quickly intervene when we are not 
paying attention and are soon to either die or be seriously harmed.

I allow my razor sharp chef's knife to fall over the edge of my counter-top 
toward my bare feet directly below the plunging knife.  Ms. Stem  jerks the 
proper foot, the one that would have been pierced, out of the way, using the 
other foot, the one that would not have been pierced, to create a stable 
structure  against which the perfect jerk can operate.  All this happens before 
I am even aware the knife has fallen.  Ms. Stem employs some might poweful 
computations to figure all his out, and this case can take immediate action, 
the proper reflex (the leg jerk) whether I liked it or not.


I think in your case, Ms. Stem had it all figured out well before things turned 
critical, but she does not know how to steer your motorcycle.  When she evolved 
to her current talent, there were no motorcycles, but there were plunging 
objects, and yes cliffs.  Along the way, fortunately for us, and by us I mean 
our Cerebellae, she can send us messages, like move left (you idiot, you are 
about to go over a cliff). To your credit, your particular Cerebellum got the 
message an took appropriate actions.  That goodness for that. And a special 
note of appreciation to Ms. Stem.  Nothing for God, Yaweh, premonition, ESP, 
Guardian Angel or other figments of our Cerebellae.


--Dean Gerber





 From: Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com 
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith
 

I'm not prone to experiencing premonitions.  Additional factoid: I ride 
paranoid because they *are* out to get me.

Yet, the day before yesterday as I was heading south down to Santa Fe on the 
GSA1200, my premonition organ wiggled, and a voice inside my head said, I 
sense danger.  Like somebody who rides paranoid needs to hear that, right?

So I went from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4.  Twenty seconds later at the very next 
traffic light in Pojoaque a northbound duelly pickup truck turned suddenly, 
unexpectedly left into the intersection across my path, smack ass dab right in 
front of me.  Had the little voice in my head not spoken, I would have been 
grill hamburger.  As it was, I had engaged that extra little bit of defense 
which gave the margin I needed to miss him.

We won't even go into the bit about the fat guy on the Harley who was going to 
follow the truck through the intersection, and who nearly fell off his bike in 
the process of aborting.

Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they are out 
to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.

--Doug


On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote:

Dave -


Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and more 
aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.

Inarguable reasoning Dave... I commend you.  Unfortunately I slipped behind the 
curve on my self-image regarding smart+aware a while back.   It may be early 
onset wisdom or late-stage cynicism...  

It *was* my youthful idealism that had me quite willing to hurtle
down the highways with nothing between me and the road except a few
feet (or inches) of air and maybe a 1/8 or less of leather.   I was
supremely confident in my own smartness and awareness as the perfect
antidote to all challengers. 

Anecdote For example, one evening just after dusk 30+ years
ago, I was hurtling down Interstate 17 in the right lane (like a
good doobie since I was roughly traveling at the speed limit and was
not passing anyone) when something made me think I needed to get
into the left lane... I checked mirrors, hit my turns, looked over
my shoulder, and drifted left only to realize that the right lane
was no longer there (well, most of it anyway).  I stopped quickly
and backtracked to find that in fact over half of the right lane had
sloughed off into the canyon in a mudslide.  I went back upstream
a hundred yards facing traffic with headlight and flashers in the
right lane and pulled over the first two cars who I left to pass the
word along and went on my way (I still had 7 hours riding ahead of
me that night).   

Those with Faith might say that God spoke to me.  I simply
believe that my cultivated awareness hinted to me that something was
amiss up ahead (missing guardrail in my headlights?  Dark abyss
below my threshold of consciousness?  Had I heard or

Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread glen


It does seem that we've come to some agreement on the meaning of the
word.  It seems basically centered around Nick's original usage: faith
is a kind of short circuit for justification.  Steve's faith only
short circuits a little bit, whereas his Faith short circuits a lot.
The same could be said of Russ'.

We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less
compressible than Faith.

But I think Robert's point is somehow crucial because it gets at what I
want.  The idea that faith implies something about acting in the face of
uncertainty.

When we take something on [F|f]aith, we're implying that the truth or
falsity of the thing we're taking on [f|F]aith has an impact on the
outcome, whereas a mere belief can have no impact on outcome.  This
includes ends justified indeterminates like I'll kill you because I
have faith that God wants me to kill you.  Even though we may never
determine the truth or falsity of their article of faith, if that person
later came to believe the negation, guilt or repentance is the different
consequence.

This sounds like the beginning of a measure we might use to distinguish
faith from other types of thoughts.  Some thoughts might be no-ops
whereas some have an effect.  Even if we factor out all the
subjectivity, intention, consciousness hoo-ha, we might be able to say
something like:  incompressible processes (all shortcuts that can be
taken have been taken -- i.e. Faith) are less expressive (or flexible,
or adaptable) than compressible processes.  This might match up with
other measures being used in neuroscience and/or psychology.

We might also be able to apply some graph theory in the sense that some
actions in a causal network will be more like cut points than others.
If a graph has high connectivity, the uncertainty surrounding any given
action matters much less than that surrounding something on the critical
path.  I know that, personally, I'd be much more likely to invoke and
talk about faith when considering a cut-point action as opposed to one
that had plenty of low-hanging fruit alternatives.

-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread glen

glen wrote at 09/24/2012 04:16 PM:
 We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less
 compressible than Faith.

Sorry.  I meant the opposite:  Faith is less compressible than faith.

-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread Robert J. Cordingley

But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I 
have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The 
expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief 
from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms 
of divine intervention.


But then if atheists have a faith in a non-divine universe then they 
also expect non-action, hmm.


Robert C
PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible 
process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some 
liquids). R


On 9/24/12 5:16 PM, glen wrote:

It does seem that we've come to some agreement on the meaning of the
word.  It seems basically centered around Nick's original usage: faith
is a kind of short circuit for justification.  Steve's faith only
short circuits a little bit, whereas his Faith short circuits a lot.
The same could be said of Russ'.

We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less
compressible than Faith.

But I think Robert's point is somehow crucial because it gets at what I
want.  The idea that faith implies something about acting in the face of
uncertainty.

When we take something on [F|f]aith, we're implying that the truth or
falsity of the thing we're taking on [f|F]aith has an impact on the
outcome, whereas a mere belief can have no impact on outcome.  This
includes ends justified indeterminates like I'll kill you because I
have faith that God wants me to kill you.  Even though we may never
determine the truth or falsity of their article of faith, if that person
later came to believe the negation, guilt or repentance is the different
consequence.

This sounds like the beginning of a measure we might use to distinguish
faith from other types of thoughts.  Some thoughts might be no-ops
whereas some have an effect.  Even if we factor out all the
subjectivity, intention, consciousness hoo-ha, we might be able to say
something like:  incompressible processes (all shortcuts that can be
taken have been taken -- i.e. Faith) are less expressive (or flexible,
or adaptable) than compressible processes.  This might match up with
other measures being used in neuroscience and/or psychology.

We might also be able to apply some graph theory in the sense that some
actions in a causal network will be more like cut points than others.
If a graph has high connectivity, the uncertainty surrounding any given
action matters much less than that surrounding something on the critical
path.  I know that, personally, I'd be much more likely to invoke and
talk about faith when considering a cut-point action as opposed to one
that had plenty of low-hanging fruit alternatives.





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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread glen

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
 But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
 have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The
 expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
 from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
 of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out.  The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called faith.  That's because the word faith is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. faith is a label used to identify especially important
components.  Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
easily adopted by everyone involved.

 PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
 process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
 liquids). R

A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
replaced by a smaller system.  Any (adequate) representation of an
incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] faith

2012-09-24 Thread Russ Abbott

Robert Holmes quoted the *Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy*http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiDoxVenas
listing these senses of faith.

*the ‘purely affective’ model*: faith as a feeling of existential
confidence
*the ‘special knowledge’ model*: faith as knowledge of specific truths,
revealed by God
*the ‘belief’ model*: faith as belief *that* God exists
*the ‘trust’ model*: faith as belief *in* (trust in) God
*the ‘doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment beyond the
evidence to one's belief that God exists
*the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment without
belief
*the ‘hope’ model*: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God who
saves exists.

Has the discussion done better than this?

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list
illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a number of
different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.

My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The
third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the
article,

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves *full* commitment, in the
face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the
evidence.

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the
article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm
concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic
venture.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly
independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support:
faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes
faith-propositions to be true *contrary to* the weight of the evidence.
This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be
called *arational* fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence
is positively favoured, *irrational* or *counter-rational* fideism.


and

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts
to a *supra-rational* fideism, for which epistemic concern is not
overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment
that it *not* accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the
evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself only*beyond*, and not
against, the evidence—and it does so *out of* epistemic concern to grasp
truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may
be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in
principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so
or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The
Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its
cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our
best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our
scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to
grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble
aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about
entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.


*-- Russ *



On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:

 Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:
  But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
  have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The
  expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
  from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
  of divine intervention.

 That's just a slight variation on what I laid out.  The point being that
 whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
 etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
 true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
 be called faith.  That's because the word faith is used to call out
 or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
 in part, on an unjustified assumption.

 I.e. faith is a label used to identify especially important
 components.  Less important components can be negligible, ignored, or
 easily adopted by everyone involved.

  PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
  process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some
  liquids). R

 A compressible system can be (adequately) represented, mimicked, or
 replaced by a smaller system.  Any (adequate) representation of an
 incompressible system will be just as large as the system itself.

 --
 glen

 
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 Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith

Steve, 

Do you remember in what childhood story, things run round and round a tree
until they turn into butter? 

Those things weren't monkeys,  weasels, OR MULBERRY BUSHES.  

Nick 

Hint:  No teacher would read this story to a child, nowadays.  

-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 5:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Doug -

Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's hood
ornament!
 Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they 
 are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.
However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry bush, I
contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use of the
word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I believe you
revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a *working
statement* which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least can't be
verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* of the
statement plays well within your community (of other riders who subscribe to
the same Faith).

I think I'm turning to butter.

- Steve




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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] faith

Dean, 

 

Yes, .. Agreed.  However, on my understanding of the term faith (i.e., =
belief), Ms Stem has beliefs . DOES beliefs, if you will . about the world.
It believes, for instance, that nothing can be moved unless something else
is fixed.  

 

Smart, your lady stem.   But faithful, all the same. 

 

Nick 

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Dean Gerber
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 6:22 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

We are all fortunate indeed that we have this very primitive stem brain that
is extremely perceptive of and extremely knowledgeable of the mostly
predictable physical world.  It is not distracted by all those higher
issues, faith, belief,  Yahweh, etc., we all endlessly try to wrestle to
ground.  It simply does its job, which is to protest us from the consequence
of our of our own actions with that physical world; and to quickly intervene
when we are not paying attention and are soon to either die or be seriously
harmed.

 

I allow my razor sharp chef's knife to fall over the edge of my counter-top
toward my bare feet directly below the plunging knife.  Ms. Stem  jerks the
proper foot, the one that would have been pierced, out of the way, using the
other foot, the one that would not have been pierced, to create a stable
structure  against which the perfect jerk can operate.  All this happens
before I am even aware the knife has fallen.  Ms. Stem employs some might
poweful computations to figure all his out, and this case can take immediate
action, the proper reflex (the leg jerk) whether I liked it or not.

 

I think in your case, Ms. Stem had it all figured out well before things
turned critical, but she does not know how to steer your motorcycle.  When
she evolved to her current talent, there were no motorcycles, but there were
plunging objects, and yes cliffs.  Along the way, fortunately for us, and by
us I mean our Cerebellae, she can send us messages, like move left (you
idiot, you are about to go over a cliff). To your credit, your particular
Cerebellum got the message an took appropriate actions.  That goodness for
that. And a special note of appreciation to Ms. Stem.  Nothing for God,
Yaweh, premonition, ESP, Guardian Angel or other figments of our Cerebellae.

 

--Dean Gerber

 

 

  _  

From: Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com 
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

I'm not prone to experiencing premonitions.  Additional factoid: I ride
paranoid because they *are* out to get me.

 

Yet, the day before yesterday as I was heading south down to Santa Fe on the
GSA1200, my premonition organ wiggled, and a voice inside my head said, I
sense danger.  Like somebody who rides paranoid needs to hear that, right?

 

So I went from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4.  Twenty seconds later at the very next
traffic light in Pojoaque a northbound duelly pickup truck turned suddenly,
unexpectedly left into the intersection across my path, smack ass dab right
in front of me.  Had the little voice in my head not spoken, I would have
been grill hamburger.  As it was, I had engaged that extra little bit of
defense which gave the margin I needed to miss him.

 

We won't even go into the bit about the fat guy on the Harley who was going
to follow the truck through the intersection, and who nearly fell off his
bike in the process of aborting.

 

Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they are
out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.

 

--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote:

Dave -

Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and more
aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.

 

Inarguable reasoning Dave... I commend you.  Unfortunately I slipped behind
the curve on my self-image regarding smart+aware a while back.   It may be
early onset wisdom or late-stage cynicism...  

It *was* my youthful idealism that had me quite willing to hurtle down the
highways with nothing between me and the road except a few feet (or inches)
of air and maybe a 1/8 or less of leather.   I was supremely confident in my
own smartness and awareness as the perfect antidote to all challengers. 

Anecdote For example, one evening just after dusk 30+ years ago, I was
hurtling down Interstate 17 in the right lane (like a good doobie since I
was roughly traveling at the speed limit and was not passing anyone) when
something made me think I needed to get into the left lane... I checked
mirrors, hit my turns, looked over my shoulder, and drifted left only to
realize that the right lane was no longer there (well, most of it anyway).
I stopped quickly and backtracked to find that in fact over half of the
right lane had sloughed off into the canyon in a mudslide.  I went back
upstream a hundred yards facing traffic with

Re: [FRIAM] faith

Robert, 

For a pragmatist, the meaning of faith is in what it gets you do, not in its
content in the ordinary sense.   So, under this understanding, Faith would
apply to behavior of people within institutions and faith would apply to
less public acts.  I guess. 

N

-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 7:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I have
faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The expected action
can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief from pain,
reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms of divine
intervention.

But then if atheists have a faith in a non-divine universe then they also
expect non-action, hmm.

Robert C
PS I may have missed it but please can you explain what a compressible
process is? (I know how it relates to things like gasses and some liquids).
R

On 9/24/12 5:16 PM, glen wrote:
 It does seem that we've come to some agreement on the meaning of the 
 word.  It seems basically centered around Nick's original usage: faith 
 is a kind of short circuit for justification.  Steve's faith only 
 short circuits a little bit, whereas his Faith short circuits a lot.
 The same could be said of Russ'.

 We could think of this in terms of compressibility where faith is less 
 compressible than Faith.

 But I think Robert's point is somehow crucial because it gets at what 
 I want.  The idea that faith implies something about acting in the 
 face of uncertainty.

 When we take something on [F|f]aith, we're implying that the truth or 
 falsity of the thing we're taking on [f|F]aith has an impact on the 
 outcome, whereas a mere belief can have no impact on outcome.  This 
 includes ends justified indeterminates like I'll kill you because I 
 have faith that God wants me to kill you.  Even though we may never 
 determine the truth or falsity of their article of faith, if that 
 person later came to believe the negation, guilt or repentance is the 
 different consequence.

 This sounds like the beginning of a measure we might use to 
 distinguish faith from other types of thoughts.  Some thoughts might be
no-ops
 whereas some have an effect.  Even if we factor out all the 
 subjectivity, intention, consciousness hoo-ha, we might be able to say 
 something like:  incompressible processes (all shortcuts that can be 
 taken have been taken -- i.e. Faith) are less expressive (or flexible, 
 or adaptable) than compressible processes.  This might match up with 
 other measures being used in neuroscience and/or psychology.

 We might also be able to apply some graph theory in the sense that 
 some actions in a causal network will be more like cut points than others.
 If a graph has high connectivity, the uncertainty surrounding any 
 given action matters much less than that surrounding something on the 
 critical path.  I know that, personally, I'd be much more likely to 
 invoke and talk about faith when considering a cut-point action as 
 opposed to one that had plenty of low-hanging fruit alternatives.




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith

I remember. Hard to forget, and I can still see the illustrations. It  
was already Not PC when I saw it. But I read it anyway, I believe in  
the library in Manila at the American Church, which was really a  
gigantic community center for expats. They also had all of the Wizard  
of Oz books, original editions... and other treasures for voracious 6- 
year old readers.

Tory

On Sep 24, 2012, at 8:45 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:


Steve,

Do you remember in what childhood story, things run round and round  
a tree

until they turn into butter?

Those things weren't monkeys,  weasels, OR MULBERRY BUSHES.

Nick

Hint:  No teacher would read this story to a child, nowadays.

-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]  
On Behalf

Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 5:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Doug -

Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's  
hood

ornament!

Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they
are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.
However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry  
bush, I
contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use  
of the
word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I believe  
you

revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a *working
statement* which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least  
can't be

verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* of the
statement plays well within your community (of other riders who  
subscribe to

the same Faith).

I think I'm turning to butter.

- Steve




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures,  
archives,

unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] faith

Hi Russ, 

 

Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another, right?
Notice that all these meanings have to do with God.  If SEP is correct, a
person not concerned with god in one way or another would never use the
word.  Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?  

 

Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here;  I perhaps am not following
closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe.  This week I
won't make it for Friday's meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 

Robert Holmes quoted the
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiDoxVen Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy as listing these senses of faith.

 

.  the 'purely affective' model: faith as a feeling of existential
confidence  

.  the 'special knowledge' model: faith as knowledge of specific truths,
revealed by God  

.  the 'belief' model: faith as belief that God exists 

.  the 'trust' model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

.  the 'doxastic venture' model: faith as practical commitment beyond the
evidence to one's belief that God exists 

.  the 'sub-doxastic venture' model: faith as practical commitment without
belief 

.  the 'hope' model: faith as hoping-or acting in the hope that-the God who
saves exists. 

 

Has the discussion done better than this?

 

It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list
illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a number of
different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.  

 

My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth bullet. (The
third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the
article, 

 

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in the face
of the recognition that this is not 'objectively' justified on the evidence.

 

That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the
article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm
concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic
venture.

 

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly
independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support:
faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes
faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This
view is widely described as 'fideist', but ought more fairly to be called
arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is
positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism. 

 

and

 

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts
to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden
and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not
accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false.
Rather, faith commits itself onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence-and
it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital
existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an
existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence
when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William
James's 'justification of faith' in 'The Will to Believe' (James 1896/1956).
If such faith can be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist
assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the
real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not
counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than
science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the
heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational
fideist doxastic venture model.

 

-- Russ 





On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

 But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
 have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The
 expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
 from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
 of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out.  The point being that
whatever the article of faith is (a being, an attribute of the world,
etc.), if it _matters_ to the conclusion whether or not that article is
true/false or exists or whatever, _then_ belief in it is more likely to
be called faith.  That's because the word faith is used to call out
or point out when someone is basing their position (or their actions),
in part, on an unjustified assumption.

I.e. faith is a label used to identify especially important
components.  Less important components can be

Re: [FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith


Steve,

Do you remember in what childhood story, things run round and round a tree
until they turn into butter?
My mixed allusions were definitely intentional.   The reference of 
course, is how we, the FRIAM community are very good at hashing and 
rehashing the same material until even those of us doing the hashing 
(can you find the etymology for hashing?) are even tired enough of the 
sight of our own tails that we might as well turn into butter from all 
that agitation.


The story of course, would be Little Black Sambo  where he lead the 
Tigers out to eat him for breakfast to chase one another around a palm 
tree until they turned to butter (something about vanity amongst the 
tigers who had first stolen his clothing, etc.).   This story, of course 
is now totally and completely politically incorrect, though the Sambo 
was a very dark southern Indian boy I believe as opposed to a Black 
African Slave in the southern US as many people assume.  (else it would 
have been panthers?)


In any case, the restaurant chain Sambo's who used the boy and his 
tigers as Icons made a mean stack of pancakes with plenty of *butter* 
(which as a child I was sure  was made of melted tigers). The Chain has 
either gone defunct or changed it's name.

Those things weren't monkeys,  weasels, OR MULBERRY BUSHES.
If I can mix metaphors, surely I can mix nursery rhymes and childrens 
stories of various origins...  when I first heard those stories I had 
never seen a weasel, a monkey, a tiger, a mulberry bush or a black 
person.  And yet somehow the stories made sense... how is THAT for Faith?


Ever hear the  one about... Ladle Rat Rotten Hut?

Hint:  No teacher would read this story to a child, nowadays.
My sister had a black life-sized infant doll handed down through the 
family, known as a tar baby referencing the days when white 
slaveholding children were allowed to play with slaves' babies... as 
if they were dolls.   I remember when my mother explained how totally 
politically incorrect (there was no term for this, it was just explained 
as wrong headed) the whole situation was... until then, my sister 
thought it was just another doll.   I lived in a secluded southwestern 
rural area where I'd never seen a person of color... well, plenty of 
Native Americans and descendents of Spanish Conquistadors, but no 
African Americans, and no TV either, though I suppose pictures in 
Encyclopedias and Nat'l Geographics?
  


-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 5:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Doug -

Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's hood
ornament!

Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they
are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.

However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry bush, I
contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use of the
word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I believe you
revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a *working
statement* which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least can't be
verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* of the
statement plays well within your community (of other riders who subscribe to
the same Faith).

I think I'm turning to butter.

- Steve




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[FRIAM] Fwd: faith



Actually these elements that negotiate your behaviours are encoded  
neuroelectrical and neurochemical subroutines, not with volitional  
consciousness to decide or not decide- so 'belief' is perhaps not the  
most accurate word for Ms Stem's motivation. If she had to think and  
decide,she'd be too slow to save the rider. Needs to be a deeper level  
trigger.

Tory

On Sep 24, 2012, at 8:51 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:


Dean,

Yes, …. Agreed.  However, on my understanding of the term faith  
(i.e., = belief), Ms Stem has beliefs … DOES beliefs, if you will …  
about the world.  It believes, for instance, that nothing can be  
moved unless something else is fixed.


Smart, your lady stem.   But faithful, all the same.

Nick

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]  
On Behalf Of Dean Gerber

Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 6:22 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

We are all fortunate indeed that we have this very primitive stem  
brain that is extremely perceptive of and extremely knowledgeable of  
the mostly predictable physical world.  It is not distracted by all  
those higher issues, faith, belief,  Yahweh, etc., we all  
endlessly try to wrestle to ground.  It simply does its job, which  
is to protest us from the consequence of our of our own actions with  
that physical world; and to quickly intervene when we are not paying  
attention and are soon to either die or be seriously harmed.


I allow my razor sharp chef's knife to fall over the edge of my  
counter-top toward my bare feet directly below the plunging knife.   
Ms. Stem  jerks the proper foot, the one that would have been  
pierced, out of the way, using the other foot, the one that would  
not have been pierced, to create a stable structure  against which  
the perfect jerk can operate.  All this happens before I am even  
aware the knife has fallen.  Ms. Stem employs some might poweful  
computations to figure all his out, and this case can take immediate  
action, the proper reflex (the leg jerk) whether I liked it or not.


I think in your case, Ms. Stem had it all figured out well before  
things turned critical, but she does not know how to steer your  
motorcycle.  When she evolved to her current talent, there were no  
motorcycles, but there were plunging objects, and yes cliffs.  Along  
the way, fortunately for us, and by us I mean our Cerebellae, she  
can send us messages, like move left (you idiot, you are about to  
go over a cliff). To your credit, your particular Cerebellum got the  
message an took appropriate actions.  That goodness for that. And a  
special note of appreciation to Ms. Stem.  Nothing for God, Yaweh,  
premonition, ESP, Guardian Angel or other figments of our Cerebellae.


--Dean Gerber


From: Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com 


Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

I'm not prone to experiencing premonitions.  Additional factoid: I  
ride paranoid because they *are* out to get me.


Yet, the day before yesterday as I was heading south down to Santa  
Fe on the GSA1200, my premonition organ wiggled, and a voice inside  
my head said, I sense danger.  Like somebody who rides paranoid  
needs to hear that, right?


So I went from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 4.  Twenty seconds later at the  
very next traffic light in Pojoaque a northbound duelly pickup truck  
turned suddenly, unexpectedly left into the intersection across my  
path, smack ass dab right in front of me.  Had the little voice in  
my head not spoken, I would have been grill hamburger.  As it was, I  
had engaged that extra little bit of defense which gave the margin I  
needed to miss him.


We won't even go into the bit about the fat guy on the Harley who  
was going to follow the truck through the intersection, and who  
nearly fell off his bike in the process of aborting.


Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that  
they are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.


--Doug

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote:
Dave -

Not true - because I have a countervailing belief - I am smarter and  
more aware than they and can thwart their evil intentions.


Inarguable reasoning Dave... I commend you.  Unfortunately I slipped  
behind the curve on my self-image regarding smart+aware a while  
back.   It may be early onset wisdom or late-stage cynicism...


It *was* my youthful idealism that had me quite willing to hurtle  
down the highways with nothing between me and the road except a few  
feet (or inches) of air and maybe a 1/8 or less of leather.   I was  
supremely confident in my own smartness and awareness as the perfect  
antidote to all challengers.


Anecdote For example, one evening just after dusk 30+ years ago, I  
was hurtling down Interstate 17 in the right lane (like a good  
doobie since I was

Re: [FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith


LadleRatRottenHut! Be still my heart.

Brilliant in sooo many ways... Yonder nor sourghum stenches shut ladle  
gulls torque wet strainers!
You know, HL Chace wrote/rewrote a number of those. All are beloved  
and collected by word-y and book-y people. And of course locally our  
own Robin Williams, the woman, the artist, the writer, uses them  
copiously in her books on graphic design.


Re Little Black Sambo, and I suppose Suzanne has several copies of it  
amongst your bookish walls?


Time to make the donuts.

...good thing this conversation is finally petering out, because  
personally I've been feeling like butter for several days...


Tory

On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:18 PM, Steve Smith wrote:


Steve,

Do you remember in what childhood story, things run round and round  
a tree

until they turn into butter?
My mixed allusions were definitely intentional.   The reference of  
course, is how we, the FRIAM community are very good at hashing and  
rehashing the same material until even those of us doing the hashing  
(can you find the etymology for hashing?) are even tired enough of  
the sight of our own tails that we might as well turn into butter  
from all that agitation.


The story of course, would be Little Black Sambo  where he lead  
the Tigers out to eat him for breakfast to chase one another around  
a palm tree until they turned to butter (something about vanity  
amongst the tigers who had first stolen his clothing, etc.).   This  
story, of course is now totally and completely politically  
incorrect, though the Sambo was a very dark southern Indian boy I  
believe as opposed to a Black African Slave in the southern US as  
many people assume.  (else it would have been panthers?)


In any case, the restaurant chain Sambo's who used the boy and his  
tigers as Icons made a mean stack of pancakes with plenty of  
*butter* (which as a child I was sure  was made of melted tigers).  
The Chain has either gone defunct or changed it's name.

Those things weren't monkeys,  weasels, OR MULBERRY BUSHES.
If I can mix metaphors, surely I can mix nursery rhymes and  
childrens stories of various origins...  when I first heard those  
stories I had never seen a weasel, a monkey, a tiger, a mulberry  
bush or a black person.  And yet somehow the stories made sense...  
how is THAT for Faith?


Ever hear the  one about... Ladle Rat Rotten Hut?

Hint:  No teacher would read this story to a child, nowadays.
My sister had a black life-sized infant doll handed down through the  
family, known as a tar baby referencing the days when white  
slaveholding children were allowed to play with slaves' babies...  
as if they were dolls.   I remember when my mother explained how  
totally politically incorrect (there was no term for this, it was  
just explained as wrong headed) the whole situation was... until  
then, my sister thought it was just another doll.   I lived in a  
secluded southwestern rural area where I'd never seen a person of  
color... well, plenty of Native Americans and descendents of  
Spanish Conquistadors, but no African Americans, and no TV either,  
though I suppose pictures in Encyclopedias and Nat'l Geographics?


-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]  
On Behalf

Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 5:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

Doug -

Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's  
hood

ornament!
Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that  
they

are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.
However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry  
bush, I
contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use  
of the
word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I  
believe you

revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a *working
statement* which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least  
can't be

verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* of the
statement plays well within your community (of other riders who  
subscribe to

the same Faith).

I think I'm turning to butter.

- Steve




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures,  
archives,

unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays

Re: [FRIAM] faith

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM
meeting.  Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

-Doug

Sent from Android.
On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net
wrote:

 Hi Russ, 

 ** **

 Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another,
 right?   Notice that all these meanings have to do with God.  If SEP is
 correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never
 use the word.  Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?  

 ** **

 Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here;  I perhaps am not following
 closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe.  This week I
 won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

 ** **

 *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Russ Abbott
 *Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

 ** **

 Robert Holmes quoted the *Stanford Encyclopedia of 
 Philosophy*http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiDoxVenas listing 
 these senses of faith.
 

 ** **

 ·  *the ‘purely affective’ model*: faith as a feeling of existential
 confidence  

 ·  *the ‘special knowledge’ model*: faith as knowledge of specific
 truths, revealed by God  

 ·  *the ‘belief’ model*: faith as belief *that* God exists 

 ·  *the ‘trust’ model*: faith as belief *in* (trust in) God

 ·  *the ‘doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment beyond
 the evidence to one's belief that God exists 

 ·  *the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment
 without belief 

 ·  *the ‘hope’ model*: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the God
 who saves exists. 

 ** **

 Has the discussion done better than this?

 ** **

 It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list
 illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a number of
 different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.  

 ** **

 My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth bullet.
 (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the
 article, 

 ** **

 On the doxastic venture model, faith involves *full* commitment, in the
 face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the
 evidence.

 ** **

 That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the
 article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm
 concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic
 venture.

 ** **

 A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly
 independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support:
 faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes
 faith-propositions to be true *contrary to* the weight of the evidence.
 This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be
 called *arational* fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence
 is positively favoured, *irrational* or *counter-rational* fideism. 

 ** **

 and

 ** **

 Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith amounts
 to a *supra-rational* fideism, for which epistemic concern is not
 overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment
 that it *not* accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the
 evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself only*beyond*, and not
 against, the evidence—and it does so *out of* epistemic concern to grasp
 truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may
 be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in
 principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so
 or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The
 Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its
 cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our
 best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our
 scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to
 grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble
 aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about
 entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic venture model.
 

  

 *-- Russ *



 

 On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:

 Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

  But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by whatever I
  have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The
  expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell, relief
  from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other forms
  of divine intervention.

 That's just a slight

Re: [FRIAM] faith


Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters,  
and the table-pounding.

After October 10.


On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual  
FRIAM meeting.  Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM  
meeting?


-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net 
 wrote:

Hi Russ,



Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another,  
right?   Notice that all these meanings have to do with God.  If SEP  
is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another  
would never use the word.  Do you put faith in the advice of your  
stockbroker?




Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here;  I perhaps am not  
following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa  
Fe.  This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK,  
look out!




From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]  
On Behalf Of Russ Abbott

Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith



Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as  
listing these senses of faith.




·  the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential  
confidence


·  the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific  
truths, revealed by God


·  the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

·  the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

·  the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment  
beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists


·  the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment  
without belief


·  the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the  
God who saves exists.




Has the discussion done better than this?



It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this  
list illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a  
number of different things, which are only sometimes related to each  
other.




My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth  
bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.)  
According to the article,




On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in  
the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified  
on the evidence.




That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent  
the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far  
as I'm concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as a  
doxastic venture.




A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly  
independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential  
support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it  
takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the  
evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more  
fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary  
to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter- 
rational fideism.




and



Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith  
amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is  
not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith- 
commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed  
on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself  
onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of  
epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential  
importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an  
existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the  
evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what  
motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to  
Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its  
cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with  
our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may  
extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it.  
Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science  
can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the  
heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra- 
rational fideist doxastic venture model.




-- Russ 





On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

 But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by  
whatever I

 have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The
 expected action can be provision of n virgins, not going to hell,  
relief
 from pain, reincarnation as a higher being and all sorts of other  
forms

 of divine intervention.

That's just a slight variation on what I laid out.

Re: [FRIAM] faith

Worksforme.
On Sep 24, 2012 9:34 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com wrote:

 Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
 Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters, and
 the table-pounding.
 After October 10.


 On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM
 meeting.  Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

 -Doug

 Sent from Android.
 On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net
 wrote:

 Hi Russ, 

 ** **

 Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another,
 right?   Notice that all these meanings have to do with God.  If SEP is
 correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never
 use the word.  Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?  

 ** **

 Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here;  I perhaps am not following
 closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe.  This week I
 won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!

 ** **

 *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Russ Abbott
 *Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

 ** **

 Robert Holmes quoted the *Stanford Encyclopedia of 
 Philosophy*http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiDoxVenas listing 
 these senses of faith.
 

 ** **

 ·  *the ‘purely affective’ model*: faith as a feeling of existential
 confidence  

 ·  *the ‘special knowledge’ model*: faith as knowledge of specific
 truths, revealed by God  

 ·  *the ‘belief’ model*: faith as belief *that* God exists 

 ·  *the ‘trust’ model*: faith as belief *in* (trust in) God

 ·  *the ‘doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment beyond
 the evidence to one's belief that God exists 

 ·  *the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment
 without belief 

 ·  *the ‘hope’ model*: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the
 God who saves exists. 

 ** **

 Has the discussion done better than this?

 ** **

 It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list
 illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a number of
 different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.  

 ** **

 My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth bullet.
 (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the
 article, 

 ** **

 On the doxastic venture model, faith involves *full* commitment, in the
 face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the
 evidence.

 ** **

 That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the
 article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm
 concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic
 venture.

 ** **

 A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly
 independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support:
 faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes
 faith-propositions to be true *contrary to* the weight of the evidence.
 This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be
 called *arational* fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the
 evidence is positively favoured, *irrational* or *counter-rational*
  fideism. 

 ** **

 and

 ** **

 Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith
 amounts to a *supra-rational* fideism, for which epistemic concern is
 not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on
 faith-commitment that it *not* accept what is known, or justifiably
 believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself only*
 beyond*, and not against, the evidence—and it does so *out of* epistemic
 concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The
 thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous
 truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide
 either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of
 faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be
 justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to
 cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith
 may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it.
 Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can
 supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the
 debate about entitlement to faith on this supra-rational fideist doxastic
 venture model.

  

 *-- Russ *



 

 On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:

 Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

  But my point (regarding

Re: [FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith

You're the first other person I have ever met who confessed to having read
Little Black Sambo.  

Thank you for that, Steve.  [sigh]

Nick 

-Original Message-
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 11:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith

 Steve,

 Do you remember in what childhood story, things run round and round a 
 tree until they turn into butter?
My mixed allusions were definitely intentional.   The reference of 
course, is how we, the FRIAM community are very good at hashing and
rehashing the same material until even those of us doing the hashing (can
you find the etymology for hashing?) are even tired enough of the sight of
our own tails that we might as well turn into butter from all that
agitation.

The story of course, would be Little Black Sambo  where he lead the Tigers
out to eat him for breakfast to chase one another around a palm tree until
they turned to butter (something about vanity amongst the 
tigers who had first stolen his clothing, etc.).   This story, of course 
is now totally and completely politically incorrect, though the Sambo was a
very dark southern Indian boy I believe as opposed to a Black African Slave
in the southern US as many people assume.  (else it would have been
panthers?)

In any case, the restaurant chain Sambo's who used the boy and his tigers
as Icons made a mean stack of pancakes with plenty of *butter* (which as a
child I was sure  was made of melted tigers). The Chain has either gone
defunct or changed it's name.
 Those things weren't monkeys,  weasels, OR MULBERRY BUSHES.
If I can mix metaphors, surely I can mix nursery rhymes and childrens
stories of various origins...  when I first heard those stories I had never
seen a weasel, a monkey, a tiger, a mulberry bush or a black person.  And
yet somehow the stories made sense... how is THAT for Faith?

Ever hear the  one about... Ladle Rat Rotten Hut?
 Hint:  No teacher would read this story to a child, nowadays.
My sister had a black life-sized infant doll handed down through the family,
known as a tar baby referencing the days when white slaveholding children
were allowed to play with slaves' babies... as 
if they were dolls.   I remember when my mother explained how totally 
politically incorrect (there was no term for this, it was just explained as
wrong headed) the whole situation was... until then, my sister 
thought it was just another doll.   I lived in a secluded southwestern 
rural area where I'd never seen a person of color... well, plenty of
Native Americans and descendents of Spanish Conquistadors, but no African
Americans, and no TV either, though I suppose pictures in Encyclopedias and
Nat'l Geographics?
   

 -Original Message-
 From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On 
 Behalf Of Steve Smith
 Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 5:23 PM
 To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith

 Doug -

 Congratulations on avoiding another opportunity to become someone's 
 hood ornament!
 Apropo of nothing, of course, except that I retain my faith that they 
 are out to get me when I'm on the motorcycle.
 However, for the sake of the Monkey, the Weasel and the Mulberry bush, 
 I contend that your use of the world faith here aligns with my use 
 of the word Faith in general and roughly matches what those who I 
 believe you revile (or at least chide) do.  You (as they) choose a 
 *working
 statement* which has no basis in fact (has been refuted or at least 
 can't be verified), but which *works well for you* and the *rhetoric* 
 of the statement plays well within your community (of other riders who 
 subscribe to the same Faith).

 I think I'm turning to butter.

 - Steve



 
 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe 
 at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at 
 http://www.friam.org


 
 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe 
 at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at 
 http://www.friam.org



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] fripm


Fripm October 12.
When worlds collide.


On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:39 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Worksforme.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:34 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com  
wrote:

Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of  
characters, and the table-pounding.

After October 10.


On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual  
FRIAM meeting.  Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM  
meeting?


-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net 
 wrote:

Hi Russ,



Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another,  
right?   Notice that all these meanings have to do with God.  If  
SEP is correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or  
another would never use the word.  Do you put faith in the advice  
of your stockbroker?




Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here;  I perhaps am not  
following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to  
Santa Fe.  This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT  
WEEK, look out!




From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]  
On Behalf Of Russ Abbott

Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith



Robert Holmes quoted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as  
listing these senses of faith.




·  the ‘purely affective’ model: faith as a feeling of existential  
confidence


·  the ‘special knowledge’ model: faith as knowledge of specific  
truths, revealed by God


·  the ‘belief’ model: faith as belief that God exists

·  the ‘trust’ model: faith as belief in (trust in) God

·  the ‘doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment  
beyond the evidence to one's belief that God exists


·  the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model: faith as practical commitment  
without belief


·  the ‘hope’ model: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the  
God who saves exists.




Has the discussion done better than this?



It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this  
list illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a  
number of different things, which are only sometimes related to  
each other.




My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth  
bullet. (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.)  
According to the article,




On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full commitment, in  
the face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’  
justified on the evidence.




That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent  
the article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far  
as I'm concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as  
a doxastic venture.




A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly  
independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential  
support: faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it  
takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the  
evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought  
more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment  
contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or  
counter-rational fideism.




and



Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith  
amounts to a supra-rational fideism, for which epistemic concern is  
not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on  
faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably  
believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself  
onlybeyond, and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of  
epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential  
importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an  
existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the  
evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what  
motivates William James's ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to  
Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be justified, its  
cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with  
our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may  
extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it.  
Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science  
can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the  
heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this supra- 
rational fideist doxastic venture model.




-- Russ 





On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote:

Robert J. Cordingley wrote at 09/24/2012 04:38 PM:

 But my point (regarding God) was an expectation of action by  
whatever I

 have faith in and has nothing to do with action on my part.  The
 expected action can be provision of n

Re: [FRIAM] fripm

Actually reading Juggler of Worlds right now. Second in Niven's Fleet of
Worlds Ringworld prequils.
On Sep 24, 2012 9:46 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com wrote:

 Fripm October 12.
 When worlds collide.


 On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:39 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 Worksforme.
 On Sep 24, 2012 9:34 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com
 wrote:

 Perhaps one could rename or subset the meeting as FRIPM.
 Meet at Sas' and finally combine the whiskey, the cast of characters, and
 the table-pounding.
 After October 10.


 On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:28 PM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

 Yikes. I might just have to break tradition and attend an actual FRIAM
 meeting.  Has there ever been an actual fist fight at a FRIAM meeting?

 -Doug

 Sent from Android.
 On Sep 24, 2012 9:17 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net
 wrote:

 Hi Russ, 

 ** **

 Whatever SEP may have to say, we still have to talk to one another,
 right?   Notice that all these meanings have to do with God.  If SEP is
 correct, a person not concerned with god in one way or another would never
 use the word.  Do you put faith in the advice of your stockbroker?  

 ** **

 Forgive me if I am being abit trollish, here;  I perhaps am not
 following closely enough, due to packing, etc., to get back to Santa Fe.
 This week I won’t make it for Friday’s meeting, but NEXT WEEK, look out!
 

 ** **

 *From:* friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Russ Abbott
 *Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 9:42 PM
 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith

 ** **

 Robert Holmes quoted the *Stanford Encyclopedia of 
 Philosophy*http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiDoxVenas listing 
 these senses of faith.
 

 ** **

 ·  *the ‘purely affective’ model*: faith as a feeling of existential
 confidence  

 ·  *the ‘special knowledge’ model*: faith as knowledge of specific
 truths, revealed by God  

 ·  *the ‘belief’ model*: faith as belief *that* God exists 

 ·  *the ‘trust’ model*: faith as belief *in* (trust in) God

 ·  *the ‘doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment beyond
 the evidence to one's belief that God exists 

 ·  *the ‘sub-doxastic venture’ model*: faith as practical commitment
 without belief 

 ·  *the ‘hope’ model*: faith as hoping—or acting in the hope that—the
 God who saves exists. 

 ** **

 Has the discussion done better than this?

 ** **

 It seems to me that we are getting into trouble because (as this list
 illustrates) we (in English) use the word faith to mean a number of
 different things, which are only sometimes related to each other.  

 ** **

 My original concern was with faith in the sense of the fifth bullet.
 (The third bullet is explicitly based on belief in God.) According to the
 article, 

 ** **

 On the doxastic venture model, faith involves *full* commitment, in the
 face of the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the
 evidence.

 ** **

 That's pretty close to how I would use the term. To a great extent the
 article has a theological focus, which clouds the issue as far as I'm
 concerned.  But here is more of what it says about faith as a doxastic
 venture.

 ** **

 A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly
 independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support:
 faith then reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes
 faith-propositions to be true *contrary to* the weight of the evidence.
 This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be
 called *arational* fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the
 evidence is positively favoured, *irrational* or *counter-rational*
  fideism. 

 ** **

 and

 ** **

 Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith
 amounts to a *supra-rational* fideism, for which epistemic concern is
 not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on
 faith-commitment that it *not* accept what is known, or justifiably
 believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself only
 *beyond*, and not against, the evidence—and it does so *out of* epistemic
 concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The
 thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous
 truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide
 either to do so or not is what motivates William James's ‘justification of
 faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896/1956). If such faith can be
 justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to
 cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith
 may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it.
 Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can
 supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the
 debate

Re: [FRIAM] Turning into butter, was RE: faith