"'round and 'round the mulberry bush!" Who is monkey and who is the
weasel? And when do we all turn to butter?
I have two words, one is "faith" and the other is "Faith". I try not to
conflate them with one another.
"faith" is roughly a shortcut term to describe articles in a moderately
validated but mostly internalized model. The floor is under my bed
nearly every time I get up (if I'm awake), the other drivers don't cross
the middle line, etc. I call that "faith" and it is not a very big
deal... my pets and the wild and domesticated animals I know seem to
have the same, sometimes to a fault. I would be paniced if I didn't have
opposable thumbs to operate doorknobs and open my own food containers!
"Faith" is something not necessarily validated and usually more
externalized than internalized. It seems to require the creation and
adoption of "stories".
I think it is easy to dismiss what other's take on "faith" as being "on
Faith". I haven't accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour (and frankly I
have no idea what that even means) but I do believe there are people who
act very much in the "faith" that they were created, and are watched
over by a strongly anthropomorphised "God" who sent "his only begotten
son" to help resolve the contradictions of "original sin" and "human
fallibility", etc... and that somehow giving him (the God and/or his Son
or that other fellow often referred to as Holy Ghost) lip service (in
private or in public) will fix all that up for them. I really believe
that they believe this... even though it comes off as totally absurd to
me. I don't think they are faking it. Well many of them.
Similary, I think my non-scientific friends often dismiss belief in
scientific principles which are *very hard to observe* as being articles
of Faith rather than faith. I personally admit that I have never really
had a single personal experience that validates general relativity or
the heisenberg uncertainty principle (or pick any one of millions of
highly specialized counter (or extra?) intuitive rules, laws, principles
found in the context of science). I've studied the mathematics and the
(anecdotal?) descriptions of experiments that have been run and repeated
to verify such things, but frankly I can't really call it "faith"... it
really is "Faith" in the sense that I believe it because I choose to and
because I'm embedded in a community who also believes it and roughly my
continued belief (or would that be Belief?) is a requirement for my
continued good standing in the community.
While driving in Italy for 3 weeks recently, it took me a while to
accept that the motorcycle and scooter riders had complete "faith" that
the cars they were whipping past on the left and right (extreme lane
splitting) would not do anything overtly dangerous to them. I also
found that even car/truck drivers take it on faith that even the
slightest trajectory advantage yields "right of way"... if an inch of
your bumper is in front of another car's, you can cut them off and they
will yield *every time*! I developed enough Faith to try it and it
worked... with that "Faith" and enough experience I'm pretty sure it
would have become "faith" for me. This would not serve me so well upon
return to the murrican driving milieu, however.
Like Doug, I've ridden motorcycles for a very long time and have managed
to stay off of the pavement, the guardrails, and the hoods and fenders
of other vehicles, and I did it by a combination of ultra-vigilance,
some common sense, and probably more than a little luck. I ride (and
drive for that matter) with a great deal of "faith" all the time... but
I *do* recalibrate my "faith" while on a two-wheeler from being on a
four wheeler.
I used to wear a helmet all the time based on the *Faith* that somehow I
was not only less likely to have a bad head-injury but somehow I was
less likely to have an accident in the first place! I now wear a
helmet more for comfort than for safety... I sometimes prefer the warmth
and wind-screening effect of a full-face helmet... other times I prefer
the wind in my stubble, the bugs in my teeth and the cinders in my eyes.
Plenty of us feel more likely to have a deadly accident or experience a
life threatening (or at least very expensive) disease or condition if we
are not carrying low-deductible, high limit insurance. We conflate
*stakes* with *risk*. Is this an act of "faith" or "Faith"? As a
non-believer (in consequence-reduction measures as risk-reduction
measures), it looks like Faith in others, yet, I swear they behave as if
they really, literally believe in this conflation?
- Steve
Russ,
Well, as was observed the last time we went 'round on this topic, you
have faith in your powers of induction: faith that the world is the
sort of a place where floors don't evaporate after several years of
not evaporating. Do you remember the car that drove off the severed
bridge in Connecticut some years back? That man had faith that an
interstate is not the sort of place where roads suddenly come to an
end. Turned out to be false.
By the way, a story circulated about that incident that the last thing
that driver did was give the finger to another drive that he had just
passed. Urban folklore, right? Too much Karma.
Nick
*From:*[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
*On Behalf Of *Russ Abbott
*Sent:* Sunday, September 23, 2012 8:42 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] faith
I don't buy that "It is faith when you get out of bed without checking
to see that the ground is still there." Why should one suppose that
the ground would not be there? It seems to me that using "faith" that
loosely robs the word of most of its meaning. 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. What
would require faith is to believe that the everyday world is somehow
not the everyday world but a manifestation of some unknowable being.
/-- Russ Abbott/
/_____________________________________________/
/Professor, Computer Science/
/ California State University, Los Angeles/
/My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy:
ssrn.com/abstract=1977688 <http://ssrn.com/abstract=1977688>/
/ Google voice: 747-999-5105/
Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
<https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/>
/vita: //sites.google.com/site/russabbott//
<http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/>
CS Wiki <http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/> and the courses I teach
/_____________________________________________/
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 5:23 PM, Douglas Roberts <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
It makes for a great academic, philosophical talking point, though.
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:13 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>* 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, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
--
Doug Roberts
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
505-455-7333 <tel:505-455-7333> - Office
505-670-8195 <tel: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
============================================================
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
