N -
Doug I look forward to hearing your HAWG roll through the gates of St.
Johns College. Bring Steve. N
Wow! What an image!
Doug's Monster BMW Dual Sport with a bungee cord attached to my 30 year
old mountain bike with a homebuilt electric motor that hasn't worked in
10 years wheezing (me wheezing, the bike clanking) along behind,
slingshotting ahead as we pull through the gates. The wonders of
elastic cords!
I'm (a)bating my breath to see if Doug reacts to his sleek EuroMachine
being referred to by a term (HAWG) usually reserved for that symbol of
(misplaced?) Murrican patriotism, the Harley Davidson.
My father bought a wartime surplus Harley when he returned from WWII,
had a grand good time stripping the military paintjob and repainting it
only to have two scary accidents within a few months (civilian turning
left in front of him, mechanical failure in the drive sprocket) which
put him off the whole business.
I didn't hear any of this until after I bought my first bike (a 2-stroke
rice burner from the early 70's)... I think he was trying to put me off
the idea as well... it only fueled my passion to prove him wrong of
course. Going through their household possessions recently, I
discovered a picture of him at 22 on that fat Hawg with a handlebar
mustache that I could never match. I guess he gets the last laugh.
Actually these days it is more of a giggle.
We look forward to your own return Nick... if I stay in town long
enough, I might even drag my sorry ass out to St Johnnies for a slug of
Joe with you guys (do they still serve Joe, or is it all fancy Italian
named stuff these days?). That was the biggest thing I missed in
Italy while I was there, real coffee! (wince)
- Steve
*From:*[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
*On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts
*Sent:* Monday, September 24, 2012 11:28 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* 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"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 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:*[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>]
*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/#FaiDoxVen> 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 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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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
============================================================
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
