AndrewKemendo comments on Scaling Evidence and Faith - Less Wrong

-3 [deleted] 27 December 2009 12:30PM

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Comment author: AndrewKemendo 29 December 2009 10:06:14AM 0 points [-]

I think you, EY and most use the term faith in a historical context related to religion rather than its definitional context as it relates to epistemological concerns of trust in an idea or claim

The best definition I have found so far for faith is thus:

Faith is to commit oneself to act based on sufficient experience to warrant belief, but without absolute proof.

So I have no problem using faith and induction interchangeably because it is used just as you say:

inferring the future from the past (or the past from the present), which basically requires the universe to consistently obey the same laws.

Religions claim that they do this. Of course they don't because they do not apply a constant standard to their worldview to all events. It is not because of their faith that they are wrong, it is because of their inconsistent application of accepting claims and ignoring evidence.

The point of the system is to deconstruct why you see their claims of evidence as faith and vice versa. Hence the incorruptible example.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 29 December 2009 06:56:36PM *  2 points [-]

Faith is to commit oneself to act based on sufficient experience to warrant belief, but without absolute proof.

The problem with this definition is that it describes every action you will ever take. "Absolute proof" does not exist with respect to anything in the real world. You only have absolute certainty in a definitional context, e.g."There are no married bachelors" - this is true by definition, but tells you nothing about the actual world. Given that the last statement applies to every single instance, your statement reduces to:

Faith is to commit oneself to act based on sufficient experience to warrant belief.

This statement sounds just like "rational action." That's why many of us take issue with your definition of faith; it does not appear to be a productive concept. Insofar as absolute certainty is impossible, if you're using faith to get you to absolute certainty, you're doing something very, very wrong.

The other problem with this definition is that it is not really compatible with the dictionary definitions, the most pertinent one of which is "belief in the absence of proof."