(September 20, 2020 at 9:43 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(September 20, 2020 at 9:10 pm)Sal Wrote: There's no proposition in faith (nor is it able to make such Stuff) which can be argued against/for.
Here you're using the word "faith" to mean something like "unsupported belief."
I'm really not. I'm using a conceptualization of 'faith' disparately distinct from 'unsupported belief', and 'belief' in general.
(September 20, 2020 at 9:43 pm)Belacqua Wrote: That may be a common way to use the word. But to be clear, John is not using it that way.
Having faith in a dentist is a proposition that may be argued for or against. That she has a good reputation, and has always done good work for me in the past, serves as evidence for my argument that faith in the dentist is justified.
I moved to Chicago, and the evidence was clear that the post office didn't deliver properly. So I lost faith in the post office there, though its existence was never in doubt. I moved to Japan, and all my mail got through. So I gained faith in the Japanese post office. This faith or lack of faith was based on clear experiential evidence.
That's an ablative use of 'faith', to mean the same as 'justified belief'.
Justified belief is based on inductive experience, same shit has happened over and over for the same conditions and you form a belief based on that experience that the same will happen again further down the line, a justified belief.
When there's a change of "the same conditions", like there's for trust or believing someone, then you'll start to doubt if that belief was warranted. It sorta loses its status as a 'justified belief', like only seeing white swans your entire life and then suddenly coming across a black swan (there are more problems with induction, I'm sure you're aware of, but we use it all the time for everything else).
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman