Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

How Do Men of Faith, Who Consider Themselves Objectivists, Reconcile t

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

Devil's Ad,

You're misinterpreting. He wan't aknowledging two types of faith. He was showing how a trust in knowledge deduced from reality is sometimes erroneous referred to as faith, & is is not to be convoluted with believing the arbitrary. Convoluting the two examples is what mystics do to parade logical fallicies as valid concepts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honorable rowsdower,

">>O.K. why not? [is every idea a logical proposition]"

The burden of proof should be on you, because I don't know how you came to the conclusion that propositional logic describes all outlooks.

An ill-defined idea (such as God) is not suited to formalization. And propositional logic itself could hardly be called a proposition.

 

sl72> Fair enough, I am not trying to propose that propositional logic describes all outlooks. I am trying to use oppositional logic to express an idea. Saying An ill-defined idea (such as God) is not suited to formalization, simply tells me I have yet to succeed in conveying the idea. I am trying to avoid sounding like the speaking in riddles crowd and the lost in paradoxes crowd. My sincerest apologies for apparently adding another flavor of mud.

 But to the question of god vs God. From several responses it seems to me, that many folks seem to have an intuitive notion that the size of a set should change when you remove members from it, and that notion does not extend to infinite sets. I will try to clarify more in coming responses 

 

">No, this is frustrating, I do say God is Reality. That sentence was still trying to get across this concept of an ultimate superset of all Reality."

I would disagree that reality is a set at all, but if so, is God a strict superset of all reality? If so, God is not reality.

 

sl72> I would be eager to hear why you think the phrase 'the set of all that is' is semantic null, but thank you for granting a supposition. I do however have trouble understanding 'strict superset'. Do you mean 'proper superset'? If so then yes. You can call it what you want, but an ordered set such that each subset is contained within its superset is called a nested hierarchy, and I am trying to express the idea that at the "top" of the hierarchy there has to be a final infinite superset or you are faced with the "turtles all the way down" thing just turned over. Infinite sets are not intuitive. 

 

"So, the union of any set with its complement is God.
>>No, I never said ANY set, reductionist logic."

The union of any set with its complement is the set of everything, AKA God.

A set of everything is simply a set that always says "yes, I contain this." Or formally, { x | }. It is the complement of the nil set (Satan?).

O.K. here is where I concede the limitations of the paradigm I chose for attempting to express this thought. I would assert, the statement 'The union of any set with its complement is the set of everything', is more accurately stated as 'The union of any set with its complement is an infinite set of the same domain as the original set'. Even there 'domain' may be a bad choice of words, perhaps 'system' is better. I am trying to say not all sets are created equal. The set of all possible Zermelo-Fränkel expressions for example is an infinite set. The set of all of Peano's numbers is likewise an infinite set, yet Peano's numbers are a proper sub-set of Zermelo-Fränkel expressions. When you say reality is real, that thing you are talking about is the whole enchilada, no turtles all the way down, no evading the issue, Reality, capital R, infinite complete, consistent, all of it, no set can subsume it, contains the null set, complements the empty set, you insist it is real why do you shy away from someone using the it as a basis for defining a meaningful concept to replace mythological gods?

 

">> My last reading of latest and greatest in the study of physics sure looks like nature is pretty mathematical to me."

The ability to use math does not mean that things are made out of math.

sl72> I agree

Just like the ability to describe ideas using propositional logic does not mean ideas are propositional logic, or that reality is nothing more than a set of propositions.

sl72>Yup, got that also.

Just like the ability to talk about things does not mean that they are made out of words.

sl72> Precisely, the Meta cannot subsume the subject. If I left the impression I was trying to do that, I apologize. There were several places in this thread I seem to have left an inverse image. The Meta however is subsumed in the whole.

 

Objectivists try to be rational, but not rationalist.

Zap! My apologies. Right you are. I will be more careful in the future. sl72

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Devil's Ad,

You're misinterpreting. He wan't aknowledging two types of faith. He was showing how a trust in knowledge deduced from reality is sometimes erroneous referred to as faith, & is is not to be convoluted with believing the arbitrary. Convoluting the two examples is what mystics do to parade logical fallicies as valid concepts.

 

He is certainly capable of defending himself, but in responding to you, I understood JASKN as differentiating between using the term faith to convey that which is reasonable from that which is unfounded.  I generally consider this to be the difference between faith and blind faith, but will allow that from an Objectivist POV the difference is more appropriately distinguished by using the terms belief vs faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A is a proper superset of B if A contains all of B and other things.

So, if God is a proper superset of reality, then reality must be a set and God must contain things not in reality.

"an ordered set such that each subset is contained within its superset is called a nested hierarchy"; If God contains everything, then this is trivial. And what order is it in? Is God not a set after all, but a list?

 

 

The set of everything does not not contain anything.

This set (JavaScript) does not not contain anything:

God: { contains: function(x) { return true; } }

This set is the set of everything, because there is only one way to never reject input.

You could also say:

God: { contains: function(x) { peanoNumber(x) || !peanoNumber(x) } }

 

"no set can subsume it"; every set can be placed in a set. Including { God }.

Edited by rowsdower
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This one is good too.   Rand again makes it clear when she speaks of faith or belief it is "blind belief."  Also, she grants that there are moral aspects to some religions but that religion itself (i.e. blind belief) is detrimental to human life. 

 

 

PLAYBOY
Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?

RAND
Qua religion, no—in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very—how should I say it?—dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.


Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand
Playboy, March 1964

 

 

 

Does anyone know if she has ever gone into detail about WHY it is harmful.  I would think it is because it is not assumed that faith could be strictly limited to one harmless area of life.  Could it?   This topic has made me think of something I say sometimes, something I do think is harmless.   The only thing I hold blind faith in is the Lakers.  It keeps me interested in basketball, it keeps me excited watching games... but, yes, I am aware of it... yet... when there is 0.4 left on the clock, I still believe they're going to win.  And sometimes they do.

 

Maybe because I'm aware that the faith is blind and there is no reason I don't actually believe it.  I'm not sure.    At least, with the Lakers, I can validate whether or not my faith at any one moment was misplaced or not. (because there are results, statistics and win/loss records)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

sl72> Fair enough, I am not trying to propose that propositional logic describes all outlooks. I am trying to use oppositional logic to express an idea. Saying An ill-defined idea (such as God) is not suited to formalization, simply tells me I have yet to succeed in conveying the idea. I am trying to avoid sounding like the speaking in riddles crowd and the lost in paradoxes crowd. My sincerest apologies for apparently adding another flavor of mud.

 But to the question of god vs God. From several responses it seems to me, that many folks seem to have an intuitive notion that the size of a set should change when you remove members from it, and that notion does not extend to infinite sets. I will try to clarify more in coming responses 

 

 

Caught error in previous post, sorry :{   NOT(I am trying to use oppositional logic to express an idea.) meant (I am trying to use propositional logic to express an idea.) I should never post during the morning hustle. Sorry.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone know if she has ever gone into detail about WHY it is harmful.

Among other things, AR said [extremely paraphrasing]: Faith causes epistemological problems because it introduces the arbitrary into the realm of ideas. Don't debate arbitrary assertions. Treat the logical fallicy as if nothing was said because, in effect, nothing was.

The arbitrary (an assertion not deduced from reality), creates a breach with reality. "God exists" is an arbitrary assertion, not deduced from nature, but attributed to something of a super nature, that can't be disproven because it isn't encumbered by those pesky rules that govern reality.

The effects on the mind, caused by such a breach with reality, can get worse. Similar to how the breach caused by lying can ripple out of control.

I debate the arbitrary assertion of "God exists" only as an excersize in logic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone know if she has ever gone into detail about WHY it is harmful.  I would think it is because it is not assumed that faith could be strictly limited to one harmless area of life.  Could it?

Faith is harmful to the extent other actions depend on it, as opposed to depending on reason.

If you were betting your fortune based on faith in the Lakers, it would be more harmful than if you weren't really doing much based on that faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Faith is harmful to the extent other actions depend on it, as opposed to depending on reason.

If you were betting your fortune based on faith in the Lakers, it would be more harmful than if you weren't really doing much based on that faith.

Exactly.  I agree with this as you put it.

 

Yet, limiting "faith" to something singular with your awareness (such as a sports team) is not something I can see has harmful.  Unless it spreads to other thinking.    I think this can be done with something like the Lakers or whether or not the yogurt shop is going to have my favorite flavor on tap one day.   With something like your philosophical belief in whether or not your life is watched over by a deity, not so much.

 

"A little nonsense now and then cherished by the wisest men". - Willy Wonka

Edited by freestyle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

"So, the union of any set with its complement is God.

>>No, I never said ANY set, reductionist logic."

The union of any set with its complement is the set of everything, AKA God.

A set of everything is simply a set that always says "yes, I contain this." Or formally, { x | ⊤ }. It is the complement of the nil set (Satan?).

 

Yet God, by definition, is supernatural.  Outside AND inside of existence at the same time.  It is a contradiction to start with.  

 

It cannot be DEfined. 

 

And shown above, the Devil would have to be APART from the set that is God.   (another contradiction-- I'm not aware of any religion that says God and the Devil are the same)

 

Similar to Rand's statement that, "a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms." 

 

I like how Rand calls religion (paraphrasing) an early form of philosophy.  It clearly is.   I tend to think that God is a reduction (or inflation) of the concept of good.  Devil is the same for evil.  And probably, Allah is the concept of "all" (in a round-about way).  

 

Prior to epistemology, apparently, humans just put arbitrary faces and meanings on these fundamental concepts.

Edited by freestyle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

Does anyone know if she has ever gone into detail about WHY it is harmful...

 

If you haven't read (or listened to the audio recording of) Philosophy: Who Needs It? , I strongly recommend it.  It responds to much of what you are asking here.  In the first part she tells the story of a hapless astronaut who crash lands on an alien world.  Rather than trying to figure out how to make repairs, he decides he isn't up to the task and chooses to wait for someone to show up and rescue him.  Someone does, and the hapless astronaut isn't heard from again...

 

I'd say most of her philosophy goes into detail about why choosing not to think is harmful to oneself.  The worst form of faith, in my estimation, is leaping over mortal danger on the premise that God won't let you fall.  I've seen this many times in my life with mixed results; someone essentially trying to coax God into performing a miracle by placing their own life at risk; or worse, someone else.

 

Faith leaps without a safety net.

Edited by Devil's Advocate
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A is a proper superset of B if A contains all of B and other things.

So, if God is a proper superset of reality, then reality must be a set and God must contain things not in reality.

"an ordered set such that each subset is contained within its superset is called a nested hierarchy"; If God contains everything, then this is trivial. And what order is it in? Is God not a set after all, but a list?

 

 

The set of everything does not not contain anything.

This set (JavaScript) does not not contain anything:

God: { contains: function(x) { return true; } }

This set is the set of everything, because there is only one way to never reject input.

You could also say:

God: { contains: function(x) { peanoNumber(x) || !peanoNumber(x) } }

 

"no set can subsume it"; every set can be placed in a set. Including { God }.

This is all great sport, but we are going nowhere. I already agreed that using a weaker semantic set to discuss a greater one was 'my bad' in the beginning. I therefore must object to attempting to shoehorn the discussion into an even weaker semantic set as we go on. Predicate logic was bad enough, computer code/pseudo-code will get us no where. Do you even care to discuss any of this, or is this the way you chose to stop participating? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Among other things, AR said [extremely paraphrasing]: Faith causes epistemological problems because it introduces the arbitrary into the realm of ideas. Don't debate arbitrary assertions. Treat the logical fallicy as if nothing was said because, in effect, nothing was.

The arbitrary (an assertion not deduced from reality), creates a breach with reality. "God exists" is an arbitrary assertion, not deduced from nature, but attributed to something of a super nature, that can't be disproven because it isn't encumbered by those pesky rules that govern reality.

The effects on the mind, caused by such a breach with reality, can get worse. Similar to how the breach caused by lying can ripple out of control.

I debate the arbitrary assertion of "God exists" only as an excersize in logic.

I think it more useful to argue that neither the arbitrary assertion that "God exists" nor the arbitrary assertion that "God does not exist" can be defended, only as an exercise in logic. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yet God, by definition, is supernatural.  Outside AND inside of existence at the same time.  It is a contradiction to start with.  

 

It cannot be DEfined. 

 

And shown above, the Devil would have to be APART from the set that is God.   (another contradiction-- I'm not aware of any religion that says God and the Devil are the same)

 

Similar to Rand's statement that, "a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms." 

 

I like how Rand calls religion (paraphrasing) an early form of philosophy.  It clearly is.   I tend to think that God is a reduction (or inflation) of the concept of good.  Devil is the same for evil.  And probably, Allah is the concept of "all" (in a round-about way).  

 

Prior to epistemology, apparently, humans just put arbitrary faces and meanings on these fundamental concepts.

Well, I do not accept that there is a 'supernatural'. So you assert that the term 'God' is useless to me? I do not buy into the whole good vs evil mythology. The devil is an artificial construct. A boogy man to frighten. Just as the gods of mythology are characterized to inspire. But I am still looking for a term to mean "That real system which is infinite, consistent, and complete." 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dearest Devil's Ad,

I'm glad you noted that AR said it's a logical fallicy to prove a negative.

I can say, "A giant invisible peeping tom exists and He likes me to ask for favors via telepathy. And nobody has ever proven He doesn't exist."

I can't be proven wrong, because it's irreducible (untied) to reality. I have given an air of validity to the arbitrary, by the fact it can't be disproven, thereby smuggling it into the realm of concepts.

Dearest SLab,

Your "I cannot prove not P" is therefore not a way to validate the arbitrary assertion that a supreme consciousness exists.

New concepts should be deduced from Man's knowledge of reality, which makes them reducible to the axioms.

The arbitrary isn't. So faith is required.

Faith is irreconcilable and incompatible with Objectivism.

I am not trying to assert that a supreme consciousness exists. I have stated several times I cannot prove either assertion. Neither God exists, nor God does not exist, can be proven from concepts deduced from man's knowledge of reality and reduced to axioms. I do assert that concepts deduced from man's knowledge of reality and reduced to axioms, exhibit relationships and patterns that allow us to hypothesize further patterns, concepts and when validated against reality more knowledge. That process never ends, no faith is required. Willingness to explore outside your comfort zone however is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yet God, by definition, is supernatural.  Outside AND inside of existence at the same time.  It is a contradiction to start with.  

 

It cannot be DEfined...

 

"... Historically, natural phenomena whose causes were not well understood, such as lightening and catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods, were attributed to them. They were thought to be able to work supernatural miracles and to be the authorities and controllers of various aspects of human life (such as birth or an afterlife)..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deity

 

References to a supernatural God are dated.  In a time when witches and warlocks lived in the neighborhood, there really wasn't anything outside the universe because the universe was simply the earth and sky.  The Founders attempted to come to terms with this by delimiting God to nature, setting aside those attributes that conflicted with what they knew.  The continued use of the prefix super applied to natural and super applied to man is essentially the same today, and not dissimilar to the use of heroic.  For example, Ayn Rand's concept of man as a heroic being certainly doesn't imply the same type of demigod Aristotle would have recognized in his day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would object to Universe, to limited. Omniverse maybe, existence is good, or even reality.

Universe is simply "limited" to "all that exists".  I don't think a a non-contradictory conceptualization of Omniverse is possible.  It would be a "thing" and that thing would refer to "all that exists".

 

The Objectivist definition of universe is what I was suggesting. 

 

The universe is the total of that which exists—not merely the earth or the stars or the galaxies, but everything. Obviously then there can be no such thing as the “cause” of the universe . . .

Is the universe then unlimited in size? No. Everything which exists is finite, including the universe. What then, you ask, is outside the universe, if it is finite? This question is invalid. The phrase “outside the universe” has no referent. The universe is everything. “Outside the universe” stands for “that which is where everything isn’t.” There is no such place. There isn’t even nothing “out there”: there is no “out there.”

The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series Leonard Peikoff,

The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 2

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ha! went back to the first opening post and reread what Steve asked, "I've noticed men of faith on this site and I'd like to confirm who you are and also, if you consider yourself an Objectivist, give you a chance to explain how faith and Objectivism are compatible."

 

Perhaps I am not one of the "men of faith" you have noticed. However I still consider myself one. I have faith in Reality, in the scientific method, in a huge canon of mathematics much of which I struggle to understand, and a similarly huge canon of physics and cosmology. If you constrain faith to mysticism, I am not your man. Like Rand I have no truck with folks who prefer to deny their own nature by refusing to think. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...