James Chastek has been noodling questions of epistemology, that is, how do we know what we know. He’s been examining the basis of scientific evidence and certainty, which is fascinating stuff, but much of it is over my head. Again, this guy is a real professional philosopher.
But he recently had a post on belief and faith that caught my attention. His basic point is that the word “belief” has a very broad range of meaning, and that the word “faith” should be kept distinct from it. Some snippets:
There are certain beliefs that, though reasons can be given for them, do not need to be believed for those reasons; and/ or which should be believed before the reasons are known. Good reasons can be given for why a child must listen to his parents or a tribesman should love his tribe, but the virtues of piety, patriotism, obedience, etc. do not require that the one with the virtue know the reasons for his action. A child who listens perfectly to his parents or teachers would be viewed as having a virtue even if we did not know if the child had a reason for what he was doing; and you can love your family or children even apart from any evidence that they are lovable. (more…)

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