From: robert@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Rob Karmolinski)
Subject: Re: Faith
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 03:37:34 GMT

arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:

>In article <fTq3rz2@quack.sac.ca.us> pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey) writes:
>>>Faith is neither true nor false.  Only statements of fact (propositions)
>>>can be true or false.  Faith is an extrapolation of past experience (or
>>>some other type of belief system not based on experience, senses, or the
>>>real world), so it can come in many different flavors, some rational,
>>>most not.
>>I'll buy that. Yo, KEN and ERIC! You's gots problems with that?

>Well, yes.  I'm not really sure what different things you're calling faith.
>The description above seems to call any belief faith.  Furthermore, it
>appears to exclude propositions as faith, and you have used a definition that
>appears to include them.

There are a couple of points of confusion here.  First of all, Paul
Harvey only quoted the text above, describing faith.  He did not write
it.  I did.  Secondly, I did not intend for the description above to be
construed as a *definition* of faith, but rather to describe a specific
property of faith.  I wrote it specifically in response to Paul's
question to Ken:  "Do you think faith is true or false?"  Allow me
to clarify my previous response to that question:

It is meaningless to ask whether faith is "true" or "false", as faith
is not a proposition; it is merely a *noun*, not a complete sentence.
It cannot be assigned a truth-value, any more than a rock can be deemed
true or false.  "This rock is true" makes no sense.  "It is true that
this rock is heavy" *does* make sense, even if it is a false assertion.
Only propositions can possess this property of truth-ness or false-ness.
Things that are not propositions do not possess this property.  Faith
is *not* a proposition.

I did not say anything about beliefs, and how they relate to faith.  I
may have appeared to exclude propositions as faith; this is because
propositions are *not* faith.  This inappropriately describes the
relationship between propositions and faith.  A specific property of
faith is that it can be used to *assign* truth-values to propositions,
in a manner I have not specified.  Since there is more than one way to
do this, there is more than one kind of faith.  Beyond that, I have not
defined faith.

The scope of my response was limited to answering the one specific
question, "Do you think faith is true or false?"  To build discussion
upon that response, beyond that scope, is meaningless.

[Paul]
>>ERIC and KEN, WAKE UP! What do you guys think about faith based on
>>inductive logic?

In a deleted portion of the text, I mentioned inductive logic as a
specific type of faith.  I believe that Paul assumed you knew what
inductive logic was, and asked how you would rate it amongst other
types of faiths.

[Ken]
>I have no idea, since your meaning for "faith" is unclear.

I may post a more complete definition for you in the future, if you
like.

>Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
>     INTERNET: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)

--
Rob Karmolinski		(robert@cs.ucla.edu)
"Why is it that mathematical induction is neither mathematical,
nor inductive?"
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism