I’ve been toying with a way of comparing theory and faith, but I’m not yet sure how well it works. Summary: Theory is to faith as our concept of physical necessitation is to that of social obligation.
We think of theory and faith as both imparting an obligation to believe. But the sense of “obligation” is different in each case. Theory borrows its sense of “obligation” from how we think about the natural world. Faith borrows its sense of “obligation” from how we think about the social world.
The sense of “obligation” in theory is that of natural necessity. We have an intuition that, in the natural world, forces act on things to necessitate changes in their states. (I’m talking about a primitive folk notion of “necessitate”, here, not the determinism of Newtonian mechanics.) Analogously, we are obliged to believe a theory because the force of reason, like a natural force, pushes us to do so.
The sense of “obligation” in faith is that of duty, trust, and deference to those who deserve it. If someone deserves our trust, then it feels wrong, or insolent, or at least rude, to demand independent evidence for their claims. Certain kinds of social relations impose a duty on one party to act as though the word of the other party were beyond doubt. Faith is the duty that we owe to God to trust him, which duty we have in virtue of the fact that we are indebted to him for our existence. And this faith is rewarded, just as one would expect to be rewarded for showing due deference to one’s social superiors.
This is nice. I wonder, though, why people wouldn’t have then used some existing, familiar term referring to feudal obligation, instead of “faith”. People were very conscious of the parallels between feudal relations, and relations between man and God. Yet I haven’t heard faith described in those terms.
In support of this idea, remember that, while in the 1st thru 4th centuries AD, as well as today, there were/are a lot of questions about who wrote various books and whether they were inspired by God, these questions weren’t often asked publicly in the middle ages. (There was inquiry into this during the Protestant Reformation.) If someone said in 1500 that you must have more faith in the Bible than in your observations, they might not have meant that there was this thing “faith” justifying belief in the Bible. Of course the Bible was inspired by God. Doubting the words of the Bible was perhaps not interpreted as doubting that the Bible was inspired by God, but as doubting that God was telling the truth. So faith wouldn’t have needed to have anything to do with epistemology.
This is nice. I wonder, though, why people wouldn’t have then used some existing, familiar term referring to feudal obligation, instead of “faith”.
Because “faith” was the existing familiar term for those relations. The feudal concept of fealty comes from the same Latin root, fidelis, that’s translated into English as “faith”. The word “faith” is still occasionally used in its original sense, e.g., “faithful servant” or “I have faith in you”.
I’ve been toying with a way of comparing theory and faith, but I’m not yet sure how well it works. Summary: Theory is to faith as our concept of physical necessitation is to that of social obligation.
We think of theory and faith as both imparting an obligation to believe. But the sense of “obligation” is different in each case. Theory borrows its sense of “obligation” from how we think about the natural world. Faith borrows its sense of “obligation” from how we think about the social world.
The sense of “obligation” in theory is that of natural necessity. We have an intuition that, in the natural world, forces act on things to necessitate changes in their states. (I’m talking about a primitive folk notion of “necessitate”, here, not the determinism of Newtonian mechanics.) Analogously, we are obliged to believe a theory because the force of reason, like a natural force, pushes us to do so.
The sense of “obligation” in faith is that of duty, trust, and deference to those who deserve it. If someone deserves our trust, then it feels wrong, or insolent, or at least rude, to demand independent evidence for their claims. Certain kinds of social relations impose a duty on one party to act as though the word of the other party were beyond doubt. Faith is the duty that we owe to God to trust him, which duty we have in virtue of the fact that we are indebted to him for our existence. And this faith is rewarded, just as one would expect to be rewarded for showing due deference to one’s social superiors.
This is nice. I wonder, though, why people wouldn’t have then used some existing, familiar term referring to feudal obligation, instead of “faith”. People were very conscious of the parallels between feudal relations, and relations between man and God. Yet I haven’t heard faith described in those terms.
In support of this idea, remember that, while in the 1st thru 4th centuries AD, as well as today, there were/are a lot of questions about who wrote various books and whether they were inspired by God, these questions weren’t often asked publicly in the middle ages. (There was inquiry into this during the Protestant Reformation.) If someone said in 1500 that you must have more faith in the Bible than in your observations, they might not have meant that there was this thing “faith” justifying belief in the Bible. Of course the Bible was inspired by God. Doubting the words of the Bible was perhaps not interpreted as doubting that the Bible was inspired by God, but as doubting that God was telling the truth. So faith wouldn’t have needed to have anything to do with epistemology.
Because “faith” was the existing familiar term for those relations. The feudal concept of fealty comes from the same Latin root, fidelis, that’s translated into English as “faith”. The word “faith” is still occasionally used in its original sense, e.g., “faithful servant” or “I have faith in you”.
This is a much more useful way to think about faith than just thinking of it as somehow the opposite of reason.
Faith is belief that unconditionally prevents understanding views inconsistent with it. A simple, illuminating definition, rendering faith a defined variety of viral meme. For the mechanism, based on psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert’s “Spinozan” theory of comprehension and belief, see “Unraveling the mystery of morality: The unity of comprehension and belief explains moralism and faith”