Not All Beliefs Are Equal | The differences between faith, knowledge, and belief

[@ericyaffey7869]

Exceptionally clear explanations of these fundamental concepts, their relationships to one another and the implications of mis-understanding them. Thank you!

[@WadeAllen001]

Unfortunately a photo I included of Frank Turek's "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" didn't show up in the final rendering of the video for some reason at 0:48. I wanted to show that theists really do say that. They've said to it me in the comments of my videos, Frank Turek and Norman Geisler have a book titled "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist," and Frank Turek has a series of talks titled that as well.

[@twinkskeptic9029]

Love your videos, man. Congrats on 1K subs!

[@WadeAllen001]

Thanks!

[@livertiny]

This video is really important in this modern dark age where "alternative facts" and creationism are gaining scary mainstream "legitimacy".

[@Alicegoulding]

I definitely learned a lot in this video. I was wondering where mathematical ideas and conclusions fit in all of this. An easy example would be any axiom within Euclid's Elements. These cannot be proven and are accepted as self-evident. But they do not exist in physical reality. And yet, we can make accurate predictions and conclusions about space with regards to these axioms. I was wondering what your general thoughts were. Are mathematical conclusions considered knowledge? How about the axioms upon which they're formed?-- is that belief or knowledge, since it cannot be either justified nor observed?

[@WadeAllen001]

These are good thoughts, and they could form the basis of an interesting video in the future. My rough ideas on it right now are that axioms of mathematics (such as Euclid's postulates that you mentioned) are in some hazy territory. I mention brute facts in this video, where things have no underpinning justification and the only thing that justifies them is that they're observed. They just are. But Euclid's postulates don't quite fit there. They're more like arbitrary definitions. However, those arbitrary definitions can lead to actual knowledge, as you say. It's like numbers themselves. In what sense does the concept of a number exist? I would say only in our imagination. For instance, the number 5 does not exist as an entity. And yet you can take an imaginary concept (importantly, one that maps onto reality in some way, as numbers refer to things) and formulate a statement with a justifiable truth value from them. Example: 2+3=5. But that statement is really only justifiable as it relates to an imaginary concept underpinning it: the existence of numbers. So you could say that the statement 2+3=5 has internal validity (it makes sense within a system I've imposed) but it might not have external validity (the system itself is imaginary, or at least potentially imaginary. Let's just say for the sake of argument that it really is imaginary, as there are plenty of people who would argue in favor of the ontological realness of numbers). It's a bit like in fiction, how you can make a justifiable claim with an actual truth value about something that exists in a novel. Like, "hobbits exist." The statement can be coherent and true, but only so far as you're referring to Tolkien's fantasy novels or works derivative of them. If you try to take that statement outside of its system then it ceases to be true. But then the interesting question about mathematical concepts is if this same thinking applies. From one perspective, it seems to be the case that mathematical concepts that originate within an imaginary system lead to conclusions that are true outside that system. But then if you think about it another way, are we still just operating within that system whenever we discuss the accurate predictions of math? This is a long way of saying, I don't know the status of mathematical concepts, I'll have to think about it more.

[@mattatron3152]

Freedom of religion is the same things as freedom of speech. Just because you have the right to your religious beliefs doesn't make them true or smart. Likewise-just because a person is entitled to their opinion and to express it-it doesn't mean that their opinion is actually worth expressing-lol...

[@philosopherhobbs]

You are not good at epistemology. Knowledge is not justified true belief. There are countless examples of people justifiably believing something true but not having knowledge. Also, using dictionary definitions is not useful for trying to seriously understand something. For example, your use of the dictionary definition of 'belief' makes use of the roughly equivalent words 'acceptance', 'trust', 'confidence' and 'faith'. It is likely that dictionary definitions of these words will just make use of the word 'belief'. Your notion of implicit belief, as spelled out by your chair example, is dubious. If you can implicitly believe something that you've never thought about, but simply based on whether you would affirm it on the occasion of thinking about it, then it follows we have an infinite number of beliefs (this is because of distinctive addition from logic). That's at least doubtful for finite creatures like ourselves if you think of belief as requiring storage of information which probably requires some physical basis (causal or otherwise). A priori justification is not “just from logic”, it often goes beyond logic and the currently best contender for what a priori justification consists in is based on intuition grounded in conceptual competence. Basically all of mathematics and philosophy is a priori but little of it is logic in the strict sense of formal logic. Your definition of faith as belief not having justification doesn't fit either dictionary definition you give unless you make “proof” (whatever that is) and justification equivalent, which they clearly aren't. Any reasonable definition of proof involves inferences from some set of propositions (premises) to another proposition (the conclusion). But justification includes belief formation from other sources like sense experience, memory, testimony, etc. Your presumed tension theists have with faith therefore dissappears. Honestly, some Christians might agree with you that faith is baseless belief (though even they don't actually believe this as they base their beliefs on testimony) but others don't accept such an understanding of faith. So in treating Christians as one monolithic group, you've just set up a straw man. In the new testament letters, the Greek word translated as 'faith' is just the word for belief in Greek. There's nothing special about it. I could go on here. You don't understand the doubting Thomas passage because you can't give a charitable interpretation of what's going on there. Your lack of ability to form the strongest version of your opponent's view will forever prevent you from thinking well about any topic. It's a common epistemological vice both theists and non-theists suffer from. The notion of brute fact is from metaphysics/ontology, not epistemology. Something can be a metaphyscially brute fact and we might have good epistemic reasons for believing in it. Yet you say confused things about brute facts like “they must simply be accepted” and also “they can be observed...they are still justified” which doesn't sound like SIMPLY accepted. This video is just all around confused and an example of the blind leading the blind.

[@WadeAllen001]

"There are countless examples of people justifiably believing something true but not having knowledge," and then doesn't provide a single one. Off to a bad start. It's not just the dictionary where you run into the problem of words being defined by words used in the definition of previous words. That's just language. It seems to me that language is a heterarchical tangle of definitions. But you might notice that I did not solely rely upon a dictionary definition. I further elaborated on what I meant by them throughout the video. What you say about non-occurrent or implicit beliefs is just simply mistaken and poorly thought out. It in no way follows that we have an infinite number of beliefs. It seems like you're just taking something that's very large and calling it infinite, which is improper. Clearly, we are capable (necessarily so) of creating a model of the world in our minds. It's how we make predictions about things and use our imagination to prepare for what might happen. Any implicit belief we might have is contained within that model. Plus, it seems you didn't pay attention to what I actually said. I said that implicit beliefs are those that you don't hold consciously. There is an important difference between that and what you said ("something you've never thought about"). A belief that I hold subconsciously (say, a part of my mental model of the world) is an implicit belief. A belief that has never even entered my mind at all, consciously or subconsciously, and then something prompts me to think about it and I accept it, is not an implicit belief. It seems you're taking "implicit belief" to mean "all the things you could believe, if prompted," which it is not. Mathematics is a type of logic. "Any reasonable definition of proof involves inferences from some set of propositions (premises) to another proposition (the conclusion). But justification includes belief formation from other sources like sense experience, memory, testimony, etc." I would argue that experience and memory and testimony are yet more propositions that go together to form a conclusion (to form proof, or to attempt to). Also, I'm aware that not all Christians think the same way, obviously. Yet a very common definition of faith accepted by Christians is one that appears in the bible: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" or alternatively "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Which is to say, belief without basis. What's uncharitable about what I said about doubting Thomas? What I said was "Christians look down on doubting Thomas for needing physical proof that Jesus was resurrected. 'Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed' and all that. The desire for evidence and logic is in contradiction with their whole doctrine. And yet I've often found the most common and persistent reason for people's religious belief is personal experience. They think that they _have_ seen. However, what I've also found is that when you question these people they end up appealing to faith at some point, basically throwing all their claims of evidence and logic out the window." One of the main christian teachings is that you don't need to see to believe (and that it's in fact better to believe without seeing). Christians often claim to have proof of their beliefs, but when pressed fall back on faith as their ultimate reason. And one would hope that viewers could understand that this obviously doesn't apply to the Christians who don't act this way. Metaphysics/ontology and epistemology necessarily overlap. How could one hope to talk about what exists without also taking into account how we can know what exists? And you're getting quite nitpicky with "...which doesn't sound like SIMPLY accepted." Perhaps you would've preferred I was more specific and said "they must be simply accepted on the basis of their observability. One can find justification for the fact that something does indeed exist without having found justification for why it exists or what allows it to exist." But I didn't say that because I figured most viewers would understand that through what I said about brute facts in the sentences following "they must simply be accepted."

[@philosopherhobbs]

@@WadeAllen001 I didn't realize I'd have to provide a Gettier example to someone trying to do epistemology since it's literally the first thing taught to undergrads.

[@philosopherhobbs]

@@WadeAllen001 , the problem with dictionary definitions is not words being defined by words. It's words being defined by themselves. Circular definitions are not useful for a philosophical understanding of something. Dictionaries largely assume a large amount of competence with the language.

[@philosopherhobbs]

@@WadeAllen001 , again I didn't expect to have to spell this out for you, although I did notice that my phone autocorrected 'disjunctive' to 'distinctive' so maybe you weren't able to get what I was pointing out. Your view entails an infinite number of beliefs because of disjunction addition/introduction. Maybe you don't know what rule of logic that is but it allows you to infer P or Q from P. Since anyone disposed to assent to P will obviously be disposed to assent to P or Q, then you're off to the races to infinity. I assume you can now work that out, right?

[@philosopherhobbs]

@@WadeAllen001 , mathematics is not a type of logic. Frege and Russell famously attempted to reduce arithmetic to logic together with set theory. They failed. You just don't understand beginner issues on these subjects.