Truth

[Yuri]

There seems to be a certain degree of confusion out there amongst my religious friends about the relationship between belief, faith and truth. I want to ask: do you think that faith is truth?

[cleve]

There seems to be a certain degree of confusion out there amongst my religious friends about the relationship between belief, faith and truth. I want to ask: do you think that faith is truth?

How would you go about making those distinctions?

[Farnsworth]

Hi Yuri, and everyone else. This is my first post too!

Yuri, I absolutely do not think faith is truth. Truth is what is true. Faith is belief in something without requiring evidence of its truth. (Which doesn't mean that what you believe in is not true. Just that you don't require proof of its truth.)

Just by definition, they are very different.

[cleve]

Hi Yuri, and everyone else. This is my first post too!

Yuri, I absolutely do not think faith is truth. Truth is what is true. Faith is belief in something without requiring evidence of its truth. (Which doesn't mean that what you believe in is not true. Just that you don't require proof of its truth.)

Just by definition, they are very different.

Farnsworth,
What is your basis of not requiring proof for truth? Do you think that truth is somehow exempt from requiring proof for its validity?

[Farnsworth]

What is your basis of not requiring proof for truth? Do you think that truth is somehow exempt from requiring proof for its validity?

No, not at all. I didn't say I don't require proof for truth. Proof of validity is what distinguishes truth from non-truth. Or at least, it's what allows us to make our best guess as to what is true.

[Keep The Reason]

Hi both Yuri and Farnsworth. I thnk faith is in not way a pathway to demonstrable knowledge, and by knowledge I mean "facts that are true". Faith is belief of course, and you may happen to stumble upon a true fact based on a faith-belief -- but this is purely based on chance.

For instance, I was listening this very morning to Chriostopher Hitchens' "God is not Great" on audioboiok, and he discussed briefly William of Occam, who (among other things) made the argument that the stars could very well "not be there" but god could make it so we think we see them anyway". This is something he believed as quite possible without any support whatsoever, and, now, in modern times, with our knowledge of lightspeeds, time and distance, it happens that William is "right" in some instances-- the stars we "see" right now may have long been extinguished, and are not actually there. Does this validate using faith as a method to attain facts? No, of course not-- it is, in essence, merely a "lucky guess", and as such unreliable.

My 2 cents

[Yuri]

by knowledge I mean "facts that are true".

I can subscribe to the concept that we think facts are true, and we think knowledge is true, but does that make fact and knowledge Truth, any more than Belief is Truth?

It seems we agree that Faith is a sub set of Belief, not anything to do with Knowledge or Facts.

I am just trying to establish the relationship between truth, belief, theory, faith and knowledge. Oh, and fact.

[Keep The Reason]

I can subscribe to the concept that we think facts are true, and we think knowledge is true, but does that make fact and knowledge Truth, any more than Belief is Truth?

Yeah you can go that way, but in practical applications in day to day life, I see little point in it other than good mind exercises (and I encourage such exercises-- no diminishing meant-- it's important and good to flex this thinking muscle like you're doing).

But practically, where is it going to lead us? I am typing on the computer. If you don't believe that as an objective fact, then what accounts for you reading this post? Do you think it's true? Do you believe it's true? Well, maybe none of it's true and we all just living in blobs of jellied cells, supplying minuscule amounts of electricity for some grand mechanical supercomputer that has developed an environment where we merely think we are at work, living our lives, and so on.

Facts are defined as what is true. Knowledge that is true needs to be demonstrable in some manner (we just had / or are having this discussion in the Demonstration threads); but it seems everyone's standards are different. I don't buy into translating mythologies like Christianity into factual truths, though I have no problem with mythology itself serving as object lessons for humans on what metaphorically might be true, or healthy, or positive. For instance, just because I subscribe to "Love thy enemy" doesn't mean I believe "Jesus resurrected from the dead and now lives in Heaven awaiting his moment to judge the living and the dead" as a fact-claim.

You're new here, so I hope to see some interesting perspectives, and might chime in (and posted to help you get things going) now and again. Enjoy the forum itself- It's got some great posters.

[Farnsworth]

I can subscribe to the concept that we think facts are true, and we think knowledge is true, but does that make fact and knowledge Truth, any more than Belief is Truth?

I'm not a philosopher, or (in the words of David Cross) a dictionary expert, but here's my impression.

Fact and truth are more or less the same thing. They both describe something that just objectively is. We, as humans, can only take our best guesses about what "truth" and "facts" are, based on available evidence.
If you believe something is true, then you must have some reason for thinking so. If that reason is evidence, then we're talking about knowledge. If that reason is more intuitive and doesn't require evidence for you to think it, then we're talking about faith.

It seems we agree that Faith is a sub set of Belief, not anything to do with Knowledge or Facts.

That sounds right to me. I will be happy to be corrected, though, if somebody knows better.

I am just trying to establish the relationship between truth, belief, theory, faith and knowledge. Oh, and fact.

"Theory" is the best explanation for something based on available evidence. Many theories--gravity and evolution, for example--are so well supported by evidence that we can safely call them facts.

[Moonwood the Hare]

I can subscribe to the concept that we think facts are true, and we think knowledge is true, but does that make fact and knowledge Truth, any more than Belief is Truth?

I'm not a philosopher, or (in the words of David Cross) a dictionary expert, but here's my impression.

Fact and truth are more or less the same thing. They both describe something that just objectively is. We, as humans, can only take our best guesses about what "truth" and "facts" are, based on available evidence.
If you believe something is true, then you must have some reason for thinking so. If that reason is evidence, then we're talking about knowledge. If that reason is more intuitive and doesn't require evidence for you to think it, then we're talking about faith.

That sounds right to me. I will be happy to be corrected, though, if somebody knows better.

I am just trying to establish the relationship between truth, belief, theory, faith and knowledge. Oh, and fact.

"Theory" is the best explanation for something based on available evidence. Many theories--gravity and evolution, for example--are so well supported by evidence that we can safely call them facts.

Well truth has to be true about something and the facts are the things it is true about so truth and facts are complimentary but not the same. Sometimes we need evidence in order to know things and some things we know without evidence, or to put that another way there are some things that are self evident. For example most people take it as self evident that objects are identical to themselves (gary here doesn't but you will have to read the demonstration thread to find out why) that there is a world out there external to us, that other people have minds and various other things. These are not univerally held to be self evident because some people have doubted them. Some Buddhist doubt the first - in fact they claim to know by experience that it is false, Descrates doubted the second and some behaviourist psychologists and neural net theorists have seem to doubt that anyone has a mind - come to that so do the Budhists. So although people all have experiences of self evidency these are not the same for everyone. For some people God who has revealed himself in various ways is self evident. These experiences of self evidency are sometimes called intuitions.

But no universal theory - theory about everything of a particular kind - can ever become a fact. The reason for this has been well known for thousands of years. If you have an inference statement in the form if A then B then you can never validly say B therfore A. This is called the error of affirming the consequent. So you can never say if this general theory were true we would find these things, we find these things so the theory must be true. But there is another logical law which says we can say not B therefore not A. So we can say if this theory were true we would find these facts and we don't so the theory is false. That is the logic of scientific discovery but in practice we can look at the confirmations of a theory and say we will judge it to be true even though it has not been proved and even if we have disconfirming evidence for a theory we can still go with it if we think it's a good idea that needs a bit of ironing out. Which boils down to saying you can have science, as it really is, or you can have reason but in reality you can't have both unless you are prepared to ignore the facts of history.

[Yuri]

We are here to argue about the truth. I have wasted years trying to change what religious people think. It doesn't work. I agree with Christopher Hitchens when he said,
"It's not a matter of what you think, but how you think, that is important." I assert that if people think straight, they can't help but abandon bad ideas and realize the truth. I also assert that religious devotees do not think straight, which is why they are capable of believing bad ideas. So, from now on, I'm going to argue with religious people by challenging HOW they think. I have been working on this for a while now, and I am ready to collaborate. Your responses so far have been more or less in line with my thinking so I want to ask you to help me develop this theory.

The first thing to do when considering how we think is to understand how our brains label and store information. Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung said that we judge the world in two psychologically opposite ways: Thinking and Feeling. Thinking is a logic-based reason process and Feeling is a value-based reason process. My theory is that we form our Beliefs from value-based reasoning and knowledge from logic-based reasoning. Thus belief and knowledge are different kinds of information. We think that our knowledge and beliefs are true. We think our faith and theories are true. However, as Karl Popper said, a universal theory could never be verified, only falsified. So, using that as a start point (and I intend to build on this if there is an interest on the forum), here is my diagram of the relationships between truth, belief, knowledge, faith and theory.



Information Relationships

The diagram does not show quantities (which will vary from person to person and time to time). It shows relationships. Here are my definitions:

Truth
Truth is, ironically, both the easiest kind of information to define and the hardest kind of information to be certain of recognizing. Truth is simply that which is true. However, in practise, we must understand that there is very little information which can be known for certain to be true. We are constantly re-evaluating our theories in a never-ending effort to define theories that match the truth. However, any wise person knows that no matter how good our theory on a given question may be, it is unlikely that our theory encapsulates the whole, complete, perfect truth.

Belief
Belief is information that we feel is true. It is quite distinct from knowledge. Are we free to believe what we want to believe, or are we a slave to the facts? Most people would probably say that by definition they must believe what they feel to be the truth. However, is that really so? A well-documented phenomenon called Motivated Reasoning informs us that people are likely to select beliefs that reinforce their other beliefs rather than accept beliefs according to the validity of the propositions presented. If the true validity of a proposition is unknown, then it is unimportant; it is the agreement or disagreement with a person’s other beliefs that determines the validity in their mind of any proposition. The source of the proposition is far more likely to determine its acceptability than the proposition itself. If a trusted authority such as a parent, teacher or Holy Book asserts a proposition then it will be accepted as belief; if an untrusted source asserts the same proposition, it will be rejected. If a source is reliable, the belief is more likely to be true. If the source is unreliable, the belief is less likely to be true. The source of belief might be a feeling generated by the self; e.g. “I believe my son is good” may stem from the feeling “I love my son” and other feelings associated with my concept of “son”. Feelings give rise to judgements of “good” or “bad”, “agreeable” or “disagreeable”, and those judgements are then used as the bases for beliefs. Beliefs formed from “good/bad” judgements may or may not be assessable for their truthfulness. “I believe my daughter is the most beautiful girl in the world” is a subjective belief and it is patently inappropriate to assess such a belief in the literal sense. A person’s assessment of their child’s beauty can only be assessed by the person. “I believe in astrology” must be carefully interpreted. The concept of astrology exists, so a person who means “I believe in the concept of astrology” believes truthfully. However, a person who means “I believe that the predictions of astrology are accurate” may be objectively challenged.

The following may be said about beliefs:

Beliefs may be true or false.
Beliefs are accepted or rejected on the strength of the trust placed in the source of the belief.
People may harbour strongly held beliefs for which they are aware that there is conflicting evidence from an untrusted source.

Beliefs are not necessarily either absolutely true or absolutely false. People believe things “a little”, “a lot”, “very strongly”, “absolutely” or anywhere they choose along a sliding scale. Beliefs are value-based and very often have an emotional content attached to them in the mind of the believer. We might rationally say “I believe it very strongly”. We would probably not say “I believe it for certain.” There are some who profess certainty in their beliefs, but this is surely a delusion. As Christopher Hitchens astutely pointed out, “never confuse certainty with truth”.

Knowledge
Knowledge is information that we think is true. (Note the difference: Belief is information that we feel is true.) Knowledge differs from belief in that people generally use the term “knowledge” when they do not harbour subconscious doubts about the validity of that information. For example, somebody may say,
 “I know I left my keys on the shelf,” or,
 “I believe I left my keys on the shelf.” In these two cases, the strength of the conviction of the location of the keys is different. When we say we know something, unless we are consciously lying, we think it is true. In order for us to consider information to be knowledge, we have to apply to it a logical judgement that gives us reason to know it (thinking). However, we may be (and very often are) wrong. Some knowledge is true, some is false. One key difference between knowledge and belief is that we can’t profess to know something when we are aware that there is credible evidence to the contrary. With belief, which is a value judgement, we are psychologically free to ignore credible evidence to the contrary if we so wish - for example, if that evidence does not match our world view or would make us feel bad if it were true. With knowledge, which is a logical judgement, we are bound by logic to consider all evidence regardless of our wishes or world view.

Knowledge is “true” or “false”. Thus something is either known or unknown. It is a logical concept and most often there is no emotion attached to knowledge. We might rationally say “I know it for certain”. We would not say “I know it very strongly.”

Faith
Faith is many different things to many different people. Some might say,
 “Faith is decision to live by a belief even though proof is impossible.” Were there a universally-agreed definition of faith, I would use it. However, for the purposes of this essay, I am going to define faith as follows: Faith is a sub-set of belief. The defining characteristic of faith is that it is independent of proof. Indeed, the whole purpose of faith is that it is a belief which is unconditional of evidence, and by definition requires that there be no proof. If there were proof, then faith would cease to be faith and become knowledge.
I have found in discussions that the faithful tend to classify Knowledge as a sub-set of, or part of, or the same thing as Belief. This has led me to the conclusion that the faithful are unable to distinguish between Belief and Knowledge. If I use the word Faith as a condition of the mind, then I can say,
 “Faith is the inability to distinguish between Belief and Knowledge.”
Note: There is another meaning for the word faith which causes confusion, that meaning of faith which we use in the following sense: imagine we are addressing our son who is nervous about playing in an up-coming cricket match and is looking for encouragement. We might say,
 “I have faith that you will do very well. I believe in you.” Or,
 “I have faith that mathematics is consistent even though it has been proven that a proof of the logical consistency of mathematics is impossible.”
This is not the “kind” of faith to which I am referring. It is a fault of our language that we use the word “faith” in this sense as well as in the sense “I have faith in Yahweh.” The two meanings of the word are quite distinct.


Theory
Theory is a well-understood concept in science. In this post, I define theory as a sub-set of knowledge in the same sense that faith is a sub-set of belief. Theory is known in the sense that the concept of a theory is understood. However, it is accepted that some aspects of theory are likely to be true and some likely to be false. Unlike faith, which is expressed by the faithful as indistinguishable from truth, theory is expressed by scientists as that which we are trying to disprove in order to better understand the universe. Where faith demands no proof to be accepted as truth, theory is accepted as knowledge that may be true or false and demands that scientists forever attempt to disprove it in order to test its validity.

Fact
Fact is a sub-set of knowledge. I have not included it in the diagram of information relationships because in most respects it is identical to theory. The difference is that we call a theory a “fact” when we can no longer conceive of a way to disprove it. That still does not mean that it is true. We should be aware of this when we assert something as a “scientific fact”. We must guard against “fact” from becoming immune from doubt in the way that faith is.

Sorry for the long post. What do you think?

[Keep The Reason]

I think you're pretty accurate in each overview.

A minor quibble, but in using "Theory" might you not better use the word "hypothesis" given that Theory in scientific jargon also means a set of observed facts that account for asserted phenomena?

As an aside, I have a belief (not a knowledge) that Moonwood the Hare and you will have a great time with one another.

[Dr Mundo]

Sorry for the long post. What do you think?

You should not apologize for that post. It was awesome!

[Yuri]

I think you're pretty accurate in each overview.

A minor quibble, but in using "Theory" might you not better use the word "hypothesis" given that Theory in scientific jargon also means a set of observed facts that account for asserted phenomena?

As an aside, I have a belief (not a knowledge) that Moonwood the Hare and you will have a great time with one another.

I will come on to Hypothesis as an element of the logic-based reasoning process that leads us to theory in my next post.
Looking forward to meeting Moonwood!
Thanks for the encouragement.

[Yuri]

Information and Reason Relationships, Transformation and Flow
Note: this diagram does not show quantities, it shows relationships. Quantities will vary from person to person and time to time.

Earlier I showed a portion of this diagram to show the relationships between truth, knowledge, belief, faith and theory. Now it is time to expanded the earlier concept to encompass some other kinds of information, and to integrate what we have learned about reasoning. Information is transformed by various processes from one form to another.

Reasoning Processes
Two new large rectangular zones are shown that form the factory in which our understanding of information becomes conscious. They are the value-based reason and logic-based reason zones. I use the following definitions of Feeling and Thinking: Feeling is the value-based reason process that gives rise to belief; Thinking is the logic-based reason process that gives rise to knowledge. I now delve into these processes in more detail.

Feelings - Value-Based Reason
Feelings arise in the conscious mind. They cause physiological phenomena in the body (such as release of chemicals like adrenalin, cortisol, dopamine). These chemicals give rise to bodily responses which have various purposes in the functioning of the body. The bodily responses are very often noticed by the conscious mind as “feelings”. Butterflies in the stomach is a good example: excitement or fear arises in the subconscious, adrenalin is released, the heart responds, the response is noticed as a feeling.

Thoughts - Logic-Based Reason
Thoughts arise in the conscious mind. Thoughts do not give rise to bodily responses unless a thought triggers a feeling. The thought “where did I put my passport?” is a simple logical construction of the mind until, on the way to the airport, realization that the passport is left at home, triggers a flurry of feelings. Thoughts that do not give rise to feelings thus have no emotional association and are merely tools of the conscious mind used in the construction of knowledge.
Knowledge and belief are not stored in our minds simply as raw information; such a store would make us little more than memory sticks. It is our understanding of the information we hold that gives us our human intelligence. In order to attach labels such as “knowledge” and “belief” to our information, we must first process it to gain some kind of understanding of what the information means. Carl Jung called this processing judgement, and explained that it can be done in two psychologically opposite ways which he called Thinking and Feeling. I am calling them value-based reason and logic-based reason.

It is precisely because thoughts often give rise to feelings that we may find it difficult to realize the distinction between the two. Our brain has the capacity to both think and feel, and it is not easy for all of us to distinguish between the two. When we try to think about a subject which has emotional association, it is extremely difficult to do so without feeling. Most of us have experienced situations in which we know we have to think rationally but we are overwhelmed with emotion and feeling and find it difficult to think clearly. Fire fighters, pilots, surgeons and martial artists train to permit feeling-free thought processes in the midst of emotional circumstances.

Inside these zones, I show the stages of processing that occur that turn raw information into beliefs and knowledge. Since we humans do this processing all the time, we already have words which fit into those stages, which I have used accordingly. The stages are equivalent in both value and logic-based reasoning and I have called them sources, propositions and judgements.

Sources - Authority (value-based) and Ideas (logic-based) Sources provide us with the seeds of new beliefs and knowledge. If we are able to comprehend these sources, we will be able to form propositions from them. Examples of sources are ideas that we or others may have, by-products of previous reasoning, Holy texts, books, teachers, media, dining table discussions and so forth.

Propositions - Assumptions (value-based) and Hypotheses (logic-based) are Propositions which derive from Sources. Hypotheses are untested theories in the case of logic-based reason. Their equivalent, Assumptions, may well pass directly to Faith if we do not feel the need to question the source of the information. If we do feel that need, then we may feel that we are able to make judgements on them. Examples of propositions are: god is omnipotent, we have evolved from an ancestor we share with a banana, my keys are on the shelf.

Judgements - Feeling, meditation, contemplation, blasphemy (value-based) and thinking, experimentation, calculation (logic-based). If we are wise, then we will wish to devise some way of improving our certainty that our propositions are true. The scientific method provides us with experimentation, a vigorous test that gives us a comparatively strong certainty if the proposition passes the test. However, if we are taking a value-based reasoning approach to an assumption of an authority such as a religious text, then any such judgement may well be considered blasphemy. Thus assumptions are likely to pass directly to Faith without judgement being applied. In this case, the religious will often say that certainty in the Faith is a given because of the value they place in the authority source.

Examples of judgements are:
1. I feel that this is correct because I trust my Imam, so I shall pass this information to the Faith zone.
2. I have conducted a rigorous experiment that allows me to pass this information to the theory zone.
3. I feel this Evolution is wrong, I reject it completely.
4. I hoped our experiment would prove this to be right but unfortunately it is nonsense.
5. Noah’s ark had kangaroos that bounced to Australia? Polar bears that swam to the Arctic Circle? At the risk of being labeled as a blasphemer, I feel this should be taken as an allegorical story, not a literal history.

If we are considering questions religiously then the value-based reason process leads to faith; if we are considering questions scientifically then the logic-based reason process is the route to theory. In either case, if we reject the hypotheses or assumptions at the point of judgement (the triangles), the information is passed to the recycle bin. Thus, we can now say that assumptions are to belief as hypotheses are to knowledge; authority is to belief as ideas are to knowledge; feeling, meditation, contemplation and blasphemy are to belief as thinking, experimentation and calculation are to knowledge. Alongside Carl Jung’s “thinking” and “feeling”, I include other concepts of judgement as essentially equivalent mental judgement processes. Thus, when someone tells us they are “meditating” or “reflecting” on a subject we can use this diagram to assess that they are using a value-based judgement process. Note, I am not attempting to equate the spiritual concept of meditation to the value-based reasoning process. On the contrary, I assert that if someone says he is “meditating on a topic”, then he is using the term incorrectly, since meditation is a spiritual discipline concerning the self, not a reasoning process that concerns some other topic.

The Recycle Bin
The new information ellipse on the diagram, the “recycle bin”, contains information that we think is false but we keep in our minds because we are aware of it. It results from the human tendency to cling on to bad ideas rather than just dropping them from our consciousness. Note: even some things one thinks of as nonsense are true. That gives us some justification at least for hanging on to what we think are bad ideas, just in case. Allegory is the value-based form of nonsense - beliefs that we consider to be false in the literal sense but information nevertheless. Allegory, like nonsense, may also contain an element of truth. Pseudoscience, and indeed anything that we consider to be false, resides in the recycle bin.

Enlightenment / Breakthrough
I have included a processes of “enlightenment” and “breakthrough” in the flow of information. I propose that enlightenment and breakthrough are not so much about finding answers as about getting rid of bad ideas. Our minds are full of information, much of which even we think or feel is wrong.

The Enlightenment was the replacing of old superstitions and many religious dogma with new, better, logically-derived knowledge. Perhaps the human mind is not naturally willing to dispose of a bad concept until it has found a replacement, which is why our minds have this archive that I have called the recycle bin.

Carl Jung’s concept of value-based and logic-based judgement is gloriously apparent in the comparison between the logic of enlightenment and the values and emotions of romanticism. What better evidence in support of the concept of the psychological opposites of logic and value could there be?

Irrational Thought Processes - the Faith Short-Circuit
I have defined faith as a value-judgement that is a sub-set of belief. With other beliefs, it makes perfect sense that we have a sliding scale of certainty in a given belief ranging from “I believe it somewhat” to “I strongly believe it”; in faith the mind makes no distinction between faith, belief, knowledge and truth. In the case of faith, all of the mind’s rational checks and balances that it usually employs when considering all other subjects are bypassed. A short-circuit of the brain occurs and the faithful person loses the ability to distinguish between belief, knowledge and truth. It is a form of mental blindness which is similar perhaps to colour blindness or tone-deafness. A colour blind person can see but can’t distinguish between colours; a tone-deaf person can hear but can’t distinguish between different pitches; a faithful person can think but regarding faith, can’t distinguish between belief, knowledge and truth.

Faith is a feeling, a process that occurs in the brain that releases chemicals in the body that are recognized by the conscious brain and interpreted as a feeling of wellbeing which is given the label “faith”. There are other feelings like faith which are just as compelling. Love is a very powerful feeling for those lucky enough to have experienced it. Like faith, it is a process that occurs in the brain that releases chemicals in the body that are recognized by the conscious brain and interpreted as a feeling of wellbeing which is given the label “love”. Try telling a person in love that their love is false. Faith has a grip on the brain because it invokes feelings like love, fear, joy, and hatred.