does faith interact with logic?

[cacian]

faith can be away from worship/religion and logic is simply a step uncomplicated and forward.
this is one interpretation I give to both concept.
do they interact? I think they should if both are to survive us.

any thoughts are most welcome :)

[YALASH]

Peace be on you. The source of these two aspects of wisdom is same; in their unadulterated form, they should go well together and well interact.


Any divide between revelation and rationality, religion and logic has to be irrational. If religion and rationality cannot proceed hand in hand, there has to be something deeply wrong with either of the two.
---- "Revelation, Rationality Knowlegde and Truth"

[MorpheusSandman]

It depends on how you define both, but, in general, I don't find they mesh well. I'm more concerned that various faith beliefs don't mesh with empiricism more so than logic.

[cacian]

Peace be on you. The source of these two aspects of wisdom is same; in their unadulterated form, they should go well together and well interact.


---- "Revelation, Rationality Knowlegde and Truth"

hi there :)
first of all I think I could not quote logic with wisdom because it is a rational a way of thinking that simply is.
faith however is much more complex deep seated routed into the mind that somehow it feels rationality gets a real beating.
interesting quote however what is done and what is said are two different meanings.

[Ecurb]

In general, logic is a mode of inference. Given a set of premises, what can we infer from those premises? (Eudlidean geometry is an example.) There's a long tradition of (attempted) logical inference, using (as one example) the Bible as a set of premises.

A logically "valid" argument is one in which the conclusions can be properly inferred from the premises (regardless of the truth or falisty of the premises). For example, Lewis Carrol offered these premises as a puzzle:

•Babies are illogical;
•Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile;
•Illogical persons are despised.

What can we conclude? Obviously, no babies can manage a crocodile (although the intermediate step: "Babies are despised" might be called "illogical" by some, it is actually logically derived from two of the premises).

In English, the word "logic" is often used in a more general way, however, so that people sometimes say that beliefs that are incorrect or insufficiently supported by evidence are "illogical".

[cacian]

It depends on how you define both, but, in general, I don't find they mesh well. I'm more concerned that various faith beliefs don't mesh with empiricism more so than logic.

Hi Morpheus you mention empiricism.
I feel that is more to rationality then empirical evidence and that is observation and links.
faith however is intricate because on one hand it is natural hereditary or based on convictions. belief is intricate some have it and some don't but some only have ut upon base of knowledge. faith is a circle of things.
logic is straight forward linear source of thinking that does not require science to debate it.

[cafolini]

Faith cannot interact with any logic. For quite a while there has been only one logic as stated by George Boole and DeMorgan, completely independent and called symbolic logic. Agnostics like Bertrand Russell and people like Foucault have thrown in a lot of con-fusion into the issue, uselessly. Faith has to do with the hope and prayer that God will be on your side with His Grace. In God we trust, not in your blah-blah about this.

[MorpheusSandman]

Hi Morpheus you mention empiricism.
I feel that is more to rationality then empirical evidence and that is observation and links.
faith however is intricate because on one hand it is natural hereditary or based on convictions. belief is intricate some have it and some don't but some only have ut upon base of knowledge. faith is a circle of things.
logic is straight forward linear source of thinking that does not require science to debate it.There is undeniably more to rationality than empiricism, but empiricism is where it's best to start (and end) there. You can have all the rational throughput you want, but without empirical input and output, how are you going to check if your throughput is actually working properly?

I've heard faith defined so many ways that I don't find it useful to talk about the term unless we really clarify what we're talking about beforehand. EG, if we take faith to mean the belief in things for which there is no empirical input/output, then I don't think it matters how "logical" the throughput is because you have nothing to test it against. There's also the kind of faith where people believe because they believe regardless of anything including a logical throughput. There's also the kind of faith where one might say they have "faith" in the reliability of their spouse, or "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow. All of these are slightly different versions, and I think, eg, the "faith" in the sun rising tomorrow can be defended via the whole empirical input/logical throughput/empirical output chain. EG:

Empirical input: The sun has risen every day I've been alive.
Logical throughput: If the sun has risen every day I've been alive, it will rise tomorrow. It has risen every day I've been alive, so it will rise tomorrow (Modus Ponens).
Empirical output: I watch to see if the sun rises tomorrow (to confirm/disconfirm the former statement)

Faith in deities and the supernatural always lack some link in this chain. Very frequently it's the logical inferences based on input, or the lack of constrained empirical output to confirm whatever logic that's been used to reach the conclusion.

Regarding logic not needing science to debate it, if we're talking about valid modes of logical inference, you're very much correct. Those modes are formal and not related to the truthfulness of propositions. However, to get a sound logical argument--ie, where the premises are true and the inferences valid--we very much need science, or some way to validate those propositions.

[cacian]

very interesting post Morpheus. i am intrigued by the sun theory.


The sun has risen every day I've been alive.
Logical throughput: If the sun has risen every day I've been alive, it will rise tomorrow. It has risen every day I've been alive, so it will rise tomorrow (Modus Ponens).
Empirical output: I watch to see if the sun rises tomorrow (to confirm/disconfirm the former statement)


my interpretation of it is this:
the sun will rise regardless on whether we observe it or not.
the sun does not rise if.
one is alive regardless of the sun because the sun establishes its own routine imposed on us on whether we chose it or not.
what i mean being alive or dead does not inflict on its decision to rise. it rises regardless. unconditional sun whereas one may or may not alive ie be born because of the sun . he or she is born regardless or may never be born according to who is who.
the two do not link because whilst we alive for others to alive ,the sun is simply, regardless
so to take it back to the phrasing of the theory:

''if the sun has risen everyday i have been alive, it will rise tomorrow'' yes to a certain extent this is if one is not dead before that.

however the opposite does not apply.

ie one may not say:
''if i have been alive everyday and the sun has risen, then i will rise tomorrow''

this does not make sense.
for any theory to work it must shows it works both ways and in this example it only works one way which means it is inconclusive.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm really lost trying to follow your train of thought, cacian (perhaps it's a language barrier). Nobody (including myself) suggested that truth or the laws of external reality are dependent on us being alive and/or observing them, we were talking about faith and logic. Faith and logic are processes that happen in a human brain. I was trying to show why empiricism (which is our sensory observation of reality) should interact with both logic and faith. The whole "we observe sun rise, logically infer it will rise, predict its rising, watch it rise" was just one example of how empiricism, logic, and one kind of faith can/should interact. It's true that nature is what it is regardless of whether we believe it, but the entire issue was one of our beliefs and how we get there (or not) via logic and empiricism. I didn't mean to place undue emphasis on the "every day I've been alive" part, that was just meant to signify the amount of empirical observations/input one has had to base their logic and prediction on.

[cacian]

Hi Morpheus sorry if it did not make sense i was merely pondering about the sun theory.
i think i am trying to say that logic makes sense and faith does not and therein lies the issue. both coinciding but not hopefully colliding is the point i am trying to put forward.
i conceive that logic lives on or leads on but faith at its present state may not for long. I could predict that if logic prevails and more and more of us enquire towards it ie logic, then faith will boil down to the very few if not none. this because yes we all enjoy a bit of intrigue and mystery with regards to gods and their meanings but we may not survive their demands that is because our present needs and what god are simply do not go hand in hand.
logic is what sees us through faith only lingers and from time to time becomes the focal point of destruction.
if faith is to survive it needs logic . this means a total revamp transformation of what faith actually mean and requires.
i hope this makes sense :)