[quote author=Jake Sapiens link=board=51;threadid=25551;start=0#109484 date=1023472824]
[Hermit] Certainly, if you had bothered to peruse the previously supplied synopsis, you would have discovered that "faith" is not required or helpful in science (if you choose to disagree, please indicate at which step in the process "faith" is required)
[ben] At some point in the scientific process, 'faith' is certainly required. We must have faith in our observations and in our instruments. You can trace the chain all the way back if you must, but as some point you have to give up and say 'I believe my observations to be correct because I have faith in (insert program/scope/meter/etc - or even 'my own 5 senses')
[Jake] I would suggest that you have switched into a usage of "faith" that really is synonymous with "confidence." Indeed this word would seem better as it does not carry the stronger religious implications of the word "faith." In religious terms faith is generally not dependent on evidence, repeatable experiences, etc. Confidence on the other hand is generally justified by such things.
[Hermit] Jake has it dead to rights. Refer the lexicon excerpt below for some useful definitions. It is definitional that anything not testable is not scientific. In order to comply with the scientific method, as currently employed, all things are at least in principle subject testable and falsifiable- including the scientific method. Thus we need neither place trust nor have faith in anything. In practice we generally accept that scientific laws are correct, and that instruments are sufficiently accurate and repeatable (as well as being appropriate for the purposes to which we put them), not because of misplaced trust, but through the preponderance of evidence that this is likely to be the case. Nevertheless, if an unexpected result is found, we then test as far back as is required to determine the source of the anomaly (bearing in mind that almost all standards are now based on highly reliable and predictable nuclear effects so relatively easy to test for). When no error is found, one publishes the theory,
the means of testing it, the experimental methodology and the analysis to enable others to analyze and possibly recreate the experiments. Should they also obtain anomalous results, an ah-ha moment is likely at hand. Most of the time, this will not be the case.
[Lexicon Entries]
The proposed definitions were introduced and discussed on the CoV in:
[quote author=Hermit link=board=16;threadid=11516;start=0#40400 date=1015206732] ["RE: virus: RFC - Definitions: Truth, Acceptance, Belief, Trust and Faith", Hermit, 2002-03-03 23:08] and following posts.
1 Truth
Gödelian incompleteness and Popperian falsifiability together necessitate that outside of a formal system of limited application, a "truth", to have any measure of rational support, must by necessity, always be provisional, incomplete and falsifiable, in other words, there must always, at least hypothetically, exist some evidence which would permit that supposed truth to be rejected.
This implies that outside of formal systems, the truth of a thing is not an absolute, but encompasses a range of probabilities which will have varying truth values (i.e. from "false" through "insufficient evidence to adduce a truth value" to "true") depending on the evidence for or against such a thing.
2 Acceptance
Valid acceptance of something as being provisionally true occurs when sufficient evidence exists to make it probable that a thing is true, and in the absence of strong contradictory evidence reducing the likelihood of the thing being true.
3 Belief
Belief can only occur where acceptance is not compelled, for if acceptance is compelled, then belief is not required to accept that thing. Belief is thus the acceptance of some thing as being provisionally true where:
3.1 contradictory evidence exists which throws doubt upon or compels the rejection of the thing being accepted as truth.
3.2 insufficient evidence exists to compel or suggest acceptance of the thing as truth.
4 Trust
To vest trust is to assert that a person or thing is reliable or predictable. This is justified where sufficient evidence exists to accept that the person or thing is predictable and reliable enough to rely upon it.
5 Faith
Faith occurs when a person places trust in a thing or person due to belief. To put it somewhat more long-windedly, faith occurs when a person vests trust in person or thing where:
5.1 evidence exists which throws doubt upon or compels the rejection of trustworthiness.
5.2 insufficient evidence exists to compel or suggest trustworthiness.
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25551>
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