Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!topaz!christian From: christian@topaz.UUCP Newsgroups: mod.religion.christian Subject: TRUTH... Message-ID: <10512@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Sun, 29-Mar-87 04:45:20 EST Article-I.D.: topaz.10512 Posted: Sun Mar 29 04:45:20 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 29-Mar-87 18:25:03 EST Sender: hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Carnegie-Mellon Univ., Andrew Project Lines: 65 Approved: christian@topaz.UUCP In a recent post, Mike Huybensz writes: "...once again, believers must resort to blind faith, that most worthless justification for belief." He follows this with an admonition to lay all on the altar in a search for "TRUTH." The major point of his post, it appears, is the (seemingly reasonable) request that we question all our assumptions before declaring our belief in some proposition. This is a generally worthwhile thing to do, but strict adherence to this rule will place its user in a dilemma. If we are to question _all_ our beliefs, we will need to inspect our belief in logic as a good method of arriving at TRUTH. One of the central tools in logic is the aristotelian syllogism, i.e. All men are mortal, socrates is a man, therefore socrates is mortal. This form of reasoning seems to work pretty well, but upon closer inspection by philosophers, the syllogism had been declared to be: -really a type of induction (J. S. Mill) -a mere superstition regarding correct reasoning (F. H. Bradley) -based upon an infinite regress and ultimately, faith (Lewis Carroll) -unimportant in describing real reasoning (Bertrand Russell) If the syllogism is so doubtful as a tool it certainly cannot help us with TRUTH. Induction does not fare much better when placed under the lens. Hume, Bradley, Russell, and Strawson all provide devastating critiques of the claim that induction will allow us to infer laws that are TRUE. Strawson suggests that we simply _believe_ the inductive principle, while Russell, Keynes, and others hope that the probability calculus will provide us with a justification. Probability is no saviour though, for the leap from .9999 to 1.0 is still based upon faith. This, then, is the dilemma: we must either _have_faith_ that logic or induction provides us with certainty or we must admit that we have found no way yet of achieving it. The dilemma is even more tragic because we live in the real world. After all, we must make judgments every day, and it has just been shown that we cannot KNOW them to be correct. They are all based, ultimately, in faith (in the continuity of the universe, or mere optimism). We must decide whether or not (or what) to eat, whether to invest in South Africa, and a host of other either more or less important decisions. We are required to act without certainty that our actions have any resemblance to TRUTH. The point of all this is that the choice is not so simple as one between religion and logic/science. There is not a competition between faith and reason. There is really a cooperation. Both religion and logic/science involve differing levels of faith, and none of those beliefs can be entirely justified. We can discuss whether our beliefs are well or poorly justified, but we must be willing to lay _all_ our beliefs on the altar - including those about science, logic, reason, and religion. Once we have done that (and seen the consequences) we might ask whether we have approached the right altar. In Christ, -Chuck Huff Carnegie Mellon University Committee for Social Science Research in Computing huff@c.cs.cmu.edu.arpa or ch2f@cmuccvma.bitnet "My employers are not responsible for my opinions, but if determinism is true, then neither am I."