It would have been more helpful (and less time consuming) if you would have just explained how you were defining the words ‘faith’ and ‘logic’ as you are using them.
However, I do see the error of your thinking so, it helps me in that sense.
Indeed, indeed. This may be the wisest statement I have seen posted yet!
Tell me: How does one go about educating selfishness out of another?
I didn’t use the word “logic”.
And I guess you are in a hurry?
And also sorry for not thinking of everything, including the subliminal knowledge of what is in your mind as to what would have helped you more. sorry my telepathic abilities are a little weak these days.[:P]
what error?
wilderness,
While I admit that I did confuse your response with filc’s you are suffering from the same error in your critical thought as he is. That is, that ‘faith’ is divorced from logic. So, my basic point still stands.
Again. I never said “logic”.
Agreed. You did not. BUT, the notion that ‘faith’ is the opposite of ‘logic’ IS IMPLICIT in your statement, ‘Who am I to think I can fully say anything about God’, is it not? Thus, you commit the same basic error as filc and my main point still stands.
To all concerned,
Perhaps it would help at this point to clarify my own position on this matter in the hope of continuing to have an intelligent dialogue and to reason through the original question posed by chloe732 (Which, by the way, I think is an excellent question deserving our best thinking). We just happen to be taking the long way 'round but, I believe it is totally relevant and important to do this so that some accuate, truthful conclusions may be drawn. I appreciate everyones patience thus far. Please bear with me a bit longer. Perhaps we will all learn something useful. I know I want to and, I am willing.
I have to say that I think some of the confusion has arisen from a lack of a well-defined concept of God, (Thus, what appears to be a ‘divorce’ of the idea of what ‘faith’ is and its relationship to logic and vice versa), on the part of some of the participants involved in this discussion. Why this is so I cannot answer; Each would have to do that for him or her/self.
My understanding of God (Some of which I get from the revelation of Himself in the Bible, some of which is from logical inference and critical thought and, further still, some of which I understand from having a personall relationship with Him), is that He is a rational Being. That is, He possesses ‘mind’. He thinks. He is cognitive. He possesses a will and is able to act; To create. He is able to communicate. He is able to relate and emote, that is, feel emotions.
Thus, there seems to be (in my mind) no good, sound reason to believe He would not desire the same for us, (Granting for the moment that He created us).
It seems to me that if a Being like this exists, He would desire that we employ logic to the fullest in every possible matter, not the supposed opposite, ‘faith’. The opposite of logic is not faith anyway; It is ignorance. No amount of intellectual or emotional commitment to the Bible and its precepts would ever make one a Christian any more than walking into my garage everyday would make me a car.
Faith is NOT the abandonment of reason. People who think ‘faith’ needs to be divorced from our intellectual faculties have, in effect, abandoned the VERY POSSIBILTY OF DISCERNING and have surely kissed their mind a final farewell. As it is written in Isaiah 1:18: ‘Come, let us REASON together’. This doesn’t sound like a Being who is asking us to empty our minds of critical thought and rigorous analysis. To the contrary.
Again, I hope this helps to at least clarify my own position somewhat. I am not asking any of you to convert to Christianity and it is NOT why I am here. I only want to make clear that for one to hold the subject of ‘faith’ and ‘logic’ in tension in any way is NOT God as I understand Him, and, nor would I want to know Him if this were the case. Why would anyone want to know a Being like that? It seems to me that that would be a rather empty, meaningless relationship AND quite unreasonable and perhaps even irrational.
No. It’s not implicit. Don’t confuse episteme (knowledge) with logic.
No error. You are so full of assumptions. Clear your preconceptions and actually learn what the other person thinks instead of continually putting words in their mouth and sterotyping them. Please.[:)]
I said logic, but I didn’t say it was the opposite of faith.
As for selfeshness why on earth should we make people not selfish? First off I have a hardtime believing that any act can be selfless, and second off our world functions because of individual desire and preference. If everyone sacrificed themselves for another we’d be useless. We want selfishness, selfishness is not the root of our problem. We want greedy capitalists to continue and improve our quality of living.
wilderness,
Don’t obfuscate. Just because epistemics is a sub-set of logic doesn’t make it ‘non-logic’. When one makes a statement like ‘knows that’ (like you did) or ‘believes that’, one IS employing logic. I stand by my statement.
As far as clearing my mind of ‘preconceptions’, I am unsure of what you are trying to say. I have REPEATEDLY asked throughout this discussion for people to define their terminology with little or no avail for whatever reason. And yes, I am full of assumptions (just as everyone else is). The question is: IS IT TRUE?
I specifically did this so that the discussions would be as clear as possible and in the hopes of avoiding the very thing that confronts us now. I don’t see where I have asked ANY unreasonable questions.
Why do so many here seem to have an aversion to defining their terminology or is it just my imagination?
I’m not. And I’m not in the mood to argue either. Every post I’ve had with you, you’ve either quoted me wrong or, as of now, think this is about arguing who’s right or wrong. It’s not. At least not with me. I simply told you what I think. I am not God. I can not have the full knowledge (episteme) that God has. You for some reason want to argue that point. I think you are confused. As you said earlier, you ‘are perplexed by that statement’. So since it was I that said it, I’m clearing it up for you on what I had said. To much anger or something going on here with you - I don’t know. shrugs
It is not logic. It is epistemics.
A is A (natural/logical/intellectual law of non-contradiction; any one of those adjectives will do). Epistemics is epistemics.
NOT A is B. NOT epistemics is logic.
No. It is of what I know. Epistemology is a good field. Epistemology would be I know A is ‘cat’. To define A as ‘cat’ and all there is to know about what a cat is, is to know A is a ‘cat’ and a ‘cat’ is this, that, and so on. The nature of a cat is the kind of knowledge a human is capable of realizing
The logic is that A=‘cat’ or A is ‘cat’. A is not anything else in this logical statement other than cat. A is A (logical law of non-contradiction).
I’ll throw another one in. To know that A is. That A (‘cat’) exists, thus, to answer that A is. This employs metaphysics.
I will apply this to God for me. God is God: A is A: Logical statement.
What is God? In other words what defines or provides the knowledge of what is God, the epistemology - that is what I don’t fully know and have said since the beginning of this discussion between you and I on this topic, ok?
The metaphysics is that God is, for me. Metaphysics answer what is of reality.
Logic applies rules to the process of knowing reality. Epistemology involves the knowledge of the metaphysical object (I say ‘object’ in a generic fashion).
You didn’t ask me to define anything. You did say you mixed up, at one point, what flic was saying and what I was saying. But no-biggie. That’s what’s excellent about dialogue. We are working through this. I appreciate your patience with me.[:)]
You didn’t ask me to define any terms. But I did this post as I find it necessary to assure clarity in our discussion. Thanks for sticking through this. It’s not you nor me. It’s how it goes. You post. I post. We work through it and figure out what’s up, etc…
I don’t think it can be done anyways. This is what Sowell calls the “unconstrained vision.” He points out that people who talk about changing human nature must at first accept that human nature is malleable and not something fixed and innate. Selfishness is, in my mind, an intrinsic human quality, it can’t be gotten rid of that being said…
In a sense, selfishness is THE problem, but it’s not a problem with a solution. I think we need to employ systems that utilize the selfishness of man, not try to get rid of it or tame it. That’s why capitalism works and socialism doesn’t.
Capitalism my work better, economicaly speaking, to fulfill most people’s selfish physical needs; but I think I strong case could be made that socialism works to fulfill most people’s selfish psychological wants.
This is very true, and I think it’s probably at the heart of why more people don’t choose “liberty.”
Wow. Wait, what?
Obviously, neither of you have read even the most basic of Austrian material. If you had, you wouldn’t say things like “socialism works to fulfill most people’s selfish psychological wants” or “capitalism may work better, economically speaking”.
“Economically speaking”? Economics is human action. That’s it. Furthermore, it’s axiomatically established that voluntary transactions benefit both parties, else the transaction would not have been made. (“I act, therefore I prefer.”)
I strongly suggest both of you read Callahn’s Economics for Real People. It’s just over 300 pages, easy to read and covers the core material well (in my opinion).
I wonder how little activity there would be on the mises.org forums if only those who had completed at least one book from the Literature section were allowed to post. Seriously, people: read!
Daniel, I think you need to reread what I said.
“Furthermore, it’s axiomatically established that voluntary transactions benefit both parties, else the transaction would not have been made.”
Also, I don’t agree with this, I think there are a lot of ways to trick people into agreeing to things they don’t really understand. I know this because I used to sell vitamins and my job was to fool people into buying things they didn’t need or really want. But I was persuasive.
In the same way, I could sell socialism to damn near anyone who doesn’t understand it. I mean “free stuff” sells. The questions people don’t ask are things like “who’s paying for it?” or “what happens if people stop making stuff because they’re not getting paid enough anymore?” or “what happens when there’s not enough stuff for everyone?” But then, if they weren’t familiar with socialism, those questions may never cross their mind until it’s too late.
Dondolee was saying, and I think this is true, that socialism has an emotional and psychological appeal that capitalism just doesn’t have. It’s only because I know about the virtues of capitalism and the vices of socialism that I can say that I don’t find socialism appealing. Also, I have money. People who don’t have money are probably less likely to care about taxes and things like that.
So when considering the question “why don’t people choose liberty?” as I said before I like to consider the question “why do they choose other things?”
I find it Interesting you disagree. Mind you, economics says that it’s very possible for an individual to regret an action after having taken it, but at the time it was taken, it was preferred above all other possibilities. That there is a disconnect between what people say and what people do is not the concern of economics; economics is “value-less”. Only what is done matters.
What, pray tell, is that appeal?
Daniel,
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I think you may have read me a bit too literaly. I was just trying to phrase a bit of a maxim/ slogan. In this day and age the word and emotional needs of socialism/ progessivism/ new leftism/ etc have far more of an emotional type of appeal than “capitalism” or the phrase “free market”. I think this is an obvious observation.
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It does not seem to be in the nature of humans to let a producer go unabated. A producer (no matter if he produced through peace or force) seems destined to have to appease at least some people the more he distinguishes himself, or he will most likley suffer consequences.
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If one has to read or logicaly rationalize X, Y, and Z in order to fully function as a proper human, I would not expect many proper humans to be around
Mutual trade is axiomatic. If both parties did not think they would gain from it no trade would have occurred.
This does not necessarily mean that a person receives exactly what they intended on receiving, either subjectively or objectively. It means that they anticipated a gain of sorts prior. Humans are subject to error.