Faith and Knowing
Knowing is an act of faith. Taking any action based on what one knows is an act of faith.
One can act without knowing, but to the extent that that lack of knowing is recognized, the prospect of that action creates anxiety -- standing on the brink of the unknown -- depending on what one anticipates can translate itself into fear or pleasant anticipation.
Knowing is the act of bringing into consciousness some aspect of the world. But bringing into consciousness some aspect of the world, means abstracting that aspect from the totality of the world, making it different from the rest of the world, alienating it from the world.
The world appears to be structured rationally, it is not random. It appears to obey laws: Applying or following these laws correctly, applying them to the correct abstracted aspects, results in predicted outcomes.
Science is the discipline of determining abstracted aspects and the laws that apply to them. Our faith in the existence of these laws and aspects grows as predicted outcomes are continually validated.
Some humans suffer from an excess of consciousness.
There is a difference between "awareness" and "consciousness": one need to be aware to be conscious, but one can be aware without being conscious. Being conscious means that one has abstracted aspects of the world and overlaid the world with these aspects so that they stand out from the rest of the world. One might do this in order to identify or abstract a specific pattern. But if one must continually re-identify this pattern, then this leaves no time to act on this pattern.
In this sense, one is unable to identify its second derivative, the pattern as it changes over time -- one continually recalculates each point rather than understanding the curve that is defined over time.
Faith in God becomes more difficult the more one knows, because knowing itself requires faith of a kind that supplants the faith one gives to God as an explainer. Maintaining faith in God is especially difficult if one conceives of God as a superior human -- a being who shares characteristics with humans but with more power. Such a conception of God may allow one to have a common frame of reference with God, but this also allow Science to usurp God's authority.
A God whose authority one cannot usurp is a God that cannot be known, and such a God does not and cannot exist in consciousness, since such a God is an object that has been abstracted from the world, made different from and smaller than the world.
But what about ethics or morality.
Ethics and morality describe relationships between or among humans or beings who share a common factor or abstracted attribute. "The Good" or "the common good" is a label (an abstraction) given to the outcome of the relationship, and is not inherent in the relationship itself. If all parties to the relationship do not agree that the outcome is "good", then the relationship does not result in the common good. A relationship involving two people, in which one person defines the outcome as "good" while the other defines the outcome and "not good", or "bad", results in no common good.
But since relationships exist over time, and the conditions of the relationship may change, a static or one-point-in-time definition of a relationship as "good" or "bad" is not useful to knowing or understanding the relationship over time.
One can act without knowing, but to the extent that that lack of knowing is recognized, the prospect of that action creates anxiety -- standing on the brink of the unknown -- depending on what one anticipates can translate itself into fear or pleasant anticipation.
Knowing is the act of bringing into consciousness some aspect of the world. But bringing into consciousness some aspect of the world, means abstracting that aspect from the totality of the world, making it different from the rest of the world, alienating it from the world.
The world appears to be structured rationally, it is not random. It appears to obey laws: Applying or following these laws correctly, applying them to the correct abstracted aspects, results in predicted outcomes.
Science is the discipline of determining abstracted aspects and the laws that apply to them. Our faith in the existence of these laws and aspects grows as predicted outcomes are continually validated.
Some humans suffer from an excess of consciousness.
There is a difference between "awareness" and "consciousness": one need to be aware to be conscious, but one can be aware without being conscious. Being conscious means that one has abstracted aspects of the world and overlaid the world with these aspects so that they stand out from the rest of the world. One might do this in order to identify or abstract a specific pattern. But if one must continually re-identify this pattern, then this leaves no time to act on this pattern.
In this sense, one is unable to identify its second derivative, the pattern as it changes over time -- one continually recalculates each point rather than understanding the curve that is defined over time.
Faith in God becomes more difficult the more one knows, because knowing itself requires faith of a kind that supplants the faith one gives to God as an explainer. Maintaining faith in God is especially difficult if one conceives of God as a superior human -- a being who shares characteristics with humans but with more power. Such a conception of God may allow one to have a common frame of reference with God, but this also allow Science to usurp God's authority.
A God whose authority one cannot usurp is a God that cannot be known, and such a God does not and cannot exist in consciousness, since such a God is an object that has been abstracted from the world, made different from and smaller than the world.
But what about ethics or morality.
Ethics and morality describe relationships between or among humans or beings who share a common factor or abstracted attribute. "The Good" or "the common good" is a label (an abstraction) given to the outcome of the relationship, and is not inherent in the relationship itself. If all parties to the relationship do not agree that the outcome is "good", then the relationship does not result in the common good. A relationship involving two people, in which one person defines the outcome as "good" while the other defines the outcome and "not good", or "bad", results in no common good.
But since relationships exist over time, and the conditions of the relationship may change, a static or one-point-in-time definition of a relationship as "good" or "bad" is not useful to knowing or understanding the relationship over time.
posted by Godel at 10:24 AM
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