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Can anything be hoped for which is not an object of faith? : philosophy
"I hope I get the job."
So: yes.
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Right, but why do you hope you'll get the job?
Presumably because you believe it will result in some good.
And that belief in a result that is, realistically, unpredictable, is faith.
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You hope you get the job because you want it, not because you think it will make it happen.
If you didn't hope to get the job, you never would have applied for it in the first place.
You could replace hope with want.
I want to get this job.
When you want/hope for something, then you try and make it happen.
"I hope Obama gets elected", so I donate money and time to the campaign.
Just because you hope for something doesn't mean you expect it to come along on its own.
Also, by going into a situation with a positive outlook -"I'm gonna ace this interview" - you are going to come off better than if you go in with a lousy attitude.
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I think you're misinterpreting the notion of faith.
Faith isn't a wish that you think more likely to make the desired outcome happen.
In the case of a hope, faith is the belief that attaining a particular end will achieve a desired result.
Presumably, you don't want the job just for the sake of having the job.
You want it because you believe it will make you happy, or will make life easier, or will make you more attractive to women, or whatever.
You assume a correlation that is itself uncertain.
So you hope you get the job, but the reason you hope for it is that you have faith that having the job will result in some good.
When you want/hope for something, then you try and make it happen.
Not always.
You may hope that your child follows in your footsteps, but also believe that it's an injustice to the child to try and control their life.
If so, then you may go out of your way to avoid making it happen.
Just because you hope for something doesn't mean you expect it to come along on its own.
I don't really know how you got the idea that I was implying anything of the sort.
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I would say that hope is grounded: Hope has a basis;
You only hope for those things you believe are likely or possible.
Faith is unfounded, it is absurd, faith is in spite of what appears impossible.
From tfd:
Hope: To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
Faith: Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
Faith is also more of a structuring phenomenon;
It is more likely to structure the way you view the world in general.
Hope, however, doesn't structure your general world-view, but is rather subject to structuring by faith.
Faith is often considered to be a religious phenomenon, but to give an example which isn't related to religious faith, consider a man who has faith in another man.
Even if this other man does things that seem to be cruel or evil, the first man, if he truly has faith in the second, will assume that the second man has reasons for doing what he's doing;
He will trust him in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Faith is not easily frustrated or changed.
A hope, however, is more easily frustrated: You may not have a general hope "in" a man, but merely the hope that "now he will do this and now he will do that." If he fails, the hope is instantly frustrated (if you persist in hoping in relation to this man, it will be a new hope, and even if this new hope is motivated by an overarching faith, the hope will be distinct from the faith).
Conversely, even if you do not have faith in a man, you may still (have cause to) hope that he will do something: "I do not trust him, but he has never broken a deal before."
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Faith is unfounded, it is absurd, faith is in spite of what appears impossible.
I think you're reading a lot into faith that's more a special case of current debates than a normative use of the term.
Yes, when people talk about having faith in God or religion, they're often talking about belief without evidence.
But think of some other uses of the term.
Taking a person's promise in good faith is not necessarily absurd.
Having faith in a person's ability to deal with a certain problm is not necessarily unfounded.
Remaining faithful to one's spouse is not necessarily done in spite of what appears impossible.
The whole medieval system of economic and political relationships was premised on reasonable faith -- fealty.
You've taken one particular use of the term from a narrowly circumscribed debate and given it primacy over the much more broadly recognized (if not always articulated) sense in which the term is used, and that's bound to skew our understanding of the original question.
In general, you're treating hope and faith as though they functioned the same but relied on material of differing quality.
What I would suggest is that they don't function the same at all, that they don't reach for the same result.
Faith, in some sense, is operable in every instance of induction.
As Hume pointed out, yes, the sun has risen every day that I've been here to witness it, but there's no way to reason from the particular to the general.
By strict logical argument, we have no reason to conclude that the sun will definitely rise tomorrow.
Anything could intervene.
We have faith that it will rise tomorrow.
And for the most part, we also hope that it will rise tomorrow, but our faith and our hope are not the same thing.
The difference, I would say, is that hope is motivated by the desire for a particular end.
Faith, on the other hand, is the conviction that a particular relationship will hold true.
A person who has faith in the ability of another is convinced of the relationship between that person and a particular end.
You can take it on faith that LeBron James will outperform just about everyone else on the court on any given night, even while you hope that the Cavaliers lose to your team.
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We have faith that it will rise tomorrow.
We have empirical evidence that the sun rises.
We have a consistent, measurable pattern.
From the standpoint of probability, it's justifiable to assume that the sun will rise tomorrow.
This isn't a faith statement, it's based on measurement and probability and rationality.
All scientific knowledge is probabilistic based on evidence - unless we're talking about mathematical proofs.
All scientific knowledge admits that our understandings are based on evidence and what can be justified via the laws of probability.
That's why we properly say that evolution is a theory - even though we've documented the hell out of it.
This kind of knowledge in the probabilistic sense always assumes the possibility that one day, a new type of measurement may possibly provide evidence to the contrary of popularly-accepted theory.
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Logically speaking, Hume's argument still stands.
Probability isn't based on logical argument;
It's simply another form of induction based on prior measurement.
No strictly deductive argument could lead us to the conclusion that the sun will definitely rise tomorrow.
If, as I'm suggesting, induction conclusions depend on something like faith, then it follows that probabilistic arguments are likewise rooted in the faith that whatever determined the data we collected to derive our probability will also determine the data we're attempting to predict.
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I think I'll have to concede to your first paragraph.
As for the 2nd, I just get to feeling a little iffy about broadening the definition of "faith" because the political ramifications are immense (evangelical Christians want to show that evolution is faith-based).
I'd rather call the item "being believed in" a theory (even though it sounds funny saying this about the sun rising!) or an induction than faith.
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You've taken one particular use of the term from a narrowly circumscribed debate and given it primacy over the much more broadly recognized (if not always articulated) sense in which the term is used, and that's bound to skew our understanding of the original question.
You're perverting the discussion.
You were asking about the phenomenon faith, not the word.
What ways one may or may not use the word without breaking grammatical rules is irrelevant;
You're thinking abstractly about a concrete question and confusing the possible use of language with the correct or actual use of language.
When you say that you're taking his promise in good faith, i.e.
When you're in a situation where you say to someone that you're taking their promise in good faith, what you're saying is that you do not have reason to trust the person (you may just have met the person), but that you will do so non the less;
If you trusted the person, you wouldn't have said that you were going to take his promise in good faith.
In other words, it is you who is ignoring the more broadly recognised definition, and preferring your own.
If you read what I wrote again, you will see that I haven't equated hope and faith "as though they functioned the same." I have not enumerated all the different ways in which they differ, but simply pointed to the most relevant.
I see that I should have used more and different words in the original characterisation, as "impossible" is a very strong way of putting it, but I thought the other things would become clear from the rest of what I wrote.
In the sense that faith comes into play in induction, and I think you will find that Hume agrees, it has nothing to do with all the particular cases of induction, nothing to do with the sun rising every day or the coming and going of the tide.
Faith in induction is the faith that the world is subject to inductive rules, it is the faith that the world will be there tomorrow, and that it will be the same, Cf.
"natural faith." When it comes to the "strict logical argument," that argument simply emphasises the fact that becomes clear in the "having" of faith in relation to induction;
Induction is inextricably bound together with uncertainty (the fuel of faith).
To be perfectly clear: In the case of the sun rising, you do not have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.
That is established with quite a lot of data, etc.
You have faith that the world will be tomorrow as it is today, and as it has been for all your life;
You have faith in induction.
We usually also do not hope that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Hope in this case is usually linked to the weather: "will there be rain tomorrow?" In this context, it is also easy to see how hope, too, can't become too founded;
You don't hope for what you know will happen.
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Reddit ate my initial reply.
I'm not talking about what's grammitically possible with the word faith -- as an argument, that wouldn't even really make sense.
I'm talking about usage, and the fact of the matter is that common use of the word faith routinely fails to comform to the narrow limits you've placed on it.
You've attempted to deal with one example, but I notice that you've left the other examples (fidelity in marriage, fealty, etc) untouched.
And even with that one example, your arguments aren't very convincing.
People do regularly enter into good faith agreements with every expectation of getting out of it what they agreed upon;
If they didn't expect it, they'd likely insist on a contract rather than rely on good faith.
The very narrow interpretation of faith that you're pressing originated in Christian apologetics, specifically with reference to a single verse that defines faith as "the evidence of things unseen" -- but there's no reason outside of theological debate to tie every use of the word faith back to that verse.
You might want to ask yourself why you're so intent on defining faith according to the terms of Christian apologetics.
Not to presume too much, but a lot of atheist polemicists insist on it as a way of painting theists who use fideist arguments as anti-rationalist.
To be perfectly clear: In the case of the sun rising, you do not have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.
That is established with quite a lot of data, etc.
You have faith that the world will be tomorrow as it is today, and as it has been for all your life;
You have faith in induction.
Seems like splitting hairs to me.
Either way, the prediction is based on induction, and induction is rooted in faith.
You can push the induction as many steps down the logical train of thought as you'd like, it doesn't change the fact that faith is operation in our "knowing" that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Beyond which, it seems unlikely to me that most people think about it that way.
That is, when most people think about the sun rising tomorrow, they aren't thinking about whether or not the world functions according to inductive rules.
They're thinking about the specific case of the sun rising, and the induction they make about it isn't that it's part of a world that behaves as though induction were valid, but rather that the sun specifically has risen every day that they've been alive, so will likely continue to do so.
To form that induction, they need not even have a general idea of what the sun is or why it rises;
They make the induction based on the experience of a pattern.
In this context, it is also easy to see how hope, too, can't become too founded;
You don't hope for what you know will happen.
Future events can only be predicted, not known.
They're only known once they become present or past events.
You could argue that you don't hope for what you take for granted will happen, but that's not a matter of foundation so much as it is one of character.
I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to hope with respect to any event that has not yet happened.
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I'm talking about usage, and the fact of the matter is that common use of the word faith routinely fails to comform to the narrow limits you've placed on it.
And?
This equates to "what's grammatically possible with the word faith";
People are not always aware of how to properly use words: I knew a guy once who thought "banal" meant something very unusual, so he went around calling unusual things banal.
It is the same for faith, for instance with certain Christians, but I'll get to that below.
You've attempted to deal with one example, but I notice that you've left the other examples (fidelity in marriage, fealty, etc) untouched.
Well, yes, but the same goes for these cases;
Do I have to list every possible occurrence of the phenomenon and explain in what way it shows itself in every situation?
In faithfulness in marriage, for instance, consider that archetypal wedding vow, "in sickness and in health, good times and bad" or whatever;
It isn't faith in the other person, it is staying faithful to the other person through all the troubles of life.
The very narrow interpretation of faith that you're pressing originated in Christian apologetics
No.
The Christians didn't invent the phenomenon of faith.
They use the concept to designate something, but faith is in Christianity as it is everywhere else;
Faith in god is the faith in something for which there is no evidence, no basis, etc.
(in other words, those who believe in god because they have had some sort of "personal communication" from him are not believers, do not have faith;
They are "knowers").
As I said: "Faith is often considered to be a religious phenomenon, but to give an example which isn't related to religious faith [...]";
I'm talking about faith in general, the phenomenon of faith.
That this is a very general phenomenon, and that it comes into play in many different situations shouldn't keep us from getting to the core of it (it is only very rarely, if ever, that a phenomenon appears on its own );
Even if there is an element of faith in the relationship between two people who have known each other a long time, the element of faith is the element of faith, and in so far as it is faith, it is there in the manner of faith, not in the manner of those other things that it is co-present with.
If you want to know about faith in a marital situation, you have to look at the faith , not the love or anything else.
Seems like splitting hairs to me.
Either way, the prediction is based on induction
No, the natural faith that the world will be there tomorrow, that the floor behind your chair is still there right now, is not based on induction.
Induction is a specific method, and it is placed within this sort of natural faith, a faith that isn't constituted by careful observation of the floor of any given place for months on end before assuming the floor will still be there behind you when you walk on it;
Natural faith is primary and overarching.
The collapse of this sort of natural faith can be seen in schizophrenic people, for instance, and no matter how many times you show them that the floor remains, a sort of fundamental insecurity keeps them from "using" induction to conclude that the world will remain the same today as it was yesterday.
That is, when most people think about the sun rising tomorrow, they aren't thinking about whether or not the world functions according to inductive rules.
Exactly.
And faith isn't something you have to "walk around with," something you have to be constantly aware of (Cf.
Natural faith again).
As I said earlier on, "Faith is also more of a structuring phenomenon;
It is more likely to structure the way you view the world in general."
Future events can only be predicted, not known.
You're confusing a lot of things here.
We are not talking about epistemology ("can we really know the future?").
People are capable of knowing, of knowledge.
Knowledge of something appears to a person in a certain way in which it appears to be certain.
I hold a ball in my hand.
I know that when I let go of it, it will fall;
This appears to me as knowledge even if it is "of" a "future" event.
It wouldn't help much if some person who read a bit of quantum physics came along and served up that old "there's a possibility that it will go straight through!!!" argument.
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Actually, I think you're the one with the mistaken definition of "faith." In most philosophical discussions, faith is an epistemological system of knowledge that doesn't rely on empirical evidence or on rational underpinnings.
Rationality can be involved on top of assumptions from faith, but at its base, faith does not require any evidence whatsoever.
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Can you give me some examples of those philosophical discussions in which faith is taken as an epistemological system?
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"I hope I win the lottery."
Hoping for luck or chance.
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