It's just that there isn't much power in your should because you can change it anytime you want. There's no should. It's just you doing whatever you do.

Sort of (I can't immediately override an existing value), but yeah, that seems to be what morality amounts to to me, so I'm not perturbed by that.

Sort of (I can't immediately override an existing value), but yeah, that seems to be what morality amounts to to me, so I'm not perturbed by that. — AmadeusD

As long as you act out of love, it's ok.

I think pretty much that, yes. Nice :)

This strikes me as a deficient definition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. It's not offered as a definition, as I hoped was clear from the previous few pages, where I indulged Austin's method in order to set out the place of "faith" in our language games. It is offered as a way to distinguish faith from trust.

Your reply is that some folk reevaluate some of their beliefs, and yet are still claimed to be faithful. You suggest that the figures of the reformation as counterexamples. But as you yourself point out, Luther and Calvin were not faithful to Catholicism.

There is no claim here that the faithful never make use of an evidence base or change their beliefs.

Ok, so, to you, faith is 'trust in an authority to verify the truth or falsity of a claim in a manner where it is dogmatic'. Is that right? — Bob Ross

Again, no. First becasue faith is not restricted to trust in authority, and second becasue any definition fo that sort will be inadequate, so should not be used.

And again, the argument is not that theist never allowing their beliefs to be reevaluated. The mark of faith is that a belief is maintained under duress. It's extraordinary that this is questioned. This aligns with traditional religious narratives such as Abraham, Job, and Acts of the Martyrs.

Empirically, faith can involve personal conviction, existential commitment, moral vision — not merely obedience to authority. Philosophically, any definition that makes faith into mere dogmatism misses the performative dimension — the way it plays out as loyalty, endurance, and identity.

Faith, unlike ordinary belief or trust, is best understood through its persistence under conditions of strain, doubt, or suffering. It is not a rigid refusal to change, nor merely trust in authority, but a form of commitment that reveals itself when it is hardest to maintain. Definitions that ignore this pragmatic and temporal dimension fail to capture the lived meaning of faith.

Seems odd that religious folk seek to deny this.

@Banno

First becasue faith is not restricted to trust in authority, and second becasue any definition fo that sort will be inadequate, so should not be used.

I think the problem is that your approach doesn't even attempt to rise to the level of a conception from intuitions; and for me it has to in order to have a robust theory.

The mark of faith is that a belief is maintained under duress

Maintaining a belief (in general) under duress is wildly different than this:

The mark of faith is that when challenged, one's commitment is not to be subject to reevaluation, but to be defended.

Maintaining a belief that one believes they have good evidence to believe under duress is noble; but maintaining the belief because they have committed themselves to never subjected it to reevaluation is dogmatic and ignoble.

Your counter-examples are interesting though; for example, Job, prima facie, seems like he had good reasons to believe God had forsaken him and the moral of the story is to have unwavering faith. My response to this, is that:

1. Faith here is being used in terms of having trust in an authority, and more specifically a kind of unwavering faith that is despite the evidence: "unwavering" faith is a subtype of faith; and

2. Prima facie, Job, unless I am misremembering, should not have had faith, given the context in Job, that God had not forsaken him because his faith was against good counter-evidence (of distrusting the authority); and

3. Job, when taken literally, is an example of God being immoral because He discusses with and allows Satan to inflict evil on Job for a bet that has been placed between them. This is not like an allowance of evil in the sense of allowing the possibility of tornadoes given natural laws: this is a purposeful allowance of evil when it is completely unnecessary. This, under my view, when taken literally, is immoral of God and is impossible of God: God cannot will the bad of something and definitely cannot place a wager in that manner. God cannot nor would not use a bad means like Satan to prove a point about Job (let alone kill off his entire innocent family to prove a point); and

4. On a deeper note, I think we can know that God cannot forsake things and that evil is a privation. Consequently, these, if true, would be good evidence to support an unwavering faith of God even in terrible times (assuming that God didn't place a wager and allow Satan to do it in that kind of sense or something similar).

Faith, unlike ordinary belief or trust, is best understood through its persistence under conditions of strain, doubt, or suffering

True, but this doesn't imply having faith despite the evidence: it implies having good reasons to have the faith and not bending to will of others or to just any willy-nilly counter-fact that may place doubt in their minds. There some doubts I might have about the security of flying, but I wave them off not because I am dogmatically faithful to flying being secure but, rather, because I know my reasons against do not rationally outweigh the reasons for.

I think that faith is linked to some promise.

1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither

2) are the purpose of koans to bring out faith?

3) when Muslim scholars of old had the two-truth position, is this a dialectical form of faith?

4) is creativity faith?

5) is courage faith?

6) Finally, why do Christians argue whether faith must have hope and love in order to cause salvation? Are not those three things always intertwined together? — Gregory

1) I would say faith is not an emotion or a thought (although faith comes in the form of thoughts, it's just not a thought itself) and the general use of the word faith supports this. One general phrasing is “to have faith, which either means it's some understanding/knowledge/acceptance of something or that it's an attribute of a person (which is generally what I lean to, that it's an attribute of acceptance of something). This brings up an interesting idea with faith, which is that the idea of faith as acceptance and of belief can be very different. Some might argue that faith is belief despite reasonable doubt (or some may say that it is belief past reasonable doubt but within the boundaries of our ability to deny it and justify a lack of faith in ourselves) but I generally think that faith is the acceptance of the idea whether or not we could reasonably doubt it as long as it is within our ability to deny it. It often comes from 2 factors: some reason that it could be true and some reason why it would explain something were it true/would help us if we believed and it was true.

2) I believe (although I am not very knowledgable in the subject) that koans are used to invite the subject to meditation and considering the problem but not to be answered. So, this would mean that it would be to bring out faith if the purpose of the meditation is to bring out faith.

3) Faith that the distinct philosophical and religious ideas had purpose and value in their own domains, for sure. I think it was mostly just the idea that the may to make the separate ideas most practical was to keep them within their own domains, otherwise things often get difficult to reconcile. In that way (considering a shift to most philosophical thinking), it could definitely be viewed as an acceptance of the fact that the things are hard to reconcile but choosing to have faith in the religious concepts (and philosophical concepts!) anyway.

4) If creativity is the attribute of being able to create something (often something which could not be true) and faith is the attribute of being able to accept something that you know might not be true, then I would say no, as you are not necessarily creating the thing if you have faith/believing it if you created it (of course, there are some people who have faith in their creations, but it is not always the case).

5) I think courage comes out of faith but the two are distinct. Courage is the attribute of being willing to do something despite fear and faith can be used to counter fear (ie. faith that something will work out, faith that it is worth it, etc.) but faith is not the same thing as courage.

6) As for whether faith, hope, and love are always intertwined, I would say that it makes sense that this could be a possible topic for discussion (salvation and these attributes) because they are not always necessarily intertwined. Faith often does not affect hope (the desire that something that might not occur will occur/vice versa) as you could desire something to happen while still denying that it will happen, and the opposite is true as well (you could accept that something will happen and desire it to not happen). I don't view hope as only existing where there is a possibility of whatever is hoped for happening or not in the mind of the person who is hoping for it, if that makes sense. I would say that, like faith, it is within our ability to deny it (meaning that the two are similar in some ways but not always intertwined). For love, which has to do with belief because of the fact that you cannot truly love something you don't believe in, in this context I would say that it is always within faith (but obviously not the same as faith). In the Christian context you gave, I would say that faith is in the possibility of salvation, hope is within it and love is connected to hope and faith through the overall context.

Thank you for the recommendations! I will check those out. — Bob Ross

:up:

Some of them will involve things that are worth thinking about or arguing about, which is of course what true inquiry should involve.

Is the word 'assent' in this post mean anything different than 'to agree or affirm'? I get the feeling it is doing more work here in your explanation than I am appreciating. — Bob Ross

No, that's pretty much it. "The same proposition can be held with different modes of assent." A Thomist would say that assent is a more generic act, and that we can assent to a proposition in different ways, such as by faith, or demonstration, or opinion, or probabilistic reasoning, etc. So an act of faith involves assent, but assent does not necessarily involve an act of faith. For example, <2a. “I do not have faith that the airplane will fly, but I assent to the proposition that the airplane will fly"> must involve some non-faith basis for assent. Tom Storm was reducing all non-faith-based assents to one category, which is incorrect, but I was just illustrating the different possibilities regarding faith and assent, with the existence of God and airplanes (i.e. his chosen examples).

:up:

(Offline until tomorrow - take your time.)

Tell me if this is this a fair characterization of your view. You seem to think that values (or else moral premises) are brute, in that they cannot be generated or corrupted. Everyone has them, but nothing guarantees that one person's set of values will overlap with another person's, and the values never change. So we can mutually influence people who have overlapping values, but we cannot mutually influence people who do not have overlapping values. ...Something like that? — Leontiskos

I don't think so, overall, but i'll be specific.

[...]

Values constantly change. This is another reason its somewhat arbitrary, even on some shared value basis (on my view, obviously). This says to me the overall thrust of this conception is not what I'm going for.. but...

[...]

That seems right. — AmadeusD

Okay. What I'm trying to do is figure out what your position or argument is so that I can interact with it and critique it. For example, you said:

For Muslims, there's predictive power, for Christians there's predictive power - but overall its extremely hard to predict what people will think is 'good' — AmadeusD

I read this as saying <Muslims have common values and therefore we can predict what a Muslim will deem good; and Christians have common values and therefore we can predict what Christians will deem good; but there are no common values—or very few common values—that Christians and Muslims share. Or that everyone shares. And therefore we cannot predict what everyone will deem good>.

My point is that the interaction with a complete stranger, such as the Egyptian, seems to show that we do have common values, and that there is therefore a morality common to all human beings. Do you agree that if there are some values which we all share, then there is a moral system that is common to all human beings, namely the system based on those shared values?

Yeah. I can't see the point of the argument if its just to assert that we have shared values. Obviously we do, even if we didn't know that empirically. I can assume anyone striving to stay alive shares that avlue with me, whether i know htem personally or not. — AmadeusD

Okay, good, and that partially answers the question I just asked.

I guess I would want to know your criteria for determining whether moral influence has occurred. — Leontiskos

This is a tricky one, because it causes me to have considered how other minds can access other minds. I think it would be extremely hard to ever tell but the criteria would be if you've influenced another's values. Then, their values, being the basis for their moral system, subsequently influences their action. Does that make sense? I still have no idea how you'd know, in the event, other than verbal report. — AmadeusD

Yes, that is a good answer. That's what I had assumed as well. Now, <We morally influence another person when we influence their values; sometimes we do influence another person's values; therefore moral influence does occur>. Do you agree with that?

When I write a syllogism in that way it is almost always <{Premise 1}; {Premise 2}; {Conclusion}>.

If "right" and "wrong" are to inform moral systems (all common understandings seem to think so - so this isn't a comment on your system, which i take to be non-moral, and instead a better concept that morality for describing behaviour anyway) then that supposed fact is contradicted by the obvious fact that 'right' and 'wrong' give us nothing which could inform the system as they are too ambiguous and essentially self-referential. This is why i say 'brute' in the face of people's use of those words. If someone says "My moral system rests on "right and wrong"" and hten I ask "What do they mean" they will tell me the same thing in a different word order. Recursive, perhaps, and a dead-end rather than incoherent. — AmadeusD

Right, and that makes perfect sense to me if we are conceiving morality and especially right and wrong in terms of categorical/exceptionless moral norms. I've highlighted this a few times, but again:

This is to say that the definition which eludes J and AmadeusD is bound up with categorical/exceptionless moral norms. The idea is that morality is really about rules which admit of no exceptions (and this flows simultaneously from both Kant and divine command theory). The exceptionless character of the rules makes them autonomous, sovereign, untethered to any ulterior considerations, particularly prudential ones. To give a reason for an exceptionless rule is almost inevitably to undermine the exceptionlessness of the rule itself. It's not an unworthy puzzle... — Leontiskos

The idea here is that a notion like that of a categorical/exceptionless wrong is incoherent because by its very nature it cannot be rationally justified, and that which is rationally proposed yet with no hope of rational justification is incoherent (because it cannot be rational and non-rational at the same time).

I think yours is a fair critique of categorical/exceptionless norms, but I don't think morality is reducible to categorical/exceptionless norms.

And they make no sense in this context, to me. Yay!!! LOL. — AmadeusD

...continuing my last point, the same thing applies to "right." When 'right' is conceived of as categorical/exceptionless, then we get the same problem, but it is equally true that 'right' is not reducible to categorical/exceptionless obligation.

Natural language itself seems to support me. Suppose you bring the water to your lips, the Egyptian says something that seems like a negative NH (for maybe he is speaking a foreign language or trying to bypass a language barrier), and then your friend who is also about to drink water says to you, "I don't know if this is the right thing to do." Now if that word really made no sense to you in that context, your friend's utterance would make no sense to you. But I would expect that such an utterance is meaningful to you, precisely because 'right' is not as nonsensical as you are claiming.

Yes. You can only regret something on the hypothetical basis something else could have been done. — AmadeusD

I would agree that to regret act X requires that X was contingent, but I don't see that this implies that the regret is hypothetical. A hypothetical regret would be something like, "I regret X if..." Similarly, every non-hypothetical ought-judgment is contingent given that something else could be done, and yet this does not make it a hypothetical judgment.

Rubbing my nose is not moral. — AmadeusD

I agree:

Objection 3 to the first article gives the complement of human acts, “But man does many things without deliberation, sometimes not even thinking of what he is doing; for instance when one moves one's foot or hand, or scratches one's beard, while intent on something else.” In his reply to objection 3 Aquinas says, “Such like actions are not properly human actions; since they do not proceed from deliberation of the reason, which is the proper principle of human actions.” — Leontiskos

-

Again, if you take all acts to be moral, fine. — AmadeusD

To be clear, I take all (human) acts to be moral (in the sense specified in my OP). Nevertheless, I am granting for the sake of argument your claim that moral acts tend to be conceived as grave acts, such as acts that pertain to the possibility of death. I address those ideas in Objection 2 and especially Objection 5 of my OP. Objection 5 is basically saying, "You can do that if you want so long as you recognize the Sorites paradox involved." On that conception of morality morality will be "incoherent" in the same way that a Sorites paradox is "incoherent."

But I also don't quite understand what's being said here - perhaps that[s because (as outlined above) changing someone's action isn't a moral influence, but an empirical one. My values aren't involved in whether or not I act on such and such (that I have incorrectly assessed) and someone's putting my assessment right. My values remain exactly the same, but the data is fixed. In the Egypt example, had I perhaps not even known that drinking water in Egypt could lead to sickness, all he's done is given me information in a really weird form (that socially, I can understand). — AmadeusD

Okay, this is great reasoning.

My idea here is something like this: our acts of "data-gathering" are evaluative and value-driven. That idea goes fairly deep, but we can simplify it. We can say that we usually trust ourselves and our own faculties of knowledge, and that when you formed the judgment to drink the water you were trusting your own faculties of knowledge (and that this involves valuing your own faculties of knowledge). When the Egyptian utters his NH you are required to weigh your own faculties of knowledge against the Egyptian's faculties of knowledge (in the particular circumstance). Whether you choose (C) or (C2) depends on whether you decide to trust your initial judgment (and your own faculties) or his judgment (and his faculties). Of course your own faculties are also involved in judging whether to accept his NH, but the point stands, namely that there is a question of whether to value your initial judgment or the Egyptian's judgment—your unaided faculties of knowledge or the Egyptian's faculties of knowledge. Even after possessing the data a choice must still be made between (C) and (C2), and at least one of those options will involve a shifting of values.

I think you can make morally forceful arguments about what you think is right and wrong to potentially influence another's values. Suggestions about acts don't do this. — AmadeusD

I agree with the first sentence and I don't quite understand the second sentence. "Suggestion" is a vague word, given that we could either include or exclude suggestions from counting as NHs. Given that suggestions are usually thought of as hypothetical, I would tend to agree with the second sentence.

Not quite. The point is more to delineate between types of suggestion. If death is a possible outcome, then even the suggestion to avoid a behaviour is moral given the 1 or 0 nature of death. In other contexts, only the suggestion to shift the value underlying an action would be a moral suggestion as there are disparate and potentially infinite possible outcomes/attitudes. But that certainly comes close. — AmadeusD

Okay, and I am happy with that. It is stronger than the interpretation I ventured.

It looks like you have a kind of (inclusive) dichotomy, <A suggestion is moral if it fulfills at least one of two possibilities: either it bears on a behavior whose possible outcome is death, or if part of the suggestion is to shift a value underlying an action>.

Note that I would prefer 'NH' to 'suggestion' given the ambiguity of 'suggestion.'

You are, and I concede this point. If I have changed my value assessment, then he's influenced me morally. But coming back to the example, he's just given me information by inference. he knows something I don't. My values didn't change. — AmadeusD

Okay. Again, this is a crucially important claim, and I tried to critique it above.

↪frank Potentially not 'on a whim' because values tend to be a bit more deep-seated. But I can do it while sitting quietly in my bedroom, unconnected to media or other people. — AmadeusD

This relates to regret, too. We can recalibrate our own moral system, and yet we don't seem to do so arbitrarily. Often we seem to be either responding to consequences in real life, or else trying to make our moral system more internally consistent. I think these considerations are also precisely what are operative when we interact with other moral agents and influence one another's values (e.g. real life consequences, logical consistency, etc.).

True — Bob Ross

I want to say that this is the truer statement:

Faith, unlike ordinary belief or trust, is best can be understood through its persistence under conditions of strain, doubt, or suffering

Faith is always resistant to certain things that direct inference is not resistant to, whether it is religious or not.

I think the problem is that your approach doesn't even attempt to rise to the level of a conception from intuitions; and for me it has to in order to have a robust theory. — Bob Ross

Intuitions?

Fucksake.

I'll leave you to it.

:roll:

I think that faith is linked to some promise. — Pussycat

I'm not sure that we can identify a clear distinction between faith and trust on this basis.

But I do think that there is an important difference between trusting or having faith in something or someone based on an evaluation of them - which we will and should change if the evidence changes and being faithful to them because we have promised to do so. In the latter case, we are expected to stick to the promise even if circumstances change. A faithful friend remains a friend even when one does something wrong, but one trusts a car only as long as it works for me. But this is not a hard and fast distinction. If my friend defrauds me of my pension, it is hard to remain a friend, and one may continue to trust a car even when it has ceased to be reliable.

The relevance of this is that adopting a religion may involve accepting certain beliefs, but it also involves adopting a way of life, promising to abide by the relevant laws and customs. Those promises commit one to more than just assenting to propositions, whether on the basis of evidence or not. If philosophy can only discern truth and falsity, it may be constitutionally difficult for it to recognize what a religion is about.

I think it is the kind of promise that is central to faith. Faith involves an unspoken, invisible promise, one that is not made by ourselves, but by the other, e.g. god, science, philosophy, tradition, institutions, other people etc. Evidence is circumstantial or, better, just informative, in that it helps shape, understand or explain the faith in something. Also, given the immense ambiguity and subjectivity of what counts as evidence in such cases, I would discard evidence altogether from any definition of faith.

Of course, faith can be broken, for example when a trusted friend proves to be a fraud. No matter if the friend promised that they would be forever loyal to us, we assumed and believed that such a promise was made in silence, and therefore it is this promise that is in fact broken, puting at risk our faith in friendship in general.

It would seem that if we're trying to figure out what "faith" means, we should at least look at how the faithful use it.

Consider:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/emunah-biblical-faith/

The idea, insofar as biblically based faith is concerned, it relates heavily upon trust. It's how one might have faith in a king or leader. You do as he says because you have trust in his wisdom and knowledge, but the faith is not in just a raw belief he exists. If you're simply saying you believe your land has a king even though you've never seen him or his castle, that's a sort of faith, but hardly worth talking about and not the "faith" of the OT.

A theme of the OT is the Israelites following God's direction and being rewarded and failing to follow and being punished. The message is that following God leads to prosperity. From that, one is faithful to God.

This faithfulness is based upon a covenant between God and his people, meaning adhering to the promise to follow results in his honoring his promise to protect. This compares perhaps to a marital covenant, where faithfulness is the expectation for the continuation of the relationship.

This sort of faith is not the epistemic category of justification we use philosophically. As in, we might know things empirically, rationally, intuitively, or by faith alone, and whatever others ways we may suggest.

The meaning of "faith" continued to evolve from the OT (as in trust despite failure or without response), but it seems to maintain the covenantal aspect throughout time.

The point being that "faith" as an epistemic justification that needs justification, which is the atheist's response to the theist (as in "how is your bold belief in God justified without further justification) is not something theists are terribly concerned about.

A good reply. Yes, faith is more than promising, yes, it involves but goes beyond trust, and yes, it involves adopting a way of life.

The challenge I set before is to ask about faith's limits, to probe the point at which it becomes wrong to maintain one's faith. I used two examples: the Binding of Isaac and the murder of Elizabeth Rose Struhs. Trussing up your son, placing him on a pile of wood, and holding a knife to his throat is abuse, as is wilfully denying a child her insulin.

The difference between faith and trust is shown when one's beliefs are challenged. But there is a point at which faith becomes incorrigible.

, this goes beyond the merely epistemological point, to demand a response from the faithful as to their humanity.

Faith is not always a good. If your faith is strong enough for you to fly a Boeing into a building, or to fire rockets indiscriminately into a city, then something has gone astray.

Faith is not always a good. If your faith is strong enough for you to fly a Boeing into a building, or to fire rockets indiscriminately into a city, then something has gone astray — Banno

Immoral behavior is never justified, whether driven by a faith in God or otherwise. Let's not specially plead concern here, as if it's more common that bombs are dropped by the religious than the secular.

Good. Then we agree at the least that faith is to be restrained, and keep it's place amongst the other virtues.

Then we agree at the least that faith is to be restrained, and keep it's place amongst the other virtues. — Banno

There's no way to control that.

Faith involves an unspoken, invisible promise, one that is not made by ourselves, but by the other, e.g. god, science, philosophy, tradition, institutions, other people etc. — Pussycat

There's a good case for saying that if such promises are entirely one-sided, they are flawed. God does propose a covenant with Israel. But it is a pretty much one-sided deal - take it or else! On the other hand, friendship is not a partnership contract - voided when it's terms are violated. It's more complicated than that.

Faith is not always a good. If your faith is strong enough for you to fly a Boeing into a building, or to fire rockets indiscriminately into a city, then something has gone astray. — Banno

I wouldn't disagree. Faith and loyalty can be misplaced and lead one astray. I've always liked Aristotle's interpretation of virtue as a balance between extremes.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I've never quite understood what such actions are intended to achieve. They are good at attracting attention and causing chaos. But they certainly don't seem to be particularly successful at winning wars.

Good. Then we agree at the least that faith is to be restrained, and keep it's place amongst the other virtues. — Banno

I wouldn't clasify faith as a virtue. I would classify it as an integrity toward maintaining the virtues and trusting that adherence to the virtues will result in positive results.

We're obviously pulling terminology from different traditions here (The Good versus God), so it's hard to make this perfectuly equivalent, but the best amalgamation I can create for an apt analogy would be to say that the Good is to God as Virtues are to Moral Decrees. Faith requires we trust in God because we should trust that doing the right thing results in a more perfect world. There is no possibility that following God will result in slamming airplanes into buildings because that is not following God. That is following (at best) a profound misunderstanding of God.

This holds true for the virtues as well. We shouldn't allow our trust in the virtues to allow us to slam planes into buildings either, perhaps under a misunderstanding of what wisdom (or some other virtue) dictates.

This is to say we're speaking in truths here on this abstract of a level and we can't entertain that maybe faith in God, faith in the Good, or faith in the virtues will ever be a bad thing. Faith in those things are necessarily good. What is bad is when we have a misapprehension of God, the Good, or the virtues.

My point here is that I pick up on your suggestion that faith in God may not be good in all instances, but that's not an issue with God. That's an issue with misdefining God in order to justify one's personal sense of evil. If the 911 terrorists had screamed that their attack was in the name of the Good or that it was in the name of virtue, it would not cause damage to those concepts. It would just mean the terrorists have hijacked (pun intended) certain terms and ideas for their evil purposes.

Similarly, the fixing of the Jewish and Christian Canons involved a lot of appeals to evidence and discursive justification. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's interesting to me how canons shape religions. The early rabbis excluded texts like I and II Maccabees, but the Church found them acceptable. I can think of several plausible reasons for rabbinic exclusion. One would be the legacy of the Hasmoneans, who persecuted (but also cooperated with) the Pharisees. Another might be that the militarism and martyrdom of these texts didn't fit well with the destruction wrought by the two Jewish-Roman wars and Bar Kokhba spurred by Jewish messianism. It's fine to glorify violence and military struggle against a floundering Seleucid empire, not so much with the Romans. The Hasmoneans have an ambiguous legacy today among Jews.

Or the reason for exclusion could have just been that the books were written late, but so was much of Daniel.

Esther was hotly debated for canon among the Jews. Jewish Esther is a considerably different text from Septuagint Esther; in ours, there is no mention of the divine, and she is a less pious figure than Greek Esther. They're considerably different compositions.

I wouldn't classify faith as a virtue. — Hanover

Indeed, it's not included in the Aristotelian virtues are typically listed as things courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, mildness, truthfulness, wit, and friendliness, Indeed, it's not included. The Aristotelian virtues are typically listed as things like courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, mildness, truthfulness, wit, and friendliness, together with artistry, prudence, intuition, knowledge, and wisdom. with artistry, prudence, intuition, knowledge, and wisdom. The Christian virtues, on the other hand, are typically faith, hope, love, justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude... Faith almost always coming first.

So the Christians amongst us might demur. At the least you will admit that there are those who count faith as a virtue.

There are also those who see their faith as a reason to commit what we see as unspeakable acts.

Those who stood around Elizabeth Struhs, praying as she died, perhaps had faith that their god would not let her die. Some of them perhaps still think that their god allowed her to die in order to further test their faith through the due process of the law and imprisonment. There is an approach to faith that does not only does not allow reconsideration, but actively seeks to reject reassessing one' s beliefs.

So while you may not wish to count faith as a virtue, others will not agree.

You mention misdefining god, or perhaps misunderstanding god's will. The obvious problem is the ubiquitous one that it is not entirely obvious to everyone what god's will is, and further there is no possibility of any objectively agreed standard here. While it might suit your narrative to claim terrorists "hijacked... certain terms and ideas for their evil purposes", this is not clear; on the face of it, al-Qaeda is a faith-based organisation. It doesn't, for example, recruit Catholics.

All this by way of showing that there is an element of special pleading in your suggestion that those who commit abominations in the name of faith are misusing the term.

seems to show that we do have common values, and that there is therefore a morality common to all human beings — Leontiskos

It really, truly does not, as far as I can tell. If your definition is just "shared values" sure, but you could've just said that in your first reply and be done with it. That's like saying "God did it".
I Do think I have been very clear, and specific on that point particularly. I don't even think 'value' came into that discussion about Egyptian waterman. Maybe you cannot conceptualize this, as you would have approached the situation another way, but I did not even involve my values. I ascertained whether someone has knowledge I want (WANT...not need). That's fine.

there is a moral system that is common to all human beings, namely the system based on those shared values? — Leontiskos

No. There is no reason to jump from shared value to shared system. This speaks to why, in all the political threads, I am banging on about sorting out shared goals before talking about how to get to them. I imagine the Muslim and Xtian would have a decent conversation about shared goals. Achieving htem though? Shit show. So the idea that values lead to systems is wrong to me.

Okay, good, and that partially answers the question I just asked. — Leontiskos

Hopefully I've given the rest of hte answer above LOL.

<We morally influence another person when we influence their values; sometimes we do influence another person's values; therefore moral influence does occur>. Do you agree with that? — Leontiskos

As long as there's an addition that the changed value leads to changed action (but, it is crucial to keep in mind i may not share the value which I have inspired - I imagine this will be a big spanner).

but again — Leontiskos

This is needless. I have expressed my take on your system several times. It is non-moral, and a better way of thinking about actions than morality is.

I don't think morality is reducible to categorical/exceptionless norms. — Leontiskos

Yeah. This seems clear - I think that is what everyone is talking about ,when they talk about morality. If the idea is to reduce "morality" to some shared value system, again, that's fine, but I doubt it would be very helpful for instance cross culturally. These are still going to be socially-restricted systems. I understand that you're trying to "tease out" that I'm objecting to exceptionless norms. I am not. I am objecting to your system being considered moral. It doesn't seem to relate to morals, in the standard sense, as far as I can tell. This obviously rests on the fact that there are disparate concepts of morality. I just took the middle ground on that, and used "relatability" as a metric for whether or not you could even call what you're talking about morality and have people understand you. I do not know that you could. But I prefer it to any 'moral' systems I've seen (other than my own, obviously). So, in light of that, I have to say I can't quiiiiiite grok what the last couple of exchanges have really been debating. Perhaps you have clarification to come. Onward..

it is equally true that 'right' is not reducible to categorical/exceptionless obligation. — Leontiskos

This does not seem to be what most people think is the case. I agree with you, though. Neither of us seems to think there are any exceptionless norms (even speaking 'ideal'ly). That's good. But, that's not what most moralists are talking about, as best I can tell. Even the "relativist" kind want to draw unassailable lines in the sand. Incoherent, as you say. I thikn we need to have the discussion in light of these facts - 'right' and 'wrong' are not considered ambiguous to most.

Now if that word really made no sense to you in that context, your friend's utterance would make no sense to you. — Leontiskos

It doesn't. I would ask what they mean by 'right' and they're going to give me a teleological argument about ends and how the drinking wont achieve those ends. Is the 'shared value' something as bogus-ly amorphous as 'success'? Maybe. But I find that unhelpful and would ask more questions. Perhaps I am unusual.

is meaningful — Leontiskos

Is different to "Means what they intended to me"(I think) which it wouldn't, in the circumstances. It's meaningful as context rather than as a indicator of what the speaker means. I am just not stupid, so know what they intended via context and biography.
If, upon noting to them the incoherence, they didn't resile from the use of 'right' I'd have an 'argument' in front of me(though, for social reasons, wouldn't engage it). As it happens, I've made this challenge several times and people, generally, do resile and switch to something like "not optimal" or "unhelpful". I am not sure what that means for them, but for me, it means they understand that 'right' cannot mean 'agreed-value-pointing' (i.e if done/agreed, points in the direct of an agreed value).

yet this does not make it a hypothetical judgment. — Leontiskos

It couldn't possibly be otherwise as I see it. I see your argument, and it's a good one as to understanding hte difference between events and deliberations. But it is plainly true that the 'moment' has passed - nothing could change the decision. It would be hypothetically-derived even if you want to call the regret 'live', as it were. Personally, I only regret actions I could have avoided, at the time. Where that isn't available, I do not feel regret, but something more akin to despair. I do not feel guilty about things I can't see that I could've done differently. It just sucks, in hindsight. Again, maybe i'm peculiar.

your claim that moral acts tend to be conceived as grave acts, such as acts that pertain to the possibility of deat — Leontiskos

That's not my claim. That's just what my system leaves behind. I do not think most people have this in mind. They simply have "acts towards others" in mind. So I've not address the following about the objections (though, some Sorities can be solved quite easily hehe).

To be clear, I take all (human) acts to be moral (in the sense specified in my OP). — Leontiskos

Cool. That sorts out a lot of where we're disagreeing, i guess.

valuing your own faculties of knowledge) — Leontiskos

I see what's going on here. Hmm. I want to say that this is an inherent property of any deliberation, and not something we could take into account as a choice of value. We would be paralyzed without it. Maybe that's a cop out. If it is, I may need to concede something rather fundamental, but I haven't push that far through my thinking yet.

you are required to weigh your own faculties of knowledge against the Egyptian's faculties of knowledge — Leontiskos

Not quite. What I am comparing is my knowledge about, lets say NYC, with a gap in my knowledge about Cairo. This man is likely experiencing a reversal of those mental spaces. His values tell him to help me. My knowledge gap tells me to fill it. So, there's a way your description is correct, but I don't thikn it quite captures what's happening. We're not actually comparing each other's knowledge at all. There is a trust involved, though it is not personal. It is actually quite discriminatory. "You live here. You fill gap. Yay". His choice to tell me is absolutely a moral choice. My decision to listen doesn't seem to be, whether or not I do the thing. There is also the question whether or not my decision to not trust my own faculties is the moral one, and not the one about listening to A or B in terms of a response to rejecting my own faculties.

<A suggestion is moral if it fulfills at least one of two possibilities: either it bears on a behavior whose possible outcome is death, or if part of the suggestion is to shift a value underlying an action> — Leontiskos

This seems bang on. Feels good, too.

Note that I would prefer 'NH' to 'suggestion' given the ambiguity of 'suggestion.' — Leontiskos

Fair enough. That's reasonable.

don't seem to do so arbitrarily — Leontiskos

Generally, it seems that way. But i can, and do (for fun) arbitrarily get myself into certain moral positions. My wife does not like this exercise. LOL.

I think these considerations are also precisely what are operative when we interact with other moral agents and influence one another's values — Leontiskos

Probably, yes.

So the Christians amongst us might demur. At the least you will admit that there are those who count faith as a virtue. — Banno

What is meant by Christian faith as being a virtue I suppose is a commitment to the truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ, which might just be a statement that the highest virtue is to believe in what is right and just and true. It might correlate to the first commandment, which is that one should have no other gods before God or perhaps the second forbidding idolotry.

But that's one of many ways "faith" might be defined, which is the question of this thread.

The Aristotlian virtues are are more specific, isolating particular aspects of a person worth fostering. It's the difficulty in translating precisely the language of Athens to the language of Jerusalem.

You mention misdefining god, or perhaps misunderstanding god's will. The obvious problem is the ubiquitous one that it is not entirely obvious to everyone what god's will is, and further there is no possibility of any objectively agreed standard here. While it might suit your narrative to claim terrorists "hijacked... certain terms and ideas for their evil purposes", this is not clear; on the face of it, al-Qaeda is a faith-based organisation. It doesn't, for example, recruit Catholics.

All this by way of showing that there is an element of special pleading in your suggestion that those who commit abominations in the name of faith are misusing the term. — Banno

The special pleading arises in supposing one ideology is for some reason immune from the problems of another and giving it a pass and suggesting the other is hopelessly dangerous. If we should examine each of the tens of thousands of bullets suspended in air, now in midflight, and place each under the microscope to decipher what anger is embeded in each of them, I'd suspect that remarkably few have thoughts of God and ancient theologies within them. Many I'm sure are filled with irrationality and raging hate caused by the mundane existence of individuals without compass, but I'd suspect a very good number, at least those that come in the largest flurries, are filled with secular interests being advanced under some guise of justice or righteousness. The hail of gunfire in Ukraine, for example, is a better example of mass destruction than 9/11. What intention do you suppose is impregnated in those bullets, the advancement of Christianity, Judaism, Islam? That doesn't seem right. Probably a drive for natural resources, the rebuilding of a fallen empire, or a a diversion from a failing economy? Secular interests that is.

I can't really see much of a difference from an atheistic perspective between the Good and God. God is rejected under this model as an outdated attempt to create a referrent for a concept that need not have one. This is to say that what I call the dictates of God you call the dictates of Good, yet you just find my language oddly clinging to the past in insisting upon an ontological existence for my holy being. Why speak of God when we can just speak of the Good without imposing upon ourselves the superflous baggage of the supernatural, right? But isn't it your view that what those two terms mean once you've purged the latter of its mystical nonsense is the exact same thing?

The point being we both cling to a moral realism, refusing to suggest that the stomping of babies is right if we happen to all agree it is. And we're willing to die perhaps to defend those babies from their stomping. Yet for some reason your declarations of righteousness and your fight to the death to protect those innocents isn't zealousness. It's heroism. You believe you can properly scream "Praise be the Good" as you save those infants and you will pose no danger because you are right in your views, unlike al-Qaeda when they screamed pretty much the same thing as they exacted not their heroism, but their terror.

This isn't to suggest we're all right, but just have different perspectives. I hold the opposite of that in fact. I agree you should fight to the death to save the babies from their stomping. I'll charge the stompers by your side. I'll just be screaming about God and you the Good.

My point is that if the danger is certainty towards one's ideology, then that exists whether your ideology is the promotion of the Good or of God. To allow that rule of dangerousness to only apply to God and not the Good is an example of special pleading, granting your brand of certainty immunity for no good reason.

But that's one of many ways "faith" might be defined, which is the question of this thread. — Hanover

That's' one way to approach the OP, but not the only way. One alternative is, instead of merely choosing this or that stipulation, to cast about and see how the word is used.

The flying bullets is a neat game. But perhaps the issue isn't how many bullets were fired by anger and how may by faith, but in acknowledging that at least some were fired in faith.

But perhaps you and I agree were others will differ. Do we agree that it is the actions, not the thoughts of the actor, that have the main moral import?

And especially, that an act is done in good faith is insufficient for it to be counted as a good act, or a being the right thing to do.

But perhaps the issue isn't how many bullets were fired by anger and how may by faith, but in acknowledging that at least some were fired in faith. — Banno

I think plenty are fired on the basis of faith, but my point was to push back on the idea that faith based beliefs are particularly dangerous by comparison. And to completely purge of bias, if we're going to acknowledge that some bullets are fired on the basis of faith, we must also acknowledge that a good many bullets never make their way to flight due to those of faith. To suggest otherwise sort of characterizes the religious as muzzled pit bulls, inherently dangerous but made safe if properly controlled and surveilled. Some are actually good actors through and through.

But perhaps you and I agree were others will differ. Do we agree that it is the actions, not the thoughts oft he actor, that have the main moral import?

And especially, that an act is done in good faith is insufficient for it to be counted as a good act, or a being the right thing to do. — Banno

I am generally sympathetic to this view because it comports with my personal religious views because prioritizing act over intent is typical of the more ancient belief systems, but like an old tie, it seems to have come back in style. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, which makes the point that trying to do right but fucking everything up isn't something you can be excused from.

One reason you find this sort of reasoning in older moral systems is that what is considered right and wrong is often more clearly laid out, sometimes being very rule oriented. If we can say X, Y, and Z are wrong, we leave less to our own personal evaluation, and so we needn't evaluate our intent when we evaluate the act. For example, if the rule is "thou shalt not lie," then you can't lie. If you do lie, but you do it for a variety of kind hearted reasons, it doesn't matter. You lied. We don't get into some complex calculus of trying to figure out when it's ok to lie and then trying to justify later when everything fucks up that we made a good faith effort at doing the math and it saying we could lie, but it turns out we probably shouldn't have.

There are limits to this concept though, because I do see a difference between a bad act committed as the result of incompetence versus malice. My wife serving me spoiled meat because she failed to check the expiration date is quite a different event than her serving it up because I failed to fold the laundry. By the same token, if she serves me up what she thought was spoiled meat in order to punish me for my poor housekeeping, but it was actually now perfectly aged and of even higher quality, I don't think she gets an award for being such a good spouse.

It reminds me of the movie Taxi Driver, where a failed assassination attempt on a presidential candidate resulted in the return of a child prostitute to her parents and the would be assassin becoming a hero. I still see something pretty bad about the would be assassin's behavior, even though he did bring Jodie Foster back to her parents where she could go on and make more movies.

What is meant by Christian faith as being a virtue I suppose is a commitment to the truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ, which might just be a statement that the highest virtue is to believe in what is right and just and true. — Hanover

Yes. When Christians talk about the virtue of faith they are not talking about generic faith. They are not saying, for example, that every act of faith-assent is virtuous. They are saying that faith in the true God is virtuous.

Aquinas says this explicitly, "The faith of which [Aristotle] speaks is based on human reasoning in a conclusion which does not follow, of necessity, from its premisses; and which is subject to be false: hence such like faith is not a virtue" (ST II-II.4.5.ad2). Faith in a guarantor who is capable of falsehood is not a virtue, but God is the First Truth (i.e. it is God's "truthfulness" that causes divine faith to be virtuous).

Classically, none of the theological virtues (viz. faith, hope, and love) are natural virtues. That is, none attain to virtue in Aristotle's strict sense unless their object is God.

Or else Pieper:

Is it "good" to believe?—In human intercourse belief is not simply a "virtue". What belief in revelation means for man's goodness becomes apparent only when the content of rev­elation is considered: God himself communicates. — Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, and Love (Treatise on Faith)