Individuals are required to make many decisions daily. Due to the limited capacity of human understanding, all decisions must be made bearing some level of ignorance. Thus all decisions employ a Kierkegaardian Leap of Faith at some point in their resolution process.

https://tweakingo.com/the-leap-of-faith/

created by Epimenides_of_Crete on 24/01/2020 at 21:42 UTC

36 upvotes, 4 top-level comments (showing 4)

Comments

Comment by Gugteyikko at 24/01/2020 at 22:20 UTC

5 upvotes, 1 direct replies

First, I don’t like the conflation or different definitions of faith. I’m fine with each individual definition, they just need to be differentiated. I’ve never read Kierkegaard, but I accept the definition of faith as a kind of trust in induction. However, the catechism of the Catholic Church also uses faith in the following way when describing the Eucharist:

”��That in this sacrament are the truth Body of Christ and his true Blood is something that “can not be apprehended by the senses,’ says St. Thomas, ‘but only by faith, which relies on divine authority.’”

There are other examples of this usage of “faith” as a method to reach true conclusions in spite of having no evidence. In my experience, when people like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins point out problems with this definition of “faith,” their detractors almost always defend the other definition, as though it’s a relevant argument.

Second, I don’t think I agree that I use even Kierkegaard’s definition as it’s presented in this article. I just don’t pretend to know those things. I don’t know that my waiter isn’t a murderer, or that the road ahead of me is stable, or that my parents weren’t cloned and swapped while I looked away.

I definitely **act as if** those things are true. But that’s just pragmatism. If you ask me I’ll say I don’t really know. However, not knowing for certain isn’t the same as being adrift in the void of uncertainty. I have some amount of evidence for the model of the world that I act upon, and until I get evidence to the contrary, it wouldn’t make any sense to start thinking or acting as if my waiter is a murderer.

Comment by breadandbuttercreek at 25/01/2020 at 09:55 UTC

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

The key is not faith but probability. I know that driving a car has a certain low probability of disaster, I make an informed decision to accept that probability. if I fly in a commercial airplane i know the probability of crashing is extremely low, I don't need to have faith in the pilot and manufacturer. if I visit the crater of an active volcano the probability of disaster is much higher, but I accept this danger for the thrill of the experience. It is possible to make informed decisions in most cases, usually there are a small number of choices and you have to decide which will probably lead to the best outcome. One major problem people face when making decisions is the "it won't happen to me" attitude.people can be aware of the probabilities but discard this knowledge because they have faith that in their case the outcome will be different.

Comment by [deleted] at 24/01/2020 at 23:54 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by Mentalfloss1 at 25/01/2020 at 00:10 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

It’s not just limits of our understanding. It’s also the variables in any situation that force incompletely informed decisions.