And when I said that I put “faith” in scare quotes and clearly indicated that it is not necessarily the only word that could be applied. I also said in the comment that anyone that has a problem with using the word “faith” in that context should feel free to substitute any other symbol string they wish in place of “faith”. From the very beginning I have maintained that whether or not we call unquestioning, blind acceptance of scientific consensus “faith” or not is besides the point. The point is that many people have unquestioning, blind acceptance of scientific consensus and that this is not so different from religious believers having unquestioning, blind acceptance of religious dogma.
It is somewhat different in that in principle the unquestioning, blind accepter of science could engage in study to acquaint themselves first-hand with the justification for their beliefs. This could be direct, first-hand verification of the scientific results in question or perhaps a meta-level first-hand understanding of why scientific consensus is more reliable than religious dogma. But until the individual actually engages in this first-hand study of the epistemic justification for their beliefs they are in the same boat as anyone else who believes things purely on the basis of cultural authority.
Whether we are capable of self-deceit is completely besides the point. I explained this rather clearly in my previous comment. It may be that the ringing noise I hear is not really a sine-wave shaped pressure differential traversing the local atmosphere but I nonetheless can’t deny my direct subjective experience of having heard a ringing sound. Even if I am mistaken that I experienced a ringing in my ears yesterday I nonetheless can’t deny the subjective experience of believing myself to have experienced a ringing in my ears yesterday.
Suppose I had the experience of seeing a ghost. I would be terribly skeptical that I had actually seen a ghost. I would probably lean more towards hallucination or similar as an explanation for my experience. But that my experience was not caused by an intersubjectively verifiable apparition does not change the fact that I had the experience in the first place.
I don’t care what you call it. The semantic debate about whether or not the word “faith” should be allowed to be used in this context is tedious and pointless from my perspective. We can call it “guffle” or “fnord” for all I care. I am only arguing the following:
- (A) and (B) are two different things regardless of what we call them.
- Someone who accepts scientific consensus simply because they were acculturated to do so and has never questioned the epistemological justification for doing so is in the same position epistemically as a religious believer who believes religious dogma because they were acculturated to do so and has never questioned the epistemological justification for doing so.
OK. Take the team of astronomers who first verified the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. According to your reasoning, it seems to me that this team of astronomers should have concluded that their observations of precession were in error because those observations contradicted the scientific consensus summarized in Newton’s law of gravity: that planetary orbits should not precess. I don’t see any way for those astronomers to maintain confidence in their experimental results unless we concede that in at least some cases, first-hand knowledge should trump second-hand consensus. Can you explain to me why their observations should not have been concluded to be faulty on the grounds that they contradicted the scientific consensus?
It’s like you’re not even reading what I’m saying. I didn’t claim that first-hand reports are necessarily more reliable than second-hand reports. (In fact, I very explicitly said I wasn’t claiming that.) I simply claimed they are different things. To demonstrate that they are different things I supplied a list of differences between those things – that’s the only way I know to prove two different things are, in fact, different things.
You yourself said that first-hand experience counts as a piece of evidence. I agree with that. I think that first-hand experience should affect one’s degree of confidence in the thing they are experiencing. You seem to think that I think first-hand experience is the only factor. I do not and have never argued this was the case. I simply think that first-hand experience is another factor in addition to second-hand reports.
Another straw man. I never claimed everyone has to go verify the experiments themselves. I claimed that some people have to go verify the experiments themselves. Do you deny that some people have to go verify the experiments themselves?
