A is a variable, a placeholder for which any entity can be substituted, so it doesn't actually represent anything itself; however, "A=A" is a representation of the identity relationship.
I don't understand how "A=A" can mean anything when "A" doesn't represent *something*.
If "A" doesn't represent anything, then "A=A" and "A=non-A" are both equally valid expressions, since "A" is a sign devoid of meaning.
On the other hand, if "A" represents something, I remain to be convinced that it always represents the same thing, since the act of representation itself is a vexed one.
Now, I can accept that faith in the unproven is critical to the religious experience, but what happens when an article previously affirmed by faith is disproven by reason and/or observation?
I'm not Jack, but... part of what I *think* he's been getting at, and what I know *I'm* getting at, is that articles of faith (or even the process of having faith in something) happens in a realm that is not the same as the one in which reason and observation operate.
Observations are interpreted; faith is a process of interpretation. Reason (in what I think is the sense we're discussing here) is another process, but one which operates in parallel. It's not on the same track.
If you want to keep your faith out of conflict, then it is necessary that you only have faith in those propositions which can be proven a priori to be unprovable.
Moreso neither provable nor unprovable (if that makes things any clearer -- I swear, I'm not *trying* to sound like Siddhartha Derrida, but that's what's coming out).
In that light, religious syncretism seems pretty difficult - if you can't prove any of the propositions in which you're to have faith, there's no way to discriminate between contradictory statements. So, do you accept them all using some sort of weird Orwellian doublethink?
Well, doublethink is holding two contradictory statements in your head at once; faith is holding two statements in your head that are more fundamentally dissimilar than that.
For instance, the statement, "An apple is red" is contradicted by the statement, "An apple is green." (Notice, he said slyly, that both can be true. Let's pretend I just said "An apple is blue" instead.)
However, the statement, "An apple is red," is not contradicted by the dissimilar statement, "An apple is sweet," or even, "An apple is a gift from the land."
In the case of the sweetness, we're still talking about physical qualities of appleness. In the case of the gift, we're talking about entirely different ways of apprehending apples. Reason and observation detect qualities of redness (objective) and sweetness (partially subjective), but are only tangentially involved in its valuation as a gift, as something for which to be grateful, as something which inspires a feeling of contentment and gratitude. That's an interpretive statement -- a statement of faith.
Does that make it make any more sense? |
