The end of Philosophy

Let me say a few things first. I am not "Trumping" philosophy. I am not advocating its demise. Rather I have been on a journey in my writings to fully explain "faith" without any religious or theological context. I believe we must fully understand the role of faith in determining truth that we can build our life around without relying on a narrow worldview of faith. Unfortunately, when the debate and discussion on faith seems to be around the object of faith, not the role of faith itself, everyone is fully prepared to defend the object of their faith.


In this journey of discovery I have bumped into Philosophy. I am not trained in the study of Philosophy as some are, but I was presented with the opportunity to read a recent essay on Philosophy of Truth written by extraordinary experts, This led me to a discovery, I think, about what is beneath many debates on faith. Below is an exert from a chapter in a course called "Evidence not yet seen: The view beneath worldview." I am posting this on my blog to get coverage with those who can advise, consent or dissent. So anyone who can do any of this, please let me know @ stevecald@gmail.com. The following is from the script of the course.
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While we may believe something to be true, knowledge has no effect on our life until we act on it. To act on knowledge means we trust the knowledge to be right or true. This trust that leads to action requires faith. So, what is faith, where does faith come from and how does faith fit in this discussion of knowledge and truth? Before we discuss competing worldviews on how knowledge and faith work in trusting what is true, let me clarify what I mean by faith. Faith is defined as evidence that something exists or is true that we cannot observe. Here we are talking about faith in general, not related to any particular faith. All faith has a target and all people have faith in something. We will see this more as we progress through this session, but it is important that you not limit your idea of faith by your common context for faith, such as religion.

You may think that faith and knowledge are mutually exclusive and on two ends of one continuum. That means your worldview equates finding truth with gaining more and more knowledge until you know enough that you can trust it to be true. You would then only need to rely on faith when or because you do not have enough knowledge. For this worldview of faith and knowledge, faith is a weakness that you depend on when you do not have or cannot get enough knowledge to know what is right or true. This worldview limits the understanding of knowledge to just eido knowledge, where all evidence is made available by cognitive processes of some form of scientific inquiry dealing with what we can observe.

This worldview of knowledge, truth, and faith is the historical view of Philosophy. While philosophers have failed to agree on their theories of truth, they do have one thing in common, there is no role for faith. Faith is the evidence not seen, which is accepting something abstract as the starting point for truth. While science provides observable evidence of fact for edio knowledge, faith is the evidence we get from having additional gnosis knowledge. Since all theories of mainstream philosophers on truth define truth by framing the unobservable abstract within the context of observable facts, they have an incomplete model of knowledge in that they do not include gnosis knowledge as a primary source of evidence. Here are a couple of examples from classical theories of Truth.

A belief is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact.

Truth is what is verifiable.

In each theory, fact and verifiable are further explained to mean anything we can observe in our world. In Session Three, What is Life? We discussed a model that identified two of the three aspects of life as “unobservable.” Remember, we said the soul was the part of our self that could not be seen though a doctor’s physical exam. We said that the soul is connected to our Spirit, which is “self’s” connection to the invisible world. Therefore, classic theories of truth struggle with their worldviews of truth when knowledge is not observable and can only be understood when we associate it with our physical senses. Generally, philosophy exists to explain the abstract based on the tangible, not to trust the abstract for our actions.

Let’s illustrate the difference between observable facts and unobservable facts.

We can observe that Jane sings well, that the grass is green (sometimes). That our heart rate after exercising is 130. But we cannot observe motivation. We see what someone does but we cannot see the psychological process behind their effort. We cannot see attitudes, love, or emotion. But each is real. Each has affect on behavior, which is observable We might even say, “I know for a fact that she loves me.” We can see that a wound has healed, but we cannot observe healing. There are things that are true in our reality that we cannot observe. We can see outcomes that they exist, but we cannot see, feel, smell, hear or touch them. We know these are real through faith, which is the term which represents the evidence we have that they exist.

So some people, in contrast to philosophy, see a competing worldview of truth where faith, which is evidence for gnosis knowledge, and eido knowledge, where science provides the evidence, are intertwined, together working toward revealing truth.

 In this case your eido knowledge is supported by gnosis. You know in your heart what you know in your head. In this worldview of truth, faith is an unobservable fact and plays a vital role to strengthen what we trust to be true. 

The first approach to knowledge and faith appears to be more rational, inferring faith is irrational or that faith is not evidence at all. The second approach claims that we must always trust something we cannot see because we can never have 100% of the observable knowledge we need. Observable evidence is never 100% because so much of what is real in life is unseen, accessible only thru what our faith can tell our mind. We must have both seen and unseen (eido and gnosis) knowledge, backed by observable and unobservable facts, to have knowledge that is credible enough for us to trust that something enough to act on it.

One way to understand when you are comfortable with faith is when you can see life events without having to ask the question “why?”. We mentioned in Session 5 that the human brain pattern determines the priority of questions that form our inquiry. Asking “why?” may be your natural bent. But under certain situations, even those who are not a “why?” person, go straight to that question. When unusual things happen, like a premature death, or a natural disaster like a hurricane destroys our home, or we experience a terrorist attack which seems so senseless, have you noticed the public outcry focusing on “why” did this happen? The soul seems to itch until the question “why” gets scratched.

While all of us are not “why?” dominate people, the need to get this question answered is also based in our human condition. Answers to “why?” establish cause and effect. If we can determine why something bad happened, then we can prevent it from happening again. This gives us a sense of control. When truth is attached to only knowledge that is observable, we feel we have control. All we have to do is gain more knowledge and we can have more control. Remember that trust is the opposite of control. The same effect of the desire for control affects how humans desire to fond truth. Behavioral Economics is a science that claims the human condition is uncomfortable with realities that seem random and outside of our realm of reasoning. People who denounce faith as a significant contributor to truth are generally not willing to leave “why?” questions unanswered, accept random events, and trust unobserved realities, because it requires the relinquishing of control. Why can’t philosophers complete their theories and find agreement? When a theory of truth only uses eido knowledge, there is a missing piece. Maybe this is why philosophy cannot include the role of faith in determining truth.

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The point of this discussion is the seemingly limit on philosophy. Namely, is philosophy flawed as a model for finding truth because it's theories END without acknowledging unobservable evidence necessary for knowing what is true. Philosophy only trusts observable evidence and attempts to only explain the invisible as abstract truth. It does not seem to accommodate the reverse. That it is possible that it is the unobservable that is true, as evidenced by faith, and that the visible is to be explained through the truth of the invisible.