A few strong words about Belief or Believing
I might suggest here that "Believe" is a verb and is a frequent activity or an action of human brain cells.
Warning! The verb "believe" is more than a little bit tricky and I strongly recommend a bit of caution when using it.
It can all too easily grab hold of the adverb "in" which changes the meaning completely. Instead of "I believe" something to be true, it says I believe IN Love or in Democracy or some such which has a totally different meaning.
Also its noun form: "Belief" has a completely changed meaning. The noun, "Belief", might be said to be one of the results or one of the outcomes of believing something to be true.
I hope I am not breaking the rules of this forum by inserting a deeply felt personal note.
If so I apologise.
I, personally, "believe in" many noble things including such things as "Love" or "Democracy", etc but, in contrast, I believe nothing whatsoever.
I, personally hate and despise the action of "believing".
Believing half truths or carefully concocted lies kills thousands of people here and now every single day.
Believing carefully concealed lies and partial truths killed millions of people in both world wars.
Example: "Belgiums are baby killers and should be punished". Once, long ago, those words were believed my millions. Evil words, sinful words. Death words.
I believe no mans's word, ever. I carefully avoid believing anything at all. Believing something can be extremely dangerous and can frequently be described as evil behavior.
And also be very careful never to confuse the innocent words: I believe in" with the evil words: "I believe".
Warning! The verb "believe" is more than a little bit tricky and I strongly recommend a bit of caution when using it.
It can all too easily grab hold of the adverb "in" which changes the meaning completely. Instead of "I believe" something to be true, it says I believe IN Love or in Democracy or some such which has a totally different meaning.
Also its noun form: "Belief" has a completely changed meaning. The noun, "Belief", might be said to be one of the results or one of the outcomes of believing something to be true.
I hope I am not breaking the rules of this forum by inserting a deeply felt personal note.
If so I apologise.
I, personally, "believe in" many noble things including such things as "Love" or "Democracy", etc but, in contrast, I believe nothing whatsoever.
I, personally hate and despise the action of "believing".
Believing half truths or carefully concocted lies kills thousands of people here and now every single day.
Believing carefully concealed lies and partial truths killed millions of people in both world wars.
Example: "Belgiums are baby killers and should be punished". Once, long ago, those words were believed my millions. Evil words, sinful words. Death words.
I believe no mans's word, ever. I carefully avoid believing anything at all. Believing something can be extremely dangerous and can frequently be described as evil behavior.
And also be very careful never to confuse the innocent words: I believe in" with the evil words: "I believe".
Comments (562)
Quaint, but wrong. You believe that you were able to put your thoughts together, you believe that you can speak English, you believe that you can type a message on a computer and have it shared across this community. You believe that people would read it and reply. you believe that there are standards for posts on the forums. You believe in good and bad conduct.
You also believe in clay, that it can be moulded, baked, sold, and that the results can be used to make a life.
As a human one has no choice but to have and act on one's beliefs. It's not that one believes that is the problem, but what one believes.
Only when imbued with the breath of life, and that sure ain't made from clay. ;-)
But not sold as bread, though.
Rather, I'm confident that I can put thoughts together, speak English, and type out a message that can be shared online. I also have reasons to think that my messages will be read and responded to. I understand that there are standards for posting on this forum. I can judge good and bad conduct.
I know about clay and stuff.
People commonly don't actually believe what they claim to believe, and in those cases, expressing belief can merely be a sign of solidarity with fellow "believers". This is why I endeavor to abandon the term. I don't hate it, and I don't hate "believers", it's just that I'm not a blind follower. I do not follow blindly, if I can help it.
What difference does it make?
So it wasn't? That's a pity. A missed opportunity, perhaps.
So isn't it the case that in order for you to be able to act, you must hold certain things to be the case? That there is an English Language for you to express yourself, for example; a keyboard for you to type on; folk to read your messages.
And isn't holding something to be the case exactly what belief consists in?
I don't see that you have removed belief so much as simply hidden it.
You are right in that there is something to be said for our beliefs being evident in our actions more than in our words. Hypocrisy and self-deception are about belief. Our actions sometimes display our beliefs despite our words.
So a plan to replace beliefs with actions might have had some merit.
It's an intriguing idea for me as a non-philosopher. It has often struck me how people's professed beliefs bear little similarity to their actions (and I don't think I am talking about hypocrisy).
Not at all, much of what I do is subconscious. Also, my dog never declares his beliefs to anyone and yet he seems to manage just fine.
I act according to my model of the world and the model is being continually updated. You seem to be suggesting that I need to have faith in this model. I don't see why faith is needed because I only have my model and no other.
I must repeat that the whole belief mess is tricky as hell.
I should have mentioned that the word "A Beleif" implies "A Conscious belief. That is a belief that is expressed in words and is an activity of the conscious mind only and not of the vastly more complex subconscious mind which I prefer to call -- the "Overmind".
It is subtly inaccurate to say "I beiieve I can speak English". The proper thing to say is - "I know I can speak English. The action of "knowing" is an action performed by my entire mind and the knowledge is part of my overmind not just my limited conscious mind.
Because of your words today this is the first time I have ever thought or said IN WORDS that I speak English. Why should I bother? But I have Known it for decades. I know millians of things that I have never used words to describe. As do you. A dog can "know" thousands of things without useing words. I know I speak English with my entire mind, including, because of you just now, my conscious mind.
(Word mind, Semantic mind, Conscious mind, The mind that functions only wih words. whatever you want to call it.)
But I have never used mere words to myself to say so.
I know I can type on a computer but I have never referred that knowledge, as such, to my conscious mind and I have never said so to myselfi in words. Why should I waste my time.?
Oops, Banno, you slipped up. You said - "beleive in" twice. You accidently added the "in" in spite of my ernest warnings and thus changed the meaning.
You said "Believe in good" plus "believe in clay"
Your word - "Beliefs" refers to something entirely different, God knows to what.
To which God do I refer to?
There is but one God and his name is Shiva.
I told you that that fucking word - "believe" is tricky as hell.
Thanks.
It's a safer practice to not trust anyone on their word (subscribe to a belief that you hear secondhand); but not a practical one. We don't have time to investigate everything, so we have to trust some things in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Save your scrutiny for the most-suspicious claims I guess. That's the best we can do.
Abstract ideas like "Love" or "Democracy" can't be proven/disproven in the objective world. When we "believe" in abstract ideas, I think we are just endorsing their usefulness as ideas.
And how is your "model of the world" different to what you hold to be true? How is it different to what you believe?
The New Man ceases to have beliefs, replacing them entirely with his "Model of the world"...
You may find this of interest...
Quoting Ken Edwards
This rests upon the dubious presupposition that you have a choice in the matter.
You do not.
Have you ever lost something valuable enough to go look for it?
As if this model does not consist entirely of beliefs about the world and/or ourselves.
I’m not sure how to answer because I’m not sure what you mean by ‘hold to be true’. What exactly do you mean by that?
Quoting Banno
I’ll go along with this , as long as ‘belief’ ’ is interchangeable with ‘anticipation’ or ‘expectation’. That way we can include perception in general.
As Banno said... the problem is not that we believe, but rather it is what we believe. So, seems better to examine how we come to believe the things we do, and what sorts of belief are best to have/hold rather than make an attempt to convince ourselves that we ought not believe anyone or anything.
There's a whole lot of bullshit, falsehood, and truth being disseminated in society, and not all for the same reasons...
But, since you bring it up I think that beliefs can be either expressed in words or felt subconsciously so in the case of the latter I got beliefs up the ass. I got millions. I got beliefs I aint even used yet. I even have beliefs about you, Banno, so watch your ass.
:ok:
You say - There's a whole lot of bullshit, falsehood, and truth being disseminated in society, and not all for the same reasons.
Alas, yes. And not just a lot. And not "by society". By pros, by experts. There are thousands of pros out there who spend millions of hours a day and millions of dollars a day trying to concoct clever, attention grabbing, truthful sounding lies or half lies that you and I and even Banno can be tricked into beleiving and then they get money out of us or power over us or maybe just enjoy fucking us over. They are good at it, they are pros.
There is no way I could have the time or the ability to examen the thousands of such dangerous falshoods that are aimed my way.
So I say 'I don't beleive anyone at all nor any words. Nothing - NADA!.
Of course I might make an exception in your case, creativesoul.
You say, Bird-up --
"Abstract ideas like "Love" or "Democracy" can't be proven/disproven in the objective world. When we "believe" in abstract ideas, I think we are just endorsing their usefulness as ideas."
I agree.
If I accept or trust or think or estimate or conclude or predict that you're telling the truth does that mean that I believe (hold to be true) you're telling the truth? A definition of believe includes the sense of 'feeling sure of'. Does that refer to intuition, the feeling that you're telling the truth but not an assessment based on reason? If that's the case then I could simply say that, that I feel like or intuit that you're telling the truth. It seems the only other way to 'feel sure of' is to hold you as a truth-teller or to have faith in you, to trust you implicitly. I imagine there could be circumstances where I would be forced to trust someone because it's not possible to verify their veracity, but that could be against my will and wouldn't be really 'feeling' or 'holding' their claims.
I agree with Banno. Also it's clear that the OP's complaint is with believing wrong or evil things, and that swearing off belief as such is going too far, not to mention impossible. Be careful about what you believe, and never think yourself infallible, and try only to believe true things rather than things that make you feel good--that seems like a more useful response to the evils that have been committed on the basis of certain beliefs. Or criticize faith, unquestioning belief, etc.
And, in fact, the intuition is used very much more frequently than is Word based reasoning.
The rest of your reasoning is extremely reasonable, highly rational, very convincing.
Perhaps the trouble is me. Perhaps I have an irrational complex.
But consider my life
.
In word war 2, right after the surrender, my battalion was put to guarding some of the millions of Nazi prisoners of war that were floating around Europe. Many of those Germans spoke English and I had extensive conversation with them.
It was horrifying. They assured me repeatedly that ordinary, every day Germans had firmly believed everything that Adolf Hitler had told them to believe.
Mad stuff, insane stuff. To the effect that fully justified them waging war and killing millions of people.
They had firmly Believed that it was morally wrong for them Not to kill.
Sitting there in Germany amid the ruins listening to these horrors I became an enemy of believing, not only rational believing but any believing.
The successful instilling of beliefs such as these frequently is used as a war weapon similar to a bayonet or a canon.
Believing half truths or carefully concocted lies kills thousands of people here and now every single day.
The recent school murderers killed children because they believed that it was right. They beleived things that they were taught to believe. They, themselves, said so.
The successful instilling of beliefs such as these is frequently used as a war weapon similar to a bayonet or a canon.
Wow, that’s heavy, and I thought Trump supporters were a bad enough exemplar to justify the condemnation of belief.
Thank you for sharing that terrible experience. That's the kind of thing people desperately need to know about these days; whether they realize it or not.
We keep making the same mistake of over-trusting our viewpoints.
Quoting Ken Edwards
It does not change the meaning. To "believe in" something as in believing in love is the same as saying you believe "love exists" to be true. To believe in something is to believe that it exists, or to have the belief that it exists. Just as hammering requires a hammer, believing requires a belief.
It does not Say that love exists. It might or might not imply it depending entirely on the interpretation by the listener which is something else entirely..
The authors of the last two mass killings proudly confirm and almost seem to be bragging about the fact that it was their "beleivings" that did the killing.
We keep making the same mistake of over-trusting our viewpoint.
Agreed, emphatically
Is this not an expression of what you believe about believing, that is is better to avoid believing?
To believe is used in distinction from to know. What I believe may turn out to be wrong. It expresses a tenuousness, a lack of certainty. It differs from a claim of knowledge.
It is when this distinction is not made, when one equates believing with being absolutely, indubitably certainty, that believing becomes dangerous.
My sentence: "I carefully avoid believing anything at all" contains self-contradictions and maybe I should rather have said: "i carefully avoid the action of beleiving" For believieg is an action and I do avoid that action. Actions are sometimes easily avoided
I think there is a further distinction be tween believing and knowing. Beleiving is limited strictly to words. "I don't believe you when you said blah blah".
But knowing applies to everything that is knowable either by the conscious mind or by the total mind, the subconscious mind. I know thousands of things. But in order to tell you what some of them are I must somehow interpret them in stupid words, alway difficult, frequently impossible.
Please remember that, in dealing with you, who are a thousand miles away, we are reduced to using dumb words. We can not use the vastly more canny intuition.
Your last statement: " It is when this distinction is not made, when one equates believing with being absolutely, indubitably certainty, that believing becomes dangerous.
That Is horribly, tragically entirely true.
First, you say that believing expresses uncertainty and knowing expresses certainty, but then say that believing can express certainty. There is also the fact that what we know can turn out to be wrong, and in those cases are we actually only believing when we think that we're knowing?
The latter is the result of the failure to make the distiction of the former.
Quoting praxis
Right, but as you say, in such cases we only believe that we think we know. The distinction is maintained.
:snicker:
Let us assume...blah blah blah = Let us believe...blah blah blah.
I think you're wrong about this. If we're uncertain about something do we need to confirm this uncertainty, or 'hold it to be true', to ourselves? No.
The expression of belief is nothing more than a sign of solidarity with fellow "believers", and a shared uncertainty is a leash, allowing yourself to be led like a dog.
What does it mean to confirm one's uncertainty? Confirm that you are uncertain? Attempt to eliminate the uncertainty? There are many things about which I am uncertain for which the uncertainty cannot be eliminated. Some of those things seem to be more likely to be true than others.
Quoting praxis
This may be true with regard to some beliefs for some people but not others. There are beliefs that are matters of opinion. There are varying degrees with which one may hold those opinions.
Quoting praxis
Again, this may be true with regard to some beliefs for some people but not others. Without greater specificity this discussion becomes rudderless.
If I accept or trust or think or estimate or conclude or predict that you're telling the truth does that mean that I believe (hold to be true) you're telling the truth? A definition of believe includes the sense of 'feeling sure of'. Does that refer to intuition, the feeling that you're telling the truth but not an assessment based on reason? If that's the case then I could simply say that, that I feel like or intuit that you're telling the truth. It seems the only other way to 'feel sure of' is to hold you as a truth-teller or to have faith in you, to trust you implicitly. I imagine there could be circumstances where I would be forced to trust someone because it's not possible to verify their veracity, but that could be against my will and wouldn't be really 'feeling' or 'holding' their claims.
Did/do you believe it was correct/justified/advisable to fight against the nazis?
When you heard these surrendered soldiers speak the way they did, did that strengthen your belief that you were correct in your personal efforts to stop them from continuing to do what they were doing?
Do you think that it's important to believe IN the justness of a cause if you are going to kill in its name?
Should I stop another from killing someone because I BELIEVE they are not justified in doing so or help them if I BELIEVE their target is an evil nefarious b****** who might also threaten me and those I care about?
If I reject believing IN anything then can I still make judgments on what I consider right and wrong?
How can you build who you are without some kind of foundational beliefs?
Rather, I think the question is how can you build who we are without some kind of foundational beliefs.
Sure, that's just a projection of what I stated. If you have your own foundational beliefs established within then you can start to try to figure out others using that reference. I am not suggesting your own foundations should be utterly chiseled in stone but you have to have some strength in your foundations.
I am a fan of the delphic maxim 'Know Thyself.' Although I would probably add 'before attempting to know others.'
I’m suggesting that it’s not a personal foundation but a group foundation. We don’t need to believe ourselves, do we???
I was correct in my warnings and then the discussion got wilder and wilder and went all over the place.
And got more interesting.
And lots of fun!
Continueing here I will answer some questions.
Did/do you believe it was correct/justified/advisable to fight against the nazis?
Yes I did.
When you heard these surrendered soldiers speak the way they did, did that strengthen your belief that you were correct in your personal efforts to stop them from continuing to do what they were doing?
Yes it did.
Do you think that it's important to believe IN the justness of a cause if you are going to kill in its name?
Yes, I do.
Should I stop another from killing someone because I BELIEVE they are not justified in doing so or help them.
No, I can't stop people from doing things because I am 97 years old and I can't walk.
If I BELIEVE their target is an evil nefarious b****** who might also threaten me and those I care about?
This is heavy stuff. I would have to know you very, very well along with your family and friends over a long period of time in order to be sure that you, yourself, were not delusional.
If I reject believing IN anything then can I still make judgments on what I consider right and wrong?
No. I believe IN hundreds of different things , maybe thousands. I if I should reject all of those things that would turn me mentally into a vegetable with the IQ of a carrot.
How can you build who you are without some kind of foundational beliefs?
I never knew I was building me when I grew up. That was 90 some years ago and I don't remember. But I like the sound of the words.
How can you build who you are without some kind of foundational beliefs?
I am an American and, like most Americans, I got lots and lots and lots of foundational beliefs. I got foundational beliefs I aint even used yet.
But I still can't figure out how we managed to get from the meaning of a single word to carrots and mice.
Please explain.
If by "telling the truth" we're talking about saying what one believes to be true, then yes. If by "telling the truth" we're talking about making true statements, then we're talking about the quality of the person's claim(belief) and not the sincerity of the person.
Indeed.
Agreed. It highlights the importance of having a stringent, prudent, personal standard for what counts as sufficient reason to believe something or other(warrant).
Well, to use a simple analogy. If you want to bake a cake the majority of people will like then pay very careful attention to the ingredients. I know this is open to abuse and such creations as 'Trump/Putin/BoJo cakes' or in the group sense, cult of celebrity/autocratic rule/plutocratic capitalism cake. The group foundation can indeed be made up of mercenaries or duped automatons but I think if you what to create a foundational group that's a force for good in this world, then you need its ingredients to be individuals who care about nurturing, maintaining and progressing the human race as well as making sure that attention to the fate of the human race does not have such side effects as the abuse of natural ecology or the extinction of fauna or the pollution and exploitation of any 'space' beyond the boundaries of Earth.
Quoting Ken Edwards
My question was asking for you to advise those who do have the power to stop such. I was not suggesting that you could personally stop such, although, after a few single malts, you probably could.
Quoting Ken Edwards
I appreciate what you mean but it's no different from your 'when I spoke to some of the German prisoners' memory. Did you know for sure that the comments expressed were supported by every prisoner in that group? It's like that biblical story about sodom and gomorrah. I mean really, that idiotic angel could not find any decent folks at all in either city! I for one, don't believe that biblical BS.
That does not mean I am attempting to invalidate the impression these soldiers gave you Ken I am just trying to use a wider (perhaps I might even risk the word wiser) beamed torch, at those soldiers and what they might have chosen to say to one of their very young captors compared to what they truly felt inside. Can you really trust what traumatised captives say, who perhaps are beginning to realise what duped fools they were and what destruction they have brought down on themselves?
Quoting Ken Edwards
But as a glorious 97-year-old, looking back. Can you see the building methodologies/strategies you employed now?
Quoting Ken Edwards
Quoting Ken Edwards
How do you 'marry' these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints Ken?
Quoting Ken Edwards
:lol: I can only offer the following old observation "Out of little acorns, big oak trees grow!"
This is why I'm also opposed to the idea of "belief". The concept is thrown around too much, also in a way to discredit someone with a more rational and unbiased view of the world. It's easy for them to say "that's your belief" to anyone that doesn't agree with them, and while "truth" is a fluid concept, there are still a lot of methods of arriving closer to the truth than further away from it. That's why I subscribe to the idea of epistemic responsibility. That you have a moral responsibility to investigate your beliefs and turn them into rational conclusions or prove them wrong and accept the rational conclusion taking their place.
Blind belief in a claim is immoral and not investigating it before believing it is immoral. A convincing argument can be temporarily accepted, but never as truth before investigation.
Still trying to work out who those millions were, and why "Belgiums", especially considering that Belgium is actually a country. :chin:
:cool: Aha!
:rofl:
The goal of the listener is typically to understand what was said by the speaker, not to make up its own meaning to the words spoken by someone else.
So what is it you mean or are implying when you use the phrase, "i believe in love.", if it's not that you believe that it exists.
Quoting Fooloso4
Exactly. This whole time Mr. Edward's has been telling us what he believes to be the case. He could be wrong. So if he is wrong that means he cant be describing what actually is the case, but what he believes to be the case. Is Mr. Edward's never wrong?
We can only ever use language to refer to our beliefs/knowledge of what is the case. Whether or not our beliefs/knowledge of what the case is accurate is another story.
TRUTH!
Quoting Ken Edwards
I hope this is said jokingly, I mean "brain cells", right?
Janus you just said: "Anything that is not known but seems reasonable can be accepted and entertained provisionally for pragmatic reasons; no believing needed."
That statement is fundamental and sums up and modifies this entire conversation.
Quoting Janus
If it's not knowledge, such a frame of mind would result in at least two alternatives being tentatively entertained: at minimum, that of X being and that of X not being. How can acting out on any alternative not entail some type of belief that the alternative one acts out on is at least likely true?
As one concrete example, one sees movement in a very dark corner close to oneself outdoors. To one's momentary awareness the movement could at least either be produced by wind-blown debris, like leaves, or else by a small animal, like a rat. Both seem relatively reasonable to yourself and both can be accepted and entertained provisionally for pragmatic reasons; still, one does not know which alternative is true. If one then moves away from one’s position so as to avoid the possibility of contact with a small animal, how can this activity be accounted for in the absence of belief (to whatever extent conscious and/or subconscious) that the movement was likely produced by a small animal (rather than, for example, by wind-blown leaves)?
The same question would also apply to less time-sensitive instances of action in cases where knowledge is not held.
(BTW, I do get the often grave problem of unjustified belief treated as incontrovertible knowledge. But I so far take it that such isn’t equivalent to belief per se.)
Hi univereness. You sent me a big handful. Let m take them one at a time.
You say: "I appreciate what you mean but it's no different from your 'when I spoke to some of the German prisoners' memory. Did you know for sure that the comments expressed were supported by every prisoner in that group?
They were not supported by every member. They were denied by some. It was an issue among them and I got later reports from my interpreters.
But I have since noticed that believing the lies that are told to one or believing two different things at the same time or pretending to believe them or coming to believe ones own lies is, alas, very common every where. My God! - just look at the remnants of the republican party.
Incidently, about your words" "It's like that biblical story about sodom and Gomorrah. I mean really, that idiotic angel could not find any decent folks at all in either city! I for one, don't believe that biblical BS."
Did you ever stop to think that a major crime was commited by God? Anal sex is practiced or experimented with by millions everywhere but God burned to death an entire city including children and dogs in history's biggest single example of murderous arson. God is a major criminal and should receive tens of thousands of murder conviction.
You say "So what is it you mean or are implying when you use the phrase, "i believe in love.", if it's not that you believe that it exists."
I agree that when I use the phrase: "I believe in democracy" there is an implication that that I think the phrase exists but the thrust of my words is my attitude and feelings toward democracy.
Also, if I use any other word or phrase whatsoever or whenever I also imply that the phrase exists. All phrases. Examples. when I say -"I ate eggs for breakfast" I imply that the phrase exists.
Here you underline the message I am trying to send. That the use of the word "believe" is very tricky and should be carefully considered when used.
In your sentence you use two phrases - "believe in" and "believe". I hold that the meanings of these two are totally different. For instance to say "I believe in democracy is not, in the least, the same as saying "I believe democracy which is meaningless.
But several times in this discussion the two different statements seem to be used interchangeably.
I don't get it. Why should anyone joke about "Brain Cells". It is my own brain cells or, more correctly patterns and arrrangements of my brain cells that are typing these words.
You say:" I do get the often grave problem of unjustified belief treated as incontrovertible knowledge. But I so far take it that such isn’t equivalent to belief per se.)
I think that beleif per se would also apply to Justified belief.
Sure. Belief, in and of itself, would also apply to "justified true belief", which is the commonly accepted definition of descriptive knowledge. Which in turn would make belief and indispensable aspect of, at the very least, descriptive knowledge.
This, however, for example does not make "knowledge" equivalent to "unjustified belief treated as incontrovertible knowledge" - even though both make use of belief.
Still, you might have a definition of knowledge in mind which does not make use of belief. In which case, the just mentioned wouldn't apply, granted.
Just in case you are not already aware of this Ken. If you highlight text typed by another member, a small tag appears on the left called 'quote,' this allows you to quote what someone else has typed that you wish to reply to, It saves having to copy/paste etc.
I agree that trying not to be duped by fake news or what is said by nefarious people who pretend to be good people is difficult. It does not turn me away from establishing my own personal belief system it just reminds me to check all sources carefully and be always willing to challenge my own even deeply held beliefs, if new evidence informs me I must, by virtue of its empirical strength.
I have identified my political position as socialist and humanist since my teenage years.
I remain so and consider Tories in the UK or republicans in the USA, political opponents.
Quoting Ken Edwards
If it existed then I would agree it is a monster but lucky for it (god), I, as an atheist am 99.9% convinced that it never has existed. Humans must stop scapegoating gods. The bad things that humans do are down to us, not gods.
Quoting Ken Edwards
I agree that 'I believe' indicates a strong level of conviction but you agreed earlier that you must have a very strong conviction towards a particular viewpoint such as freedom or democracy, if you are willing to kill other humans who try to remove it by force. I would fight against fascism to the death. I would also fight against autocracies/aristocracies/plutocracies/cults of celebrities etc. I would do so because I believe them to be unjust systems.
Prediction, to put it succinctly. This happens whether we like it or not. Our minds are constantly looking for patterns and making predictions.
Maybe you're suggesting that our beliefs correspond to our conditioning, that if we tend to react in a particular way it indicates a belief of some kind. An irrational fear of rats, for instance, means that a person believes that rats are dangerous. This goes against the sense of "holding to be true", however, because there is little if any control over the phobia. Irrational fear is not something that is desirable, and indeed is something that most would rather not hold.
Given what is already pragmatically accepted and entertained as what seems most plausible, then one or other of the alternatives will in turn seem the more plausible. All this against the background of what we always already pre-reflectively know, our "know-how", as embodied beings in a world. This latter kind of knowledge, in distinction to "knowing-that", it makes no sense at all to be skeptical about; any such skepticism is a feigned intellectual posturing in a state of separation from life. This is how it seems to me, in any case, and I accept and entertain it provisionally, until and unless an understanding which seems more plausible comes along.
Quoting Ken Edwards
:cool: Cheers Ken.
:up:
I don't see why the formula could not be: knowledge consists in justified true ideas. If I have an idea that such and such seems to be the case, and I accept that idea as a provisional guide to action, why could that not be counted as knowledge if the idea is both true and justified? Does anything here depend on the psychological fact of my either believing or not?
If I concern myself with thinking in terms of believing, and thus let skepticism or doubt come in, and they always come in as the alter-ego of the spectre of belief, then I can never know, in any absolute sense, whether any idea I entertain about the world is true, and even worse, I can never know whether it is justified either. Yet my never being able to know such things is of no concern if I don't concern myself with believing. and remain satisfied with entertaining.
In the example provided, the mind predicts two conflicting alternatives are possible: wind-blown leaves or a small animal. Also given is that you do not consciously know which alternative is real. To consciously act on either is not prediction: the predictions of if-then are already embedded in each alternative. So prediction as stipulated does not account for why one chooses to act on one alternative but not the other.
Prior to addressing what you’ve stated, I think it's best that we agree upon what terms signify. I’ll start by providing some working definitions of what I understand by “belief”:
-- a belief (a noun) is an instantiation of the activity of believing (a verb)
-- believing can occur in the form of “believing that [the given clause]” or “believing in [the given noun]” or else “believing [the given agent(s)]
-- to believe that [the given clause] is to trust (i.e., hold confidence) that [the given clause] is real and, hence, is to attribute reality to [the given clause] (e.g., I believe that tomorrow will be like today)
-- to believe in [the given noun] is to attribute reality to [the given noun] (e.g., he believes in UFOs), else to [the given noun]’s moral standing or preferability (e.g., she believes in not burning flags), or else to [the given noun]’s ability to accomplish (e.g., I believe in Bill (e.g., in Bill’s ability to finish the marathon)).
-- to believe [the given agent(s)] is to attribute truthfulness to [the given agent(s)]’s claims and, hence, to attribute reality to what [the given agent(s)] claim (e.g., he believed her).
-- hence, common to all three types of belief is some variant of “the attribution of reality to”.
Do you disagree with these definitions, and, if you do disagree, what do you instead recommend?
Indeed, but only after already having a belief system intact. Suspending one's judgment is a metacognitive endeavor. Metacognition is existentially dependent upon pre-existing belief.
Thanks universeness. I did not know that.
We seem to have almost identical political positions. Mine date from the 40's. But I have lived in Mexico and Guatemala since 1955 which experiencec vastly reenforced the validity of those same positions and, of course, taught me many things about the ways and day to day practices of their mild despotism.
For instance upper class Mexicans and the upper levels of the rare middle class are never tortured but the lower classes are routinely and impersonally tortured without exception when they are arrested. The arrests are rarely the results of a police report . but usually result from a denunciation. The reason for torture is that torture is the only information retrieval system that they know of.
I bacame a "Born again athiest at the age of 17
I think you are splitting hairs. Do you believe the words you typed above are correct?
I am encouraged by the thought we would most likely be united in opposition against those who behave the way the Mexican police you describe above, behave.
We will wait in forlorn hope, for an eternity, if we wait for gods to relieve/prevent/stop human suffering and injustice. Only other humans can achieve that.
People of the world, UNITE!
Overall Ken, I think we would be on common ground in many of our viewpoints but I do disagree with your concern over the term 'believe,' regardless of the context of its use.
I am concerned about what people do, not what they think they might do based on their personal beliefs.
It is very important to have adequate checks and balances within our society to prevent any nefarious b****** from gaining power and influence and be able to remove them easily if they become such. All people must be educated to as high a standard as possible, at no cost to them. Money must be removed as the controlling factor for individual lives.
We must insist on equality of status and value for all humans and we must protect all ecological systems. If we achieve that then I think the human race could become a benevolent interstellar species, which exists on many planets. If we don't, then I fear for our survival.
I for one remain confident that humans will continue to improve.
"Anything that is not known but seems reasonable can be accepted and entertained provisionally for pragmatic reasons;" is what it means to believe anything. All you've done is show that you can't escape believing anything.
And you're avoiding the question I posed to you earlier about it means to "believe in" things.
All you're doing is moving goal posts. :sad:
Oh, sorry. I was almost sure that you used "brain cells" in a humoriys way. I could never think that somenone would say seriously that bain cells actually "believe". But now I do. Esp. after your claiming that your brain cells dictate to you what to type and, in fact, force you to do it.
BTW, by saying "my brain cells" I believe you mean that you own --you are the owner of-- a brain with cells, right? Have you ever thought who is that owner?
You asked: “If one then moves away from one’s position so as to avoid the possibility of contact with a small animal, how can this activity be accounted for in the absence of belief (to whatever extent conscious and/or subconscious) that the movement was likely produced by a small animal (rather than, for example, by wind-blown leaves)?”
If a mind accurately predicts the presence of a rat then moving away from it, assuming the rat is rabid or whatever, is a good and adaptive prediction. Otherwise it’s a prediction error.
If there were time to think before acting, the musophobic could consider their options, to fight or flee, or come up with some other plan, all the while fully realizing that there may not be a rat rustling in the leaves. Again, it’s not necessarily an idea or prediction that’s ‘held to be true’.
Beliefs are ‘held to be true’, which means that experience or evidence that may disprove a belief is resisted. We don’t necessarily resist new information, clearly. The shared knowledge and fictions that bind us can be accepted and entertained provisionally for pragmatic reasons; no believing needed.
While it may not have been the best example I could have offered, you’re still overlooking a key ingredient that was stipulated from the beginning: lack of knowledge. You do not know what caused the movement in the dark corner. You haven’t clearly seen anything but a movement; you haven’t seen a small animal, never mind seeing a rat. But you’re mind inferentially predicts that the movement might either have been caused by wind-blown leaves or by a small animal (but not both). Which one is real is to you not known, and hence not a psychological certainty.
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BTW, I’ll ask that you also comment on the working definitions I’ve provided of belief in my previous post – which culminate in stipulating that all forms of belief in one way or another consist of “the attribution of reality to”. This so as to arrive at a common understanding of terms.
Going by what was so far offered, if one attributes reality to the contents of a prediction, then the given prediction will by default be believed - thereby constituting one form of belief. Otherwise one deems the prediction fallacious and, by the same count, does not believe - i.e., does not attribute reality to - it.
Then, going back to the example of the two alternative predictions - that of either wind-blown leaves or of a small animal (to make this explicit, which are to be understood as mutually exclusive) - it's to be understood that they cannot both be real. And again, one does not know which one is real. If one acts accordant to one of the two predictions - thereby evidencing via action that one attributes reality to the prediction’s contents and, hence, believes the prediction’s contents - then one at the same time dispels the other prediction's validity (here, at least momentarily disbelieving the other prediction’s contents).
… I'm thinking this holds unless you find the offered definitions of belief to be fallacious. In which case, what do you instead recommend?
(Note: “X is held by S to be true” is equivalent to “X is held by S to be conformant to what is real” which to my mind in turn is equivalent to “S attributes reality to the contents of X" - this example being just one of many variant forms of belief.)
First remember that I, AM my braincells.They are me. Oops, not completely so. I am lots more. I am also a person with feet, knees head and shoulders as well as a brain. My brain contains brain cells that combine and recombine into patterns that produce electrical currents . We call that combining activity. "THINKING" or "Cogitating". That's what thinking is. It is an action, an activity performed by my greasy brain cells.
But my conscious mind, my word mind, which is that part of the brain located just above my eyes has created another me, a WORD ME, that only exists as words. Where does my word mind find those words? It finds them In my "vocabulay" which is stored just above my eyes in a vocabulary storage bunch of brain cells that function like a trunk in the attic.
And that "word me" right now, is typing these words that are being sent to you using the internet.
You are an equivalent "Word You". Please sit up straight and listen. But to do that typing I have to have fingers and the fingers have to be directed and controlled muscularly by another, non-word using part of my mind called the "subconscious mind".
Got it? I hope so because I don't.
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I can't ask for more than that Ken. :blush:
You say: "Still trying to work out who those millions were, and why "Belgiums", especially considering that Belgium is actually a country."
I don't remember the history very well and I might make some mistakes but here is the way I remember it.
In the first world war, Germany attacked France with its army. Belgium is a very small country that is located partly between France and Germany. In order to get to France Germany attacked and occupied Belgium.
During the subsequent occupation it was reported internatioally, perhaps falsly, that Germany was very cruel to Belgium citizens and mistreated or murdered many.
As individuals, Germans liked and admired Belgiums. In order to maintain the moral of German soldiers the German government tried to convince Germans soldiers and citizens thst Belgiums were very bad guys and did very bad things like killing babies.
I hope I got it right.
I hope you will forgive my small correction Ken. Feel free to call me bad names if you want as I feel I am being a bit cheeky in correcting a 97-year-old on a relatively unimportant contextual/spelling issue, when what is important, is the historical example you are using to illustrate your point.
Anyway It should read 'very cruel to Belgian citizens'. People from Belgium are called Belgians not Belgiums. I hope you will forgive my impudence!
Tangentially, to clarify something on my part in case this does need clarifying:
Beliefs - at least as I’ve so far tentatively defined and understood them - which will never waiver irrespective of evidence or reasoning will presume an unwarranted infallibility. And I again fully agree with @Ken Edwards that such a species of belief is most often, if not always, detrimental to at the very least an accurate understanding of reality. But the observation of this species of belief sometimes occurring in others does not signify that all beliefs are thereby just such a species of belief. Hence my disagreements in this thread.
(To my fallibilist mind, the alternative is to hold all beliefs to at the end of the day be fallible, and thereby remain open to revising them if evidence or reasoning gives warrant to so doing.)
I know that is the way things seem to me; there is no belief involved.
Quoting javra
I don't disagree with the definitions. Believing something is "holding it to be true". That is not what I'm talking about; I'm talking about entertaining the idea that seem most plausible, not holding ideas to be true.
Quoting creativesoul
It seems to me most plausible to think that judgements are made on the basis of, abstracted from, embodied precognitive orientations to the world. I don't know if that is true, but I accept it as a working model until and unless something that seems better shows up.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, believing something means holding it to be true. The only things I hold to be true are the things I know. There are things we know, which cannot honestly be doubted by anyone; and I don't count such things as being matters of belief. Matters of belief are things we hold to be true despite the fact that they can be doubted. If we don't hold any such thing to be true then we can't rightly be said to believe anything, as I see it. How can you be wrong about something which is merely a matter of definition?
“Most plausible” to me signifies “most likely to be real or conformant to reality”; to deem X most plausible is hence to provisionally accept X’s reality, thereby constituting a belief.
How can S deem X plausible without deeming X to be likely real or else likely conformant to what is real? Thereby in some way attributing reality to X, which would then be an act of believing.
For instance, to believe that extraterrestrial intelligence occurs and that humans therefore are not the only sapient species in the universe is neither a) to know that extraterrestrial intelligence occurs nor b) to be uncertain and fully agnostic about the matter but, rather, c) to deem its occurrence most plausible - hence most likely real.
In short, how else should I understand “plausible” in the contexts we’re using?
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To address a previous notion, a justified and true idea that one cognizes but does not hold to be true is not a personal instance of knowledge. As one example, a theist may hold the idea of atheism, may be aware of the justifications for it, and it might in fact be the case that atheism conforms to what is real; still, if this theist doesn’t hold the idea of atheism to be true, this justified and true idea of atheism which the theist holds awareness of will not be an instance of the theist’s knowledge. On second thought, if you deem that it is not possible to either know that there is no divinity or else that there is divinity, the same argument can be presented of numerous other propositions, such as that of “the house is over the hill”: the idea might be justified and true, but if one doesn’t hold it to be true then it cannot be something which one knows.
As I said, it all depends on how you define belief. Deeming X to be most plausible is not the same as X seeming most plausible. My point is simply that I know X seems most plausible to me, but I don't deem it to be most plausible, per se, because there are no absolute criteria for "most plausible". There is thus, no need for believing anything.
To put it another way, I don't see it as having anything to do with "reality"; I think that term is altogether too overblown. "The most plausible" is just what seems to be the best explanation; the one that fits best within a general network of perspectives that I find explanatorily workable.
I guess the example is unclear because it lacks specificity. The unknown critter is referred to as both an experience-based prediction and also an inference. In the example, I assume that something in the environment, some pattern of sense data, subconsciously resulted in a prediction that a small animal may be present, even though it couldn't be verified visually or otherwise. After the prediction was conscious it could then be consciously considered or reasoned with. At that point, other information may come to mind, like that there's been an increase in rat sightings in the area because of a nearby construction project, for example. That may favor the conclusion that there is a small animal. IN ANY CASE, there's no reason to "hold it to be true." More evidence to the contrary conclusion, all things being equal, would not be resisted.
Quoting javra
I think belief is all about the 'holding to be true', which is really about holding to shared meaning and identity. We can provisionally accept and entertain both knowledge and fiction for pragmatic reasons, but we don't need to maladaptively hold to them.
Example:
We provisionally accept and entertain the fiction that a $100 bill has value beyond its physical properties, but under different circumstances, like if we were stranded on a desert island with a group of goofy castaways, we would no longer accept or entertain the fiction.
Best explanation for what if not for what is real or else what is really the case? But if you think the notion of reality is too overblown, even though I disagree, I won’t argue with you.
Quoting praxis
There were two competing alternatives rather than the one scenario of an unknown critter. Then again, I don’t get how experience-based predictions can be anything other than inferences based on some experience.
Maybe it’s just me not being up to par. All the same, I’m going to likely call it a day.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the mountains
- My Fair Lady
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you ask for
- Rolling Stones
A penny saved is a penny wasted
- Benjamin Franklin
Between these three examples I think it’s likely that you’ve just experienced at least one prediction error. The error didn’t occur because of good or bad reasoning but simply because the examples don’t follow a pattern that you’ve been conditioned to recognize.
This to me is a crucial prerequisite to all beliefs. Believing is not the problem. Even belief held with such fervor that it might even be labeled obsessional. Such strongly held beliefs can be great motivators for the good as well as the bad. I hold a very very strong belief that a system that creates rich people and poor people is fundamentally unjust and must be defeated. But if you hold any belief, including that one as a belief that is absolutely unchallengeable and if you claim your belief was always true, is true and will always be true then you are not a balanced individual. You must be willing to look at valid empirical evidence that suggests a particular belief you hold may be flawed, no matter how deeply it runs through you. Otherwise, you are a fool, who can and will be infected by the viewpoints of nefarious b*******.
What is the difference between you knowing something and the way something seems to you?
What is the difference between the way things seem to you and you having a delusion or hallucination?
What terms can we use to refer to the way things seem to you and the way things are? Belief and Reality.
What is the difference between belief and knowledge? Belief is when you only have an observation OR reason to support a particular view. Knowledge is when you have both observation AND reason to support a particular view.
I don't agree. I think that there are ways of using "belief" and related terms that make for a more holistic and consistent discussion. I think that not only does a clear use of these terms lead to a better understanding of what is going on here, but that it will better support the intuition you express in the OP - that excessive fervour leads to immoral acts.
So if you will bear with me I'll outline a grammar that will clear up some of the issues. Set aside your previous notions for a bit and consider this alternative.
We can differentiate between some statement being true, and our believing that it is true. This is a commonplace; it's a distinction worth making because it allows us on occasions to be wrong - for example when you believe the keys are in your pocket but the truth is they are still in the locked car, or when what you took to be an ass is actually a mule. Without this distinction we could not differentiate between what we hold to be the case and what is actually the case, and hence we could not correct our view of how things are.
What this shows is that we need the notion of "belief" in order to make a basic distinction between what we think is true and what is actually true.
There's a myriad of debates here, of course, concerning those who mistakenly hold that what we think is true is what is actually true, as if we were omniscient, or those who think that we can never be certain of our beliefs, as if that made them all false, and so on. Doubtless there will e replies to this post arguing for these oddities. In some cases they are correct, in others wrong, but generally they must accept the distinction between belief and truth in order to make their case. So that distinction stands.
It's also apparent that there are some things that we must set aside from doubt, in order to get on with our lives. You can't make a pot unless you set aside any doubts you might have as to the clay or the wheel. Such things are taken as givens. We might doubt them, as when a batch of clay turns out not to be up to the task, or a wheel refuses to turn, but we bring such things into doubt only as we have reason to do so. So while we might doubt almost anything, we take most things as granted.
Talking at this level, the notion of "belief" is clear, and necessary. And at this level it is absurd to claim one believes in nothing; even stating that one believes in nothing is a performative contradiction, since it displays confidence in the words used in order to make the very statement.
There's no mess here.
It might also be clear that very few of the things one holds to be the case are ever made explicit. We tend only to set out our beliefs when there is some question as to their truth. That, indeed, is the very point of differentiating beliefs from truths. For the most part our beliefs remain implicit. Nevertheless, it remains possible to set out our beliefs in words, should the need arise.
It's also apparent that you and I and anyone else hereabouts will agree on the vast majority of beliefs. While we might disagree as to the finer points of aesthetics, we will agree that there are pots and wheels and dishes and shelves and so on. We tend to emphasis our points of disagreement because these are the most interesting.
All this by way of showing that the notion of belief is inescapable, pivotal, and vital. So if someone proposes that they do not have beliefs, they are not using "belief" in the relatively clear way set out here.
Most of the discussion in this thread stems from failing to make the distinctions noted above, or form failing to grasp their consequences.
I'll pause there for comment.
There are two kinds of doubt: ordinary doubt and radical doubt. When it comes to taking the perspective of radical doubt, pretty much anything can be doubted, which means we don't know anything, or at least we don't know that we know anything. But that kind of artificial doubt is abstract and has nothing to do with our actual lives.
When it comes to our actual lives there are countless things which are beyond reasonable doubt, and we can think of these as knowledge. If something is open to reasonable doubt then it is not knowledge. In such cases there will be two or more alternative possibilities, and we can either adopt one and hold it as a belief, or suspend judgement and accept provisionally what seems most likely to be the case or what seems most workable. We don't have to believe such acceptations, we merely have to entertain them.
That's the way I see things, and it seems to be consistent and to work for me. I don't require or expect anyone to agree with my view.
The best explanation is what makes a situation seem most intelligible. You say "what is real or else what is really the case"; why not just 'what seems most likely to be the case'?
We know countless things like "Paris is the capital of France", "The Earth is roughly spherical", "There is a greater surface area of water than of land on our planet", "Humans are usually bilaterally more or less symmetrical", "There are many muscles in the human face" and so on and so on. It makes no sense to doubt such things, so they count as knowledge, and I find it muddies the waters to speak about believing such things; we can be said to not merely believe, but to know them on account of there actually being no reasonable doubt.
Now, think of a criminal trial. The purported criminal is found guilty or innocent depending on which is considered to be beyond reasonable doubt. But we maybe in many cases can't count this conviction as knowledge because the purported "beyond reasonable doubt" may be more or less based on wishful thinking or prejudice.
Spelling is not that impotant. More important are things that people ask you (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/703817) and you chose to ignore. Most probably because you don't want to change your beliefs.
Indeed, beliefs are very strong, sometimes stronger than knowledge.
I don't see how it necessarily follows. If I have a method of cleaning windows, I can conceive of a better method that might one day become apparent. I don't have to have a concept of the method by which windows are cleaned in order to have a concept of a better method by which windows are cleaned.
Likewise with your keys. I can have a a concept of a better assumption as to where the keys are without having to have a notion of the truth of where the keys are. It seems to me to be perfectly possible to use the idea of better models absent of any notion that one such model is the model.
There is the more nuanced observation that the capital of France is 'F,' personal interpretation can always offer a different perspective.
Too vague. What do you mean, "actual lives"? There are many that seem to spend much of their "actual lives" on these forums expressing doubt in "radical" ways. We have experienced what it's like in holding a particular view only to find it was wrong, and this happens during our "actual lives". These types of "actual life" experiences are what cause us to question everything we know. So, I don't see a distinction you're making between radical and ordinary doubt. Doubt is doubt. It's just that we can doubt different things with different degrees. Questioning our purpose and whether we know anything is just like any other doubt. It's just that questioning foundational knowledge brings everything that was built on that foundation into doubt as well.
Quoting Janus
I don't see how this is any different than the way I explained the differences between belief and knowledge. When others disagree with your view does that not instill doubt in your views? I know that it makes me want to understand the reason for their disagreement and whether or not it is a valid disagreement.
Belief is like holding a view without either some observation or logic to support it. Belief in God is an example. Also what some theory of physics seems to show without having been verified by observation would also qualify as a belief. Only when the belief has been shown to stand up against observational AND logical inquiry can it be categorized as knowledge.
but then some beliefs....
Quoting Ken Edwards
Quoting Ken Edwards
Quoting Ken Edwards
Quoting Ken Edwards
and then there must be many beliefs that lead you to trust the sources of information that led to these assertions of belief.
At least, I am assuming you believe your statements in the OP to be true.
A pointless comment eliciting this otherwise pointless response.
Quoting Harry Hindu
They don't live their radical doubt and that is what I mean by "actual lives".
Quoting Harry Hindu
In that case you'll agree with me that it is better not to speak of believing things about which there can be no serious doubt, but of knowing them, and you'll also agree with me that when it comes to things we don't know, there is a distinction between adopting and holding one of the alternatives and declaring it to be the truth, and remaining undecided or provisionally adopting what seems most plausible, and seeing how it pans out.
Further, in your example, windows and dirt are taken as given. Hence in your example, Ken's "I carefully avoid believing anything at all" is again an error, since in order to better clean a window, there must be a window.
This leads back to our agreeing that neuroscience assumes that there are brains. Something must be taken as a background against which belief, window cleaning or neuroscience might occur.
Jane asks, "Where are the keys?"
Bob replies, "The keys are in my pocket."
"Are you sure? Please check."
Bob probes his pockets and says, "Huh, I must have left them in the car."
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Bob thought the keys were in his pocket but they were actually in the car. :chin: Or perhaps they were not in the car either. Maybe after searching for a while Bob remembered that he put the keys on the upstairs dresser.
It would seem that Bob never needed to declare his belief or hold any location of the keys to be actual or true. It would be rather odd and unhelpful if he did insist that the keys were in any of the places that they weren't, actually.
I can't think of any situation where a declaration of belief is required.
I see. I thought your response to the OP was a good summary of why it's mistaken, but I didn't see where 'truth' came in - hence the query.
I am as baffled by the "I don't believe anything" species of epistemology as I am by the "I assess everything rationally and derive thus the 'truest' facts". They seem as gross a misunderstanding of the dynamic and collaborative nature of belief as each other. The former (the example of which we have here) seems the more eccentric of the two. I can't think of a reason why anyone would want to profess such a view. I get that it makes one sound ever so slightly Solomonesque - devoid of bias - which I think is the root motivation behind claims to epistemological purity, but surely this self-image of dispassion is only of any use if others are tempted to enquire of your judgement at some future time. At which point our OP would have to say "I don't judge"... Anyway, idle psychologising.... Thanks for the clarification.
The comment to which you're replying was about the notion of belief, not the declaration of one.
It's not required. Not sure why that is relevant.
It is the case that Bob believed the keys were in his pocket, yet his belief was false.
If we instead look at it being true that the keys were in his pocket, this could not be false without a contradiction. If it were true, Bob could not be wrong.
I guess I am not sure what your point is.
Thanks.
Quoting Isaac
I suppose that historically the idea that we ought not believe anything derives from the notion that doubt is a virtue. It is found in the naive version of fablsificationism, which supposes that no statement is ever proven, only disproven. It is implicit in Pragmatism, with Peirce's odd notion of truth only being approached asymptotically. It's in some coherence epistemologies, which claim that statements are never true, only consistent with other statements.
All of these grossly oversimplify the situation.
Note the ought not? This is supposedly a moral position, as can be seen in the OP. Hence such discussions are fraught with over-reaction.
Which could lead to all sorts of poor heuristics. We don't really have a quality like doubt. We engage in an activity of doubting. So, how often? on what grounds? in what way? what should trigger this activity? did the person who came up with that as a virtue doubt their conclusion? how much? how often?
The intuition behind it- not believing something without good reason - is Ok in some places, but absurd in others. It works in the examples given in the OP, but not in the examples you and I provided. And it needs to be balanced by the contrary that one need not doubt without reason.
The next step us to map out the relations between truth, belief, certainty and faith. Seems as there is some confusion as to the last two. There's a tradition that treats certainty as what is not subject to doubt, and faith as belief not despite doubt, but in the face of the facts. But small steps.
As to have faith you have to have the certainty that your belief equals with the truth.
Knowledge, Belief, and Faith.
[quote=The Architect]There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.[/quote]
society functions on belief between people.
it would be extremely difficult for society to function with zero belief if not impossible.
first of all nobody would believe into government therefore it must be removed which leads to anarchy.
this is extreme ofc. but if there is zero belief that's extreme.
Unavoidable, I think. As I've said before (only a little tongue in cheek) most epistemological theories are just various attempts to find a 'bigger stick' with with to beat those whose opposition to one's own beliefs is an impediment. The attempt to remove one's stick is understandably resisted.
Despite my sympathy with the human-scale realism of a colloquial definition of 'truth' I can see how even that has it's appeal to the stick-wielders; an accessible truth means that you might well be the one who's got it. There's an undeniable psychological appeal to that. Both Peirce's truth and falsification makes truth unavailable to anyone; the same property which makes it, ironically, pragmatically useless as a term is also the one which makes it psychologically unappealing (it's pretty useless as a 'stick').
Quoting Janus
As I pointed out in my previous post, there are instances in our actual lives where we have discovered that what we thought we knew was wrong. So it seems to me that there is no knowledge involved, only beliefs.
It is not unwarranted for the one who believes. Maybe for an outsider seems like that indeed, but not for the one who has actual faith on something. Though the link you provided didn't open to me by the way.
It's relevant because shared belief is the heart of the OP and the reason we're discussing this.
Quoting Banno
Is it a matter of belief or was he simply misremembering their location? If he reached for his pocket in effort to use his keys, does that count as an explicit expression of belief? When a plant bends towards the sun is that an explicit expression of belief that the sun is in a particular location?
I think that my car keys are currently in the car but I'm not sure. I accept and entertain that's where they are provisionally for pragmatic reasons; no believing needed.
I have thousands of beliefs. Most of them are intuitional but unfortunately
I can not express any of them to you because this correspondence is purely verbal.
I am interested in your knowing or perhaps feeling that I can't change certain beliefs. Perhaps I can. Try me out. Could you please phrase one or two of them for me to tackle?
Thank you in advance.
Also at JStore
And there is a longer thread on it here.
The epitome of faith is unshaken belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is supposed by some to be a virtue. It isn't.
Why would that follow? Do you suppose that only beliefs that have been made explicit can be shared? But that's not right. Sure, any belief can be made explicit - if not, then it's not a belief, but instead an intuition or an inclination or a "feeling".
Quoting praxis
You are supposing he misremembered his car as his pocket?
Quoting praxis
You are doing no more here than substitution "think" for "belief" in order to defer the rejection of a better grammar. The fact remains that we use belief in our characterisations of our behaviour. That you can construct locutions that talk about our beliefs without making use of the word "belief" has no bearing here.
Whatever criticism you are trying to make remains unclear.
We fail when we believe too much, for then we believe things that are not true. We fail when we believe too little, for then we may miss what may be important.
There is a place of balance between credulity and skepticism.
The kinds of things I have listed as knowledge cannot be seriously doubted, let alone discovered to have been wrong.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
For me the proper attitude is to be mindful of as much as possible so as not to miss anything important, and to provisionally accept, not to believe, anything which is could be subject to reasonable doubt, but which is commonly held to be the case. The latter includes much of science obviously. So, for example I provisionally accept tectonic plate theory, which means that I acknowledge that it might turn out to be false, but I certainly don't believe it is true.
I'm not sure what you are asking, Ken. I don't know what you count as your "intuitional beleifs" so I can't test you on any of them. I don't think I have said that beliefs cannot be changed; I think they can. One might be a believer in Christianity, for example, and then later become an atheist.
What I have said cannot be changed is what we know, for examples that humans usually have two legs and two arms, are roughly bilaterally symmetrical, that Paris is presently the capital of France, that there are oceans on Earth, and mountains, and deserts, and many kinds of animals and plants.I am saying it is better not to speak of 'believing' in such cases, but of knowing, and reserve 'believing' for religions and ideologies, for things which can reasonably be doubted and about which, in consequence, there may be much disagreement in the community.
Indeed, and I think Janus described it most succinctly.
Quoting Janus
Meh.
And it is not the same as "There is a place of balance between credulity and skepticism".
A belief is something you take to be true. So you provisional believe tectonic plate theory. Again, so what. All you are doing is not using the word "belief" when setting out your beliefs.
As if a provisional belief were not a belief.
That means that we are forced to hold all reasonable unknowns to be true. That we are forced to feel confident in them. That doesn't make sense.
If you told me that you're wearing a green shirt I would certainly accept and entertain your claim. There would be nothing unreasonable about it. I would not hold it to be true, however. If someone asked I'd probably say something like, "Banno said he's wearing a green shirt."
Quoting Banno
Were is this ballance then?
The thing is that they don't consider them as "evidence". They don't recognize them as such, despite for an outsider seem like evidence indeed.
They will always find a way to overcome these evidence as not to shake their own faith. Even a silly way would be enough for them.
These evidence probably were already there from the very beginning, even when they started to form their beliefs that they should have faith on "whatever". So doesn't really matter to them.
Quoting Banno
Usually these "some" are those who actually ask for people's faith.
And are they right? What do you think?
I think you should read the article before critiquing it.
How does this "force" you to do any such thing? Quoting praxis
Risible. You " accept and entertain" that my claim is true.
Hence you believe the claim, even if only provisionally.
Quoting praxis
Now that is a better question. I hope you do not expect a simple answer.
Say that I forgot where my keys are. There are many many reasonable places where they could be. According to you, I must have confidence (beleive) that they are in every reasonable place that comes to mind. How does that make sense?
I can't see how this related to anything I have said.
Why would I be committed to such an oddity?
Ah - seeQuoting Banno
There is a difference between being certain and simply believing.
Well I guess it depends from the evidence and from the kind faith that someone has. So each case is different. If for example someone's faith goes against scientific evidence then no he isn't right. It's pure bullshit for me. But what can you do? His desperation to have faith on something overcomes reason and logic. That happens to most people.
Quoting Banno
Possible, but is it possible to have also faith on it without being certain? Don't know. Certainty seems to me as a requirement for actual faith.
Quoting Banno
You're saying that all reasonable unknowns can be believed (accepted as true; feel sure of the truth of) provisionally. If I've forgotten where my keys are, how can I believe that they are in every reasonable place that comes to mind?
Quoting Banno
It is not possible to believe something without feeling certain about it. If you don't feel certain about it, then you doubt it and you're not really believing it, but vacillating.
Do you have to do something?
Well actually not really.
There is a reason we make the distinction between believing something and being certain of it. It is often useful for us to make that distinction.
Conflating certainty and belief bring about the confusions displayed here.
Here is the distinction as it is commonly made:
One may believe and yet still think one might be wrong.
To be sure, the defence of my position here is simply that this is a distinction worth making, because it clears up many a philosophical mess.
Have a look at the Kenny article. The first page explains all this quiet succinctly.
Holding something to be true just is holding that it could not be false. You are contradicting yourself.
Quoting Banno
No, one may advocate a view which one acknowledges may be wrong because it seems the most likely to be right; that does not constitute believing it is right, but thinking that it seems more likely to be right.
Your "grammar" is too ambiguous for my taste
Ken admonishes those who believe, claiming that belief is a confusing notion and that we ought avoid it.
I think he is right in much of what he says, and that it is in agreement with the Kenny article; but that what he says is poorly expressed.
If one replaces "belief" in the OP with "certainty", we get something much clearer. So "[s]Believing[/s] Being certain of something can be extremely dangerous and can frequently be described as evil behaviour." - that is much the line taken by Kenny.
Rubbish. It's common to treat things as true, even though we might be wrong. I believe the keys are in the tray, even though I might be wrong. I believe you have the capacity to understand this simple point, but I may be mistaken.
You may be making the error described by Kenny in the second paragraph of the article:
Quoting Kenny
but with "believe" in the place of "know" You seem to think that what one believes is true, one believes is necessarily true. That's wrong.
This is a distinction worth making, but which was not made in 's OP.
The first makes sense. The second is a contradiction.
You're conflating the possibility of being wrong with the acknowledgement of the possibility of being wrong; that's the ambiguity of your position right there.
Seen again here:
Quoting Banno
What one believes is not necessarily true, of course, but one believes that it is necessarily true, which means that one cannot acknowledge that it might be false without ceasing to believe it. Take as an example, say someone believes there are living beings on Mars; not merely that there are likely to be, but that there are; then one cannot acknowledge that there might not be, although of course one could acknowledge that there might not have been, but that is not the same.
No. I believe that the keys are in the car. I do not believe that it is necessarily true that the keys are in the car.
The confusion is yours.
The keys could be in many places that you could think of, all of which would be reasonable places for them to be. You can't feel sure that they are in every reasonable place.
If you were a competent user of English you might believe the keys to be in the car while not being certain of it. Your terminology leads to the confusion in the OP.
You are failing to make a distinction that is useful, and trapping yourself as a result.
They could be in any of a variety of places, but they are believed to be in the car.
So what. You line of thought remains obscure.
Quoting Banno
Both work fine.
Simply that things, like the location of keys, can be accepted and entertained without feeling sure about them. We can also feel certain about the location of keys. Further, we can have irrational beliefs about the location of keys.
On the back foot, with no argument, yet still asserting? I've shown the ambiguity in your terminology; can you show the purported confusion in mine; can you spell it out clearly? Your terminology may be closer to common usage, but in my view that says nothing to recommend it, since we all know there are many ambiguities in common usage.
Quoting praxis
Exactly. Of course one may believe they are in the car, and one may be wrong; but unless one feels certain they are in the car (which in most cases would be unwise) then it is confusing to talk in terms of believing they are there, as opposed to merely thinking it most likely.
Are there degrees of certainty? Cuz it seems that would solve the problem. Colloquially: mostly sure, 90-99% sure, 100% sure....
Or is certainty always 100%?
I don't disagree. Indeed, the grammar proposed here makes it clear that one can believe without being certain.
Quoting praxis
Yep.
I'd say there is certainty and then there are degrees of uncertainty; which just means that you are not certain, but that whatever it is that is at issue seems to be more or less likely.
Well, no; quite the reverse.
Here it is again: There is a common distinction made between being certain of something and believing it. Your account denies this distinction.
You are not very good at this stuff.
I still don't understand how that can be the case, and for some reason when I ask about this you do not answer.
I can't believe (feel sure) that my keys are in various places at the same time. Rather, I can entertain the thoughts of them being in various places.
There are degrees of belief - from impossible through possible to certain.
One might colloquial call these degrees of certainty.
I don't see why one would suppose such a thing. It seems there is a step in your reasoning that I have missed. Something like, that instead of "If the keys are not in the car then they must be somewhere else" you suppose "If the keys are not in the car then they must be everywhere else".
Fixed.
They could be in various places. I can entertain thoughts of where they might be. I can't feel sure or certain about every place that I imagine, can I?
You are not very good at reading or at presenting arguments without resorting to trying to belittle your opponents. I have already made it clear that I draw a distinction between feeling certain and being certain. We can only be certain of what we know, but we can feel certain of what we believe, even though there can be no certainty that it is correct. To be certain of what we know means that there can be no doubt, not merely that I have no doubt. So there can never be no possibility of doubt about anything believed, even though there may be no possibility of your doubting it. (And if you do have doubts about something then to that extent you don't believe it).
That's appalling.
You're not being clear. Also, I revised the post a couple of times.
Unfair. :wink: So where are we up to? What would you have me re-read?
Here:
Do we agree that there is a problem with the second sentence, but not with the first?
Completely agree with Janus here.
This:
I believe the keys are in the car, but I might be wrong
I am certain that the keys are in the car, but I might be wrong.
Do you agree that there is a problem with the second sentence, but not with the first? Am I wrong here, and if so, how?
Do you think there is a distinction to be made between believing and being certain?
You shouldn't be surprised as it's a fact-based assessment. Like when you started a thread called The Idiot's Argument and called all comers who didn't agree with you an idiot. The past isn't finished with you.
I forget who said it: You might be finished with the past but the past isn't finished with you.
Edit: turns out it's from the movie Magnolia where they try to claim it's from the Bible.
"And the book says, 'We may be through with the past, but the past isn't through with us.'"
Having lost my keys, I can imagine them being in three different locations without feeling sure about them actually being in any of the different locations that I imagine. I could not believe (feel sure) that they were in all three of the places that I imagine.
I say this to point out that considering different locations is entertaining the possibilities and not believing them.
If I were to look for the keys and found something that gave me a clue to their location, like a note to myself that read "you're getting close", I might be more sure of the location that was nearest to me at that point. Even so, I don't think that I would feel sure at that point. I know myself and I can be pretty unreliable.
If out of nowhere I heard my car being driven away I would feel sure that the keys were in the car, even though I couldn't confirm it.
If at some later date I was reunited with my keys, holding them in my hand I would feel certain of their location.
There's no reason to be surprised, and many reasons not to be.
It seems a reply to your quoting me here:
Quoting praxis
Is there a point of disagreement here?
The etymology appears neck deep in theology.
Perhaps like God, the term is dead.
Etymonline.com also has
I could not find a dictionary that equated "belief"with "certainty", only with trust, confidence and so on. Nothin to support the idea of belief implying certitude.
The latin would be fides, fidelity, again to do with trust and reliability, whereas certanitatem is that which is certain, settled, exempt from doubt.
Hence the distinction to which I would draw attention has a long history.
Have I claimed otherwise?
What I find most problematic with belief is its meaning as described in the etymology: "be persuaded of the truth of" (a doctrine, system, religion, etc.) is from mid-13c.; meaning "credit upon the grounds of authority or testimony without complete demonstration, accept as true"
I'm not at all sure what your position is.
Where are you looking for your etymology? Nothing I have access to has anything like "be persuaded of the truth of...". Checked my SOED, which has no such sense. There is the sense of trusting, then of assenting to a proposition, then the thing believed, and finally a creed. In the etymology I find there is "believe in a thing...", to be persuaded of the existence of, say, ghosts, from Boswell, a phrase using the second sense - assenting to the existence of ghosts.
"credit upon the grounds of authority or testimony without complete demonstration, accept as true" is belief without certainty, which I do not see as problematic.
Yeah, this turn of events from @Janus has surprised me too. I've never heard of "I believe" being equated with "I'm certain", it seemed out of the blue.
Like...
Quoting Janus
I'm quite confused by this introduction of a distinction between what I believe and what I'm merely 'entertaining might be the case'. I don't see any linguistic support for it (who talks like that?), and there's certainly no neurological support for it (it's not how brains work) - so I can't really see where it's coming from.
Unless we are to argue that "I believe the keys are in the car, but I might be wrong" makes no sense at all, then we have to acknowledge that 'believe' ranges across degrees of certainty. One can believe something with a near pathological certainty, and one can believe something as merely being the more likely of two options.
As to...
Quoting praxis
You absolutely could. It's perfectly possible to believe (even to feel sure of) two contradictory things at once, people do it all the time. What one can't do is act on both beliefs, but one can hold both beliefs. Were it not possible, each alternative would have to be completely modelled from scratch in the brain as an when it was needed.
Take the 2020 American presidential election, for instance. Trump was a leader and an authority figure who made a claim that his supporters 'felt sure' was true, despite a lack of supporting evidence. This sort of thing is characterized as a "big lie". You're cool with big lies? This directly relates to Ken Edwards's experience in WW2, btw.
Perhaps you're misconstruing what was said.
Quoting Isaac
Can you give an example?
In my example, there is one set of keys and three places that are imagined they could be located. How could someone feel sure that they are in all three places?
Obviously, we can imagine all sorts of things without believing them.
Like...?
So you're saying that you've never held an idea that you though could not be seriously doubted, yet only to discover later that you were wrong?
Sounds like you're saying that you've never been wrong in your life.
Then I don't really see the conflict with what @Banno is saying. If "feel certain" is just another way of saying "believe", perhaps wanting to emphasise a bit more confidence.
The key is if there's room for doubt. If "I feel certain the keys are in the car, but I'm probably wrong, I've got a memory like a sieve" seems a normal expression to you then 'to believe' entails any amount of doubt.
Quoting praxis
Not really no. The comment was on the presumption of this distinction @Janus was making between a mental state and an expressed belief. A belief as a mental state has no barrier to being contradictory. Beliefs here are simply propensities to act as if some state of affairs were the case and such a propensity is carried in the brain by dynamic networks. Since these are stochastic and unstable, it's perfectly possible to hold contradictory beliefs (propensities to act as if two contradictory states of affairs were the case). In fact, it's quite a normal state.
If you thought to yourself 'now, where's my keys' the image or concept of their location that comes to you would be the result of a resolution of that network at the state it's in at the time.
As for 'feeling sure'... Feelings are all post hoc narratives invented after the event. One could 'feel' anything which makes some sense of what just happened. It tells us absolutely nothing beyond our abilities as storytellers.
Maybe I can help provide a real-world scenario, if I'm following you correctly.
A plant has the propensity to bend towards the sun. With mirrors, or simply turning the plant around if it's in a pot, the plant can be made to bend in different directions. One day at a particular time we can make it bend to the East and the next day at the same time we can make it bend to the West.
One day the plant believes (has a propensity to act) that the sun is in the East and the next day it believes the sun is in the West, dynamically adapting to the circumstances of the moment.
Feelings are narratives? That doesn't seem right.
You might say feelings play a role in the construction of narratives...
A day later I still do not see what you are trying to get at.
Dictionaries provide an outline of the many ways a word is used. One such definition is that "belief" is used as "credit upon the grounds of authority or testimony without complete demonstration, accept as true". I do not see this definition as problematic - it is one of the ways in which the word is used.
That is an utterly different question than whether one ought accept the word of a liar such as Trump.
Your equating to two makes no sense to me.
Quoting Isaac
I'm glad you said that. Nor do I.
Trust you to raise the issue of inconsistency in such an uncomfortable way. :wink: "Uncomfortable" because those with a philosophical inclination tend to take rationality for granted, as if it were impossible to be irrational. And here you are pointing to the fact of irrationality in the way people live their lives. Damned inconvenient.
Philosophers sometimes forget that appeals to rationality are themselves normative. That we are sometimes irrational means we can ask if we ought be rational.
'I believe the keys are likely to be in the car' is more consistent. That is keys being in the car seems to be the most plausible option, but of course they may not be. I cannot, without contradiction, simultaneously believe the keys are without doubt in the car, and believe that that they may not be. If I acknowledge that they may not be in the car, then it would be absurd to firmly believe they are in the car.
I'm not going to explain this again; if you can't see it then that is your loss. No one has offered an actual argument for why my more subtle distinctions re believing are not preferable to the common parlance; riddled with ambiguity as it is. If someone does come up with such an argument then I'll listen, and respond; or concede the point.
Quoting Isaac
This, and the rest of what you say is not relevant to my argument since I am addressing what can be consistently, i.e.' rationally, believed; that is, what can be believed without contradiction.
So we agree that (1) is consistent, (2) is contradictory.
Quoting Janus
You cannot explain it again, since you did not explain it in the first place. This is from one of your first replies:Quoting Janus
This has been shown to be wrong. With it your position collapses.
Interesting you put it like this. Does the plant not move towards the same direction each time and if it must have beliefs, could it not feel it has been moved? :razz:
Quoting Banno
That's discomforting - does it suggest a moral dimension to the use of reason? Do you feel that the use of reason as a foundational principle is tendentious? I imagine postmodernists might say reason is a construct of no particular merit, except when located in the value system of an intersubjective community. Do we forfeit conventional communication if reason is no longer priviledged?
No, (1) as you framed it is the same as (2).
Quoting Banno
I've said plenty to clear up any ambiguity in what you quote there. It should be obvious in light of what I've said that I meant rationally believe. It seems it suits you to ignore that and go for the low-hanging fruit.
To believe something is to feel certain about it, to be convinced of it. The psychological fact that people are able to (irrationally) believe (feel certain about) contradictory things is irrelevant to my argument that it is not possible to rationally be convinced of two contradictories or inconsistencies.
You haven't even attempted, let alone succeeded, in addressing anything I've said.
Hmm, maybe we should switch to people beliefs and try to come up with a real-life scenario where a person has an equal propensity to act in contradictory ways.
Say there's a person who is pro-life and this person has the propensity to act in ways that are in line with the pro-life movement. This person becomes pregnant and due to circumstances that are out of their control they desire an abortion and therefore have the propensity to act in ways that are contrary to the pro-life movement. If they have an abortion does that mean that they never actually believed in the pro-life movement? It would appear so.
If the pro-life belief was fake then what purpose did it serve? I propose that it functioned to help bind a group with shared "beliefs".
It's discomforting perhaps because of the multitude of issues it raises. I'll try to give a sense of what is involved.
First, not all normative evaluations are moral. So one prefers a sharp knife, and makes normative claims such as "I prefer this knife because it is sharp", but that's not a moral evaluation.
We prefer talking with those who are rational, and judge that by, for example, rejecting those who contradict themselves or are inconsistent or incoherent (see for an example). One ought be rational, but is that a moral norm? Or just good manors? or a pragmatic preference - we get more done with those who are consistent?
There is a sense in which irrationality misfires. So if someone claims to have a square circle, we can be confident that they are mistaken, because "square circle" does not refer to anything. But this does not render irrationality in a conversation senseless. I just made use of square circles in the previous paragraph, and hope that it made sense for you. So despite being contradictory and irrational, it can have meaning.
Similarly, from Janus' contention that we must be certain of our beliefs and yet we can acknowledge that our beliefs might be wrong, we can conclude that Janus has gone astray somewhere. The inconsistency shows that something has gone astray in the account, or if you prefer, that there may be a better account, one that is consistent. We ought prefer consistent narratives.
The postmodern position remains a mystery. Sure, rationality is a construct, as is all language and all ubiquitous, enveloping social institutions. It does not follow from this alone that rationality is without merit.
There's something deeply problematic in accepting contradictions. It's shown most clearly in the logical Principle of Explosion, (p & ~p) ? q; that is, if both a statement and it's contradiction are true, anything follows. If one accepts a contradiction, then anything follows. It means that we can accept any narrative we like; and hence we no longer have a basis for any decision making.
Compare the criticism of Feyerabend mentioned elsewhere, that if anything goes, everything stays. If we have no good reasons for changing how things are, we may as well leave them as they are.
So whatever kudos one might gain by cleverly showing that reason is of no merit immediately dissipates, as narrative is then incapable of producing change. To forfeit conventional communication is to accept self-serving bullshit. Post modernism is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Rationality underpins our social institutions, so that a commitment to living in a society is a commitment to rationality. It's not as if morality could be unreasonable...
They changed their mind. It happens. Beliefs are subject to change without notice.
A better example might be a pro-lifer so certain of the sanctity of life that they are willing to kill doctors who perform abortions. Hence, Quoting Isaac
Agree. Thanks for the wonderfully clear and useful overview.
:wink:
My take would be different. We could also say the person was a hypocrite or that they were a case of 'do what I say not what I do.' Nothing could be more human than advocating one thing and doing another. I am not sure this changes what they believe but just demonstrates the gap between theory and practice.
But other than this I get what you are saying.
It's worth pointing out that this is not a rejection of logic but an enlargement of the scope in which we can put formal logics to use. Formal logic provides a template for rationality, but rationality is much broader.
No, you've gone astray again because you conflate being certain with feeling certain. We can only (excluding the absurd kind of radical, artificial doubt) be certain of what we know. But we can feel certain of our beliefs; and in fact if to believe is to be convinced, then that is what it means to believe something; to feel certain of it. Are you eventually going to present any counter-argument or are you just going to go on trying to make it seem like you have one up your sleeve? :roll:
Yes, you're wrong. Here's how:
I am certain the sun will rise in the morning. But I could be wrong.
This does show Banno's lack of distinction between being certain and feeling certain; so yes, he is wrong on those terms. I would say, however, that we cannot be certain that the sun will rise in the morning, but that of course we can feel certain of it; which presents no contradiction or inconsistency with the possibility of being wrong.
So....
I can be certain 2+2=4.
I can feel certain the sun will rise in the morning.
Is that what you had in mind?
How exactly did they change it?
I was thinking of what Isaac said in relation to the location of lost keys and how one could have an equal propensity to act in multiple ways. In the keys scenario, I figured that long term memory would be a key factor. If long term memory indicated that the keys were equally likely to be in two different locations there would be a moment of indecision. Otherwise, one would readily check the most likely location first. Therefore, one way to manipulate ourselves or others would be to alter our long term memories.
Is that how you’re suggesting the pro-lifer can change their mind? To somehow make themselves forget that they are a pro-lifer?
If you could be wrong, then you are not certain.
Perhaps you are using "I am certain..." somewhat irregularly to indicate that the degree of doubt can be ignored. The group of words hereabouts can be used with various and in many cases interchangeable sense. But for our purposes we need something tighter.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
but:
That doesn't seem to help @Janus' case.
Thanks for actually engaging in the discussion with an argument. We could proceed to reconstruct Austin's Kindergarten... the research program he commenced that examined the relations between words. Putting the anal back into analytic.
This definition or rule is fine - it's the beginning and end of your argument.
@Janus's view is fine too.
Quoting Banno
You're ignoring Janus's view in favor of your own. Only natural.
But both are fine.
Not really interested in continuing this. Just passing through.
This?
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
I admit to not having been able to make sense of it. He hasn't made a case for what the difference consists in. Hence my counterexample:
Quoting Banno
Seems to make no difference.
I'll leave that to Janus. I can see an a-priori-a-posteriori-esque tack surfacing. Or a (likely idiosyncratic) codification of degrees of certainty. All of it seems fine to me, but not my cup of tea. We'll continue to believe and to be and/or feel certain, regardless.
Headed back to the coliseum roar.
Have you read Lisa Feldman-Barrett's work?
This is also in accordance with my view. Of course, if you could be wrong then you can't be certain, but you could feel certain (but only if you didn't think you could be wrong).
Quoting Banno
The difference is obvious: by your own argument at the top of this post you cannot be certain the sun will rise in the morning, because you could be wrong. But you can be certain that 2+2=4, because you cannot be wrong about that. Of course you can also feel certain about either example.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
I agree there can be more or less certainty, and I would say that to the degree you feel certain of something, to that degree you more or less believe it.
This analytic stuff is not really my cup of philosophy either, it's mostly pedantry and trivia; I just comment when I think there is some degree of confusion, and I don't like to be misrepresented. But I should learn not to waste time and energy where it will be ill-spent. Casting pearls before swine and all that...
It's good exercise but not a lot of meat on those bones.
Others find it filling.
See @Banno's example here . It gets closer to what I'm saying.
A belief is not simply a mental state alone - mental states on their own are just snapshots of a constantly changing pattern of bloodflow,or action potential, depending on what you're measuring. To say a mental state is a belief requires that it is interpreted as some statement or other in our language. Banno and I disagree (I think) about the extent of non-verbal beliefs, but the crux of the matter is pretty indisputable I think - a belief is a belief that... So, in my terms, a propensity to act as if some state of affairs were the case requires me to define that state of affairs - in language. The brain, however, does not require such states of affairs to be rendered in language on order to be in some state or other.
So our 'pro-lifer' can hold the belief that all life is sacred and also hold the belief that some life is not sacred which he will express (and possibly even rationalise, post hoc) in different ways if and when called upon to do so. If I were to look into his brain (this can't be done yet, of course) and see the tendencies wired into his neural networks, I might render his beliefs as "he believes that all life is sacred, and he believes that all life is not sacred". He would likely not render them that way (seeing how odd it sounds) but the way he renders his beliefs is just a front - a post hoc process designed to make them meet that standard required of rational discussion.
Exactly. That we can say "you're being irrational about this!" entails that it is possible not to be rational. How would one render irrational beliefs into a conversation if it were impossible to even hold them in the first place?
Why didn't you say?
Well. I strongly recommend her work.
This is a good introduction https://www.affective-science.org/pubs/2017/barrett-tce-scan-2017.pdf
It irks philosophers that this is not so.
Well, I'm not sure of the extent of our disagreement either, but further if we do disagree then you are probably right. I've a vague notion of how belief or some correlate might function in neural networks roughly in terms of Bayesian analysis, but it's not as clear as it should be. It seems that a belief can be represented as a non-symbolic pattern in a neural net, and arguably that is a non-linguistic belief, but I would add that one could still put that belief into symbolic form - into words - and hence in that sense all belief is of the form "A believes that p". I'm not sure that any disagreement we might have here would not be about the terms used rather than the nature of belief.
Ha! Yes, the abject (and worsening) failure of the project to get people to think more rationally by using rational argument. Was it Mark Twain who said "you cannot use rational argument to disabuse a man of a notion that was never arrived at rationally in the first place".
Quoting Banno
Ah, yes. I remember now, we did resolve that. How satisfying. I am, of course, seconding the word 'belief' for a purpose it was not originally intended to cover, but now we have discovered these networks which are (in all likelihood) responsible for our tendency to say things like "I believe the pub is at the end of this road", then it seems appropriate to borrow the word 'belief' to apply to them. The limits of our language remain the limits of our world.
The interesting thing that a neural analysis opens is the possibility of two or more renderings of the same neural network. I might say "I believe life is sacred" and you might (looking at my horrendous anti-abortion bombing spree) say "No you don't believe that". What we'd be arguing about is the best rendering into language of exactly the same neural network, where 'best' might be defined by the rules of rational thinking, or ethics, or just social function.
Swift.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
From memory so check it. :smile:
Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.
Or perhaps they never had a tendency to act according to their "beliefs".
I afraid this doesn't pan out, simply because we can 'hold something to be true' despite evidence, despite reason, and despite our own propensity to act as though it were true.
Quoting Isaac
Rather, they can 'hold something to be true' (life is sacrid) and fail to act as though it were true.
The curious thing is that you appear perfectly willing to count emotions as social constructs but not something like beliefs.
To abandon belief is to abandon the influence of a social construct and essentially an effort to abandon tribalism. Belief died with God, in other words.
Sometimes, that's the case. Other times, denial, rationalization, compartmentalization are at work.
Christian women are, officially, pro-life, but many, if not most, also routinely use contraceptives and have abortions, just like non-Christian women.
As far as I know Christians, context determines a lot. There are things they proclaim in official situations, but in some informal situation, they might claim the opposite. The whole discrepancy seems so strategic, so systematic that it's hard to believe there is some mistake or unconscious denial going on.
A similar pattern can be observed with with many other people. For example, a white American supremacist nationalist will show contempt for blacks if the topic of the discussion is US internal matters, but will prefer a black American to a white Russian or a white German if the topic of discussion are matters external to the US.
Ah, yes. I was using the tried and tested policy - if in doubt attribute it to Mark Twain.
How would you know?
Quoting praxis
Odd that you should think that. My main field of research was the social construction of beliefs. What have I said that makes you think I've dismissed it?
It seems to me that this is how (philosophically uneducated) people usually mean it.
Quoting Isaac
But this has nothing to do with rationality, but with the power hierarchy between the people involved, and the implications of this hierarchy. Neither those above oneself nor those beneath oneself are open to being convinced by the arguments one gives.
_He_, the pro-lifer. Oh, the irony.
Well, that still leaves those of one's own class, surely?
Weren't we just talking about pro-lifers getting abortions? I suspect the inverse also occurs, pro-choicers not getting an abortion because it feels immoral, like murder.
If belief is merely a social construct then we can abandon it should the need arise... at the risk of being abandoned by the social group.
All this? Why didn't you read? Anyway, not exactly. It seems to me likely that if someone says 'I feel certain', unless they are critically minded, they will mean 'I am certain'. If they are critically minded, they probably won't say 'I feel certain' at all, but rather, 'it seems to me', unless we are talking about what is "common knowledge". I don't buy the equation of belief with 'acting as if', because I lean more towards thinking there are many things people believe, or at least entertain (which you, at least; seem to count as being the same as believing) which have no bearing on action.
Yes, good exercise, but hardly a satisfying meal. Might as well live on pills and supplements...
Yes.
Interesting article. What I fond problematic is the language that describes the neural net as "representing" how things are, or as "models".
My reading of Evers and Lakomski has taught me that neural networks are not rules-based. Here's an excerpt from a Master's theses I wrote on the topic:
That was written almost twenty years ago, so my recollection of it is not all that clear, but the upshot seems to be that while the output of a neural network at some time can be set out symbolically in a suitable matrix, this can be done only post-hoc.
Now this seems to me to tie in nicely with §201 of Philosophical investigations: that there are ways of understanding a rule that do not involve stating the rule, but enacting it. In effect the matrix states the rule that the neural network enacts.
So the language that describes the neural net as "representing" how things are, or as "models", might be misinterpreted as implying that the neural network somehow symbolises the sounds or images it is processing. There is no symbolic representation within the network.
To be sure, I'm not saying that Feldman Barrett does this, only that it is a possible, erroneous interpretation of what she says.
Any chance that could be translated into English?
Quoting Banno
:snicker:
2. Not all belief is knowledge i.e. some beliefs are not knowledge (missing justification)
But how would you know they actually believed in pro-life/pro-choice beforehand...if they committed no action 'as if' they did?
Quoting praxis
On the contrary, social constructs are some of the most stubborn bits of 'mental wiring' we have. When we say "X is a social construct" we just mean that it is not a biological/physical feature, that society is instrumental in maintaining it by regular feedback. This has little bearing on the ease with which it can be abandoned, some are easy some are hard. What really impacts the ease with which a belief can be abandoned is the degree to which it is embedded with other beliefs rather than its origin.
I suppose the point is that a construct can be seen as a construct and be accepted and entertained provisionally for pragmatic reasons; no believing needed.
Yes, you're absolutely right. One of the main criticisms of the model-based approach is that it is too representational, but I do think that critique misplaced.
The trouble really is translating folk understandings into something cognitive science can work with and unfortunately for that project there's a fundamental problem in that brains don't work like anything we have any folk understanding of such that we can give some comprehensible analogy. When we talk about a 'mental model' of, say, my belief that the pub is at the end of the road, what people most often imagine we're talking about is some part of the brain which is wired such that when "where's the pub?" is entered into one end "at the end of the road" comes out the other, but unfortunately that's not the case. Rather than holding their function in 'wiring', neural networks hold their function in behaviour. They are not 'wired' such as to produce the answer, they 'behave' such as to produce the answer. It's a dynamic system.
What this means is that the same actual 'bit' of brain can hold several different beliefs because the belief is encoded in how that bit of the brain behaves not how it's wired, and it can behave differently at different times. It creates a much more responsive system.
So the question is how some given cortex knows how to behave, how is it that when I try to imagine where the pub is (or start walking to it) I always picture the end of the road? At the moment, the leading answer is in dynamic causal modelling - basically the output of one neural network can be to shape another's function. there's a good paper on it here, if you're interested https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811919310444?via%3Dihub.
The problem is then how to translate that back into any folk understanding of something like 'believing the pub is at the end of the road' or 'being angry', both of which are dealt with by models in the brain, but not in a one-to-one representation.
My preferred method, that adpoted by Barrett, Friston etc is to put an intermediary step in the translation where we talk about 'models of...' between the world we're trying to talk about (the actual pub) and the means by which the brain gets us to walk to the end of the road to get to it (the dynamic neural networks responsible). I think it's helpful because it allows for actual computations of Bayesian updating which does seem to be how the networks are best represented (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02994-2). Others, such as Varela, Hutto, Clark reject the whole use of representational models at all, which I think just ends up nothing but 'just so' stories...but that's just me.
Having said all that, your piece seems to be about language, and although I'm sure it'll be very similar, my experience with all this extends only to belief (mainly behavioural), and a little on perception (about objects) so it may be that language has not need for the whole 'representational model' intermediary step.
What would 'accepting and entertaining' entail that did not constitute a belief?
Having read your post to Banno, you appear to have a wildly different conception of belief than I do.
It seems that way, but I'm still not sure what your conception is.
Can you make sense of, for example...
"I believe the keys are in the car, but I might be wrong, I can't remember"
"John believed the door was locked, so he escaped through the window"
"We all believe larger objects cannot fit inside smaller ones"
"He was walking the wrong way, he seemed to believe the pub was at the top of the hill"
What expression would you replace the use of 'believe' with in those sentences that would be synonymous?
'Certain', or 'felt certain' doesn't fit in 1, 2 or 4.
Pointless to you perhaps but that in no way makes my point pointless, just inconvenient for your point.
It’s like the exchange about the Sun rising or setting when in fact it does neither, it’s the Earth that turns!
Believe it!
Why don't you consult the most accurate and knowledgible of all scientests. The linguists.
Just look it up in the dicionary
I am not saying I am against all this. On the contrary I love hambuerger.
I think there's a difference between expressing a degree of certainty and expressing an intention to hold something to be the case.
Take these two statements for instance:
"Having studied the subject a bit, I think that Democracy is the best form of government for the people that I know of, at least when it has adequate supporting institutions, checks on power, etc."
"I believe in Democracy."
The latter statement seems more like an expression of faith.
Quoting Ken Edwards
Universeness, if your point is that same as Ken's, quoted here, which I agree with, then it is not "inconvenient for my point" at all. I'm still not seeing the relevance, so if you really have a point and want me to get it, you will need to explain.
In what is called"folk psychology", or less prejudicially "intentional discourse", belief is used to explain behaviour. Why did Isaac walk up the hill? Because he wanted to go to the pub; and, he believed that the pub was at the top of the hill. That's sufficient for most of our purposes, and is the prime exemplar of what belief is about.
Neuroscience is looking for a different answer. Why did Isaac walk up the hill? Because the neural patterns in his brain caused his limbs to move in various complex ways.
Here's two descriptions:
Both are of Picasso's Guernica. Somehow matte house paint on canvas is the very same thing as a powerful anti-war statement. How those shades of grey do this is a complex business.
I'd urge caution here. There is a notion of "model" descending from Kant and used in philosophy of mind, and by association in cognitive science, insisting that we only see the world as it is modelled by our brains. That view skips significant steps, the core of which Isaac captured here: Quoting Isaac
I might phrase the point as follows. We do not see the model; rather, the model is our seeing the world. It's not that brains construct models and the mind sees the model rather than the world, but that seeing the world can be described as constructing a model.
Hence, in Davidson's terms, the world is always, already interpreted.
All this by way of avoiding homunculi...
And it is the reason of my interest here:Quoting Banno
Sure, I'm mapping out a series of related terms, on the premise that the apparent confusion stems from lack of precision.
Putting it roughly and briefly,
Making this distinction allows us to see the error in thinking that it is wrong to believe anything, while maintaining the moral rejection of faith in the face of objectionable evidence. So faith in the evil of Belgians or the Nazi Party is objectionable, yet we can still believe that the pub is at the top of the hill.
I still don't see the significance.
Btw, we still have mental representations that are internal and in that way we can 'see the model'. For example, I can imagine a ten legged horse, and can play blind chess. Actually, I can't play blind chess, but I could with training.
Of what?
Quoting praxis
Sure, you can imagine stuff. But you are looking at your screen now; you are not looking at a model of your screen constructed by your brain.
It's constructed in at least the sense that the screen is distinguished from everything else.
Quoting Banno
Parsing statements into actions on purpose.
Can't a person believe a religious truth and not doubt it regardless of the evidence?
I'm sorry, but I still do not have a clear idea of what you are arguing, of what your stance, if any, might be.
Where did you get this definition of faith? It's in conflict with every usage of the term I've ever heard.
I don't know why I would hold something to be true to myself. If I had an idea about something and it turned out to be wrong it would cause me no loss in social standing of any kind. Maybe denial to avoid uncomfortable feelings?
It's a commonplace. Same as used by Kierkegaard. The faith of Abraham when he bound Isaac. The submission in Islam.
It really isn't a commonplace that faith is belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. You've misunderstood.
To my mind you have these wrong except the first. Re the second, if one believes some statement one does not subject it to doubt, so the second is the same in substance as the first if you mean "feels certain" .
So the problem is, you are again speaking ambiguously; by "is certain" did you mean "feels certain" or something like "has the certitude of common knowledge or assent"; the two are not the same. You need to speak with more clarity. Re the third, I would say no one believes anything without also believing they have evidence.
So again, here there is the ambiguity between feeling certain (thinking one has evidence) and being certain (having what would generally or commonly be counted as evidence). The latter is obviously much harder to establish, at least in many cases.
More nuance, Banno!
If you could present the part of Kenny's speech that produced your impression we discuss that.
If you're at all familiar with Kierkegaard, you'd already know that's not how he used the idea of faith.
I've read both Augustine and Kierkegaard. No need to be testy.
Quoting Banno
Argument as in: explain what Augustine and Kierkegaard meant by faith?
Knowledge, Belief, and Faith.
Faith is not belief in the face of evidence to the contrary. No one has ever used the word that way as far as I know.
Faith can be distinguished from certainty in that faith is that sub-class of certainty such that no evidence to the contrary will be sufficient to dissuade the believer.
Of course, there is more to it than just that, as the Kenny article and others cited previously attest, but that's the nub for the purposes of the OP.
Is this how you are interpreting the above quote from Kenny? Or did he go into this issue of [I] evidence to the contrary [/I] later in the speech?
You mean this part:
Quoting Ken Edwards
It certainly appears contradictory. I would have put it differently, and sort of the other way around. I may believe things but I'm very cautious about using the term 'believe' because of the social implications. I would rather not have faith in institutions but accept and entertain them provisionally for pragmatic reasons. Matters of the heart are irrational by nature.
As pointed out previously, here you seem to be vacillating between "is certain" and "is true", as you must do if you are to adopt a pragmatic theory of truth. Is that your goal?
My agreement with the spirit of the OP hasn’t changed, though I think that I’ve benefited from the discussion in exploring the nature of belief.
Not at all; I think things may be true regardless of how certain we might feel, but anything we can be certain of must be true. I don't think any belief falls into that category; only what counts as knowledge does. "Is certain" means, for me, justified; and something is not really justified if our reasons for believing it are not sound..
Again I'm not clear what you mean by "is certain". Do you simply means 'feel certain' or something else?
Wo else makes this distinction? Can you point to a source?
We are discussing this, so why attempt to bring others into it? Let's start with baby steps: do you think anything at all is certain?
Again, you misinterpret. It’s inconvenient to your position that what I stated was pointless.
In my opinion, @Ken Edwards is mainly concerned about how individuals abuse the tendency of others to follow blindly and become believers in poorly formed and sometime quite nefarious proposals such as ‘all Belgians are….. or all Jews are……. You can fill in any nationality and claim you like.
You claim you have some position short of ‘believing.’
I think the reasoning you have offered is mere ‘hair splitting,’ at best. Although I am sure you BELIEVE what you type.
I was merely pointing out that I have some sympathy for those who are fooled into believing inaccurate statements and I lay some of the blame at the door of all of us who have to take care about the accuracy of what we say or type.
Perhaps ‘what is the capital of France?’ Should be considered an inaccurate question and it should be cited as such and perhaps it’s important to suggest it is changed to ‘what is the name of the capital city of France,’ so that someone cannot offer the answer ‘F,’ by conflating the question with ‘What is the capital letter of France?’
Nefarious individuals twist meanings all the time. This is the basic tool of fake news and is used to fool people into believing what the nefarious want them to believe.
Just like the majority of people who incorrectly believe the Sun rises and sets.
Holding beliefs is unavoidable, trying to dilute the term into something without the word belief with a lower level of conviction merely indicates a belief held with a lower level of conviction.
The way to help stop people believing in and acting (sometimes lethally) based on false claims is to encourage everyone to fact check as much as possible, not encourage alternatives to the word or concept of belief.
Simply by way of trying to make sense of your position.
Quoting Janus
Yes, lots of things. Next.
So...
"Having studied the subject a bit, I believe that Democracy is the best form of government for the people that I know of, at least when it has adequate supporting institutions, checks on power, etc."
...wouldn't make any sense to you? It seems a perfectly normal sentence to me.
Obviously when someone says they "believe in..." something, that's a different expression with a different meaning altogether.
Quoting praxis
As has already clarified, that's what 'seeing' is. We don't 'see' the constructed screen (as if we could see the deconstructed one, but don't). Rather 'seeing' something is the process itself. Identifying edges, corners, texture, colour, size...naming it, remembering it, picturing it's use, imagining it's far side...these processes are what 'seeing' consists of.
The object of our belief (the computer screen) is already a public object, an agreement between us and the world as to it's constitution, so there's no 'real' computer screen that we're seeing a model of. But this is slightly off topic... and we've been through it before.
Isn’t fact checking or verification the alternative to belief? If you’re opposed to holding something to be true then, if it matters, you must be for verifying that it’s true.
It suggests more a commitment, that I will ‘hold it to be true’, when I would rather be more adaptive.
Quoting Isaac
I know it’s beside the point, I’m just saying that the mind is constructing it in at least the sense that the screen is distinguished from everything else. Is it really separate?
Surprising, but I'll take your word for it. It suggests nothing of the sort to me. American vs English usage perhaps?
Quoting praxis
Yes. It really is separate, because it is an 'it' only by our use. Outside of that, there's no 'it' to be 'really' anything.
A computer screen is the thing we look at, talk about, use... The means by which we come to do so are the matter of interest to neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and the like. How we come to believe what we believe is what I study, but in doing so I'm not studying the real thing (in itself), that's the object, I'm studying the means by which we come to have such an object.
Perception is probably the easiest process to explain the principle with. When you see a rose, the thing you're seeing is a rose - the thing you pick, the thing which pricks your finger. Anything outside of your Markov blanket is part of the means by which you see a rose, not the 'real' rose.
Does that make sense?
I’m not against holding something to be true but I am advocating for some rigorous background checking to make sure YOUR conviction or belief it’s true is justified to YOU and you can cite your sources and also cite why your sources are reliable and rational. Fact checking is a way to support personal beliefs.
They don’t say things like “I believe God exists” in Limey town?
Quoting Isaac
So the mind constructs ‘it’.
If we’re not sure about something why would we need to hold it to be true?
I am 99.9% sure gods don’t exist and I hold there nonexistence to be true but It would be highly unlikely that I would kill other humans over the issue.
It would depend on what the theists were threatening me with and those I consider innocents, with.
I would kill theists who threaten to kill others in the name of their theism.
I would also kill those who I believed were 99.9% fascist and were engaged in killing others as happened In WW2.
In general I would probably try to kill someone who was trying to kill me or those I care about.
But I would not have much belief in a concept such as ‘the only good German is a dead German,’ A little fact checking would soon provide strong evidence that there are many good Germans, even during WW2.
So we need to believe certain things are true if we are willing to kill based on it being true.
In a court of law, reasonable doubt gets an acquittal and reasonable conviction… gets a conviction. In this area there seems to be a moral imperative to ‘hold a conviction to be true’. It also helps to avoid the trouble of having to retry the case indefinitely, which would be impractical.
Within the same socioeconomic class, there is still a power hierarchy, depending on socioeconomic context. Would, for example, your boss be persuaded by rational arguments provided by you? Perhaps your colleagues would, as long as you and they are not competing for the same opportunities at work.
My point being that there are relatively few situations in life where the argument from power isn't the strongest one.
"Unwarranted" on whose terms?
"Belief despite evidence" according to whose idea of evidence?
This is what happens when you throw out all notions of subjectivity and set yourself up as the one objective arbiter of reality.
You don't care about other people's knowledge, insights, concerns. Other people don't really exist for you. You are the one who decides what is real and what isn't, what exists and what doesn't, what is adequate evidence and what isn't. You treat your own standards as if they were the objective standards that everyone is bound to. (IOW, you're doing the exact same thing as many religious people do.)
* * *
Quoting Tate
Some atheists do, for example.
Some atheists believe there is a lot of evidence that shows or at least indicates that god doesn't exist. They also believe that they have the only truthful take on the matter. So from the perspective of those atheists, theists in fact believe in god contrary to evidence.
Similarly, some theists claim that atheists refuse to believe in god despite ample evidence that god exists.
You can find examples of this in the theism-atheism discussions pretty much anywhere where this is discussed.
The two camps have vastly different ideas about what in particular constitutes "evidence of god", but often, they refuse to acknowledge this.
Well, yes. It's just that it doesn't carry the connotations of certainty you read from it. "I believe God exists" could equally mean one is a fervent evangelist or a casual churchgoer.
Quoting praxis
Yes. I don't think that can be in doubt. We cannot see anything without minds.
Probably, but it sounds simply tautological. Power is powerful. You could drop the 'argument' bit entirely. People are controlled in some way or another by those more powerful than them. If they weren't then it would be incorrect to have identified them as more powerful.
Whether they are actually convinced by that argument is not given by power relationships. Loads of people are more powerful than me. I rarely believe anything they say.
Could be. My casual observations:
-- Americans use "belief" more frequently in ideological contexts,
-- "belief" is an extremely loaded term,
-- middle class people use it more often than elites,
-- in British English, "I believe" seems to often be used with the meaning 'I guess; I think so, but I'm not sure'.
Us Yanks, well, one at least, see a difference between the the following statements.
"I think God exists"
"I believe God exists"
The former suggests consideration or thinking and the latter suggests more conviction or faith in the sense of accepting another's word as true. If someone had actually met God I think they would be inclined to say something like, "I know God."
Do you really see the statements as perfectly synonymous?
Like I said earlier: Neither those above oneself nor those beneath oneself are open to being convinced by the arguments one gives.
I think the existence of a power differential between people makes rational argumentation (and being convinced by rational arguments) difficult or even impossible.
It's the power relationship that prevails.
Personally, it feels awkward to me to agree with an argument given by someone more powerful than myself. Am I agreeing with their reasoning, or submitting to their power?
Virtually, yes. As @baker has said above...
Quoting baker
We might even say something like "I do believe it's going to rain" meaning nothing more than thinking it slightly more likely than not.
Yeah, interesting. I suppose that's more true than it might at first seem if one considers social as well as economic power relationships. I do think it's surmountable though, but I agree the temptation makes it difficult to be sure.
I think, one difficulty here is that there's two aspects to these types of discussion that people are interested in. The 'beliefs' we find most interesting are those like god, socialism, transgenders, etc... But these are a tiny minority of beliefs. We all believe, for example, that larger objects cannot fit inside smaller ones.
The former type of beliefs I think are held almost entirely for reasons of social relationships. The latter type more for pragmatic or biological reasons. The forces which act on each type will be different.
About a propensity to act, why are we calling that a belief rather than, say, a conditioned response?
I'm not sure how to answer a question like "why" am j using some word or other. It's like asking why I use the word 'cup' to refer to the thing holding my tea.
Nonetheless, I think your dichotomy there is excessively distinct. It's not "propensity to act" it's "propensity to act as if...". 'Conditioned response' wouldn't cover that.
So if I'm walking down a flight of stairs and I have a propensity to act as if the next step is the same dimentions as the previous steps but I trip because it's not, did I have a mistaken belief or a prediction error?
OK, so regarding the distinction between feeling certain and being certain; we can be certain of some things, so they are the things we know. Of the things we cannot be certain, we can either feel certain or uncertain.
The former state I call believing; we believe something is the case even though we cannot be certain that it is so. meaning that we feel certain, even thought we cannot be certain. My point all along is that it is possible to act without believing; so I don't see the definition of belief as a tendency to act a certain way as being a very useful one.
To anticipate an objection; I am not claiming that someone who believes something necessarily feels certain about what they believe all the time; they may vacillate between belief and doubt. The point is that belief consists in feeling certain, so at times when doubt may creep in they are no longer believing.
What you're describing is epistemic egoism. It's the ideal of epistemic autonomy.
Given that we're not living in a vacuum, epistemic autonomy is not possible.
Yeah, but you only think that because the power elites make you...
:roll:
You are equating being certainty with knowing. That's not right. Knowing requiters having a justification. Certainty does not.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
If you wish to use the word "belief" in this idiosyncratic way, be my guest. It doesn't fit withthe standard use of my community, nor with the standard use in philosophy. Take a look at the Stanford article:
Quoting Belief
See especially the section on Degree of Belief, which quite explicitly sets out how not all beliefs are certain.
Your distinction between \being and feeling certain still appears incoherent. I don't see any point in continuing this discussion, since it seems that you are the only [person who holds to your view, and it does not help with the problem in the OP.
Cheers.
Ah, so we are free to "think" that such-and-such is true, free of the yoke of authority?
We disagree right there; feeling certain does not require a justification (at least not an inter-subjective one), but being certain does.
Quoting Banno
Taking something to be the case or regarding it as true is the same as feeling certain it is the case or that it is true.
Quoting Banno
I'll take a look; but I can say right off that I agree that not all beliefs are certain. In fact I don't think any beliefs are certain; if they were they would be better thought of as bits of knowledge, not beliefs. On the other hand all acts of believing are acts of feeling certain; and that is precisely the distinction you keep missing.
How it relates to the OP goes back to what I said in the beginning; that I can accept and entertain something as seeming to be the case, and act accordingly, without believing it is the case. The author of the OP seems to have agreed with what I've said and to have thought it to be germane to his thoughts, so I'm puzzled as to why you seem to be resisting what seems so obvious.
See, this is where there is a miscommunication. What I said above does not imply that feeling certain does not require a justification. Knowing requires justification. And again, one can know something without feeling certain.
Beliefs; if someone believes in things
Technically speaking, belief isn't pluralized in that context, only in the context of multiple parties.
Metaphorically the spring of belief is constant and is a singularity, where any fragmentation divides a singular, reducing belief and not multiplying it.
I have belief, I can also have belief in- the problem, is that beliefs means multiple belief when it assesses belief in. I believe in is different from I believe; both make sense but when regarded technically are different.
I believe I have made myself clear, it's among my beliefs.
It's me, though, saying that feeling certain does not require a justification; insofar as justification is an inter-subjective requirement.That said, I also doubt that people generally feel certain about anything without thinking they have justification for their feeling of certainty.
I agree that knowing requires justification, in that knowing, in order to count as such, must be warranted by either observation, experience or logic. One can know things without knowing that they know, I guess, which would mean that one does not have to feel certain about it. But in order to know (reflectively) that you know, you must be certain that you know, and you can't be wrong about that or else you only think you know.
My words,contrasting the two entirely different phrases : one, saying: "beleive" and the other saying: "beleive IN" have been accepted by many in this forum as having different meanings but also have not been accepted by many who use them interchangeably.
My initial words --"I believe nothing." were incorrect. I do, indeed believe things but rarely do I believe WORDS that are said to me.
But I have been wildly correct in saying that the these words are very tricky and self contradictory. The evidence for that is this extended forum itself.
Both are the same thing.
I agree, I see ‘hold a conviction to be true,’ and believing a proposal to be true to be almost synonymous.
Ego is an undeniable aspect of being human so it’s no surprise that it will influence personal beliefs.
If an individual is nefarious and they have power and influence then they can insist their personal beliefs are more important than the beliefs of some alternate mass or group of people with less power and influence. But, all tyrants are eventually overthrown, even those who seem to have total power. The combined belief of a large majority that they are not being treated in an acceptable way that makes their lives worth living is often the reason why those who think their beliefs/legacy will ‘stand for a thousand years,’ gets overthrown relatively quickly.
I’m curious where the line is drawn. If consciousness isn’t a prerequisite then it would be correct to say that my phone (specifically the calculator app) believes that two plus two equals four. If that’s correct then, following the rules of gravity, perhaps gold believes that it’s heavier than aluminum.
That seems an odd leap to take. If a belief is a relation between a state of mind and a proposition, then it would seem, by definition, to require a mind.
When a group of people are together, we might call them a crowd. When a group of balloons are similarly clustered it would be wrong to use the word 'crowd' despite their arrangement meeting exactly the same threshold criteria.
We often use different terminology for humans. I don't see anything ontological we need derive from that, it's just cultural.
A mind is conscious, so it appears you’re drawing the line there and subconscious processes do not entail beliefs.
I think there are subconscious aspects to our minds. It appears we have yet another disagreement over definitions.
An example of contemporary use https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440575/
Prediction precedes belief?
A prediction is a belief. But we're not getting anywhere just disagreeing about definitions. What is the consequence of a distinction between that which we're aware of holding to be the case and that which we hold to be the case but are unaware that we do? Whatever word we give those two categories, how does their differentiation bear on the question?
Not necessarily. I might predict (in the sense of bet on) inflation will continuing to rise based on that seeming to be, at a guess, the most likely of three possibilities, without believing that it will rise, but just taking a punt.
Of course believing falsehoods (lies) is gonna hurt and hurt real bad, but sometimes it's sane to be insane.
I suppose the idea of belief sans justification is baked into, is part and parcel of, rationality - to avoid an infinite regress we must decide on a starting point (postulates, axioms). True that there's an attempt to make postulates/axioms as obvious/self-evident as possible; nevertheless, we're not completely satisfied with the arrangment, we instinctively recoil against flat assertions of any kind.
So, let me try to understand where the line is for you.
"I believe there is a God" is a statement of belief, right?
What about "I believe there's a 50% chance the coin will land on heads"? That's not a belief, according to you, right? (working on your example above - holding there to be a greater than 50% chance of inflation is not a belief)
What about "I believe there is a 99.999999999% chance there is a God"? Still not a belief? Or have we crossed into belief territory yet?
Of course ""I believe there is a God" is a statement of belief. You don't believe, you know, that there is a 50% chance, statistically speaking and assuming a perfect coin, that the coin will land on heads. It's true by definition.
I haven't said that, in the example, the speculator holds anything definite to be the case about the likelihood that inflation will continue to rise, but merely that she bets on that since inflation is currently rising, and she goes with the idea that it will continue..
I'm not claiming that belief is impossible, or that there is no such thing as belief. All I've been saying is that if someone believes something to be true, then it follows that they feel sure that its true. On the other hand if they don't feel sure that it's true and only believe it's likely to be true, then they don't believe it's true, and they don't even have to believe it's likely to be true to bet on its being true or to act as if it's true..
That's not how probability works. If I'm 100% certain there's a 50% chance, then there's a 50% chance. If I'm 80% certain there's a 50% chance, then there's a 40% chance (depending on the exclusivity of the other options). Probability is already a measure of uncertainty, you can't have uncertainty about the probability as being some kind of separate measure.
Quoting Janus
Unless she's acting randomly, then betting money one way indicates a belief in the likelihood of that outcome. Obviously, people might act randomly, but it's hardly the normal case, and very difficult to prove in any case.
Quoting Janus
Indeed. They believe it to some degree of certainty below 100%. The most common case. A belief with 100% certainty is rare.
Quoting Janus
No indeed. They could act randomly or irrationally. It's not common though.
If I'm 100% certain there's a 50% chance, then I'm 100% correct that there's a 50% chance?
If certain, then correct?
That can't be right.
I can be 100% certain and also 100% wrong.
100% certain there's a 100% chance - with a 0% chance.
If depends on from whose perspective. Probability is a measure of uncertainty. From an objective perspective there's just a 100% chance the coin will land on whatever side it will land on (assuming determinism). So saying there's a 50% chance of it landing on heads is just an expression of my degree of uncertainty. A person with a super advanced knowledge of the coin and the air conditions might not say 50%.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Yes. But right and wrong are not about probabilities at all, they're just about whatever model of truth you're using.
That's not what I was saying though. I said that we are one hundred percent certain that there would be a fifty percent chance of the coin landing on heads ( or tails) because it is analytic that if there are two possible outcomes and nothing biasing towards one or the other then there is a fifty percent chance of either outcome.
Quoting Isaac
I don't agree. She may have no idea whether inflation will continue to rise or not, but simply decides to bet one way or the other. That is not irrational because the chances may be incalculable, in which case it would be rational to suspend belief.
My whole argument has simply been that the term 'belief' is commonly used to refer to a range of different phenomena, which makes it ambiguous. I also think there is a logic to believing that says that if you really believe something then you are convinced of it. You can't both doubt and believe
at the same time regarding the same thing.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, but they may believe one hundred percent that its likely to be true; if they don't believe that then what would you say they believe? Note; of course I'm allowing that people may across time vacillate between belief (defined as feeling certain) and doubt (feeling uncertain).
Quoting Isaac
As I said above I don't think it is always irrational to act without believing anything in particular. In cases where we have no idea what is more or less likely (and there are very many of those) it is rational to simply guess, or to "think with your gut" as to what seems or "feels" most likely and go with that.
We are, but the usefulness of this freedom is yet to be seen. It's right up there with "Everyone is free to buy themselves a private jet."
It's common sense to make this distinction. From what you've said so far, you're making it as well. Otherwise, you couldn't say things like "Faith is unwarranted belief."
If you see yourself as the arbiter of what makes a belief warranted or unwarranted, it means that in a particular case, you determine whether a particular person is certain of x, or, at best, can merely feel certain of x (regardless of what said person claims about their relationship with x).
I wasn't thinking about epistemic egoism in such socially dramatic terms. I was speaking in reference to your claim "I am advocating for some rigorous background checking to make sure YOUR conviction or belief it’s true is justified to YOU".
Also see Ethical and Epistemic Egoism and the Ideal of Autonomy.
Could you sketch out how exactly, or point me to a source?
It's not clear this would generally even be considered a belief, but rather, knowledge, common sense, something that isn't up for dispute.
I agree. I find that often, the former are attempted by many people to be advocated as the latter. For example, "All men are created equal" or "Those who refuse to get vaccinated against covid are selfish" are sometimes advocated as being as equally true, objective, self-evident as "2 + 2 = 4".
One consequence is in learning. If I’m reading you right, you seem to be saying that in everything thing we do, we always believe that we’re doing it correctly. If that were the case then we would not be able to learn.
For example, I could watch an expert basketball player shoot hoops perfectly. I could try it myself but I would fail to perform nearly as well. I would not believe that I was doing it correctly. Maybe some of the predictions that my mind made while trying were closer than others, but I would know that many were way off. I wouldn’t hold all of my predictions to be true or false. Comparing performance to goals seems to requires awareness.
Basically, stories. We're quite easily fooled by stories, so whilst a social group seems indispensable for the construction of many complex beliefs, those social groups don't have to be real.
Quoting baker
Since knowledge is considered to be justified (true) belief, if would seem that still makes it a kind of belief.
Quoting baker
Lately this has been a trend, yes. The stuff in the '2+2=4' category changes with cultural fashions. It used to be God. Now questioning God is allowed but questioning scientific orthodoxy isn't. It depends on the dominant social narratives around at the time.
You're not.
I can't think where you've read such a thing into what I've written when I've mostly been arguing the exact opposite - that belief is dynamic and usually held in degrees of certainty.
...is always contradicted by...
Quoting Janus
...this is something we can never know but be absolutely sure exists. Something absolutely must be biasing one side or the other, that's why it lands on one side or the other. We just don't know what that something is, nor what its effect might be. The probability, then, is a measure of our uncertainty.
Quoting Janus
Well, betting one way and not the other isn't suspending belief, unless she's acting randomly. I agreed random action is possible, but it's not common.
Quoting Janus
I don't understand why you've disallowed 'quite certain of...', or 'a slight inclination toward...', or ' I'm not sure but I'm inclined to believe...' ... or any other such expression of moderated doubt. It seems to me that we quite often have a slight inclination toward one state. For example, I'm pretty sure it's not going to rain today, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. My belief that it will not rain is neither certain, nor in doubt. I'm 'pretty sure'.
Quoting Janus
'Likely to be true' is already a measure of uncertainty. So saying I'm 100% certain that it's 50% likely is just exactly the same as saying I'm 50% certain.
Quoting Janus
I agree, which is why I included 'random' in there too. I don't think either case is common though.
We are 100% certain that, absent biasing factors, there is a 50% chance of either outcome. Are you 100% certain that "is always contradicted"? The point there is that if one is sensible one does not believe there is actually a 50% of either outcome, and one really has no idea, other t5han that the probability is roughly 50 %.
Quoting Isaac
I don't disallow any of that, I just recommend a more nuanced way of speaking about what we are doing when our conviction is not 100%. For example if I say I believe God exists, I would mean that I have no doubt God exists. Or if I believe the butler did it then I would be 100% convinced that the butler did it, but if I was merely 100% convinced that it is most likely, to the point of being beyond reasonable doubt that the butler did it, then I would say I beleive the butler did, but that it most likely that he did, and so on.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, 50 % certain of either outcome, but that contradicts nothing I've said.
Quoting Isaac
It might be random, or it might be based on a gut feeling, or just a preference, or wishful thinking. I agree that it is not rational in the sense of 'measured..
No. Absent biasing factors the coin will not land at all. Some force has to cause it to land. That force will be biased to one side or the other. We just don't know which.
Quoting Janus
Why 100? If you want to reserve a special word for when one considers the probability 100%, why not another for 99%? One for 51%, one for 32%... What is it about 100% that warrants it's own word? I can't see the advantage of what you're advocating.
Quoting Janus
...and a 'gut feeling' is different to a belief, how?
I don’t see how they can change unless we are aware of them. If I have a belief that I’m unaware of it would never change.
I don't see how the biasing factor could be in the gravity that causes the coin to land, or in the toss, since the coin will start heads up or tails up randomly. It seems to make sense to me that the biasing factor will be in the coin since I find it impossible to believe that any coin could be absolutely perfect.
Quoting Isaac
I'm not advocating establishing percentages of certainty; I can't see how it would be possible. My point is that about any proposition which is not certain, we can feel certainty (believe) and uncertainty (doubt) to varying degrees. Scientists don't have to believe anything in order to practice science; they simply have to entertain provisional hypotheses and presuppositions.
Quoting Isaac
A gut feeling is simply a feeling we can choose to go with or not. We don't need to believe that it is "true" one way or the other. If we did go with a feeling, and if that seemed to be the only possible guide in a context of uncertainty or undecidability, then I don't see that as being irrational.
Anyway, I've had about enough of repeating myself here: I know what I think about the best way to talk about these things; if you don't agree that's fine. All I've done is attempted to explain myself in response to questions about my ideas. So, I think we are done here.
I believe this may be the objective the OP had in mind. Personally I can't see the sense in defining away a word. If we confine beliefs to those matters about which we are absolutely certain (not even 99.9999999999999%), then no one has any beliefs and we have a spare word.
Quoting praxis
Why do you think that?
Especially since belief is contrasted with knowledge already, whether one consider's knowledge to be beliefs arrived at rigorously (something along the lines of JTB) or a different category.
Because I don’t think that subconscious predictions are beliefs.
The topic here were the epistemic implications of power relationships between people (Do I believe someone's argument because I am convinced by its rationality, or by the power of the person who made it?). You said this was surmountable. I asked, how. From what you said, I don't see that you explained that it is surmountable.
It's not clear this is the case.
If you knowingly change your stance about something, this could have implications for your other beliefs, over time, without you being aware of those implications at the time of the change.
One cannot justify it, not even to oneself. It's not based on a syllogism, and one cannot even construct a syllogism to support, in hindsight/ad hoc.
What seems most plausible, or likely to be fruitful, could be chosen, without any commitment to believing it is true; and that choice would not be "random", as I see it. I agree with you that you could say this is believing, if you are using the ambiguous range of common usages of the term as your criterion, but I have acknowledged that from the start, and explained that sloppy terminology is just what I am advocating against.
So, I have explained how I see it (which I've only bothered to do in order to clear up what I have seen as misunderstandings of what I've been saying), I don't think it is very important anyway, and it doesn't matter to me if others disagree.
It's telling that such a core fact of neuroscience should be so badly misunderstood.
@praxis is using the model displayed and dispelled at the start of the Feldman Barrett article, in a slightly altered form:
What we now know is that this sequence cannot be recognised in the processes of our neural networks. Phrasing it somewhat ambiguously, the event is already a belief, in that it is a prediction of the neural net.
:yikes:
Janus, you know better than to say something like that...
No need in taking it to be true that one's instruments have been calibrated. No need in taking it to be true that I'll get paid for my work performed. No need in taking it to be true that the lab will be there tomorrow when I return....
We're working from incommensurate understandings or notions of human belief. May not be much point in continuing this if we cannot agree on what the key terms mean. Hope your move worked out well for you!
I’ve read Barrett’s book on constructed emotion theory, but I was more thinking of thousand brains theory.
Assuming this theory is good, at what point in the neural process is there belief? In each cortical column or in the consensus of columns?
Any reason why not?
I'm not sure what I can do about that. We often believe arguments made by people more powerful than ourselves. Sometime this is appropriate (if their power is on their expertise), sometimes we only make the show of acquiescence because it's socially convenient, we need the support of others believing what we do. The solution to that is that those others do not have to be real for this effect to work. Stories.
I feel like I've just rewritten what I wrote before, but maybe if it's still not making sense, you might explain what's missing.
All beliefs are supported in hindsight.
Exactly. The main problem I see with this attempt to separate out belief from prediction is that there's no special category remaining for belief to be.
There's nothing of which we 'feel certain' that is distinguishable from that about which we feel 99.9999% certain. There's nothing we form in awareness to distinguish from that which is formed in subconscious processing. There's nothing resulting from syllogism to fill what was otherwise a blank space. Basically there is no mental state which can correspond to the description of beliefs being offered such as to distinguish it from predictions, and assumptions (of the sort such that we believe larger objects cannot fit inside smaller ones). There's no dividing line between believing the table in front of me will hold my cup and believing God exists such as to delineate one as a different type than the other.
There's some (understandable) cherishing of the (unfortunately post hoc) construction process where one is aware of it, that leads to a desire to set it apart in type from the process where we are not. but there's no support for such a notion.
Quoting praxis
Firstly, Thousand Brains only deals with the NeoCortex, it still relies on the traditional functioning of the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, and the perihinal cortex, particulalry for memory retrieval which is how relations between previous predictions are made (according to Hawkins). As such there's no real conflict between his model and that of Friston (whose model Feldman Barrett uses). The 'columns' in Hawkin's model are merely the means by which the predictions are made - thousands of options 'voted on'. The means by which the results of those predictions are stored as models (dynamic models, of course) is still the same hippocampus-cortical links that traditional models use to relate the results from one context to those of another (an image and a smell for example). So each column is still embedded in a cortical hierarchy from lower areas (say sensory) to higher ones (like beliefs). Each column, therefore is processing data not yet in the form of a belief (a belief that...) because there's no 'that' until the predictions have been related (to whatever the belief is about) and that happens (in Hawkin's model) after the voting process, where the hippocampus (or the entorhinal cortex, or sub-cortex depending on the type of memory) make the association on which we can act.
Which is why sentences like I believed it would be a fruitful line of research and it was. (or but it turned out not to be) make sense.
If I choose what I think is a plausible argument or conclusion it does not mean I doubt it. You have contrasted belief and doubt. That makes no sense to me.
Scientists, and the rest of us, have all sorts of beliefs that are about probabilities. Person A: I believe that gun control is better for the nation, but I am not 100% sure because American society is not exactly the same as other societies. I believe even more strongly X, but yes, if cornered I will admit I am not sure.
In fact it makes sense to say, I believe X, but I am starting to have some doubts. I read an interesting article against X, so I have to mull. But, I would still say I believe. Or 'I believe X is the case, but I am less sure than I was before I....'
Conversion (religious) by word or by sword! Aut consilio aut ense.
Argumentum ad baculum.
Argumentum ad verecundiam.
I find these two to be very persuasive modes of convincing people. The choices are: My way Or The Highway! :snicker:
In more explicit terms: Aye or Die! :snicker:
How rational is it for an anorexic to believe they are too fat, when they appear to be almost skeletal?
How rational is it when a person states 'I believe 100% that a steel ball bearing will not float when I throw it into water?'
How rational is it when someone says, 'I believe 100% that I will win the national lottery one day' or 'I believe 100% that I am a superior human being to you and you should comply with my commandments or else I will be justified in killing you.'
How rational is it when someone says, 'I believe 100% in the lord god jesus christ .'
How many times have you had an exchange like:
'Oh I KNOW its true,' and the response is 'No, you just BELIEVE its true, you dont KNOW its true.'
I think a 100% belief that a steel ball will sink in water is as close as you will get to connecting 'belief' with 'fact.'
Any belief that does not have very strong empirical evidence to back it up, remains fully open to being assigned a 'measure of rationality,' by others. You will not escape that judgement based on a claim that you are not stating a belief, you are merely 'having a punt' or 'stating a conviction level.'
I doubt very much that a nazi getting tried at Nuremberg would have got a lesser sentence if he/she claimed that they killed others NOT because they BELIEVED their victims were inferiors but because they were 'betting' they were inferiors, with a 'certain confidence' level.
Seems an arbitrary distinction, as though saying that when holding a cup in hand we can believe it’s a cup but we can’t believe in the cups texture or weight, the individual elements it’s comprised of.
We can very well believe in its texture and weight. It's not at that level of processing that these 'columns' are dealing with. All you're getting at the base of these columns are output signals from sensory and proprioceptive neurons, and in a constant stream, with a relatively high error rate. As data progresses up these columns, errors are corrected by backward acting inhibitors from cortices higher up the hierarchy. This is a one way system (hence we can reliably refer to it as s hierarchy). But at this stage it's still just noise detection, it's not "this cup is heavy". To get there you have to (so the theory goes) fire all the final neural clusters in each column with a tiny emission of neurotransmitter such that only those signals with sufficient volume (the highest 'vote') will create an action potential in one of the hippocampus-sub-cortex links to set off the chain of associations we have which form the concept "heavy" (depending on your theory of semantic memory - it's a moot point). But it's after the multiplicity that we get "rough", "heavy"...etc as actual beliefs about the cup.
You mean like, What would Aragorn do?
I don't find your explanation believable. I suppose what you're saying is what people often do; in a sense, it's the essence of religion/religiosity; it's also why people can feel inspired by and find a feeling of confidence about life in the Harry Potter books, LOTR, or Star Wars, to name some notable examples.
I often wonder about the potential for real-world application of moral and other principles or "lessons" found in fiction. Bruno Bettelheim was probably the most famous (if not original) proponent of the idea that people learn to overcome real-world life problems through what is clearly fiction, ie. fairy tales. (Although given the limited resources an individual person has for experimenting and testing, the life advice given in "science based" help books might as well be fiction, too.)
Just because acting in a particular way worked out fine in the end for Frodo, doesn't mean doing something similar will work out fine for me as well. Of course, if a work of fiction is complex and nuanced enough, it provides scenarios that can accomodate such failure as well.
As long as this is merely a description of what works for people, that's one thing. But to take it as a prescription?? To _deliberately_ pick a work of fiction and use some of the characters in it as one's "support group"? In my experience, this doesn't work.
Be that as it may, the framework is such that individual determinations contribute to a group determination. The individual determinations are determinations. In an election, I vote for the canidate that I determine will best serve my interests, and my vote contributes to a group determination. To claim that my vote isn't a determination is unfair and downright unAmerican.
On a related note, what do we believe when we experiece sensations but don't know what they are? Do we believe nothing, or do we beleive that we don't know? What do we believe when we can see two things, like the duck/rabit sketch?
Exactly you may choose without either believing or doubting it.
An example of belief. Jan. 6 Hearings show that Trump believed he won. His staff told him there was no evidence for that. Yet Mr. Trump believed.
I wonder whether he really believed, or whether it just suited him to claim that he won.
Even Trump believed his own lies.
I have been watching the hearings. Today his top team testified that Trump's claim was totally bogus.
But Trump already planned a coup if he lost. So the lie is in service of his power. Like a salesman, what really are you selling?
:up: Right, salesmen don't invariably believe in their products.
Of course you can pick without doubting or believing. I have never asserted that you can't. I might do that on a roulette wheel.
But a scientist is not going to choose that way. They are going to believe that this line of research is more likely than that one. They go to casinos and let the roulette wheel decide. If you ask them, most will say that they are not certain that line of research X is better than the one they did not choose, but they believe it will be.
Doubting would hardly be a motivation to act as if something was true. Believing but having doubts could still be enough motivation to act like it was true. Not doubting, not believing X is true, having, it would seem, no opinion at all, would make it sort of like the mood of tossing stones for the feel of throwing.
I can't see a positive reason to make belief mean certainty. And it doesn't reflect usage. People can be certain about their beliefs, but that is a subset.
I don't. I gave you a heads up that you misunderstood it, the portion you quoted, that is.
Here's an oddity. You don't wish to discus it, but you post on it, and in that post claim I have misunderstood it.
Presumably, since you do not wish to post on it, you will not explain that supposed misunderstanding...
So your post amounts to nothing.
It's worthwhile to understand faith since it's an aspect of human creativity and potential. I encourage you to look again.
No, you don't. That would requirer far more than you seem to be willing to provide.
Explain where I misunderstand Kenny. Mere accusation is a nothing.
You pointed to this to show that Kenny believes that faith overpowers negative evidence.
This quote obviously doesn't say that. It is therefore your interpretation that's wrong, not Kenny.
"Overpowers"?
Consider this:
I agree with Kenny here, and maintain that "The epitome of faith is unshaken belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary" is a summary of his conclusion.
I also agree that nevertheless, rational religious belief is possible. This contra Dawkins.
This paragraph is wrong. As conceptions of the earth and sky changed, conceptions of divinity changed. If Kenny were right, this couldn't have happened, and it clearly did.
I'm not seeing anything of value in your posts.
He is wrong. I explained why.
So to your argument:
Quoting Tate
This in opposition to:
Let's try parsing this. The core of Kenny's point is that no argument will make a true believer give up his faith. Your counter is that as our understanding of the world changes, our concept of divinity changes.
So is your argument that the faith of someone post-Galileo is different in kind to the faith of someone pre- Galileo? That in effect someone learning and accepting, say, the heliocentric world, gives up on one set of beliefs about god and adopts another?
If so, I'd just point out that folk also rejected the heliocentric model because they supposed that it was in conflict with their faith. These are Kenny's true believers.Those who changed their beliefs simple had insufficient faith.
What this shows is that your point does not actually count against Kenny's definition of faith.
Learning that the sky isn't a rigid dome changed ideas about God, yes. People who had faith that God resides in the sky changed their views based on the evidence.
Quoting Banno
If these are Kenny's true believers, they are only a subset of people with faith. Therefore he doesn't set out a definition of faith, but rather comments on behaviors associated with certain "true believers."
Quoting Banno
No. They had faith. Faith does not mean you reject evidence. That's called being bull-headed.
Those who changed their mind as to god's residence had a belief that he was in the sky, but not faith in his being in the sky.
Begging the question.
Kenny is setting out useful distinctions between belief and faith. Your denying them does not make them disappear. Kenny justifies the distinction on various logical, historical and etymological grounds. If you wish to show that these grounds are misguided, you must address them.
But that would requirer your addressing the article.
You recognized yourself that he's commenting on the behavior of a few.
Your conclusion that this few, which we identified as "true believers" are the only ones equipped with faith leads to the absurd picture of people whose worldview hasn't changed in 2000 years.
I ask you to stop being bullheaded.
Cheers.
Hasta luego.
Do you know that, or merely believe it? Do you really believe it or is there some doubt?
How would you know? That's the whole point of making decisions based on ideology. Until you reach the end of your life and look back on the whole thing you can't possibly say what 'worked out' and what didn't because actions have consequences which range over different timescales. Maybe you 'acting like Frodo' didn't yield the short-term result you wanted but brings about a better long-term result than otherwise. Maybe you're not just a selfish git and actually care about the even longer term (after you're dead and gone), maybe that's where the benefits lie... You couldn't possibly know. Hence any assessment of "well, that didn't work out for me" is inherently flawed as evidence for the failure of a particular approach. That's why we need virtues. Guides to behaviour other than "how well did that work out?" ranged over some arbitrary timescale.
All I'm saying about stories is that these guides are not believable simply made up alone, they lack the gravitas that being embedded in a story gives them (particularly a classic story).
Quoting baker
What has failed about it?
Good job I'm not an American then.
Quoting praxis
Depends what you mean by 'know'. We always make a prediction as to what they are, we're never 100% sure.
Quoting praxis
We 'believe' hundreds of things at the same time, so it depends. I believe I'm looking at the famous duck/rabbit sketch. I believe there's a picture of a rabbit, I also believe there's a picture of a duck.
You’ve been saying that predictions are beliefs. If we always make beliefs (predictions), then what do we believe when we can’t recognize, understand, or make any sense of something?
I depends on the thing. The feeling you might be inclined to describe as "not understanding something" is rarely as empty of sense as the expression suggests. Did you have a situation in mind where we might literally understand nothing at all of a sensory input, like absolutely draw a blank? I can't think of one.
Well, for instance, I could ask you what I’m holding in my hand. You might well guess that I’m holding a phone. If you did guess that, would you believe it?
Yes. To a degree.
You can test this quite easily by asking me to bet on whether you're holding a phone or a small pig. I'd put more money on the phone. I believe the phone prediction more.
Nice attempt at correction.
I am reminded of Russell here who, like Kenny and yourself, also drew a distinction between faith and belief. Christianity has a well-established history of holding unshakable absolute certainty in some of their beliefs - as you've noted - even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Hence... Christian apologetics is faith-based, and makes concerted attempts at placing the evidence against the God of Abraham into question. Christians will even go so far as to be proud of themselves for maintaining absolute certainty in these beliefs. It is cultivated, praised, sought after, and rewarded amongst Christian communities.
"Walk by faith not by sight" is a common phrase supporting the idea to consciously and willfully ignore all the evidence against the God of Abraham that is plain to see...
One can be certain and wrong. Thus, certainty does not equate to, nor does it always indicate knowledge.
If 'X' is certain, do we not also feel certain about 'X'? In other words, I do not think you've drawn a distinction here. According to what you've said above, 'X' is both knowledge and belief.
Isn’t that just your associative memory at work, guessing it’s a phone, and if you put more thought into it you might think that I would try to make it hard to guess and deliberately not use a phone. I’d love to hold a cute little pig though.
Suddenly it occurs to me now how much belief is a story or personal narrative for ourselves, our ego, strengthening individual as well as group identity.
We cannot be certain and wrong, but we can feel certain and be wrong. Of course if you are certain you also feel certain, but the converse does not follow; i.e. we can feel certain even we are not. For example I might feel certain that God exists, but I obviously cannot be certain about that.
Seems that "be certain" means the subject is true. An odd phrasing that leads Janus astray.
Yeah, we could swap some terms and likely make some sort of sense. Perhaps introducing how truth works in belief statements may be on the menu here.
"Certainty" is a term mostly used to indicate the level of confidence than an individual has that something or another is true and/or is the case. Let that something be X. When and where the confidence is highest, the individual has no doubt about X, and thus such individuals are certain that X is the case or that 'X' is true.
Being certain and feeling certain are the very same thing. Being true and being certain are not.
We begin to temper our confidence(and thus rethink our own certainty that X is the case or that 'X' is true) only after having become aware of our fallibility and mastering language that is replete with the ability to talk about our own mistakes. Skepticism based upon percentages and probabilities seems unhelpful here as far as I can tell. That applies to only the cases after we've become aware of our own fallibility. Certainty and belief precedes that.
We're certain that X is the case and/or that 'X' is true long before we become equipped with the language capacity to be able to apply probabilistic terminology to our beliefs, or to 'measure' our certainty in such terms.
:up:
Yep. I might update my belief about the content of your hand to make it better fit other beliefs (like those about your intentions, character etc)
Quoting praxis
Exactly.
MAGA world is prima facie evidence of the power of belief, as well as how easily others can directly influence our worldviews and behaviors. Intentionally creating all the necessary preconditions from which mass delusion emerges; a carefully planned coordinated effort to defraud The United States of America, is exactly what Trump and his close circle of co-conspirators successfully achieved.
So many bought into the big lie that we're suffering from a country with untold(perhaps hundreds of???) millions of people suffering from mass delusion or cognitive dissonance as a direct result of it. All the while Trump's personal versions of "Go Fund Me" were raking in hundreds of millions from those who trusted that Trump was telling the truth. His lies were layered. The supporters donated for the specified cause of helping fund a 'legal' fight that was unfounded to begin with and everyone already knew that. Untold numbers of judges threw the cases out as a result. It's no secret. Those allegations were being publicly presented to Trump supporters in such a way as to convince them that there was something to fight against. This was also being waged by so-called 'attorneys' who knew they had no evidence to support those very serious charges that Trump and others were making then, and continue to do so now.
There are some similarities between Trump supporters' unshakable conviction(unquestioned trust in the truthfulness of Trump's speech) and the religious faith being discussed here...
No being certain means knowing that the subject is true.The subject being true and knowing that the subject is true are not the same. Your lazy reading and/or thinking is leading you astray.
Quoting creativesoul
See above; you are making the same mistake as Banno. You ignored my example that clearly shows they are not the same: to repeat, one can feel certain that God exists, but one cannot be certain, i.e. know, that God exists.
A statement of belief.
Quoting Janus
Knowledge of object.
Agreeing with you, that's it.
With sentences like that, is it a surprise I have not understood you?
Is this "No level of certainty implies knowing the subject is true" or is this "No, you are wrong, Banno, being certain implies knowing that the subject is true", or something else?
OK, fair enough, I overlooked a comma, thus rendering the sentence open to ambiguous interpretation. It should be ' No, being certain means knowing the subject is true', as opposed to your previous interpretation that asserted I was saying 'Being certain means the subject is true". Apologies for my sloppy (lack of) punctuation.
Quoting Janus
And this is as opposed to a mootted
Quoting Janus
Is that it?
Do we have a working definition for belief now? I always thought it was 'that I hold something to be the case.' Being certain doesn't change the status of what I think, just my confidence in it.
Suzy was certain that she'd won the lottery, but she was wrong.
Suzy believed her shoes allowed her to fly, but she installed a net below her window just in case.
It's all in how you glop the words together.
So being certain is just feeling certain of something, and that thing being true.
Being certain of something is knowing that it is true.
Always have had. We believe something if we take it to be true. Hence the error of @Ken Edwards's OP, which claims that we ought not believe anything.
Remember Ken Edwards? This is his thread. Everything else is just @Janus being confused.
...so being certain is just feeling certain of something, and that thing being true, and it's being justified?
Why add "knowing"?
Quoting Banno
Can you know something without knowing it? Are you certain of anything? If so, do you know it is true or not? Do you feel certain of anything that you don't know to be true?
To be sure, it is clear that you make a distinction here. What I've been doing is trying to draw out form you what that distinction is. I think I hit on it here:
Quoting Banno
That is, what you call "being certain" is just what the rest of us would call feeling or being certain of something that is indeed true.
You idea is a confusion - literally, "act of mingling together two or more things or notions properly separate" - Etymology online. You con fuse together "certainty" and "truth" in order to invent a new category and extend Ken's thread indefinitely.
I think my work here is done.
No you complicated it to make it seem confused, when it isn't. You conveniently failed to answer my questions:
Quoting Janus
in answer to this:
Quoting Banno
You're looking distinctly disingenuous now.
Quoting Banno
Then you'd be wrong; your work has not even begun.
Balls. You asked me pages back if I were certain of anything. I said yes. You didn't follow up on my reply.
The consummate politician is always playing to the crowd.
Quoting Janus
It's not the only question there. Do you now admit that you were wrong, and that there is a valid distinction between being certain of something and feeling certain of something?
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Yes, he is certainly behaving more like a politician than a philosopher!
It is as I pointed out, many pages ago: You have invented a novel distinction by confusing truth and certainty.
Quoting Janus
You must disagree with some part of the above then. Which part?
Fucksake. I disagree with your differentiating "feeling certain" from "being certain", because on yur own account "being certain" is just feeling certain of something that is true.
Not sure if this is the third, or fourth time, I've said that. Today.
Are you a chatbot?
We can feel certain even when we are not right. We can feel certain even when we are not justified in being so. We can feel certain even when we're dead wrong.
We cannot feel certain when we are not feeling certain.
So, Janus, help me out here...
Would you agree to all of the above statements?
:yikes:
Looks like following the logic leads us to conclude that that is a bit of nonsensical language use.
What else could possibly be the determining factor regarding whether or not someone is certain that X is the case, or being absolutely certain that 'X' is true, if not the high level of confidence(the complete lack of doubt) that the believer has that X is the case, or that 'X' is true?
The certainty that S has about X is one thing, and X's being certain is another.
When S feels certain then they are. What does it mean for S to be certain if not that they are?.
How else is there to parse this?
:yikes:
I think you hit the nail on the head. A conflation of truth and certainty. The former is about the belief, the latter is about the believer. Janus' use of "feeling certain" is about the believer, but his use of "being certain" is about the truth of the belief.
several pages ago. Pretty unimpressive. I don't know if I should be more disappointed with Janus for such poor argument or myself for not walking away form such an absurd discussion.
May not be worth fretting over. Clearing up confusion for others helps even if we fail to convince those who oppose us.
Quoting creativesoul
Why would I not agree when you are simply echoing what I've already said?
Quoting creativesoul
No, you've got it wrong again. Feeling certain is feeling that you know the truth while being certain is knowing the truth; both are about the person. So, again I can feel certain that God exists, but I cannot be certain that God exists. I can be certain that 2+2=4. Can you spot the difference yet?
Banno won't say whether he agrees or disagrees with those two statements, because he will appear a fool if he disagrees, and if he agrees he will be acknowledging that he actually agrees with my distinction, which his ego won't allow him to do. So, he hides behind insults and attempts to appear above the discussion. It's a bit sad, really.
No need for people to fret much over this...
Your language use is very odd. You claim that feeling certain that 'X' is true is not equivalent to being certain that 'X' is true.
So what extra is needed aside from S's feeling certain that 'X' is true in order for S to be certain that 'X' is true?
Let 'X' be "God exists"...
Quoting Janus
"Feeling certain" seems to suggest belief, while "being certain" seems more like knowledge.
"I believe that God exists, but I cannot know that God exists".
What does your practice add to our understanding here that the quote above lacks?
You just seem to be paraphrasing what I've already said. Do you agree that there is a valid distinction between feeling certain and being certain, or not?
I'm not a hobbit. Nor an elf. Or even a man, for that matter (notice how there are very few strong female characters in much fiction).
In other words, the ideology put forward in a text of fiction may come with some assumptions about requirements that need to be met in order for acting in line with said ideology to be morally satisfying. Whereby these requirements might never be explicitly stated in the text itself.
Imagine reading a work of fiction, agreeing with the ideology in it, feeling inspired, confident about life because of it, only to some time later discover that it was meant to apply only to a particular category of people (or not even to people at all).
One can read through a book of philosophy or religion, find it appealing, and only later discover that the author intended it only for men. Even though he might never say a bad word about women in the text; but one might later discover that when he speaks of men, he doesn't actually mean humans, but specifically men, males. Or that it's intended only for white people, or only for Indians, or only the upper class, etc.
I've had this experience, and it left me disheartened. My trust in finding support through stories has been eroded.
Like I said above, the intuitive trust in stories is gone, for me.
After that, only a deliberate taking up of this approach remains. Like with so many things, when doing something deliberately, it loses its power somehow. Like if you deliberately try to fall asleep, you can't; if you deliberately try to be "more spontaneous", you're even more uptight.
I think that the trust in stories that you're talking about is what is sometimes termed "states that are essentially by-products". Ie. they cannot be achieved deliberately.
Here from Jon Elster:
States that are essentially by-products
I know I know! Meeting God.
No, but you may convince me otherwise..
Quoting Janus
So what extra is needed to go from feeling certain that God exists to being certain?
Well, to be blunt, you've said none of those things. I do think you meant them though. What you said was...
If what I said echoes that then that is an incomplete thought filled out by my echoes.
I'm trying to get Janus to explain what the difference is, according to his/her position, between feeling certain and being certain. Seems to me like that difference amounts to feeling certain being on par with belief whereas being certain is on par with knowledge. That difference is truth to some, warrant to others, and truth plus justification to some. Belief is required for all.
Clarity has not been forthcoming.
My question was about how you'd know. I mean, it's not as if Frodo had a party throughout the book. His journey was, if I recall correctly, pretty much one trial after another without let up even up to the last chapter and then he had to leave anyway. I don't see how someone in mid-life could possibly say "well, I tried it and it hasn't worked".
Quoting baker
Yes, I sympathise with that, it is difficult to get out of the idea that one's first thoughts are somehow more authentic. But there really is no reason to think they are. They just happened to have arrived first. There's nothing special about them.
True. But I'm talking about the belief, or faith, that acting in a particular way is worth the effort.
It's this belief or faith that can be eroded.
No, I'm not talking about one's first thoughts, I'm talking about mental states that cannot be brought about deliberately.
Yes. I think that process of erosion is more in one's control than is immediately apparent perhaps. One can lose faith st every setback, or one can retain it despite failures.
Quoting baker
Yeah, I'm disputing the existence of those states. I'm saying that such states only appear to be impossible to bring about because we erroneously assume that the state they are intended to replace (our first thoughts) is arrived by some more 'natural' process. It isn't.
If one is, say, sad, that state of sadness is a constructed narrative to explain the sea of interocepted prior states being experienced. Other narratives are equally valid and perfectly possible to believe.
Like any narrative, there are limits, it has to work (predictions made using it have to turn out), but there are multiple narratives which work no better or worse than each other. We're free to choose between them.
What’s so special about knowledge? Knowledge can be wrong and outlive its usefulness.
A spoon may be in my hand or I could just be hallucinating it. All that really matters is if it works, if it is useful in fulfilling my objectives. Adding belief will only trap me in some ideology that I rather be free from.
There is no spoon. :razz:
You can't be certain that God exists, because being certain is knowing and the things we can be said to know are things that are inter-subjectively corroborable.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting Janus
Can you see how what you said above is the same, in different words, as what I said above? Also you do seem to be agreeing that there is a difference between being certain and feeling certain. If not then point to the difference you think is there between the two statements above.
Do you think we can be said to know anything we cannot be certain of? Do you think we can be said to believe anything we do not feel certain of? ( To anticipate an objection that might be raised to the second question: I allow that we might vacillate between believing and doubting; being certain and being uncertain, but the question is whether it could make sense to say that we can simultaneously and rationally (or even irrationally for that matter) both believe and doubt something.
Go back and read carefully what I've said, and then tell me what you agree or disagree with, and then we can talk.
I didn't say that I beleive nothing. Actually I do believe to be true hundreds or thouands of things.
I said, instead ---"I (consciously) try Not to beleive most things that are SAID To ME. Please notice the "SAID TO". By that I mean - "SPOKEN TO ME". or "WRITTEN TO ME".
A very large difference.
Also I spend lots of time in the internet. The net is full of hundreds of professional liers (LIERS )who spend thier lives thinking up words that will sound truthful.
Seems to me Ken, that you fight against the nefarious and you are a seeker of nefarious internet trolls so you can give them a good mental kicking! All power to you! Keep kicking that troll ass!
Ok, thanks for that clarification. I was misled by this: Quoting Ken Edwards
I disagree, though this is semantics and use does vary.
Certain has to do with a mental attitude, not the truth value of one's belief.
When someone asserts that they are certain, they think they know. They have no doubt. They are sure they are correct. Just as if they are uncertain, they lack the completely confidence in their belief.
They might in fact be correct and would answer correctly on a test when uncertain.
It's a partly emotional attitude.
If someone says they are certain God exists,regardless of whether God exists this can be a true assertion. They are certain of it. Their belief about the existence of God may well be wrong, but that they are certain is not. Just as being uncertain is not about the truth value of the belief. I was so sure I was right. I was so certain he was wrong.
And we also talk about degrees of certainty.
We use those degrees of certainty to describe our confidence in what we are asserting. Our attitude toward the probablity that our belief is correct.
Also we say when finding out something we believed (with great certainty) was incorrect...
I was so certain that X was true.
We don't say Oh, it turns out I wasn't certain, I just believed.
No, we were certain and were wrong.
Often you will see certainty described the feeling of being completely sure about something
Convinced and sure will come up as the first synonyms. And we can be convinced by others, for example, that X is true when it is not. We are talking about an attitude about our confidence level, our degree of certainty. Unsure tells us that this is an attitude related to our confidence we are right. You can be unsure and be right and sure you are right or just sure and be wrong.
Of course language is floppy. Some definitions will define certain using the verb 'know'. But these are not philosophical works. And in common parlance 'know' is often used as an intensifier. You think she's a lesbian. No, I KNOW.
But generally I would say the word leans towards the description of an emotional attitude about what we belief. How certain we are. And look at that sentence. How certain.
I can't see any way to tell someone that they are incorrect if they use certain to be a kind of attitude. I can see arguments mounted that it can ALSO mean one is confident about a belief AND correct.
Good. That's what I thought you meant. So, according to your line of reasoning here, being certain requires things that are inter-subjectively corroborable, which amounts to saying that we can only be certain of things that can be verified. Whereas feeling certain does not require a verifiable component(thing). Hence, that is consistent with the overlap you spoke of earlier, where one can feel and be certain that 2+2=4, but one can merely feel certain that God exists. Presumably, as a result of "God exists" not being verifiable.
Quoting Janus
Well, to be sure, there's more than one difference in need of careful consideration. One the one hand, there's the difference between the words you're using, and the words I've been using to say the same thing. On the other, there's the difference between how you're using the term certain. The difference you're asking about above is about the latter. The question has been answered to our satisfaction.
I'm aware of the semantic differences you're claiming that there is between your use of "feeling certain" and your use "being certain". That difference is all about what you mean when using those words(what you're doing with them). I've paraphrased several claims on two separate occasions. Your agreements regarding my 'paraphrasing' in both confirms that I've rightly understood what you're claiming.
You're invoking the difference between feeling that one knows the truth and one knowing the truth as a means for grasping the difference(by virtue of comparison) in what you mean when using "feeling certain" and "being certain". Your use of "feeling certain" describes situations of one believing that they know the truth, whereas your use of "being certain" describes situations of one knowing the truth.
Quoting Janus
Considering the differences between your statements is not enough to understand the remarkable difference in the meaning between our respective statements. You've now confirmed more than once that my paraphrasing captured what you meant. That tells me that I've correctly understood what you're arguing.
What's needed here, is a mutual understanding, not only of what you've meant, but also of what my paraphrasing meant. The differences there are remarkable enough to shed light on the problems with your particular use.
Nothing special about knowledge if it can be wrong. On my view, it cannot.
Quoting Janus
Quoting creativesoul
The above is for a bit of context...
We need to examine the differences between "We can feel certain, even when we are not", and "We can feel certain even when we are not right". If those two statements mean the same thing, then cases of feeling certain even when we are not certain are cases of feeling certain even when we are not right. So, being certain is on par with being right. Since being right requires true belief, then being certain would as well. True belief requires truth. If being certain requires true belief and true belief requires truth, then being certain requires truth as well. Truth is not about the believer. If truth is not about the believer and being certain requires truth, then being certain is not about the believer in the sense that the truth of the belief is not about the believer. Hence, I noted that earlier...
Quoting creativesoul
...but you objected...
Quoting Janus
Well no, I've not got it wrong at all, my friend. I've correctly understood what you meant at every turn, and you've confirmed that much on more than one occasion. The contentious matter is directly above. It's your notion of "knowing the truth". You hold that knowing the truth is about the believer, and while I would not reject that claim outright, for knowing the truth is indeed about the believer - in part at least. People do have true belief after-all, but knowing the truth is not just about the believer, and I think that you've neglected to carefully consider the rest of what it's about. So, in a very limited sense, knowing the truth is about people. However, the problem shows up when we consider what true belief(and hence *what else* knowing the truth) requires.
Knowing the truth requires true belief. Belief is true only if and when it corresponds to fact/reality. Hence, knowing the truth requires belief, fact/reality, and correspondence between belief and fact/reality. Correspondence is not about the believer(with exceptions involving claims about oneself, of course). Correspondence is the key element in knowing the truth(even in the exceptions above, one could be wrong about themselves). Thus, knowing the truth is not just about the believer. It's about correspondence as well.
Correspondence, it seems clear to me, is also the key difference between your notions of feeling certain and being certain. Correspondence is exactly what's being verified and/or corroborated after-all.
Quoting creativesoul
You seem to be contradicting yourself; you've said your statements "capture what I meant" which I read as meaning they agree with what I meant, then you speak of some purported "remarkable difference" which you haven't explained as far as I can tell.
There only seems to be this, and I've already corrected the misundertsnding which seems to lurk there:
Quoting creativesoul
I'm not concerned with knowing the truth in any absolute sense or with what truth is. I'm saying that being certain is being certain of knowing the truth in a verifiable inter-subjective context which is contrasted with merely feeling certain of something being true which cannot be inter-subjectively confirmed.
You should know from my past history of posting on here that I've argued that the so-called deflationary conception of truth as expressed in Tarski's T-sentence just is, despite the protestations of the dogmatists, an encapsulation of the logic of correspondence. But I'm not concerned here with accounts of what constitutes truth as such, but with the difference between subjective and inter-subjective experiences of certainty. so it still escapes me as to what you think the "remarkable difference", your elusive purportedly very significant point of disagreement, is.
The more significant idea I've been exploring is that it makes no sense to speak of knowing something that one is not certain of or believing something one does not feel certain of. To the extent that one is uncertain one does not know, and to the extent to which does not feel certain one does not believe, but rather doubts.
Quoting Bylaw
I haven't said otherwise. I've said that merely feeling certain obtains when one believes that something one cannot be certain of is true; the example I gave was being certain that God is real.I shouldn't have to keep repeating myself to clear up other's misunderstandings..
But that's just not the meaning of the word at all. If I'm 90% sure it's afternoon, no one in their right mind would describe that situation as me "doubting it's afternoon", yet I don't 'feel certain' it's afternoon either.
But that's a ridiculous stipulation; you are a hundred percent sure it's afternoon (if it is). In any case if you are 99% sure of something (ignoring the stupid idea that you could ever quantify that) or unsure to any degree, then you are not certain but are entertaining a blend of belief and doubt.
So what about the afternoon? You're ruling out "I believe it's afternoon" because I don't feel certain. We can rule out "I doubt it's afternoon" because I clearly don't.
So what is the name of my attitude toward "its afternoon"?
“What was once useful may no longer be useful.”
It's a weird example, but I'll play along. If you are uncertain as to whether it is afternoon, then it seems to follow that you entertain some doubt, Are you vacillating between believing it is afternoon and doubting it? In other words are you vacillating between certainty and uncertainty?
To me the following does not fit with my description of what certain means...
Quoting JanusI am taking these questions as expecting the answer should be 'no'.
I don't think feeling certain or being certain are distinguished in the use of certain. He was certain he was right but he was mistaken. He felt certain he was right, but he was mistaken. Both those sentences read a plausible assessments to me.
And I went into issues like this in my previous post. So, I don't think we agree. But, if I am wrong about the difference in our positions, well, just ignore my post. If I am right about the difference, well I guess I shouldn't have to repeat myself either.
They may not be distinguished in sloppy common usage, but isn't that the point of sharpening usage: to clarify the underlying logic?
"He was certain he was right, but he was mistaken" expressed in my terms means that he felt certain he was right, but he was not certainly right (because he failed to investigate the matter sufficiently, or whatever). To be certain means, inter-subjectively speaking, to be certainly right. You can be certain of many things: 2+2=4, the Sun is larger than the Earth, vertebrates have an internal skeletal structure, and so on and so on, almost endlessly. Of these kinds of things you can be certain (excluding ridiculous radical skepticism). As I've acknowledged, being certain subsumes feeling certain, but feeling certain does not necessarily entail being certain.
Given that you originally invoked "knowing the truth" as the distinction between feeling certain and being certain, if you are not concerned with what truth is, then you're not concerned with what "knowing the truth" means. If you're not concerned with what "knowing the truth" means, then your not concerned with what you're adamantly arguing over, and thus your thoughts on the matter are not worth much more of my time.
You did say that I was "echoing" what you had already said after reading my statements, despite the fact that our respective statements were remarkably different in that I added at least one term, for starters...
Contrary to what you've said, I have set out the differences between "we can feel certain even when we are not" and "we can feel certain even when we are not right". As hinted at above, the term "right" was added without subsequent objection. You offered the claim, and I added a term andchecked for your agreement. You readily offered it up. You did not object to that term being added. Rather, you claimed that I was "echoing" what you said.
So...
Given that the sounds produced by a reading is not identical, if my saying "we can feel certain even when we are not right" echoed your saying that "we can feel certain even when we are not", then I can only take that to mean that I captured your meaning, or that our different statements pretty much mean the same thing to you. All this being said...
You've just admitted to not being concerned about what truth is. If one is not concerned with what truth is, then they cannot be concerned with what "knowing the truth" means. If "knowing the truth" is central to someone who claims that they are not concerned with what truth is, well we've reached the end as far as I can help. Any further progress requires you performing a bit of damage control, because you've admitted to not being concerned with what we're discussing here.
"We can feel certain even when we are not" means, as I read it, we can feel certain even when we are not certain (i.e. cannot be certain). And this of course entails that we can be wrong about what we feel certain about. So, nothing there is inconsistent with what I've been saying; rather it supports it. That's why I said you had been echoing or paraphrasing what I had said.
Quoting creativesoul
I'm concerned with the kinds of things which are counted as being beyond reasonable doubt, i.e. certainly true, by the community at large, not with what constitutes or justifies being counted as such. That is an entirely different discussion.
You claimed that being certain is knowing the truth and then later openly expressed no concern about what truth is. Nothing left for me to say...
You're haven't been saying anything relevant in the way of disagreement any way, so probably better that you don't feel you have anything left. We don't have to know what generally makes things true in order to know that they are commonly counted as such. I have never seen any account which makes more sense than correspondence, so it seems that at least we agree on that much.
You're saying that being certain is being certain of something that you're not concerned with.
To borrow a bit from you(I do not like the phrase "knowing the truth", but since you've chosen it)...
Certainty is confidence that one knows the truth; that some belief or other is true; is the case; corresponds to fact/reality, etc. Certainty does not require the belief in question to be true in order for the believer to be absolutely certain that it is. One can be both certain and wrong. History is chock full of examples.
Being certain and knowing the truth are different. The former is the attitude the person has towards some belief, particularly being confident that it is true. The latter is determined by whether or not the belief(s) is(are) true.
What you've said here is irreconcilable with all this...
It's true that one could inadvertently know the truth without being certain of it; so all instances of knowing the truth are not necessarily being certain of knowing the truth. But all instances of being certain of knowing the truth, as opposed to feeling certain of knowing the truth are instances of knowing the truth.
I've given examples; do you disagree that I can be certain that 2+2=4. that the Earth is roughly spherical, that vertebrates have an internal skeletal structure and so on? Do you disagree that I cannot be certain that God exists, but that I can feel certain of it? Answer those questions in a straightforward ingenuous way and/ or provide counterexamples, or I'm done conversing with you.
That's not true. I read your bits. I summarized what you were getting at. I verified the summary by asking if you agreed. You characterized my summary as "echoing" what you've already said. Thus, I concluded that being certain, being right, and knowing the truth are all the same thing on your view. So...
I first figured out what you meant. Then, I went on to the issues...
Quoting Janus
If that were true, it would be impossible for anyone to be certain that "God exists" is true.
it is impossible to be certain of that. You need to up your reading skills it seems.
Not at all. People are certain of all sorts of stuff, that stuff included.
All sorts of people are certain that God exists.
Hundreds of millions of people are certain of that.
That's what your notion of certainty boils down to.
Quoting Janus
That's when you hung yourself.
Quoting Janus
Yes. Some doubt, but more certainty. 10% doubt and 90% certainty to be precise.
Quoting Janus
No. Just one single position.
If it's easier for you, I'm almost exactly 84% sure that I won't roll a one on a normal six-sided die. No vacillation between doubt and belief, just a single belief that there are six possible outcomes, five of which are the ones I'm interested in. My belief that "I will not roll a one" is roughly 84% certain. If I were betting (assuming I wanted to maximise my return) I would but exactly 84% of my investment on that outcome. If I were planning my day based on a dice roll I would invest about 84% of my thought planning for the {not-1} outcome and roughly 16% of my thought planning for the {roll-1} outcome.
People perform this kind of activity all the time, holding two possible outcomes at different levels of likelihood. We used to call that believing that X, but with less than 100% certainty. You want to change that language use, but I'm unclear as to what you want it changed to.
I thought I'd explained it pretty clearly; it makes perfect sense to me, but if others don't get it or agree that's fine too. It's by no means that important and I've run out of enthusiasm for pursuing it any further.
I get what you're saying here, but when attempting to parse belief and knowledge in terms of being certain and not, we're missing the key elements that separate belief and knowledge. Truth and/or justification/warrant. Knowledge and belief are not analogous with being certain and not. That comparison fails in all the most important respects.
I would not have any issue with someone saying that they feel certain that God exists but cannot be certain, if that means they strongly believe God exists but cannot be absolutely certain of it, especially if that person has a recent newly acquired personal standard of warrant(adequate/sufficient reason to believe) that demands verifiability, due to having serious doubts raised concerning other accompanying beliefs about God.
Oh...
Glad you like your new place. I'm with you all the way when it comes to preferring being more on the land than in the city or suburbs. Luckily, we live on an acre, so it's not so bad as the quarter acre carefully designed plots with fences between that are common nowadays. Twenty or fifty or a hundred acres would be better though!
Cheers...
Of course one can suggest a specific usage for a term that people can then agree to use. That's fine, but your posts read as if the people who disagreed with you are wrong. They didn't understand what the word meant. Those two discussions have quite different tones. Here the common usage tends much more against your sense of how the word should be used, and people were likely responding from that knowledge. I would guess they would react differently if you presented it as a proposal for a unified definition and the one you want. I certainly would have.
I'm not disagreeing with either point. In fact, I agree. However, I have found that by being more deliberate, innocence and passion are gone. Many people aren't deliberate like this, so being this way has a psycho-socially alienating effect, which isn't to be underestimated. By being more deliberate, much folk wisdom becomes unintelligible, "Have faith", "Believe in yourself", "Just listen to your heart" mean nothing anymore. Add to this active derision and even ostracism (I've been accused of being a "cold bitch", a "troll", that I "never put my heart into anything".)
But choose between such equally in/effective narratives on the grounds of what? Which one pleases one's ego more?
Doubting 'X' is doubting the truth of X. When one doubts 'X', one holds some belief or other(s) that ground(s) the doubt. Otherwise, the skepticism is groundless and/or unwarranted. Groundless skepticism is unacceptable. Radical skepticism is traditionally based upon doubting that we can be certain of and/or know anything at all, which is in and of itself - untenable - for if it is consistently applied it would undermine itself when so applied. On my view, radical skepticism is akin to overcorrecting one's front steering wheel when the rear of the vehicle breaks loose and begins to come around towards the front. It does not follow from the fact that we cannot know some things, that we cannot know anything.
The basic takeaway...
All doubt is belief-based. The pre-existing belief(s) held as relevant to X by the individual 'stands in the way' of the individual's certainty. A fine example of this is shown by the overwhelming majority of Americans not trusting that the country is heading in the right direction, by virtue of not trusting the truthfulness of elected officials, and most recently, not trusting the very institutions of American government.
I haven't suggested they were wrong, but that they were responding in ways that showed they were not taking in what I was saying, which was advocating for more precise usage of terms.
So, what I've been saying, in a nutshell, is that, to me, the logic of the idea of believing anything consists in feeling certain, with doubt consisting in feeling uncertain. And the distinction between merely feeling certain and being certain shows the difference between subjectively held beliefs and inter-subjectively justified beliefs respectively. Basically that's all I've been saying; how the underlying logic of those ideas seems to me. And then people respond with "but this is not in accordance with common usage"; well, yes of course, that was actually the point.
Unfortunately, one political party--the GOP--is deliberately fomenting doubt.
Be nice for you to unpack that. Doubt of what, based upon what? That's the philosophically interesting approach, keeping in line with the OP's topic.
Doubt in the legitimacy of the government. Not coming from Democrats.
Doubt in the legitimacy of the government, based upon what?
Based on they want power and want to delegitimize all existing norms.
I'm looking for an explanation consisting of more philosophically interesting substance. Not political speech.
Not sure what you are asking for.
Since the time of Plato, belief just meant weak knowledge. Not seeing much of philosophical interest beyond that. Or in religion, which is deliberately self deceptive.
Specific beliefs that are commonly held by Trump supporters that have been fomented by Trump and his allies that have resulted in an increase in doubting the legitimacy of the election results. Then we can look at what beliefs that doubt is founded upon.
Sorry, I do not understand that sentence.
Then we can examine the specific beliefs that ground the doubt regarding the legitimacy of the election.
That Trump won, not Biden. I said that. I must not be understanding you at all.
Yes. Trump and his allies have and are continuing to foment doubt in the legitimacy of the election results. Their supporters believe that Trump won.
What grounds the belief that Trump won?
What do you mean by "grounds?" I answered the question and you keep posing it again.
What evidence supports that belief?
Knowledge and belief are clearly differentiated in 187b–201c of the Theaetetus. Knowledge is not judging something to be true.
I know the difference. You failed to refute what I said.
I wasn't attempting to refute anything.
Quoting creativesoul
Me, too.
Then don't read my posts. All you do is make personal attacks. Goodbye.
Sage advise, it seems.
Trump supporters' doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 American presidential election are not based upon the motives you've proposed.
Same. The right wing thinks our government is not legitimate and thinks Trump needs to be a dictator.
Do you agree?
One motive: Delegitimize the election. There is not a single bit of evidence the election was improper.
Agreed.
So, Trump supporters' belief that the election was stolen is not based upon evidence. What grounds their belief? What is such belief based upon?
I submit to you that such belief was based purely upon the deliberate perpetuation of the falsehood. They took Trump at his word.
If then, these people are presented with all the relevant facts, and they remain convinced that Trump won and the election was stolen, then we've got a very serious problem on our hands. Such belief is on par with the kind of religious faith that was discussed earlier in the thread.
Yes, I can see how it might. Current social norms do love putting people in impossible catch-22s. "If you try, you're faking it, if you don't try, you're a loser"... There's simply no escaping the issues. As my wife i fond of saying - if there was a solution, there wouldn't be a problem.
Quoting baker
Yeah, possibly. I prefer more aesthetic grounds, but I don't know that there's much to choose between decision-making methods. Ones I like are - coherence (with other narratives), aesthetic value (usually inspired by childhood stories, to be honest), a preference for simplicity, a favouring of what I think are more 'natural' approaches... But those are just ways that seem to suit me, I couldn't raise an argument in favour of any of them, except I suppose coherence does make one's life easier to navigate, but then again many people seem to live with extremely clashing beliefs and come to no harm by it so...
Let us grant that the deliberate perpetuation of the falsehood was Trump's; still the belief of others cannot be based simply on that. The interesting question is as to why they take Trump at his word? What motivates their taking Trump at his word?
They wanted a violent overthrow of the government.
It's not clear it's a belief. It could also be simply strategy, a claim they repeatedly make (even though they know it isn't true) because it serves their purpose to do so (to obtain high positions of power).
Which also explains why they seem immune to facts. They know the facts, they just have different plans.
Quoting Janus
Why are right-wingers right-wingers?
Yes, I think this may explain a lot of it.
Quoting Janus
It's a culture war and tribalism like this is about attack and maintaining the rage. Trumps biggest attraction is that he seems to have the right enemies - his content is useful primarily as a battle cry.
I agree with both your answers, but the question seeks a deeper answer; why do they want to overthrow the Government, what motivates their participation in a "culture war". Baker's question seems inapt because this is not typical right-winger behavior. Typically they are conservative and want to maintain the status quo; this taste for revolution is coming, it seems, from the disaffected working class; those who you would expect to be more aligned with the left. So, Trump seems to have played on this disaffection and duped people into thinking he is all for the worker, the 'every woman and man'.
So, it seems to me the answer lies in the growing perception that the left have sold out to corporate and plutocratic interests.This perception is also there in Australian politics, but the intensity is dialed down somewhat.
Hitler's National Socialism, fascism, was popular in the lower middle class. Because they tend to be less educated and without skills for good jobs. Basically, about resentment.
You raise good questions and I don't have certainty on this, just some ideas. I think conservatism has been coopeted by a more radical right that has little interest in social institutions or tradition, other than what can be used for propaganda and to ignite hatreds. This seems to be the case in most English speaking countries. Even the idea of a 'right wing' is an inadequate and perhaps outdated term.
Quoting Janus
Certainly. There are a range of reasons for Trump and the culture wars. Or Howard and the culture wars - or Abbott and Morrison and the culture wars. We live in a new era of super charged tribalism that can readily be organized and inflamed by social media and Murdoch. I think this intensifies bigotries and rewards dualistic thinking.
I agree with you about disaffected working folk - there should be a way to reactivate a Reformist Left (as opposed to a Cultural Left, which may be seen more as a product of elites and latte sipping hypocrites).
When I speak with working people I often hear that for them much of what passes for the Left hates and mocks them because the left is about elitism (education) and cultural issues they don't relate to and is palpably snooty about working people and the suburban life. I can see why they say that. 'The Right' has an opportunity to say - hey, we're not elitists, we don't dig modern culture much either, we just want all people to live the dream and make money for their family and be left alone by academic wankers and interfering governments. This can be seductive.
One small win for the Justice system against Murdoch's institutionalised mendacity:
[quote=Bloomberg; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-21/fox-corp-loses-bid-to-toss-dominion-suit-over-election-claims]Fox News’s parent company can be sued by a voting-machine maker because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with “actual malice” in directing the network to broadcast conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis on Tuesday denied Fox Corp.’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying Dominion Voting Systems had shown that the Murdochs may have been on notice that the conspiracy theory that rigged voting machines tilted the vote was false but let Fox News broadcast it anyway.[/quote]
Maybe part of Trump's appeal is that he exemplifies 'you can create your own reality, never mind facts'. He plainly lives in a kind of fantasy world, in his own mind he was the greatest of all presidents and is wrongfully maligned and scorned by an ignorant world. His followers buy into that fantasy. Behind its malignant scowl, it's magical thinking. That's what makes it so dangerous - complete disregard for fact.
(I sometimes wondered, and it was commented, that the global financial crisis was created in part by the Bill Clinton's belief that everyone was entitled to own a home. Magical thinking, again.)
Religions don't have a monopoly on belief.
Indeed, but that article I linked to says a major factor was Bill Clinton's aspiration to provide home ownership to larger numbers of people. Or that was one of the factors - it also notes there was 'plenty of blame to go around'.
Agree although I would say that neo-liberalism is a religion...:wink:
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed. Which is another imagined appeal of being filthy rich.
I suspect that facts are not the primarily the issue in this matter. It's all about feeling, one liners and channeling resentment. Discourse seems to have become a weaponized form of stand up comedy.
Quoting Bloomberg
Lots of people are waiting for Rupert to die. Problem is Lachlan may well make Rupert look like the compassionate one.
Trump was outspoken about these things long before the election. He put that idea into the public sphere when doing so. He openly claimed that the only way he would lose the 2020 election would be if it was "rigged". Everyone knowing about the DNC's simultaneous abject failure to provide the people with a free and fair election reminded everyone of the possibility. The Assange leak was shocking in that what everyone already suspected became undeniable.
He fostered, fomented, and perpetuated the very idea successfully partly as a result of recent history.
Could explain the behavior. NOTHING excuses the inaction!!!
Are you God?
Else, on what grounds can you fret about what they do or don't do?
The right-wingers have a plebeian mentality, regardless of their education status and wealth.
Quoting Janus
They probably don't see it that way, but more in terms "so that the truth may prevail".
No, I think the disaffected working class align themselves with right-wingers, because their focus is on material wealth, it's that plebeian mentality.
I don't see it that way. People are eager for wealth, so they look up to the wealthy; but only to those wealthy they can already relate to, ie. those with a plebeian mentality, ie. the right-wingers.
They rally around him like their religious leader. "Thou shalt not analyze my words against common sense!"
Seditious conspiracy. Conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States of America. It's illegal to know about a planned attempt at sedition and not notify the proper authorites. It's illegal to help another implement either of the two clearly defined illegal behaviours above.
On the ground that I am an American citizen, and as such I expect all elected officials to do what's in the best interest of the country.. Seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States of America is never in the best interest of the country. Nothing excuses the inaction of those who knew what was happening and did nothing to prevent it. In times of strife, character is not built. Rather, it is shown.
Each and every individual who knew about and failed to report, and/or actively participated in either has committed a crime worthy of the most severe punishment, including removal from public office and being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law(according to the crime).
On what ground can you justify arguing otherwise?
:brow:
"Are you God?"
Pffft. Fucking morons around here.
The Theory of Evolution, survival of the fittest. It's all the rage, we're all supposed to believe it, yet somehow, be very selective about thinking it through to its logical conclusions.
You didn't explicitly answer my question.
Oh, the love is just oozing.