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On the nature of belief

#1
Ostronomos Offline
[b]On the need to believe as a starting point of truth...[/b]

This, my confused friend, moreso speaks to the veracity of human nature than the validity of individual interpretations (which are always parts of a whole). It more reflects the need to believe in something as the motivation behind a life of truth, whether that be the belief in atheism or the knowledge of God. Only a life of truth leads one to God. As we are products of our conditioning and genetics, conditioning and genetics almost always leads one to truth, unless you're evil or atheist.
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
And what if you're an agnostic and simply acknowledge you don't know enough to form a belief about the beyond? Can we be so dishonest with ourselves that we will believe just in order to gain some sort of benefit? What kind of self-blindedness would that require?
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#3
Zinjanthropos Online
Better start them when they’re young Ostro. Two year olds & younger lie all the time so maybe you might want to create an age limit. A life of truth is a pretty tall order. Unfortunately that makes a life of truth a lie, sorry about you’re luck especially if you believed you qualified. Right now the only humans that might get consideration are those who haven’t developed language skills, like newborns.
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#4
Yazata Offline
(Sep 29, 2022 04:42 PM)Ostronomos Wrote: This, my confused friend

Who are you addressing? What is the context of this post? What does "this" refer to?

Addressing the question implicit in the thread title...

Quote:On the nature of belief

I guess that my definition of belief is that it's a propositional attitude, in which the truth of a proposition is being affirmed.

"Sue believes it is raining outside" means that Sue affirms that the proposition "It is raining outside" is True.

Quote:On the need to believe as a starting point of truth...

Well, since truth and falsity are properties of propositions, one would need to have a proposition before one can have truth or falsity. Humans generate propositions.

But I don't think that there's any need to believe that the proposition is true in order for it to be true. Whether we adopt a correspondence theory of truth or a coherence theory, things that we don't personally believe might nevertheless be true.

I guess that an exception to that might be a pragmatic account of religious truth, where the "truth" of a religious doctrine is the effect it has on a religious individual. (Early Buddhism was like that.) So in that kind of case, the religious doctrine won't have its intended effect on the individual unless he or she believes it.
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