The nature of belief

[Magical Realist]

If you believe in something, but don't know what it is, does that count as a belief?

What is the difference between belief and disbelief?

Can we only believe in propositions? What about when you believe something exists?

Are beliefs voluntary or involuntary, or a mixture of both?

Are there moral standards for judging what people ought to believe?

Are there other reasons to believe something besides just that it is true?

Can you believe in something without knowing it?

What are the distinctions between having an idea and having a belief?

Bonus question: Is there some other way to relate to a proposition other than believing or disbelieving it? I am intrigued with finding new ways of relating to truth and falsehood outside of belief. What if I just pretend something is true in order to explore it's affect on my psyche? Would that mean making it true for myself without actually believing it? ? What are the implications of relative truth for belief and disbelief? What if I think something CAN be true for one person but not another? Am I believing in it then? What if I believe something is neither true nor false, but totally undetermined?

[Image: Believe-1.jpg]

[C C]

If you believe in something, but don't know what it is, does that count as a belief?

(1) "We believe something is causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. At this early date we don't know what that is."

(2) "We believe the labor union leader was murdered. But we don't know how it was done, we don't know where the body is, and we don't know who the hit-men were. Well, we do know he disappeared. No one has seen this fellow in quite awhile. We believe something happened."

What is the difference between belief and disbelief?

"Do you believe that Capone cheated on his taxes?"

"Yes, I do." [Belief]

"No, I don't." [Disbelief]

Can we only believe in propositions? What about when you believe something exists?

"My dog becomes excited at this time every day because it believes it is going to be taken on a walk in the park."

"How does your dog formally state its belief?"

"Huh?"

Are beliefs voluntary or involuntary, or a mixture of both?

"I have come to believe on my own that witchcraft works for [yata, yata] reasons."

"I believe witchcraft works 'cause we were taught in my family that it does."

"I was taught by my family to believe that witchcraft works and now personally defend that belief in this book I have written."

Are there moral standards for judging what people ought to believe?

"To ensure that all your great grandchildren will have basic protection, you should believe that everyone is born with certain human rights rather than having to earn them or qualify for them."

Are there other reasons to believe something besides just that it is true?

(1) "I believe man walked on the Moon because I'm making big bucks selling fake lunar rocks."

(2) "Do you believe in climate change? If you don't we will fire you from this job and ruin your reputation everywhere else."

Can you believe in something without knowing it?

(1) "Beliefs are part of a false folk theory of mind. Scientifically there is no such thing as a belief. Excuse me why I go across the street to vote for Governor Johnson's plan to eliminate poverty."

(2) "Why did you not ritually curse the fictitious God prior to our feasting upon these male virgins, Helen? As the rest of your fellow members of this vampire cult did?"

"Uh... for some reason the thunder and lightning of this storm distracted me during that moment, High Priestess."

What are the distinctions between having an idea and having a belief?

"I have this turnabout idea for a screenplay, JD, where Earth attacks the Martians."

"Fantastic, Ed. I believe this movie will rake in millions."

[C C]

Bonus question: Is there some other way to relate to a proposition other than believing or disbelieving it? I am intrigued with finding new ways of relating to truth and falsehood outside of belief. What if I just pretend something is true in order to explore it's affect on my psyche? Would that mean making it true for myself without actually believing it? ? What are the implications of relative truth for belief and disbelief? What if I think something CAN be true for one person but not another? Am I believing in it then? What if I believe something is neither true nor false, but totally undetermined?

Beliefs of all sorts have affected the history of the world even when their objects were imaginary or were not substantiated by public perceptions and experiments. So ironically they have real effects (both private and public ones) even if they can't acquire truth status. And when it comes to some of the formal systems and contracts that regulate us and society, "belief" might often not even be applicable in the sense of nailing any true/false, real/unreal judgements to them. They're just pre-settings which govern behavior and action and organizing.

The rest more or less might fit into a pragmatist approach, where the emphasis is on the relative usefulness of or "practice" of a mental representation in some contexts -- rather than fixation over its status in universal true/false, real/unreal values. In the earlier 20th century, the idea of suspending belief about even these dyadic judgements themselves was bounced around. Adding the prefix "ab-" to realism would produce a stance meaning "away" from that, but in the sense of departure from the whole real/unreal dyad, of evaluating affairs with it. Similar with "ab-truth" and "ab-theism" (avoidance of both true/false judgements and avoidance of both cognitive prejudices of theism and atheism, respectively).

"There is something straightforwardly unWittgensteinian about the Realist's belief that language/thought can be compared with reality and found to 'agree' with it. The Anti-Realist says that we could not get outside our thought or language (or form of life or language games) to compare the two. But Wittgenstein was concerned not with what we can or cannot do, but with what makes sense. If metaphysical Realism is incoherent then so is its opposite. The nonsensical utterance "laubgefraub" is not to be contradicted by saying, "No, it is not the case that laubgefraub," or "Laubgefraub is a logical impossibility." If Realism is truly incoherent, as Wittgenstein would say, then so is Anti-Realism." --Duncan J. Richter

However, language first deals with description of the ordinary external world of sensation, and only ventures to depict the "meta-external" in special enterprises. Dismissing knowledge and belief concerning the genre of metaphysical realism is one thing, but practicing the same skepticism about the everyday "board-hitting-one-in-the-face" cosmos of appearances (and even the science investigations of that) is another. So when a belief doesn't actually jibe with the phenomenal world or systematic study of the latter, and it engenders great disturbance or grave consequences rather than sitting passively, then that belief probably should be judged / condemned as soon as possible. Like: "My child doesn't need medical attention, she'll be healed. I prayed to the alien spaceship that's hidden behind the Moon last night."

[elte]

The question about whether belief is voluntary or involuntary is one that seems of unusually high interest to me.  Several years ago, I began to observe that it is involuntary.  That could at least partly explain why indoctrination is so powerful.

Because belief can be unconscious, propositions aren't required.

The question of if a belief can exist if the person is unaware, a corollary to the involuntary nature of belief should imply yes.

Disbelief is conscious unbelief.

An idea can be thought of without feeling of belief.

Adressing the bonus question, a proposition can be examined without a belief whether it is true or not.

If one believes that a belief might be true for someone else but not oneself, then my opinion is that is believing in it.

Undetermined belief can be because of lack of giving it thought, maybe because of unawareness, or it can be because after thought, it is felt to undetermininate or indeterminate, which is agnosticism.

I recently observed how fear of consequences can influence beliefs.  A prominent yet unsupporable futurology belief is that a person's brain can someday be emulated by some external means.  That is very  extremely (I can't stress the unlikeliness enough) unlikely.  The best one could hope for is creating a clone with memories of the original.  The clone won't feel like it was actually the original though.  The person won't feel like life has continued in the clone.  Unfortunately, the fear of one's demise inhibits seeing that.  It's basically a dogma of futurology, basically a religious belief based on limited understanding.  That is how religious belief has worked through the ages, answering questions with knowledge that is so limited as to have only a miniscule chance of being accurate.

[Yazata]

Good thread MR. We need more question-threads that everyone can express their opinions on and maybe argue about.

If you believe in something, but don't know what it is, does that count as a belief?

If I believe in the existence of something, I don't think that I need to be able to name or identify it, so long as I can establish reference to it some other way. I can imagine pointing at something while saying "I don't have a clue what that thing is, but there it is!".

What is the difference between belief and disbelief?

In general, I'd say that disbelief in X is synonymous with belief in ~X. (not-X)

Of course, as atheists incessantly preach, there's a difference between not believing in something and believing in the non-existence of that thing. (Atheists almost always believe in the non-existence of God as opposed to having no opinion on the matter, but their point still stands.)

Can we only believe in propositions? What about when you believe something exists?

Belief does seem to be propositional. If I say that I believe that X exists, I'm basically asserting that the proposition 'X exists' is T.

Are beliefs voluntary or involuntary, or a mixture of both?

I'm inclined to say a mixture of both. Your question kind of blurs over into the question of whether decisions to believe are conscious or unconscious. I think that it's clear that we are often kind of predisposed to believe certain things and to disbelieve others, by our previous experiences and by our preexisting beliefs and desires. I don't think that we are always consciously aware when that's happening.

Are there moral standards for judging what people ought to believe?

There does seem to be an ethical-like dimension to belief, but I haven't given it a lot of thought. It's somehow 'wrong' to opt for believing whatever we want to be true in the face of strong counter-evidence. I guess that doing that would typically be disfunctional from an evolutionary perspective. ('No, there's no sabertooth tiger over there, since thinking that there is brings me down and kills my buzz!') So there may be some innate drive to think rationally, just as we feel an innate compulsion towards fairness and reciprocity.

Are there other reasons to believe something besides just that it is true?

William James made that argument. He argued that if there's no convincing evidence either way, then we are justified in believing in whatever belief 'works' in our lives. If we have no way of knowing whether God exists or not, and if belief in God has positive psychological effects, then we are justified in believing in God.

There's currently a big vogue for 'pragmatism' (in a very broad and unhistorical sense) in philosophy, in opposition to 'evidentialism'. Evidentialism is the idea that people should only hold beliefs that are supported by suitable evidence. But there are philosophers who insist that there are other good reasons for holding beliefs as well, such as the belief's political-correctness.

Can you believe in something without knowing it?

Of course. If knowledge is 'justified true belief', then we can say that many beliefs that people hold aren't true, and many true beliefs probably aren't well justified.

What are the distinctions between having an idea and having a belief?

I can form the counter-factual idea that London is the capital of France, but I don't believe it. Belief seems to suggest that we are asserting the truth of our idea.

Bonus question: Is there some other way to relate to a proposition other than believing or disbelieving it?

Wouldn't understanding a proposition be an example of that?

I am intrigued with finding new ways of relating to truth and falsehood outside of belief. What if I just pretend something is true in order to explore it's affect on my psyche?

We often hypothesize the truth of propositions in thought-experiments. Then we explore the implications of the hypothesis being true.

But I'm not sure that it's possible to perform a thought experiment in the psyche as you suggest. How can I pretend to accept Christ as my savior? I either do or I don't, and there doesn't seem to be any middle hypothetical option there.

What are the implications of relative truth for belief and disbelief?

I'm inclined to assign beliefs weights. Some beliefs are more plausible than others. Some are much better justified by evidence and argument. If I'm accepting somebody else's authority, how authoritative do I take them to be?

If I assign a belief a low weight, that belief remains speculative. So it resembles a thought experiment in that respect.

What if I think something CAN be true for one person but not another?

'This spot is less than 40 miles from San Francisco' say I, pointing towards the floor. I'm guessing that's true for me and not true for you. That often happens when sentences contain indexicals. An indexical is an expression whose meaning or reference changes according to context. The word 'I' is an indexical, since its reference changes depending on who is using it. CC, Hillary and Carly Fiorina can truly say 'I am female', but it would be F if I said it.

Am I believing in it then? What if I believe something is neither true nor false, but totally undetermined?

If you believe that something is neither true or false, then you wouldn't be believing in the truth of whatever it is, would you? (I suspect that we might do that more often than we are willing to admit.)

[Magical Realist]

If I believe in the existence of something, I don't think that I need to be able to name or identify it, so long as I can establish reference to it some other way. I can imagine pointing at something while saying "I don't have a clue what that thing is, but there it is!".

It becomes a subtle distinction between believing that something is and believing that something IS some particular thing. If I believe in ufos, while at the same time insisting I don't know what they are, then I believe SOMETHING exists while having no belief about what that something is. I frame it as believing in the phenomenon itself vice believing in a theoretical explanation for it. And isn't that the case for all reality? A man who had never seen or felt water will suddenly believe in it when it is shown to him. But he is not believing it is water in the sense that we use the word. He is believing in THAT stuff, whatever we wanna call it or identify it as. Does he believe in water? Yes and no. He believes THAT it is, not WHAT it is. Or he may believe what it is to be different from water altogether. Maybe he believes it is a magical living creature that sings and dances in the sunlight. He believes in water, but not in "water".