Talk:Belief/Archive 1

Archive 1

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Hmm. Im wondering, how come Hume and Kant seem to be quoted so often here in WP. Certainly they are pillars of western thought, but they do have some holes in their ideas, and besides, I thought we had long ago begun the process of weening ourselves off of our sacred cows of westernism.

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"Westernism"? What's that? If you mean Western culture generally, um, no, I'm not aware that anyone other than some "postmodern" and extremely politically correct types are making a move to "weaning ourselves" off of this material. We've got to have a huge amount of such material on Wikipedia if it's going to be complete. But this doesn't stop you from adding as much "non-Western" (whatever that means) type material as you like. --Larry Sanger

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Not again... More silly resentment towards "postmodernism" and "politically correct types".... they're not out to kill you. So you disagree with them, get over it. I'd be willing to bet that you (yes, you, Larry Sanger) will be dwelling on this absurd cynicism for a very long time. Postmodernism is just a catch-all phrase for something easy to criticise; the fact is that there is no such thing as a postmodern "movement" or "school of thought" or "belief system"... The obsession with postmodernism is simply a phenomenon among critics who are desperate for a board to throw darts at.

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Would it be relevant (or interesting) to mention the logical convolutions of Raymond Smullyan, eg characters who believe one thing, but consistently lie, so say the opposite, etc?

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I'm not sure--why would it (on this page)? Wouldn't that belong on lying or something like that? --Larry Sanger

Just a thought (I'll crib what I've typed here to pad out the stub on Smulllyan, at any rate). At one point he introduces characters who only believe only false things, yet lie: hence all their statements are true. -- Tarquin

I wonder what point he was making with that. Sounds interesting...

Is belief voluntary?

Actually, there is something interestingly relevant we could add from the literature in epistemology: it's widely held that most people have no control over most of what they believe... --Larry Sanger

I made a stub section on this matter. Please expand and improve. Andries 11:03, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If I may add my own experience (and I am quite sure many people would recognize a pattern here)... I have a firm belief that reincarnation exists because instinctively I can't imagine I could stop being conscious after death, but I also admit I can't live forever. But by rational thinking I also know that nothing to my knowledge can justify reincarnation. This is only one example among others where belief seems to oppose knowledge. I think there are many other such examples, essentially about concepts difficult or impossible to prove, for example involving the existence or non-existance of God. Fafner 09:47, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC) ---

If I find the time... I'll try to add sometime here. Hume (amongst others) noted that we acquire beliefs passively, that the aquisition of them is not subject to the will. Bernard Williams' paper 'Deciding to Believe' investigated this and tries to show that the coneptual relations between belief, truth and evidence rule out voluntary believing. While some have shown that his argument for the incoherence of 'believing at will' is not quite right, most philsophers do believe that decision and belief can't be linked in the same way as, for instance, decision and imagination : I can successfully decide to imagine a scene, but I can't successfullly decide to belief that scene represents truely. However, as Williams noted, this doesn't rule out deciding and influencing our belief by more "roundabout routes". One could embark on a course of action, hypnosis or drugs were his suggestions, such that afterwards you would have brought it about that you belive some proposition or other. Williams remarks that this would make the person "deeply irrational". Some have questioned this but it reamins to be seen whether any convincing account of belief at will can be found. (Fabulist 18:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC))

(indented Fabulist's entry). There's nothing remaining of this at this point. Apparent conflation of the willed and the arbitrary. Lycurgus (talk) 21:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Assuming the thread started by the founder, may be something to be added here, benefit of the/good faith whatever, will come back to it. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 21:25, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Degree of certainty

Why is there no mention of degree of certainty? If I believe something then it means that I think that the chance that something is true is >50%. I can believe something with 51% or 99% certainty. Quite a big difference Andries 20:35, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---

Attempted anwer: Certainty looks like an absolute, and it may be hard to see how something can be 'a bit certain', or 'fairly certain'. Perhaps it can only be 'absolutely certain'. Sceptics seem to have a similar problem over ‘knowledge’ and conclude, rigorously, that it cannot be truly achieved. Anyway, if belief is accepted as ‘a strong feeling’ this confusion as to whether it must entail any particular degree of certainty seems to go awayYanx 19:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC) i don't think so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.219.144.51 (talk) 19:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

There is certainly an enormous literature on this with many different approaches and spanning different disciplines. Before completing the merge I'll make sure there's something for partial belief if there isn't already. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 00:01, 19 June 2014 (UTC)