Talk:Belief
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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.
"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
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.
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?
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...
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[edit] 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))
[edit] 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) ---
[edit] Belief system
Please help with the belief system entry at Talk:belief system. Thanks. Adraeus 02:06, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Because that article is on VfD and looks to be deleted due to no content, I am moving the associated talk page, which does have content to here:
[edit] Moved content from Talk:Belief system, currently on VfD
Note: This entry needs work. Adraeus 02:10, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
A belief system (also system of beliefs) is...
Here is my small contribution. It will probably need lots of works, but after all we have to start from somewhere ;-) I don't know if the comparison has been used somewhere, but a belief system really looks like a mathematical logical system with a set of axioms (unproved beliefs) and inferring rules (reasonnings). Axioms (beliefs) are very debatable since it usually involves beliefs in God(s), supernatural, or even science after all (how many people among you has ever seen and verified an experiment in quantum mechanics? probably not the majority, certainly not my case but I believe in quantum mechanics) ;-) Inferring rules (reasonnings) are usually common to most people. Deduction is the most reliable, induction is used to assert probable conclusions (although I met someone acknowledging only induction as reliable and rejecting deduction). Fafner 08:05, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
See also belief, worldview, paradigm, model
External links On Belief and Belief Systems by the late Bob Eddy (Institute of General Semantics)
Belief Systems by CognitiveBehavior.com
Eric Herboso 04:16, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Self-consistent sets of beliefs
I seem to recall something about the application of Gödel's proof to beliefs, to demonstrate that one's beliefs cannot, taken as a whole, be logically self-consistent. It seemed very interesting at the time, but I can't pull up a cite -- can anyone help? (Yes, I know that Gödel's proof actually demonstrates "incomplete or inconsistent", but the argument did something plausible at this point...) -- Karada 07:57, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Gödel's incompleteness theorem#Misconceptions about Gödel's theorems: "The theorem only applies to systems that are used as their own proof systems"; it follows that the theorem might imply that you can't be consistent if you justify your beliefs with other beliefs; on the other hand if, as most people, you justify your beliefs from one or several external referrents, the theorem does not apply. Jules LT 19:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] belief is assigning probability greater than 50% ???
Removed from the article: "To believe something can be interpreted as assigning a probability of more than 50% that something is true."
(also removed "The rule of the thumb from a school of epistemology that says that certainty should be as big as the corresponding evidence is called evidentialism.", which is useless without the preceding "definition")
This has little to do with evidentialism, which is a theory of justification, in any case.
Who said that? In what book? Is it so widely accepted among scholars that it deserves mentionning so high in the article? This is not only unsourced, it also looks pretty preposterous to me. When you say "X has a probability of more than 50%", you don't believe that "X", you believe that "X is more probable than not"; this is entirely different. Jules LT 19:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Definition of Belief
A belief, in its varying degrees, can be a guess, a dogma, a hope, an intuition, a leap-of-faith. Belief is to make an hypothesis which then must pass the test of Cash Value—bringing Peace of Mind. Yesselman 20:35, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Reasoning??
Beliefs can be acquired through perception, reasoning, contemplation or communication
This statement is plain incorrect, How on Earth can resoning be related to 'belief' . Infact they have completely opposite meanings. Obviously if you can reason(or if there is a logical explanation) to something, then there won't be any 'need' to believe because that 'thing' would be undeniable fact(like a maths equation). The point of belief only arises if there is an absence of resoning!!
The only possibility here is if 'resoning' is being referred to as 'bias' dependent on culture/surroundings etc. Reasonit 00:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I think this results from a confusion between belief as an unproven fact and belief as a conviction adopted after a reasonning (for example a political position). The difference between the two of them might be thin in some cases. Just a thought... Fafner 08:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "Is Belief Voluntary?" section
"Most philosophers hold the view that belief formation is to some extent spontaneous and involuntary.
Most philosophers!? That's a bold and sweeping statement. I'm not sure if to just suggest that is radically POV or ask for some kind of verification. For now I've added a "citeation needed" tag and left it.
Maybe "many philosophers" would be a better choice of words, and easier to add a few references for. The word "most" suggests that nearly all philosophers past-and-present agree about this - somehow, I seriously doubt that... -Neural 03:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
