Daydream Believer
Someone told me today I am always quick to shoot down the beliefs of others. I conceded that I probably am among the first to challenge beliefs which I don't share. I expect people to do the same to me, probably as a result of learning my trade as a scientist. But I was also careful to point out that it was nothing personal, I was questioning an idea, not a person who held the idea.
In science, I may draw a set of conclusions from the data set I am presented with through experimentation. When I present these conclusions to other scientists, I fully expect them to challenge my conclusions, question my assumptions, query the data on which I based them. That's science. Only by constant re-evaluation does science move in any direction. I think beliefs should be like that, too.
People make assumptions and draw conclusions based on the experience and environment in which they live. They make decisions about what they think is most appropriate, and reject concepts which they find to be unhelpful, or at odds with their existing belief set. Often they use their conclusions to defend their existing behaviour patterns when criticised.
When people tell me that I am quick to attack peoples opinions or beliefs, I admit that I am. But I am doing it explicitly. I am saying "I don't share your belief, and here are my reasons". People who have beliefs are doing the same thing. But without any transparency. To hold a belief, one makes a choice. To accept one explanation or method, and reject all others. This rejection is implicit, and stealthy. Even though I challenge people, I give them the opportunity to respond to, even attack, my thought processes. But rarely do they afford me the same courtesy.
I find it quite interesting that apparently I am in the wrong for challenging the publically stated beliefs of others, putting my thinking out in the open for discussion, attack, ridicule and analysis. While the believers quietly reject all other explanations, and hold their beliefs close, and their reasoning closer. How can we learn if everyone keeps secret their route to understanding of their chosen beliefs?
In science, I may draw a set of conclusions from the data set I am presented with through experimentation. When I present these conclusions to other scientists, I fully expect them to challenge my conclusions, question my assumptions, query the data on which I based them. That's science. Only by constant re-evaluation does science move in any direction. I think beliefs should be like that, too.
People make assumptions and draw conclusions based on the experience and environment in which they live. They make decisions about what they think is most appropriate, and reject concepts which they find to be unhelpful, or at odds with their existing belief set. Often they use their conclusions to defend their existing behaviour patterns when criticised.
When people tell me that I am quick to attack peoples opinions or beliefs, I admit that I am. But I am doing it explicitly. I am saying "I don't share your belief, and here are my reasons". People who have beliefs are doing the same thing. But without any transparency. To hold a belief, one makes a choice. To accept one explanation or method, and reject all others. This rejection is implicit, and stealthy. Even though I challenge people, I give them the opportunity to respond to, even attack, my thought processes. But rarely do they afford me the same courtesy.
I find it quite interesting that apparently I am in the wrong for challenging the publically stated beliefs of others, putting my thinking out in the open for discussion, attack, ridicule and analysis. While the believers quietly reject all other explanations, and hold their beliefs close, and their reasoning closer. How can we learn if everyone keeps secret their route to understanding of their chosen beliefs?
posted by The Last Scientician at 9:07 PM
25 Comments:
Ah - to say you are quick to "shoot down" a belief when you question someone’s belief is a weak and moronic form of attacking witihin an argument. You, Last Scientician, have probably hit the nail on the head and they have no comeback, no intelligence to contribute to the conversation and hence the name calling. I am assuming that your general response to this name calling would be to become immeadiately defensive and then the shift in the conversation has taken a personal detour and hence your questions are left unanswered. Easy peasy.
Hey…Way to stop a conversation from hitting on areas where you might learn something you fucking clowns.
Next time someone tells you you are quick to shoot down a belief, say thanks I’ll take that on board - now back to my question….Keep asking the questions my friend...
The issue can get curly when you shift cultures. I would LOVE to have the belief-questioning conversations where I live just now (Philippines) but need to be cautious: for example, "atheism" can be synonymous with Satanism here (does one capitalise "Satanism?) and the idea of not believing in any sort of god/s can seem quite bizarre if not shocking to many people. If I really tried to get into the belief-questioning line of discussion, I think I'd seriously upset people, in a different and less acceptable way to those back home in Oz who lazily accuse you of attacking beliefs.
No point to make, really, just stumbled across the blog and, procrastinating, wanted to get in on the discussion. Goodbye.
Shooting down beliefs, eh? So, please define for me in physical terms an "idea".
An idea? A concept with no physical or tangible presence.
Wombat, you are right, and when I travel, I tend to avoid such potentially dangerous or awkward discussions, because I both value my life, and show respect to my hosts wherever I tread.
However, in the comfort of my own (relatively) free and open country, I feel it my right and my duty to question, evaluate and challenge beliefs I find irrelevant or counter-productive. It's my culture too.
" An idea? A concept with no physical or tangible presence. "
That's not a description in physical terms.
Or are you saying it doesn't exist, since you imply it can't be described physically?
Scientician, I agree completely - when I'm back home in Oz, I'm all for challenging bizarre (I'm sure you'll agree that just because they'r entrenched, it doesn't mean they're not bizarre) and counter-productive beliefs. A phiosophy-of-science friend of mine just sent me a paper that argues that "Despite appearances, many Western adults who’ve been exposed to standard science and sincerely claim to believe in God are self-deceived; at some level they believe the claim is false." It's written mostly without philosophy jargon and is very entertaining.
I would be most interested in reading that, wombat, I have often thought that myself.
Anonymous, I distinguish beliefs from testable concepts, in that beliefs have nothing but faith to support them. Even trying to defend something which stands as a question of faith probably erodes it's credibility.
I agree that trying "trying to defend something which stands as a question of faith probably erodes it's credibility." I think the most effective "debate" a religious person could have about their faith is to not debate it at all. The moment it's held up against any normal system of assessing something's veracity, it crumples completely. Which just makes the whole phenomenon all the more bizarre.
The paper isn't yet published, but I'll chack with my friend and see if it's OK to send it to you, id you want.
Scientician,
I simply asked for a description in physical terms of an "idea".
You told me it was "A concept with no physical or tangible presence."
I said "That's not a description in physical terms."
From that I would infer that, in terms of a scientific framework, an "idea" or "ideas" do not exist.
What is science again?
I don't exactly see where you're going with this, anonymous. Are you trying to prove that ideas don't exist? Ideas and beliefs aren't the same thing, either.
Science could be defined as the systematic investigation of phenomena in order to assess their most probable cause.
Oh, and wombat, that would be great.
TLS,
"Are you trying to prove that ideas don't exist?"
Not at all.
"Ideas and beliefs aren't the same thing, either."
I agree.
"Science could be defined as the systematic investigation of phenomena in order to assess their most probable cause."
Not the definition I would use, but let's not quibble. Could you apply it to an "idea" please? Can you do better than "A concept with no physical or tangible presence" which seems to me to be a definition rather than a physical description, as I put it, or rather than a systematic investigation if you would like?
Anonymous - Can you do better? Sounds like you want to give it a "shot"
picknmix,
'Sounds like you want to give it a "shot"'
Not at all. I'm just waiting for an answer to the question posed: 'please define for me in physical terms an "idea"'.
I thought it seem a simple & reasonable request in light of the post and comment.
I don't think an idea can have a physical description as such.
If an idea is undescribable in physical terms, scientifically speaking, does it "exist"?
I sympathize with scientician's post on belief experimentation, but it is overly narrow in some ways too. It is easy (though likely uncharitable/mistaken) to read scientitian as though he wished we could be (as epistemologists and economists put it) "ideal rational agents," airing out our beliefs with one another in the borderless confines of enlightenment. Now, this may not be crazy. Indeed, there are still some epistemologists that attempt to rationally reconstruct scientific and even moral reasoning in order to justify claims as an ideal rational agent would. Of course, most are skeptical of the significance of such reconstruction, given that we've evolved to a state that makes ideal rational agency, and any absolutely objective vantage point, impossible. We must be happy with objectivity that's watered down with greater and lesser degrees of subjectivity. But on the whole, people are surely capable of more rationality than they typically display. And more is welcome! I suspect this is what scientitian was getting at, and that he likely doesn't think ideal rational agency is possible.
I also think, however, that people can be surprisingly open to belief experimentation if one presses experimentation in the appropriate way. We've evolved lots of social norms for guarding our beliefs--and for good evolutionary reasons. But we've evolved rationality too, and most people are willing to let that show--are willing to experiment--if one navigates the social norms appropriately. Or so I learned quickly when it was my job to communicate recent scientific findings to the public, realizing to my initial dismay that not everyone "believed" we're warming the earth, or that we shouldn't shoot endagered species. Sheer dogmatism is sometimes an explanation for a person's reluctance to hold her beliefs over the fire. But it's not always the only one, nor always a correct one. A person may be quite willing to hold her beliefs over the fire, when engaged in the right way, or at the right time, or by the right person. Further, though our evolved belief guarding mechanisms (and the subsequent demand for engaging people properly when wishing to experimenting with belief) may often be a pain in the ass, it's not clear these mechanisms are bad things. Some people reckon they evolved in part as factors that enhance social cohesion, and also as heuristics to help ensure a good idea is not disposed before we've had a chance to test its legs. The ideal for a society, of course, is to strike the right balance between social cohesion and truth seeking. I sympathisize with the scientitian's underlying worry that folk often act in a way that doesn't allow for enough truth seeking. But I'm not sure he appreciates how delicate the balance is.
A further picky point regarding the physical nature of belief. In the relevant literatures, a belief is any proposition that you think is true, including not just articles of faith, but tested inductive hypothesis, deductive certainties, and mundane thoughts such as "this apple is red." The vast majority of cognitive scientists think a physical description as such is possible (i.e., the mind certainly has a "physical presence") and gets cashed out in ways that support (in part) some interesting hypotheses. For example, one popular theory is that, physically speaking, each belief is a particular symbol in a language of though (LOT) and that our cognitive systems compute over these symbols. The exact physical nature of these symbols is only partially understood; often, authors say the symbols are "realized in" or "supervene upon" the physical substrate of the brain. In the context of the scientitian's post, the interesting point is that we often are not conscious of the "content" of our beliefs, i.e., of what that symbols that are our beliefs actually represent/mean. And even when we are conscious of the contents and correct about them, we often deceive ourselves to the point that we say things that contradict our actual beliefs. This may have consequences for how we'd go about implimenting belief experimentation. But I'm not sure this was Anonymous' point when he/she raised the issue of the physical nature of belief. I'm not sure the scientitian's point turns on whether beliefs are physical or non-physical. Perhaps the question about what counts as science is more relevant. I'd need to hear more from Anonymous.
mjb,
I enjoyed your comment, as I did the scienticians.
"We must be happy with objectivity that's watered down with greater and lesser degrees of subjectivity." I don't think the Australian prime minister would agree with you.
"But I'm not sure this was Anonymous' point when he/she raised the issue of the physical nature of belief."
I didn't mention the physical nature of belief. I'm not sure that it would be an enduringly interesting topic. I raised a "simple" question. Simple questions can be non-trivial.
It's a simple question, to be sure, Anon, but as Mjb said, it's not really one that I spend too much time considering, and wasn't actually one on which I rested my initial post.
There are any number of physical descriptions of ideas and beliefs I imagine, from philosophy to neuroscience, but I don't think any of them are all that relevant to what I was saying.
Obviously I don't think humans are capable of purely rational thought, we would cease to be human without our emotions, from what I can tell. I would, however, like people who implicitly suggest that my view is wrong to offer me some explanation why they think differently.
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Is relevance subjective?
"You may lead a horse to water...."
or to put it another way
"What value is there in self-discovery?"
There is much scope for philosophical thinking here, and I will merely bring, but one small point in regards to the phyisical nature of ideas. The famous American philospher W.V.O. Quine* claimed that we currently cannot have an accurate account of human motivation because we currently lack a physicalist account of human motivation. I'm not sure physicalism will ever explain human behaviour, but don't throw me in at the other end and call me a dualist for claiming so.
Would love to know what scott free meant- I can't make head nor tail of it.
*His nephew was Robert Quine- yes *THAT* Robert Quine who worked with Rochard Hell and Lou Reed (amongst others), and produced the famous Quine tapes of the Velvet Underground.
I think Scott Free's basic point was that people often deflect questions about motivation by changing the subject, including attacking the person asking the questions. That was my interpretation, anyway.
Obviously, we can't ever fully explain our motivations, but to say that it is somehow wrong to question them at all is regressive, surely?
As someone who has seen you in action doing this stuff (on ye old emenen), and someone who also has a scientific background, I think the part of this questioning behaviour that upsets people is that they see it as a personal attack. "How dare you question my personal beliefs?", they're thinking, "have you gone through the things they've gone through?"
It's hard to get tone right on a messageboard, and clear, concise logical writing can easily be taken as curt and attacking. Many see a messageboard like M&N as a place to have conversations, much like they'd have in a pub, and in that context a stranger coming up to them, butting in on their conversation, and questioning things they say can be seen as a direct personal attack.
I would say that the best way to avoid this is to try harder to understand why they believe their delusional religious beliefs - 9 times out of 10 when you really offend someone, it's because something about the belief is very dear to their heart, helped them in a difficult time, etc etc. I think you'd probably be better off showing how a scientific logical approach would be better for them in their everyday life, based on what you know about their life.
tim.
Point taken, tim, I have cocked it down a notch. I think. Enopugh with the cross blogination.
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