I am baffled, please explain

[PRmerger]

I’ve nothing else to do waiting for my pizza dough to rise and the footy to start, so here’s some random thoughts on choice and belief.

Is it conceivable that you believe something without knowing any facts about it at all? Hardly. You cannot say you believe that the Blues will win tonight if you don’t know who the Blues are, what game they are playing and the relative merits of the opposition. So…no facts, no belief. And in this context, I am using facts as being indistinguishable from information that may or may not be acceptable as being true. In other words, as a snippet of information that you could accept or reject. For whatever reason.

Is it possible that you can declare that you don’t believe something under the same conditions? Obviously not. You cannot say: ‘I believe the Blues will win tonight’ if you have no information/facts about the matter.

So. No facts, no possibility of belief. Now let’s look at facts that you do have.

The Blues are a rugby league team representing my state. We are playing our deadliest rivals, Queensland. I won’t go into any more details, but imagine that I gave you all the facts and figures for the game. Which player was playing in which position, past results etc.

You may accept the fact that home advantage in this game is indeed an advantage. You might reject the fact that our coach is a deciding factor. And so on. And having all these facts at your disposal, and using reasoned internal debate, having accepted some facts and rejected others, you will be in a position to answer the following question: ‘Who do you believe will win the game tonight?’

So with facts, you are in a position to make a decision. To accept them or not. And to therefore say that, from the information/facts I have been given, I BELIEVE X.

Now let’s look at trying to make a conscious decision to believe something.

Let’s any that I tell you that my team is comprised of children who have never played the game. Let’s say that Queensland are putting up their biggest, best and toughest players. Is it at all conceivable that you can say that you believe that Q’land will lose? Obviously not. Similarly, even if you were the most fanatical, one-eyed NSW supporter, you could not consciously decide to believe that they will win. The facts of the matter, as you have accepted or rejected them, force you to admit your belief.

It is impossible to hold a belief without any facts. It is impossible to accept facts for a situation and believe it not to be true. It is impossible to reject facts for any given situation and believe it to be true. The result of trying to do so is cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, pizzas need my attention…

youtube.com/watch?v=AckOxXt6h2U

#usawomensworldcupchamps

 

[DCNBILL]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/07/f5/80/07f580460518df2eb8683e7d7750ca26.jpg

youtube.com/watch?v=AckOxXt6h2U

#usawomensworldcupchamps

We won! whoo whoo!

 

[Bradski]

We won! whoo whoo!

We didn’t…

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’ve nothing else to do waiting for my pizza dough to rise and the footy to start, so here’s some random thoughts on choice and belief.

Is it conceivable that you believe something without knowing any facts about it at all? Hardly. You cannot say you believe that the Blues will win tonight if you don’t know who the Blues are, what game they are playing and the relative merits of the opposition. So…no facts, no belief. And in this context, I am using facts as being indistinguishable from information that may or may not be acceptable as being true. In other words, as a snippet of information that you could accept or reject. For whatever reason.

Is it possible that you can declare that you don’t believe something under the same conditions? Obviously not. You cannot say: ‘I believe the Blues will win tonight’ if you have no information/facts about the matter.

So. No facts, no possibility of belief. Now let’s look at facts that you do have.

The Blues are a rugby league team representing my state. We are playing our deadliest rivals, Queensland. I won’t go into any more details, but imagine that I gave you all the facts and figures for the game. Which player was playing in which position, past results etc.

You may accept the fact that home advantage in this game is indeed an advantage. You might reject the fact that our coach is a deciding factor. And so on. And having all these facts at your disposal, and using reasoned internal debate, having accepted some facts and rejected others, you will be in a position to answer the following question: ‘Who do you believe will win the game tonight?’

So with facts, you are in a position to make a decision. To accept them or not. And to therefore say that, from the information/facts I have been given, I BELIEVE X.

Now let’s look at trying to make a conscious decision to believe something.

Let’s any that I tell you that my team is comprised of children who have never played the game. Let’s say that Queensland are putting up their biggest, best and toughest players. Is it at all conceivable that you can say that you believe that Q’land will lose? Obviously not. Similarly, even if you were the most fanatical, one-eyed NSW supporter, you could not consciously decide to believe that they will win. The facts of the matter, as you have accepted or rejected them, force you to admit your belief.

It is impossible to hold a belief without any facts. It is impossible to accept facts for a situation and believe it not to be true. It is impossible to reject facts for any given situation and believe it to be true. The result of trying to do so is cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, pizzas need my attention…

Yes, indeed, some beliefs are like that. But even with all - or at least an identical set - of the facts lined up, there will be disagreements about what those facts indicate. Which is to say that facts are not sufficient to determine, at least, some and probably many beliefs.

The role that choice makes in the “determination” of many beliefs is still an open question, not one settled by examples where facts play a large role since not all beliefs are fact dependent in that way.

 

[DCNBILL]

Not so fast. God is also “omnipresent”, meaning he is everywhere, even in the physical universe. Also God allegedly maintains the physical universe, acting on it, acting in it, so he is definitely a subject to a scientific study. And so far there was no positive experiment to substantiate God’s existence. Any experiment comes back as a negative.

You do not seem to have a grasp on who God is. A good reference for you to read is “The God of Jesus Christ” by Walter Kasper.

Now, it is true that the “absence of proof is not a proof of absence”, but the “absence of evidence is a very strong evidence of absence”.

Ok

Well, it was you who insisted on an example where the different stimulants on the brain will produce new mathematical results. Erdos’s usage of those stimulants produced a clearer awareness, clearer thinking, resulting in truly awesome results. I gave you the evidence you wanted. What now?

I insisted on nothing, I requested evidence of your mind not your brain and you have not provided any, So as to your statement above…

That is what you believe. What kind of evidence can you provide for it? Objective, repeatable evidence?

I told you that I have little evidence in my following sentence, did you not read it?

I have not said a word about out-of-body experiences. I am simply talking about memory, emotions, feeling of pleasure and pain, thoughts, personality, all of which are influenced by electro-chemical means. You say that the “mind” survives the physical life. But you did not actually say just what this “mind” would be?

No one said you did. You are the one who claims to have a mind, yet you keep talking about your brain.

Actually the repeatable experiments are sufficient evidence for those scientists, whose job is to explore the neural activities. They set up hypotheses, conduct experiments, read the results and draw their conclusions.

No question they are, to demonstrate brain activity.

But you have a different view, which is fine. You believe that the mind exists, whatever it may be. Can you explain and prove the veracity of your assertions, starting with a definition of the “mind”?

You still have not convinced me that you have a mind.

If quoting actual but contradictory posts from different posters is a violation of charity, then I am in deep trouble. As for the “insanity”, I used a very narrow example of a mother, who is unable to accept the irrefutable proof of his son’s guilt. Of course it is “only” irrefutable for the police and forensic scientists. For the mother there is no “irrefutable” evidence of her son’s actions. How would you classify this kind of behavior - in a charitable way, of course? (By the way, I am surprised that supposedly personal conversations with moderators might be available to the general public.)

I have no Idea what you are getting at here.

Who mentioned personal conversations with moderators, are you unaware that they monitor the threads? Do you know what the red triangle at the top right of a post is for?

 

[Pallas_Athene]

I insisted on nothing, I requested evidence of your mind not your brain and you have not provided any, So as to your statement above…

This is what you said:

When you demonstrate that an electrical current stimulates someone to come up with a mathematical formula let me know. As for drugs interfering with brain function once again these are physical effects…

So I did, I gave you the example of drugs stimulating the mind, resulting in wonderful new discoveries in math.

You still have not convinced me that you have a mind.

All the neurophysicists conduct experiments to show the results of “mind altering drugs”. What do you think, why are those drugs called “mind”-altering drugs? Since I have no idea what your definition of the mind is, I cannot comment on it.

 

[DCNBILL]

This is what you said:

So I did, I gave you the example of drugs stimulating the mind, resulting in wonderful new discoveries in math.

No, you gave me an example of medication allowing a person to function properly, that is a far cry from a chemical inducing a spontaneous revelation in mathematics.

All the neurophysicists conduct experiments to show the results of “mind altering drugs”. What do you think, why are those drugs called “mind”-altering drugs? Since I have no idea what your definition of the mind is, I cannot comment on it.

Of course you can not and that is complete understandable.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Atheism certainly would eliminate a lot of problems with the criminal justice system. Theists believe man has an innate impulse toward good which comes from being the creations of a Creator who can be nothing but good. If that Creator were taken out of the equation, then whose impulse is correct? From where do we derive our moral compass? Each person would be free to judge for himself or herself. It might not be okay to kill a totally innocent person, but if I know so-and-so has harmed me and my family - irreparably - then who’s to say it’s immoral for me to go kill so-and-so? And I should not be punished for it, either because my view of things is just as valid as anyone else’s.

 

[Gorgias]

DCNBILL:

#usawomensworldcupchamps

We won! whoo whoo!We didn’t…

We didn’t? Are you sure about that? You might want to check ESPN.

 

[Bradski]

Yes, indeed, some beliefs are like that. But even with all - or at least an identical set - of the facts lined up, there will be disagreements about what those facts indicate. Which is to say that facts are not sufficient to determine, at least, some and probably many beliefs.

Facts are all you have to go on. And again, I’m using facts as meaning information given to you which you may or may not accept or reject. You cannot, in any sense of the term, believe something without being given information about it. And if you accept all the information as being true, then you cannot do anything but believe whatever that information relates to. If you reject all the information because you consider it to be false, then you cannot do anything other than not believe. This is axiomatic.

Of course, not all the information given to you is objective and verifiable. If I say there’s a pen on my desk, you can check it out yourself. There either is or there isn’t. If there is, then you have no choice but to believe the statement: ‘There is a pen on my desk’. But if I give you some subjective information such as: ‘The pizzas at Papa Giovanni’s are the best in the suburb’, then it’s more a personal preference. But you can still check them out yourself and accept or reject my statement depending on your opinion. Then you can say: ‘I believe the pizzas are the best’ or ‘I don’t believe the pizzas are the best’. But…you either accept the information and therefore believe or reject it and therefore not believe. There are no other options (apart from not being able to make up your mind).

There will obviously be occasions where you hold an existing belief and information is given to you that is counter to that belief. There will be a tendency to reject a lot of what doesn’t already slot in with what we hold to be true. This is quite normal – we’d likely go crazy if we always accepted contrary information and constantly changed our minds.

Look on our beliefs as a flywheel. They have an impetus. In a lot of situations it’s going to take quite a lot to slow that wheel, stop it and reverse its direction. But if you keep accepting information that contradicts your belief, eventually that wheel will slow. The only conscious decision you can make it to accept the new info or reject it. If it is information that is effectively undeniable and you deny it, then we have cognitive dissonance.

Global warming is a good example. I used to deny it was happening. I even helped my daughter produce a short film that backed up that belief. But I kept on accepting more and more information that ran counter to my belief and that flywheel slowed and slowed and eventually stopped. It is now spinning rather vigorously in the opposite direction. Not because I chose to change my mind. I chose to accept information that caused it to happen automatically. I didn’t wake up one morning and think: All the liberals are saying it’s happening – I think I’ll choose to believe it as well.

A woman may believe her husband to be faithful. It might take a lot to change her mind about that. Telling her that you saw him talking to another woman will not change that belief. Showing her pictures of him having lunch with another woman will not. You can imagine further scenarios, each more damning than the last up to the point where you can take her to the hotel room where her husband is in bed with the woman. At some point she will lose her belief that her husband is faithful. She won’t want to, but the weight of information to the contrary will be too great and she will automatically lose it.

All the information that she had prior to these new revelations – leading to the conclusion that her husband was faithful, was accepted and she therefore believed it. Then she accepted information to the contrary and therefore lost her belief. Once that information was accepted (her only conscious decision), then she had no further choice in the matter.

The role that choice makes in the “determination” of many beliefs is still an open question, not one settled by examples where facts play a large role since not all beliefs are fact dependent in that way.

It’s not an open question at all. All beliefs are fact dependent. Or rather information dependent (I’m using the two words as synonyms). You either accept the info or reject it. And you therefore believe or not as the case may be. If that is not the case then you are going to have to come up with a belief that has no informational content at all. Which is literally impossible. You can make any statement about belief at all:

‘I believe X’

All I have to do is ask you why you believe it. If you have an answer, then you have some information which you have consciously accepted which has therefore led to your belief. If you have no answer, then you have made a nonsensical statement ‘I believe X…but I don’t know why’).

Belief is not a choice.

 

[Bradski]

We didn’t? Are you sure about that? You might want to check ESPN.

Sorry, when I said WE didn’t I was referring to my team that I mentioned in a previous post. We got hammered…

The American women did brilliantly (Australia lost to Japan in the quarterfinals).

 

[Bradski]

Atheism certainly would eliminate a lot of problems with the criminal justice system.

Funnily enough, we have a system just like that down here. It’s a secular system that makes no reference to God. If someone commits a crime, they don’t get convicted on the basis that God says it’s a crime. Otherwise…well, we’d be putting homosexuals in jail, sending people to the Big House for masturbating, fining them for working on the Sabbath.

Seems to work OK.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Facts are all you have to go on. And again, I’m using facts as meaning information given to you which you may or may not accept or reject. You cannot, in any sense of the term, believe something without being given information about it. And if you accept all the information as being true, then you cannot do anything but believe whatever that information relates to. If you reject all the information because you consider it to be false, then you cannot do anything other than not believe. This is axiomatic.

Of course, not all the information given to you is objective and verifiable. If I say there’s a pen on my desk, you can check it out yourself. There either is or there isn’t. If there is, then you have no choice but to believe the statement: ‘There is a pen on my desk’. But if I give you some subjective information such as: ‘The pizzas at Papa Giovanni’s are the best in the suburb’, then it’s more a personal preference. But you can still check them out yourself and accept or reject my statement depending on your opinion. Then you can say: ‘I believe the pizzas are the best’ or ‘I don’t believe the pizzas are the best’. But…you either accept the information and therefore believe or reject it and therefore not believe. There are no other options (apart from not being able to make up your mind).

It’s not an open question at all. All beliefs are fact dependent. Or rather information dependent (I’m using the two words as synonyms). You either accept the info or reject it. And you therefore believe or not as the case may be. If that is not the case then you are going to have to come up with a belief that has no informational content at all. Which is literally impossible. You can make any statement about belief at all:

‘I believe X’

All I have to do is ask you why you believe it. If you have an answer, then you have some information which you have consciously accepted which has therefore led to your belief. If you have no answer, then you have made a nonsensical statement ‘I believe X…but I don’t know why’).

Belief is not a choice.

All you have said does not make EVERY belief “fact dependent” in a strict sense, since the believer has control over the extent to which the facts determine his/her beliefs. The fact that you give obvious examples does not demonstrate that many other examples do not exist which permit much less a dependency on facts.

Value judgements, unlike the example of a preference for pizza which you gave, may be somewhat fact dependent and somewhat will dependent.

I would even suggest that there are three levels of beliefs, each with a different level of “dependency” on facts.

1. preferences - are completely or almost completely will or subject dependent.
2. judgements (of value, for example) - are a mix of will/subject determination and fact dependent.
3. factual beliefs - which are (at least for sane individuals) completely (or nearly so) fact dependent.

A belief, for example, that "Murder is wrong.” is a value judgement that depends very much on the constitution of the will and very little on fact. The fact that individuals adhere (for the most part) to this belief has more to do with intergrity of the person as person or moral agent than it does with “facts.” That is not to say someone could not disabuse themselves of the belief if they willed hard enough to do so.

There are, I would suggest a plethora of other value judgements or judgements in general that are much more amenable to willed choice than to “facts.” Moral agency runs into these all the time in daily life - they are the little situations that challenge us hundreds of times a day to make “choices” or choose options.

A consistent pattern of choices will lead to a change in the constitution of the subject such that whatever they would will at Time X will be quite different from what they did at Time W. The change in the will could be entirely dependent upon the free choices made in the interim. This, in fact, is why we are accountable for our choices - the small choices we make day to day turn us into the kind of being we have chosen, in small increments, to become.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Funnily enough, we have a system just like that down here. It’s a secular system that makes no reference to God. If someone commits a crime, they don’t get convicted on the basis that God says it’s a crime. Otherwise…well, we’d be putting homosexuals in jail, sending people to the Big House for masturbating, fining them for working on the Sabbath.

Seems to work OK.

That’s great! Now, why do you put them in jail for killing others, even when those others have done them a wrong or aren’t good people? Why do you put them in jail for beating the tar out of another person who might have said something nasty to them? Why do you put them in jail for stealing what they need to eat to keep themselves alive? Or from stealing from a rich person who won’t even miss the money?

 

[Bradski]

That’s great! Now, why do you put them in jail for killing others, even when those others have done them a wrong or aren’t good people? Why do you put them in jail for beating the tar out of another person who might have said something nasty to them? Why do you put them in jail for stealing what they need to eat to keep themselves alive? Or from stealing from a rich person who won’t even miss the money?

Well, there’s nothing in the penal code that mentions God or Christianity or any other religion for that matter.

I appreciate that you have just the couple of hundred posts, so maybe you don’t realise that this question has been done to death in many posts on many threads (and in many other forums). But if you want to believe that we do it because God, whether we believe in Him or not, has laid down the law, and that we couldn’t work these things out for ourselves, then please feel free to do so.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

No, you gave me an example of medication allowing a person to function properly, that is a far cry from a chemical inducing a spontaneous revelation in mathematics.

You said: “properly”. That is a very strange idea. Stimulants enhance the activity of the brain which result in a much better functioning mind. Without those mind-altering drugs Erdos was unable to function on the same level as with them. Obviously the chemicals did not provide the discoveries themselves, they “merely” allowed the mind to operate on a much higher level.

Let’s think about those mind-altering drugs as the performance enhancing drugs like steroids. The steroids change the metabolism of the people, so that their muscles will work “better” and the result is “superhuman” achievements. That is not really the “proper” functioning of those muscles.

Of course you can not and that is complete understandable.

Yes, indeed. It was simply an idle intellectual curiosity on my part when I asked “how do you define the mind”?

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Well, there’s nothing in the penal code that mentions God or Christianity or any other religion for that matter.

I appreciate that you have just the couple of hundred posts, so maybe you don’t realise that this question has been done to death in many posts on many threads (and in many other forums). But if you want to believe that we do it because God, whether we believe in Him or not, has laid down the law, and that we couldn’t work these things out for ourselves, then please feel free to do so.

Well, if you look at my join date, I haven’t been around long enough to see that its been done and done again in many threads or I wouldn’t have asked.

Still, I don’t see how any atheist has any moral compass at all except the one of his own making. And it’s either atheist or God. There is no in between.

 

[Bradski]

This, in fact, is why we are accountable for our choices - the small choices we make day to day turn us into the kind of being we have chosen, in small increments, to become.

You’ve got it exactly right. Except that, for whatever reason, you don’t want to admit it. It beats me…

Those ‘small choices’ we make every day constitute accepting or rejecting the information we have. That’s what a choice is, for heaven’s sake. It’s a decision to accept one thing and reject another. Whether, as you say, they are preferences/judgements or objective facts (if it’s an objective fact, you have no decision to make unless you want to be perverse and deny the undeniable or accept the unacceptable).

All other choices are, obviously, a matter of taste or judgement. ‘I prefer this’ or ‘I consider him to be honest’ or ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘That doesn’t appear to be true’. You are making those ‘small choices’ by accepting or rejecting information. If someone’s honesty is in question then you believe him to be honest or not because of, wait for it, information that has been given to you about that person. You make that ‘small choice’ by accepting or rejecting that information. The choice that you make THEREFORE forms your belief. You CANNOT have that belief until you have made that choice – to accept or reject.

You CANNOT reject something and believe it to be true. You CANNOT accept something and believe it to be false. This is so incredibly, amazingly, mind-boggingly obvious that I am at a complete loss as to why you are even trying to deny it.

 

[Bradski]

Still, I don’t see how any atheist has any moral compass at all except the one of his own making.

As a theology student, surely you would be aware of secular morality. Even if you don’t agree with it, surely you see how it is developed. I can’t see you simply learning about Christianity in a vacuum. Aren’t other world views presented, explained and discussed as part of the curriculum?

 

[PRmerger]

I insisted on nothing, I requested evidence of your mind not your brain and you have not provided any, So as to your statement above…

And it is indeed a warranted request.

There seems to be a weird hypocrisy being embraced: “I’ll only believe in things that are empirically demonstrated to be true!” and “Of course the mind exists. I don’t need to have empirical data to demonstrate that!”