Wed, 21 Oct 98, Reader writes:
I am interested in the theoretical and epistemological foundations of our world paradigm and which makes people 'not believe' things, as if beliefs have anything to do with this. I have tried standard places and got nowhere. It is not a simple topic although once understood it is very simple. Would anybody be interested?
Fri, 23 Oct 98, Otherplane's reply to reader:
The beliefs of the world had been built and created over the years by a variety of believers. As we are brought up in the atmosphere of these beliefs, each of us learns some of each via parents, school, society, television, propaganda, etc. It is human nature to want everyone to believe as you do, for this seems to confirm one's beliefs to them in some strange way.
You mention that belief has nothing to do with it, and there I must disagree. Religion is based on a variety of beliefs and people who share those beliefs. Science is based on trying to prove or disprove the beliefs of others. I do agree that we do not have to believe something just because others do. But, our personal beliefs is what makes us unique and gives us our individuality.
Thus, to put it simply, it is not important "what" you believe, only that you "do" believe.
Fri, 23 Oct 98, Reader writes:
It is slightly more complex than your portrayal. I agree on the transmission bit, this is soaked up by kids before they can think as it has to be imprinted first to make them think. Compare the recent posting on monkey's counting.
Do you assume I mean by 'belief' what you imagine it to mean? If so, wrong. Belief: adherence to the communally shared "consensus reality" or myth that what the senses portray is "real". Count the number of times "real' is referred to and used as a bludgeon to down opponent; in our society, mind you. The Buddha disagreed and Eddington, 1927 AD stated, about Relativity, that: Henceforth the senses are no longer a reliable guide to reality"; quite so.
Our society also 'believes' that there can be but One and Only Theory of Everything, which is false. A theory is but a sentence writ large across the sky. Having alternative experiences and states of consciousness each forces a different world model and theory. Magic works, physics works, it all works but never 100% of the time. Even the best of psychics seldom score above around 70 to 80% right. In which case, in order to enter a 'gateway' of usage of various theories or belief systems one has to learn to believe and unbelieve at will, which takes some doing but is organized at a level higher than the usage of the belief.
As William Blake said: we become what we behold. To behold does not take belief but the ability to envisage, sensory mode, intellectual mode, intuitive mode, which if one knows how to do this at will has nothing at all to do with belief, more a case of will or being pigheadedly persistent in one's doings, even when the evidenced has not yet come forth.
I was poking fun at Berkeley's question: does the world exist when you are not looking. Well, yes it does, but neither in the form or subject to the process or method that involves the senses. The very thing you open with, that beliefs about the world have been built up. etc., is a belief of the hearsay kind or custom or tradition, which does not happen to be how it was at all. Before you can communicate you have to figure out the means thereof and before you can do that you have to figure out how to impose order. Then, when a shared world order and model works it acquires the force of reality, because it works, which says nothing at all about other world models doing the same thing too. Just because it is successful, how often does not mean it is real, which ploy us widely used in our society and that is what I am against, since it inhibits and prohibits people from using their belief system to explore this ultra queer, weird world.
We are living at a fantastic time because all these silly notions older generations of authorities imposed upon us are all and sundry tumbling down. They are, in effect, undecidables which are neither true not false but asserted, like Euclid's straight lines, to be real, therefore a fact and just because it is logically well connected does not imply it is real, do it?
Truth is not the proof or correspondence between an idea and an observation + an interpretation but when a pattern fits together just so. Keats; Truth beauty is and beauty truth. "Truth" therefore, belongs with aesthetics and rhetoric not binary logic. Everybody knows what simple is but who knows how to contrive the simple and the standard usage of belief is one of these simples that unpeel not like a banana but a big can of worms.
Fri, 23 Oct 98, Otherplane's reply to reader:
I see we are speaking about two different definitions of belief. Thanks for clarifying, the belief I was speaking of comes from within one's self and is believed as the final truth. Nothing anyone says or does to this person will be able to change the beliefs they have taken on as themself. This is not something either science or society has any control of, for it comes from within an individual. Thank you for your insight and views.
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