Cerril
06-25-2005, 03:29 AM
I brought this up in another post that got buried (I've noticed DS tends to avoid replying to my philosophy posts; I'm not sure whether that's because of a lack of anything interesting or if I'm complete enough in my replies; anyway...), but I'm interested in thoughts here.
I tend to define 'to believe' as the tendency to 'act as if' something is true. So I believe that when I go to sleep I'll wake up and it will be about seven hours later, and I believe that there is no God, and I also believe that a certain ethic will maximize my happiness over my life. I also believe a great deal of more mundane things about the effects my actions have on the world around me. Incidentally, if I were forced to choose between five outcomes, whichever I chose would be the one I believed would happen (though if I were allowed uncertainty, I wouldn't necessarily believe any one outcome to be the one which would occur, if the probabilities were similar).
This is obviously different than the traditional way it's defined, which involves most people believing certain things (especially about morality) and acting in a different way. Now without sounding too much like DS, the traditional example is how most people profess belief in a very specific deity who has some very specific things to say about what you should or shouldn't do and how you should act (i.e. that while you are forgiven, that forgiveness requires genuine contrition), yet most people do things that their faith or code says is wrong without being too broken up about it.
I also use this same 'act as if' definition to talk about relative certainty. That while I can't prove that I won't drop dead between now and tomorrow, or that there is a real world independent of me, I can safely 'act as if' they were certainties since the alternative would be nonsense.
Obviously there's a measurable difference between the statements 'I believe I will have chinese food tomorrow' (since I have a dinner date at such a restaurant) and 'I believe there is a real world independent of my thoughts.' But the usage of 'believe' doesn't differ in kind, in both cases I will 'act as if' the thing I believe is true (in the first case by not having chinese food before then; in the second case by continuing to interact with others) until it's demonstrated otherwise.
So I really just wanted to put this thought forward, and see what sort of reactions anyone has to any part of this.
I tend to define 'to believe' as the tendency to 'act as if' something is true. So I believe that when I go to sleep I'll wake up and it will be about seven hours later, and I believe that there is no God, and I also believe that a certain ethic will maximize my happiness over my life. I also believe a great deal of more mundane things about the effects my actions have on the world around me. Incidentally, if I were forced to choose between five outcomes, whichever I chose would be the one I believed would happen (though if I were allowed uncertainty, I wouldn't necessarily believe any one outcome to be the one which would occur, if the probabilities were similar).
This is obviously different than the traditional way it's defined, which involves most people believing certain things (especially about morality) and acting in a different way. Now without sounding too much like DS, the traditional example is how most people profess belief in a very specific deity who has some very specific things to say about what you should or shouldn't do and how you should act (i.e. that while you are forgiven, that forgiveness requires genuine contrition), yet most people do things that their faith or code says is wrong without being too broken up about it.
I also use this same 'act as if' definition to talk about relative certainty. That while I can't prove that I won't drop dead between now and tomorrow, or that there is a real world independent of me, I can safely 'act as if' they were certainties since the alternative would be nonsense.
Obviously there's a measurable difference between the statements 'I believe I will have chinese food tomorrow' (since I have a dinner date at such a restaurant) and 'I believe there is a real world independent of my thoughts.' But the usage of 'believe' doesn't differ in kind, in both cases I will 'act as if' the thing I believe is true (in the first case by not having chinese food before then; in the second case by continuing to interact with others) until it's demonstrated otherwise.
So I really just wanted to put this thought forward, and see what sort of reactions anyone has to any part of this.