From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 07:27:40 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Brett explains why a number of careful thinkers go ballistic
> when they hear the word "belief". I had always wondered about
> that.
Lee, I don't think this is an accurate summary of the main
contention of my post at all, indeed its so far off it that I am
genuinely at a loss as to whether I completely failed to
communicate or whether you didn't really read what I wrote.
I did get an offlist message from someone else saying the post
was good but reading your response I am really wondering
now what went wrong in the communication process.
Maybe its me.
> > [Some people] have not yet separated themselves from
> > superstition and when they stick their uncritical,
> > unweighted, propositions in each others faces they
> > do so proclaiming all too often, all too proudly,
> > as though it were a great virtue in itself,
> > "this is what I BELIEVE !".
The above is a *caricature*. But by pruning both the
comment from immediately above it and the sentence from
below it you've changed the thrust.
Statistically, I understand, a majority of the worlds population
is so much into belief and religion and the supernatural that many
of them think they have another life coming after this one. That imo
effects the way they make resourcing decisions and do their cost
benefit analyses to the extent that they do them at all.
Belief makes for bad social policy.
I'll continue with this thread, but I want to rebadge it so that I
don't have to rehash all the stuff in the original again if anyone else is
interested. (I've added the suffix "- a variant" to the subject line).
> It is perhaps significant that I don't ever recall anyone using
> the word in this manner, and I have even entertained a number
> of religionists who've knocked at the door. That is *so*
> mindless, that perhaps it's a vanishing usage.
>
> > IMO, "beliefs", by their very nature, and as opposed to reasons,
> > are ultimately counter-social.
>
> I know what you mean, and you know what I and other sensible
> people mean when we say "believe" or "belief".
Respectfully, it is not at all clear to me that you do know what I
mean yet.
I need to get to know someone before I give them the benefit of
the doubt as to having done either qualitative or quantitative analysis
of any sort *if* they say they have arrived at a position based on
faith or belief. Actually if the used the words "arrived at a positon"
I'd probably raise my evaluation a bit. If they use another word
instead of believe, like perceive, think, suspect etc.. I know theres
a better chance of some sort of personal processing going on. That
they are not just parroting what they've heard. I guess I apply a
crude sort of Turing test to people. I suspect that some others that
have a strong commitment to reason also make assessments on
the basis of language. Assessments which are not facts, but are
definately not mere beliefs either.
> It has been
> a useful conveyor of the amount of certainty the speaker feels.
> One customarily speaks even of "degrees of belief".
Just barely. Its like a worldview with only three switched on the
dial, yes (knowledge), no (disbelief and no knowledge) and maybe
(belief). Such a system is better I guess just barely that one that has
no maybe at all, but I think almost any semi-sentient creature achieves
the yes, no, maybe level of "sophistication", whereas homo sapiens
have, if they chose, at their disposal a much wider range. Probabilities,
percentiles, cause and effect understanding. Contingency etc. Of course
they can also choose not to reason something through too.
Some one who does no better than to believe when reason is
available in my view is morally copping out in many cases. The
process of reasoning is available to normal homo sapiens but it can't
be engaged simultaneously with the process of believeing. Belief
starts when reasoning stops. If indeed in some peoples cases, on
many issues, reason every got out of the starting block in the first
place.
>
> > They build barriers between people. Whereas reason through
> > the medium of language can potentially build bridges.
>
> Do you really have evidence in your personal life that
> people you talk to are handicapped in this way?
Yes.
> I'm willing
> to trust you, but it seems to me that this is a nice theory
> that has no real utility.
I think that is because you are thinking in terms of dialog, not in
terms of a political discussion where those talking are also aware
that there are others listening. Often in politics it is for the benefit
of the undecided listeners not the ostensible adversary (who is
frequently beyond persuasion, at least in one step, and in a public
forum with ego invested and face to be saved etc) that one speaks
as one is after sufficient numbers of voters to achieve an outcome
and one knows that many of those voters, alas, will make superficial
judgements or go with mere belief, rather than reason.
In order to understand what I am saying about belief and why I
think extropians should not use the word you need to think about
extropians talking in public forums perhaps debating with people
with strongly held views to the contrary but with a wide number of
"undecided"s listening in.
If the extropian dumbs down his/her language in such a forum to
include the uncritical word belief and thereby justifies by implication
the view that beliefs are as good as reasons, the extropian has handed
over a large part of their natural advantage. The listener(s) hear both
the extropian and the extropian's adversary talking in terms of belief
and may get the message that as both sides are talking about beliefs
they may as well choose whichever uncertainty they like. Hell vote
for the better looking politician, or the tall one.
> For example, people whose thinking
> is screwed up anyway aren't going to be magically helped by
> dropping a certain term and fishing around for synonyms.
No. To understand my point you need to see I'm thinking like a
lobbyist and a political activist trying to arm my allies, not like a
philosopher arguing some esoteric point that doesn't really seem
to matter to many people at all. I see extropian activities as
potentially a matter of life and death, I take memes and training in
memes very seriously. I live in a democracy where "everyone",
believers and reasoners (I'm simplifying) each get one vote. And
the majority of votes make the law irrespective of whether belief
or reason was used by each of the many voters to make their
personal "decision". There are already a swag of folk who
specialise in collecting believers. I can't stop people believing but
I don't have to encourage the dumbing down of the population.
I certainly won't willingly contribute to the view that belief is as
good and as valid a way of making decisions in the world as
reason. It isn't. Indeed promoting such a misconception in a
democracy increases the chances of my premature demise.
>
> > Please do consider ditching "belief", "human life" and "human
> > beings" from your operating language when other terms are
> > available.
I'm talking again as a political animal, not merely or mainly a
philosophical one. I am persuing change and very aware of how
important it is to win the votes on issues in democracies.
>
> Do you believe in Sapir/Whorf?
No I don't believe in belief. Also I have not heard to my
recollection of Sapir/Whorf.
> By that I mean the hypothesis
> that our vocabulary and grammar greatly influence our thoughts?
Ok
> I only weakly believe in it; sure, a lot of our thought would
> be impossible without language, and I also believe that the
> speakers of some languages, e.g. Japanese and French, end up
> with a tiny few differences from those of us who's primary
> language is English.
Again your not thinking politically, fine, I am.
>
> Oops. Sorry. I used "the word" twice without realizing it
> there! (Yes, the third time was deliberate.) But you know
> exactly what I mean. The purpose of language is to convey
> our thoughts.
Of course it must be valid to be able to use the word belief to
describe when one *is* actually talking about belief itself.
I was saying one should not hand the believers implicit support
for abdicating reason, by using the word belief when one actual
means something far more qualitative and/or quantitatively
weighted. Use say perceive, suspect, intuit, cognate, etc etc,
anything that doesn't suggest that belief is a moral equivalent of
reason in a social world.
>
> Now this is a different matter entirely from my own suggestion
> that people stop referring to "rights" in the abstract. I
Yes.
> consider that to be an indicator that the speaker believes
> (sorry) in "Absolute Right and Wrong", just as if he or she
> were relying on Authority. But I don't care if someone, even
> me, actually uses it in sentences when the meaning steers
> clear of absolutism.
Neither would I if I was only talking one-on-one and I knew
what the other meant by the word, because we'd defined it.
But that is not the case in the political world. Every word
written on this list is potentially read by many others. There is
an opportunity to promote good memes here, I suggest we
use it as well as we can. But more importantly I am suggesting
we take the tactic of not using the word belief with us out into
the wider world, and that we also get others to specify what
they mean when they say belief or believe or faith. Nail the
dumb anti-social memes right at the outset. But first one
needs to recognize that they are dumb and anti-social.
Along with belief, coming fresh from lobbying around the stem
cell area, I'm keen to have thinking folk purge the terms "human
life" and "human being" from their reflexive vocabularies too.
Unless they actually want to include human cancer cells and
persons in the one class and see no moral distinction as relevant
or important in today's political environment.
Sorry just in case that was missed, the pivot point on embryonic
stem cell research around the world at present (politically)
speaking is whether an embryo is a human being. Of course
it is. It exists and its human. Its not a person though. So if we
don't want to propagate and validate the confusion we'd better
use the term person and people and personhood or some such
equivalents when we mean them instead of the less precise terms
or we are running the risk of helping believers giving us social
policies whereby actually persons (sick people) cannot be given
the fullest level of care, because we've traded off their rights as
a class against the rights of some potential people (embryos) as
a class.
Regards,
Brett
PS: My tenor of reply changed as I moved through your
reply and replied myself. I think it needed too. I think you
characterised my meaning incorrectly at the start. Perhaps
I failed to communicate adequately. I hope I'm doing better
now.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:35:50 MST