Yes, I attempt to only believe statements that are:
a. Verified by empirical evidence (science facts)
b. Logical tautologies (logic facts)
c. True in general (statistical generalities)
d. Propositions that make my life easier. (convenient beliefs)
E. Essential to my happiness. (happy lies)
F. Push me to be a better person (eudaimonia beliefs)
When I find a belief -- or take an action that necessitates a belief -- that is out of line with these, I try to fix it.
During my twenties,I had pretty good reasons for most of my beliefs. As of now, I have largely forgotten the reason for a lot of those. Yet, I believe that I had good reason before and could figure it out in the future.
#vaguepost
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D through F sound like the basis for Williamism, the latest fad religion and tax shelter.
ReplyDeleteDo you have others, Todd Sprang ?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post, I was trying to think about how I come to believe things. A & B are my gotos (I <3 Science & Logic), and I think D-F are interesting and insightful belief sources, which pretty much exhaust me. I dislike C as a fact source (thanks, Mr Twain).
ReplyDeleteThe closest I could think of taking a belief "on faith" was with a Go teacher who said to me that while he couldn't explain the theory well enough, I should take it on faith that what he said is right for now. The words bugged me, but the approach was right, and while I still can't explain the "why" of this thing is correct, I can explain the "how" of doing the right thing. Not sure if that has a name, but I kind of lumped it under F.
D is what allows evil to thrive in the world.
ReplyDelete(Not saying I'm not guilty too.)
That's a really valid point, Jay Treat . Perhaps D should be at the bottom of the list, and only reached for when necessary.
ReplyDeleteThen again, it is the easiest.
Is laziness the root of all evil? I thought it was still money, but I'm cool with laziness.
ReplyDeleteF (and to a lesser extent D and E) can be generalized over groups -- things that are convenient for a group to believe (like money, or documentation standards), things that are essential to a group's happiness (beware, these can be both surprisingly fragile and surprisingly resilient), and things that help a group to act as its best self (human rights).
ReplyDeleteI'd hazard that most actually resilient beliefs need to be supported by two or three categories.
As a mathematician, there's a sort of sideways kind of truth I interact with -- postulates are true because assumed, and then you can look at the consequences of those postulates to see if they cause problems (for various definitions, mostly having to do with contradictions or undesirable outcomes).
I find I accept and evaluate many people's beliefs as postulates. Even my own, which gets me in trouble sometimes.
Jesse Cox -- I was hoping someone would call me on that. That is, on postulates and notions that I take as true without evidence. I intentionally left it out, and hoped this would happen. You've made my day.
ReplyDeleteWhat's even worse is I am not a math-machine -- I'm a biological machine. My OS isn't really evident to me, and there's are lots of things that guide my actions that I don't have any control over. Lots and lots.
Pain is a great example -- pain makes me stop doing things. And not for any rational reason, but because I don't like it.
Similarly, many of my beliefs are really postulates. Like that we should strive to have beliefs that are coherent with reality. I could give reasons for why I believe that (I think it makes us less error prone, Cartesian demons, blah blah blah), but at some point we get to something fundamental.
That's absolutely true: There are fundamental things that I take as true and cannot possibly prove. Personally, I blame Godel.