Throughout recorded history man has continuously brought in some form or another of organized or randomized beliefs in order to explain the unexlainable.
It has become “necessary” to have some form of belief of religion in order to preserve ones own life due to the fact that simply believing that our bodies will tell us when we need food, water, etc. in itself is an unexplainable phenomena that we believe though cannot prove.
So why then do we as humans feel we must argue about which belief or religion is the right one when it is not a necessity to be right but only necessary to trust and believe?
Welcome Sherlock! {The temptation to say “No shit Sherlock” was overwhelming} The need for food water etc, is instinctual and is explicable as an adaptive function without which an organism cannot survive. It’s not the same as belief in a god.
Flex, although this is true the idea of instinct and trust in instinct implies that we do without thought or rational process considering this although the belief in instinct is not quite the same as " the belief in god" it is none the less still a belief. We explain the phenomena of instinct by saying that on a subconscious level we do what we must to survive so on that note, no the belief in debate is not by any means spiritual. However considering it is science that has “proven” this survival instinct and we would know nothing of it without said source then on another level belief is still present.
Has science proven that there is a survival instinct? I don’t think so. Adaptive behavior is necessary to survive, but that may or may not involve an instinct whatever an instinct is. If there is an unconscious instinct that is necessary for survival, it might operate like a reflex whether you believe in it or not, so it isn’t clear that BELIEF in instinct is necessary.
You do indeed raise a good point to be honest never thought of it that way. So even in that instance trust in ones self is irrelevant as well then?
Well, of course, the short answer is that I don’t know. Trusting or believing in oneself seems like a good thing. But there are times when doubting oneself may adaptive too. An organism that doesn’t trust it’s instinct might survive by being cautious.What works depends on the situation one is in. It’s best to be flexible and awareness seems to be a survival asset across the board. But sometimes survival seems to be more or less random. Like in some combat situations where whether a soldier lives or dies may depend on being in the right place at the right time. But the right time or place may be determined by chance or unknown factors like where a bomb is going to drop. Sometimes it isn’t possible to tell if survival is due to intuition or instinct or just dumb luck. People who died following their instincts aren’t testifying about it.
Though doubting oneself requires trust in oneself. If there is any process one intentionally uses to doubt and evaluate, this obviously involves trust in this process and the implicit beliefs involved. Even if this process is fairly unconscious the same applies.
We are fairly well doomed to trusting ourselves and believing. Specific beliefs and abilities (in certain contexts perhaps) can be doubted, but overall we still require belief and trust in something in ourselves, if nothing else that we can in fact sense intuitively something is off and needs checking or cannot be so confidently depended on.
Or they accurately or partially accurately explained these things.
You mean that this is a kind of religious belief, not that you need to tack on Christianity or Sufism, yes?
Trusting and believing may or may not be sufficient. It depends on what is trusted.
I think his point is that we move forward, all of us, on beliefs that we have not tested empirically in such a way that would satify peer review at Nature, for example. Our instincts all have belief components, which most of us can put into words. But it is good to run away from loud sounds. Being nice to people with power lengthens my life. And so on.
There’s a number of reasons we still argue and fight.
For one thing, the kinds of beliefs we cling to sometimes encourage us to fight. We are sometimes told, by religion, that it is our duty to convince others that our religion is the right one, and that if they consistently disagree, we ought to use force and violence.
For another thing, there’s politics involved. Even if you didn’t really believe in your own religion, you may still have incentive to promote it and keep others convinced of it - especially if you hold a special position of power in the sociopolitical structure that rests on that religion.
Finally, disagreeing to the point of getting annoyed, frustrated, and angry with others is natural and hard-wired into the brain. We are fitted out by nature to defend our beliefs in the face of disagreement and opposition to a shockingly dangerous extent. This is extremely difficult to surpress.
It seems to me that doubting oneself requires a self image or an objective self. It does not seem to require belief in or trust in such self image. Of course, belief or doubt in the self are usually relative to each other. All reflection on the self is dependent on the self image. That is the level of self consciousness. The level at which you suppose we are doomed to trust and believe is pre-reflective, immediate and spontaneous. It doesn’t require belief in one’s objective self to operate.
Yes, thank you, I think you are right. That is Sherlock’s thesis. But, in my view, the responses of our bodies to physiological needs precede self reflection and therefore do not involve believing in yourself to say nothing of religious belief. So other evidence or arguments would be necessary to support the thesis that such beliefs are necessities.
I don’t think he was saying it had to be religious belief, but that these beliefs are like religious beliefs - in that they are not based on evidence. As far as believing in yourself, I would say it is in a hazy area. Given that you countered that doubt was sometimes adapative, we generally counter doubt to belief. The organism - human in this case - acts as if it believes in these reactions which it does not doubt - at least in the moment. And often, later, would defend as making sense - especially if they worked. If we do not stifle, inhibit and delay our innate reactions, this seems to me a form of believing in oneself and one’s reactions.
Which is interesting, because to me this means that trusting oneself and even believing in oneself is not necessarily some additional cognitive structure. Such as: I am a really smart organism, so if I feel an urge to run when there is an incredibly loud sound, I know this is a good decision. So doubt, in these cases, is the opposite of not inhibiting oneself.
Which is why, Ithink, a lot of positive change can involve undoing.
Some inbuilt reactions are great, but we have been trained to doubt them. The trick in not to add in new cognitive structures, but to get rid of the ones that form the doubt.
Note: just to be doubly clear, this is not true in all cases, but in many.
None of us would survive without a range of untested beliefs. We all have them. Think of all the beliefs we have about how to deal with authority figures, other people, improving situations, what to when when we reach obstacles we haven’t encountered before, and so on. Nobody double blind tests all of these and no one even checks all the research out there to confirm what we think is true and have learn often quite intuitively.
Believing in yourself or doubting yourself can get in the way when playing music or sports where immediacy is required. Belief and doubt are self referential thoughts reduce the flow of spontaneous responses and thus bollix up performance. Perhaps that’s why people tend to lose awareness of self when experiencing a flow state.
Right. As William James observed, the state of things is evidently far from simple; and pure insight and logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not the only things that really do produce our creeds.
It’s possible to believe in not believing and be right …
And then there is a whole mass of often not so conscious heuristic devices we use to deal with problems. Obviously some people have terrible ones, but others have fairly effective ones. IOW the category intuitive heuristic device - which entails beliefs - can be just fine. In fact, we gotta have some.
It’s not possible to not believe in general. To not have beliefs that is.
An opposing view:
“Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer,… Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away… If [a] belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence [even though the belief be true] the pleasure is a stolen one… It is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town… It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
William James quoting “Clifford” ? in “The Will to Believe : and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”
This says to me, that if we are after the truth we ought to be subjecting our beliefs to logical and evidential testing. Of course, if we don’t care about the truth, “whatever gets us through the night is all right” like the song says.
Could be, however deciding someone else’s belief is this kind of belief is likely this kind of belief.
This is precisely a belief accepted on insufficient evidence.
And here it becomes clear. First of all it is not always clear why we believe things, so this would mean we must give up all intuitive beliefs, many of which are very useful. I have never met anyone who could provide strong evidence for all their useful beliefs, and this person is no exceptions, since he could not provide strong evidence for the belief he outlines here.
I really don’t have time to do this. Or the resources. Think of all the beliefs you have about how to deal with other people (in their subcategories also.) And that’s just one area I simply do not have time to subject my beliefs to logical and evidential testing. I do hope that I am an organism that learns and calibrates. But that is a belief I do not test either. It seems to be true. I move on an live. Anyone who says they have no beliefs that they cannot demonstrate evidence along scientific empirical lines is very confused about themselves.
Which is useful, getting through the night that is. Not that this is the basis of my defense of certain kinds of beliefs, but it is certainly a valid one.