Verification problem

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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What do people do with an idea that cannot be verified? Do they carefully inspect it from all sides, weigh it and try to determine what is more likely to be true about it or not? Do they authentically search for other evidence that could possibly verify it? Do they at least store the idea in their minds in a way that suspends judgment and preserves the actual unverified nature of the idea in all the various truths and conditions of that?

Not really, no. In my experience people do none of the above. What they instead do is: assert that either the idea is true or false. Real or not. Good or bad. They make a determination usually on some personal emotional grounds. This seems to ā€œsolve the problemā€ from their perspective, since they have deliberately made the problem invisible to themselves. Convenient self-brainwashing and cognitive dissonance avoidance simply paper over the entire thing and soon enough the unverified nature of the idea is no longer even recognized. A ā€œbeliefā€ has been formed.

What about supposed evidence for such an idea, but the evidence itself cannot be verified? Same thing. People just treat this unverified ā€˜evidenceā€™ as another idea to form a yes/no belief about, paper over the psychological act of epistemic falsification, and move on with their lives.

What sort of ideas fit into this category?

aliens
ghosts
bigfoot/other weird cryptozoological creatures
God and religions
heaven and hell
telepathy and other psychic phenomena
time travel
life on other planets/moons in our solar system
the galactic federation
NASA coverups
secret societies
global secret world governance
wars and media news stories
anti-gravity and other advanced physics
shadow people
out of body experiences
near death experiences
angels and demons
parallel realities/dimensions
the soul/eternal consciousness
past life regression
astral projection
remote viewing
skinwalkers
shapeshifting reptilians
deep underground military bases
chemtrails
UFOs and faster than light travel
human cloning

And the list just keeps on going. So many unverified ideas, perhaps most of these are literally unverifiable. And yet almost everyone who encounters one or more of these ideas is going to have some kind of belief about it.

The problem even extends beyond these weird sorts of ideas and into the more mundane. Faith in a political figure or party or ideology. Moral beliefs. Sociological and economic theories. Big corporations and the government collecting data on you and covert spying. Experimental medical interventions. Whatever your neighbor or friend told you the other day, some random story that they heard somewhere about something. A news piece you heard about a scientific breakthrough or a political upheaval occurring in some other part of the world.

How many of the ideas that constitute significant amounts of our minds and daily attention are really verified, or even verifiable to us? How much do we take on faith, assumption, good-will or for various incentives and other reasons tilting us one way or another?

And worst of all, does anyone even care that this is the common state of being of humans? Not really, no. They donā€™t care. This entire situation being described in this topic thread is just one more ā€œideaā€ to be given a quick yes or no, or perhaps best case scenario it is simply ignored. When verification cannot occur and the idea in question is such that giving either a quick yes or no both seem unpalatable for whatever reasons, itā€™s quite easy enough to simply forget the idea even exists. Mind-erasure and easy distraction. We do that to ourselves. Why? Are the reasons behind it yet another example of unverified evidence for such an idea?

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Doritos

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The world is a mess imoā€¦ anything [seems to] go(es).

Thereā€™s nothing wrong in having personal beliefsā€¦ I myself have experienced experiences of the supernatural kind, but I donā€™t expect anyone to believe them, though some people can relate due to having had similar experiences - I think you have to be open, for such experiences to find you.

ā€¦and you are right, not many people seem to care about the state of the worldā€¦ though I think that incentives would solve that one, quickly enough. I myself do what I can, to improve what I can, to make life better for my fellow citizens.

Embracing more socialism/care than capitalism/profit, might be a good place to startā€¦ and also, prohibiting the instigation of hate between different peoples/countries and the attacking of them on our streets.

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ĀæSalsa dip? :confusion-shrug:

Lel

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Right, ideas and personal beliefs definitely can have positive utility for a ton of different reasons and across a ton of different situations. Iā€™m not saying we shouldnā€™t have any unverified beliefs.

This topic is more about the unfounded nature of belief itself. Not that unfounded beliefs cannot also have value or utility. Look at evolutionary psychology and sociology, we are biologically wired to believe in things we cannot verify, religion for example. Groups that had strong religious beliefs would tend to out-compete other groups that lacked strong religious beliefs. And those religions which pushed socially-useful ideas tended to be the religions that won out over time, for the same reasons of natural selection. Then there are various traits such as how much a person tends to attribute intentionality behind natural phenomena, or how likely they are to over-detect agency. These were useful for survival in situations where the natural world around us could often be immediately life-threatening, but in modern times it is more associated with extreme religious beliefs, delusions, Schizophrenia etc.

Clearly there are reasons why we hold to our unverified beliefs. Then again there are reasons for why anything is what it is, that is just true by definition. The fact something has reasons for being whatever it is isnā€™t the point and is really irrelevant formally-speaking. Unless the reasons in this case would actually be related to the content of the belief itself. So for example: what are the reasons for believing in any of the things on the list I made above, which reasons actually relate logically to that thing on the list and not to something else like social utility or evolutionary selection pressure?

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ā€¦and Iā€™m not saying that we should have unverified beliefs forced on others. :wink:

Unverified beliefs are more like tales of old or woe, fables and forewarnings, and concepts to [maybe] live byā€¦ as opposed to touting around, as factsā€¦ because they arenā€™t.

ā€¦my aforementioned experiences certainly werenā€™t. :laughing:

Thanks for the further definitionā€¦

Reasons like ā€˜safety in numbersā€™ ā€˜group thinkā€™ ā€˜belongingā€™ ā€˜identifiers, for clan/tribe membershipā€™ and yesā€¦ overall survival of the ā€˜groupā€™ could all be reasons why beliefs arose, and more besides.

What if there were always the extremists, the delusional, the schizophrenic? Some say, that some groupsā€™ beliefs are downright prehistoric and so is the way that they govern their peopleā€¦ so a case of lack of on-going incremental reform over time. Perhapsā€¦?

Beliefs are a thing of the mind, so a steering toā€¦, but also a pressure ofā€¦, from the necessary steering towards the goal that needs to be achieved.

A divided clan is a power halved, so shared beliefs morals objectives tastes etc. would ideally keep the group together.

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The issue of ā€œforcingā€ beliefs on others is a very tricky subject. Technically much of the process of education, especially for young children, is forcing beliefs on them. They lack critical thinking and experience to properly evaluate what they are being taught, so they will tend to accept almost anything. This doesnā€™t mean education is bad, but it does mean that itā€™s a huge responsibility to not fuck it up.

The thing with unverified beliefs is that they might be true. Or the might be partially true. Or there might be elements or kernels of truth to them in certain situations and contexts. Thatā€™s why this issue is so difficult. We cannot properly evaluate the belief. We are like those little children who are just being told stuff and they blindly accept it. But in our case, as adults we also quite often choose to just blindly reject these unverified beliefs. Someone says they saw a UFO or a ghost, or experienced a telepathic connection with someone else, or used crystals to heal themselves, or whatever it might beā€¦ lots of people cannot verify if that is true or false, so they just reject it. They tell themselves and act as if they know that itā€™s false, when they really donā€™t know that. Itā€™s a deep form of dishonesty and closing oneself off to possible reality.

Well there is a sense in which we can compare different cultures/societies and rank them better or worse by various objective metrics, and there is another sense in which cultures and societies must be understood and judged on and by their own terms. Sometimes itā€™s difficult to get that balance just right. Calling someone an extremist, for example. Anyone can be called an extremist, mostly thatā€™s just a political term of character assassination and dehumanizing someone without understanding them. Similarly with delusional and schizophrenic, those are relatively modern concepts. Some people definitely experience these things, others might be mis-labelled or over-diagnosed under a highly medicalized system like the one we have today.

True. There is powerful utility in shared beliefs, morals, culture, language, experiences, history, etc. Understanding the reality and the value of this sort of relative homogeneity will being you one step closer to seeing through the propaganda of ā€œmulticulturalismā€.

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Gentle reminder: A belief being useful does not rule out the possibility of it being justified with good reasons and evidence & grounded in reality. To suggest that the existence of the phenomenon of all/any belief is explainable is not to suggest a particular belief is beyond either epistemological justification or ontological grounding.

Not taking a position - as a position - is an act of epistemological bad faith. Itā€™s one thing to put some thing in moratorium until youā€™ve been able to examine the evidence and reasons. A permanent state of moratorium is bad faith. Think about it in the frame of stages of grief. Something in your worldview is potentially dying and youā€™re gonna have to go through the stages of grief to accept it and replace it or however folks move on. Sometimes we donā€™t. Sometimes weā€™re like Dr. Frankenstein.

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Yes, they are not the same thing. The utility vs truth of a belief. However, over time and in the aggregate, beliefs which are more aligned with how reality actually is would tend to be more useful than beliefs which are out of alignment with reality. That is simply because an organism survives or perishes based on its ability to properly navigate the world and conditions around it. Too many crazy unreal beliefs in a person or a population would tend to cause real problems in the long term.

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I edited my last post, however, if the group will kill you unless you see things a certain way, it becomes more adaptive to survival to see things that way, even if it means thinking that the leader is a God. So, no, I would not say that survival utility guarantees correspondence to reality. Folks who have a higher appreciation for the truth than for mere physical survival have a history of martyrdom. That is not to say they have a history of atheismā€”although they do get branded with that label from time to time. Because Socrates was loyal to the one God, he was charged with corrupting the youth and challenging the gods. Jesus & his martyred disciples were charged with blasphemy & upsetting social order especially in places whose economy thrived on religious ritual. Just some examples.

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I didnā€™t say it guarantees it either, just that over time it would tend in that direction more than otherwise. The example you gave of adhering to whatever social doctrines or edicts from the leader exist in your group or risk being killed is just one example of why beliefs do not always 1:1 correspond to truth.

That also seems to be true, at least in the extremes. People who more moderately care for truth more so than the average, but not so much that they entirely rock the boat, would probably tend to have an increased survival potential. Remember too that even social conditions are also truths that need to be respected ā€“ it is true that if I donā€™t do or say X I will be killed by the alpha male of my tribe, etc.

Yes, and atheism was very rare throughout history. It is still rare even today. What I have seen indicates that humans tend to have an innate instinct or drive to worship and to religious reverence of some sort. A push toward metaphysical possibilities and ideas and experiences. This probably exists for a variety of reasons, some of which would be further examples of unverified beliefs or unverifiable ideas themselves.

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Atheism is a metaphysical possibilityā€¦ a worldviewā€¦

Some consider themselves open-minded when they label themselves agnostic, but to take the label indefinitely is (as mentioned previously)ā€¦ an act of bad faith.

If you have no good evidence or reasons for a claim, but a counterclaim has better evidence or reasons, drop the unsupported claim.

If your alpha would kill you for believing the better supported claim, lie to them until you can convince them, or get a new alpha.

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Yes.

Thereā€™s nothing inherently wrong with claiming to be agnostic. No one knows the truth about God/afterlife/spirituality, at least no one Iā€™m aware of. Best to keep an open mind and evaluate things individually as realistically and accurately as you can, including suspension of judgment where warranted.

That depends entirely on the specific claims being made and a full and honest assessment of all the underlying evidences and reasons on both sides, as well as leaving room for possibilities as-yet unable to be ruled out.

Thereā€™s no reason to drop a lesser claim, better to reserve it properly where it is at in the hierarchy of ideas. Itā€™s not a yes/no dichotomy, thinking isnā€™t a zero-sum game. Well I should say, good thinking isnā€™t a zero-sum game.

Smart.

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So your answer to the problem of unsupported claims is to hold them?

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No, the answer is to not reject something unless you can actually justify rejecting it. And that justification must come on its own grounds and terms, not by simply comparing it as better or worse than something else. There is no reason to reject a claim that you cannot verify either way, simply because another competing claim is out there which has more merit but also cannot be verified.

Why presume you already have access to all the data and evidence and reasons and logical processes you need to properly evaluate the claims? If you did then the claims wouldnā€™t be unverified. But my closing the door on an open claim you are in effect saying ā€œI have all the data, evidence, reason, logic I need to know for sure this claim is falseā€ when in reality that is not the case, you are lying to yourself. This breeds inauthenticity and an egotistical and short-sighted attitude.

It is analogous to the reason why radical skepticism fails. You need reasons to doubt something just as much as you need reasons to believe something. Doubt for its own sake is just as pathological and irrational as is belief for its own sake. Absent the already-mentioned various utilities that might come along with that, of course, but we are talking about the truth of the claim here. If you cannot justify, explain, prove that a claim is false then you have no business throwing it out. Just store it properly in the mental universe of ideas where it is actually located. Simple. Why make claims you canā€™t actually justify? Why pretend to a level of certainty that isnā€™t there?

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ā€œWhy make claims you canā€™t actually justify?ā€

Ermā€¦ and why hold them?

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You seem confused. You seem to not know what it means to have an idea.

Think about it some more and get back to me if you figure it out.

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You sound upset.

Why? About what, really?

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Those^ are the kinds of posts you get when someone is not well-read or epistemologically well-roundedā€¦ then subjectivity prevails and their argument gets weaker and weaker and trails off.

ā€¦but what they^ have done, is describe indoctrination coercion and assassination, beautifully. =D>

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ā€¦you will not be allowed to have any ideas, and you will be happy about it. :laughing:

:smiley: