Would Changing a Belief have an Effect on One's Actions?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Alright, I was done hijacking another thread to continue this debate, so I will start my own.

To catch up, here’s the argument:

Let’s go with this argument. I don’t want to change it, I want to discuss it.

Faust, I also have no interest in slithering around. I want to discuss this one topic, because it is of great interest to me. If it seems like I’m “slithering around,” it is due to my inadequacy in debate and philosophy, not purposeful manipulation of the conversation, so a pleasant push back on course would be appreciated.

I am arguing that by simply removing one belief that a person holds, it can affect their actions. An example would simply be a person who goes to church every Sunday because they believe in God. If that person stops believing in God (that one belief is removed), and stops going to church because of it, I would argue that their action of going to church was halted due to a change in one of their beliefs. I’m not saying it’s the only belief that would cause that person to stop going to church, but it was the change in belief that prompted such an action.

If there is a strong counter-argument, or some reason that this is a weak or inaccurate argument, I would like the reasons and explanations as to why. I, too, am interested in finding the truth in this world, and it doesn’t seem like this is false…

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faust went on vacation…and you made him do it.

You’re not removing the “belief”. You’re removing the action that justified this belief. The belief is still there. It wasn’t removed. That action was merely stopped. Actions create reality, not beliefs.

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So are you arguing that the person still believes in God, but just stopped going to church? I don’t know how this is possible, as the first step in the process was the part where the individual stopped believing in God.

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By the way SS, I don’t mean to offend, and I hope you don’t give up on me as Faust did. This is something that I have been thinking about for over a year, and I have been trying to find out why it is a flawed belief system, but I cannot.

I need to see why others do not believe it, or do not agree with it, as my own perception of this theory has completely blinded me to what others might think of it.

5

No. You are, however, frustrating.

Christianity’s other followers still exist. The person no longer practices it. You didn’t remove the belief. The person no longer attends church.

You can’t say that beliefs cause action. Actions cause beliefs. Beliefs don’t cause actions.

If you are no longer a believer, you are no longer acting to create this belief. It takes believers in Christianity for it to exist. Christianity is action. What you do reflects your beliefs.

This is why terrorists are wrongfully associated with Islam. Because actions create beliefs, beliefs do not create actions. Many people believe in Islam and are not terrorists. Beliefs do not create actions. I think I’ve made that clear.

The Qu’ran is a material that consists of guidelines for Islamic living. The Qu’ran does not tell its followers to murder, ok? Those who murder do so on their own accounts. Those who follow the Qu’ran also do so on their own accounts. They don’t do it because of their beliefs; they do it because of their will to do. Their will may reflect any belief they’d like it to but it is still their will. Beliefs do not make them choose their way of life.

If they believe that suicide bombings will send them to heaven, they do so by their will to do. They don’t do so because of their beliefs. Their beliefs are only activated with actions and the majority of those actions are not suicide bombings which means what they do share, their religion, is not the cause. It means what they don’t share, their wills to act according to how they please according to what they please, is the cause.

With that in mind, there is a will to do without a belief to do it. Beliefs are not mandatory to your will. But, your will is mandatory to your belief, in case you haven’t noticed.

Oh- and flipping this topic around, I’ll state that changing one’s actions would have an effect on their belief. Imagine no one believing Christianity and having it die off, its scriptures lost in rubble, and never to be found again. It would no longer be a belief without believers or physical evidence, would it? You see, because that’s what creates it. It doesn’t create itself or its possessors.

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Ah, semantics. Okay, let’s say we removed the belief from that particular individual. We didn’t mean we eliminated christianity from the face of the earth.

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Sure they do. If you’re a drunk and a womanizer, and you want to be immoral, then you would not believe in christianity.

Do you have a definition of belief and action, or are you just making this up as you go?

It would no longer exist. And, if it did not exist, nobody would follow its laws and suggestions as to action. So beliefs do influence action. HA!

Well, I don’t either, but sometimes it gets hard…

Can you, ss and d00d, agree on this statement?

Beliefs influence actions, as beliefs are factors in decisions. Therefore, two people with the same assumptions about a certain decision except for a certain belief may make different choices. (Whether or not beliefs cause is dependent on your definition of cause, but it is sure that they influence.)
An action is more likely to occur if the action has the justification of a belief. Beliefs do not cause actions, they influence choices, and are contributing factors. Example of a contributing factor:

To play a game of cribbage you need to have 52 cards. Without one of these cards you will not play a game of cribbage. While any particular card, say “the jack of spades”, is essential for the action (cribbage game) to occur, none alone is the “cause” of the game being played. While you cannot play cribbage with just a jack of spades, you can also not play it without the jack of spades. Translation, for the metaphorically impaired: Though without the belief the action cannot occur, the belief by itself is not enough to carry out the action.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible for a person from the middle-east to kill Americans without being a muslim, I’m just saying that it is impossible for some middle-easterners to: that without the belief, which is still not “the cause”, the action would not occur.

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It gets old too.

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But not at the same time! (heeheehee)

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Well, can you agree that what one believes in has an effect on their decisions?

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Decisions have effects on beliefs. How many times I gotta repeat that? A belief is decision made(i.e. you choose your belief); a decision is not belief made(i.e. believing does not choose for you). It may confuse you, but that is the order and the only correct order it’s done by.

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So, then, you agree?

Just kidding. But you should say a strong NO just to be clear.

You can’t agree that your beliefs affect your actions? My god!

Example: You believe that beliefs don’t have an effect on actions. Because of this you debate with me right now. Without that belief, or if you believed that beliefs do have effects on actions, you would not do the action (debating). You would do something different, you would agree. Is this example true? (Yes or not)

How?

No amount of repetition will make your claim true.

That may be true, but does not conflict with the idea that beliefs influence decisions. Have you ever heard of the positive feedback loop? I’m sure you have, so count that last question as rhetorical. Your decisions may influence your beliefs, which influence your decisions, which influence you beliefs, and so on. In this loop, your beliefs still influence your decisions, even though your decisions influence your beliefs. They both do.

Many people do not choose beliefs, especially in the countries we are discussing (islamic ones).

No, but believing influences your choices. A belief is not the sole deciding factor in a decision, but is still one of them (a deciding factor).

Both orders are correct.

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What is in one’s brain effects behavior, as behavior is always related to what is in one’s brain (“brain”, for the sake of argument).

If a single individual holds a “belief” of mind – read: “a strong thought” --, then that belief will effect that individual’s behavior, for certain.

It may not effect that individual’s behavior all the time about all things, but it will effect that individual’s behavior about some things.

If that belief of mind is diminished or vanishes, behavior will be altered accordingly.

To speak of a belief relevantly here, is to speak of it – a strong thought – on a per individual basis, not on a collective-consciousness-of-humanity basis.

In this instance of discussion, it doesn’t matter whether a strong thought is held similarly by others or not.

I take it that this thread’s intent was to examined belief-based behavior one person at a time.

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Actually, this thread’s intent is to prove that there is such a thing as belief-based behavior. In any form. But mostly on the individual level. It arose out of two people denying that beliefs influence actions.

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If anyone reading along wonders about the importance of this thread, then perhaps I should discuss my secret agenda.

If a general agreement can be reached regarding beliefs affecting ones’ actions, then it can certainly be determined how one acquires many of these beliefs. Of course, one mustn’t look far to see how much media, culture, language, etc., affects our beliefs.

But if different beliefs cause individuals to act differently in different situations, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that some beliefs are certainly more effective than others.

For instance, suppose one child is raised to believe he can do anything he puts his mind to. Another is raised to believe he will never amount to anything, is worthless, and will never raise above lower class. Which person will be a more productive member of society?

These are the kinds of beliefs that are only true or false dependent on what the individual believes, not on anything else. So why aren’t we teaching all human beings of our true potential? WHy do we allow parents to convince their kids that they will never amount to anything, or don’t have any talents, or should be realistic instead of imaginative, etc.?

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Dorky - you have at least come out and stated your thesis. This is an improvement. This is at least interesting. I may review this and comment, when I have more time. Sorry I can’t right now.

Zeus - as long as you hold that an unspecified cause-and-effect relationship exists between belief and action exists, you don’t even have a thesis. Saying “there is some relationship between belief and action” is not a thesis. It is not much of anything. You have vascillated between simple causality and this much more complicated but still unstated relationship you call “influence”. And it’s clear that you wish to substitute one for the other as it suits your purposes. For this reason, I cannot reply meaningfully. You have to stake out some turf here, and make a stand on it.

If the belief is removed, and the action can still be peformed, what have you said? Nothing, I’m afraid.

You have said nothing about the differences between belief, justification, rationalisation, emotions, reasoning, leading, following, politics - these can exists as factors simultaneously. And there are more. Perhaps you should come clean about what your actual thesis is, as dorky has done. Until you do, your thoughts here are still incoherent. You have not provided enough context. But beyond that, you have not admitted that you are dressing politics up as philosophy.

I’m just too old for that shit, brother.

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It seems, at this point SS, that the disagreement can be likened to which came first, the chicken or the egg.

We are trying to determine whether or not removing a single belief can have an effect on one’s actions.

I couldn’t imagine it being an unanswerable or unprovable thesis, regarding which comes first, action or belief, but at the same time I am at a loss for coming up with a way to prove it unbiasly. There must be a way to settle this.

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Dorky - this issue is begging for something like perspectivism. Which is complicated. Even without the epistemology. I vote because I believe that it will have an effect on my life. I vote for a certain candidate because I believe that this candidate would serve my purposes. I believe that my purposes make sense for me. O believe in purposes. I believe in sense. I believe in me.

Just as there is an infinite regress in causation, there is a parallel infinite regress in belief, even absent a clear conception that belief is causative.

Politics is politics. Stop the regress there. Or somewhere else. If your thesis is that the media cause wars, then say so.

But perspectivism will examine psychology, sociology, history, science, politics, religion - all as partial views. Beliefs are admixtures, result form an admixture of many factors. Trying to reduce them to a single factor is what I call the “philosopher’s disease”.

Physician, heal thyself. If you want to make a political point, to claim that Isalm is the cause of the wars being fought in the ME, say so.

If you try to start at the end, you won’t have anywhere to go.

19

That is metaphysical nonsense; It’s the action that changes your beliefs you should be contemplating

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I think causation needs to be worked ona little here, too. Are we saying beliefs cause action like a pool stick causes a pool ball to move just so? Are we saying beliefs cause action like “I ate the sandwich because I was hungry”, in more of an accountance kind of way? Sure, if you changed someone’s beliefs, it would change what they did. If you changed someone’s socks, it would change what they did.