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>I can't choose what I believe to be true. Uhhh, what? Fundamentally belief is the acceptance in an idea as true or real. It represents the amount of confidenc

by jotux 10y ago

>I can't choose what I believe to be true. Uhhh, what? Fundamentally belief is the acceptance in an idea as true or real. It represents the amount of confidence you have in what is presented to you. Confidence can be based on many things (evidence, social pressure, etc) and can change over time. So you are absolutely free to choose what you believe is true or false.

zeveb 10y ago
That doesn't make any sense: I don't choose to have confidence that something is true; I either have confidence that it is true; have confidence that it is false; or do not have sufficient confidence to know either way. I can't choose whether I believe something is true or false, any more than I can choose to wake up an aardvark tomorrow.
- deleted 10y ago
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- skissane 10y ago
  I think the reality is – we do have some limited degree of choice in our beliefs. For example, I can choose what books I read. If I choose to read two dozen apologies for Marxism, that is not guaranteed to make me believe in Marxism, but it almost certainly increases somewhat the probability I will end up believing in it compared to if I hadn't chosen to read all those books. (Substitute for Marxism any other belief system – Islam, atheism, Christianity, whatever – and the point still holds.) At the same time, I can't wake up tomorrow morning and decide out of the blue "I'm going to believe in Marxism today". Beliefs are ingrained habits of the mind – we have some conscious power over our own habits, but it requires a desire to change them, and a willingness to make concerted efforts over time to change them, and even after all of that there is no guarantee of success. (It's unusual for people to actually want to change their beliefs, but not completely unheard of; while most atheists are quite happy to remain atheists, some of them actually do want to believe in God, but can't; some of those try to make themselves believe it; many of those who try fail, but I'm sure some of them actually do succeed.) In most cases when people change their beliefs, it happens without any conscious effort to do so–the ideal of rationality says on the basis of new evidence or better arguments; however, given the reality of human non-rationality, I'd say that social and emotional factors are often more important in changing beliefs than rational or evidential ones. Now, when it comes to the actual topic at hand – political liberalism vs. political conservatism – I don't think the vast majority of people's political beliefs are the result of a conscious choice to believe one thing rather than another – they are primarily the consequences of social and emotional and personality factors (reason and evidence do play a role, but far less than either side would like to think.) While in theory a person could consciously choose to try to make themselves believe in a particular political ideology, I doubt many people ever actually make that choice in practice.
deleted 10y ago
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dragonwriter 10y ago
> Confidence can be based on many things (evidence, social pressure, etc) and can change over time. So you are absolutely free to choose what you believe is true or false. No, The second doesn't follow from the first. Sure, confidence can change over time. That doesn't mean that you can make a conscious choice to believe something. (With skill, you may be able to identify the factors that influence your belief and then chose behaviors which will lead to experiencing the factors that will influence your belief in the direction you wish, but its absolutely not directly and simply within your control, even before considering that a belief that something is true itself generally precludes the belief that you should believe that it is not true in the first place.)

by jotux 10y ago

zeveb 10y ago

That doesn't make any sense: I don't choose to have confidence that something is true; I either have confidence that it is true; have confidence that it is false; or do not have sufficient confidence to know either way. I can't choose whether I believe something is true or false, any more than I can choose to wake up an aardvark tomorrow.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
skissane 10y ago
I think the reality is – we do have some limited degree of choice in our beliefs. For example, I can choose what books I read. If I choose to read two dozen apologies for Marxism, that is not guaranteed to make me believe in Marxism, but it almost certainly increases somewhat the probability I will end up believing in it compared to if I hadn't chosen to read all those books. (Substitute for Marxism any other belief system – Islam, atheism, Christianity, whatever – and the point still holds.) At the same time, I can't wake up tomorrow morning and decide out of the blue "I'm going to believe in Marxism today". Beliefs are ingrained habits of the mind – we have some conscious power over our own habits, but it requires a desire to change them, and a willingness to make concerted efforts over time to change them, and even after all of that there is no guarantee of success. (It's unusual for people to actually want to change their beliefs, but not completely unheard of; while most atheists are quite happy to remain atheists, some of them actually do want to believe in God, but can't; some of those try to make themselves believe it; many of those who try fail, but I'm sure some of them actually do succeed.) In most cases when people change their beliefs, it happens without any conscious effort to do so–the ideal of rationality says on the basis of new evidence or better arguments; however, given the reality of human non-rationality, I'd say that social and emotional factors are often more important in changing beliefs than rational or evidential ones. Now, when it comes to the actual topic at hand – political liberalism vs. political conservatism – I don't think the vast majority of people's political beliefs are the result of a conscious choice to believe one thing rather than another – they are primarily the consequences of social and emotional and personality factors (reason and evidence do play a role, but far less than either side would like to think.) While in theory a person could consciously choose to try to make themselves believe in a particular political ideology, I doubt many people ever actually make that choice in practice.

deleted 10y ago

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dragonwriter 10y ago

> Confidence can be based on many things (evidence, social pressure, etc) and can change over time. So you are absolutely free to choose what you believe is true or false. No, The second doesn't follow from the first. Sure, confidence can change over time. That doesn't mean that you can make a conscious choice to believe something. (With skill, you may be able to identify the factors that influence your belief and then chose behaviors which will lead to experiencing the factors that will influence your belief in the direction you wish, but its absolutely not directly and simply within your control, even before considering that a belief that something is true itself generally precludes the belief that you should believe that it is not true in the first place.)