Can you choose to believe? Something is either mentally acceptable or not. Even if a friend convinces me otherwise, now I have no choice but to accept. Where's the choice? Even ambiguous things like God. If you believe, you cannot choose not to.Nor vice v

Comments

• Of the couple that actually understood the scope of the question, I think you've expounded upon it the best.
  I also think you are right about filters. It takes time but the brain can be re-grooved by focusing on new evidence. But the notion we can snap choose to believe, or that we are actively sustaining a choice when we hold the same belief a decade is for me wrong.
  Thanks for the reply.

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on August 14th, 2009

• I think there are some key distinctions about this issue -- an issue I think is very important in our modern world, where beliefs seem to offer so much comfort and danger at the same time.
   
  The main thing I think that needs to be distinguished is that the kind of belief which is problematic is really a form of *commitment*, rather than knowledge. Knowledge works pretty much as you've said: the mind comes to understand the world in a somewhat mechanical way, based on the evidence it is exposed to, prior conditioning, etc. But belief 'breaks' the normal functioning, by introducing an ego-based commitment... a personal attachment to the outcome of the cognitive process.
   
  So all this bit about people 'standing up for their beliefs' and defining themselves in terms of their beliefs is dangerous stuff. It comes from the perversion of the normal process by ego. I really don't see any form of that as beneficial or something which should be considered heroic. It's more like a malfunction that we should be working to minimize.

  • Report
  

  by HasntBeen on August 14th, 2009

• Excellent answer HasntBeen!

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

• Thanks, MJ.

  • Report
  

  by HasntBeen on August 14th, 2009

• What you are talking about is principled action. About doing what we have pre-determined to be important. That's what founded this country and made neolithic man run left even though a herd of bison was breaking right. Its about doing what is counter-intuitive in the moment and possibly those around you because you have determined ahead of time what matters. Without it, there's no personal improvement, public demonstrations, quiting smoking, AA, or being polite when you'd rather yell.
  "The British are coming" and they didn't abandon their homes and hide in the woods.
  Dangerous ? You bet.
  A "malfunction that we should be working to minimize. "
  I don't think so.

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on August 14th, 2009

• I think you misunderstood my comment. I'm all for commitment to values and vision and action. It's binding one's ego to a concept or explanation that causes the mischief. True vision is not some theoretical construct which one is being righteous about, it's an open range of possibilities one is committed to making available.
   
  The true revolutionary is not some righteous-but-ignorant firebrand who wants to tear down the existing tyranny (so he can become the tyrant himself), it's someone who sees *possibility* and fights for that possibility. That's a very different phenomenon from someone defending their fixed conceptual system.

  • Report
  

  by HasntBeen on August 15th, 2009

Comments

• Thanks for showing interest. Sounds like you might have considered this before. :,

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on August 14th, 2009

• Yes, I have had lengthy discussion with people in real life, and on a few AB threads. It usually boils down to a discussion about the definition of words. "What does 'believe' mean?" etc.

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

Comments

Comments

Comments

• Dude. You missed the entire scope of the question.
  Someone who likes Fords over Chevy's has made a conclusion, not a decision, that's based on what he can recall at any given moment about what makes a vehicle more worthwhile.
  If I permit him to list every criteria that, to him, makes a Ford better and PROVE to him that a Chevy is better in each way, he now has no choice but to believe Chevy's are better.
  He simply has nowhere to mentally stand.
  He has no CHOICE about what to BELIEVE.
  If you can choose what to believe,
  let's see you choose to believe the opposite of the answer you posted to my question above.
  Get back to me when you have succeeded.

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on August 14th, 2009

• But humans cannot have access to all knowledge. That's the difference between us and angels, and the reason we can be forgiven but they cannot.

  • Report
  

  by LarryH54 on August 14th, 2009

• So you admit you can't change your mind on this . . . what you believe.
  You can't choose.

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on August 14th, 2009

• No, lack of knowledge CAN be fixed. Theoretically. You ALWAYS have choice. And science has led us in two directions simultaneously more than once.

  • Report
  

  by LarryH54 on August 15th, 2009

• So when you disagree with someone, one of you isn't educated enough ?

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on August 17th, 2009

• Technically, yes.

  • Report
  

  by LarryH54 on August 17th, 2009

Comments

Comments

• I disagree. However, your example is excellent. I think that the person you have proved wrong doesn't choose to continue to believe, they choose to ignore or internally discredit the evidence you have provided. Its called Dissonance Reduction, and it is done by our brains when we are faced with Cognative Dissonance.

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

• Lets say you have killed someone under questionable circumstances. You hold in your mind two opposing facts. 1) I just killed someone, and 2) I am a good person. These opposing facts in your head cause Cognative Dissonance, it is uncomfortable for your brain.

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

• You brain will now go through a process of Dissonance Reduction, whereby it will discredit one of those two facts it knew a few minutes ago. I can deny that you killed someone, it can deny that you are a good person, or it can deny that there is a conflict. It is almost impossible to deny that you killed someone since you can look at the body. For most people, their belief that they are a good person is central to their being, so that one is usually not dropped. Your brain will start making excuses for you, like "it was an accident" or "it was self defense."

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

• My long winded point is that it is not a choice so much as it is a natural process.

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

• There is certaily a large element of "natural process" in it.
  Bit if it were that cut and dried, given the same evidence we would all reach the same conclusion.
  It isn't and we don't.
  We really do make choices.

  • Report
  

  by edndori on August 14th, 2009

• You are right, we don't all reach the same conclusions. This is because even though the evidence is the same, we don't see it as the same. We see the evidence through the filters of our own biases and preconceptions.

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on August 14th, 2009

• True.
  Choices.
  Not all of them conscious.

  • Report
  

  by edndori on August 15th, 2009

Comments

Comments

• Thanks for the input. I think you are missing the scope of my question.
  
  For instance, you believe choice is always there. Can you choose not to believe that? Being skeptical has nothing to do with it. Neither a skeptic nor a non-skeptic can overlook his own conclusions/calculations. When something new is proposed to you, there's a brief moment when you think and weigh the evidence. But during this time you are, in fact, trying NOT to choose anything, and are trying to come up with an unbiased logical answer. Then you involuntarily believe your own conclusion. If I provide every kind of evidence you require for proof of alien life, you have to believe, even if you tell me you still don't, you walk away believing.
  
  I am telling you choice doesn't enter into it. And you cannot choose to agree with me. Even if I convince you, you then agree with me and have no choice about it.
  
  (Thanks for listening... I get alot more room in the comment box, than I did in the question box)

  • Report
  

  by Tedkzn on November 20th, 2006

• Yes, but you could factor in whether i believed you were mistaken, lying, deluded by my own or your own senses... its not that black or white.. it never is. in my experience the presence of one absolute almost always indicates the presence of the other, usually in close proximity one way or another (spatially/temporally if you want to define conventionally)...

  • Report
  

  by WussiePussieHasLetHimselfOutOfTheBag on April 7th, 2007

• ...: In the case of the someone being mistaken, lying or deluded, it is the evidence that is in question. You can choose to deny or accept the evidence, but if you accept it, you have no choice to believe.

  • Report
  

  by MrJosh on January 20th, 2009

Comments

Comments

Comments