on the nature of beliefs...

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Peter Kropotkin
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on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

on the nature of beliefs.. first we have to understand the topology
of beliefs... beliefs can be both personal and communal..
beliefs that one person can hold.. I hold that Babe Ruth is the
greatest baseball player of all time...other people have looked at
the exact same stats as I have and made different conclusions...
that is an example of a personal belief...a communal belief is
the belief that America is the greatest country on earth...millions
of Americans hold to that belief...

we also know that communal beliefs live in history...which means
beliefs have history.. they are born, they live and they die..
or said another way, how many people still believe in RA or Zeus
or Anu? Beliefs exist in history... the belief in the ''exceptionalism
of America'' is slightly more than a hundred years old....it was born,
it currently lives and it will die...

we can see why beliefs are born and why they live,
but why do beliefs die? Beliefs exist within a certain time frame,
within certain conditions and if those conditions change, the beliefs
must change in response to the changing conditions....an
example of this is how as children, we hold beliefs in Santa Claus
and the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy...we are indoctrinated
with these beliefs.. but think about someone who still holds these
childhood beliefs as strongly as they did as a child... I would be
very concerned about someone who held these childhood beliefs...
I would wonder why they hadn't grown up and evolved into adult
beliefs... and you would to...

the nature of beliefs is that they change and evolve as we ourselves
change and evolve.. as we go from birth to being a child to be
a young adult to being an adult to being middle age to being
a senior citizen.... today, I am a senior citizen... my current beliefs
are age appropriate... I don't believe in the Easter bunny and I don't
believe in Santa Claus.. and I don't believe in the nonsense of my
middle age years... the lie that if you work hard, you will "move"
up in the world... the vast majority of people do work hard and get
nowhere.. they grow old and have very little to show for 40 years
of backbreaking work... the time-honored beliefs of America are
lies... as I have grown older, my beliefs have changed, as they should...

The evidence I have seen in my life, the facts on the ground, have
changed what I believe in.. my beliefs have changed as they should have...
and that is the nature of beliefs.. that they change.. they change because
the facts on the ground force them to change.. the environment has changed
thus, the beliefs must change to match the changing environment...

for example, when I was growing up, what a member of the GOP,
meant certain things. you believed in certain values...
in small government, in low taxes, at one time the GOP even believed
that the government wasn't the problem, it was part of the solution...
or see the history of the 1950's.. where the GOP was instrumental
in massive building projects all over America.. including the
modern day freeways... and bridges, libraries, police and fire departments...
all the stuff that the after one of the 5 worse presidents in American history,
Raygun, said, that the government was the problem, not the solution,
in opposition to what the GOP believed in 30 years earlier...
and this is another example of the changing nature of beliefs..
the communal change in beliefs...

certain communities hold certain beliefs... what might be true, a belief, in a NY
city community, is not a belief, or true in a Mississippi community...
and that too is part of the nature of beliefs.. the nature of beliefs
change with changes in age, economic changes, social status, marriage/children,
titles... we change our beliefs as our social-economic status changes, for
some anyway... My economic status has changed... but my beliefs in
the equality of human beings hasn't changed.. but many who move,
change in economic status, become wealthier or poorer, do change their social,
economic beliefs...the environment we live in, changes our beliefs...
and what if it doesn't? We must change our beliefs to match our environment..
and what happens to beings that don't change their beliefs to match their
environment? We call them dinosaurs and recall what happened to
the dinosaurs...

So the belief in god and religions did at one time, matched their
environment.. the belief in god/religion did work in that environment

but do the ancient beliefs in god/religions match, work for our modern
industrial, technological, scientific age? I don't see how.. for existence,
for us to survive, we must change and adapt our beliefs to our current
situation/environment.... and if we don't? we are nothing more
than dinosaurs...

to change, to challenge one's beliefs is an emotional event...
we feel safe and comfortable with our entrenched beliefs
but changing and adapting is what it means to be human..
human being survived because we were able to change
and adapt our beliefs... what caused our ancient ancestors
to climb out of the trees? A changing environment and
to adapt, we moved out of the trees... and today is no
different... to survive, we too must change, adapt our
beliefs to our current situation/environment....
but that calls for a reevaluation of values....
America is in dire need of a revaluation of values about
what it means to be an American...

Do you have the courage for a personal and communal
reevaluation of values?

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1504
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

there is a belief that our own personal beliefs should be
like blankets.. warm, soft, comfortable, safe...

but I disagree...there is a saying in ZEN...
that before ZEN, the sea is calm, the mountains are fixed,
the rivers flow in their banks..

during ZEN, the sea's are wild and unpredictable, the mountains
jump and dance, and the rivers overflow their banks..

and after ZEN, the sea's are calm/glasslike, the mountains
are fixed and steady, the river flows in within its banks....

I can attest to the fact that during times of change and reevaluation,
the sea is wild and unpredictable, the mountain jumps and dances,
the river overflows it banks...

but people are afraid of those times.. the times of ZEN..
but that is where we must be.. if we want to change and
adapt to our every changing circumstances...we must not run
from times of ZEN.. in fact, we must embrace those times...
we must seek out the times of ZEN... collectively right now,
we are, in America, in a time of ZEN... the "Great resignation"
within America has shown us that people have engaged with
a reevaluation of values about work that is long overdue...
and within this personal reevaluation, has come an reevaluation
of the political and economic systems, we have in place...
for millions of Americans, the political system of a republic
has been questioned, and the economic system of capitalism,
has been questioned, very deeply questioned...

we won't see the answer from those reevaluations of values for perhaps
decades...but we will see it.... and in ways we might find shocking today....

holding values is not the end of being, but the point, beginning of the examination
of existence, of what it means to be human, what it means to be an American,
what it means to be male or female or what ought to be
our understanding of life and death...

and only in the state of ZEN can we begin the reevaluation of values..

Kropotkin
Advocate
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Advocate »

Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:31 pm Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
K: belief that is "justified" (knowledge) is the point of philosophy
and unjustified (faith) is the religious... theology...

Kropotkin
Advocate
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Advocate »

[quote="Peter Kropotkin" post_id=589182 time=1660246824 user_id=22684]
[quote=Advocate post_id=589181 time=1660246297 user_id=15238]
Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
[/quote]

K: belief that is "justified" (knowledge) is the point of philosophy
and unjustified (faith) is the religious... theology...

Kropotkin
[/quote]

Theology is attempting to explain the impossible in terms of the improbable.
Iwannaplato
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:40 pm
Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:31 pm Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
K: belief that is "justified" (knowledge) is the point of philosophy
and unjustified (faith) is the religious... theology...

Kropotkin
And all the stuff in between, the beliefs that guide most of our decisions, the ones not rigorously justified via carefully controlled research and beliefs based on nothing at all....are none of those part of philosophy? And is there nothing that doesn't fit this binary schema.

How many of the great philosophers wrote only about purely justifed beliefs? Only. I did add purely, but when you have a binary schema it looks like to pure and non-overlapping categories.
bobmax
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by bobmax »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:40 pm
Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:31 pm Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
K: belief that is "justified" (knowledge) is the point of philosophy
and unjustified (faith) is the religious... theology...

Kropotkin
Beliefs that are "justified" are not beliefs.
If anything it is instead what justifies that it is a belief.

Unjustified belief is faith only in one case: if what one believes is the Truth.
Any other unjustified belief is superstition. Regardless of whether it is a religious belief or not.

What justifies a belief may in turn be justified or not.
If it is not justified, and it is not the Truth, then this belief is superstition.

Faith in the Truth is fundamental. In fact, only with this faith it is possible to really think.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:23 pm on the nature of beliefs.. first we have to understand the topology
of beliefs... beliefs can be both personal and communal..
beliefs that one person can hold..
I believe it is necessary to have a structured framework for what are beliefs.

Beliefs are mental thoughts that are held to be true.

Beliefs are represented in a continuum of confidence levels of truth from subjectivity to objectivity, from,
1. Opinions - highly subjective
2. Beliefs - personal mixed subjective & low objectivity
3. Knowledge - group -low objective to high objectivity

1. Opinions
These are arbitrary views by individuals or groups which are highly subjective and not subjected to verifications and justifications.

2. Beliefs
Beliefs are mental thoughts that are held to be true by individuals with a range of verifications & justifications and confidence levels done by the individual.
For example someone may have a hypothesis and did some research and investigation to support his view and that would be a belief of some degrees.
When Einstein had finished his paper of the Theory of Special Gravity that can only a a personal beliefs with high conviction.

3. Knowledge
Knowledge is justified-beliefs [as verified and justified] from within a specific Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] or Reality [FSR] which is human-based.
For example, scientific knowledge emerge from the scientific FSK and at present is the most credible, thus the standard bearer of truth.
There are other lesser credible FSK, e.g. legal, economics, finance, political, which generate their own degrees of truth of justified beliefs relative to the scientific FSK.

We cannot deny the claim of 'knowledge' by theists within their theistic FSK. But because they are not subjected to the relative verification and justification process of the Scientific FSK as the standard, theistic knowledge has low or zero credibility.

Similarly Astrologers also claim they have "knowledge" [facts or truths] via their Astrological FSK, but relative to the scientific FSK, such "knowledge" [facts or truths] claims are at best falsehoods.

Views to the above?
Age
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Age »

Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:31 pm Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
Justified (knowledge) is just (fact). So, there is, literally, NO need for belief.

If some knowledge is justified, or is a fact, then why would anyone need to believe it or need to have a belief in it?
Age
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Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Age »

Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 9:07 pm
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:40 pm
Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:31 pm Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
K: belief that is "justified" (knowledge) is the point of philosophy
and unjustified (faith) is the religious... theology...

Kropotkin
Theology is attempting to explain the impossible in terms of the improbable.
Is this your attempt at explaining the so-called 'impossible'?
Age
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Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:17 am

Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Age »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:40 pm
Advocate wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:31 pm Belief is of two two kinds, justified (knowledge) and unjustified (faith). This is preliminary to how many people hold it or how they feel about it.
K: belief that is "justified" (knowledge) is the point of philosophy
and unjustified (faith) is the religious... theology...

Kropotkin
What is 'philosophy', to you?

And, if there is not a clear 'point', in your definition of 'philosophy', then what is 'the point', of 'philosophy', exactly?
Age
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Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:17 am

Re: on the nature of beliefs...

Post by Age »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:23 pm on the nature of beliefs.. first we have to understand the topology
of beliefs... beliefs can be both personal and communal..
beliefs that one person can hold..
I believe it is necessary to have a structured framework for what are beliefs.
'Structured' in relation to 'what', exactly?

Other's, AND your, views, or just your views only?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am Beliefs are mental thoughts that are held to be true.
Do you know of any 'thoughts' that are not 'mental'?

Also, what you say and claim here is why I ask the question, WHY have or hold BELIEFS in the beginning?
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am Beliefs are represented in a continuum of confidence levels of truth from subjectivity to objectivity, from,
1. Opinions - highly subjective
2. Beliefs - personal mixed subjective & low objectivity
3. Knowledge - group -low objective to high objectivity

1. Opinions
These are arbitrary views by individuals or groups which are highly subjective and not subjected to verifications and justifications.
Why are your opinions not subjected to verification and justification.

I will subject your opinion here about opinions are not subjected to verification and justification. I have subjected your opinion here and have verified it to be false, wrong, and incorrect. The justifications for these can be obtained through open questions posed and asked, to obtain clarity.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am 2. Beliefs
Beliefs are mental thoughts that are held to be true by individuals with a range of verifications & justifications and confidence levels done by the individual.
For example someone may have a hypothesis and did some research and investigation to support his view and that would be a belief of some degrees.
When Einstein had finished his paper of the Theory of Special Gravity that can only a a personal beliefs with high conviction.
But some people have a belief that God exists. And, according to your own mental thoughts and beliefs, the belief that God exists would be made with NO range AT ALL of verification NOR justification, correct?

(Oh, and by the way, the reason why I respond to what some one like this one says and writes, and ask them questions, for clarifications is to point out and show how when the people in the days when this was being written had or were holding a BELIEF, then they, literally, would NOT listen to a word I say or write.

This one, for example, will NOT reply to ANY thing I say because its OWN BELIEFS are so strong that they, literally, BLOCK OUT hearing or seeing what another, with contrary views, says or writes.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am 3. Knowledge
Knowledge is justified-beliefs [as verified and justified] from within a specific Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] or Reality [FSR] which is human-based.
For example, the knowledge that the sun revolved around the earth and that the Universe began and is expanding was "justified-beliefs" (as verified and justified).

The ABSURDNESS of what is being said and claimed here by "veritas aequitas" is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am For example, scientific knowledge emerge from the scientific FSK and at present is the most credible, thus the standard bearer of truth.
The so-called "scientific knowledge", which has emerged from the so-called "scientific fsk", and when this was being written was the, laughable, most credible, about how the Universe began and is expanding, and thus is the so-called "standard bearer of truth", was the same "justification" used for ALL of the OTHER Falsehoods made, through any number of other alleged "verification" and "justifications".
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am There are other lesser credible FSK, e.g. legal, economics, finance, political, which generate their own degrees of truth of justified beliefs relative to the scientific FSK.

We cannot deny the claim of 'knowledge' by theists within their theistic FSK. But because they are not subjected to the relative verification and justification process of the Scientific FSK as the standard, theistic knowledge has low or zero credibility.
Why are they NOT subjected to ANY verification or justification processes?

Are 'you' to WEAK or USELESS to subject them to ANY verification or justification processes "veritas aequitas"?

'I' subject 'you' to verification and/or justification processes for 'your' claims here "veritas aequitas".

And this is how I have been able to prove 'you' Wrong on many occasions.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:24 am Similarly Astrologers also claim they have "knowledge" [facts or truths] via their Astrological FSK, but relative to the scientific FSK, such "knowledge" [facts or truths] claims are at best falsehoods.

Views to the above?
'you' are BLIND and DEAF, caused by 'your' own BELIEFS and ASSUMPTIONS.
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