Well, why? Everybody "believes" things. Don't you think that, say Determinists "believe in" Determinism? Or when I scientist is asked if he's found a solution to a problem, and he says, "I believe I have," do we suppose he's lying? Or is he just referring to the normal human practice of arriving at the best explanation of the phenomena in hand, and supposing the most likely conclusion?LuckyR wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 6:14 pmAh, thanks for more detailed explanation. In that case we're in agreement. I just happen to use the label "beliefs" to describe what you call "spooky stuff".Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 3:10 pm What you can say, in all fairness, is "I, personally, have no evidence for the existence of the metaphysical," or better, "I don't recognize that I have any evidence for the metaphysical." And if you stopped there, it would be fine. But can you really go on to add, "...therefore, nobody else can possibly have any evidence for the metaphysical," or even "it's impossible that I'm overlooking evidence I actually do have for the metaphysical"?
For I think you do have such evidence, whether you're prepared to recognize it or not. And I say that because human beings all have "spooky" stuff like cognition, self-awareness, aesthetic or moral judgments, rationality, personhood, or soul -- none of which can be confirmed by mere physical test, but all of which we actually depend on for doing things like the task you and I are performing right now...discussing.
I submit to you that the problem with physical tests is that they test only the physical.As such, they are completely incapable of telling us whether or not the physical is all there is. But other things can tell us that the physical is NOT all there is, such as our ability to question whether or not the physical is all there is, which employs our minds, our reasoning, our consciousness...all the spooky stuff you're currently supposing can't possibly exist: the metaphysical.
If that's what "belief" means, in so many benign contexts, why would we imagine that "belief" had to mean something different in other contexts?
That would be a problem. It would mean you'd have to think there was no "evidence" for anything that wasn't physical. And that's clearly not the case. You certainly have evidence of your selfhood and your own cognition, for example...but no physical proof. And you have evidence for me being another such entity, and writing back to you. Those are so obvious you probably don't even bother to question them...but they're not physical, and can't produce that sort of "evidence."And I use the term "evidence" for what you call "physical tests".
And yet, you're already acting as if you do have some spooky thing called "personhood," or "intelligence," or "cognition," or "identity"...these are non-physical realities no reasonable person doubts -- rather like "reason" itself.Thus I may or may not believe in, say an eternal soul. You may or may not feel some spooky stuff that convinces you that you possess an eternal soul. Regardless neither of us can concoct a physical test to answer once and for all whether an eternal soul exists.
The problem with that analogy is that it describes when human beings simply lacked the physical means to demonstrate what is a thoroughly physical phenomenon. But it doesn't imply all cases are like that.Historically humans could not explain bacterial illness and thus metaphysical explanations were created to help make sense of observations and to provide psychological comfort. Of course through time physical evidence of bacterial illness was uncovered and thus as an entity it passed from the metaphysical to the physical. That is, if physical evidence exists about something, it can't be (by definition) metaphysical. Who knows maybe in the future gods will pass from the metaphysical to the physical. Personally I doubt it.
Here's a different case: Aristotle believed in reason. In the thousands of years intervening, human beings have not come even one step closer to finding a physical explanation for reason. They know of entities that have cortexes and brains of various kinds, which seem to be the location of that operation; but no evidence of reason itself. They can detect it only from its manifestations, not at all from its substances. And yet, they don't have the slightest doubt that reason is a real thing.
So what gives us justification to believe that in the next thousand years, reason will be found to be a physical entity? Is that not nothing more than an imagining, or a wish? There's zero evidence that any such thing will ever happen. And if something as ordinary as reason is eluding our test tubes, our vernier calipers and our measuring sticks, what reason do we have to think that God should be a simpler matter?