Belief

What does it mean to say that somebody believes something?

I think that a belief is a mental state, representational in character, taking as its content something that could in principle be stated as a proposition. To believe p is to hold that p is true.

How can we distinguish between believing that we hold that p is true and actually holding it to be true? Beliefs predispose us to certain behaviours. If we consider what people actually do, we can sometimes discern a difference between what they profess, and what they actually believe.

A predisposition to believe?

In a recent article, Justin Barret argues that the reason belief in gods is so prevalent in human societies is that we have certain innate predispositions that tend to lead to a belief in supernatural agents.

This brought a critical response from philosopher A.C. Grayling, which unfortunately seemed to amount to little more than the ad hominem strategy of attacking Barret's faith position and funding, rather than the arguments themselves.

However, as Barrett subsequently points out, his arguments are not new and they don't come from Christians or Templeton Foundation funded researchers.

Barret cites Pascal Boyer's 2001 book 'Religion Explained' as one source and this reminded me that Grayling has never really understood the nuances of Boyer's position. In Grayling's collection of essays 'The Reason of Things', he mentions Boyer's arguments directly and criticises them, for failing to account for the following:

"Why, for example, have traditionally conceived deities had human characteristics of will, intention, memory and emotion, instead of being like (say) waterfalls, carrots or birds?"

Clearly Grayling either has not read or has not understood the chapters of 'Religion Explained' which deal with this precise point about what kind of entity turns out to be a suitable candidate for the role of deity.

Transcendental Logic Part II

A while ago I debated with somebody who offered a proof of the existence of god on their website. You can see that here.

That same proof was recently brought to the attention of Stephen Law, so if anybody wants to see how a professional philosopher tackles this kind of argument, go here.

The Limits of Rationality

For the purposes of this blog post, I am defining rational thought as the process of deriving valid inferences from a set of premises.
As such it has a very limited domain within human affairs but makes a very important contribution for all that.
Sometimes people seem to argue that the supporters of secular liberal democracies should educate the children of religious adherents about the logical inconsistencies in religious beliefs in order to make the decline of religious fundamentalism more likely. Ironically though, this might ignore the evidence on what religious adherence entails and what benefits it might have.

Usually when humans attempt to compete directly with evolution in terms of creating artifacts that mimic the behaviour of biological mechanisms, evolution wins against our gadgets created by rational thought. Whilst we can make things that biology has not and perhaps could not, when we have tried to build things that walk across rough terrain unaided, or things that can recognise speech or images, our attempts so far have come a poor second. (Though we are doing a little better these days.)

When it comes to trying to solve some of the problems of life or engaging in creative activity that we consider worthwhile, it seems to me we must turn to non rational means. Some problems seem intractable when faced via reason. How to deal with loss and the knowledge of our own ultimate decline and demise perhaps. Other areas seem to positively benefit from the suspension of reason:
'Of course, you could be uncompromisingly rational and try whispering in your honey's ear: "Darling, you're the best combination of secondary sexual characteristics and mental processing that my fitness calculator has come up with so far." After you perform this pilot experiment and see how far you get, you may reconsider your approach. If you think that approach absurd to begin with, it is probably because you sincerely feel, and believe in, love.' Scott Atran

Perhaps evolution and culture have equipped us with ways of thinking that are non rational in terms of the strict definition I have used here, but that solve some practical problems better than rational thought does. Here is another example from Atran taken from his reply to Sam Harris after the first Beyond Belief conference:

"A research team that I co-directed in the Maya Lowlands for more than a decade — including psychologists, biologists, linguists, and anthropologists — found that only one of three human populations that live in the same environment practices agro-forestry in a sustainable manner (measured in terms of crop diversity, canopy cover, soil nutrients, etc., as reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA). We found the most reliable predictor of behavioral differences between the three groups (Itza' Maya, Q'eqchi' Maya, Ladino) to be their respective mental models of how humans, plants and animals interact in the rainforest (reported in Current Anthropology and The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute). And the best indication of a sustainable distribution of species for the forest was the mental model held by the men of one group (computed by factor analysis from individual responses) of which species the forest spirits desire most to protect (this is reliably different from what people themselves consider most worthy of protection, as reported in Psychological Review). " Scott Atran

Read the rest here.

A Manifesto for Non-Belief

Somebody recently pointed me in the direction of this website.
It contains 17 propositions and some quotes and links around the theme of questioning and challenging the way we think about the world.
I'd welcome any comments on this.

The Supernatural

Is this term an oxymoron? I suspect it is. Or at least, I think the worldview it describes is incoherent.

J.B.S. Haldane said;

“Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

Which suggests to me the following hierarchy of possibilities:

1) The universe is queerer than we suppose.
2) The universe is queerer than we can suppose (Haldane)
3)The universe is queerer than we will ever be able to suppose
4) The universe is queerer than anything can suppose
5) The universe is queerer than anything will ever be able to suppose

So is 'supernatural' a contingent term, dependent on some specific time and epistemic horizon, or is it a statement of principle?

An Open Mind

Recently, whilst debating on the Today message board, I have noticed a polarization between those who regard themselves as old school atheists and the so called New Atheists. The former are characterized as 'open minded' whilst the latter are seen as 'zealots'.
I am sceptical about the concept of open mindedness. It might be true that a psychometric index of flexibility of thought, or receptivity to new patterns of information might credibly be formulated and tested. I do wonder whether people can accurately assess this in the course of debate though. For example, are we swayed by irrelevant factors when deciding how open minded a contributor to a debate is? Factors like how much their position conflicts with ours and how confrontational their style of debate seems.
I wonder whether there is a direct correlation between the cognitive flexibility of a person and how open minded they seem to be. My initial thought is that there is not.
What do you think?