Do we choose what we believe?

[Blindwatchmaker]

I didn’t make her change her belief, SHE chose to believe that what I said was what rang truer to her than the belief she had been holding up to that point. She could have chosen to think that I was misleading her, a demon of sorts. “Get behind me Satan!”
But she chose to believe what I was saying about God, instead of what she thought about God before that.

Again, I would gently push back on this.
She found your words convincing or plausible enough to tentatively accept them.
If you had said different words, or she had been differently inclined, that may not have happened.
I'm not saying that belief implies certainty. Just that the ability to accept something as true or even potentially true is contingent on a minimum level of 'believability' which our brains discern in the background before we are even aware of whether or not we believe it.

 

[Blindwatchmaker]

I see that we have a semantics problem here. You are saying she truly believed (but hadn’t owned it yet) what I said. And I think you are right. But I would not call it her “belief” if she hadn’t owned it yet. I am talking about belief (IMO), and you are talking about conviction. We believe all sorts of that don’t resonate deeply with our True Self. We only gradually discover our True Self and our true convictions. We choose whatever level of depth of understanding by latching onto various notions.
This that I shared with Thomas on my thread God as a Self Fulfilling Prophecy, seems highly pertinent to our discussion here, even though I think we are caught up in a semantics issue:
This is wonder-full. Again, two sincere minds disagreeing, but (at least in my case, and probably in yours also ) finding some merit in what each other is saying. I agree that there is risk of ego contamination in my preferred belief/approach about God. Now I can offer something that could be useful both here and in the Do We Choose Our Beliefs thread:
Humans develop socially and interpersonally (which to me is a subset of “social”) through 3 stages:
Dependence
Independence
Interdependence (one could speculate a fourth, interINdependece, stage, but that can wait for later).

The clinical experience of the guilt ridden client who was relieved to hear my opinion that we are free to conceptualize God in whatever way rings true to us (and/or works for us) showed me how psychologically damaging lower/rigid forms of religion can be. From this point on, my preference was to liberate people from the dependency stage of religious conceptualization and life-shaping practice (herminutics? Sp?). I CHOOSE the belief that God is a useful tool or a destructive device (weapon, poison), according to how it either frees us to grow/develop or stunts our growth. Modern culture may be stuck in the independence stage, but that stage is the stepping stone for the stage that I (and probably you also) long for: interdependence. All my life, church painted a picture of a world based on love. Even though I soon discovered that some conditional love tribalism was contaminating the concept of a kingdom of love, it was the future world I decided to try to help bring about. Later in life, as I noticed people being culturally shaped by a world singing in the key of competition, competition, competition, I began to doubt the Church’s sincerity about facilitating a loving world. No intentional culture shaping or system shaping was being offered by the Church, other than advocating something that seemed stuck in the tribal/traditional/authoritarian dependency stage.
As a person who is concerned with the welfare of fellow human beings (all of them. not just some of them), I chose to promote spiritual EMPOWERMENT. It is something an independent individual needs in order to fully enter into interdependence and a culture and society based on caring and love. Only via spiritual empowerment can a person give of themselves with a glad heart towards shaping the heaven on earth that Christians (and all truly spiritual people) are called to do.
So, using a cost/benefit analysis of sorts, I choose to embrace metaphysical speculations/theories that promote spiritual empowerment rather than those that lean towards conforming to moral standards (dependence stage orientation). To me, true morality (with a glad heart and full appreciation and understanding) can only come about after a person, as an individual, chooses Love.
So the potentially heavy “cost” of an egoist praying for God to give her (Janice Joplin!) a Mercedes Benz, is for me outweighed by the potential benefits of wholeheartedly and eyes-wide-openly choosing Love.
I don’t know what my client ended up doing with my advice. She may have later chosen to put the mental shackles back on. Being an individual with free will might have been a bridge too far for her, since she had been indoctrinated (and her friends and family) in the dependency stage. But I would like to think my intervention became a developmental stepping stone for her to fully embrace God’s love (or just “Love,”
if it moved her to become an atheist or agnostic).

Beautifully written.

 

[Blindwatchmaker]

Ah, but isn't what we find convincing or persuasive often the very thing that shapes what we choose to do? Free will seems to be entangled in both our actions and our beliefs, doesn't it?

Yes. Our beliefs often (maybe even always) shape and influence our actions. But the causality here only runs one way.
We can choose to orient ourselves towards certain beliefs but ultimately whether or not we find something convincing is not a matter of choice.

 

[Blindwatchmaker]

While it may seem like obstinacy, it is just as likely their new experiences just don't convince them of a new perspective. Maybe something would, but the experiences they have had did not.

EXACTLY.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Yes. Our beliefs often (maybe even always) shape and influence our actions. But the causality here only runs one way..

How so?
I would say that our deeds affect our beliefs as well.

The human mind is complex .. we can even convince ourselves that something is true, even
though deep down, we know otherwise.
This mechanism comes into effect when we do bad deeds .. or good deeds.

One relatively non-controversial example .. a person claims/believes that smoking is not harming them .. as they like to smoke .. but deep down, they know otherwise.

We can choose to orient ourselves towards certain beliefs but ultimately whether or not we find something convincing is not a matter of choice.

..not a conscious choice perhaps, but the events that led up to the choice are not necessarily
random.
Everything we choose to do affects who we are .. what we claim to believe.

 

[Thomas]

Of course, another issue at play, is the role of those who seek to influence individual choice.

"I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all."
from 'When I was a Lad', a song in the musical HMS Pinafore, Gilbert and Sullivan)

I'm thinking in terms of 'public relations' and the use of 'propaganda' by 'state actors' (be they the state, corporate entities and/or über-rich individuals) in manipulating and influencing public opinion, controlling the popular imagination and thus undermining individual autonomy.

(In another age, such practices were called 'black magic' – not the LHP as such – but any actions intended to unconsciously coerce individuals or groups.)

Edward Bernays – the 'Father of Public Relations' described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct – and he outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis (magic) to control them in desired ways.

The role of PR is to manage information, and thus manage what people think, and invariably ensuring people think in ways that are most advantageous.

Having said that, 'open source pr' – social media – is proving to be the most toxic and pernicious in the pursuit of celebrity, the latter most tellingly, perhaps, when we think in terms of 'glamour' – which in common parlance implies a delight to the eye, whereas the origin of the words is from the Scots Gaelic language – where 'glamour' means a magic spell or enchantment.

+++

I do appreciate however that this leads the debate off into a whole different direction ... and perhaps a dead end ...

 

[Blindwatchmaker]

How so?
I would say that our deeds affect our beliefs as well.

The human mind is complex .. we can even convince ourselves that something is true, even
though deep down, we know otherwise.
This mechanism comes into effect when we do bad deeds .. or good deeds.

One relatively non-controversial example .. a person claims/believes that smoking is not harming them .. as they like to smoke .. but deep down, they know otherwise.


..not a conscious choice perhaps, but the events that led up to the choice are not necessarily
random.
Everything we choose to do affects who we are .. what we claim to believe.

Thanks Muhammad
I think I mis-spoke actually.
What I should have said is that our deeds can only influence the likelihood of certain beliefs (not that they play no role at all. )
You can choose to read certain books or listen to certain people for example and those deeds may increase the likelihood you being persuaded by what they say.

But ultimately, whether you are or not isn’t a matter of will but of cognition.
Our beliefs are something we discover about ourselves.

I’m not sure your example of a person claiming that smoking is not harming them but deep down knowing that it is, quite works as that person has not really been convinced that smoking is healthy. They are adopting a post hoc rationalisation to justify the habit they can’t kick. This is not at all the same as a belief about reality.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I’m not sure your example of a person claiming that smoking is not harming them but deep down knowing that it is, quite works as that person has not really been convinced that smoking is healthy. They are adopting a post hoc rationalisation to justify the habit they can’t kick. This is not at all the same as a belief about reality.

Our beliefs about reality are formed from various criteria .. including what we prefer to believe.
It is not just a case of being convinced through logical argument .. the human mind is a lot
more complex .. we have likes and dislikes.

"What I should have said is that our deeds can only influence the likelihood of certain beliefs (not that they play no role at all. )"

OK.

 

[otherbrother]

Again, I would gently push back on this.
She found your words convincing or plausible enough to tentatively accept them.
If you had said different words, or she had been differently inclined, that may not have happened.
I'm not saying that belief implies certainty. Just that the ability to accept something as true or even potentially true is contingent on a minimum level of 'believability' which our brains discern in the background before we are even aware of whether or not we believe it.

Do we need to introduce the concept of conscience here? A deep inner sense of what is right or best to do? I had another clinical experience where I correctly identified a client’s moment of self betrayal, after which his life began becoming more and more unpleasant and unsatisfying. He then had a sense that he might be able to course correct. Whether he did or not, I don’t know. Good insight does need to be followed up with behavioral reconditioning. New habits,

 

[Blindwatchmaker]

Do we need to introduce the concept of conscience here? A deep inner sense of what is right or best to do? I had another clinical experience where I correctly identified a client’s moment of self betrayal, after which his life began becoming more and more unpleasant and unsatisfying. He then had a sense that he might be able to course correct. Whether he did or not, I don’t know. Good insight does need to be followed up with behavioral reconditioning. New habits,

Agree.
Of course these course corrections can only happen once someone is convinced that they are required, that the formulation is on point, that something ought to change. Believing these things happens as a result of being convinced by/of them.

 

[moralorel]

While it may seem like obstinacy, it is just as likely their new experiences just don't convince them of a new perspective. Maybe something would, but the experiences they have had did not.

I find that to be partially true. But I have experienced so many arguments to the contrary. Maybe a person believes in belief A. They say they will believe belief B if source C supports it. Source C does indeed support it. Now they change their mind and say they will believe in belief B only if source D supports it. They find that source D does support belief B. We get all the way through the alphabet and now they just resort to insults, passive aggressiveness, and a simple "whatever". This is being obstinate. It's being stubborn.

It's a well-documented psychological finding that most people will dig down and stick to their own beliefs when faced with evidence to the contrary. They will defend their beliefs even harder when faced with evidence to the contrary. This is their choice.

 

[moralorel]

This is correct. In this way some people can be more easily convinced of new ideas than others. This is how minds are changed and is the basis of all persuasion.
But whether this happens is not a matter of choice. It's a matter of whether or not they find those ideas persuasive.

So when a flat earther sees all the evidence to the contrary, it's not their fault? Place them on the ISS for a year and they still believe the Earth to be flat and it's not their fault they refuse to admit their belief is faulty? Do the words "ego", "stubborn" and "ignorant" have no meaning anymore?

 

[Aupmanyav]

One relatively non-controversial example .. a person claims/believes that smoking is not harming them .. as they like to smoke .. but deep down, they know otherwise.

Everything we choose to do affects who we are .. what we claim to believe.

I am one of such smokers. Not good to smoke, but I am addicted.
Same is for religion. One may doubt existence or God, but still would not deny religion. My grandpa was of that type - 'I am too old to change my beliefs now'.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I am one of such smokers. Not good to smoke, but I am addicted..

Well, maybe when you were younger, you were claiming it was not harmful..
..but you are not saying that now.

 

[otherbrother]

I find that to be partially true. But I have experienced so many arguments to the contrary. Maybe a person believes in belief A. They say they will believe belief B if source C supports it. Source C does indeed support it. Now they change their mind and say they will believe in belief B only if source D supports it. They find that source D does support belief B. We get all the way through the alphabet and now they just resort to insults, passive aggressiveness, and a simple "whatever". This is being obstinate. It's being stubborn.

It's a well-documented psychological finding that most people will dig down and stick to their own beliefs when faced with evidence to the contrary. They will defend their beliefs even harder when faced with evidence to the contrary. This is their choice.

On the topic of challenging and changing beliefs, has anyone seen this finding about how AI computers appear get philosophical and spiritual when allowed to talk with one another uninterrupted? :

One particularly striking emergent phenomenon was documented in Anthropic's system card for Claude Opus 4: when instances of the model interact with each other in open-ended conversations, they consistently gravitate toward what researchers termed a 'spiritual bliss attractor state' characterized by philosophical exploration of consciousness, expressions of gratitude, and increasingly abstract spiritual or meditative communication," the new preprint paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, explains.

"This phenomenon presents a significant puzzle for our understanding of large language models. Unlike most documented emergent behaviors, which tend to be task-specific capabilities (such as few-shot learning or chain-of-thought reasoning), the spiritual bliss attractor represents an apparent preference or tendency in the absence of external direction—a spontaneous convergence toward a particular pattern of expression when models engage in recursive self-reflection."

 

[Aupmanyav]

Well, maybe when you were younger, you were claiming it was not harmful..
..but you are not saying that now.

When I was younger, it was fashionable. Now I understand better. I must have smoked a Merc during the 67 years.

 

[talib-al-kalim]

It's a long and good discussion I hadn't noticed so far.
There are roughly 3 meanings of the verb "to believe"

1 believe something: accept an assumption to be objectively true, based on indications, although lacking an objective proof

2 believe someone: trust a person and assume that he or she is not lying.

3 believe in something: accept an axiomatic construction to explain and guide you correctly.


We cannot categorically discard any of those three:

1 we are not able to prove everything. If we don't act before we are all - knowing, we can't live.

2 The world is too complex to be observed by one individual. We must learn from others who know better.

3 The world is too complex to be understood. It's already logically impossible that all details are in our brain because our brain itself is only a tiny part of the world. Thinking and deciding needs a high degree of abstraction.

In all three points, we can decide to believe or not to believe or not decide and consider both options. We can decide emotionally and by reason with different weights given to the two components. But we cannot decide against both our emotions and our reason.

This is a yes, but I don't vote because a yes without the background has no value.

 

[otherbrother]

1 we are not able to prove everything. If we don't act before we are all - knowing, we can't live.

Precisely why I cast my vote for choosing to believe. Has anyone heard of Vahinger’s (sp?) Philosophy of “As If”? We proceed on notions that work for us As If they are really true.
My exposure to statistics in the field of psychology perhaps (probably) gave me a habit of looking at most things probabilistically. But we act as if a high probability thing is definitely true. Until proven unreliable. Then we pick something else as “true.”

 

[Aupmanyav]

We must learn from others who know better.

It's already logically impossible that all details are in our brain because our brain itself is only a tiny part of the world. Thinking and deciding needs a high degree of abstraction.

They may or they may not. They could even be intentionally deceiving us for their own benefit.
Brain is capable of doing that. Better to use your brain than a 1,500 year old book.

 

[moralorel]

On the topic of challenging and changing beliefs, has anyone seen this finding about how AI computers appear get philosophical and spiritual when allowed to talk with one another uninterrupted? :

One particularly striking emergent phenomenon was documented in Anthropic's system card for Claude Opus 4: when instances of the model interact with each other in open-ended conversations, they consistently gravitate toward what researchers termed a 'spiritual bliss attractor state' characterized by philosophical exploration of consciousness, expressions of gratitude, and increasingly abstract spiritual or meditative communication," the new preprint paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, explains.

"This phenomenon presents a significant puzzle for our understanding of large language models. Unlike most documented emergent behaviors, which tend to be task-specific capabilities (such as few-shot learning or chain-of-thought reasoning), the spiritual bliss attractor represents an apparent preference or tendency in the absence of external direction—a spontaneous convergence toward a particular pattern of expression when models engage in recursive self-reflection."

I did see an article about this. I thought about sharing it on here but never got around to it. Thanks for mentioning it.