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[Inert Beliefs]: Thoughts, Words, and Actions
_J_
PedantRegistered User, __BANNED USERS regular
PedantRegistered User, __BANNED USERS regular
In contemporary political, religious, and generally social discourse we find these two ideas.
A person who claims to be concerned about the environment, but fails to engage in pro-environmental actions (recycling, car pooling, conserving fuel) is said to not really care about the environment, because they are not acting on that care. The Thought Police of Orwell's 1984 are held to be a dystopic portrayal of the state's overreach, of laws and limitations being placed on one's thoughts and beliefs. It is acceptable to limit individual's actions, but we ought not limit one's words, one's thoughts, one's beliefs. Thought policing is bad; freedom is speech is good.
A holistic appraisal of this situation belies a conflicting account of the relationship between thoughts, words, and actions. Sometimes we posit a strong relation between beliefs and action. (If you really believed X, you would act in this way.) At other times we posit a gap between beliefs and actions. (It's ok to believe X, just don't act on X.)
If beliefs motivate action, then a person who believes
This presents the idea of an inert belief, a belief that does not motivate action. It also presents a problem: What, exactly, is the relationship between belief and action? In The Fixation of Belief, Charles S. Peirce wrote, "Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions." Our contemporary society seems to think this is the case, sometimes. When a person has beliefs we deem good, we want them to act on those beliefs. When a person has beliefs we deem bad, we can't tell them to abandon the beliefs, for some reason, so we quash their actions, instead.
That is a problem.
Here are my questions: Is it possible for a belief to be inert, to not motivate action? Or is what we call an inert belief merely a fleeting thought? Is it disingenuous to tell individuals that they can believe X, but not act on X? Does limiting actions limit beliefs as well? If we maintain that an individual can genuinely believe X, but not act on X, then can we still criticize people who fail to act on their professed beliefs?
Guideline for Discussion: The hope is for this thread to not devolve into a debate on particular beliefs. This is not the place to argue about religion, or abortion, or GLBT marriage, or any other issue. This is a conversation about the conversations we have about issues. Is it sensible to both encourage people to not act on their beliefs, and at the same time fault people who do not act on their beliefs?
- You don't really believe X, because you do not act on X.
- It's ok for you to believe X, just don't act on X.
A person who claims to be concerned about the environment, but fails to engage in pro-environmental actions (recycling, car pooling, conserving fuel) is said to not really care about the environment, because they are not acting on that care. The Thought Police of Orwell's 1984 are held to be a dystopic portrayal of the state's overreach, of laws and limitations being placed on one's thoughts and beliefs. It is acceptable to limit individual's actions, but we ought not limit one's words, one's thoughts, one's beliefs. Thought policing is bad; freedom is speech is good.
A holistic appraisal of this situation belies a conflicting account of the relationship between thoughts, words, and actions. Sometimes we posit a strong relation between beliefs and action. (If you really believed X, you would act in this way.) At other times we posit a gap between beliefs and actions. (It's ok to believe X, just don't act on X.)
If beliefs motivate action, then a person who believes
- Abortion is immoral.
- I ought to prevent others from engaging in immoral acts.
This presents the idea of an inert belief, a belief that does not motivate action. It also presents a problem: What, exactly, is the relationship between belief and action? In The Fixation of Belief, Charles S. Peirce wrote, "Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions." Our contemporary society seems to think this is the case, sometimes. When a person has beliefs we deem good, we want them to act on those beliefs. When a person has beliefs we deem bad, we can't tell them to abandon the beliefs, for some reason, so we quash their actions, instead.
That is a problem.
Here are my questions: Is it possible for a belief to be inert, to not motivate action? Or is what we call an inert belief merely a fleeting thought? Is it disingenuous to tell individuals that they can believe X, but not act on X? Does limiting actions limit beliefs as well? If we maintain that an individual can genuinely believe X, but not act on X, then can we still criticize people who fail to act on their professed beliefs?
Guideline for Discussion: The hope is for this thread to not devolve into a debate on particular beliefs. This is not the place to argue about religion, or abortion, or GLBT marriage, or any other issue. This is a conversation about the conversations we have about issues. Is it sensible to both encourage people to not act on their beliefs, and at the same time fault people who do not act on their beliefs?
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1. Know or believe they should do many things on one level, but don't actually give a fuck enough on another level to break out of their routine to do it.
2. Know or believe they shouldn't do many things on one level, but are compelled on another level to continue to do such things.
It turns out that the human consciousness is not a unitary, logical unit, but made of of multiple, often conflicting illogical units.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Yes there are levels and hierarchies and conflicts. But at the end of all that, one acts. Typically, we maintain that the action indicates the set of beliefs that were most significant.
A person either recycles that can or they don't recycle that can.
What about the person who recycles the can, but doesn't bother to sort his trash for recycling cause its a pain in the ass?
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Which can? The one they drank at home where they have access to easy recycling? Or the one they threw in a trash can, where a hobo would probably find it, rather than carry it for the other 4 hours they would be out that day. Or the one they threw in the garbage at their in-laws house who don't have curbside recycling and have a hate on for environmental causes?
I believe I should be more outgoing and friendly and trust that if I approach people they won't abuse me. I believe that this is hugely important to my future happiness. I need to change how I approach just massive portions of my life.
I've known this for a very long time. Acting on these things, these beliefs? Not easy.
This ignores entirely the fact that "X" is not necessarily a binary choice. It doesn't have to be black or white.
For example, on environmentalism, a person could believe that the environment is important, but it could simultaneously be less important than their desire to own a gas guzzling SUV. In the same sense, this person could refuse to dump toxic wastes into a river when ordered to do so by their employer, because of their belief in the environment.
Incenjucar hit it on the head.
That's one of the questions, though. Does the person *really* believe the environment is important if they own a gas guzzling SUV?
That a separate concern to what _J_'s dilemma highlights. It may well be the case that that is how multiple beliefs act in concert but it doesn't answer the question of the connection between belief and action (or to put it in your system the most heavily valued beliefs and actions) nor how we describe or determine appropriate and inappropriate beliefs.
Belief leads to action when action is the highest value among exclusive options. Our values change throughout our lives and throughout the day, due to various influences and compounding values (valuing something because of other values).
Appropriate and inappropriate is just a compound result of other values, generally those given to us by society combined with a few instinctual ones.
Our values mostly break down to "I want to feel good." Empathy causes "I feel good" to require others to also "feel good," and cooperative social behaviors allow people to make themselves feel good in exchange for making others feel good. People teach each other a variety of specific values because doing so is expected to make them feel good, either by causing the other person to make them feel good, or by having empathy for that other person and feeling good because they feel good.
For instance in the case of environmentalism, climate change is not statistically affected by the most common forms of recycling. You can do lifestyle changes that would affect it (A smaller, better isolated house, no meat and cheese, no car are the three highest impact choices if memory serves), but all of those are at pretty high cost and will only work when you convince a ton of people to do it to. And the best thing of all would be to convince the Chinese to please stop building more coal plants. I would like to see the world to make this switch, but there are large opposing forces and even if I dedicated 100% of my time and money to it, it is uncertain if it would have any impact. How heavy then is the burden on me to change, even though my single change is negligible and counteracted?
In our society in general we have limited time and money, and through an imperfect push and pull system with many layers of meetings, compromises and opportunism things are decided. The path to spending your time and money to achieve a goal is thus very unclear.
Personally I spend a lot of my time on one problem, which is the refugee situation in the Netherlands. Not because it is the thing I care most about, but because I saw that I had a chance for real impact.
Such an impact analysis is not easy to make even with scientific methods, and humans are notoriously terrible at it through gut feelings. The amount of people who start with "Why don't they just..." and proceed to talk about a subject they know next to nothing about are beyond count.
Yes, they just believe it to a lesser degree than someone who would only own a Prius, or a bicycle. We couldn't function if our beliefs were not analog, because we have multiple beliefs that will eventually come into conflict.
To your original questions, I do not think it is disingenuous to tell an individual that they can believe X but not act on X. I think it would be disingenuous if I were to state I believe in something but did not act upon it, because there is a societal norm that if I state I believe in something, I am actually stating that I believe very strongly in something (that is, to a high degree).
Even in your own dialogue, you use the idea of "genuine belief". In reality, this is simply something that someone would believe in very strongly. No person only has one belief, and we have to balance those beliefs. I think that for most beliefs, it is vanishingly rare for someone to have an absolute belief. There are a few special cases, such as the sanctity of my own life, or the lives and well being of my loved ones, where this is more common. But it's rare to have someone who will willingly sacrifice themselves for the environment or other beliefs.
In answer to your last question, I think it is possible to believe in something very strongly without being totally committed. It's only when you're willing to sacrifice your life for something are you demonstrating total commitment to a belief, because you are also sacrificing all other beliefs you have.
Belief structures are complex, life variables are complicated, so we cannot tell what a person believes based on their actions?
You only get what their most immediate values are. If you can satisfy a value, you'll get whatever is below it next.
This alone suggests that just because somebody engages in an action does not mean they do not hold any contrary beliefs. I do not believe that kicking you in the face is good, but if you tickle me enough, I will do so.
That might seem like a trivial case but the world is full of people who engage in actions, from sexual compulsion to addiction to nail-biting, that their beliefs are powerless to stop.
2) Is belief sufficient to motivate action?
This one is trickier, and probably more controversial... but I don't think that belief is sufficient to motivate action.
I have personal reasons for believing this. I experience depression as a disease of motivation. I am usually a low-energy person, but when I'm unmedicated or having a mood swing, I find it much harder to engage in any kind of action. I might believe, consciously, that getting out of bed and taking a shower is the right thing to do, but I just can't quite do it.
Consequently, I've come to see motivation and belief as two different things. Ideally, they should be congruent, but they are not necessarily so.
Therefore, if somebody fails to engage in a certain action, that alone is not enough for me to conclude that they don't have a congruent belief.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is a non sequitur. What people believe or value at a sufficiently high level of abstraction doesn't illuminate whether there is a link between belief and action, how we should appropriately describe "what people believe" or whether we should evaluate particular beliefs as harmful - all leading to informing _J_'s central dilemma of the tension between the two common principles.
In fact, as yet, no one has even interacted with what the OP is about due to what I suspect is an insufficient sensitivity to how academic philosophical arguments tend to be constructed.
Haha, touché! It isn't explicitly.
It's partly contained within _J_'s précis at the end of his OP, but it is also phase 2 of _J_'s dilemma once this aspect has been agreed upon as a basis for further argument.
The question of action is a question of intentional action, and for the purposes of idealisation we can assume for the moment that we are not talking about conditions affecting mental health, such as compulsion (or, for the latter point those of depression) - though it's certainly an interesting question for the philosophy of psychology (and specifically intentionality) to analyse the relationships between such conditions and a more general theory of belief and intention it is precisely because they deviate from such a theory that they are deemed abnormal and interfere with their sufferers (or alternatively these beliefs might be characterised by the existence of idiosyncratic and irrational beliefs that interfere with productive or prosocial behaviours).
The question of motivation may or may not be a separate issue depending on the framework one uses to analyse or understand it (whether as a direct function of belief or a secondary force). I can see either approach having its own merits but not, I think, significant impact on the tension _J_ highlights.
Which then leads to the the question of what it means when we say that "someone believes something" - i.e. "John believes in the power of prayer" or "Mary believes her keys are under the couch" or "Ashley believes Obamacare to be bad policy". At their face value they're easy to understand - but if the actions or other related beliefs don't match up then we sees number of questions about the nature of belief and what can, in fact, be said about belief and action?
If John never prays what does that tell us about the accuracy of the statement, in what way can he be meaningfully said to believe it?
On the other hand Mary only has this explicit belief after she arrives at her car and finds her keys aren't in her purse - the explicit belief (that her keys fell under the couch) is conscious but prior to that she had the expectation that they were in her purse but this was at a sub-conscious level, she never explicitly thought about it - should this 'expectation' be also termed a belief, a special category thereof or not a belief at all? What then are the consequences of that?
Ashley, being a typical American disapproves of Obamacare, until you ask about the specific aspects of Obamacare; each of which Ashley strong approves when questioned about them directly. Even so Ashely votes against Obamacare while demanding that the government provide its constituent services and guarantees. So, does Ashely really dislike Obamacare or can people be mistaken in knowing what they believe, no matter how vehemently they express it or act toward it.
None of those examples necessarily go directly toward informing _J_'s dilemma but are typical of the sorts of issues that the field, in general, is sensitive toward. The philosophy of language, truth and epistemology all concern themselves with similar sorts of issues - the Gettier paradox (largely about coming to believe something through rational means that turns out to be true but through unrelated means - though there's more to it than that), the Other Earth dilemma (about whether "meaning" arises internally or externally) and a whole range of questions about what it means for something to be true ("the bus will come at 8 o'clock" - is this true always or only once the bus comes? How does the fact that it's location {and bus} specific affect its truth value?).
For my money, I don't think it's necessarily required - to make sense of "Person X believes Proposition P" degrees of confidence don't obviously come into play, either a person believes it, or they don't, to believe something seems to be a ratchet function - once confidence goes over some threshold it makes sense to say someone believes it, once it dips below that it does not.
On the other hand, to explain behaviour - say, Roger professes some belief, but when the rubber meets the road don't act in the belief because they don't deem it sufficiently certain a proposition?
I'm in two minds - the first being that it might be most coherent to simply declare that Roger never actually believed any such thing, that such a lack of confidence would by definition mean that Roger did not believe such a thing. This has the virtue of being nice and consistent with how we use the term "belief" and understand utterances like "I believe X"with an absolutely minimum of gymnastics but perhaps its simplicity could be a problem in that it fails to account for more nuanced situations (but I don't think that is obviously the case, I just haven't thought it all the way through/seen the counter arguments yet). The other thing is that it renders it possible for persons to be mistaken about their beliefs in both their sincere utterances and through introspection - which I don't think is a problem, but I'm far sceptical than most about the value of introspection and self-identity.
The second option as I see it - to view confidence as merely another kind of belief:
P1. "I believe X"
P2. "I believe Y"
P3. "I believe P1 more likely to be false than P2."
Which then should a new belief be introduced that forces one to choose between P1 and P2 then P3 determines the result. Which has the benefits of being nuanced and consistent, but the detriment of not striking me as a particularly plausible way to describe how we think about confidence - I think it's functionally the same but not, I think, a direct description of the mental states involved. The solution there is simply to change how I express P3 to be more reflective of such mental realities but that is hard and won't look as pretty.
And it's not manifestly clear what we should say about someone who doesn't actually understand the beliefs they profess. I think this is one of the open questions in the thread (and possibly in the academic literature, but I am not actually familiar with the current consensus or competing consensuses so I couldn't say for certain) - Ashley hates Obamacare, upon hearing the term and upon its enshrining into law feeling of great distress were the result, Ashley thinks his congressthing voting to repeal means it is doing a good job. But, as stipulated previously, it's only the name Ashley hates, the parts by themselves Ashley loves!
What can we say about Ashley's beliefs about Obamacare? Either answer is, on its face, problematic.