it's not full or actual belief. It's some kind of semi, quasi, pretend belief. — Artemis

If you come upon someone meditating, or even asleep, and you jar them from that state, they are distracted, and lose it. The state they were in was genuine, not in any sense delusional, but not maintainable under all conditions.

Does that help?

might it be that believers so much want their belief that it becomes to them as real? — PoeticUniverse

It might be, yes, that's surely one possibility. I'm not sure how common it is, though. :chin:

No, they believe because they so much want it that they suspend other thinking, unknowingly, as a kind of being in denial. — PoeticUniverse

Oh, then no, if that's what you meant.

Because suspension of belief is what it says. Although I believe the story, there are limits. So I remain aware, in your example, that the Green Slime isn't actually threatening me. Let's not get too formal about this. Suspending disbelief is a pretence, after all. And the distraction you mention is a downside. You can't disbelieve everything, which may be why many readers say they prefer a book to a film. As a reader, I might comment that the colour is better in a book than a film - :smile: - but it may be that a film is more likely to eject you from the 'reality' of the book and its story, as you describe, detracting from the story and our enjoyment of it. :chin:

When I read a story - a good story; a poor one simply doesn't captivate as a good one does - I immerse myself in it. I accept its 'reality' and its magic. And I don't mean the magic of Gandalf, I mean the glamour of a good story. When I've finished, so is my belief in the world and the characters of the story. But while I'm within the story, I believe. I can't believe that's unique among readers? :chin:

You mentioned a sticking point. I wondered if it was that the belief I describe is temporary? :chin:

No, I can't see a sticking point, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's actually believing something ... and then setting it aside. Temporary belief is the problem, would you agree?

I said what I said because he said this:

everything is countable — Marzipanmaddox

Quite why he said that, I don't know. :chin:

Oh no, I believe in practice that magic and elves exist. For the duration of the story.

Basically, once you start to count things, you can tell that everything is countable. — Marzipanmaddox

Consider the difference between "less" and "fewer": There are fewer cows in the field, so there is less milk. The concept of countability is this basic. Cows are countable; milk is not.

Think of a rock falling from a person's hand towards the ground. This may not seem numerical, but even if it does not naturally appear this way, we can still represent and describe it numerically. — Marzipanmaddox

No we can't. We can develop and assign numbers to something like a falling rock. These numbers might predict the rate at which the rock falls, but that's as far as it goes. There is much more to be included before we can say that our words "represent and describe" it.

If it was not selected for or against, then it would not be so prevalent — Marzipanmaddox

That's an assumption, not the conclusion of a logical thought process, or at least not one that you've offered in this discussion.

I'm saying philosophy is not reliable method of deriving truth because it deviates from the scientific method. — Marzipanmaddox

Ah, so the only reliable method that exists for "deriving truth" is the scientific method? :chin:

Sure, some people who read Tolkien might believe theoretically in magic or elves or stuff like that, but do they believe LoR is a historical account of a real world? — Artemis

Straw man. No, of course they don't.

Not when you believe fiction to be a true account of history. — Artemis

Straw man.

I think he's confusing imagination, suspension of disbelief and actual belief. — Artemis

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: You could be right, but I don't think so. Instead of creating nonsense to counter, why not read what was said?

Whenever we think with the aims of discovery and exploration, there is an imaginative phase where we deliberately suspend disbelief. Edward de Bono's hats describe this well. [ And yes, there is a more formally critical hat [ Black ] that succeeds the imaginative one [ Green ], so there's no need to point this out. ] — Pattern-chaser

[Additions in bold.]

Flexibility of thought isn't easy to learn, if you're not used to it. And its utility is limited: it only applies when you're seeking something new. This might be discovery, where we're just looking to understand something new, or whatever. But more often it's when we have a problem to solve, one that hasn't been solved before; a new problem.

What de Bono has published in recent years isn't new, but he was the first to gather this stuff together, stuff that creative thinkers have worked out over many years, structure it and write it down for others to benefit from. He deserves the praise.

Flexible thinking - which could be called creative thinking, and which de Bono calls "lateral thinking" -
is what we do when we're looking to create something new. I spent my professional life doing this, as a firmware designer. So techniques that others rarely used, I employed all the time. I have a lifetime's training in flexible thinking, for which I am immensely grateful.

So, returning to the story example, I do believe the story, its world and its other premises, while I read it. In traditional language, I "suspend disbelief". When I'm not reading it, there is no thought in my mind that (for example) Tolkien's elves are part of the space-time universe! No-one has asserted, or even suggested, such nonsense! To suggest otherwise is a trivial straw man, as I commented above.

If one is not a designer, or a member of another creative profession, flexible thinking might seem foreign; odd. To someone like an analytical philosopher, who has worked very hard to develop a formal and rigid understanding of things, flexible thinking can be so alarming that some might be tempted to dismiss such 'twaddle' with straw men, and the ridicule that concludes the straw man sequence.

But I think it's the case that sometimes flexible thinking is the order of the day, while at other times, some structure or rigour is more appropriate. For (mental) voyages of exploration and discovery, flexible thinking will get you there. To determine if the results of flexible thinking are usable in practice - to evaluate a Green hat idea - we need a formal critique, for which we don the Black hat.

If you can imagine a style of thinking, you can probably also imagine a situation where it might be the most appropriate tool for the job. Rigid and rigorous thinking has its place, but so does flexibility. There is no One Tool for all jobs, so I don't understand the resistance I'm seeing here to what is, in the end, just a way of thinking. There is no need to act as if this new way of thinking is offered to replace existing ways! It is not. Such an offer would contribute nothing. If you give me a screwdriver, I won't immediately throw my hammer away. I'll keep both, and use both, as the job requires.

That's how we wind up with stuff like Scientology. — Artemis

Not all the ideas resulting from a creative excursion are good ideas. :wink:

If you truly immerse yourself in a story, and its world, you might start to think in terms of the story and its environment being real, and what the consequences might be. You can sometimes make connections that you might miss otherwise. You can recognise perspectives that are helpful to you in other matters. It may be fiction, but it isn't necessarily unhelpful in understanding some aspects of the real world. Flexibility of thought. Just one of many tools.

I don't at all believe that there's any example of looking at this where it would turn out that most people exposed to an utterance reacted violently. — Terrapin Station

[Straw-man alert]

But I wouldn't say I ever do that with fictions. — Terrapin Station

Then you may be getting less from your reading (watching too?) than others do? :chin:

Can you give a couple examples of what you're sampling for a claim like that? — Terrapin Station

No, I can't be bothered. You know as as I well how such inquiries are carried out. I will not carry on clarifying my clarifications beyond the point where even my autistic judgement can see that you're taking the piss. That point has been reached and passed.

To believe something is to accept it as true. This might be time-constrained, or otherwise constrained, but the basic core is acceptance.

[ Replying to @Terrapin Station ]

You've simply assumed it as the default and required that we offer evidence sufficient to convince you of a causal link. — Isaac

The causal link can be observed empirically, but it's vague. We need to apply sociology and statistics to clarify that hate speech often leads to violence. But if we do, the result is clear: hate speech leads to violence often enough to legislate against it.

I'm asking, and have been from the start, why you feel the burden of proof falls on those claiming a causal link when it comes to legislation, and not on those claiming that the observed correlation is not causal. — Isaac

[Rant]
Any sentence containing the phrase "burden of proof" is BS, and should be ignored. It's a way of saying that someone else has to do the work, because you can't be bothered.
[/Rant]

Stressing in that you're still saying that it's belief. — Terrapin Station

Of course it's belief. It's acceptance of the story, and the world wherein it takes place, for the duration of that story. This is NOT worth disputing to this degree. It's a side-point of a side-point. Let's leave it here.

But how can we get something wrong in a system if it is act according to it and there is no objective criterion for deciding which system is better ? :smile: — Wittgenstein

I think that question carries its own answer. "There is no objective criterion for deciding which system is better". :smile:

But you're stressing that you actually believe fictions — Terrapin Station

No, not "stressing". That's what "passive belief" is intended to communicate. Something that happens in the background. Something that makes no significant contribution to the experience, which is the story, in this case.

What does that refer to, though? You're saying a belief you're not aware of? — Terrapin Station

If you don't know how to 'suspend disbelief' and enjoy a good story, this is not the place to find out about it. Too often you retreat from the topic under discussion into time-wasting and unnecessary quibbling. At your request, I have described and explained passive and active belief, even though I think my intended meaning was already fairly clear. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now you're just baiting me, I think. These matters do not require or justify formal and logical consideration. :razz:

What would you say is the difference between a passive belief and an active belief. — Terrapin Station

In this context, rather than as a bold and universal (objective? :gasp: ) statement, I would say that passive belief remains in the background, largely ignored (because its relevance is small), while active belief stays in the foreground, a significant player in whatever it is that we're thinking about.

If you passively believe that Alice entered Wonderland, what does that involve exactly? — Terrapin Station

It doesn't involve anything "exactly". This is not a precise and measured discussion of trivial scientific facts, this is a vague discussion about thinking habits and stories. You're just being awkward now. :razz:

So nazi Germany beliefs and ideas were okay because all of them thought so. People in the past, agreed on a global level that slavery was okay. We don't always progress towards improving our morality, but we can try to correlate better morals with better living conditions in a society. — Wittgenstein

We of the present day nearly always consider that we do everything better, and in a more sophisticated and enlightened way, than our historical predecessors. We see news reports of bad things in our societies, and we dismiss them because they happened 20 years ago, which is more or less prehistory, and besides, we don't do this any more. :chin: The truth is that we get things wrong, we have always got things wrong, and we will continue to get things wrong, as far as we can see. Well probably also get some things right.... :chin:

But you are creating little straw men out of my words. :sad: Nazi "beliefs and ideas" were not "okay". They were adopted and pursued by mid-twentieth-century Germans. We can assume, I suppose, that they did what they thought was right, but that's irrelevant. We can only observe that they did what they did. An observation does not communicate agreement or disagreement, so my own observations do not consider what happened in Germany to be "okay" or not "okay", but only that these things happened, and they weren't accidental. The German people decided what to do, and then did it, as all societies do. But acceptance does not constitute agreement.

We have created such social constructs to be safe but does that make it right ? — Wittgenstein

The fact that we (i.e. our society) did it makes it "right". There is no external ('objective') Law that covers such decisions. "Right" is what we say it is, so our prohibition of hate speech, and of murder, is right because we say it is. [ I intend this not as an assertion, but as a pragmatic acceptance of what is. ]

the profound truth of monotheism was something very different from the religions it displaced — Wayfarer

Was it, really? I think in this sense that all religions are the same. I believe in God, and I'm as happy to call Him Jupiter or Jesus as any other name. All of them - yes, every one - represents one or more aspects of the one too-big-for-us-to-understand God. I think of Her as Gaia, but Cthulhu will do just as well, if that's your thing. God is God ... maybe in the sense that "Brexit is Brexit"? :wink:

@Terrapin Station: so are you in favor of eliminated speed limits?, perhaps leaving them as recommendations. Does this extend to age restrictions? things like the age one can get a driver's licence - or, as I mull it over, getting rid of licences at all, since these are statistical protection - or buy a whisky shot at a bar or give consent to sex. — Coben

Good questions. Here is one thought-train, offered as another example: unconstrained freedom of speech gives us the freedom to insult and provoke. The freedom to own guns allows this to progress easily to violence and murder. Empirical observation confirms that this is a path humans are likely to follow, unless they are discouraged or prevented. Yes? Too many unconstrained freedoms lead to unacceptable results (unjustified violence) in some cases; far too may cases to ignore, I think.

Maybe you literally believe fictions when you're engaging with them, but I sure do not. It seems to me that literally believing them would be unusual (but no problem with being unusual there). — Terrapin Station

Because the aim here is to enjoy the story, our belief is passive. We even express it as "suspending disbelief" to emphasise this. So our belief in the story-line is not active, or at the forefront of our experience, because it's the story which is important. Disbelief and belief fade into the background, as they should. Until the story's over, that is. :wink:

It wasn't hate speech per se, it was hate speech delivered by a charismatic authority figure, in the right socioeconomic climate and allowing it to go unchallenged. Basically without the alignment of various socioeconomic factors, hate speech would be little more than words. The factors that enabled Nazism have been the topic of discussion of historians for decades for this reason. To say it was just speech is too simplistic, too local. — Necrofantasia

Nazi leaders embraced, encouraged and recommended hate, using the communications medium of (hate) speech, and violent acts of hate were subsequently enacted. There is a causal connection here. It is not formally causal, nor is the connection always direct, but it is there. This can be verified by empirical examination, using sociological and statistical tools. For we all know that hate speech cannot and does not infallibly lead to violence. It relies on certain aspects of humanity, i.e. the way that we can be provoked beyond endurance. It is easy to argue that we should not act in this way, but that's the "ought", where the "is" is that we do act in this way quite often. Often enough that we need to consider it, which is what we're doing here.

Have you never heard someone, describing a good story, say "you have to suspend your disbelief"? That's what you do when you're experiencing a story: you suspend disbelief. For the moment, you believe. — Pattern-chaser

You don't believe it. What you do is not be a realism fetishist, because that's not pertinent to fiction. You enjoy the fantasy for what it is rather. — Terrapin Station

Terrapin already pointed this out, but I'll reiterate: creativity and imagination have nothing to do with actually believing. I still very much enjoy Tolkien, but was unaware that I therefore believe in Ents and the Dark Lord! — Artemis

First, this point is worth pursuing because it doesn't only apply to the appreciation of fiction. Whenever we think with the aims of discovery and exploration, there is an imaginative phase where we deliberately suspend disbelief. Edward de Bono's hats describe this well. [ And yes, there is a more formally critical hat that succeeds the imaginative one, so there's no need to point this out. ]

When we accept a new fact (or something close to that), once we have considered it and found it acceptable, we believe it until new evidence comes along. In the case of fiction, we believe it for a shorter time, equally well defined: until we are finished with looking at it, or enjoying it. But we do believe it.

None of this changes the fact that not believing things that are impossible, illogical, etc. doesn't amount to not having an imagination — Terrapin Station

Agreed. But when we're looking for new understanding, we need to be cautious of dismissing something that could have value without proper consideration. Throwing the baby out with the bath-water, that kind of thing. Too often new ideas are dismissed simply because they contradict current orthodoxy. In this case, we risk missing out on new discoveries, which (by definition) contradict current orthodoxy. :chin: [ And yes. of course, this can be hard work. How do we know which ideas to pursue, and which to disregard? We don't. We have to guess. And it can be difficult and tedious work. That's life. ]

when you ask questions like is QM casual... — Bill Hobba

Causal? :chin:

If philosophy were legitimate it would be a science, you would be able to veritably and unquestionably prove your philosophical assertions via the scientific method. — Marzipanmaddox

So, to paraphrase, philosophy is crap because it isn't science, and only science can be not-crap? Is that about it?

I am just arguing that philosophy is inferior to science with regards to actually having an argument. Meaning a philosophical point would always lose to a scientific point. I'm saying that worshiping philosophy, arguing that philosophy is somehow above, or even equal to science is delusion. Clearly it is not, if it were, then it would be proven by the scientific method, and thus become science, and at that point it would no longer be philosophy. — Marzipanmaddox

You're really serious about his, aren't you? You do realise this is sciencism? Possibly eXtreme Sciencism? [XS] Objective correctness gone mad? Joking aside, let's be clear: you're arguing that science is the One and Only Tool acceptable for use in the examination of Life, the Universe and Everything? And that philosophy has been wholly superseded by science?

If there was no objective benefit to morality, than moral societies would not exist. They would be no more capable or powerful than amoral societies, and due to the excess effort it takes to maintain a moral society, morality would have fallen out of favor.

It would be seen as needless and pointless explicitly because morality produced no objective benefit, because a moral society was no better off than an amoral one. It would be like drinking snake oil every day, and reasonable people would quickly realize that drinking the snake oil does nothing and then subsequently stop doing that. — Marzipanmaddox

If the sun carries on rising every day, the snake oil is working, isn't it? :wink: And if everybody takes the snake oil, every day, no-one will be able to deduce it's doing nothing, will they? :wink:

And another thing. What if morality is not a policy considered and adopted by societies, but is an emergent property of societies that just appears? The way you put it, you expect evolution to get rid of it if it does nothing. But there are many attributes that have no critical survival value, so they are not selected for or against. Maybe morality is such a thing? :chin:

The intention is to suggest that there is an unintelligible infinite variance of color which can never be adequately described. — thewonder

Perhaps the intention is to suggest that there are things that we can experience, but not describe? In this case we wouldn't be implying that there is something that cannot be approached or understood, but only that this thing cannot be described. Does that make sense? :chin:

Everything within this universe, everything within the planet earth, is inherently numerical... — Marzipanmaddox

Sorry, I stopped reading after that. Not out of disinterest, but because I need you to clarify this before I can continue understanding what you wrote. I can't see how everything - absolutely everything - is "inherently numerical". It's not that I doubt what you wrote, it's that I don't understand what you wrote. Can you explain, for the benefit of this senile and baffled philosopher? :chin:

you could argue that Law [...] is, therefore, part and parcel to the machinations of the State in a negative sense. — thewonder

I suppose you could. But let's remember, we're talking about human-world artifacts being imported into a gaming environment (or the environment of fantasy novels or films). In the process, these things are necessarily simplified. And, as we noted before, often over-simplified.

That theory makes a lot more sense if you accept my friend's assertion that High Fantasy is just kind of Fascist. — thewonder

Hmm. Fantasy worlds are often feudal in their politics, ruled by the rich and powerful. But I think this is usually an accidental import from the human world, a sort of default State, you might say. :wink: So Fascist? I'm not convinced this is a meaningful observation. Good fantasy is about good stories. The freedom to have purple sky, backward-running time or reversed gravity allows the story to run where it will, but its success still depends on the story itself. Or is the literature itself accused of being Fascist? If so, I'm not even sure what that entails.... :chin:

Or should we be travelling a different route altogether? Should we observe that:

• OR is a thing. One thing.
• Nothing else except that one thing exists.
• There is no reason to subdivide OR, except human practicality. [ We can't swallow OR whole, so we need to divide it into digestible chunks, even though this division is artificial, or maybe non-existent (the division, that is). ]

Therefore there is, and can only ever be, one thing. Nothing is distinct. Thus the one and only thing that exists - OR - necessarily exists by itself. Is that the answer to this riddle? :chin:

how about the question in my post? If no thing can exist by itself, then how can any set of things exist by itself? — tim wood

But a question: given that "something" cannot be - exist - by itself, then it seems to follow that in existing, necessarily something else exists. Is existence then founded in a reciprocity? Or is there one thing that in existing grounds the existence of all other things? And if one thing, does that exist by itself? (And if it does, how would thee or me know it?) Or does it require itself reciprocity? — tim wood

I'm not sure. I think I see that Objective Reality exists. That's a starting point. If something has actual existence, it exists within OR. We have no Objective evidence of what exists in OR, or of how many things exist in OR. So, in those absolute terms, little or nothing is clear. :sad:

We can also turn the above on its head, and say that, because OR is everything that exists, nothing separate or distinct from OR can exist. But it still doesn't seem to lead to anything useful. :meh:

TW> Or is there one thing that in existing grounds the existence of all other things?

Yes: OR.

TW> And if one thing, does that exist by itself?

Yes, it's OR.

TW> And if it does, how would thee or me know it?

By metaphysical reasoning only, I suspect. <reluctant shrug>

TW> Or does it require itself reciprocity?

I'm unsure how reciprocity is concerned here. Is there something - or some things - that can only exist if something else also exists? [ I exclude OR itself from this consideration, to avoid confusion. ] I suspect existence itself is not dependent on the existence of other things. But I have no justification to offer for this. :chin:

[Rant]Yes.[/Rant] :smile:

You don't buy influence? Too vague? Instead of free will - I will do this, without influence from anyone or anything - the real world is more about many influences affecting what we do. Some influences are strong; others less so.

Have you never heard someone, describing a good story, say "you have to suspend your disbelief"? That's what you do when you're experiencing a story: you suspend disbelief. For the moment, you believe. That's what fantasy is about. And this applies to solving problems too. First we imagine, pretend and create. Then we bring it into the real world, if we can, and make it work. We don't have to do that last bit for stories, though. Stories are just for fun, even if we can learn from them, sometimes.