This is just a stupid thread. A belief is simply a propositional attitude. I.e., what you hold the be true or false. The idea that belief is somehow a religious concepts or that it ought to be abolished in mind-numbingly ridiculous. — MindForged
"Beliefs ought to be abolished" do you hold that to be a true statement? If you, that means to you believe that statement. — MindForged
We can trivially avoid belief by generally being keen on evidence.(which is contrary to the concept of belief which generally permits the opposite, evidence ignorance) — uncool
This is simply absurd. Beliefs *are* part of science, no matter what asinine claim your favorite science communicator tells you. Scientists, within their work, believe and assert things as true. Yet, those claims are rarely taken to be claims of infallibility. Even things that we know to be true are beliefs, that's literally part of the classical definition of knowledge. Things I know to be true are also thing since believe to be true. This holds in mathematics, formal logic, science, you name it. — MindForged
Man are you serious? Being "keen on evidence" literally just means believing what the current evidence seems to indicate. This is hilarious. Evidence is a nebulous term, which people can just as easily be fallible or even stubborn about. Not everyone agrees on what some set evidence suggests, nor even on what counts as appropriate evidence for some proposition or view. — MindForged
Remember, that evidence doesn't depend on beliefs; scientific equations don't suddenly work because scientists chose to believe in them.
It doesn't work until you follow evidence, and no amount of belief or passion poured into work, affords that said thing works. — uncool
Belief no more "permits one to ignore evidence" anymore than your weasel phrase "being keen on evidence" (which is just another way of saying "belief").
That is completely irrelevant. Scientists *believe* (meaning they hold it to be true) that some such equation is veridical. No one is proposing some causal relation between "X believes Y" and "Therefore Y is true" in virtue of being believed. This should be extremely simple. — MindForged
As I said, you are literally just taking time concept of "belief" (holding some proposition to be true or false) and renaming it "being keen on evidence" — MindForged
And try reading that research in the OP. It is primarily about delusions (false beliefs, as defined in the research) and belief formation. You are misguided and misrepresenting research because of some silly fear of religion. — MindForged
"Belief can be defined as the mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of some idea (Schwitzgebel, 2010). According to many analytic philosophers, a belief is a “propositional attitude”: as a proposition, it has a specific meaning that can be expressed in the form of a sentence; as an attitude, it involves a mental stance on the validity of the proposition (Schwitzgebel, 2010). Beliefs thus involve at least two properties: (i) representational content and (ii) assumed veracity
(...)
Beliefs, or perhaps more realistically belief systems, provide the ‘mental scaffolding’ for appraising the environment, explaining new observations, and constructing a shared meaning of the world (Halligan, 2007)."
You are reaching. Again, this is neither state in the research and is even contradicted by it.
:
"Belief can be defined as the mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of some idea (Schwitzgebel, 2010). According to many analytic philosophers, a belief is a “propositional attitude”: as a proposition, it has a specific meaning that can be expressed in the form of a sentence; as an attitude, it involves a mental stance on the validity of the proposition (Schwitzgebel, 2010). Beliefs thus involve at least two properties: (i) representational content and (ii) assumed veracity
(...)
Beliefs, or perhaps more realistically belief systems, provide the ‘mental scaffolding’ for appraising the environment, explaining new observations, and constructing a shared meaning of the world (Halligan, 2007)."
I mean if you literally get rid of one of the most basic concepts in human experience I guess being ridiculous isn't a problem for you. — MindForged
Don't forget this line:
"There is, for example, no philosophical consensus on what belief is." — uncool
Your point? Are you serious? Yes people disagree on what exactly a belief is. What does that have to do with anything? There is no philosophical consensus on what "evidence" is either, and even about how evidence "supports" the truth of some proposition. This is more absurd by the minute. — MindForged
The point is that beyond the philosophical definitions which you quoted above (on which there is no concensus) there exists experimental data on the other hand, showing that belief generally occurs such that evidence is ignored. — uncool
You are quoting it referring to people who form beliefs in an irrational way. Great argument, I never realized that people could use a tool incorrectly or have biases. Let's try this:
I will now be "keen on evidence". Oh what's that, you have some evidence which contradicts what evidence I am currently "keen on"? Well that can't be correct, I will ignore your evidence and only pay attention to the evidence which supports the evidence I am "keen on".
See what i mean? This is the stupidest semantic deception I've seen in a good while. It's literally just changing the label of what we refer to as a "belief" — MindForged
I will now be "keen on evidence". Oh what's that, you have some evidence which contradicts what evidence I am currently "keen on"? Well that can't be correct, I will ignore your evidence and only pay attention to the evidence which supports the evidence I am "keen on"..
People will do exactly the same thing if they are "keen on evidence" (e.g. believe) as suggested by you. This is nothing but a smokescreen and ignores that the research you quoted was about people forming beliefs irrationally (overly driven by bia. — MindForged
If you constantly observe evidence, rather than only looking for data that agrees with your prior stance, you're already doing what is contrary to the concept of belief. — uncool
It is no less immune to the manipulation of personal bias and to try and pass it off as such is so naive as to be scary. — MindForged
How does that change a thing? — MindForged
I will now be "keen on evidence". Oh what's that, you have some evidence which contradicts what evidence I am currently "keen on"? Well that can't be correct, I will ignore your evidence and only pay attention to the evidence which supports the evidence I am "keen on".. — MindForged
That statement of yours is demonstrably false, because scientific thinking has been less susceptible to evidence ignorance and evidence distortion, than what belief generally facilitates.(Scientific thinking has brought technological/scientific progress, and promoted that old mistakes were and are repaired rather than being maintained regardless of contrasting evidence) — uncool
If you go back to the OP, or my exchanges with you, you may quickly notice what I underlined all along; scientific thinking generally permits evidence consideration, while belief generally permits evidence ignorance.
Looking at your earlier quote below, that is precisely what belief generally promotes: — uncool
What a whopping non sequitur. That science has improved over time doesn't show that it is above exactly the bias you complained about beliefs being susceptible to. See the move from Newtonian dynamics to 20th century developments, especially qusntum mechanics. — MindForged
I don't know how many times I can literally just substitute your phrase "keen on evidence" to show its being used exactly the same as belief is until you get it. Beliefs are part of science. Ask a scientist if they believe quantum mechanics is the best theory we have of the quantum world and they will say yes. Do you know why? Because a belief is just what you hold to be true or false. The fact that it can be susceptible to bias (like literally everything else humans do) is the stupidest reason to discharge a concept that is used in every field of science, mathematics, etc. — MindForged
That scientists believe on non-evidence, does not suddenly remove that science generally facilitates that evidence is considered.
In fact, you've demonstrated that when scientists fail to prioritize evidence, they fail to make progress in a regime where evidence generally facilitates progress. — uncool
You do realize that I was using your proposal and you just agreed (umwittingly) that it was indistinguishable from belief, don't you? Your proposal is paper thin fear of religion or some other silly thing. — MindForged
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