Belief is reality. There is no difference. — Noble Dust
There is no "higher" reality in a spiritual sense, nor a "true" reality (in contrast to falsehood) in a logical sense, that exists "behind" or "beneath" my beliefs about reality. Belief is reality. There is no difference. — Noble Dust
What you believe may indeed be your reality, but it's possible to become unstuck. — Janus
Belief is reality — Noble Dust
Okay, short attention span-friendly: a belief is a fiction (until corroborated by evidence) and an attitude is a strong feeling about a belief or an experience.What is a belief, and what is an attitude? — Noble Dust
This is just word vomit and I'm not posting these thoughts with the intention of arguing a position. — Noble Dust
If I use language to dig around deeper into the cadaver of my thoughts, the knife eventually hits the operating table. I've cut through the whole thing. Belief is not a set of thoughts which are then represented by words. Belief is more fundamental than thought. — Noble Dust
What do I believe about myself? untangling this question requires a lot of rigorous work and honesty. I am the window through which I experience the world; I am fundamental to the world I experience.[...]
Beneath language, at the quantum level of experience, is something that exists in an undifferentiated form. This is belief. Belief is undifferentiated from reality down here — Noble Dust
My fundamental beliefs about myself shape my reality. That could be another way of saying it. — Noble Dust
Does it need to be seen to be believed? — Amity
Does it need to be seen to be believed?
— Amity
This is a very good question — javi2541997
How about "believing is seeing"? Some times we do not see reality because we do not believe that it is real; and visa versa, we see the non-existent because we believe it exists. Some see god's purposes in every bird song and car crash. — BC
What does the term 'quantum' mean? How does it relate to 'experience'? Mental meat? Physical heat? It seems to be the smallest, basic building block, have I got that right? Is it stable? I have no idea. Indeed, the whole thing is a mystery to me. Does it need to be seen to be believed? — Amity
Belief is undifferentiated from reality down here. There is no "higher" reality in a spiritual sense, nor a "true" reality (in contrast to falsehood) in a logical sense, that exists "behind" or "beneath" my beliefs about reality. Belief is reality. There is no difference. — Noble Dust
I think a distinction should be made between types of beliefs. The beliefs you're using as examples here are context-dependent and directly related to the world around us. What I'm trying to get at is fundamental belief, the beliefs that are the foundation of how each of us perceives and experiences the world. These are often not apparent to us (maybe more apparent to those of us who post on philosophy forums, true). They're beliefs about the self. — Noble Dust
… what of truth attained rather than truth pursued? We are accustomed to taking the uncontroversial as the paradigm of truth. Kierkegaard has argued that such analyses sacrifice significance in the vain pursuit of certainty. Truth, he suggests, fundamentally concerns the uncertain and how it matters to us. The truth of what no one would care to dispute seriously(where what counts as "serious" reflects an interpretation of our shared situation) is derivative from this. Weaker versions of this approach are taken by those philosophers who argue that the decision to accept a research program provides the context within which other claims can be evaluated, and, more generally, by epistemological holists, according to whom we accept a claim only on the basis of previously accepted claims. But they usually have not taken Kierkegaard's further step: this prior acceptance must be a decision about what matters to us, in our lives and in our research. Present-day "rationalists" fear that truth will then be left to be decided by unconstrained choice.
Two responses can be made to this. Kierkegaard does not confuse our ability to devote our lives to one task with the ability which we do not possess, to insure that we succeed at that task. "Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. " Realist philosophers of science have argued that what is thus finitely possible or impossible depends upon how the world is, independent of our desires, commitments, and actions. Kierkegaard has responded that it is only in the light of our transcendence into the world that the world is in one way or another. To describe the world is already to select those features worth describing; such a selection presupposes an interest with respect to which the selection can be made. Without an interest, which for Kierkegaard requires a commitment, nothing could manifest itself as true (or false).
Our commitments do not determine how the world is, but they allow it to show itself as significant in one way or another. Even for the world to show itself as an obstacle presupposes an approach which it resists. Even what commitments we can intelligibly make, and what concerns with which we can approach the world, are constrained by the situation in which we find ourselves. A situation is not an "objective" state of the world, nor just an unfounded belief about how the world is. Our being situated challenges the alleged separation between subject and world. A situation is a configuration of possibilities through which both subject and world can acquire meaning through the subject's involvement and the world's "response." It is the outcome of a history of such involvements and responses.
Our involvement is vulnerable, precisely because we must commit ourselves to it before it can show us new aspects of the world; but what it shows may confound it. And even that is open to interpretation. Kierkegaard's aim was to substitute for a truth which is, but remains unattainable for us, a truth which happens in time and thereby enters our lives. We have moved from his view of a truth which happens individually to the truth(s) of a generation and a society. Truth then belongs to an historical situation and may change. But this does not make the truth arbitrary. Nor is this historical situation insulated from others before it or around it. Our situation resulted from past involvements and is changed by our encounters with others for whom truth shows itself differently. Such a conception of truth may not satisfy those for whom eternity must be the hallmark of truth. But, as Kierkegaard reminds us, such a truth is nevertheless the highest truth attainable for an existing individual. (Joseph Rouse)
What is a belief, and what is an attitude? — Noble Dust
[my emphasis]I think a distinction should be made between types of beliefs. The beliefs you're using as examples here are context-dependent and directly related to the world around us. What I'm trying to get at is fundamental belief,the beliefs that are the foundation of how each of us perceives and experiences the world. These are often not apparent to us (maybe more apparent to those of us who post on philosophy forums, true). They're beliefs about the self. — Noble Dust
I’m not sure that such a distinction between self and world can be made. — Joshs
Philosophical or religious beliefs are beliefs about the world, but beliefs about myself are the foundation on which these other beliefs are built. — Noble Dust
Kierkegaard said that the truth or falsity of an aspect of the world is subservient to how it matters to us. — Joshs
Knowing is more fundamental than believing, believing is more fundamental that thinking and thinking is more fundamental than having an attitude. — RussellA
That belief ... merely is your ego – masking oneself (i.e. being-in-the-world) – an 'illusory separation' from the world (i.e. disembodiment fantasy). A psycho-sociological fiction.So what I believe about myself does indeed create my world. — Noble Dust
Do you think each of them is dependent on each other, or should we look at them individually? — javi2541997
What is a belief, and what is an attitude? Are they synonyms? Are they different aspects of the same thing? — Noble Dust
...philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". — Wikipedia - Belief
We receive language as a tool that we use to differentiate the undifferentiated raw data of experience [notice that the words "raw" and "data" used here are metaphors]. I want to understand my beliefs, so I use language to dissect my experience of believing [dissect, another metaphor]. — Noble Dust
Back to the original questions above. What is a belief? On the surface it appears to be a set of thoughts formed into words (or not) that signify something for me in my world. But I think this is just a surface level understanding. If I use language to dig around deeper into the cadaver of my thoughts, the knife eventually hits the operating table. I've cut through the whole thing. Belief is not a set of thoughts which are then represented by words. — Noble Dust
Beneath language, at the quantum level of experience, is something that exists in an undifferentiated form. This is belief. Belief is undifferentiated from reality down here. There is no "higher" reality in a spiritual sense, nor a "true" reality (in contrast to falsehood) in a logical sense, that exists "behind" or "beneath" my beliefs about reality. Belief is reality. There is no difference. — Noble Dust
Be warned that there's a good chance I'll pull a newbie OP move and ghost this entire thread, i.e. not respond to anyone's replies. — Noble Dust
What is a belief, and what is an attitude? — Noble Dust
So, can you have a belief that is not expressed in words? I think maybe the answer is "no," but I'm not sure. — T Clark
I find it interesting, in light of your career as an engineer, that you question having beliefs that are not expressed in words. — wonderer1
I often believe, and I'd say know things, without the belief being expressed in words. — wonderer1
You mentioned once, funneling facts into your head and engineering solutions arising later as a result. If you don't mind me asking, were the results that arose from this process results in the form of words? — wonderer1
...there is something - thought, emotion, even motivation to act - beneath language. I think, but I'm not sure, that we can access, experience that something. — T Clark
Not to be cute, but since saying things uses words, how can you say you know things that aren't expressed in words. That's a serious question. — T Clark
Well knowing something about an electronics design I'm considering is often for me a matter of pictures or maybe something somewhat analogous to videos. — wonderer1
...saying I know something is a different matter than expressing what it is that I know. — wonderer1
I imagine that in some cases I could communicate things in pictures and without resorting to words, — wonderer1
In fact the video game Journey is an example of such a strange communication game, as it doesn't provide for language use between players, but it certainly allows for teaching aspects of Journey-world physics via a sort of monkey-see/monkey-do mechanism. — wonderer1
For example, when I believe that it rains, I'm feeling confident about the truth of the sentence 'it rains'. The belief is representational, it can be true or false, unlike experiencing the rain, which is a causal sensory interaction with the rain, not sentences. — jkop
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