Prediction precedes belief? — praxis

A prediction is a belief. But we're not getting anywhere just disagreeing about definitions. What is the consequence of a distinction between that which we're aware of holding to be the case and that which we hold to be the case but are unaware that we do? Whatever word we give those two categories, how does their differentiation bear on the question?

A mind is conscious, so it appears you’re drawing the line there and subconscious processes do not entail beliefs. — praxis

I think there are subconscious aspects to our minds. It appears we have yet another disagreement over definitions.

An example of contemporary use https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440575/

If consciousness isn’t a prerequisite then it would be correct to say that my phone (specifically the calculator app) believes that two plus two equals four. — praxis

That seems an odd leap to take. If a belief is a relation between a state of mind and a proposition, then it would seem, by definition, to require a mind.

When a group of people are together, we might call them a crowd. When a group of balloons are similarly clustered it would be wrong to use the word 'crowd' despite their arrangement meeting exactly the same threshold criteria.

We often use different terminology for humans. I don't see anything ontological we need derive from that, it's just cultural.

So if I'm walking down a flight of stairs and I have a propensity to act as if the next step is the same dimentions as the previous steps but I trip because it's not, did I have a mistaken belief or a prediction error? — praxis

Both are the same thing.

About a propensity to act, why are we calling that a belief rather than, say, a conditioned response? — praxis

I'm not sure how to answer a question like "why" am j using some word or other. It's like asking why I use the word 'cup' to refer to the thing holding my tea.

Nonetheless, I think your dichotomy there is excessively distinct. It's not "propensity to act" it's "propensity to act as if...". 'Conditioned response' wouldn't cover that.

Personally, it feels awkward to me to agree with an argument given by someone more powerful than myself. Am I agreeing with their reasoning, or submitting to their power? — baker

Yeah, interesting. I suppose that's more true than it might at first seem if one considers social as well as economic power relationships. I do think it's surmountable though, but I agree the temptation makes it difficult to be sure.

I think, one difficulty here is that there's two aspects to these types of discussion that people are interested in. The 'beliefs' we find most interesting are those like god, socialism, transgenders, etc... But these are a tiny minority of beliefs. We all believe, for example, that larger objects cannot fit inside smaller ones.

The former type of beliefs I think are held almost entirely for reasons of social relationships. The latter type more for pragmatic or biological reasons. The forces which act on each type will be different.

Do you really see the statements as perfectly synonymous? — praxis

Virtually, yes. As @baker has said above...

in British English, "I believe" seems to often be used with the meaning 'I guess; I think so, but I'm not sure'. — baker

We might even say something like "I do believe it's going to rain" meaning nothing more than thinking it slightly more likely than not.

there are relatively few situations in life where the argument from power isn't the strongest one. — baker

Probably, but it sounds simply tautological. Power is powerful. You could drop the 'argument' bit entirely. People are controlled in some way or another by those more powerful than them. If they weren't then it would be incorrect to have identified them as more powerful.

Whether they are actually convinced by that argument is not given by power relationships. Loads of people are more powerful than me. I rarely believe anything they say.

They don’t say things like “I believe God exists” in Limey town? — praxis

Well, yes. It's just that it doesn't carry the connotations of certainty you read from it. "I believe God exists" could equally mean one is a fervent evangelist or a casual churchgoer.

So the mind constructs ‘it’. — praxis

Yes. I don't think that can be in doubt. We cannot see anything without minds.

It suggests more a commitment, that I will ‘hold it to be true’, when I would rather be more adaptive. — praxis

Surprising, but I'll take your word for it. It suggests nothing of the sort to me. American vs English usage perhaps?

Is it really separate? — praxis

Yes. It really is separate, because it is an 'it' only by our use. Outside of that, there's no 'it' to be 'really' anything.

A computer screen is the thing we look at, talk about, use... The means by which we come to do so are the matter of interest to neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and the like. How we come to believe what we believe is what I study, but in doing so I'm not studying the real thing (in itself), that's the object, I'm studying the means by which we come to have such an object.

Perception is probably the easiest process to explain the principle with. When you see a rose, the thing you're seeing is a rose - the thing you pick, the thing which pricks your finger. Anything outside of your Markov blanket is part of the means by which you see a rose, not the 'real' rose.

Does that make sense?

So...

"Having studied the subject a bit, I believe that Democracy is the best form of government for the people that I know of, at least when it has adequate supporting institutions, checks on power, etc."

...wouldn't make any sense to you? It seems a perfectly normal sentence to me.

Obviously when someone says they "believe in..." something, that's a different expression with a different meaning altogether.

It's constructed in at least the sense that the screen is distinguished from everything else. — praxis

As has already clarified, that's what 'seeing' is. We don't 'see' the constructed screen (as if we could see the deconstructed one, but don't). Rather 'seeing' something is the process itself. Identifying edges, corners, texture, colour, size...naming it, remembering it, picturing it's use, imagining it's far side...these processes are what 'seeing' consists of.

The object of our belief (the computer screen) is already a public object, an agreement between us and the world as to it's constitution, so there's no 'real' computer screen that we're seeing a model of. But this is slightly off topic... and we've been through it before.

What may be useful (covering both this issue and the OP topic) is if you provide the modus tollens you think I've failed to process properly. We can both agree to the rule that...

P1: If X, then Y.
P2: Not Y.
C: Therefore, not X.

...follows.

So what are X and Y in the matter of some issue pertinent to the thread over which you and I disagree? No long winded exposition. Modus tollens does not accommodate such, just two propositions, X and Y.

Disagreement is not the problem, since we could still rationally explore the extent of our disagreements. And for that you still would need rationally compelling arguments which are possible only thanks to a shared set of epistemic rules and shared ways to apply them. Rebutting to your opponent’s objections by expressing a disagreement without providing rationally compelling arguments amounts to withdrawing from a rational confrontation. That’s all. — neomac

The disagreement is about what is rational. It's about whether I have or have not stuck to those rules you mention. It's about whether I have or have not provided those 'rationally compelling arguments'. How do we resolve that disagreement? More 'rationally compelling arguments', about which you and I will inevitably disagree over whether they are such?

you have to provide pertinent rationally challenging arguments yourself. — neomac

This just begs the question. The question is whether I have actually provided rational arguments (you disagree) and you're claiming that to make my case (that I have provided rational arguments) I must provide rational arguments to that effect. If we agreed on what constitutes 'rational arguments' then there would be no question to answer in the first place.

I would exactly do all I did, so what is the point of claiming that my judgements are completely subjective as yours or anybody else’s? We would still be in condition to possibly convince others based on rational compelling arguments! Claiming that all my claims or judgements are completely subjective is devoid of any cognitive meaning. — neomac

Not at all. As I've expressed here several times, there is a substantial difference between rejecting an argument that has overwhelming evidence to the contrary and accepting an argument which doesn't. The important distinction is that one is compelled to do the former (if one wants to remain rational), but one is not compelled to do the latter (many such arguments exist - underdetermination). Hence the focus is erroneously on which arguments must be ruled out by overwhelming evidence to the contrary, rather than on the reasons for choosing among those which remain.

Most of us are intelligent enough to have already discarded theories which are overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, those of us that are not can simply defer to experts (who are). Thus it's very unlikely that any theory being seriously discussed is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, and us such none of us are compelled by the 'rules of rational thought' to discard it.

What remains are the range of theories which are not overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary - the plausible theories. From among these, however, rationality is useless as a method of choosing. all rationality can tell us is that the theory is plausible (which we already knew by its inclusion in this set). There's no evidence that can be brought (all theories in this set have supporting evidence), there's no logic that can be used (all theories in this set are logically valid). So the arguments persuading people to adopt one theory over another are not rational ones, they are emotional ones, social ones, ethical ones...

When you fail to calculate an arithmetic sum, I can show you how to calculate it correctly by actually calculating that sum as everybody learnt to effectively calculate it. When you fail to process a modus tollens, I can show you how to process it correctly by actually processing the modus tollens as everybody learnt to effectively apply it. — neomac

Exactly. Notice the two uses of 'everybody' there? Notice the complete absence of any reference to 'everybody' in your claims?

You cannot demonstrate that I have summed 2 and 2 incorrectly by simply saying that I have. The only way you can do so is by reference to 'everybody else' - some maths professor, a few students, day-to-day life... the argument is "that's not the way we do it", but to sustain that argument there must be a 'we', your word is not sufficient. If you think I've failed to process a modus tollens correctly, but I think I haven't, we have nothing more to appeal to that "that's not the way we do it", but for any argument much more complex than 2+2=4, you will fined different people do it different ways, so where does that leave your recourse to such a claim?

Having read your post to Banno, you appear to have a wildly different conception of belief than I do. — praxis

It seems that way, but I'm still not sure what your conception is.

Can you make sense of, for example...

"I believe the keys are in the car, but I might be wrong, I can't remember"

"John believed the door was locked, so he escaped through the window"

"We all believe larger objects cannot fit inside smaller ones"

"He was walking the wrong way, he seemed to believe the pub was at the top of the hill"

What expression would you replace the use of 'believe' with in those sentences that would be synonymous?

'Certain', or 'felt certain' doesn't fit in 1, 2 or 4.

I suppose the point is that a construct can be seen as a construct and be accepted and entertained provisionally for pragmatic reasons; no believing needed. — praxis

What would 'accepting and entertaining' entail that did not constitute a belief?

Yes, you're absolutely right. One of the main criticisms of the model-based approach is that it is too representational, but I do think that critique misplaced.

The trouble really is translating folk understandings into something cognitive science can work with and unfortunately for that project there's a fundamental problem in that brains don't work like anything we have any folk understanding of such that we can give some comprehensible analogy. When we talk about a 'mental model' of, say, my belief that the pub is at the end of the road, what people most often imagine we're talking about is some part of the brain which is wired such that when "where's the pub?" is entered into one end "at the end of the road" comes out the other, but unfortunately that's not the case. Rather than holding their function in 'wiring', neural networks hold their function in behaviour. They are not 'wired' such as to produce the answer, they 'behave' such as to produce the answer. It's a dynamic system.

What this means is that the same actual 'bit' of brain can hold several different beliefs because the belief is encoded in how that bit of the brain behaves not how it's wired, and it can behave differently at different times. It creates a much more responsive system.

So the question is how some given cortex knows how to behave, how is it that when I try to imagine where the pub is (or start walking to it) I always picture the end of the road? At the moment, the leading answer is in dynamic causal modelling - basically the output of one neural network can be to shape another's function. there's a good paper on it here, if you're interested https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811919310444?via%3Dihub.

The problem is then how to translate that back into any folk understanding of something like 'believing the pub is at the end of the road' or 'being angry', both of which are dealt with by models in the brain, but not in a one-to-one representation.

My preferred method, that adpoted by Barrett, Friston etc is to put an intermediary step in the translation where we talk about 'models of...' between the world we're trying to talk about (the actual pub) and the means by which the brain gets us to walk to the end of the road to get to it (the dynamic neural networks responsible). I think it's helpful because it allows for actual computations of Bayesian updating which does seem to be how the networks are best represented (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02994-2). Others, such as Varela, Hutto, Clark reject the whole use of representational models at all, which I think just ends up nothing but 'just so' stories...but that's just me.

Having said all that, your piece seems to be about language, and although I'm sure it'll be very similar, my experience with all this extends only to belief (mainly behavioural), and a little on perception (about objects) so it may be that language has not need for the whole 'representational model' intermediary step.

Weren't we just talking about pro-lifers getting abortions? I suspect the inverse also occurs, pro-choicers not getting an abortion because it feels immoral, like murder. — praxis

But how would you know they actually believed in pro-life/pro-choice beforehand...if they committed no action 'as if' they did?

If belief is merely a social construct then we can abandon it should the need arise — praxis

On the contrary, social constructs are some of the most stubborn bits of 'mental wiring' we have. When we say "X is a social construct" we just mean that it is not a biological/physical feature, that society is instrumental in maintaining it by regular feedback. This has little bearing on the ease with which it can be abandoned, some are easy some are hard. What really impacts the ease with which a belief can be abandoned is the degree to which it is embedded with other beliefs rather than its origin.

But this has nothing to do with rationality, but with the power hierarchy between the people involved, and the implications of this hierarchy. Neither those above oneself nor those beneath oneself are open to being convinced by the arguments one gives. — baker

Well, that still leaves those of one's own class, surely?

Why are you demonstrating that Putin and Lavrov are liars? Has someone suggested they aren't?

I think they're both liars — Isaac

we can 'hold something to be true'... despite our own propensity to act as though it were true. — praxis

How would you know?

The curious thing is that you appear perfectly willing to count emotions as social constructs but not something like beliefs. — praxis

Odd that you should think that. My main field of research was the social construction of beliefs. What have I said that makes you think I've dismissed it?

Swift — ZzzoneiroCosm

Ah, yes. I was using the tried and tested policy - if in doubt attribute it to Mark Twain.

There's no different treatment. — ssu

There is. You used Biden's statement as evidence of America's intent. You disbelieved Putin's statement (and Lavrov's earlier) deciding that only an analysis of their actions would suffice.

The fact that you can criticise America is not in question. As @Streetlight rightly highlighted...

"History" is not a storage space for America's bad shit, to be sequestered and lopped off as an academic's concern. — Streetlight

You're right. Back to the topic.

So those Hungarian bath houses...

It irks philosophers that this is not so. — Banno

Ha! Yes, the abject (and worsening) failure of the project to get people to think more rationally by using rational argument. Was it Mark Twain who said "you cannot use rational argument to disabuse a man of a notion that was never arrived at rationally in the first place".

I'm not sure that any disagreement we might have here would not be about the terms used rather than the nature of belief. — Banno

Ah, yes. I remember now, we did resolve that. How satisfying. I am, of course, seconding the word 'belief' for a purpose it was not originally intended to cover, but now we have discovered these networks which are (in all likelihood) responsible for our tendency to say things like "I believe the pub is at the end of this road", then it seems appropriate to borrow the word 'belief' to apply to them. The limits of our language remain the limits of our world.

The interesting thing that a neural analysis opens is the possibility of two or more renderings of the same neural network. I might say "I believe life is sacred" and you might (looking at my horrendous anti-abortion bombing spree) say "No you don't believe that". What we'd be arguing about is the best rendering into language of exactly the same neural network, where 'best' might be defined by the rules of rational thinking, or ethics, or just social function.

Is it her view that "feelings are narratives"? That doesn't have the ring of precision to me, no matter how you parse it. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well. I strongly recommend her work.

This is a good introduction https://www.affective-science.org/pubs/2017/barrett-tce-scan-2017.pdf

It's difficult to understand Putin's words at the start of the war as anything else than regime change — ssu

No it isn't. I've understood then other than that. So have many others. That you personally find it difficult is the result of your particular biases (as is the fact that I find it easy). Truth is not given us by the difficulty we have understanding it (otherwise all quantum physics would definitely be wrong!)

I think that this history of aggression, the actions taken by Russia, speak more clearly than words. — ssu

Exactly the point I was making. Your apologetics for America. You take Biden's word as evidence of America's intent (despite a similar history of aggression), yet with Putin, you look to his actions, not his words. Why the different treatment?

Philosophers sometimes forget that appeals to rationality are themselves normative. That we are sometimes irrational means we can ask if we ought be rational. — Banno

Exactly. That we can say "you're being irrational about this!" entails that it is possible not to be rational. How would one render irrational beliefs into a conversation if it were impossible to even hold them in the first place?

See @Banno's example here . It gets closer to what I'm saying.

A belief is not simply a mental state alone - mental states on their own are just snapshots of a constantly changing pattern of bloodflow,or action potential, depending on what you're measuring. To say a mental state is a belief requires that it is interpreted as some statement or other in our language. Banno and I disagree (I think) about the extent of non-verbal beliefs, but the crux of the matter is pretty indisputable I think - a belief is a belief that... So, in my terms, a propensity to act as if some state of affairs were the case requires me to define that state of affairs - in language. The brain, however, does not require such states of affairs to be rendered in language on order to be in some state or other.

So our 'pro-lifer' can hold the belief that all life is sacred and also hold the belief that some life is not sacred which he will express (and possibly even rationalise, post hoc) in different ways if and when called upon to do so. If I were to look into his brain (this can't be done yet, of course) and see the tendencies wired into his neural networks, I might render his beliefs as "he believes that all life is sacred, and he believes that all life is not sacred". He would likely not render them that way (seeing how odd it sounds) but the way he renders his beliefs is just a front - a post hoc process designed to make them meet that standard required of rational discussion.

Clearly, the Nazis which Putin desires to remove are supported by the present Ukrainian government — Metaphysician Undercover

How so?

Feelings are narratives? That doesn't seem right. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Have you read Lisa Feldman-Barrett's work?

those activities are governed by epistemic rules that we can fail to follow: arguments can be flawed formally or informally; definitions can be contradictory, circular, semantic nonsense or ambiguous; evidences can be from unreliable source or misreported or misunderstood or non-pertinent etc. — neomac

And if we disagree about those judgements?

What do you mean by “completely subjective”? I’m not giving you my judgement as a measure! I gave you arguments for you to assess based on rules you actually do, can and must share and apply to play the game of assessing rationally peoples’ claims and arguments, mine and yours included. — neomac

Right. And I disagree that those rules have been broken (by my claims). I think they have been broken by yours. So now what? How can I now argue (using those same rules) that you broke those rules. We're just going to end up in the same position (you think you didn't break them, I think you did).

I were to believe things completely subjectively, what would even be the point to provide arguments to discriminate what is more or less rational? — neomac

To convince me (or others) to believe the same. I'm not claiming that nothing is objectively irrational (it's a word in a shared language, so it has a shared meaning, not a private one). What I'm saying is that you cannot get further then the range of shared meaning. Several contradictory things can be equally rational (they all fit the definition of the word). Take 'game' for example. A Cow is not a 'game', it's a type of farm animal. Anyone claiming a cow is a game is wrong. But the question of whether, say, juggling is a 'game' is moot - some say it is and others say it isn't. There's nothing more you can do from there to determine whether it's a game or not, there's no outside agency to appeal to. Whether an argument is 'rational' is like that.

I could simply claim you are a Russian troll/bot, that you claimed that Russians are morally justified in bombing, killing, raping, looting Ukrainians, or that Mearsheimer is paid by Russians. — neomac

Not without providing some evidence. It would be a ridiculous claim.

That objectively is a false claim. I never said “I don’t try to identify the logic structure of the argument” in my previous post. You can prove me wrong by quoting exactly where I wrote “I don’t try to identify the logic structure of the argument”, can you? No, you can’t. And that your claim is objectively false is independent from our political orientations. — neomac

Good example.

Here's a dictionary explaining what the Idiom "you're saying" means in English. As you can see, it doesn't literally mean that you actually spoke (or wrote) those exact words. It's an understanding of your meaning. Hence, again, what you think is objectively false only seems that way to you. Other interpretations see it differently.

I have no idea what academic career you have/had and in what field, but it would be shocking to discover you didn’t apply some standard academic methodology to prepare and assess your students’ tests for example, or some standard scientific methodology when making and publishing your research — neomac

I do. Absolutely none of which is happening here. There have been no scientific papers produced on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, no statistical analysis, no accepted methods and no peer review. But it's not these standards that make for a filtered set of theories in the scientific journals - it's the agreement on how they're measured. If I published a paper in which the conclusion was "I reckon..." without any reference to an experiment or meta-analysis, we'd all agree that's a failure to meet the standards. We're talking here about situations where we disagree about such a failure. You keep referring to epistemic standards (as if I'm disputing they exist), but the question is not their existence it's the resolution of disagreements about whether they've been met. So...

this is how I would navigate our differences rationally. And I would expect you to do the same with me, if you want to be rationally compelling to me. — neomac

...we would both already claim we were. The problem here is that you keep insisting I'm not meeting those standards, but you've got nothing more than your opinion that I'm not. No evidence can be brought to bear, no external authority appealed to. It's just you reading my argument and concluding it is not 'rational' and me reading it and concluding it is. There's literally nothing more that can be appealed to other than our judgements.

Lately you made an objection to me where you evidently failed to logically process a modus tollens. — neomac

I disagree. So what I'm asking is what is your method for demonstrating that I'm wrong in that disagreement and you're right?

It would be easier to talk about risks in qualitative terms (e.g. very unlikely, unlikely, possible, very likely, practically certain ) for example after consulting and aggregating the feedback from experts in different strategic domains. — neomac

So what method (if not numerical) is used to perform this 'aggregation' and reach the assessment?

So it implies taking Ukraine as far as Kyiv. — Olivier5

To force regime change, yes.

'De-nazify' doesn't "literally" mean 'force regime change' any more than it "literally" means 'take over'.

It "literally" means 'remove Nazis'. As an objective it could have been satisfied by anything from destroying the Azov battalion, to changing legislation, to killing every last person Putin even vaguely suspected of being slightly right-wing.

What it doesn't, under any circumstances whatsoever, literally mean, is 'take over political control of a neighbouring country'

Even 'regime change' isn't the same as 'taking over' a country. The US wanted regime change in Iraq, but Iraq is not now part of America.

To force a regime change, one of the things one must do is take the capital city. — Olivier5

So?

Just in what drug-addled world does "de-Nazify' Ukraine" "literally" mean 'take over Ukraine'?

Perhaps you're misconstruing what was said. — praxis

Then I don't really see the conflict with what @Banno is saying. If "feel certain" is just another way of saying "believe", perhaps wanting to emphasise a bit more confidence.

The key is if there's room for doubt. If "I feel certain the keys are in the car, but I'm probably wrong, I've got a memory like a sieve" seems a normal expression to you then 'to believe' entails any amount of doubt.

Can you give an example? — praxis

Not really no. The comment was on the presumption of this distinction @Janus was making between a mental state and an expressed belief. A belief as a mental state has no barrier to being contradictory. Beliefs here are simply propensities to act as if some state of affairs were the case and such a propensity is carried in the brain by dynamic networks. Since these are stochastic and unstable, it's perfectly possible to hold contradictory beliefs (propensities to act as if two contradictory states of affairs were the case). In fact, it's quite a normal state.

If you thought to yourself 'now, where's my keys' the image or concept of their location that comes to you would be the result of a resolution of that network at the state it's in at the time.

As for 'feeling sure'... Feelings are all post hoc narratives invented after the event. One could 'feel' anything which makes some sense of what just happened. It tells us absolutely nothing beyond our abilities as storytellers.

what's wrong with evil fighting evil in a contained battlefield? — Metaphysician Undercover

The poor sods the two 'evils' get to do their fighting for them.

The Innocents caught in the crossfire, or deliberately targeted.

The poor, who inevitability pay the most for the damage both sides have done to their livelihoods.

The people who each side should have been looking after but weren't because they were too busy playing Top Gun.

... Will that do?

Yeah, obviously after the Kyiv operation didn't work out so well, he had to limit his objectives. — ssu

No Putin has never, ever said that he wants to occupy Ukraine. You've assumed it. I don't object to you surmising or estimating someone's motives from their actions rather than their words. Putin may well have wanted to occupy the whole of Ukraine. I don't know. No apologetics going on at all.

What I objected to was you treating Russia as if their intentions had to be derived from some deep analysis of their actions, off-message speeches, intercepted phone calls... Yet to arrive at America's intention we only need ask it's leader.

That's apologetics. Either treat them both as dishonest or take them both at their word. It's your favourable treatment of Biden that's sycophantic. I've not treated Putin favourably. I think they're both liars.

therefore...? — jorndoe

Therefore we ought to stop looking at potential solutions presented by one of these 'sides' as if they were beneficent manna from heaven with no downsides.

There's only one issue (beyond the pointless moralising others seem to delight in) and that's whether we lend our support to our own governments (and media). Decisions such as joining NATO, sending weapons, taking part in negotiations, the terms of those negotiations... all involve an assessment of honesty, intent and integrity on both sides. Treating one side as saints and the other as the devil gives an inaccurate assessment of how those decisions will impact the people they are made on behalf of.

I could not find a dictionary that equated "belief"with "certainty", only with trust, confidence and so on. Nothin to support the idea of belief implying certitude. — Banno

Yeah, this turn of events from @Janus has surprised me too. I've never heard of "I believe" being equated with "I'm certain", it seemed out of the blue.

Like...

What one believes is not necessarily true, of course, but one believes that it is necessarily true, which means that one cannot acknowledge that it might be false without ceasing to believe it. — Janus

I'm quite confused by this introduction of a distinction between what I believe and what I'm merely 'entertaining might be the case'. I don't see any linguistic support for it (who talks like that?), and there's certainly no neurological support for it (it's not how brains work) - so I can't really see where it's coming from.

Unless we are to argue that "I believe the keys are in the car, but I might be wrong" makes no sense at all, then we have to acknowledge that 'believe' ranges across degrees of certainty. One can believe something with a near pathological certainty, and one can believe something as merely being the more likely of two options.

As to...

I could not believe (feel sure) that they were in all three of the places that I imagine. — praxis

You absolutely could. It's perfectly possible to believe (even to feel sure of) two contradictory things at once, people do it all the time. What one can't do is act on both beliefs, but one can hold both beliefs. Were it not possible, each alternative would have to be completely modelled from scratch in the brain as an when it was needed.

Biden also broke literally every campaign promise he ever made — Streetlight

Yep. The most rational position to take with regard to Biden's planned, official announcements seems to be to assume every single one of them is a lie. That would simply be more likely based on past experience.

...but then @neomac is currently schooling me on how to think rationally. It turns out to have a lot less to do with methods of thinking and a lot more to with with how far arguments support a neo-liberal agenda. Who'd have thought, eh...