Claims of Knowledge About The World.

Are beliefs different from other claims of knowledge about the world? What is intended when we say that a person believes a certain proposition about the world? In the case with anything which carries as much familiarity we must be wary of being led astray by the terms we use to describe cognitive events. Believing is not guaranteed to be a unitary phenomenon simply because we have one word to describe it. Precision in description is key when one attempts to describe mental events, such as memory, recognition, or belief.

Our closer cousins in the animal kingdom (dogs, pigs, apes, etc.) can be seen to form associations regarding things and events, this could be said to be "believing" things about the world. This is not however the sort of "believing" I am shooting for in this essay. When I refer to beliefs that people subscribe to consciously ("Malaria is transmitted by mosquito bites," "Soccer is superior to hockey," "Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead,") I am speaking about ideas that are communicated and acquired, through language. In order to believe a particular proposition, is to say that it is a correct representation of some state of the world, this fact brings about some insight into what our standards should be in the function of beliefs. Mostly it reveals why we value evidence and demand logical coherence in regards to the propositions we asses all the time. In the same way that we are not free to mean whatever we fancy when using words like "dead" or "fire" or "two" we are not free to adopt unjustified claims about science or history. When anyone becomes certain they have such an ability to fly free of justification for what they maintain as "true", they should not be shocked when the rest of us cease to listen to them.

A strong case can be made that what gives our brains its unique humanness is largely our capacity to evaluate new statements of asserted truth in reference to the multitude of others it has already integrated. With the use of intuitions regarding truth and falsity, necessities of logic and contradiction, we are capable of putting together coherent images of the world. What must take place inside our heads in order for this process to occur, for us to come to a conviction that a particular statement or group of statements are true or false? No one really knows, what it takes at the level of neurological events. Information processing, especially linguistically, must play a substantial role, for sure, but how does the brain take products of reasoning, perception and memory into focus regarding particular propositions and convert them into the substance of actions. In an adaptive sense beliefs have been extremely useful. By believing things about reality we are able to predict events and ponder the possible outcomes of certain actions or occurrences. This can and has been exploited by the unsavory. But living a life free of understanding which is in some large ways second hand does not appear to be possible.

"Beliefs are principles of action: whatever they may be at the level of the brain, they are processes by which our understanding (and misunderstanding) of the world is represented and made available to guide our behavior." Sam Harris

Once a proposition has been affirmed as true by in an individuals mind it can have powerful effects in both emotional states and actions they take. Imagine someone proposes to you, "The police have raided your home." There are many things which may either throw you into a panic or lead you to reject this claim at all. Maybe you have a large drug operation in your basement (panic), maybe you are sitting on your couch when told this (disregard). In the first case the door of belief has opened forcefully and in the second case belief has not opened. Beliefs are interdependent with their neighbors, both being related in semantics and logic. They constrain and are indeed constrained by each other. A belief like I highlighted above "malaria is transmitted by mosquito bites," hinges upon the affirmation of many basic and derivative endorsements of truth. In order to integrate this as a true statement of reality one must first accept that mosquitoes bite humans (basic) and that malaria is a disease which is carried in the blood (derivative). But one could not be said to believe this example and then claim that humans cannot acquire malaria because mosquitoes do not bite them.

The things which a person integrates into their mind as true must be highly coherent in order for personal identity to remain intact. Try to picture a person who thinks he is a professional cyclist and that he has no legs, that he has a daughter who is also his mother. Once logical inconsistency reaches a certain level our notions of personhood disappear. Our behaviors are largely informed by what we believe, this necessitates that we believe things that are at a minimum possible. "Anything is possible," you might say. Lets see how that would work. There is a knock at the door, either it is a salesman or it is not. I may believe one proposition or the other, I may even say I do not know. I cannot say it is both.

To say that you believe a particular proposition to be true is to admit that when questioned "why" you can provide defensible reasons. In order to claim that a particular belief is an accurate portrayal of some aspect of reality it must be defensible and coherent within the framework of the multitude of other acknowledge claims you have accepted. Spinoza thought that belief was synonymous with comprehension, while disbelief needs a rejection upon comprehension. Maybe comprehending a proposition is analogous to perceiving an object in physical space. It may that we default to accepting appearances as real until they are shown to be false. Regardless of whether this process is active or passive, we are continuously auditing the verbal ideas (our and others) looking for factual inconsistencies. Changing just one word in a spoken phrase determines the different response we are likely to have. If someone stops you in the street and says, "help a Spinx is raping a woman in the alley." you may question the validity of this claim. If he says "help a man is raping a woman in the alley." you may run faster than he will to help.

In the epistemic sense, belief is that which aims at representing knowledge of reality. This commands that to believe something is to say that it is true, not simply that we would like it to be so. Placing these constraints upon ourselves is indeed a very good thing. Unrestrained wishful thinking is not likely to lead to a very long or peaceful existence. We generally place a high level of importance on evidence for the claims people make. But in some especially tenacious beliefs, biases can nearly prevent us from engaging the lack of support for our most strongly held ideas about reality. We as humans can have massive failures of rationality which can take several forms, all the way from inconsistencies in logic to full on losses of subjective continuity. The possibility that we will ever be able to possess minds which are perfectly free of contradiction is zero. Still, due to the demands of language and conduct, the reality is we cannot afford to leave incoherence in place, to do so requires failures in linguistic sense or of understanding regarding possible occurrences. Simply it is immoral to continue to call something true which is not supported by evidence in reality.

As soon as we conclude that beliefs are efforts to bring understanding into line with reality, we come to understand that in order for them to be valid they must be in correct standing with reality. To say that your understanding of the world represents the way the world is, you must believe that your beliefs are a result of the way reality is. This in turn leaves you vulnerable to new evidence. If nothing could conceivably change in your experience and understanding which would lead you to question a particular belief or set of beliefs, then you cannot claim that your understanding of reality is based upon reality. It is at least in some part based on fantasy. No one would want to admit this is the case. But resistance is not only futile but incoherent.