BELIEF: AN OWNER’S MANUAL
ARTICLE 2:
A CONVENTION THAT INHIBITS UNDERSTANDING:
THE CUSTOMARY DEFINITION OF “BELIEF”
One habit of thought that inhibits attempts to understand belief is its customary definition. The word “belief,” as widely used, refers to opinions or convictions held in the absence of rigorous proof (such as the conviction that the earth is flat, some political or social opinions, and most religious creeds). It is only inconsistently understood as referring to other kinds of assertions – like scientific observations and theories, on the one hand (Shermer, 2013) or faith, on the other (Smith, 1998).
The customary definition’s arbitrary and inconsistent boundary inhibits attempts to understand the full range of concepts that, when accepted, make us who we are. The question, “Is a given concept best described as belief, knowledge, faith, opinion, or something else?” is, I propose, a distraction from more important questions, such as, “How does affirming this concept shape a believer’s perception, emotion, understanding, judgement, and/or action?” “What characteristics of the concept in question encourage that result?” “What characteristics of the believer – both alone and in conjunction with the characteristics of the concept in question – do so?” “Is it possible to assess that result impartially?” and “If so, how?”
The definition of “belief” on this website was chosen to draw attention to those questions and to make them easier to answer. Thus, “belief,” when used on this website, can refer to any concept that shapes the perception, emotion, understanding, judgement, and/or action of those who affirm it. This definition is silent about the validity of the concept in question. While “belief,” as that term is used here, can refer to opinions or convictions held in the absence of proof, it can also refer to convictions grounded in meticulous scientific observation or to rigorously tested theories.
More simply, “belief,” as used here, can refer to any assertion that (1) has one or more of the effects described in the above paragraph and that (2) can substitute for ‘X’ in the sentence, “I believe that ‘X.’” When used in this way, a belief can be about any subject. We may believe we are – or are not – worthy of love. We may believe that the universe was created 13.8 billion years ago by a “Big Bang” or a geologic wink ago by an act of God. We may believe that hard work is the key to success or that luck or privilege determine our fates; that Ford does – or does not – build better trucks than Chevy; that artificial intelligence will – or will not – become self-aware; or that loyalty to humanity should – or should not – trump loyalty to one’s family, tribe, or nation.
Many statements describing faith, facts, knowledge, opinions, hypotheses, theories, assumptions, etc. can (1) affect believers’ perception, emotion, understanding, judgement, and/or action and (2) complete sentences beginning with the words, “I believe that . . ..” Thus, for our purposes, all such statements qualify as beliefs.
Of course, not all beliefs are the same. Faith is a type of belief, but it is belief of a particular sort: it is belief in the absence of evidence. Knowledge is belief thought to be supported by undeniable facts. Hypotheses are beliefs held tentatively; and opinions are beliefs supported as strongly by passion as by evidence. All these species of belief (and all other assertions that both affect believers and satisfactorily complete sentences beginning with the words “I believe that . . .”) can be analyzed using the techniques I’ll be describing.
On the other hand, the term “belief,” as used here, does not refer to what people believe in. That’s because the meaning of “I believe in” is vague. Before you can critically examine what you believe in, it’s essential to spell out what you mean. Those who believe in a politician may believe that the politician will fulfill his or her campaign promises. But they may mean something quite different. They may, for example, believe in a politician because they believe that he or she is willing to do whatever is necessary (including misrepresenting his or her intentions) in the interest of benefiting those the believer cares about. Those who believe in God may believe that the divine rewards and punishments described in the holy books they favor will be realized. But they may mean something quite different. For example, those who say they believe in God may mean they believe that a Divine Being exists and cares about us, even though they believe that humanity’s sacred texts misrepresent that Being’s characteristics and desires.
By allowing comparison of diverse beliefs, this website’s definition makes it easier to discover systematic differences between them. The customary definition, which arbitrarily restricts the range of phenomena considered “beliefs,” makes it impossible to see those differences. Imagine how unlikely Mendeleev’s creation of the Periodic Table of the Elements would have been if he’d assumed that substances differing in color, taste, or odor had no deeper relationships. And imagine how unlikely James Clerk Maxwell’s discovery that electricity, magnetism, and light were manifestations of the same phenomenon would have been, had he been blinded by their palpable dissimilarities.
Defining the range of ideas with which this website is concerned as “beliefs”—and insisting that the same procedures be employed when assessing, comparing, and discussing all such ideas – also thwarts specious attempts to defend beliefs by claiming that they belong to a protected class of ideas (e.g., by describing them as “faith ” or “knowledge”) as well as specious attempts to denigrate beliefs by alleging that they belong to a class of ideas that is unworthy of respect (e.g., by describing them as “superstitions”). And, by doing so, it avoids conflicts over who has the authority to categorize.
The absurdity of such conflicts was highlighted by the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764), in which he wrote, “It is difficult to mark the limits of superstition. A Frenchman travelling in Italy finds almost everything superstitious, and is hardly mistaken. The Archbishop of Canterbury maintains that the Archbishop of Paris is superstitious; the Presbyterians make the same reproach against His Grace of Canterbury, and are in their turn treated as superstitious by the Quakers, who are the most superstitious of all in the eyes of other Christians.”
EXERCISE 2:
BECOMING MORE AWARE OF YOUR BELIEFS
AND CHOOSING A FEW TO EXAMINE
The first step in deepening your understanding of how beliefs function and how they affect you is to identify a few “practice” beliefs you’re willing to examine. This exercise is designed to help you do just that. Be sure to write your beliefs down and to keep them handy. You’ll be referring to them repeatedly as you progress.
To help you acquaint yourself with this way of thinking about beliefs, be sure to phrase beliefs you’re considering examining in the form “I believe that ‘X” (where ‘X’ is your belief). You can, of course, add modifiers to such sentences. Thus, if you believe something reluctantly, you can say, “I reluctantly believe that ‘X’,” and if you’re uncertain about something you can say, “I tentatively believe that ‘X’.”
I suggest that you do this exercise with an eye toward identifying between two and five beliefs you find intriguing, are open to seeing differently, and are willing to discuss with trusted friends, advisors, or on-line forum members. At least one of those beliefs should be held in common with a political, religious, cultural, professional, familial or social group with which you identify. (If you are not aware of shared beliefs you are open to seeing differently, choose a shared belief that, while you’re committed to seeing it as you do, you find intriguing and are willing to discuss.) You can, of course, identify additional candidates for examination later.
You may find worthy practice belief candidates among:
• Beliefs you find painful. Since our subjective sense of certainty bears little relationship to the confidence our beliefs merit, feel free to consider beliefs you think of as unquestionable truths. And since many beliefs that would be destroyed by critical examination survive by prohibiting believers from appraising them, you may wish to consider defying such prohibitions by boldly including beliefs you’ve been taught it’s wrong to question.
• Things you believe but wish you didn’t. Again, don’t hesitate to include beliefs on this list because you view them as unquestionably true or because you’re concerned that examining them might be rude.
• Beliefs you find intellectually troubling or confusing – beliefs that, in one way or another, don’t seem to make sense. While many of these beliefs may seem trivial, they may be more influential than you realize. As Quine and Ullian pointed out in The Web of Belief (1970), almost every belief is held in place by other beliefs. A change in an apparently minor troubling, false or irrational belief may free related beliefs to change or even compel them to do so, creating cascades of associated corrections. And as Michael Shermer (2011) has argued, through such cascades, correction of even apparently inconsequential beliefs may have significant and surprising consequences.
• Beliefs you rely on to help you achieve your most important goals. The following steps may help you identify some of those beliefs:
o Identify one or two goals that are important to you. Goals, as I’m using the term here, are imprecisely specified outcomes. Some examples of goals are achieving vocational success, having satisfying friendships, maintaining health or fitness, having happy intimate and familial relationships, finding joy in life, being a good person, having a rewarding religious or spiritual life, contributing to your community, or making the world a better place.
o Identify (and consider examining) one or two beliefs that lead you to view these goals as important. Let’s imagine that personal happiness is one of your goals. Among beliefs that might lead you to view that goal as important are, “Everyone deserves to be happy” or “God wants me to be happy.” Beliefs that might lead you to view the goal of achieving justice as important are, “It is my religious duty to help God ‘heal the world,’” or “Real peace is impossible in the absence of real justice.”
o Identify one or two objectives associated with each of the goals you’ve identified. Objectives, as I’m using the term here, are concrete (and, ideally, measurable) steps you can take to achieve your goals. Thus, if your goal were “personal happiness,” your objectives might include getting a satisfying job, avoiding debt, living in a low-crime neighborhood, belonging to a faith community, maintaining a positive attitude, and/or having close friends.
o Identify (and consider examining) one or two beliefs that lead you to think that achieving these objectives will help you achieve your goals.
Remember that the beliefs you choose will provide a context in which to reexamine unquestioned assumptions, longstanding prejudices, and other change-resistant habits of thought. As such, exploring even the most benign belief is likely to be challenging. I therefore suggest that you avoid tackling highly sensitive issues on your first go-round. You can examine more challenging beliefs later.
Other Beliefs You May Wish to Examine
While I recommend that you use your own beliefs to develop your belief analysis skills, you may, at some later point, want to examine:
• Beliefs that others are trying to “sell” you. Most often, these are political beliefs, religious beliefs, or, in your personal life, beliefs about who you or others “really” are. If the technique employed to sell you a particular point of view is clumsy, it probably makes you uncomfortable. With luck, methodical examination will supply you with arguments you can use to discredit it. If the technique employed to sell you a particular point of view is sufficiently subtle (or sufficiently compatible with your other beliefs), you may think that you’re simply being told the “truth.” However, if those who present particular points of view discourage critical examination of their ideas, use personal attacks to discredit critical arguments or information, or dissuade you from learning about other perspectives, you may want to consider critically examining the positions they advocate.
• Beliefs you suspect of harming friends, family members, or the broader community. Be warned, however, that analysis of such beliefs requires divining both the nature of the guidance believers rely on their beliefs to provide and the quality of guidance their beliefs actually provide as believers interpret them. Such analyses are invariably difficult and uncertain.
A Final Note
If a to-be-examined belief contains something like a “should” or “must,” you may want to consider rephrasing it as one or more “if-then” statements (perhaps accompanied by a statement of desirability). Thus, “I should lose weight” could be rephrased to “If I lose weight, my odds of heart disease and cancer will decrease,” and “Reducing my odds of heart disease and cancer is a good thing.”
Similarly, you may want to consider rephrasing beliefs about the past in a way that highlights their relevance to the present. For example, I believe that that Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime and its collaborators systematically murdered about six million Jews in death camps and extermination chambers. That belief is relevant to the present because it leads me to believe that Utopian political and religious movements that portray outsiders as inferior are capable of unspeakable evil.
REFERENCES
Quine, W. V., & Ullian, J. S. (1970). The Web of Belief. New York: Random House.
Shermer, M. (2011). The Believing Brain. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Shermer, M. (2013, October 1). Why We Should Choose Science over Beliefs: Ideology needs to give way. Retrieved from Scientific American : https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-we-should-choose-science-over-beliefs/
Smith, W. C. (1998). Faith and Belief: The Difference Between Them. Oxford, England: Oneworld Press.