WHAT IS BELIEF? (1996)
Introduction
Belief is indeed an inscrutable
conception, or though it may seem. In this short essay, I will explore the
concept and its applications in many aspects of our lives. I hope to show it is
more than just a conception, but the bedrock of far-reaching notions in modern
philosophy and science. Though the title
of this essay seems to indicate it's all about belief, what we really consider
could just as well be entitled: What Is Knowledge? The two ideas are so intertwined.
The Philosophy of Belief
Belief is an idea that is virtually
inseparable from our everyday lives. It is not necessarily the result of
perception, though, it can be, as when I look at a chair and believe it to
exist, because of the visual perception of it. Ordinarily, I claim to know it exist because
of seeing it. Silly though it sounds,
the question--what if it's an illusion?--was raised and answered by
philosophers in the past. The general consensus in the last century was that
perception was a very special kind of belief and it must be classified as the
source of all reliable information we derive from our environment. Going back
to the chair analogy, I see the chair and believe it to exist because my visual
perception tells me so. Most beliefs are the result of this kind of phenomenon.
We perceive something, and from that
perceptual experience we come to have certain definable ideas about the
experience. This process is called ideation. The importance of this process is
in its result: Belief. That is, conceptual belief. I mean by this that we come
to hold ideas which go well beyond the scope of what our sensate experiences
have conveyed. For example, a person exposed to a cold winter day can form an
idea of what it means to lack heat. This
idea of 'cold' after this experience can then be applied in numerous other ways.
One can form an idea of cold objects,
cold places, cold times of the year, intensity of cold, etc. In the end, 'cold' becomes a concept of which
one has a well-defined picture. He
needn't experience 'cold' to invoke the concept. He now has developed a belief
of what it means to be cold, and what in the abstract 'cold' is. This would be
called a rational belief. Rational, because it, (the belief) has gone through a
process of abstraction and then it has been generalized to apply to a universe
of experiences, ideas, and logical constructions. Most beliefs are of this
form, but as we shall see, some are quite the opposite.
As I mentioned earlier, belief does
not have to come directly from our perceptions. In fact, many rational beliefs
are not the result of our experiences at all. This is most evident in the
beliefs that are attached to scientific pursuits. Yes, it seems strange to
apply the word 'belief' to anything having to do with science, but actually as
it was framed above, that is just what many elements of the most basic sciences
are! However, they refer to them as hypotheses. With this said, I note, there
is a popular misconception that belief implies something unprovable or just
plain unsubstantiated. Not true. All that a rational belief lacks is absolute
proof. That is to say, it can’t be established that a rational belief is true
in every possible construction. Actually, most concepts can not be shown to have
this kind of endurance. Even some of the most simplistic notions we have. For
example, take the mathematical concept of infinity. It was believed by most
mathematicians well into the 19th century to be absolute truth. This idea was
tacitly understood by the public to be something that could not be exceeded. Until,
Georg Cantor, a man virtually unknown outside of mathematical circles of the
19th century, proved the existence of sets of objects bigger than infinity. He
also helped to establish the special field of set theory in the process. But
here again, we are faced with a belief. You see, in this case as with so many
having to do with science, the belief is nothing more than a consensus to
accept truth based on a systematized structure, which is agreed upon by all
involved. Here's how they do it. First, their luminaries have a convention of
minds. This association establishes what’s okay and what's not. If your
investigations, research, looking-into-things, whatever it might be called are
within their agreed upon criteria, well, then you are accepted, published,
heard and seen by many. You can even become famous. Does this sound at bit
partial to you? Well it should because guess what, it's still only a belief. With this said, it should be clear that an
absolute belief can never be established.
Rational
belief from deduction
One way that science does differ
from our perceptual source of belief is in its notion of deductive proof. Here
we have a belief that results not from some experience, but from certain
assumptions we make based on a formal set of rules. With this system of belief
we need not experience the conclusions to give credence. Relativistic physics
provides an example with the General Relativity Principle (GR). One conclusion
of GR is that the universe is curved. This conclusion is not the result of
someone traveling throughout the cosmos and finding it curved. Rather, it is
the product of a series of rational abstractions based on a few assumptions. An
exposition of GR is well beyond the scope of this essay, but an oversimplified
example should suffice for our purposes. The principle of Equivalence in GR
leads to the assertion that gravity and matter, are in continuous non-discrete
relationship known as the space-time continuum (which by the way, sets up a big
problem for it with quantum mechanics). Each affects the other. Matter deforms
space or better put curves space: the larger the matter, then the larger
curvature. If we have one large piece of matter, and another smaller one, the
larger curves more space, and the smaller is forced to travel in this curved
space around the larger, i.e. orbits it. We also know this as gravitational
attraction. If this idea is expanded to
a universal scale, and we consider what all matter would do to all space, it's
not hard to see that universal matter would cause a universal curvature. Whether
space is infinite by the way is irrelevant since the result would be the same. There it is. The universe is an immense ball,
and if you travel in a straight line throughout it, you'd eventually end up
where you started.
(Note: There are some works I
recommend for readers without a technical background interested in a more
complete description of GR, Max Born's Einstein's Theory of Relativity is
an excellent source. It requires nothing more than a knowledge of elementary
algebra to understand all the topics within the theory. For more advanced
readers, Einstein's collaboration with Lorentz, Minkowski and Weyl in the
Principle of Relativity should suffice. This work is a collection of the
author's memoirs, and is constructed with a fine precision that covers all
aspects of GR. Though, the translation from German at some points gives the
non-mathematical text a touch of ambiguity. Finally, for those interested in
the philosophic implications of this strange theory, Hans Reichenbach's Space
and Time is a delight. With little mathematical treatment, Reichenbach
touches upon some of the unintuitive conclusions that result from GR. )
Now, this hypothesis required no
perception of any kind to derive. It was solely based on deductive reasoning
from a set of agreed-upon assumptions. Yet, it is still a belief. It can change
if the data are in contradiction to it. Scientific beliefs are not only
deductive (in most cases actually inductive), but rational. They follow a set
of conventional rules that allow for revision. But there is another form of
belief that is not so mutable. This kind of belief is ever-popular and
sometimes pernicious: irrational belief.
Irrational
belief: Religion and Politics
What of beliefs that are irrational?
This is an issue of great concern in our worldwide socio-political conflicts. There
are many examples.
An interesting point here is that
the irrationality of belief is a reversal of the usual logical progression I
outlined above. Ideation can turn back to affect perception. The belief, once
formed can direct and control how one perceives. Our senses make for ideas, and
those ideas once formed give rise to our beliefs, all quite clear. But, when
our ideas then determine what we see, feel and think, they've gone too far. They
are irrational and possibly dangerous, to us and others. Religion serves as a
good example. Though most well-defined religions are not injurious to its believers,
there are occult sects that use this very same principle of irrational belief
to cause undo harm. Recent examples: Om Shinrikio, Heavens Gate, an older one
would be the Jim Jones tragedy in Guyana, South America. These are examples of
how demagogic influences can easily turn this powerful form of belief into a
malicious and destructive social force.
The religious term for irrational
belief is faith. The origins of faith are obscure. To modern thinkers, its
roots are buried in the rise of religious dogmas, which were themselves derived
from pre-existing mythologies. It's here that we finally get to the perceptual
root of irrational belief. The dogmas themselves in many cases resulted from
the perceptual experiences of select individuals, whom in turn became the sole
interpreters of their experiences for their followers. Thus, there were such
persons as Christ, Muhammad, Bhudda, Confucius, and others, undergoing profound
personal revelations and espousing their belief in these ideals to a gathering
multitude of followers. These followers in turn, spread the faith in codified
rituals and practices to others and a cascading process ensues. The process
eventually became more coercive. True believers required that new converts
dispensed with reasoning to accept the tenets of their religion. . The faithful
accepted their beliefs without questioning their veracity. It is not a matter of substantiating the
content of the prophetic figure's beliefs to his believers, but how one adheres
to them. They practice their respective beliefs without doubt. It is not a
question of being correct for the faithful, but being true to their beliefs. This
is the major fault of irrational belief. It provides no room for doubt. There
is not way to question the validity of their beliefs.
We don't have to turn to religion to
see this phenomenon in action. Political concepts are more often than not
irrational. Especially if the subject is
about the body politic. Here's an example. A few days ago, I had a conversation
with friend concerning the U. S. constitution. During the course of great
dinner at an elegant restaurant (we hadn't seen each other since college and
lived and worked in different cities), we discussed everything from sports to
politics. Near the end of our third Martini, I mentioned that the U. S. Constitution
was a document that may have outlived its political utility. I followed this
comment with the suggestion that it was an outdated document and should be
rewritten or even totally scrapped. My friend couldn't have disagreed more. He
stated that the constitution was the basis for the American state and to
disengage it would mean something tantamount to. . . he said after sallowing a
mouthful of Martini. yeah "National political suicide". I went on to
cite that the constitution somewhere in there provided for its own
disengagement. I wasn't sure of this, but what the hell, I'd heard it did
somewhere, and thank God he didn't challenge it. To tell you the truth, I don't
think I've ever read anything in the Constitution beyond the 1st Amendment,
that 19th century prose is mind-bending. Anyway, he retorted that wasn't the
point, the Constitution was all that this nation had to claim its existence, it
couldn't be revoked. Such an act would destroy the raison d'etre of America. We
went on like this for another round of Martinis. Finally, with no resolution in
sight, we changed the subject to more important things like whose child support
burden was heavier. Later that evening, after getting home, it occurred to me,
that Paul's stance in this debate was irrational.
Irrational
disbelief
Another point to keep in mind with
respect to irrational beliefs is that they do not have to be positive. That is,
you can just as well disbelieve something irrationally as believe something
irrationally. Intuitively, I suspect this kind of belief is probably more
common than its opposite. A personal example of this sort of belief comes in
the form of a disagreement I once witnessed between a close friend and his
girlfriend. My friend, Muhammad has long since left this country, and his
girlfriend, Sheila, I've haven't seen in a number of years. Nonetheless, one
evening in the fall of 1978, I was invited to a dinner at their apartment. While
we passed the evening recounting stories of Muhammad and myself in various
escapades, Sheila at some point made mention of Muhammad's irritating habit of
talking in his sleep. I thought nothing of the remark and changed the subject. Muhammad,
however was more than a little irked by Sheila's off-color comment and launched
into what I knew would be an unpleasant argument Here is the exchange to the best of my
recollection:
Sheila, I don't talk in my sleep!
Yeah you do, and in Somali no less too!
You're crazy, Roble (my middle name, by which he always
called me), you hear that, She doesn't know what she's talking about. I wave my
left hand back and forth, indicating not to involve me in their quarrel. Okay,
if I talk in my sleep, what did I say?
I told you it was in Somali, how da hell I know whatchu was
sayin'. You know I don't speak your language.
This only strenghtened Muhammad's disbelief.
Oh, come on, see she can't even tell me what I said, maybe
YOU were dreaming, or better yet, maybe you're lying!
Why I got to lie about this, Muhammad, man, you so silly. You
were mumbling about somethin because it woke me up.
Mumbling? Now it's mumbling! I thought you said I was
talking in my sleep.
Sheila at this point became
thoroughly disgusted with Muhammad's reaction, cursed and excused herself from
the table. This gent, being a argumentative type pursued her into the bedroom,
where it eventually ended up with her ordering him to leave the apartment. A
command he had to oblige since it was her place after all. Having experienced
many a lovers spat between these two, I have already donned my sport coat, when
Muhammad says to me:
Robleh, would you like to go to that bar on the west side?
I'll buy.
This sort of refusal to believe an
aspect of our behavior is not uncommon. Just think of a time when you've heard
of someone's drunken behavior at a party and that person is astonished when his
performance is recounted later. What is common to Muhammad's stubborn
irrational disbelief and those nursing hangovers is the fact that neither
perceives their actions directly. As I stated above, what we believe is often
interconnected with what we perceive. The same applies to disbelief. This is
particularly true when, credence must be applied to us. Muhammad's irrational denial wasn't only due
to a disagreeable, argumentative nature, but a belief, that if he didn't hear
it, see it, and feel it, he couldn't have done it. No matter how much objective
confirmation you give him, to believe he did something, his senses can't
confirm was unthinkable, which, of course is again irrational.
The
Limits of Belief
We have belief in two forms:
rational and irrational. We know it is singular as when I believe in a notion,
conception or ideal, and plural as when a group of people embrace a conception
or philosophy. Furthermore, we know that beliefs are not limited by our desires
or perceptions. Therein lies a far-reaching question in its scope and near
unanswerable in its depth: Why do we have belief? Some would be quick to answer
this question with a modern brand of relativism. They would counter with
self-assured cool--Beliefs depend on the environment from which they spring and
to which they apply. Likewise, their validity is predicated on the context in
which they apply. There are no beliefs which can be applied outside their
respective context. As may be obvious now, there are others that would argue
just the opposite, stating that there must be a universal context for at least
some beliefs. Religionists would say this of moral values, scientists would say
that of certain laws (particularly those with reference to physics). The list
of opposing views can be enumerated ad infinitum, but let's make a simple
dichotomy here. In the former group we have one of the 20th century's most
prominent schools of thought: Existentialism. In the latter, we have a host of
philosophies that may diverge within themselves, but affirm the universality of
belief, they include to name a few: scientific theory, theologians, and
political economists. However at the bottom of this towering mountain of
thought is one 18th century philosopher, that proposed a different answer to
the question: Why do we have belief?
Kant
and Belief
In the middle of the 18th century,
Immanuel Kant wrote an idealistic mammoth work entitled Critique of Pure
Reason. While this work is difficult for anyone, even an expert in the
field to decipher, in the 'Transcendental Logic' portion of this treatise, he
made an understandable argument about the extent of human knowledge. For
instance, he poses the question of knowing something, anything from our
perceptions vis-a-vis the object being unperceived and thus unknown. What he
eventually concludes is that knowledge and perception are not good bedfellows. That
is, to know something is to be one step removed from it. Moreover, your
knowledge of what you perceive is always incomplete. In order to really know
something you must be that something. For example, I saw the keyboard before me
as I wrote this sentence; I know it exists because I used my senses of sight
and touch to experience the keyboard. Yet, I can never be sure that these
perceptions through my senses are truly the keyboard. I must be the keyboard
itself to know that! Of course, that I
can't do. Nor can I be a glass, another person, or anything else other than
myself. all my experiences are one step
removed from me. I only know what my senses will permit me to know (or what
contrived extensions of them will permit). I know reality second-hand if you
will. This is a profound conception. It means there are things we can never
know. Kant named this philosophic bombshell 'ding-in-sich', in English
'thing-in-itself'. This is the a priori that lies just beyond mortal reach. Of
course, you might guess whose reach it did lie in.
How does this relate to belief?
Quite simply, our perceptions are based on false notions of certainty. We think
we're coming to know the true state of reality when in fact, this certainty is
denied us by our state of being.
Belief
and Mind
The above comments don't prevent us
from using our knowledge of reality to do things. This is what we do when we
apply scientific concepts to reality, e. g. technology. The application of our
knowledge to affect the world in many different capacities is what technology
does. However, even these accomplishments don't take us any closer to having
certain knowledge of our reality. In fact, recent constructions in theoretical
physics preclude the use of instruments to verify their conclusions. For
instance, the quantum mechanical theory of the universe's origin rests upon the
notion of non-existence before the commencement of a singular point of infinite
density that leads to the Big Bang. This hypothesis (which is of course a
belief) can't be verified by any empirical test. We certainly can't know it in
the Kantian fashion I described above, that is, first order as if we were here
prior to the beginning of the universe. in the end, this notion, while well founded is
really just a conjecture.
Finally, what about our beliefs
concerning our own sentience? The notion
that we take for grant, that we are conscious, reflective beings. In general,
people maintain certain common sense beliefs concerning themselves. They
believe they are aware of themselves in a very intimate sense. A person takes
for granted that he or she knows who he or she is. This assumption of
self-awareness (with the exception of the mentally ill) is virtually universal,
and again a form of belief. It may not be evident that we develop a belief
about our own sentience and persistent sense of self. That is only because it
comes about over a long time (i. e. over the course of our lives), and happens
as a result of our interaction with an external world. The existential
viewpoint actually challenged this notion several decades ago. It questioned
the idea of self-awareness on several grounds, but the principal objection has
to do with the Kantian idea of order of experience. When I reflect on some event of let's say a
few days ago, am I not treating myself as an object of my reflection, thus
removing my awareness of myself as the subject of my awareness. In this case
the 'I' that's thinking is treating itself as if it weren't itself. In Kant's
terms, I'm actually viewing myself second-order as if I were someone else
reviewing my own actions. This paradox of self-awareness has been known to
cognitive scientists for sometime and there have been many attempts to
characterize it and even determine the source of the paradox.
Computer scientist, Douglas
Hofstadter, in his Pulitzer prize winning work: Goedel, Escher, Bach: An
Eternal Golden Braid explores the vagaries of this phenomenon, from a
different point of view. He sought to establish what the self-awareness notion
meant to the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the early 1980s.
Today, in the late 1990s the paradoxical everyday phenomena is still not
completely understood. In fact, AI practitioners have actually fractured into
different opposing schools (Strong AI vs Weak AI, Connectionists, etc), based
in part, on how one defines self-awareness in machines. As a final word, Belief
the noun or to believe, the infinitive verb are alike one special way. They
are born and endure, when we haven't well-defined, demonstrable answers to our
many questions about the natural world.
Click for an audio homem_aranha.mp3
Translation of Homem AranhaClick here for a translation of Homem Aranha
Zeca Baleiro's passionate song of a woman's love for himTelegrama
English translation of Telegrama
English Translation of Tarde em Itapua
A dreamy love ballad by the late Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho. This song gets me every time I listen to it. See how it grabs you?
A song by Milton Nascimento, about the sea and so much more....
English Translation Brigam e Hollanda (not the title of the work)
Negro e Lindo (Black is beautiful)
Jorge Ben is a jazz/samba singer guitarist from Brazil. He is unequalled in his lyrical accomplishments. His melodies and lyrics as social commentaries are treasures. Above is one such treasure. Jorge Ben wrote and performed this song in the mid 70's. It is a direct reflection of the black consciousness movement that was in full swing in the U.S. His musical interpretation I think far outdoes, anything African American artists were producing at the time. Compare this stellar work to James Brown's I'm Black and I'm Proud , and I'm sorry to say, it doesn't measure up brothers and sisters.
English translation of Lalari-Olala
As a Somali, I am proud of our monumental heritage. We are the direct descendants of a Nilotic-Cushite people that created the first human civilization, most know as Egypt. By we I mean the Abyssinian peoples in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa (Somalis, Amharas, and Tigres specifically). After conquering Cush, we migrated up the northeast edge of Africa, via the Nile river to eventually settle a branch of our race in Egypt. Of course many remained in the cradle of mankind Abyssinia proper and as the centuries passed, became estranged in language and culture from the Egyptians. But, linguistic evidence still attest to the true origins of the ancient Egyptians and I happy to report it isn't in the Semitic region of the Near East, but with us. Sure there were invasions later from this region, I'd be a fool to deny this, but long after our establishing and building this unparalleled civilization.
When Somalia attained her independence from European invaders in the sixth decade of the 20th century, a popular song was Madafan. It speaks of the tasks that remain for an independent Somali nation spread across five geographic areas of Africa, to unite and build a strong homeland. Since then much has change for my people. So much for the worst, but this songs hearkens back to a happier idealistic time.
Corneille Nyungura is a Rwandan survivor of the horrible genocidal war that took place in that country in the late 1990s. His song Parce qu'on vient de loin (We come from afar) is so beautiful, I had to post an English translation courtesy of a French-Canadian friend. Thank you very much Stephanie! I can't imagine anybody would not be enthralled by the sultry voice of this young East African singer, not to mention, the poetry of his words.
English translation of Parce qu'on vient de loin (We come from afar)
Poem with a theme of vengeance (9/12/92)
You're Not Alone