Believe What??!!??

Luky has been driving me crazy with his theory on belief. He got me into this conversation with his "Believing Politicians" post back on the 10th (http://philosopherdog.blogspot.com/2005/11/believing-politicians.html), and he pretty much has not let up. People think Malamutes are just good observers of the world. You have to live with one to understand just how opinionated they can really be!

Anyway, here's what Luky says about belief. No, I'm corrected - it's not about belief, it's about how we use forms of the word, "belief," and just how little we can expect it to communicate. Oh well . . .

According to Luky, who ponders mankind's effort to find and relate to the ultimate creator - as in, you know, THE CREATOR of all things, one of the greatest challenges man encounters in his pursuit of "faith" (a uniquely human concept, Luky advises) is the loose and ambiguous way in which humans use words. In the contemplation of God and matters of the spiritual realm, man's efforts regularly involve reference to traditional logical and epistemological terms such as, "truth," "knowledge," "belief," "evidence," "faith," and so on. And according to Luky, at the most basic point of such contemplations, the heart of the contemplator does not matter - the spiritual skeptic, the atheist, the committed faithful, the recently saved - all of them must meet the same first challenge with regard to sharing their spiritual investigations with anyone, including themselves. They must understand the words they use, use those words correctly, and wherever possible and to the greatest possible extent (especially when attempting to communicate their thoughts to other parties) confirm that the audience has correctly understood what they intended to convey. This challenge, he says, never presents itself for wolves and wolf-kin (that is, dogs, of course).

Luky says that when we consider the uses and abuses of the word "belief," especially considering statements of belief which he calls "declarations of belief," (to be abbreviated as "DOB" or "DOBs"), we find that at their root ALL DOBs communicate the same thing.

In fact, he sites different DOB examples, such as . . .

1.) I believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq;
2.) I believe I have forty cents in my pocket;
3.) I believe that our home team will win this weekend; and,
4.) I believe in the tooth fairy;

. . . and then he argues that if we think critically about what might possibly be expressed, and what might possibly be inferred, all these sentences are the same!

Yes, I asked him to explain that seemingly absurd conclusion and I had to sit through what follows.

The obvious and instinctive response is for us to try to distinguish between DOBs such as numbers 2 and 4, above. We might feel there ought to be enormous differences between a person's belief that he has forty cents in his pocket and his belief in the tooth fairy. Clearly, there are enormous differences in the subjects of those two DOBs. If we request it, the speaker might easily check and verify his forty cents; whereas, try as he might he would likely find it difficult to produce the tooth fairy. However, when the speaker expresses those two DOBs he is not telling us much about the forty cents or the tooth fairy. In other words, he is not telling us he has knowledge of either one: he is not telling us how many coins make up the forty cents, or if it's U.S. or Canadian currency; and likewise, he is not telling us if the tooth fairy is nearby, has curly hair, etc. Unless we push the speaker for greater detail, which may then inspire him to investigate further and acquire more information, or reveal to us that he already possesses more information but had not yet shared it, we are limited in the information we can take from any of his DOBs. In fact, the only thing his words really say is that he perceives himself to be in a state of some mental conviction regarding the proposition. And perhaps the worst part of such epistemological assertions is that we have no way to ascertain whether or not the speaker is lying! That is, his words may be saying that he perceives himself to be in a state of some mental conviction regarding the proposition, but we cannot even be certain he has communicated the true conviction of his mind.

Yes, after recognizing the enormous gaps of understanding that must exist between speakers of DOBs and their audiences simply on the basis of what their assertions really intend to convey - i.e., something about the speaker's state of mind - we have to recognize even that might be misleading and the speaker might actually have said, "I believe that our home team will win this weekend," purposely lying in order to avoid the anticipated ridicule or embarrassment of expressing negative opinions about the home team in front of an audience which he knows to be highly team-loyal.

This then is our problem, especially when we consider spiritual topics: when someone asserts a DOB like, "I believe in God," he is asserting no more and no less than he asserts when he says, "I believe in the tooth fairy," and, the same goes for his asserting something like, "I believe gas prices are too high." Regarding any analysis we might undertake of the speaker, it will not matter whether we agree or disagree with his assertion; nor will it matter whether we think he has good reasons for his statement. It will not even matter whether we judge him sane or insane. And further, since we have no ready means of determining whether or not the speaker is intending to be honest or not, the only thing we can conclude from any DOB whatsoever is that the speaker intends to convey to his audience that he possess a certain mental conviction regarding the subject.

Thus, by taking this time to consider just how little might actually be communicated by, and how little can be inferred from, DOBs, we can begin to grasp the scope of their ability to mislead. The fact is, DOBs are so lacking in their capacity to communicate reliable information it seems highly likely that we generally express them in order to intend, as well as hear them to interpret, far more than they really do! The truth is, DOBs are regularly used as part of selling products, justifying wars, establishing religions, ratifying countries, and so on. Man uses (abuses, as Luky insists) them for some pretty weighty objectives considering how little weight they may actually support.

Wolves, on the other hand, do not suffer from such ambiguities. They know what's what just by its smell!