Is belief a choice?

[Jeffret]

If this is the case, then is behaviorism not an explanation for all belief, not just supernaturalism? If we consider that it's not possible to prove causation, then it would suggest that all belief is determined by environment. Is there a version of this that preserves free will?

For a strict behaviorist, a la Skinner, it's all behaviorism. All the way down. As far as I can tell there's no reasonable way to disprove behaviorism, though most of us don't feel comfortable with the idea.

From there we could start to figure out belief in general and then get to the really complicated stuff involving supernatural belief and superstition.

Sent from my SM-J327V using Tapatalk

[Jeffret]

Personally I suspect it's a mix with free will and behaviorism, both having significant components. Which doesn't make it any simpler to figure out.

Sent from my SM-J327V using Tapatalk

[Mad Jax]

Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it

But of course, that little joke will just make it hurt more.

Here's one that is at best tangentially related, but really got me to recognize how fragile the foundation of any belief is unless it is rooted in rigorous philosophy.

In practically every branch of philosophy, the concept of knowing something has at minimum the requirement of having you:

1. Believe it.
2. There is a good, rational reason for you to believe it.
3. It is true.

This is generally referred to as justified, true belief. But if you're like me, (and I have a good, rational reason to believe you all essentially are), you're seeing a problem almost right away. How do you know you know? Whether something is true or not is really impossible to axiomatically prove (unless you start with lousy axioms). Number three is possible to meet but it's never possible to verify. It begins to feel like you're reasoning in circles trying to determine what would be necessary to verify it. You could be 100% right about everything you've ever thought, said, or believed and yet none of it could be verified in perfect certainty (not even logical proofs). So you may know something, is almost certainly true that you know perfectly an uncountable number of things, and yet you never truly know that you know.

I wonder if saying that in sacrament would blow a few circuits with the testimony crowd.

[oliver_denom]

Personally I suspect it's a mix with free will and behaviorism, both having significant components. Which doesn't make it any simpler to figure out.

Sent from my SM-J327V using Tapatalk

You could argue that a choice is being made, but that it happens earlier in the process before the belief is either formed or debunked. A person could, for example, choose not to exclude their religious claims from skeptical inquiry. That has to be a choice of some sort because we see many people doing this through either avoidance or denial. I may not be choosing to disbelieve at that point, but I do choose to open myself to the possibility should the evidence present itself. But did I even make that choice? It's turtles all the way down.

[Jeffret]

You could argue that a choice is being made, but that it happens earlier in the process before the belief is either formed or debunked. A person could, for example, choose not to exclude their religious claims from skeptical inquiry. That has to be a choice of some sort because we see many people doing this through either avoidance or denial. I may not be choosing to disbelieve at that point, but I do choose to open myself to the possibility should the evidence present itself. But did I even make that choice? It's turtles all the way down.

You could argue that. But not if you're B.F. Skinner, because then as a strict behaviorist you would be convinced that you were behaviorally conditioned to make that argument.

[Jeffret]

We're also getting into Descartes' territory. Are we really certain that we exist, to actually be having these beliefs?

Elon Musk has asserted that we don't really exist and are just parts of a computer simulation.

Descartes boiled it down to "Cogito ergo sum", or "I think, therefore I am". Or in its fuller form, "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am", which is actually much more interesting in our current topic. Is it doubt that establishes our choices, rather than belief? Descartes might argue that even if we exist in a computer simulation as Musk asserts, the fact that we doubt implies that we have some existence. (Personally I think Musk is wrong.)

Ultimately, I think the best approach is probably to behave as if we have the ability to choose our beliefs. I think we gain the most by behaving that way. But, perhaps I've just been conditioned to believe that.

[dogbite]

Descartes also worried that he was just a demon decieved soul, akin to the modern simulation argument, just before computers.

[Jeffret]

Descartes also worried that he was just a demon decieved soul, akin to the modern simulation argument, just before computers.

Interesting. I'm out of my depth here, I admit. I know the introduction to some of these ideas but lack the full understanding.

[2bizE]

Yes, just not in Utah.

[dogbite]

A lot of epistemomlogy is concerned similarly to the simulation/demon deceived soul with the Brain in a Vat, BIV.

Because we only experience "reality" at a remove from said reality we can not directly apprehend what our true state is. I could just as easily be a brain in a nutrient bath being fed a set of coherent signal inputs that I perceive as this reality but it's just a manipulated illusion.

But you can only progress your Philosophy and epistemology with a second assumption beyond cogito ergo sum. At least some of the time my senses are correct. And it's only an assumption. It can't be proved. Indeed we can all recall incidents where we mistakenly saw, heard, felt things that turned out to be something else.

Those epistemologists outside of the empiricists add extra assumptions about the mind being a sourceof truth on its own as a justification of religious beliefs and other unsupported claims. Alvin Plantigina has a well regarded 'Reformed Epistemology' that tries to move belief to as basic as cogito... This is tied to the difficulty of proving that other minds exist. But I find the argument overall an unwarrranted assumption to elevate belief to an unassailable position.

Minimizing assumptions is important IMHO, the fewer the better.

[alas]

You could argue that a choice is being made, but that it happens earlier in the process before the belief is either formed or debunked. A person could, for example, choose not to exclude their religious claims from skeptical inquiry. That has to be a choice of some sort because we see many people doing this through either avoidance or denial. I may not be choosing to disbelieve at that point, but I do choose to open myself to the possibility should the evidence present itself. But did I even make that choice? It's turtles all the way down.

You could argue that. But not if you're B.F. Skinner, because then as a strict behaviorist you would be convinced that you were behaviorally conditioned to make that argument.

Pure behaviorism went out the window before Skinner was even dead. So, like Freud, the theories have some good concepts, but also some flaws. I could get into the flaws in behaviorism but nobody wants psych 230, lets just keep it at psych 101. But one of the big flaws is we are not born as an empty slate, but come with preferences and instincts and being social creatures we model behavior and have human culture.

So, many if not most beliefs are taught. Belief in God is taught verbally, not learned by behaviorism. It is simply too complicated to come about with pure behaviorism. Sure, there is some behaviorism built into rewarding children for learning their lessons, but the actual lessons are cognitive beliefs.

Now a pure behaviorist (if such an animal exists anymore) will say a belief is a behavior, but I find it more useful to see a belief as a cognition. Separate the outward behavior from the inward behavior, if you will.

I am much more into the cognitive stuff myself because it is the only therapy model proven helpful. And this involves lots of choices about what we believe. Basically it is a method of examining the false beliefs that are screwing up your life so that you can stop screwing it up. But since this conversation is kind of about religious beliefs and in therapy the therapist does not touch those, so I have not gotten into the way we change our beliefs on purpose using cognitive techniques. Back to the lucky blue shirt, that is a faulty belief that may want to be examined in cognitive therapy if the guy has a gambling problem. But we don't touch the God stuff.

As far as the philosophers go, I don't find any of their theories really helpful. Well, Sartre on how we avoid freedom is useful in understanding the human condition, but most philosophy is ......so deep it is best left buried? It just is not practical in understanding human behavior, so I go for the stuff that is the study of human behavior. So, those of you who are into that kind of stuff can carry on with that line of thinking.

[RubinHighlander]

Humans created a label, a description call "Choice" of what it means to be presented with information and change our behavior based on that information. Reality might be a simulation, a test by some higher being or force, a temporary state of corporal existence, a random natural event in the big bang...lots of possibilities here. Did single celled life choose to start photosynthesizing sunlight and produce oxygen to change the planet or was that just behavior in evolution? Is our higher cognitive ability to take in vast amount of information from our environment and then change our behavior constitute a choice differently somehow or is it just more evolution? Does the reality or simulation we are in predestine us to a known behavioral path? Might be the Matrix, might be the Truman show, might just be atoms doing what atoms do in this universe or multi-verse.

Maybe my path out of the church was not ultimately a choice by some definitions and standards, but I can say that it has helped increase my happiness with my perception of this existence. Having removed the mystical higher power belief from my reality, I've chosen the scientific method mingled with emotion and my own biases as my new way of navigating the continual path of discovery I'm on.

[moksha]

Seems that even behavior is a choice, although it might be limited in some ways. For instance, could Trump really refrain from being angry if someone placed an obstacle between him and a cheeseburger? I suppose that is the dividing line between simplicity and bringing Descartes into the mix.

[Jeffret]

Now a pure behaviorist (if such an animal exists anymore) will say a belief is a behavior, but I find it more useful to see a belief as a cognition. Separate the outward behavior from the inward behavior, if you will.

I am much more into the cognitive stuff myself because it is the only therapy model proven helpful. And this involves lots of choices about what we believe. Basically it is a method of examining the false beliefs that are screwing up your life so that you can stop screwing it up. But since this conversation is kind of about religious beliefs and in therapy the therapist does not touch those, so I have not gotten into the way we change our beliefs on purpose using cognitive techniques. Back to the lucky blue shirt, that is a faulty belief that may want to be examined in cognitive therapy if the guy has a gambling problem. But we don't touch the God stuff.

After our fascinating romp through various aspects of philosophy and existentialism, alas is trying to pull us back to more along the lines of the original question with a number of excellent comments. I wanted to highlight these specific ones, though I found the whole post spot on.

I think it's valuable to recognize that we really don't know. We have not been able to determine if we truly have free will or to what degree we do. We really don't know if belief is a choice. Or in what manner it is. Or how much. Or what types of beliefs.

But as I mentioned above and alas here elaborated on, I think we're best off if we behave as if we have at least some choice in our beliefs. And at least to some degree we can choose to change them. In the case of the poker player, he could choose to change his beliefs about how his shirt impacts his results. alas is the expert on these cognitive therapies, but from what I know of them, dealing with the idea that beliefs can be changed has shown productive results, indeed about the best results of anything. It doesn't mean that it isn't difficult to change or choose or beliefs or there might barriers or limitations. Practice.

When it comes to specific beliefs, then it can become more challenging. Could you choose to literally believe in Santa as an adult despite all of the counter evidence? Maybe. Maybe not. It's tough to really say, though it seems somewhat unlikely. It's certainly possible to finesse it and maintain a belief in the spirit of Santa or the story / myth or the aggregated actions of everyone in society who participates. This is the message of "Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus". This same sort of approach is what a lot of spiritual but not religious people follow.

[alas]

Now a pure behaviorist (if such an animal exists anymore) will say a belief is a behavior, but I find it more useful to see a belief as a cognition. Separate the outward behavior from the inward behavior, if you will.

I am much more into the cognitive stuff myself because it is the only therapy model proven helpful. And this involves lots of choices about what we believe. Basically it is a method of examining the false beliefs that are screwing up your life so that you can stop screwing it up. But since this conversation is kind of about religious beliefs and in therapy the therapist does not touch those, so I have not gotten into the way we change our beliefs on purpose using cognitive techniques. Back to the lucky blue shirt, that is a faulty belief that may want to be examined in cognitive therapy if the guy has a gambling problem. But we don't touch the God stuff.

After our fascinating romp through various aspects of philosophy and existentialism, alas is trying to pull us back to more along the lines of the original question with a number of excellent comments. I wanted to highlight these specific ones, though I found the whole post spot on.

I think it's valuable to recognize that we really don't know. We have not been able to determine if we truly have free will or to what degree we do. We really don't know if belief is a choice. Or in what manner it is. Or how much. Or what types of beliefs.

But as I mentioned above and alas here elaborated on, I think we're best off if we behave as if we have at least some choice in our beliefs. And at least to some degree we can choose to change them. In the case of the poker player, he could choose to change his beliefs about how his shirt impacts his results. alas is the expert on these cognitive therapies, but from what I know of them, dealing with the idea that beliefs can be changed has shown productive results, indeed about the best results of anything. It doesn't mean that it isn't difficult to change or choose or beliefs or there might barriers or limitations. Practice.

When it comes to specific beliefs, then it can become more challenging. Could you choose to literally believe in Santa as an adult despite all of the counter evidence? Maybe. Maybe not. It's tough to really say, though it seems somewhat unlikely. It's certainly possible to finesse it and maintain a belief in the spirit of Santa or the story / myth or the aggregated actions of everyone in society who participates. This is the message of "Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus". This same sort of approach is what a lot of spiritual but not religious people follow.

I put one bold marks on one sentence in what Jeffret said here. It is very important for us to believe we make choices. People who feel they are totally controlled by fate, or other people, or their environment give up on life and die. Whether it is true or not, it is very important to our emotional well being that we believe that our choices make a difference. One famous experiment put rats in a situation where nothing they did made any difference is getting an electrical shock. The other group of rats they put in a situation where they could learn to control whether or not they got shocked. Then they put the rats in a tub of water that they could not get out of and measured how long they kept swimming. The rats who could not control their environment gave up and sank to drown in about five minutes. (the psychologists pulled them out before letting them die) the rats who believed that what they did made a difference kept swimming until they were too exhausted to keep going. Up to 24 hours, compared to 5 minutes.

So, the belief that what you do can make a difference is huge. The belief that you cannot control your own behavior leads to depression. Which if you don't change your belief you will give up and die at the first problem. And a belief is a behavior, even if it is internal behavior. This belief that nothing I can do makes any difference is common among battered wives and children. It takes a safe environment and then therapy to change this belief. But we can change this belief. Been there done that. Both myself and doing therapy with others.

There is a reason they call this kind of thinking nihilistic.

Maybe that is one reason that some philosophers bug me. The, "I am just a brain being fed input, in some grand warped experiment" yeah, kinda stupid. The truth is you wouldn't know. But really, the arrogance of thinking you might be the guy in this false reality with people just watching your reaction to this huge elaborate fake reality. It is both extremely arrogant and extremely stupid. No, if the experimenters could pull it off perfectly, then you wouldn't know. But the experimenters could never pull it off perfectly, and why the hell bother? Are you so important that they would go to that much effort to create a fake reality?

But there is one rule with changing beliefs. You have to change from dysfunctional faulty beliefs by finding evidence in reality, to realistic, more true, more functional beliefs. So, I don't recommend trying to go back to believing in Santa. You would have to be delusional. If you can't find evidence in reality to support your desired belief, you are unlikely to change it. And therapists don't mess with religious beliefs because it is considered unethical----except for the ones who work for LDS FS. But the second reason is that it is hard to find evidence for or against religious beliefs, and unless they are destructive therapist don't mess with them.

But let's take an example of a dysfunctional belief. Gal comes in depressed. Therapist asks questions and finds a recent event. She was going to meet a friend for lunch. The friend doesn't show. Gal feels sad. What about this makes you sad? She must not like me after all. The little things like this is clients life build up into depression.

So, far we have an event=friend didn't show.
We have a belief=if my friend breaks a date=she must not like me=nobody likes me and I am worthless.
And we have an emotion=feeling sad and depressed.
So, challenge the belief. what if friend had car trouble? What if she got the wrong restaurant? What if she was sick? Did you check with friend? So, the therapist get the client to check facts and either confirm the belief or prove it wrong. After several events like this, and examining the dysfunctional beliefs, the client starts to change beliefs like, "nobody likes me" and, " nothing I do makes any difference."

We do the same thing without a therapist. Going to church makes me unhappy. So, what is happening at church and what do you believe about it? Well, the men=priesthood are glorified and women are second class. So I am worthless and God doesn't love me. At some point our brain goes, wait a cotton pickin minute. Who says I am worthless and God doesn't love me? And we suffer a bit of cog dis and then conclude that "what I am being taught at church is crap." We challenge the belief that is making us miserable and we find a happier belief. That involves noticing the unhappy, seeing the event that causes our feeling, and examining the belief that the church is the church of God so what it does is what God does. And when we examine the underlying belief, we find a problem with it, then find a way to change the belief. Or we stay happy and stuff it deep inside.

[Linked]

This has been fascinating, please continue to psych 230! Then we can all watch Psych together.

I put one bold marks on one sentence in what Jeffret said here. It is very important for us to believe we make choices. People who feel they are totally controlled by fate, or other people, or their environment give up on life and die. Whether it is true or not, it is very important to our emotional well being that we believe that our choices make a difference. One famous experiment put rats in a situation where nothing they did made any difference is getting an electrical shock. The other group of rats they put in a situation where they could learn to control whether or not they got shocked. Then they put the rats in a tub of water that they could not get out of and measured how long they kept swimming. The rats who could not control their environment gave up and sank to drown in about five minutes. (the psychologists pulled them out before letting them die) the rats who believed that what they did made a difference kept swimming until they were too exhausted to keep going. Up to 24 hours, compared to 5 minutes.

Do you have a link to this study? I googled it but it seems that researchers really like to make rats swim in their experiments and I couldn't find this one.

[Corsair]

"Is belief a choice?"

This is a great question. I answered "No", but I do acknowledge that person can choose ot act within the belief they want to be true, whether or not it is true. A person can develop a belief in many things.

[alas]

This has been fascinating, please continue to psych 230! Then we can all watch Psych together.

I put one bold marks on one sentence in what Jeffret said here. It is very important for us to believe we make choices. People who feel they are totally controlled by fate, or other people, or their environment give up on life and die. Whether it is true or not, it is very important to our emotional well being that we believe that our choices make a difference. One famous experiment put rats in a situation where nothing they did made any difference is getting an electrical shock. The other group of rats they put in a situation where they could learn to control whether or not they got shocked. Then they put the rats in a tub of water that they could not get out of and measured how long they kept swimming. The rats who could not control their environment gave up and sank to drown in about five minutes. (the psychologists pulled them out before letting them die) the rats who believed that what they did made a difference kept swimming until they were too exhausted to keep going. Up to 24 hours, compared to 5 minutes.

Do you have a link to this study? I googled it but it seems that researchers really like to make rats swim in their experiments and I couldn't find this one.

Well, this one is old enough that it was in the text book when I was doing undergrad, so long before there was an Internet to put it on. But, I even donated all my old textbooks to DI, so I can't even look it up, and after thirty years, I may have some facts wrong. But look up "learned helplessness."

And since psychology is having problems with replication, I can see some flaws in it, because they didn't control for the physical poor condition of rats getting shocked with electricity compared to the rats who avoided it so they were not getting shocked. But see if you can find a new and better study.

[Linked]

This has been fascinating, please continue to psych 230! Then we can all watch Psych together.

I put one bold marks on one sentence in what Jeffret said here. It is very important for us to believe we make choices. People who feel they are totally controlled by fate, or other people, or their environment give up on life and die. Whether it is true or not, it is very important to our emotional well being that we believe that our choices make a difference. One famous experiment put rats in a situation where nothing they did made any difference is getting an electrical shock. The other group of rats they put in a situation where they could learn to control whether or not they got shocked. Then they put the rats in a tub of water that they could not get out of and measured how long they kept swimming. The rats who could not control their environment gave up and sank to drown in about five minutes. (the psychologists pulled them out before letting them die) the rats who believed that what they did made a difference kept swimming until they were too exhausted to keep going. Up to 24 hours, compared to 5 minutes.

Do you have a link to this study? I googled it but it seems that researchers really like to make rats swim in their experiments and I couldn't find this one.

Well, this one is old enough that it was in the text book when I was doing undergrad, so long before there was an Internet to put it on. But, I even donated all my old textbooks to DI, so I can't even look it up, and after thirty years, I may have some facts wrong. But look up "learned helplessness."

And since psychology is having problems with replication, I can see some flaws in it, because they didn't control for the physical poor condition of rats getting shocked with electricity compared to the rats who avoided it so they were not getting shocked. But see if you can find a new and better study.

Thanks! I looked it up and didn't find the mice experiment, but did find one about shocking dogs. Wikipedia has a good write up.

One of the first was an experiment by Seligman & Maier: In Part 1 of this study, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group 1 dogs were simply put in a harnesses for a period of time and were later released. Groups 2 and 3 consisted of "yoked pairs". Dogs in Group 2 were given electric shocks at random times, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. Each dog in Group 3 was paired with a Group 2 dog; whenever a Group 2 dog got a shock, its paired dog in Group 3 got a shock of the same intensity and duration, but its lever did not stop the shock. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. Thus, for Group 3 dogs, the shock was "inescapable".

In Part 2 of the experiment the same three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus. All of the dogs could escape shocks on one side of the box by jumping over a low partition to the other side. The dogs in Groups 1 and 2 quickly learned this task and escaped the shock. Most of the Group 3 dogs – which had previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on shocks – simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked.[4]

In a second experiment later that year with new groups of dogs, Overmier and Seligman ruled out the possibility that, instead of learned helplessness, the Group 3 dogs failed to avert in the second part of the test because they had learned some behavior that interfered with "escape". To prevent such interfering behavior, Group 3 dogs were immobilized with a paralyzing drug (curare), and underwent a procedure similar to that in Part 1 of the Seligman and Maier experiment. When tested as before in Part 2, these Group 3 dogs exhibited helplessness as before. This result serves as an indicator for the ruling out of the interference hypothesis.

It's a cruel experiment, but the results are fascinating. There have been follow up experiments that seem to confirm learned helplessness. A lot of the ups and downs of my life seem explainable by this.

Now, back to whether or not belief is a choice...

[oliver_denom]

Maybe that is one reason that some philosophers bug me. The, "I am just a brain being fed input, in some grand warped experiment" yeah, kinda stupid. The truth is you wouldn't know. But really, the arrogance of thinking you might be the guy in this false reality with people just watching your reaction to this huge elaborate fake reality. It is both extremely arrogant and extremely stupid. No, if the experimenters could pull it off perfectly, then you wouldn't know. But the experimenters could never pull it off perfectly, and why the hell bother? Are you so important that they would go to that much effort to create a fake reality?

The point of that type of question isn't to actually posit that reality may not be real, but that there are limits to what we can know beyond any doubt. That was really troubling to people in the sciences, because if it were true that even causation itself couldn't be proven, then what was any knowledge firmly grounded in? Descartes ultimately grounding his philosophy in the idea that if one is capable of thought, then there must at the very least exist some sort of being that thinks. From there is a straight line to existentialism that focuses more on the problem of being and existence, actual human problems with life, and away from intellectual puzzles or word games. What does it mean to exist?

I feel that a part of the original question comes from an accusation that believers level towards those who no longer believe. The idea works in two ways. First, if you made a decision, then I as a believer can then punish you and hold you accountable. Second, if you made a decision not to believe, then you are perfectly capable of making the opposite decision and begin believing again. When I answer that belief is a choice, I am also disagreeing with both of these accusations and the motives for making them. We may possess a higher degree of openness which can be shaped by biology and environment, but we also possess the ability to either expand or contract that quality based on the choices we make. We can choose our experiences, and we are able to choose our environment. Choices lead to new experience and new experience lead to new choices. These things act as a feedback loop and are in no way independent.

What makes the two accusations incorrect is not their particular claim that "you made a choice", it's the explicit value judgement they place on that choice. It was a "bad choice" and therefore I am now justified in punishing you, or it was a "bad choice" and now you need to repent and correct yourself. At some point I chose to allow my beliefs to be scrutinized, and once they were, I chose to accept the results. Having seen so many people go through similar processes who are then able to deny or shield themselves from scrutiny, and choose to not accept the results, it's difficult for me not to see the process as the difference between willful acceptance and willful denial. My judgement of the matter is not that I'm blameless in all this, but that my decision making was in fact central to the process and that I consider it necessary, authentic, and "good". My current perspective sees the whole "good / bad" dichotomy as unnecessary, but I can at least remember what it was like to think this way. While it's very upsetting and sometimes traumatizing to have people close to you call you evil and shun you from the community, I still want to accept my decisions as worth it because there is no way I would go back even if I could. I prefer the person who I've become, and I hope to feel the same way in the future as I look back to today.

Maybe it is possible that none of this was actually my choice, that it's all been determined, but if that's the case then what would it matter? I would prefer to take responsibility for who I've become than blame my current state solely on circumstance. There's an equal amount of power in recognizing mistakes, or actions that were "bad". If you own them, then at least you can learn from the experience.