It would be useful if you read the meaning and grammar topic where we encounter two important topics. These are firstly the fundamental distinction between object and action and secondly the distinction between semantics and meaning clusters.
The brain uses seeing in order to do three major things, firstly to give information to the ‘on the move’ movement models, secondly to detect movement in the visual field and finally to identify objects (object perception). The separate homes of ‘the object’ and of action, lie in vision before they appear in language.
If we look at these deep perceptions of ‘object’ and ‘action’ we see an interesting difference between believing and knowing. Both of these words are verbs. When you change ‘believing’ into its noun equivalent you get a clear object, a belief. When you change ‘knowing’ into its noun equivalent you do not get a clear object. Knowledge is an object word whose space is filled by more than one thing. This is an insecure basis on which to act. We explore this field below but our efforts are not helped by our current cultural bias. We have great respect for ‘knowing’ while at the same time avoiding ‘belief’ in talk and thought (outer and inner dialogues). Indecisiveness and self doubt are major problems of modern culture because of its emphasis on knowing rather than believing.
Below are some thoughts around these initial points.
As a language game set in the contexts of its meaning cluster, belief is not about the reasoned truth of statements.
The main conclusion from our initial points is that belief is strongly attached to our being.
I am looking out of my window in Sheffield to see if a sparrow hawk will fly past. I can do this intentionally without believing that I will see one. Indeed my inner dialogue will be busy telling me all the reasons why I will not see one. If someone asks me what I am doing I can say truthfully that I am looking for a sparrow hawk. I am looking without believing that I will see one. If I look believing that I will see one my inner dialogue will then be full of all the reasons why I might see one. I will also spend more of my time watching out of my window.
Belief is far easier to understand than you think. It works very much like animal action does. When reading the movement and action topic we are likely to find ourselves overwhelmed by the complexity of the integrated movement models that lie behind the physical action that we observe others doing - and that we also observe ourselves doing thanks to our minds. Through live meaning clusters (meaning and grammar) you can strengthen your muscles to some extent by thinking of moving them without actually doing so. Dreaming of walking in dream sleep can, in some people, flick the action switch. They then walk though asleep. Belief works in exactly the same way. If you believe something to be true many aspects of yourself will commit to it. Even processes in your body inaccessible to both your inner dialogues and your visual imagining can be affected. In the meaning and grammar topic we outline the difference between semantics and meaning clusters. Belief is moving from the semantics of a language form to its meaning clusters.
The power of belief is best seen in the placebo and nocebo affects. This power is not subject to reason or knowledge. It is more likely to make use of them than bow before them. It is as free and wide ranging as any of the other strange collection of processes that make up our biology. Its workings are most clearly exposed when researching a new drug.
Even in the mid twentieth century doctors would sometimes prescribe bland inert pills to patients because they could not do any harm. The patients believed in them and their condition improved.
You are more likely to know about the placebo effect than the nocebo effect. In the placebo effect you believe that something is doing you good and in the nocebo effect you believe that it is not. They are equally powerful. It is a very serious matter for any living thing to be injured or sick. In nature any weakness is life threatening. Living as we do in the glorious nursing and entertainment home, we have culturally dedicated ourselves to staying alive at all costs for as long as it is possible to do so whatever our state or condition. We see this as part of our commitment to life and against our old adversary death. Medicine fights on many fronts to do this using a great deal of knowledge. When new drugs are trialed, the belief processes of people are so strong that they are often more powerful than the effects of the drugs. The effect of the drug can only be seen if some people are given dummies and others the drug. We can get some idea of the wide ranging and subtle nature of belief by the fact that even the doctors administering the drugs cannot know which is a dummy and which is a drug. If they do know, they unconsciously strengthen the placebo effect for the drug and weaken the effect for the dummy. This is a simplistic view of modern research but it serves to illustrate the power of belief.
Two vital points arise here. In our current culture the power of belief is always being questioned when it comes to faith healing but embraced in research design and then hidden at the point that a drug is actually prescribed. The only honest way to give someone a medicine is to say ‘I am prescribing you this drug but it is very important that you believe that it is doing you good’. The second point is that doing or saying something where you withhold belief; e.g. looking for the sparrow hawk when not believing that you will see one, or not knowing whether the drug will help you or not; is very different than holding a counter belief such as believing that the drug will not help you or even that it will do you harm. The strong link between belief and action is illustrated here as in the latter instance you would not take the drug.
When we believe we commit to live meaning cluster content deep in our in our brains. We do this in many different ways in many different situations when subject to many different forces and influences. When our belief is questioned by ourselves or others what we really do is start a ‘why’ language game: anyone who has encountered a young child who has discovered the way to use the word ‘why’ will recognise that this game has no way out. Questioning a belief rarely reveals much about the set of conditions; the state of our experience; that caused the switch to be flicked. Indeed we are often aware of the differences between the inner dialogue which accompanied our flicking of the belief switch and the later inner dialogues that justified it to ourselves as well as the contrast with the reasons we give others for our belief.
When we act we cannot predict exactly what the consequences will be on the physical and social reality that we inhabit. When we act we create an encounter in the physical and social worlds. We only experience these worlds through encounter and we have no other means of connecting to them. Belief strengthens the preparation to act and turns it into a base strong enough for action.
The core meaning behind the word truth is revealed when we understand the core meaning behind the word belief. The first step is to separate the word truth used of our own belief from its use to refer to a belief held by someone else. If you want to follow up this point then read example two in the speech and language topic.
Belief is a commitment to a thought. For the body holding the belief; making the commitment; the flicking of the switch creates truth. All beliefs are true to the person who holds them. I believe that all white mice squeak in the same way. Because I am committed to this belief I am also committed to the truth of the statement ‘all white mice squeak in the same way’. Why do I believe this? I can’t remember. I have not spent any time looking after white mice. I suppose that I once read it in a trusted source. Only I have a feeling for what this commitment involves. You are likely to think that this is a playful and low commitment belief that would leave me with little more than a feeling of embarrassment (and only then if I had ‘gone public’ on it) if I changed the belief to ‘I think that white mice have slightly different squeaks’. So; I got it wrong then? No; I changed my belief. I am happy with my new belief but if you like I admit that the statement that ‘all white mice have the same squeak was wrong’. Note that we change beliefs and that the technical truth or falsity of statements is secondary as it is more about grammatical structure and logic. By the way you were wrong about my low level commitment to the original belief. It cost me in many ways as I had invested time and money in setting up a company to sell precision squeaking white mice.
Beliefs, those things that we do and do not believe, are generally passed on socially from people and sources that we trust. Less often they are forged from our own experience.
Knowledge is passed on in the same way as belief and in many contexts we generally do not bother to distinguish beliefs from knowledge but for Wittgenstein the failure to do this is central to the problem of the cultural over extension of scientific thought.
What about knowledge?
Belief switches between could and could not. It is like action we either act or we don’t. The core meaning cluster of knowledge is the place of hypothesis; the place where we think and observe but do not know whether to believe something is true or not. The whole edifice of knowledge is underpinned by the possibility that what is currently thought to be true could just as easily be found to be false. This applies to history as much as it does to physics. My search for a sparrow hawk by looking out of my window is independent of whether I believe I will see one or not. Though, as we noted earlier, what we believe will affect how we act while testing a thought. Keeping thoughts hypothetical is very difficult as when living things act (and as a result generate an encounter) no part of them can be left behind as they are one body. They are totally committed. Belief is the thought (inner dialogue) equivalent of action and often paired with it at the point that we ‘do’ something.
Knowledge practitioners are required to speak in language games which, though authoritative constantly put forward provisional, conditional and qualified positions. All knowledge is ultimately dependent on evidence bases. Being human, the lives and beliefs of knowledge practitioners become mixed up in their judgments and they find it hard to keep up an uncommitted and open perspective; though, at the same time, they would strive to resist the assessment of themselves as being believers.
The conditional nature of knowledge comes from the fact that it relates to action in a different way than belief. We have already noted that thinking about walking prepares your muscles for walking and changes the body’s chemistry leading to an improvement in muscle tone. It is in preparing to act that knowledge has its original and core meaning cluster. Who knows how to unlock this door? Who knows when the young swallows leave the barn? Who knows why there is a police car at the bottom of the street? The last two are more distant from specific actions but they could inform a wide range of individual or connected actions.
From a knowledge perspective the truth and falsity of statements is a way of recording and describing a changing picture. The hypothetical disengaged position is vital if knowledge is to pursue its search for evidence and relevance. The application of knowledge is a very different thing from belief whether building a bridge or setting up a scheme for the unemployed. Actions are inherently unpredictable whether they are based on knowledge; ‘we must do something’; or belief; ‘we must do this’.
Knowledge and belief are questioned in the same way. When we ask the questions ‘how do you know that’ and ‘why do you believe that’, the language games used hinge on replies that name trusted sources, share mental pictures and talk of personal experiences or present evidence?
As we have seen the nature of belief is that to believe something is to ‘commit’ to it in the same way that we do when we act. This is not surprising as we have the option of acting on a belief. A commitment to a thought; for example ‘eating potatoes with lemon juice will give you energy without putting on weight’, creates a belief and this changes the relationship between the words used to express the belief and the original meaning clusters behind those words. When we flick the switch, the meaning clusters are trimmed and hardened up to be strong enough to support and defend our actions. In this case the act of eating potatoes with lemon juice. Our brain also sends out messages throughout our body in relation to the practice of a belief and the required involvement of the body; as seen in the placebo effect. This is achieved through the meaning clusters that lie behind every sentence, phrase and word that verbally expresses the belief. They are our experience register and contain the links to feelings, emotions, senses, episodes and beyond into the systems hidden from consciousness. Though we can express similar meanings using different language, the hardening up of the meaning clusters that takes place when we believe also has the effect of hardening the expression of those beliefs. This is the point at which we become tied to expressing belief using specific language. The danger is that the human culture will then recognise the belief only by a form of words. At this point the meaning clusters have shut themselves off from semantics.
Belief functions also in a social animal context as the action that we are talking about includes both physical action and social action. Can you convince someone else to believe the thought? Do you have sufficient contact with the person or persons that you received the believed thought from? How can you build, or where can you find, the related thoughts that can also be believed and extend the reach of the belief further across human affairs?
Beliefs operate at all levels of our inner dialogues and hence across all our actions. They engage with the particular and the general. If we are unsure of their social context, or know them to be unfashionable, we will generally offer our beliefs up tentatively and, in tune with the current cultural triumph of the hypothetical, we often say ‘I think’ to mean ‘I believe’.
Our beliefs change as the shape of our physical and social lives change. Little change is brought about by thinking.
Being a social animal practicing a social process we can be fearful of being outside the consensus. We trust that the belief is true and can be justified to others. In reality this makes us more vulnerable to the exercise of power; subdued by the authority of the person and their ability to persuade and/or the popularity of the belief within our reference group. On the other hand we are capable of defending a belief in the teeth of overwhelming evidence and brilliant reasoning and some of us will embrace social isolation and even death rather than change a belief. These are beliefs that we are heavily committed to.
The degree of our commitment to the belief and the degree of social support that we have for it, especially from those we share our life with, more usually determines the energy that we put into defending a belief even when our thinking throws up doubts. The degree of our commitment to a belief, and the nature of the other beliefs that it is structurally involved with, provides a measure of how difficult it is to change it. It often has to be undermined by changing to a social reference group that does not hold the belief and then by attrition; changing the memories and records of sense, emotion and inner dialogues and creating new ones with implicit counter beliefs. The final attachment to the belief can wither away but this can be more cleanly and speedily removed by ritual action. We explain the nature of ritual in the introduction. New beliefs can also be quickly secured this way. Ritual is widely practiced in cultures and it is one of the major casualties of the current scientific material culture with its conditional, tentative and distant mentality. It is ignorant and suspicious of engaged human nature and experience.
We live in a culture of knowledge and in a material world created by it. This means that the hypothetical dominates. This is a world of knowledge islands; systems and attendant experts. From what we have examined we can conclude that this will weaken our confidence in living and enfeeble us. To what extent can we live out our nature in hypothetical states not knowing what to believe and what to commit to, withholding action as much as possible? Belief and the strength and confidence for acting are under pressure. Beliefs that we would once have acted on and changed through experience are held as thoughts and never tested alongside action.
Our experiences are loaded with numerous elements all participating at varying levels of intensity. Thus unpredictable, unfathomable and chaotic change underpins our existence and is constantly present. To be alive is to be disturbed to a greater or lesser degree. Belief and action are how we throw our bodies into this.