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According to Terence Penelhum, there are two general schools of thought when it comes to how beliefs originate: voluntarist and involuntarist. The voluntarists' take says that belief is a matter of will, we have control over what we believe much in the way we have control over our actions.

Involuntarists argue that we cannot really choose to just believe anything. According to involuntarism, a belief is not an action and, hence, cannot be attained by command, either by your own or by another' s to you.

How and why do we believe things? What causes our beliefs? Do we choose our beliefs?

Source: about.com

Let me put it this way: quite simply, there are 3 levels of thinking...

Level 1: thoughts you're aware of and can control (eg, preparing in your mind a post you want to share in a thread).
Level 2: thoughts you're aware of but can't control (eg, obsessive-compulsive thinking).
Level 3: thoughts you're not even aware of, let alone control (ie, subconscious thinking reflecting a very early childhood experience).

Depending upon the subject matter, beliefs can permeat all the way down to Level 3, or not make it past Level 1.

Very Freudian of you Mindship. Ego, Superego and ID.

More Egoic / Cognitive psychology in general, as the Id is basically the resevoir of instincts, not thought.

Originally posted by Storm
According to Terence Penelhum, there are two general schools of thought when it comes to how beliefs originate: voluntarist and involuntarist. The voluntarists' take says that belief is a matter of will, we have control over what we believe much in the way we have control over our actions.

Involuntarists argue that we cannot really choose to just believe anything. According to involuntarism, a belief is not an action and, hence, cannot be attained by command, either by your own or by another' s to you.

How and why do we believe things? What causes our beliefs? Do we choose our beliefs?

Source: about.com Beliefs are a set of rules that one has described covertly or at times overtly. Their existence can occur through a number of avenues:

Vicarious learning - Individual/s that holds a set of beliefs is perceived to gain more reinforcement than would be anticipated, the difference being credited to adherence to said beliefs.Superstitious Behavior - One's state of affairs is poor and not desired for a period of time, various methods, including belief behavior, are applied to achieve a more desirable state of affairs, eventually one's state of affairs returns to the mean and life is better than it had been. The individual "believes" his belief based behaviors have actually impacted the outcome when really there has just been a return to the mean.The belief behavior actually has some valid aspects that while portions of the belief are superstitious and unnecessary to achieve the result.Society reinforces beliefs consistent with its own.Perhaps the belief is valid.

In a manner involuntarist.

we can partially choose our beliefs but many of our beliefs are determined by society. It is hard for people (in general) to go against society, certainly when there is almost no voice of opposition.

Of course you always have exceptions. I think our beliefs change by experience, but then again experiences are also partly determined by society.

Practically we choose everything from society. No one really is under their own morals. We all fulfill a social contract when we're a part of a society.

Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
Practically we choose everything from society. No one really is under their own morals. We all fulfill a social contract when we're a part of a society. Social contracts are bull shit. One, for the most part, does not have a choice of where they are born and what society they are raised in. For something to be a contract, it must be completely voluntary. Choices, like stay or leave, deal with it or die are far from actual choices.

I agree with Mindship. There are many levels of awareness of our thoughts. Thoughts that we are aware of are more under our control, but some thoughts we are less aware of are less under our control.

Beliefs are consequences of these thoughts we cannot control. A change of belief would be to become aware of these thoughts through an insight gaining some control of them.

Do we have control over what we beleive? Short answer, yes. But if you break it down, it truly depends on the person. There are essentially 3 types of people -each group has its own level of thinking and therefore each group has a different amount of control over what they beleive, based simply on how they think.

Group 1: Conformists/ non-thinkers-for-themselves-ers. (Whatever word.) These people tend to...not think for themselves...society, what happens around them, everything has the most major if not the only impact on what they beleive and there is little or no conscious or well thought out ideals. They follow the crowd, their parents, and friends and what they see on TV. By far, the largest category. For this question to them -the answer is no.

Group 2: Transcendentalists: This is the smallest category, because in general, most people have a hard time seeing from all points of view. It requires both universal knowledge and free thought, uniterrupted by what is happening around them. It takes being able to pull back and think without any bias -a transcendentalist view if anyone knows that term. These people have the most "free will over their beleifs", so above all others, these people can answer yes to this question. Something i shoot for, though i still have a long way to go.

Group 3: Rebels/ Non-carers (another word I couldnt think of): These people tend to follow no real beleifs except "personal freedom" and have little or no influence by anything... Yet they basically beleive nothing and therefore rule themselves out altogether. If you ask them a question about what they beleive, they may give a crap answer but inside they dont have anything they care enough about to beleive in.
Unfortunately, another large population percentage. Though they would seem to have such firm rebellious beleifs, the majority of this group is a "no" answer, because when you commit to going against something that strongly, that thing is already influenceing your beleifs.

Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
Practically we choose everything from society. No one really is under their own morals. We all fulfill a social contract when we're a part of a society.


I strongly disagree



To say that no one is really under thier own morals is false, because then there would be no rebels. We do not simply mold into the beleifs of our society. If so, there would be no Buddha, no Ghandi, no Jesus Christ, no Socrates, no Plato, etc.


Our morals are both a response to our influences and our own intepretations of those influences. We do have an individual mind you know, and it is not entirely developed by environment.


Your social contract point has nothing to do with this argument. Storm is questioning where our beleifs come from, whether they are simply willful submissions to another's perview, or whether or not they are sincere intuitive trains of thought.

It's about nature vs. nurture. I choose to believe (ironically) that what you believe isn't decided solely by you. It's who your parents are. Where you grow up. How you're taught in school. How you were raised. But there is some choice in the matter.

To use a political and somewhat autobiographical take: You're raised in a fairly conservative area by a religious family. It follows that you should end up being just like them. However, I, am an extremely liberal person and an agnostic. Was it an involuntary desire to be different? Or did I choose to be different because those were beliefs held by my father, who was abusive to my mother, siblings and me?

Even I'm not sure srug

Originally posted by Strangelove
It's about nature vs. nurture. I choose to believe (ironically) that what you believe isn't decided solely by you. It's who your parents are. Where you grow up. How you're taught in school. How you were raised. But there is some choice in the matter.

To use a political and somewhat autobiographical take: You're raised in a fairly conservative area by a religious family. It follows that you should end up being just like them. However, I, am an extremely liberal person and an agnostic. Was it an involuntary desire to be different? Or did I choose to be different because those were beliefs held by my father, who was abusive to my mother, siblings and me?

Even I'm not sure srug



My family is not conservative or liberal, they are pretty much in between. I grew up around very old fashioned and conservative people, however. I also grew up around very judgemental people and my family has a tendency to be judgemental towards others, especially towards famous people.


I turned out very Liberal and less judgemental than my family, however, i used to be conservative. I used to be very Christian, very narrow minded, very gullible, and self-destructive. I liberated myself out of a small canal of thinking...but not until after a long time of making mistakes and errors.

Originally posted by Mindship
Let me put it this way: quite simply, there are 3 levels of thinking...

Level 1: thoughts you're aware of and can control (eg, preparing in your mind a post you want to share in a thread).
Level 2: thoughts you're aware of but can't control (eg, obsessive-compulsive thinking).
Level 3: thoughts you're not even aware of, let alone control (ie, subconscious thinking reflecting a very early childhood experience).

Depending upon the subject matter, beliefs can permeat all the way down to Level 3, or not make it past Level 1.

To expand a bit on this and how it deals with belief.

From a neuro cognitive perspective, there is very little difference between what we know to be true (ie, I have 2 legs, the sum of 2 numbers, semantic meanings) and what we think is true (political affiliations, philosophy, those types of things). Although we, as fully functioning individuals can say "we can't know certain things for sure" that is not how our mind looks at it. To the brain, something is true and therefore will assist in preparing and planning future action or it is not true because it will be of no use.

The idea of something "permeating down" from top to bottom in the cognitive system is normally associated with expectations built on previous beliefs. While that would influence our actions and may make us aware of new connections between previously held beliefs, I am personally skeptical of the human capacity to generate "new" information at the highest cognitive levels that then influences lower level functioning. As with other sensory and perceptual information, I would imagine beliefs about the world around one would be built from a lower cognitive interpretation of the stimuli then assembled to a full percept and sent to the cortex.

One of the most interesting things about belief then, presuming that you believe what I have said, is how susceptable it is to error. It is possible to ellicit a predictable response in people for reasons they are unaware of. Further, when it comes to things like the moral justification of action, it is very commn that people will uniformly behave in one manner, though have no justification for their actions.

Belief and freedom are not necessarily related topics, though our perception of personal freedom is very much based on our beliefs, and on many other even lower cognitive functions. Without running this post on forever, the best I can say is that someone who believes they have MORE freedom is more likely to undergo stress and suffer from cognitive dissonance. The perception of freedom of action polorizes people to very specific worldviews to generally make them feel as though the world has more meaning and their choices have value. That is very counter intuitive, especially to someone like me who dabbles in anarchist and liberitarian political values.