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Beliefs. Where do they come from?

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spiney:
Hey, nobody's mentioned Karl Popper ...........

"Many scientists now use Popper's philosophy as a guide. The cycle of hypothesis and criticism fits in well with the long-established practice of peer review of all research before it is published in scientific journals. This practice ensured that a critical process was applied to scientific results and theories long before Popper described what was happening".

http://www.wisewords.demon.co.uk/popper/popper.html

Memes are pseudoscience. Purely and simply.

NiroZ:

--- Quote from: Evil Eye on Mar 21, 2009, 06:52:53 AM ---I was just showing a correlation. You don't have to be attacked by a tiger to believe that it can kill you. On the other hand, being skeptical of that fact can also put you in danger, so the belief whether right or wrong is advantageous in an evolutionary sense.

--- End quote ---
No its not. If I claimed that grass was poisonous, and that rice killed people, you'd live a very difficult life and perhaps die of starvation.

But again people, we are getting way offtopic.

Evil Eye:
How can we be off topic?

You asked about where belief comes from. We're trying to hash it out.

If you already have an idea and want us to follow it, then the conversation is pointless.

Belief is an evolutionary tool that stems from practical use. You could not function without it, but we (as humans) have developed an ability to question them, test them and choose them. That is critical thinking, but still relies on believing what you know or what you think you know to find the answers.

You can't even begin to test something if you do not believe it will provide an outcome.

Birds around here believe that I am a danger. They don't think about it.

Birds in the Galapagos are not afraid of humans because they have not evolved that impression.

We have instincts and learned knowledge, and both require belief.... either to hold onto or to correct or discard. Belief is not much more than trust that something is the truth regardless of the reality.

I happily believe that a ladder I buy will allow me to climb to the roof. That doesn't make it true. It allows me to trust the ladder.

It allows us to make right or wrong predictions and function in the reality.

ganzfeld:
Like many other things, they come from evolution. The mystery to me is whether they exist for their own selves (ie beliefs - the selfish meme) or developed because they were useful for organisms they inhabit (or both). (The only reason I can think of that they are so emphasized in western philosophy is because western religions made them seem overly important.)

There aren't any wrong beliefs or right beliefs, just varying degrees of usefulness. Some of them are so useful that they form integral parts of our world. But even if we call them "real" or "correct", that's just shorthand for "extremely useful". Even 2+2=4 isn't real. It just works well sometimes as a representation of certain things.

ganzfeld:

--- Quote from: spiney on Mar 21, 2009, 07:16:25 AM ---Memes are pseudoscience. Purely and simply.

--- End quote ---
Basically I agree with this. I used the word "meme" as a bit of shorthand in my post but strictly speaking they are not a scientific or falsifiable term.

They may one day be, though. When discussing consciousness, Crick mentioned that such definitions can start out quite vague at first. He asked to consider the definition of a "gene" as an example. Only by understanding the mechanism of their expression were we finally able to get a grip in genes. Maybe one day we will be able to isolate memes. Until then, I think you're right. They are a kind of pseudoscience.

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