Will, Belief, Experience

Do we consciously choose what to believe?

It seems to me that I cannot choose to disbelieve that the world exists, in the same way that I cannot disbelieve that my throat is sore (at this moment, it actually is sore). There's something about the immediate presence of certain stimuli and observations that seems to force states of mind upon me, states which dictate that "things are a particular way".

Now, I can sort of construct an artificial barrier between myself and the belief. I can do some dialectical footwork to maybe convince myself that what I'm thinking of as "being sore" really isn't. Or maybe my throat (or my conscious self at all) doesn't exist, so there's nothing to be sore. Or, maybe, I can detach myself slightly from the experience: focus on other things or meditate on the painful sensation in such a way as to attenuate its sting.

But I can't seem to rid myself of this persistent belief that there is something painful I am experiencing. I can't simply decide, "I no longer believe that it hurts when I swallow"--because somehow all that I feel at a given moment conspires to reject that belief as untenable? ... Or something?

Maybe it's not "belief" that I'm talking about. Maybe it's a primal awareness, and I'm simply attributing implicit "beliefs" to any states of awareness at all. But okay then, does that mean when I decide, "My throat no longer hurts", I really do now believe that my throat doesn't hurt, in spite of the continued discomfort I feel? That seems obviously wrong, somehow.

Probably, I can't convince myself that there is no table in front of me (unless I have good reason to believe that it's an illusion). I can try, and I can reach forward as though to swipe my hand clear through the illusory table without resistance. But I will be lying to myself as I do so, because I will know (or at least strongly believe), in some sense, that my hand will in fact meet resistance.

Really, all I'm doing is convincing the conversational (logical?) part of my mind, whereas the neuro-hardware that processes these things remains unconvinced. Probably it needs other triggers.

Can I look down at a patch of grass and convince myself that I'm looking at trees and vegetation from two miles up, thus inducing vertigo?

How is it that being told "X was just in this room" can elicit such an emotional response in me, whereas simply thinking "X was just in this room" in isolation, when I have no good reason to actually believe it was true, elicits nothing? Why can't I manufacture conviction artificially?


{Is there a connection between sanity and "proper" beliefs?}


Beliefs like, "The world is round/flat" and "God does (not) exist". For these propositions, I don't see anything which sticks out so obviously as a barrier toward changing belief; they're much too abstract. Maybe I really can change these through will alone. But in these cases, there's still a corpus of other beliefs and actions which conflict with my supposed espousal of a contrary belief: I can declare "I was an atheist just one moment, but now I fervently believe in the Judeo-Christian God", yet I won't really accept or embrace that conclusion. I won't feel the truth of it, yet I will feel like a duplicitous moron when praying or trying to act as though God really did exist.

Is, then, a vital component of belief feeling? The experience of certainty?

Fallibility vs Infallibility

And binary.

This is another variant of the same old theme I keep rehashing.

If we have no perfect (infallible) knowledge, then we cannot know with certainty that we have no perfect/infallible knowledge. Even as fallible beings, we must know at least that--but then, we're not completely fallible after all. Just, mostly.

Maybe 99.99%.

...

In the mystical traditions, "one" is unity, "two" is a division (from a whole to distinct things). Dualistic thinking. If we had no powers of discrimination whatsoever, presumably we would experience all things as one giant homogeneous, indistinguishable conglomerate.

That is, assuming it is possible to "experience" at all without discriminating in some way or another. Don't our senses detect contrast best? When exposed to a single, unwavering stimulus, that stimulus loses its edge, its flavor, its ability to be sensed at all?

From the concept of "two"--of one thing distinct from another--we can build up, perhaps, the entirety of mathematics (and thus, we think, physics, nature, human thought) through binary; binary being a meaningful alternation between two distinguishable states (represented in computers as "0" and "1").

If we can reduce any piece of information to "yes" or "no" questions--true or false statements--then we can represent it as a series of bits. Just as, even before George Boole came along, logic traditionally separated all propositions into those which are the case and those which are not, knowing that some thing cannot both be the case and not be the case simultaneously. Presumably, a mind simply needs to know, from the list of infinite propositions, which are true, which false. (Perhaps we would need to know which propositions are senseless or lacking truth/false values too; but then we shouldn't have included them in the list to begin with.)

This would be sufficient for omniscience...? Leibniz thought so, or at least that God comprehended the universe through such eyes.

Infinity does seem to present a problem, among many other obstacles. Recursion, describing oneself while describing the universe.

And what about the infinity of imaginary possibilities? Are conditional/subjunctive statements "true" or "false"?

Leibnizesque Proclivities

I recently borrowed Bertrand Russell's A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, and I'm rather enjoying what little I've read of it so far.

One thing that struck me is the description (in the beginning) of Leibniz's disinclination toward publishing a fully developed system. Rather, it seems Leibniz tended to craft arguments in response to private correspondence, or to issues which he bore some personal connection to. Unfortunately, this makes giving a comprehensive take on his views a bit difficult, since most if it is fragmentary.

The amusing thing is that I think I find myself doing something similar. I rarely write for the sake of writing--I will always be most motivated to give an in-depth argument when it's directly in response to someone else, peculiarly enough.

Maybe I should work on that.

Creation

Is it satisfying to create a world in which your creatures achieve their desires, so that you may vicariously effect wish fulfillment? To craft a fantasy where your own dreams (and perhaps others') come true?

Is it satisfying to create a world in which your creatures suffer through a morass of confusion, despair, and ever-frustrated longing, so that you spitefully ensure they are never happier than yourself? To craft a fantasy where no one's dreams come true?

Vacuous Truth

From my post in a topic in the xkcd forums:

"Every woman currently living on Pluto is male."

"Every true falsity is false."
"Every false truth is true."

"Every circular square is neither circular nor square." (This one almost makes an intuitive sense... but then, it really doesn't, when we consider that every circular square is also circular and square.)

"Every present King of France is simultaneously bald and not bald."

By the mathematical/logical principle that propositions are vacuously true when their subject does not exist, no matter what is predicated of that subject, the above statements should be considered true.

This relates to the problem of negative existentials in the philosophy of language, but I don't have more to say about it at the moment. May investigate further.

Must Perfection Equal Stagnation?

At various times I have encountered or myself espoused the view that anything which is perfect must be, in some sense, static. Religious critics might apply it to the idea of heaven, to show that any possible heaven must be a boring/stagnant place; similarly, we might argue that we're better off not being able to reach a state of complete perfection, because perfection would require no change, and therefore what would we do?

The reasoning goes something like this: for change to occur, an entity or circumstance must become other than it is currently. That is to say, at one time we may say of x that Px, while at another time we may say ~Px. So, if x is currently in a state of perfection but that state changes, surely that change now negates the previous, perfect state of x, thus rendering x imperfect.

An analogy with which we should all be familiar is grades: suppose a student has the perfect grade of 100% in the first week of a course. Suppose further that the teacher never allows extra credit, so at this moment the student possesses the highest grade attainable. From here on out, the only possible change to her grade would be to a lower value; so if at any point during the remainder of the semester, her grade experiences any form of change, it must be to a state of imperfection (< s100%).

So far, so good. If perfection be defined as having a grade equal to 100%, this is all true. Any change to that number necessarily yields an imperfect grade. The problem comes when we assume that, because the state of being perfect must not change, therefore nothing else pertaining to the object or circumstance in question can change. And that assumption is simply unwarranted.

To continue with the grade analogy, we should recognize that even while the total grade percentage does not change, a number of other factors do: as the school term progresses, the student continues to do assignments and turn them in. The teacher then grades these new assignments, sums the student's earned points so far, and divides that number into the highest possible point total. So while the grade percentage does not change, the student's earned sum continually rises. And of course, throughout the term, the course progresses, the student strives and sweats over homework, studies for tests, etc.

To me, this makes an obvious case that perfection can occur even while the qualities being judged for perfection change. In my example, the percentage remains at 100% even while the sums increase. This suggests the more general point that "perfection" can describe processes, not merely singular, unchanging states. Which really ought to be obvious, since, after all, we can easily set up (artificial) criteria for a perfect performance or the perfect execution of a technique in music, dance, etc. Yet clearly change does occur in these cases, for they are activities, not frozen states, after all.

Now, the point about lack of change is still true insofar as a perfect performance or process must never deviate from its perfect criteria on pain of falling from perfection. That is to say, the perfect student must continue to score 100% for as long as we judge her, and in this way her score will be predictable and therefore stagnant. However, we can hardly say that the student's homework and grade as a whole are stagnant, since she continues to accumulate new points and produce new work.

Similarly, I say that heaven would be static only insofar as its residents and contents would not deviate from a particular type of perfection; but their behavior could easily be a process or performance, or at least analogous to such. In simplistic terms, if perfection in heaven could be gauged as a percentage of points achieved out of points possible, the points could rise (or hey, they could fall too) without becoming imperfect so long as the total points possible matches them. It could be like a series of games in which one continually succeeds.


It is also important to note that, every time we talk about "perfection," we must qualify ourselves by answering the question, "Perfect according to what criteria?" Would it not be possible to have a constantly changing criteria set for perfection? And could there not easily be criteria which require change of some sort, as perhaps to run a perfect marathon requires that one change one's location and move one's limbs?

Gödelizing Gödel (and random thoughts)

It strikes me that Gödel's incompleteness theorem bears a bit of a resemblance to the types of skepticism I keep criticizing, insofar as it makes a universal statement about formal systems which seems to limit or hinder their power. Yet I wonder--could it be that to make this kind of statement successfully requires an implicit perspective subject to the same critique the incoimpletness theorem makes in the first place?

This is an idle thought, and it does not seem to me that Gödel's theorem could be undermined or subverted by its own conclusion, and nor am I qualified to investigate much further.

Analogously, that might have implications for the halting problem.

Just wondering.


And on a completely (?) unrelated note, I feel obliged to mention how Jorge Luis Borges' story "Funes the Memorious" features a man with complete eidetic/photographic memory, who experiences and recalls the "sensory manifold" in toto, rather than as we do in bits and pieces. (Here roughly meaning Kant's "sensory manifold", or whatever modern analogy there is). As a consequence, the man sees little point in abstraction and in fact has difficulty recognizing the similarities behind different species of dogs, or even different objects seen from different angles. I'm reminded next (through reading Gregory Chaitin) of information theory and Kolmogorov Complexity, where we judge the complexity of algorithms or objects based on the smallest instruction set necessary to recreate them.

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