contact@onbelief.orgChanging Our Beliefs
As Life Changes So Should Our Ideas
We are born, we learn, we mature, we reproduce, we age and ultimately we forget and are forgotten. Collectively we induce great change in the world. These dynamics of living makes a constancy of philosophy even during an individual life time seem inappropriate. Would we legitimately expect, for example a grandmother of 60 to have the same perspective on life as the teenage girl she once was? If she were to hold a constancy of of perspective we could legitimately question why this should be the case.
Perhaps a more compelling reason for having an ever changing philosophy is that the 'knowledge base' which we have available to describe the world is constantly expanding and enriching through systematic study and research and at the same time being pruned of obsolete ideas.
In addition present day science teaches us that we appear to live in an ever changing universe shaped by a myriad of random biological and non-biological evolutionary processes. Stars are born randomly and die. The continental plates drift around over the surface of the earth. The atmosphere is subject to many forms of climate change. The fossil record shows the appearance and disappearance of many species. Molecular biology teaches us that we as individuals are merely a transient collection of genes that will never be reproduced again in a natural fashion. Change is engrained into our physical existence.
If our fate is to live in a world of inconstancy we should embrace and accommodate change rather than cling to concepts of immutable permanently descriptive truth as inherited from our long dead ancestors and formative thinkers of the past. An overriding challenge for those who look at the world analytically is to discover how the strengths of past ideas can be productively elaborated upon whilst leaving behind that which is now less useful in the light of new observations.
There is a very long tradition of thought that focuses on the importance of belief revision. More than two and half thousand years ago it became obvious to people of different cultures that is productive to consider the importance of change
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you"
Heraclitus of Ephesus (540 BC - 480 BC)"Searching to find stability in a shifting world is the wrong way"
Derived from part of the Second Noble Truth of Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha, ca. 563 - ca. 483 BC (see source)The thesis set out on these pages is that our philosophy should be dynamic in character that our belief systems should be malleable.
Changing Our Ideas can be a Pleasure
In order to be become questioning believers we do not have to abandon all beliefs, merely be happy to revise them. I neither see a questioning way of thinking as burdensome nor a psychological challenge to our sense of well-being. Indeed I view it as the opposite. It is a genuine pleasure in life and a personal liberation. If we learn the appropriate strategies our questioning can become productive rather than excessively nihilistic. I view unwillingness to change our beliefs as one recipe for dissatisfaction with life and cultural stagnation.
For the professional belief reviser such as the structural engineer (see remarks of a correspondent) or the research scientist the development of revised or new beliefs systems can also be a real pleasure. Clearly it would be foolish to operate under the slogan 'belief change is fun' for there will be times when such change is associated with unpleasant disturbances of mood, however on balance it is to be welcomed at an emotional level in part because of the feeling of progress that accompanies new intellectual discoveries.
Cultures of Belief
Our beliefs are important for they strongly influence our sense of well being and our actions in the world. Scientific beliefs shape the way we see the world and the way we develop technology. Political beliefs affect our welfare. Legal beliefs help to make our societies function in the way that they do. Moral beliefs influence the way we treat others. Religious beliefs, in the widest sense, strongly influence our view of our origins, our deaths and the nature of reality as well as having a strong social influence.
In spite of the fact that some of these culturally important belief sets are more observationally based than others, diverse sub-cultures of very strongly held belief seem to have become endemic to our civilisation. The long existence of belief systems suggest that we are, as a species, belief-dependant or to use a modern metaphor 'belief junkies'. It seems we could not survive as very inquisitive highly social animals without belief.In apposition to the sub-cultures of social belief that have developed we have seen the rise of Natural Philosophy, or science, which seeks to produce a predictive and utilitarian view of the physical world based on repeatable observation. The theoretical ideas of science should also be considered as a belief system for like any system of law, politics and religion they are not fixed but develop in the light of new observations. The coexistence of science and other belief systems seems to be necessary because science does not inform us about the validity of our social and moral state or about how we should lead our lives and relate to others. Indeed the lack of moral basis to science should be the concern of all scientists, philosophers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, military officers and religious thinkers. Nevertheless the explanatory and predictive power of science and its technologies is life changing and the methodology of science is clearly productive. So there exists the possibility that the scientific methods of today and their associated philosophies can also be used to inform and challenge the way we arrive at conclusions in domains of thought that were once largely determined by religion or the dictate of monarchs.
I, like many others, contend that we should become a civilisation of questioning thinkers rather than unquestioning believers. Scientific and analytical philosophical methods show us the advantage of learning to modify beliefs in the light of observation and the value in making new observations.
A Questioning Attitude
Some have said to me that humans need something to believe in. I will leave that for the reader to decide. I argue however that belief is not an all or none phenomenon in many senses. Even if you choose to adhere to a belief in the 'truth' of a particular scientific, religious or political approach it is still legitimate to apply a questioning attitude to other domains of thinking. You could for example be a Buddhist and question the causes of climate warming. Alternatively you might be a atmospheric physicist who questions the utility of Buddhism or a Muslim who, while accepting the value of evolutionary ideas, questions scientific or religious ideas about the origins of life. It is useful to believe but is it not more legitimate to question?
On the Nature of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
Copyright 2007 onwards
