Beliefs vs. Facts

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Should humans stop having beliefs that cannot be proven? Why do humans believe things when there is not enough evidence to prove that the belief is valid? Is this a primitive brain anomaly of humans? Do beliefs help or hurt humans in the long run?

No.

Humans are irrational, and not just a little; for example experiments have established that some very very basic inferences are consistently screwed up by practically everyone's brains.

On some occasions intuition may be a more efficient mechanism for finding truth than one can consciously rationalize. Most people would do quite badly if they tried to engage in many real-time activities if the maxim of each move was consciously reasoned through.

Maybe.

Depends on the belief.

Beliefs are not digital manifestations that are either on or off. They range in a spectrum of utility and are sustained by all sorts of pragmatisms. One cannot decide to or not to believe. They must be sustained by something and those somethings vary greatly between individuals. For instance I believe I will be in existence (whatever that might mean) in the next ten minutes. I have no real basis for that but it's something I base all my actions upon.

Ahhh....

Ummm...where's the third option on the poll that involves a little of both?

The issue is what fact is and what we consider to be a fact and what isn't. I gather that fact is related to epistemology and is a proposition of truth, which would be supported by empirical evidence but also by inductive/deductive reasoning instead and when truths are considered a priori. In that regard, there can be different positions about the same issue on wether they can be the real truth or not, and well, fact can be defined to be something believed to be truth, so fact would be related to belief and I would say that philosophical skeptics and antifoundationalists would deny or question any proposition of fact and would probably see it as an equivalent of belief, although I may be wrong on this, but my own perspective seems to relate to it.

The question is, does fact=certainty or can it just be an aproximation, therefore possible of being mistaken? I mean, science does not look to claim certainty given that it recognizes that no theory is infallible.


I think beliefs are necessary for many things, probably for everything in our daily life, but well, I'm one who often see the assumed and/or proposed truths as most likely to be equivalents to beliefs and opinions.


well, I'm not sure if that can be ever possible, I think is part of our psychology to believe, or to put it better, to assume or presume a belief in things that haven't been proven or we can't prove.


well, the issue is that we are not entirely rational beings, so we often rely on emotions and intuitions and our learned experiences and given that we are not duplicates of another we don't perceive and interpret things exactly the same as well don't have the same experiences, and that would make our perspective to differ from others', so in the end everyone would have a different set of beliefs about many things.


Both I think, but I suppose it depends.

Are you willing to have no beliefs?


Well, for one, it is not possible to "prove" anything outside of mathematics. We always have to go with the best conclusion we are able to draw based on limited evidence and our imperfect interpretations of that evidence. The closer we can get, the better, but we are never to the point of knowing something as an absolute fact.


It is an adaptive mechanism to survive and function.


Help.

The name of the game is not to let or beliefs stray too far from the facts. We should have empirically grounded faith.

ruveyn

Well, some things can't (yet) be explained by science (I can't actually think of any examples, as science now explains a lot more than it used to, but I'm talking in general here), in which case people can believe what they want, because the chances are that one of those beliefs/theories will be the truth. But when such a time comes that something is scientifically proven beyond all reasonable doubt, believing otherwise is irrational.

For example, back when people didn't know about the Big Bang and everything, they came up with the Intelligent Design story because they couldn't explain it any other way. But now, we have a scientific explanation for how the earth was created. So what is to gain by stubbornly clinging to outdated ideas like a child clinging to a blanket? Nothing. Niente.

In science nothing is proved beyond a doubt. There was a time when physicists never doubted that the ether existed. Now they know better. There was a time when physicists believed that heat was a fluid. Now they know better. Our best established theories will fray at the edges when the technology develops to show phenomena that the theory does not account for property. That is how quantum theory came about.

ruveyn

That's why I said "beyond all reasonable doubt", as nothing outside of math can be completely proved.

Nothing can be prooven, including anything in maths. Every piece of knowledge we have is an assumption, belief or delusion. The word "fact" is merely used for beliefs, assumptions or delusions that prove to be useful.

I believe that all scientists, evolutionists, and creationists look at the same facts, but I think their differences of opinion, their beliefs, sometimes come from their own presuppositions that they use to interrupt these facts.

A parent, for instance, may see dirt on the carpet and think that the child had put it there; but the child may see the same dirt on the same carpet and think that the dog did it. But if the child did it, and wasn't aware that he did it, then the fact that what the child knows, or which he perceives but doesn't really know, is actually unrelated to the facts.

The child, then, who might have some bias on the matter, may be unwilling to accept the parents interpretation on how the dirt got on the carpet and come up with his own reasons that will allow him to justify that what the parent believes is incorrect.

It seems to me that facts by themselves are basically neutral unless, or until, someone starts tinkering with them.

That's what starts, and keeps, some people looking for if there is enough evidence to prove it valid.
In some other cases, with some other people, well, . . .


People would tinker with facts?
Noooo, they would surely never do that, not for money, not for agendas, not for power.

And then there's those situations where there's quite a bit of debate about what counts as 'evidence'.

I agree that is possible to intuitively know something as valid without enough material evidence so far to 'prove it'.
Now, if asked to provide factual evidence to back that up, umm . . .

In mathematics one can prove that certain propositions follow from the axioms or postulates assumed (these are theorems). That is why mathematics is the most dependable of the intellectual arts/disciplines.

ruveyn

In mathematics one can prove that certain propositions follow from the axioms or postulates assumed (these are theorems). That is why mathematics is the most dependable of the intellectual arts/disciplines.

ruveyn