Belief through proof, or proof of beliefs?

During my time wandering the forrums here on ATS. Ive noticed two different classes of posters if you like..

Those who have theorys and then set out to prove them.

Those who have studied proof/evidence and then formed a belief.

They may sound very similar but theres a distict difference. If you understand what i mean you'll see it in peoples posts.

Which would you say you are?
What do you think it tells us about peoples charcter or psychological make up?

I supose i better kick off with myself.

I had a ghostly experience that made me believe in ghosts. I thought i was a belief through proof person, untill i realised that i had no proof and i was actualy searching for evidence that supported my experience. Which puts me in the studie of proof/evidence that will form my belief.

This to me says im very unsure and hesitant to believe in things because despite having the experiences i've had. They still are'nt enough and so just left me with more questions that i aim to answer.

I cant help wonder if whether, i just took what happened as proof and carried on. I might have done battle with the sceptics and been more close minded in general about the subject. I find myself constantly asking myself whether i believe or not.

Is this just me being unconfident or overly cautious?

Anybody feel the same, and what group do you belong to?

reply to post by KrypticCriminal


I belong to neither actually. I stand with Socrates when he says that the only knowing is that you know nothing *paraphrasing*. I mean, we can't even prove that us and the world did not suddenly blink into existance 5 seconds ago with a past that never happend or that we truly "exist" at all.

reply to post by KrypticCriminal


A skeptical mind is a healthy mind. When no empirical evidence is available, 'belief' is merely a proxy for faith. The second someone makes up their mind about what it is that they have experienced, the mind becomes closed. Faith is for the closed minded individual. An open mind also entertains the option that they may be wrong in their perceptions or thinking.

IRM

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


Surely you must hold some beliefs, if you thought like that all the time then you would never belief, or make your mind up about anything.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
reply to post by KrypticCriminal

 

A skeptical mind is a healthy mind. When no empirical evidence is available, 'belief' is merely a proxy for faith. The second someone makes up their mind about what it is that they have experienced, the mind becomes closed. Faith is for the closed minded individual. An open mind also entertains the option that they may be wrong in their perceptions or thinking.

IRM

Yeah, i never thought about it like that, but at what point do you stop being skeptical and become paranoid or in denial. I think i might be over skeptical at times if you like.

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled." — The Kybalion.

Two sides of your brain. Logic (Proof) and emotion (belief).

The modern world conditions us to pick one but that is not natural.

I would ask if proof is simply a belief in socially accepted facts.

reply to post by zroth


Interesting question. Maybe its not myself that im trying to prove things to, but other people so they'll accept what i say is the truth. Pandering to social codes or expectations.

I believe that im right deep down but i also leave room for the fact that i might not be. So maybe im being totaly natural about my aproach to things.

Thanks for your reply..

I remember that I was forced to accept the possibility that I was dead wrong concerning two issues that were - to that moment - central to my own view of reality. One was the government's official conspiracy theory of the 9/11 attacks, and the other was the historical validity of the narrative that Jesus actually existed as a human being on planet Earth. Both reconsiderations, and eventual adjustments, of my view of reality were caused by people that I did not like, did not respect, and still don't like or respect. In truth, I still resent that I have had to come to the conclusion that I simply can't embrace these two "truths" as being self-evident, but I know that we can't insist on our own reality if we want to be able to discern what's real and not real.

I guess I'm a "belief through proof" person. Most of what I know to be true is stuff that I wish could be different.

reply to post by NorEaster


Thats a very good point. Your willing to believe something even if its harder to do so. Ive had instances of that when ive been posting on this site. There was a sudden realisation that i was letting my arrogance and personal views of the person involved get in the way of what was true. But at least i, and you had the humility to accept this truth in the end. Some seem to just disregard or try to shift the focus from anything that challenges thier beliefs.

Thanks.

If you really want to go to the depth of this, you'll never be bored the rest for your life. There are innumerable books, perspectives and opinions on the subject.

Personally I've had experiences similar to yours, and I'm also critical to draw too farreaching conclusions from them.

On the other hand, we do seem to relate to 'ordinary' life with some confidence of its 'reality'. Maybe just because we're used to it, while a shaman would consider non-corporeal entities as 'normal' and consider them such as we consider traffic-lights.

At a motivational/explanatory level, I have for years been using the same model as Robert Anton Wilson: We live with relative realities, which may contain smaller or greater amounts of 'truth' (as compared to an ultimative, possibly imaginary, truth). Such 'local truths' can be quite functional in their own localities, but useless outside.

An example: Most people probably believe, that what we experience as physical matter through the sense of tactile touch is, well...matter. It isn't. It's the reprocial repulsion of the outer shells of electrons in atoms. In other words electromagnetic fields. Matter is, insofar matter exists, the quarks at the center of atoms, and our only sensory experience of them lies in the gravity of 'mass'.

So in 'normal' life we can function very well, believing in sensory 'matter', while a physicist wouldn't get anywhere on such notions.

I'll try to get down to earth. There are ways and means to evaluate such experiences as you and I've had. Mind you, not definitive methods, nor definitive conclusions. Only enough to form a map of relative reality.

I try to avoid letting a potential megalomania get the better of me by playing 'guru', but should you be interested, I have 45 years of interest in metaphysics behind me, so I can give a few suggestions, if you want.

A very Interesting Topic. "Belief through Proof,or proof of Beliefs".

Since English is not my native language, its quite hard to find the right words to express my thoughts, but i will try to do my best.

In my opinion there are 3 categories of posters.

The first category are those persons who have accepted some "Facts", and stay firm to those "Facts" no matter what.

The Second Category are those persons who have accepted some "Facts"stay firm, but they are always searching for new " Facts".

The Third category are those persons that still searching for "facts", in order to verify the "facts" that they already known.

For my self i belong to the second category, as I am always eager to learn some new " Facts".

reply to post by bogomil


Wow

I never expected anyone to go so deep in to it, but im glad you did.

I guess what your saying is, peoples perception of what they deem to be true, or a fact, is relative to their perception of whats real or within the boundries of the reality they've accepted.

Its funny because i sometimes get the feeling that within certain fields such as quantum physics or quantum mechanics. You can pretty much prove anything to be true, if your willing to search hard enough for evidence.
Im not sure whether its because matter at that level is hard to understand and quantify or whether matter at that level has the power or flexability to do or be whatever you want.

Im by no means even, at novice level on the subject but, to me atoms appear like pixels. They ensure that whatever your perception of reality is. Remains painted, the way you expect or comprehend it to be. Almost as though they have the power to be whatever you want, you only have to believe it.

Im not sure whether i would be able to prove this if i set out to do so. Simply because i believe it to be the truth.

My heads hurting already just thinking about it.

reply to post by Seed76


Hi

Your english is probaly better than mine at times, so no worries.



The first category are those persons who have accepted some "Facts", and stay firm to those "Facts" no matter what.

In my experince these tend to be trouble on threads. They've got a limited knowlege of a subject and they hold firm to what they have found out. I cant understand why they refuse to take other things on board though. They usualy just argue with you and miss the point of what your trying to say. Even when your agreeing with them.

The Second Category are those persons who have accepted some "Facts"stay firm, but they are always searching for new " Facts".

This probably describes most people on forrums. They enter them with thier belifs and are only interested in expanding on those beliefs. In my experience they generaly enjoy a good debate but are rarely open to new ideas.

The Third category are those persons that still searching for "facts", in order to verify the "facts" that they already known

This ones basicly the same as the third i think. If i was to add another category to your list it would be those who know nothing about anything in particular and are just curious. People like this are interesting because often they give impartial points of view that can often force you to question your beliefs, or at least look harder at them in order to make them understand it better. Then eventually they join one of the above groups.

Fresh meat

Only joking, i know i will come across as sounding judgmental but im just putting it the way that i see it. Nobody needs to agree. Although aparently some like yourself do.

Thanks.

Originally posted by bogomil

At a motivational/explanatory level, I have for years been using the same model as Robert Anton Wilson: We live with relative realities, which may contain smaller or greater amounts of 'truth' (as compared to an ultimative, possibly imaginary, truth). Such 'local truths' can be quite functional in their own localities, but useless outside.

An example: Most people probably believe, that what we experience as physical matter through the sense of tactile touch is, well...matter. It isn't. It's the reprocial repulsion of the outer shells of electrons in atoms. In other words electromagnetic fields. Matter is, insofar matter exists, the quarks at the center of atoms, and our only sensory experience of them lies in the gravity of 'mass'.

The percentages involving the solidity of mass is somewhere in the neighborhood of 99.9999% space between constantly moving bits of this and that, with those bits containing the same percentages as internal solidity. Of course, physicists can only guess at the internal nature of quarks and such. No one really has the capacity to determine the smallest possible unit of matter, since the indivisible unit has not been established.

Then you have to allow for the potential of other forms of unitary existence that have collected to form other types of matter that we, as carbon-centric molecular wholes, have no ability to perceive. Well, I suppose you could completely reject the possibility of such a potential, but how responsible would such a rejection be? After all, even our own invisible atmosphere consists of a uniform slurry of molecular particles (oxygen, hydrogen, for example) that we push aside as we wander about from here to there. We'd be pretty casual about the pursuit of reality if we patently dismissed the possibility of other forms of molecular, or even non-molecular, physical existence after learning what we have about those forms that hide in plain sight.

What amazes me is that as we exist from instant to instant, our corporeal structures change constantly (atoms and sub-atomic elements shifting, spinning and changing relative position) and never align back to any previous configuration in any sense at all. This means that we, as corporeal beings, cease to exist from split instant to split instant, only to emerge as holistically transformed organizational configurations immediately upon the obliteration of our prior selves. And we all do this at the exact same causal unit rate - which allows us to relate to one another (as well as to everything else that exists as corporeal around us) as solid and stable structures. Obviously we all share a constant and uniform rate of change, and it makes the world around us seem like it's concrete and stable.

Yeah, reality is a mind blowing thing if you really dig into it.

Hi NorEaster

my repeated respect.

You wrote:

"Then you have to allow for the potential of other forms of unitary existence that have collected to form other types of matter that we, as carbon-centric molecular wholes, have no ability to perceive. Well, I suppose you could completely reject the possibility of such a potential, but how responsible would such a rejection be?"

Quite the contrary, I most likely agree with you. I'm slowly trying to go in the direction of 'unitary existence' (sentient complexity?) even beyond particle manifestation. Presently I'm working with the idea of 'intelligence' (intent) based on pure energy-manifestations; energy-fields.

As the 'others' (non-humans) are experienced as being able to pass through solids and to move spatially instantaneously, they can't be even gaseous. And while many such entities in my experience are holographic projections (or the equalent in a psi-technology: Mental projections), some are 'objects' in space and time, the same way cars, trees and humans are 'objects'.

As the vague concept 'mind' nowadays is my best candidate for a higher 'reality', I see no problems with considering 'intelligence' in an energy-field, capable of transferring information/signals, as matter-energy just are two different perspectives of 'mind'.

You wrote:

"What amazes me is that as we exist from instant to instant, our corporeal structures change constantly (atoms and sub-atomic elements shifting, spinning and changing relative position)"

I have on another thread presented my hypothesis on that: The cosmic form is somewhat separate from chaos-'reality'. When chaos pops in and out of this form (figuratively speaking), it would have to do this simultaneously synchonized for all manifested existence to change from moment to moment and be completely 'new'. If the 'popping' is spaced/timed-out separately, non-simultaneously, there would be a 'cosmic' memory created by the particles/energies in present momentary manifested existence, leaving pre-arranged 'moulds' for chaos to adapt to. So you understand, I'm not so keen on trousers of time, or individually observer-created universes. Cosmos has according to my hypothesis a certain elasticity, but tends to revert to 'historical memory'.

But at cosmic level, inside cosmic form, changes do take place due to small asymmetries between the various manifested components (remember gravity was a candidate for asymmetry some years ago). Particle/energy constellations do change, and thus also eventually leads to changes in complexities. Random mutation or evolution.

Re KrypticCriminal

thanks for your answer.

You wrote:

"I guess what your saying is, peoples perception of what they deem to be true, or a fact, is relative to their perception of whats real or within the boundries of the reality they've accepted."

Sure, perception can petrify in rigid 'reality-tunnels', where incoming signals are interpretated according to pre-arranged value-systems. But that's only half of it. Such 'reality-tunnels' also deny any access whatsoever to basic signals/information from the 'outside' which doesn't fit recognized patterns of the 'reality-tunnel'.

E.g. non-corporeal entities are just everywhere in abundance. A standard westerner, imprinted with 'scientism' values, would already at the incoming level of signals/information about such non-corporeal entities, automatically shut down the perception system, so the information wouldn't reach as far as the level of awareness. In a way such information would be repelled at the earliest state of recieving it. Allegorically being blind and deaf.

reply to post by KrypticCriminal

The first category are those persons who have accepted some "Facts", and stay firm to those "Facts" no matter what.

In my experince these tend to be trouble on threads. They've got a limited knowlege of a subject and they hold firm to what they have found out. I cant understand why they refuse to take other things on board though. They usualy just argue with you and miss the point of what your trying to say. Even when your agreeing with them.

They refuse to accept other views, cause they are afraid that a certain "Fact" that they know maybe or could be wrong. So they just blocking and keep repeating the same things over and over. This is what i call "Frozen" Mind.

The Second Category are those persons who have accepted some "Facts"stay firm, but they are always searching for new " Facts".

This probably describes most people on forrums. They enter them with thier belifs and are only interested in expanding on those beliefs. In my experience they generaly enjoy a good debate but are rarely open to new ideas.

I will agree with you to that. But in my experience they are open to new ideas, but they are skeptical and that is what i call a "Healthy" mind.

The Third category are those persons that still searching for "facts", in order to verify the "facts" that they already known

This ones basicly the same as the third i think. If i was to add another category to your list it would be those who know nothing about anything in particular and are just curious. People like this are interesting because often they give impartial points of view that can often force you to question your beliefs, or at least look harder at them in order to make them understand it better. Then eventually they join one of the above groups.

By all means feel free to add that category. Certainly there are people that knows nothing about some "Facts", either because they are not interested or because they had at some point a discussion about a "Fact", and they did not knew what to say. So they are just searching for answers and sometimes they do question your " Facts".

At some point yes, they will probably join one of the above groups. But that its entirely up to them in what category they wanna be.

After all the whole life, from beginning till the end, is a process of learning.

Fresh meat

Only joking, i know i will come across as sounding judgmental but im just putting it the way that i see it. Nobody needs to agree. Although aparently some like yourself do.

Thanks. .

I do not think that you will come judgmental. After all there is the "Freedom of Speech". We are just having a discussion.^^

reply to post by KrypticCriminal


Oh I was talking about "knowing". That word, in my opinion, is little more than a nice semantic loophole used as a safety blanket to provide false certainty. I "know" only that I don't really "know" anything.

I mean think about it, all those quaint little myths and etc we all laugh at now and call the people who believed them primitive or ignorant. They believed those things and would argue like we do now about physics and etc. What makes us any different? Sure we think we have a sound basis, but so did they.

Sorry bit of a tangent.

Originally posted by bogomil
Hi NorEaster

my repeated respect.

You wrote:

"Then you have to allow for the potential of other forms of unitary existence that have collected to form other types of matter that we, as carbon-centric molecular wholes, have no ability to perceive. Well, I suppose you could completely reject the possibility of such a potential, but how responsible would such a rejection be?"

Quite the contrary, I most likely agree with you. I'm slowly trying to go in the direction of 'unitary existence' (sentient complexity?) even beyond particle manifestation. Presently I'm working with the idea of 'intelligence' (intent) based on pure energy-manifestations; energy-fields.

As the 'others' (non-humans) are experienced as being able to pass through solids and to move spatially instantaneously, they can't be even gaseous. And while many such entities in my experience are holographic projections (or the equalent in a psi-technology: Mental projections), some are 'objects' in space and time, the same way cars, trees and humans are 'objects'.

As the vague concept 'mind' nowadays is my best candidate for a higher 'reality', I see no problems with considering 'intelligence' in an energy-field, capable of transferring information/signals, as matter-energy just are two different perspectives of 'mind'.

I agree on the notion of non-molecular intelligent existence, but I have a slightly different take on the physical nature of that existence. We, who are inherently corporeal in our foundational references, seem to need the non-molecular to have some form of recognizable mass as substance, and if none is available, we will do logical backflips to install one that we can lean on. This notion of energy fields is - in my own thought concerning this tendency - a way that the "mystical" (the kind of stuff attributed to "mind") can be properly catagorized as ralatable to the world of matter and material substance. To be honest, "energy" has become a catch-all in the same way that supernatural used to be, and neither fills the requirement of what has been empirically obvious to human beings for thousands of years.

Information is actually the best candidate for the unit-level indivisible basis of what we've all been trying to understand, and once we've allowed for the possibility that information - like so much else that we know to exist - has a variety of existential forms of manifestation, the world of possibilities opens up like a flower in the sun.

You wrote:

"What amazes me is that as we exist from instant to instant, our corporeal structures change constantly (atoms and sub-atomic elements shifting, spinning and changing relative position)"

I have on another thread presented my hypothesis on that: The cosmic form is somewhat separate from chaos-'reality'. When chaos pops in and out of this form (figuratively speaking), it would have to do this simultaneously synchonized for all manifested existence to change from moment to moment and be completely 'new'. If the 'popping' is spaced/timed-out separately, non-simultaneously, there would be a 'cosmic' memory created by the particles/energies in present momentary manifested existence, leaving pre-arranged 'moulds' for chaos to adapt to. So you understand, I'm not so keen on trousers of time, or individually observer-created universes. Cosmos has according to my hypothesis a certain elasticity, but tends to revert to 'historical memory'.

But at cosmic level, inside cosmic form, changes do take place due to small asymmetries between the various manifested components (remember gravity was a candidate for asymmetry some years ago). Particle/energy constellations do change, and thus also eventually leads to changes in complexities. Random mutation or evolution.

edit on 23-10-2010 by bogomil because: spelling

Concerning these things that pop in and out again; unless they have tracking units on them, I'm going to assume that they are not popping out and then back in, but are things popping out, and other things popping in. These things would be extremely primitive and short-lived organized chains of activity that exist long enough to be noticed before failing as organized events. Like a pool ball rolling across the table to a stop as compared to the event of the entire game that the ball's movement was a part of. These gatherings and dispersions of unit-level activity are examples of extremely primitive levels of organized activity. We - you and I - are examples of extremely sophisticated levels of organized activity. The observing of such a thing requires the translation of what's been observed to be as accurate as the observation itself. Activity and information, as always, in symbiosis with success as the result. Sometimes, it takes stepping back even further to discover the patterns that always exist in physical existence.

In the larger sense of progressive causation, nothing ever returns to an original configuration. Nothing. It changes at what I call "The Causal Unit Rate", and information comes into existence - either by the fact (reflecting the change that has occurred, and as it occurs) or by generated burst (reflecting the reaction of the affected brain to its own internal and/or externally triggered changes) - at this same unit rate. This synchronicity stabilizes the entire relationship between event, impact, observation and contextual direction, allowing it all to appear structurally motionless, as higher layers of causal progression and associated information response carry on like wheels rolling across the surface of a road. Even then, the observing mind is being generated at the unit rate of change so that the motion is smooth and the hitches between one unit of change and the next are invisible. Like the frames of a motion picture passing before the lightbulb of the projector. All in sync and seamless to the viewer.

All that information gathers and sets precedence, with the successes repeated and the failures stored as informational "cautionary tales". Yes, this is oversimplified, but the idea of information as existing in a physical form, with structurable units in direct response to the structurable units of activity is not where most thinkers go when considering the existential foundations. And yet, when you dig deep enough, it's hard to go anywhere else without creating your own version of reality to explain things like redundancy and consistent structure. Hell, even the straight line that a ball rolls is difficult to properly explain - at the true basic level - without units of both causation and information that can be placed together as a definite chain of physical structure. And that's before you start puzzling out the repetitive nature of the activity that creates the ball itself.

Energy is fairly sophisticated, when you really tear into it at a sub-structural level. And when you do, you're still forced to deal with what brought it all together and stabilized it enough to become this energy.

Belief through proof. Any wacko can make all sorts of magical claims, but I won't believe until there's solid evidence, either a personal experience, or experimental or mathematical proof .