What should we believe in?

An age old question in philosophy is 'What should we believe in?' or 'How do we determine the grounds for believing in something?What can we use as a criteria for justifying or rejecting beliefs?' This question has been debated for centuries and continues to be debated. Apart from some general idea about the important schools of thought I know very little about the nuances in this debate, so what I am about to say has probably been said a thousand times before (and refuted and defended and so on). But since I'm not aware of that I'll go right ahead.

I think the question is wrong. The mistaken assumption behind the question-in fact in the language we use in framing the question- is that we have free will. We don't. What this means is that all ' how should we' questions should actually be translated to 'how do we?' Instead of asking what we *should* do, we should (hehe) instead be trying to model how belief formation works. The better we understand belief formation the  closer we would be to clearing the confusion that question causes in us. It would take us closer to the 'answer' to that question.

 So, belief formation. Contrary to what many of us who subscribe to rationalism would claim we do not actually believe in those things whose truth has somehow or the other been proved to us. I for instance, don't believe in God but believe that the Andes Mountain exists though I haven't seen either of them. Presumably if I did go to South America I would find out that they did exist, but I  haven't and still believe in it. So how does my mind actually acquire beliefs?  

 A realistic model will of course be complicated but here's a simplistic I go about gathering experiences and in my head I try to make a pattern out of them a them - a sort of a model of the world. This happens unconsciously. If I get new information that fits with what I already know, then that information goes right in. If it doesn't, I'm doubtful. It could be that the pattern needs to be changed, or that the new information is 'bad'. How does my mind decide?  It would depend on how much of the model in my head I have to discard or modify to fit either way. If somebody told me, say, that there are bunnies in the moon, then I would be unlikely to believe him. 'Cause believing in that means letting go a lot of the picture I've built up - what supports life, how the environment on the moon is and so on. While not believing in it I only give up my assumption that my friend has not been smoking up. One could probably represent this model in terms of networks.

 This process goes on in our heads mostly without us noticing. The model here is an ideal one in the sense that the mind described looks at all new information and judges how well they fit into its existing world-picture and decides to accept or reject the information based on that basis. We can call this the 'rational model'. Many minds do not try to do this and can have inconsistent beliefs. Also minds will differ with respect to the complexity of the judgement they are capable of performing in a given time. This will generally result in different levels of 'irrational beliefs'.

The origin of this way of belief formation is I think evolutionary. The person who has made a consistent model of the world from information received would obviously be more likely to survive than a person who is unable to do so.

 The way Science evolves is I think pretty much the same as the process described above, except that now  we are talking about beliefs held by a community instead of a single individual, and the community tries to 'rational' ise the process in the above sense. That is to say, new ideas coming in can be said to be given an 'acceptance-value' based on how well it connects with or differs from other ideas. Of course different scientists will reject or embrace it with different degrees so one is speaking here of an average 'acceptance value'. For competing scientific theories, those that will connect most dots will tend to be favoured. The point here is that belief formation is science is not essentially distinct from personal belief formation, it is the distillation of the same process.

Adventures of the Insti Dog

It was a summer afternoon, and the Sun was, as they say, beating down on the Institute. It was hot even in the shade near the Institute’s reception area. Too hot, Blackie decided with some reluctance, to continue sleeping there. Cursing the Sun, she blinked a bit and looked around. She wondered if she should move a little more to the inside and try to get some more sleep, but an easy mental calculation told her that it wasn’t worth all the effort. Getting up slowly she wagged her tail a bit and looked around.

 It was lunchtime and grad students had began crawling out of their hiding places. Blackie looked as they passed her by, mostly thin spectacled men in Bermuda shorts and worn out tees. Some of them had the glazed look of those who had gone far into the depths of one of nature’s profound mysteries and found that there wasn’t a paper in it. Blackie sympathized with these kids. In fact, she had come to regards herself as one of them.

 One of the students was approaching Blackie, with an apparent intention of petting her. In no mood to socialize, Blackie looked down and pretended to be lost in thought. This trick worked and the student immediately walked away, also looking down and pretending to think. This practice of mutual looking-down-and-pretending-to-be-lost was, Blackie had observed, almost a social convention among the researchers here. She felt happy having done it right, it made her feel part of the community. But  it's not just the manners of researchers that she had adopted. Research itself interested her now.

 Once there was a time when Blackie was happy to just eat, sleep and be petted by folks. She did not ask for more from life. But her time in the Institute had just changed all that. Just eating, sleeping and being loved by random individuals is, she recently came to realize, no life for the intelligent dog. There has to be something more - pursuit of some higher goal. Something pure and beautiful.  Maybe the Mysteries of Nature.  Maybe creating abstract worlds from imagination. Research, and not  those creamy biscuits with nuts in them, should be the goal of one’s life. Blackie pitied the street dogs who spent their days just eating, mating and barking. If they only knew the beauty of Algebraic Topology, Blackie thought. Algebraic Topology was Blackie’s favorite subject. It was one of the abstruse problems of the subject that had been occupying her thoughts recently.

 Two Post-Docs came out of the entrance, speaking among themselves.
‘ .. This is my fifth post-doc… no job offers yet, no......nowadays my father's second hand furniture business seems not to be scoffed at ..'
' I just heard that my college crush just had her second divorce.  I am not getting my hopes up this time though..’
Together they looked at Blackie.
‘ Look at that dog, man. No worries in the world.’
‘ Yeah, just eating and sleeping all day long. Wish I had a life like that.’

Blackie though was vexed. She thought she had the solution to her problem, she could feel it in her head, but the it kept just out of reach. She tried again. Vague images rose in her mind and tried to fit in with each other, as in a jigsaw puzzle. And she almost had it –  the full picture with all the parts in right places –almost. Then it was gone and she was left with the jumbled pieces again. At times like this Blackie wondered if  research was much of an improvement on her previous pastime : chasing her own tail. 

And then she had an epiphany.  Just when she thought it was pointless to try anymore and given herself over to a contemplation of  the leftover bones she was going to acquire from the canteen a little later, the completed image just popped into her mind. She had got it !These are moments when you feel like telling someone all about your idea. While dancing the Tango. While smoking a cigar.

                                                                                                                             

Just then the Professor of Algebraic Topology  came out of his office and started walking towards the canteen. He had  been sleeping in his office, and had just woken up from a  bad dream. He had dreamed that he had transformed into a medu vada. Then someone put chutney on him and gave him to that black dog that stayed in the Institute, who started happily nibbling at him.   The Professor knew that when he was a little more awake, he would think of the dream as being very stupid. But at the moment he felt a strong animosity towards Dogs and medu vadas.

Here's the man who will understand me, thought Blackie, watching the Professor walk out. I would like to see a reaction on him. Bet it would blow his mind. Bet he never thought a mere dog would solve this problem that he himself could not. He caught up with the Professor and started explaining the idea to him, almost choking with excitement.

‘WOOF WOOF Woof Woof Woof. Woof Proof Woof WOOF WOOF!’

This proved to be too much for the Professor.

 ’Aaaargh! Help! This  infernal dog won't leave me alone! Guards!Take this crazy animal away from here!’

 ‘ Well there's no need to be like that just because I got there first.’  said Blackie. Pausing to give the Professor a look of mild reproach, she gracefully scampered away.