I think there’s always been something misleading about the connection between knowledge and belief. In the sense that you’re updating a model of the world, yes, “belief” is an ok way of describing what you’re updating. But in the sense of “belief” as trust, that’s misleading. Whether one trusts one’s model or not is irrelevant to its truth or falsity, so any sort of investment one way or another is a side-issue.
IOW, knowledge is not a modification of a psychological state, it’s the actual, objective status of an “aperiodic crystal” (sequences of marks, sounds, etc) as filtered via public habits of use (“interpretation” in more of the mathematical sense) to be representational. IOW there are 3 components, the sequence of scratches, the way the sequence of scratches is used (usually involving interaction with the world, implicitly predicting the world will react a certain way conditional upon certain actions), and the way the world is. None of those involve belief.
So don’t worry about belief. Take things lightly. Except on relatively rare mission-critical occasions, you don’t need to know, and as Feynman typically wisely pointed out, it’s ok not to know.
That thing of lurching from believing in one thing as the greatest thing since sliced bread, to another, I’m familiar with, but at some point, you start to see that emotional roller-coaster as unnecessary.
So it’s not gullibility, but lability (labileness?) that’s the key. Like the old Zen master story “Is that so?”:-
“The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parent went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.
“After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbours and everything else he needed. A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth—the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back. Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”
I think there’s always been something misleading about the connection between knowledge and belief. In the sense that you’re updating a model of the world, yes, “belief” is an ok way of describing what you’re updating. But in the sense of “belief” as trust, that’s misleading. Whether one trusts one’s model or not is irrelevant to its truth or falsity, so any sort of investment one way or another is a side-issue.
IOW, knowledge is not a modification of a psychological state, it’s the actual, objective status of an “aperiodic crystal” (sequences of marks, sounds, etc) as filtered via public habits of use (“interpretation” in more of the mathematical sense) to be representational. IOW there are 3 components, the sequence of scratches, the way the sequence of scratches is used (usually involving interaction with the world, implicitly predicting the world will react a certain way conditional upon certain actions), and the way the world is. None of those involve belief.
So don’t worry about belief. Take things lightly. Except on relatively rare mission-critical occasions, you don’t need to know, and as Feynman typically wisely pointed out, it’s ok not to know.
That thing of lurching from believing in one thing as the greatest thing since sliced bread, to another, I’m familiar with, but at some point, you start to see that emotional roller-coaster as unnecessary.
So it’s not gullibility, but lability (labileness?) that’s the key. Like the old Zen master story “Is that so?”:-
“The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parent went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.
“After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbours and everything else he needed. A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth—the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back. Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”