Can you make yourself believe something?

Great Debates
1

In this thread, Revtim wrote:

Allow me to argue the contrary position.

It seems to me that it is possible to consciously make yourself believe something you didn’t believe before, without the need for evidence.

Five years ago, I attended a free “sales pitch” seminar for a particular company’s system of “Irrevocable Complex Pure Trusts” – trust documents which they claimed were similar to those that had secretly been used by “the rich” for centuries. Supposedly, by giving them $9500 to create a system of Pure Trusts for me, I would make all my records immune to subpoena, make all my assets immune to lawsuits, and never pay a dime in income taxes again. (!) Obviously, such a scheme sounds like it’s too good to be true, and there were a million suspicious things said in the sales pitch that I should have checked out with a lawyer before I forked over any money to them. So why did I just jump in and swallow their hook without checking them out beforehand?

Simple. I wanted what they were telling me to be true.

I wanted to not have to pay income taxes again. I wanted to be able to thumb my nose at anyone who threatened me with a lawsuit. I wanted to believe that there were all sorts of freedoms that all Americans had but which we’d all been tricked into believing didn’t exist. And if I just believed in their Pure Trust system hard enough, it would make all those other wonderful consequences magically become true. (They didn’t. I discuss what’s wrong with their system here, if you’re interested.) I embraced all the little scraps of evidence which seemed to lend legitimacy to their system of Pure Trusts, and blatantly ignored any evidence that contradicted it. For a while, that is, until the people who sold me these Pure Trusts were no longer able or willing to answer the tough questions I was asking them.

And this wasn’t the first time I’d believed in something because I wanted it to be true. Before I fell for that Pure Trust scam, I was also a True Believer in orgone energy and the other alleged discoveries of Wilhelm Reich, again not because its evidential basis was so overwhelming, but because I wanted them to be real, and because if Reich was right it would behoove me and the rest of humanity to believe. (I have a bunch of webpages about what’s wrong with Wilhelm Reich now, too.)
But if I could fall for such transparently problematic and suspicious things, and others could fall (and have fallen) for such things too, I wondered: how many others have believed in a thing not because they had good personal evidence for it, but because they wanted to believe in it, because if it were true they’d get all sorts of goodies out of it? How many people believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft, for example, not because there’s solid evidence for it but because it would be “really neat” if it were true?

And could you convince yourself, could you “trick” yourself, into believing in something you’d like to believe in, without having to resort to Orwellian double-think? I say, yes, you could – and maybe you already have.

2

It seems to me that just about all belief is a natural human condition, and very much about language. Its key elements are emotional investment, and repetition of narrative descriptions of the belief. Also, avoiding contrary narratives–listening to them, sometimes, but especially avoiding speaking them oneself. (This is, I think, pretty much the reason why most debates come down to sides talking at each other, refusing to see any merit in the other, and mischaracterizing what was said. I suspect this is pretty much just a reflexive and unconscious part of human consciousness.)

Most of the time, people do all that just sort of accidentally. It can definitely be done deliberately–and I think that’s recognized. How often do you hear evangelical believers in Christianity urging others to invite Christ into their hearts? A motto of Buddhism is “come and see”–i.e., do the practices and see what happens. I suspect most religions have similar things–it’s a recognition that people can make themselves believe things when they put emotional repetition into them.

3

Hmmm … the whole “avoiding contrary narratives” thing would explain the commandment in Deuteronomy 13:6-11, which ordains that people who want you to worship gods other than Yahweh must be executed without hearing them out. (Kind of a severe, legally sanctioned equivalent of, “I’m not listening! La la la la la!”)

I wonder how many people have made themselves believe that the person they’re dating is far more wonderful than (s)he actually is, because of the benefits of such a belief or the consequences of not believing it. :wink:

4

You have a good point there tracer, I hadn’t really thought about the emotional factor of people believing something because they want to believe (damn my vulcan blood!). But, since people don’t really choose what they want to believe, it still is largely beyond their control. Like the evidence that supports a belief, the desire for a belief is either there or not, and not the choice of the person who might believe.

5

Bad relationships–especially the kind that some unfortunate folks repeat over and over, the stereotypical person with self-esteem problems who may get out of one abusive relationship only to move right into another f’r’instance–are really good examples of willed belief. Even if it’s uncontrolled willed belief. Er, if that makes any sense at all.

Most people think “belief” and they think religion, of course. That may be a bigger kind of belief, and the bigger they are, the harder to just will into. Another strained parallel to language acquisition–the native one is always the easiest, subsequent languages learned take far more effort as the brain loses that wonderful young plasticity. Thinking about it that way, it makes sense why “born again” types, of whatever belief system, so often seem so focused on its importance to them. You’ve got to drill with that second, third, whatever language to keep skill with it.

6

At the root, we are talking about personal intellectual honesty, are we not?

Many times I’ve found myself trying to wriggle away from a “contrary narratives.” This can apply to any subject, politics, science and religion not least among them. For me, an important part of my growth as a thinking person has been learning to recognize that queasy urge to sidestep, and quash it, so that I can face new ideas and arguments head-on and evaluate them with an open mind.

Of course, doing so requires one to be willing to say give up old beliefs, a practice which carries an awful price: one must often say I was wrong. It’s awfully hard to announce that in public, but the even great hurdle is to accept it yourself.

The reward is that you know that your beliefs have been tested, and withstood the test. When I give in to that urge to slither away from an honest argument, and fall back on my old stubborn patterns of thought and timeworn justifications, then I eventually come to feel that my intellectual edifice is constructed on foundations of sand. I know that if I find myself trying to defend my own ideas from the truth itself, rather than welcoming any and all comers to rip it to shreds, then I’m being weighed down by a weak and flabby idea, and if someone else doesn’t tear it down for me, then I ought to do the job myself! If your position can take a full frontal assault–or, even better, if you let your enemies into the gate and serve them a gracious meal on your finest china–and they walk away, leaving your fortress intact, or even modified by the thinking of your opponent to be even stronger, then that’s the real intellectual victory.

I don’t mean to sound too pompous in this post . . . I know that I’m still stuck with a few sacred elephants housed in straw huts. :wink:

If you “want” to believe something, then, yes, you’ll give in to that tendency to shy away from honest inquiry. However, I think that’s quite a different kettle of fish from sitting down and saying, without any prior inclination, “Today I will begin believing X,” which is what it would take (not to drag religion per se back into the argument) for an atheist to decide okay, fine, there really is a god.

I can see an atheist being lead to that belief through some combination of, oh, I don’t know, personal tragedy, unexplainable, seemingly-miraculous events, near-death experience, friendship with a very charismatic believer, a radical change in philosophy or worldview (which would have to have its own antecedants), or something like that, and being less intellectually rigourous about the belief than they would otherwise, because of mitigating circumstances. But I think it would take something more than simply willing one’s self to believe, a la Pascal’s Wager.

7

Good points all. I’m not saying anyone can choose beliefs by saying “Okay, I’ll believe this now!” and snapping their fingers–no more than soeone can say “Okay, I’m going to know ancient Greek now!” and learn a new language just by snapping their fingers. It’s just do-able, not guaranteed but do-able, with the longer-term application of will.

Or so it seems to me. Individual brains undobutedly have different capacities for learning new languages–some people can be polyglots if they put the effort into it, others have to settle for just being bilingual–and have to work at that or lose it–and others still probably literally can’t ever become truly bilingual. With truly big beliefs, that involve the committment of a great deal of emotional energy and identity, that’s probably a similar situation.

Hmm. That was an awful long time to reach the conclusion “it depends.” Sort of unsatisfactory, ain’t it.

8

Revtim wrote:

At least as far as religious belief goes, it is my not-so-humble opinion that emotions are all. I know of no one who became an adherent of a particular religion because (s)he got to the end of a long axiomatic proof in his/her geometry or symbolic logic class, and said, “Hmm! And therefore, God does exist. Well, what do you know!” People usually become religious because they were brought up in a religious household, or because they had some personal experience where they felt a presence they were sure was God, or because they were in distress or depression and a religious person or group came up to them and offered just what they needed to make them feel better.

True, but the desire to believe something does not necessarily mean that you’ll actually decide to believe it. You might have a stronger desire to stay away from such beliefs because you’ve got a nitpicking conscience that won’t let you smooth over the problem-spots within the belief, or you might have gotten burned by believing similar things in the past and are more wary now. (Or, like me, you might have gotten burned and realized it was because you wanted to believe that you let yourself get burned in the first place, and so now you’re suspicious of anything you “want” to believe.)

9

Drastic, wouldn’t avoiding contrary narratives be perhaps a clinical explanation of “denial”. We are sometimes unable to distinguish between thoughts and feelings, what we want to be true and what is actually true. Our belief structures are based on a combination of thought, emotions, behavior, and evidence.
It is kind of disturbing to me, how we can sometimes believe in concepts wholeheartedly, and be just dead wrong. I think someone else posted a link about cognitive dissonance http://www.afirstlook.com/archive/cogdiss.cfm?source=archther in another thread. Very interesting.

10

Not only is the desire for a belief either there or not, and not the choice of the person in question, but accepting a proposition because I desire it to be true is not the same as honestly believing it to be true. It’s a kind of self-deception, which I take to be different from true belief. As Bob Dobbs says, you can pull the wool over your own eyes.

There are many things I want to be true, but can’t believe. I once wanted to believe in Christianity, tried with all my heart until I was about 30. Accepted it on faith, and announced to myself and others that I believed. And yet, deep inside, I was always aware that it could be just a story that has snowballed over the centuries and become a religion. When I felt that doubt inside, I would squelch it. I considered it a sin even to consider that the stories might not be true, and wouldn’t even allow myself to entertain the thought.

But gradually, over the years, the thought that it might not be true just naturally developed, without my actively working on it. It started to seem not only possible, but very likely. Finally, I had to admit it to myself: I just don’t believe it. And I’ve been a much happier person since, with a lot more “inner peace.” I think this comes from finally being honest with myself about what I believe.

Your desire to believe in the Pure Trust scheme, or in Reich’s orgone energy, could be called belief, I suppose. But I think we need a different word for that kind of belief. It isn’t true belief in the sense that I’m using the word. It’s more like self-deception, or faith. Maybe we could call it acceptance–but I don’t need to consciously accept what I believe to be true. I accept it spontaneously. I can be wrong, but when the evidence shows me that I am, my belief changes automatically, not because I make a choice. Yes, you can trick yourself into believing something you’d like to believe in. But that isn’t belief, or at least, there is another kind of belief that is more honest.

(I don’t claim that all faith is self-deception. I have faith in my wife, even knowing that I could be all wrong about her, but my faith is based on several years of evidence.)

Maybe it’s just semantics, but I say that I do not and cannot choose what I believe. I could not choose to believe something that I honestly don’t think is true. I honestly believe in gravity; I see it in action all the time. No matter how hard I try, I can’t believe that my pencil won’t fall if it rolls to the edge of the desk.

I’ll concede that we can fool ourselves sometimes. Will you concede that there is a fundamental difference between what we make ourselves believe and what we honestly, spontaneously believe?

11
  1. The Kinsey Institute is in Bloomington.
  2. Bloomington is in Indiana.
    Con. The Kinsey Institute is in Indiana.

C’mon, I dare you. If you can choose what to believe, then believe 1 and 2, but not the conclusion. Don’t play tricks, it’s the same Bloomington, “in” refers to spatial relation. If you believe 1 and 2, that implies that you believe in spatial relation and the existence of the subject matter of those sentences. So can you really believe those premises but NOT the conclusion?

Well…you could. If you didn’t know any basic logical rules, perhaps the conclusion would elude you. The extent to which people appear to be “choosing” their beliefs has alot to do with how their individual mind has been influenced by its prior experiences. Some people give great weight to argument from authority. To that person’s mind, the personal testimony of a respected figure might be weighted more heavily. Still, that only works when facts are in dispute…and those people aren’t really “choosing” which facts to weigh more.

On a more metaphysical note, the neurons in our brain are limited by the same laws of physics that stones, candles, aluminum cans, and spiffy new convertibles are. They can only do what they must as defined by those laws, just as the stone can only fall precisely where it must by those same laws. It’s a causal universe, after all. That you really “choose” anything is doubtful, even when it pertains to your own mind.

If your mind determines that belief in a certain thing is desirable, it might ignore certain things to get there. This is a simple survival mechanism. That’s not “choice”, that’s biology.

12

I don’t know if it’s really possible to make yourself believe something you already don’t believe in, a la the atheist-believing-in-God scenario Podkayne mentioned. But I think it is possible to make yourself believe something when the evidence is inconclusive either way; we do that all the time.

An example from my imagination: Say you’re a salesperson working in a store, minding your own business, and you happen to turn your head and see this gorgeous girl (or guy, whatever) standing there who, it seems to you, averts her eyes the moment she realizes you’re looking at her. This person is very attractive and you hear that little voice inside your brain telling you to go talk to her, but you aren’t sure whether she was interested in you or you were just imagining it. You don’t want to go make a fool out of yourself, but you don’t want to pass up this opportunity either if she really was interested. Somewhere about this point, some courage wells up in you, you become convinced that in fact she really was casting eyes your way, and you go up and talk to her, and whatever happens happens.

In a situation like that, where you have nothing to go on but a vague impression, I think it’s possible (and in fact likely) that you make up your own beliefs based on what you want, and that it’s possible to fully believe them. Imagine you go up to her (or him) and get shot down, but as you walk away you’re thinking to yourself “I could have sworn she was looking at me. Oh well, I guess I could have been wrong. Yeah, I was probably wrong.” and go on thinking that. Haven’t you just convinced yourself again, and again on evidence that didn’t lead necessarily to that conclusion (after all, she could have just been shy and lied to you)?

(Boy, I’m sure nobody can tell that something like this has ever gone through my mind before…)

It’s probably not possible to convince yourself to honestly believe something contrary to what you take to be a fact, but there’s a lot of situations where, given enough wiggle room, you could convince yourself of something other than what the facts would seem to suggest.

For another example, suppose you were agnostic, but really wanted to believe in God. You might not be able to just convince yourself in one fell motion that God exists, but by dwelling on uncertain aspects of the arguments against God you could build confidence in the possibility of His existence. Follow that road far enough and you might be able to find a back door into belief; you might be encouraged toward that end by arguments like Pascal’s Wager.

13

Just an addendum: that’s not to say that following that line of thinking necessarily means you’re convincing yourself of a lie; you might sometimes come by the truth other than by “full frontal assault.”

14

With the understanding that “precisely” means within known quantum-mechanical limitations. If you know the falling stone’s momentum really really really accurately, your knowledge of where it is will be uncertain, to the tune of (position uncertainty) = h / (momentum uncertainty). (Where h = 6.626 x 10[sup]-34[/sup] Joule second.)

Sort of.

15

Well, gosh, Tracer, why do you assume that it’s only us religious folks who are choosing to believe what they want to believe?

Sure, there are plenty of religious folks living what they consider virtuous lives, in the hope that there’ll be a reward in Heaven for what they do here on Earth. There are also loads of atheists leading what those religious folks would consider sinful lives. Those atheists hope there WON’T be an afterlife in which they’ll be punished for what they do here on Earth.

So, in a sense, the “virtuous” Christian and the “sinful” atheist both have very selfish reasons for wanting to believe that traditional Christian notions of Heaven and Hell are or are not true. BOTH are engaging in wishful thinking. BOTH believe what they want to believe.

So, why pick on the Christians only?

16

Might this be related to cognitive dissonance? You have two contradictory beliefs, and try to justify to yourself the one that results in the ‘better’ outcome to reduce the psychological discomfort.

17

I don’t think you choose what to believe, per se, but you evaluate the evidence and go with what makes sense to you. That “sense” may be based on emotion, what you would like the outcome to be, facts, assumptions, or what have you. I think it is difficult for most people to stretch beyond their prior experience and deal with the evidence, but I believe most people can reach that plateau, even if it takes a while.

18

Hey, cool!!! Can I use this the next time a Freshman Atheist with the Answers shows up and starts pontificating about how all belief is actually self delusion and/or ignorance fostere by the church leaders’ power structure? :smiley:

19

Huh? :confused: Most of my examples in this thread (with the notable exception of that one Deuteronomy passage) have been of secular beliefs – sales scams, UFOs, dating, etc…