We can define “belief in the afterlife” just as readily as we can define “France”. Just as we can define France as “The geographic area within these boundaries” we can define belief in the afterlife as “a mental state characterised by stating that one believes in the afterlife.” Simple as that. Either definition is arbitrary.
Nope, again.
Is someone living on Reunion living in France? Is a French citizen, with a residence in Paris, who spends 5 nights a week in London, living in France? And so on and so forth. Both France and the people who are considered to live there are arbitrary, subjective concepts. They wouldn’t exist as at all if people had no ability to define borders, and their status as residents exists only within the mind of the person doing the considering.
If I worded the question “How many people maintain lifelong residence in that part of mainland Europe defined as France” I will get a completely different answer than if I ask the question “How many people have legally occupied, at some time in the past 60 seconds, space under the control of the French government?”. Ergo the existence of residents of France are entirely in the mind, part of subjective reality liable to be changed simply by how the question is worded.
Alright, up until this post, you were couching your arguments in epistemological terms–saying that there’s a fundamental difference between how we know the population of France and how we know about people’s beliefs in the afterlife.
But in this post, you’re saying the distinction is metaphysical–you’re saying there is a fact of the matter about France’s population, and there is no fact of the matter about what people believe. (This is how I interpret you when you say that beliefs are “part of a subjective reality…”)
In fact there are some scientists and philosophers who think there is no such thing, really, as a belief–that “belief” talk is just fuzzy “folk psychology” with no correlate in physical reality. These thinkers are in the minority, but they exist and are taken seriously–so if I understand you correctly to be casting your lot with these folks, then you have good company.
But let’s be clear that you’ve apparently changed what your explicit position is in this last post.
An argument that we can’t know what people believe because we have no way of inquiring into what they believe other than asking them what they believe is fallacious in several ways. (Asking someone what they believe isn’t the only way to know what they believe–you can also watch how they act and see what beliefs those actions are consistent with, for example. And just because the only way I have to know about something is to ask someone else doesn’t mean that I can’t know it–it just means my epistemological access to the fact is mediated by someone else’s expertise. And even if a fact must be objective in the sense of accessible to everyone in theory in order to be knowable–doubtful already!–it would take a lot more argument to show that people’s belief states are not accessible to everyone in theory given the right psychological theory.)
But an argument that there is in fact no such thing as beliefs can be made–which is not to say that you’ve made it!
Belief is a latent variable . The paper in the link is by a pretty well known guy in latent variable modeling, Denny Borsboom. It’s full of discussions of the philosophy of latent variables, but the bottom line is that, to him, an epistimic difference exists between latent and observed variables. From the abstract:
In terms of measuring religious belief, these peopleseem to be on the right track.
I think I understand the point Superhal is making. For example, suppose you had everyone in class watch Star Wars and then asked them to summarize what the movie was about. You’ll find that some people can’t summarize things - they can’t grasp a work as a whole. Their “summary” will just be a synopsis.
An example of a summary: “Star Wars is a science fiction movie about a guy named Luke Skywalker. He’s from an obscure planet and he wants to see the universe. He finds some robots that tell him about a princess named Leia who is being held captive by a guy named Darth Vader on a giant space station called the Death Star. Luke joins together with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, and Chewbacca to go rescue Leia. They rescue Leia from the Death Star but Obi-Wan is killed by Darth Vader. Luke then joins the rebel goup that Leia belongs to and helps them destroy the Death Star.”
An example of a synopsis: “Star Wars starts with a ship capturing another ship. A princess named Leia is on the ship that gets captured and she gives a message to a robot. A guy named Dath Vaader is on the capturing ship and he takes Leia priosner. The robot and this other robot escape to this planet. On the planet a guy named Luke Skywalker buys the robots and finds the message. Luke talks to a guy named Obi-Wan Kenobi and while he’s doing that his family is killed. Luke, Obi-Wan, and the robots go to this town and meet Han Solo and Chewbacca who have a starship. Leia is being held prisoner on a giant space station called the Death Star and they use the laser on the Death Star to blow up her home planet. Luke and the rest of them fly to where the Death Star is and get captured. Luke, Han, and Chewbacca find Leia and get trapped in a garbage compactor but they escpae. Obi-Wan fights with Darth Vader and gets killed. The rest of them fly to another planet. Luke decides to join the rebels but Han and Chewbacca are going to leave. The Death Star arrives and is going to blow up the rebel planet. Luke and a bunch of other guys attack the Death Star but most of the other guys are killed. Han comes back and helps Luke… Luke attackes the Death Star again and blows it up. Everybody gets a medal.”
And this example is just indicative of a larger issue. As I said, some people cannot grasp the whole of a subject. You can teach them the various theories and procedures and they may learn them but they won’t put it all together in their mind.
Superhal, I don’t recall seeing in your posts how old your students are. Knowing this may help us with some perspective about what’s going on in your classroom. (sorry if you did and I missed it)
One of my first instincts it that these are high school students who are not taking your class seriously. It kind of sounds like an elective that is known among the students as an easy grade. Their reactions of “I don’t know,” or “I don’t remember,” were the answers I remember students giving in classes where the teacher graded easy because the subject matter of the class was so - subjective. This made accurate testing difficult for the teacher and grades easy for students who were remotely creative. Those teachers were usually known as pushovers, and in a college prep high school where a 69% was a failing grade, those teachers didn’t last long.
I’m not trying to be insulting in any way, it’s just a gut WAG, my first instinct after reading the thread. If these are ESL students or adult learners, then I got nuthin.
Participation grades are controversial. I’m not a fan of them myself. You should be assessing the student’s learning. If he learns without participating, that’s fine, IMO (as long as he’s not being destructive of others’ learning).
Objectivity in assessment of participation is also a big problem.