John Searle - What is Belief?

John I believe a lot of things everything I believe I think is true but if I stop to think about it what do I mean by belief what is the nature of belief yeah well I think as you know the mind is a biological phenomenon so belief is part of the biology of the mind and you won't understand belief unless you see it in relation to other parts of the biology of the mind I have to introduce an ugly word here intentionality and that sounds like it's a fancy thing it just means the capacity by which the Mind represents objects and of Affairs so beliefs and hopes and fears and desires and love and hate and lust and discussion those are all intentional now that suggest they got something to do with intending but that's just an accident of History we got this word from the Germans and like most of our confused words in philosophy and in German intentionality doesn't sound like obos that's the word for intention so forget about the connection with intending and just think there is this capacity that the mind has to represent and it does that in a variety of ways and belief is one of the most most important uh belief and desire are kind of matching Concepts here because with belief we represent how things are or how we think they are and that has the mind to World direction of fit the mind's supposed to fit the world but with desires we represent not how we think things are but how we want them to be and that the desire has the world to mind direction of it the world is supposed to change to match the mind now how then does all of this work as a totality all these uh intentional States well I can't answer that question briefly it's too big a question but I can tell you some features beliefs are characteristically I Justified beliefs require justification in a way that desires and hunches don't and beliefs areally justified by their position within a network of other beliefs and other intentional States and above all a network that contains perception so you see uh that the dog is is in the living room and that is kind of a boring belief but you come to the belief the dog is in the living room so you have beliefs that are both related to your perceptions and also many of your beliefs are derived related to other uh beliefs uh I believe that Barack Obama is active in the government because I also believe he's president of the United States but now the remarkable thing is that with beliefs There's A peculiar rational con restraint in that the belief is not only caused by perception which is often the case but the belief is itself subject to rational assessment depending on not just what you've seen but what you've read and what you know otherwise and what seems reasonable and what evidence you have so now I have to introduce another piece of jargon the belief only exists in a big network of other beliefs and other mental States and one part of the network such as my belief we're in the United States that only makes sense in relation to the whole network I have to believe the United States is a country that it's on the surface of the Earth and so on so belief is not belief looks like it's pretty simple on the surface I got this belief I believe I'm an American but in fact it's part of a vast network of intentionality and you can really only understand it by seeing how the network works and how it's constrained by rationality and by perception are there different categories of belief such that the belief that you saw your dog in your living room or the belief that you do not believe in God yeah those are two things I'd use the word belief but one is kind of a direct perception and the other is uh kind of an analysis of reality but but I they're both beliefs yeah I think that you're right to say that we have to make a categorization of our beliefs into so so so to speak different degrees of centrality but in fact there are some of my beliefs I think it is misleading to describe as beliefs I think they are presuppositions that enable me to cope with a world do I believe that there is a real world out there independently of my representation see I'm going to get on an airplane now when I call up the airline and uh or when I get on the computer to find out is the plane on time I don't then have to ask oh and by the way does reality exist I I that's not something I can find out by even looking on the net uh because all of these activities presuppose the existence of reality so there are some beliefs I that are so fundamental that it's probably not a good idea to construe them as beliefs and I mentioned earlier that Network these are part of something in addition to the network these are what I call the background the whole system works against a background of what we take for granted we take for granted that entities are related to each other by cause and effect relation so we want to know what's the cause of cancer and it won't do to say well cancer is just one of those things it doesn't have any causes we won't accept that because our background presupposition is things need a causal explanation and the background presupposition that makes sense of true belief is the idea that there's a way that things are that's independent of how we represent how they are now some sometimes that's not the case sometimes our beliefs are so incor they're so ill formed we don't really know but for beliefs that really matter to us uh we assume that there is a reality that corresponds to the belief but that belief in that reality is not just another belief it's a presupposition of making sense of the first belief some people say that when they believe in God that that is the the most sure thing that they know many people tell well I no I think a lot of people for them the belief in God is is a kind of background presupposition they make sense of their lives only on the presupposition that there is a Divine force uh and there was a period in my life rather long time ago when I accepted something like that when I was a small child but it later on it came to see me there's no rational ground for that whatever uh it's sad that there's no rational ground for it and a lot of people think well who the hell needs a rational ground I have it on faith well okay but faith is not a reason faith is not a ground for accepting something so I I think you're absolutely right that there are a lot of people for whom a certain metaphysical Vision the existence of God or the existence of spirituality or the existence of a certain uh spiritual nature of the universe that all of those are background presuppositions of their whole being their whole mode of life but I I don't share any of that I think it's all for the I think it's almost all hot air that they don't have any ground uh for these and many of them with admit they don't have any ground but for me that's a reason for not accepting it whereas I can my acceptance that there is a world that exists in the pendently of me that seems to me not at all like the belief in God it's not specific uh to this or that view it just says if when you investigate how things are there's a way that they are that enables you to investigate but to understand the nature of belief your feeling of the reality of the external world and the person who really believes in God uh as a fundamental basic belief uh in terms of just understanding belief not understanding reality is kind of the same thing yeah no I don't think it is and I'll tell you why the belief in God presupposes the belief in an external reality because if external reality should turn out that there is a God that's a feature of external reality if it should turn out that external reality is such that there is no God that's a feature of external reality so they're not on all force with each other I know a lot of people often say that to me well you're acceptance of the real world is just like my acceptance of God now they're totally different

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 45,182

Keywords: John Searle, Closer To Truth, Belief, Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Psychology

Id: 5QaOt56cWhg

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016