Do people "choose" their beliefs?

Questions about Objectivism
1

Years ago I used to “believe” in Rynd style objectivism, but left it behind just as I left Christianity behind before I “got Objectivism.” What I’ve learned through the years is that, to a great extent, people don’t “choose” their beliefs. It’s not like one day someone gets out of bed and thinks out of the clear blue sky, “Golly, I think I’ll be irrational and be a Christian.”

The mistake “believers” of all stripes make is that they don’t realize that we don’t have nearly as much control over how we think about the world as they would like to think. We don’t choose our culture, the language we will think in (and hence the concepts that are expressable in that language), the family we are born into and the influences it imposes on us long before we are able to understand . . . and the list goes on and on and on . . not least of all the incredible flow of chance events that exposes us to myriads of ideas and experiences we don’t choose to be exposed to. We only have control within the range that is left to us after all of these formative and controlling influences have done their work.

Here’s an analogy. Put someone in a room. Choose the design of the room, the furnishings and objects in the room, the lighting in the room, what other people in the room will do, etc. To what extent can they claim control over their activities in the room when you have determined the very possibilities. Life and genetics does the same thing to us. Just as the person in the room only has choice within the context of the room, so we only have control or choice within the context of our genetic predisposition and the backgrounds of our lives.

Consider Objectivism. Objectivists pride themselves in being logical, just as Lutheran’s pride themselves on being moral, and artists pride themselves on being creative. But it is a fact of life that we are born with genetic predispositions. Some people are good at math, by their very genetic constitution. Others will never, ever be good at math, no matter how hard they try. Some are naturally good at art. Not only are there genetic predispositions regarding what we are naturally good at, but the same goes for what we enjoy. Some people (like people who frequent internet forums) enjoy intellectual sparring, other’s not - and these are not things we have a lot of control over. I couldn’t choose to be interested in knitting or accounting theory if I wanted! Being logical, or rational if you like, is similar. There is no doubt a great deal of genetic predisposition involved.

I often see in posts in these forums, expressed implicitly or explicitly, that people choose to be irrational. There is little, if any room given for people to simply be who they are genetically, and that, to a great extent, we are the result of our backgrounds. Again, I’m not saying we have no control, or that we’re totally determined by genetics or background, but rather that we are not nearly as free to choose our interests, predispositions, beliefs, etc. as some would like to believe.

My questions -

  1. Do you believe we freely “choose” to be rational/irrational (obviously it’s a matter of degree), or are some of us, at least to some extent, naturally predisposed to having an interest and ability in being rational, as some are naturally interested and predisposed to being good at math, art, or social ability?
  2. If your answer is “No, we don’t freely choose to be rational,” how can we blame irrational people for being irrational?

(Notice that I’m not saying that we should like that irrational people are irrational, that we shouldn’t do anything to try and help them be more rational, or to prevent irrational people from screwing things up. It’s a question about the nature of human personality.)

2

Do you believe we freely “choose” to be rational/irrational (obviously it’s a matter of degree), or are some of us, at least to some extent, naturally predisposed to having an interest and ability in being rational, as some are naturally interested and predisposed to being good at math, art, or social ability?

I do think people choose to focus or not, which is the fundamental choice which “determines” all the others. The choice to be rational is not enacted like this: “I will be rational” it is enacted by the choice to consider an issue thoroughly or not. Considering throughly, or “giving attention to” is thinking. The basic act of choice is to choose to think or not, thinking will lead you to rationality, to logic, to proof, etc. Non-thinking will lead you to contradiction, and the willful acceptance of those contradictions.

No matter what a person’s environment (barring perpetual torture since birth or another extreme scenario) they still possess the ability to choose not to focus on it, or to consider it thoroughly and come to conclusions. Rationality is not “agreeing with Ayn Rand about politics, or ethics, etc.” Rationality is the constant excercise of one’s own ability to think, to think about one’s environment, not in spite of it.

3

About all that I can add to that is that we freely choose to focus, or not. However, I don’t believe that all people have equal mental abilities, and I don’t think that everybody has the same talent at focusing and stay focused. Some people simply are dumb. Whether this is always because of bad up-bringing and choices in early life, or perhaps sometimes because of genetic factors (apart from pathological brain problems), we can’t say philosophically, or scientifically. I think that if there is a genetic factor, it’s nowhere as significant as the choice and experience factor, e.g. being brought up to just accept and never doubt the bible or your parents will lead to long-term problems – that is, non-thinking. But even if you are slow at thinking and have to work at it, all people have the capacity to focus.

4

…I’ve learned through the years is that, to a great extent, people don’t “choose” their beliefs.

This is not true. By your own admission, learning is fiction. You just think you learned all this stuff. You’re just fooling yourself that you’re drawing all these conclusions and so on. Even if you do not have innate ideas, would it not follow that your whole post is nothing but a mechanically produced reproduction of what your brain simply had to produce, based on it’s structure. Surely nobody here could choose to agree with you if they have no choice. So why post at all? Do you think people have some type of choice in whether to agree of not? If so, what type of choice do they have?

5

Here’s an analogy. Put someone in a room. Choose the design of the room, the furnishings and objects in the room, the lighting in the room, what other people in the room will do, etc. To what extent can they claim control over their activities in the room when you have determined the very possibilities. Life and genetics does the same thing to us. Just as the person in the room only has choice within the context of the room, so we only have control or choice within the context of our genetic predisposition and the backgrounds of our lives.

Sure, in a room there are things you can’t do e.g. drag race, play football, build a spaceship. But these are specific, verifiable limitations. They are quite different from nebulous and unsubstantiated claims that something about the room prevents you from being e.g. violent, friendly, or rational.

Do you believe we freely “choose” to be rational/irrational

It may take different amounts of time for two people to realize an argument is correct/incorrect, but once it is realized to be, say, incorrect, that’s where rational/irrational comes in. A man isn’t irrational simply because he mistakenly believes an incorrect argument to be correct. He’s irrational when he knows X is incorrect and intentionally acts on the premise that X is correct.

As for the question, yes. I believe we (when knowing something is incorrect) freely choose to treat it as correct/incorrect.

Welcome to the forum.

6

There is little, if any room given for people to simply be who they are genetically, and that, to a great extent, we are the result of our backgrounds. Again, I’m not saying we have no control, or that we’re totally determined by genetics or background, but rather that we are not nearly as free to choose our interests, predispositions, beliefs, etc. as some would like to believe.

First of all, I should say that I am not sure whether or not my position on this subject is in line with Objectivism or not, because I never read anything that explains the concept of free will very thoroughly, beyond saying that we have one. And I agree: we have one: we have a mechanism which is fully supported by physical operation of the brain, which is entirely constructed by genes and influence of environment: nothing more.

I would go a step further beyond what you said in this quote, and say that there is nothing but genetics and environment that shapes one’s mind.

But this statement is not as sensational as it appears on first glance: genetics are the blueprint to construct a machine which has the ability to learn and choose, make decisions, shift focus, and all the actions that you know you are capable of doing.

Every man has the ability to choose, learn, decide, focus, etc’ because that is the nature of man, and that is what our brains allow us to perform.

I have never heard of any human born with a brain defect that caused him to loose the ability to learn or to make decisions. When we will, then it would be the time to start thinking how the law should treat beings with no free will (but with all the physical aspects of a human).

But as far as I can see: EVERY human has the ability to consider ideas, make choices, choose to focus or not to focus: we are born with the mechanism, and in my opinion, the mechanism is fully controlled by genes and is influenced by environment - it is known that the brain changes it’s structure in response to stimuli from the environment.

Even if you do not have innate ideas, would it not follow that your whole post is nothing but a mechanically produced reproduction of what your brain simply had to produce, based on it’s structure.

Yes it is.

Surely nobody here could choose to agree with you if they have no choice.

I agree with him, and even more than agree. and I chose it after considering his ideas. I don’t see a contradiction between determinism and free will, perhaps your concept of “free will” is different than mine.

7

My questions -

[*]Do you believe we freely “choose” to be rational/irrational (obviously it’s a matter of degree), or are some of us, at least to some extent, naturally predisposed to having an interest and ability in being rational, as some are naturally interested and predisposed to being good at math, art, or social ability?

As the others have said, I believe that the choice to think or not is the basic choice, and that it is a choice. But to address your specific question–I think that a person who knows what it means to be rational can make the principled choice to be rational, and I think that is what most rational people do. I think in most cases, irrational people do not make the principled choice to be irrational, but rather fail to make the principled choice to be rational. This leads them to be rational in some cases, and irrational in others.

There are some who attempt to make the principled choice to be irrational, such as the German Romanticists and Irrationalists of the 19th century, and their modern followers. But life requires some rationality, even if you believe that Will or Instinct or something else supersedes reason.

8

This conversation reminds me of a book I read, I’m okay, You’re Okay by Thomas Harris (not the horror writer…). What he said is that there are three parts of the brain, the parent, the child and the adult. The parent is things you heard from you’re parents at a young age. The child is emotions, also from a young age. The adult is rational, and its job is to sort out truth from falshood from the child and parent. It also collects new information and integrates it. The adult frame of mind is rational. Many people never use the adult portion and simply run off of the other two areas. Those people are irrational. He said that it is possible to change how you think, but it requires constant effort at first.

I agree with his ideas. While the irrational don’t necessarily “choose” their values, they simply never grow up, and never improve. I suppose it can be said that they make their choice to be irrational by not making the choice to change… <_<

9

I agree with him, and even more than agree.

What exactly is the idea with which you agree?

Of course people are affected by their genetics. Of course a physical change in the brain can bring on all sorts of behavior. And… of course we are able to exercise our minds in a way that we term “free will”. There’s a pretty good summary article in a recent edition of “The Economist” (December 23rd, 2006), titled “Free to Choose”. It starts thus:

IN THE late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?

The fact that friction exists does not make movement impossible.

10

What exactly is the idea with which you agree?

I didn’t write that long post for decoration you know. I laid out a summary of my position in it, and I quoted what it is that I agree with:

There is little, if any room given for people to simply be who they are genetically, and that, to a great extent, we are the result of our backgrounds. Again, I’m not saying we have no control, or that we’re totally determined by genetics or background, but rather that we are not nearly as free to choose our interests, predispositions, beliefs, etc. as some would like to believe.

But please read my last post to see the correction to this, and my full view.

Of course people are affected by their genetics. Of course a physical change in the brain can bring on all sorts of behavior.

Again, I said it all in my post: I think that people are not merely affected by their genes, but that one’s genetics + environment (throughout one’s life) determine the content of one’s mind and body - there are no other basic factors. Yet I think that this does not contradict free will, as I explained.

It would be like saying that the content of a computer depends on it’s hardware, and it’s environment. Sure it would be easier to describe some of the changes in terms of software, but still, in order for any change of content to occur, some physical change must occur too, and physical changes can only be caused by physical factors.

Hour is kinda late, hope this was clear.

11

I didn’t write that long post for decoration you know.

:slight_smile: Just checking if that was all you agreed with, or whether you also agreed with the original poster’s implication that he couldn’t help believing in Christianity, couldn’t help switching to Objectivism and couldn’t help moving on.

Of course we form ideas using some mechanism of our bodies, based on observations and experience. So, our thoughts depend on our experiences and our natures, if one uses “nature” very broadly to mean “what we are”. To the extent that free-will is part of our nature, that too determines what we think and who we are. Maybe not though… what do you mean by “free will”?

12

I think what Ifat is saying is that a person can only choose from the alternatives that he knows are available to him. If that’s what she’s saying, I agree.

And it has implications for how I judge people.

Not knowing about things leads to honest errors.

Alternatives can be made unavailable by force, or by brain damage. They are also made unavailable by one’s nature as a human being (you can’t choose to sprout wings and fly) or even by one’s particular nature, such as your genetic makeup. However, apart from actual birth defects, I think a person’s genetics, as they vary from one human to another, are far less limiting than many people think.

Deliberate evil consists of knowing there is a better choice, and passing it up.

If the evidence suggests, inconclusively, that there may be a better choice, and you pass up an opportunity to investigate it, I would call that a vice. However, it is a matter of degree – the stronger the evidence, the worse of a vice it is not to investigate it.

You may be wondering if circumstances might arise where I might say that an ignorant murderer, catching only the glimpse of the idea that an honest life might be possible, has a “vice” of this kind. Sure he does! But I must explain that this does not give him a free pass. There are two ways to judge people, and a person has to use both.

The first is to judge them by their actions: their actions are either dangerous or they’re not. And on that basis, a murderer is a murderer, so who cares about what he’s thinking, you’ve got to protect yourself.

The second is to judge their minds, which can tell you whether their future actions might be harmful. This is what it means to judge someone’s character. Since a person’s thoughts cannot be observed directly, it is necessary to infer the thoughts from their speech and actions, including how they respond to criticism, especially when that criticism is accompanied by facts.

Inference in general is subject to the possibility of error, and the stakes are high when a person’s character is judged, and sometimes the emotions run high, too, which is why this form of judgment has a bad reputation. It is so easy to get it wrong! However, inference in general can be gotten right, with certainty, if it’s done properly – and if one did not make this sort of judgment, one would find people completely unpredictable.

That’s why it’s so important to use reason as carefully and scrupulously as possible in these cases.

But some people are also guilty of not distinguishing the two forms of judgment, and discarding both. That is really dangerous.

I use both, and I tend to use the first hastily, but I generally don’t condemn people’s character until the evidence really piles up.

This means if someone has the “wrong” beliefs, I have to act accordingly (which means expecting them to act according to their beliefs and then planning to protect myself and my values, as necessary, from that action), regardless of how they arrived at their beliefs. But there are a lot of reasons why a person might hold wrong beliefs. Does he choose their beliefs? Of course. But what were his options? How did he weigh them and why? Those are the questions I must answer before I can condemn the person morally.

(My apologies for the length of this post. I’m making up for years of not posting anything.)

13

(My apologies for the length of this post. I’m making up for years of not posting anything.)

Great post, Necro, you should do it more often!

I think what Ifat is saying is that a person _ can only choose _ from the alternatives that he knows are available to him. If that’s what she’s saying, I agree. (emphasis added)

The two highlighted parts show the interplay of self/nature/choice on the one hand and environment on the other. I would agree with this too.

However, the underlying question about free-will and determinism is this: does one really make a choice in any sense of the term? After all, the argument goes, the choices that one makes are determined by previous thinking and observation; and those, in turn, by more basic thinking and observations… until one comes to a stage of such simple thinking, that the real determinants at the beginning must be something in one’s brain (genetics, wiring, etc.). The argument, then, is that we have a choice in a sense, but in another sense the choice is already determined by who we already are, what we think, and so on.

14

What is the significance of these questions on freewill and determinism? If you come to a conclusion that one or the other is right, will that change at all how you approach situations in your life? Wont you still try to make the best possible decisions?

15

(Oops, made a silly mistake in my post. I was writing “Do they choose their beliefs,” using the indefinite plural, and then I decided to change it to “he,” and apparently missed some spots.) :slight_smile:

16

What is the significance of these questions on freewill and determinism? If you come to a conclusion that one or the other is right, will that change at all how you approach situations in your life? Wont you still try to make the best possible decisions?

It is a very important question as the wrong answer undercuts all of ethics. If someone is not free to choose otherwise in any particular circumstance, then they do not control their own fate. If you have no choice, then nothing is significant.

17

It is a very important question as the wrong answer undercuts all of ethics. If someone is not free to choose otherwise in any particular circumstance, then they do not control their own fate. If you have no choice, then nothing is significant.

People who think human thoughts and actions are determinant would still try to “choose”, they would just think they are automatic responses the brain makes instead of voluntary ones. So, in effect, they would still be trying to “choose” the best decisions.

18

People who think human thoughts and actions are determinant would still try to “choose”, they would just think they are automatic responses the brain makes instead of voluntary ones. So, in effect, they would still be trying to “choose” the best decisions.

In actuality they would because reality demands coherence with it to some extent. Functionally, the problem becomes that you can’t say something is good or bad, when you accept determinism. No passing of value judgements. So defense of freewill is important to objectivism as a philosophy. In day to day life it isn’t a big deal as long as you don’t try to live by determinism.

19

People who think human thoughts and actions are determinant would still try to “choose”, they would just think they are automatic responses the brain makes instead of voluntary ones. So, in effect, they would still be trying to “choose” the best decisions.

It is true that a person can’t make his own free will go away merely by denying that it exists.

However, a person who claims that he has no free will can thereby rationalize away his responsibility for his choices. He can act on his emotions rather than reasoning things out; he can drift out of focus, and then say that he couldn’t help it because he has no free will, he is the hostage of his emotions, which in turn were the product of his environment, his genes, etc.

That’s why it’s important for a person to recognize that he does have free will; this recognition on his part is the first step he must take in order to take charge of his own mind.

20

We don’t choose our culture, the language we will think in (and hence the concepts that are expressable in that language), the family we are born into and the influences it imposes on us long before we are able to understand . . . and the list goes on and on and on . . not least of all the incredible flow of chance events that exposes us to myriads of ideas and experiences we don’t choose to be exposed to. We only have control within the range that is left to us after all of these formative and controlling influences have done their work.

It may not be single word to single word but all concepts are expressable in every language.

You are right, before humans are mature enough to think for themselves, they are already exposed to a myriad of ideas and experiences, the content of which they have little or no control over. But then comes the adulthood and mental maturity and with it the ability to choose your own ideas and beliefs. People come from many different backgrounds, some are more lucky than others, but everybody has a choice to ether continue with what they have been taught without question or to analyze what they have learned and to look for alternatives. One does not need to know specifically what other alternatives exist out there - they only need to have a desire, an interest to find them out.

Just as the person in the room only has choice within the context of the room, so we only have control or choice within the context of our genetic predisposition and the backgrounds of our lives.

As already mentioned, by others, the genetic predisposition is a very small factor. Yes, not every choice will be available to every person as we do differ in ability (one reason socialism is so unjust of a concept) but at each level of intelectual ability there is a multitude of choices available. Most importantly, at each level of intelectual ablity, a person has a choice to take pride in their work, to apply themselves and be great at what they do or to slack and become mediocre at it. Morally it does not matter if one works as a janitor or a lawer, instead, how one approaches one’s work is what matters.

When it comes to the background of our lives… well we are living in the era of informational revolution. Unless you live in the country such as Iran, you have an access not only to “one room” but the whole world. Before that there were libraries. If one is searching for knowledge - one will find it.

But it is a fact of life that we are born with genetic predispositions. Some people are good at math, by their very genetic constitution. Others will never, ever be good at math, no matter how hard they try.

The question to ask here is: For what purpose? No everybody needs to be good at higher math for the purposes of their life. Everybody (short of mental retardation cases) can grasp basic math, enough to manage their life.

Some are naturally good at art.

I would call it predisposition to be good at art (or music) - being good still requires work.

Not everybody needs to be an artist. Not everybody wants to be an artist ether.

Not only are there genetic predispositions regarding what we are naturally good at…

Many, many things we can learn and become good at. You have taken an example of artistic predisposition and made it into a rule.

but the same goes for what we enjoy.

Where is the proof for that? I share genetic material with my parents and grandparents yet the things we enjoy doing are very different.

Some people (like people who frequent internet forums) enjoy intellectual sparring, other’s not - and these are not things we have a lot of control over. I couldn’t choose to be interested in knitting or accounting theory if I wanted!

People choose to be interested in things they consider valuable in the context of their life. You do not see value in knitting thus you have no interest in it. If you did, you would find yourself interested in learning it and would be able to learn it.

Being logical, or rational if you like, is similar. There is no doubt a great deal of genetic predisposition involved.

No doubt? 100% irrational human would not be able to survive so every living person is rational if only to the degree that allows them to maintain their life.