You suggest that what distinguishes the beliefs commonly criticized as “belief in belief” from others is that they are voluntarily, explicitly adopted (and that this goes along with treating them in all-or-nothing fashion rather than as having degrees of assent). I think there’s a lot of truth in this. But your taxonomy of beliefs seems to be missing a category. You say:
The answer to this is that choosing to believe something is more than choosing to say it to oneself and to others. Rather, it is choosing to conform the whole of one’s life to the idea that this is true.
But a large part of the point of talking about “belief in belief” is that some people say they believe things (voluntarily, black-and-white-ly) but don’t act in ways fully consistent with believing them. For instance, some (a small minority, and I’m not intending to insinuate e.g. that most religious people are like this) profess to believe that in the very near future the Second Coming of Christ will occur, putting an end to pretty much all the institutions of present-day human society—but they aren’t taking out enormous loans that will come due after the alleged Second Coming, they are still sending their children to school, they still have pensions, etc., etc., etc. Which suggests that maybe they don’t really believe that the world as we know it is going to end in a few years, they just think they’re supposed to say they do. (Very similar things are sometimes said about singularitarians. Again, I am not claiming that they are correctly said of more than a small minority.)
In other words, the point is that someone who says “The Messiah is coming” is not
in every way acting as though this is true
and indeed this is how we might diagnose that
his internal Bayesian estimate is that [...] the evidence is strongly against this
and declare him a practitioner of “belief in belief”. Unknowns, consider the religious people in the second category you mention in your last paragraph. How do you know that they
clearly have an internal estimate which is extremely low: they are virtually certain that their religion is false
if, as you say,
in every way, externally and internally, they act and think as though it were true?
Ok, you are right that I missed the situation of people who say things but fail to live up to them in obvious ways. That is probably simply because I don’t really see this in the religious people I am most acquainted with. My guess is that if we leave out people who are actually not telling the truth about what they believe (i.e. people who are literally lying about what they hold), that happens mainly because of akrasia and other similar situations where their desires are in conflict with their explicit beliefs about what they should do, and they follow their desires instead of their belief. If this is right, it wouldn’t be necessary to make a distinct category of belief here, just as it isn’t necessary to say that I have a “belief in belief” that I should not waste so much time browsing the internet, even if I do it. The desire is a sufficient explanation without having to modify the belief.
About the people virtually certain their religion is false, I should have said “in every way under their control”. In other words it is precisely the voluntary aspects that they are choosing to conform to the belief. But there are many involuntary aspects that reveal the contrary estimate. There are also voluntary actions which are somewhat indifferent, where they could consistently do the action if the thing was true, but they might be somewhat more likely to perform that action if they held the contrary internal estimate. For example, since emotional reactions are somewhat involuntary they can manifest something about it; someone with a high internal estimate of his religion is more likely to react badly in an emotional way to someone else leaving the religion, while someone with a low internal estimate is likely to be more calm about it. Likewise, as an example of the voluntary case, if someone says “I realize there is plenty of evidence against my religion,” this is a somewhat indifferent voluntary action, since it is consistent with the religion being true, but it is more likely to be said by someone who has the low estimate.
someone with a high internal estimate of his religion is more likely to react badly in an emotional way to someone else leaving the religion, while someone with a low internal estimate is likely to be more calm about it.
I don’t think there’s reason to believe that.
If someone says something I know to be utterly false I laugh. There needs to be a basis of doubt to feel bad emotionally.
You suggest that what distinguishes the beliefs commonly criticized as “belief in belief” from others is that they are voluntarily, explicitly adopted (and that this goes along with treating them in all-or-nothing fashion rather than as having degrees of assent). I think there’s a lot of truth in this. But your taxonomy of beliefs seems to be missing a category. You say:
But a large part of the point of talking about “belief in belief” is that some people say they believe things (voluntarily, black-and-white-ly) but don’t act in ways fully consistent with believing them. For instance, some (a small minority, and I’m not intending to insinuate e.g. that most religious people are like this) profess to believe that in the very near future the Second Coming of Christ will occur, putting an end to pretty much all the institutions of present-day human society—but they aren’t taking out enormous loans that will come due after the alleged Second Coming, they are still sending their children to school, they still have pensions, etc., etc., etc. Which suggests that maybe they don’t really believe that the world as we know it is going to end in a few years, they just think they’re supposed to say they do. (Very similar things are sometimes said about singularitarians. Again, I am not claiming that they are correctly said of more than a small minority.)
In other words, the point is that someone who says “The Messiah is coming” is not
and indeed this is how we might diagnose that
and declare him a practitioner of “belief in belief”. Unknowns, consider the religious people in the second category you mention in your last paragraph. How do you know that they
if, as you say,
Ok, you are right that I missed the situation of people who say things but fail to live up to them in obvious ways. That is probably simply because I don’t really see this in the religious people I am most acquainted with. My guess is that if we leave out people who are actually not telling the truth about what they believe (i.e. people who are literally lying about what they hold), that happens mainly because of akrasia and other similar situations where their desires are in conflict with their explicit beliefs about what they should do, and they follow their desires instead of their belief. If this is right, it wouldn’t be necessary to make a distinct category of belief here, just as it isn’t necessary to say that I have a “belief in belief” that I should not waste so much time browsing the internet, even if I do it. The desire is a sufficient explanation without having to modify the belief.
About the people virtually certain their religion is false, I should have said “in every way under their control”. In other words it is precisely the voluntary aspects that they are choosing to conform to the belief. But there are many involuntary aspects that reveal the contrary estimate. There are also voluntary actions which are somewhat indifferent, where they could consistently do the action if the thing was true, but they might be somewhat more likely to perform that action if they held the contrary internal estimate. For example, since emotional reactions are somewhat involuntary they can manifest something about it; someone with a high internal estimate of his religion is more likely to react badly in an emotional way to someone else leaving the religion, while someone with a low internal estimate is likely to be more calm about it. Likewise, as an example of the voluntary case, if someone says “I realize there is plenty of evidence against my religion,” this is a somewhat indifferent voluntary action, since it is consistent with the religion being true, but it is more likely to be said by someone who has the low estimate.
I don’t think there’s reason to believe that.
If someone says something I know to be utterly false I laugh. There needs to be a basis of doubt to feel bad emotionally.
If you think your friend is going to hell for eternity, you feel bad. You don’t need to doubt.