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Meaning of the Word, Choice
Belief is not a Choice

Meaning of the Word, Choice

JeremyDC
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Posted 11/01/06 - 11:29 PM: Subject: Meaning of the Word, Choice	#1
The Meaning of the Word: Choice; Belief Isn’t a Choice It is hard to categorize this topic. I believe it is MOST tied to philosophy of language, and I would like a philosophy of language perspective. However, there are also philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind questions in this topic as well. Feel free to tie it to whatever category you wish. ---- I am writing this post to pose an all-out assault on the Christian concept of “belief,” and the proposition that belief is a choice. ---- Let’s define “choice” first. Choice is a function of the verb, choose; so one must consider the definition of CHOOSE first. Webster’s online dictionary gives several definitions of choose: 1 a : to select freely and after consideration 1 : to make a selection 2: a preference (I reject this definition because it is not analagous to the usage with regard to belief. To prefer to believe in God is entirely different than choosing to believe in God.) Defining a choice as a selection is a tautology, as select and choose mean essentially the same thing. Nothing is gained from such a definition. Bottom line: the dictionary is useless in this discussion of defining choice in the context of the argument “Belief is a choice.” In order to understand what “to choose” actually means, we need to think philosophically. Thus, I propose that the best way to define “choose” is to determine what properties a “choice” has. ---- 1. The first property that I considered was a sense of immediacy. That is, most choices, if not all, have the property that one can make a “choice” immediately or may immediately make the choice in the future. There is no other function dependent on choice -- a person can “choose” at some point in time; now or in the future, immediately. Example: I may choose to eat at McDonald’s restaurant or Burger King restaurant. I may do so now or in the future, but when I make the choice, I take an action and do it. 2. Choice requires an action of some sort. It is not enough to “choose in your mind,” you actually have to do something, and the act of doing that thing IS the choice. Example: When I choose to eat at McDonald’s restaurant, I have to actually go there and order a meal. My act of choosing in my mind means absolutely nothing unless I go to McDonald’s and eat there. I can’t “choose to eat at McDonald’s” and simply stay at home. Then I “chose” to stay home. Choices are actions, not mental processes. 3. Choices do not require reasons in that they can be selected at random. I can flip a coin to make a choice to go to one restaurant or another. 4. Choices can be made by someone else for another person. (So long as that person allows the other person to make the choice for them and act according to that choice.) ----- If you have any other properties of a choice, please share them with me. ----- Now, I think it is pertinent to show how belief is not in the realm of choice. 1. Immediacy. There is no way to choose to believe immediately. I cannot choose Jesus Christ as my personal savior nor choose to believe in God immediately. I had a discussion with a friend on this issue, and he rejected my analysis. He said, “If you read some books or went to church, you could change your mind and thus choose to believe.” My refutation of this argument was marked by the fact that I was not making a choice to be an atheist. The books I’m reading, my reasoning skills, and my experiences effectively change my mind for me deterministically. I can choose to read books and go to church, but my believing has nothing to do with simply choosing to believe. I must be genuinely persuaded either by arguments or personal experience to believe. Thus, whatever “I” am, “I” am not choosing anything. This problem raises the philosophy of mind problem. How do we define what “I” am? Is it my brain? If my brain is persuaded by reasons to believe something, am “I” choosing to believe? Or is my brain deterministically influenced to believe? I think the latter is valid. To summarize, belief is not an immediate snap of the fingers now or ever. It is a process. It requires deliberation. Thus, believing something is not similar to choosing what restaurant to eat at. 2. Believing something requires no action, therefore it is not a choice. This may be a difficult concept to grasp. You may say, “But Jeremy, if I choose to believe in God, I conduct such actions as going to church and praying. Surely those are actions that have to do with choice!” But this is not a valid argument. The actions of going to church or praying are SEQUENTIAL actions that follow AFTER you believe. Believing is the reason you go to church or even a reason that would INFLUENCE you to go to church. But the action itself is the choice, not the believing. Mental processes are not actions in the physical world. Choosing to go to church is an action, but believing is not an action. Thus, even further, choices require things outside the human mind to be affected in some way and some action has to result from the choice. One might also argue, “A depressed mental patient may choose to work on his mind to be less depressed. That has nothing to do with the outside world!” This is flawed, however. One can’t choose to be happy either. Mental states cannot be chosen. Therefore, you can do certain mental exercises or activities to try to be happy, but once again, you cannot IMMEDIATELY change mental states by pure free will. 3. Beliefs cannot be decided by the flip of a coin, hence they cannot be chosen. Beliefs require mental reasoning whereas choices DO NOT, necessarily. Most choices do require reasons, but they do not necessarily require them. Doesn’t it sound ridiculous to say, “I chose to believe in God on the flip of a coin. It said heads, so I believe in God. If it was tails, I’d be an atheist.” 4. Whereas choices can be made by one person for another, beliefs cannot be. I cannot allow my parents to choose a belief for me; even if I may be greatly affected by what they would like me to believe. Consider this, “My parents choose my beliefs for me. I believe whatever they choose.” ---- I think the most powerful argument against entangling choice and belief can be summed up with this sentence: Mental states cannot be chosen and belief is a mental state. Mental states ultimately require changes in the brain. (I am a monist on the philosophy mind question.) Mental states depend on the physical structure and processes in the brain. Mental states differ in synaptic connections, neurochemicals, and electrical processing within the synapses. NO ONE can choose how to prune his or her synaptic connections, can choose what neurochemicals exist proportionally in the brain, or can choose the electrical processing patterns going on in his or her mind. This is beyond the scope of choice. Belief is one of these processes in the brain, therefore, BELIEFS CANNOT BE CHOSEN. --- After this explanation, I can scarcely see how any theist can honestly and validly defend the proposition that belief is a choice. I often hear wild theological arguments or quotes from scripture, but elevation to philosophy of language or philosophy of the mind seems completely foreign to such discussions by theists. Theology has NO power or place in this discussion. It is a philosophy of language and philosophy of mind question. I apologize if I sound pompous or arrogant in my rejection of this as a question in the scope of theology or my accusation that theists do not focus any attention to these realms. If one is here to defend such a proposition, I am willing to hear any arguments from a philosophy of language or mind perspective. (Forgive me if what God said in the Bible about belief is not persuasive.) --- Ultimately, if one can show that belief is not a choice, Christianity is dealt a death blow. Christianity is based on this assumption! It is ethically and logically preposterous for God to punish individuals for involuntary mental states. The “justice” for sending non-believers to hell is based on the idea that non-believers have a choice to believe but do not. (Just as murderers have a choice not to murder but murder anyway.) All other sins are voluntary ACTIONS except the state of non-belief. That's just it. Sins must be actions and they must be chosen. Belief is a mental state, not an action; therefore it cannot be chosen. This is a HUGE part of Christianity, if not the crux of it. Thus, it logically follows that if belief is not a choice, Christianity is completely false. --Jeremy Edited by JeremyDC on 11/01/06 - 11:39 PM

The Milk Oracle
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Posted 11/02/06 - 02:30 AM:	#2
I'm not really interested in defending the Theist's position, but for the sake of argument, I have to say that many of the things you mention sound rather implausible to me. Eventually, my argument is an argument of language: I say that choice and belief, as used in language and understood by most people, don't really are as you depict them. If you object to this kind of argument, saying that you are not interested in what most people think these words are, but in a precise philosophical definitions of these terms, then I'd simply retort that if your precise philosophical definitions are so narrow as to exclude the usage and understanding of these terms by most people, then that precision comes at too great a prize, at least in regards to your goal, which is to convert a good many people who use language themselves and feel competent in doing so (namely the Christian community). In other words, the argument turns out to be an argument about what we believe words mean. Anyway, here goes (italics are supposed to be paraphrases of your premises/arguments): (1) Choice is immediate, belief isn't. > Implausible. Some choices require intense reasoning and are made over a long period of time. Some beliefs, on the other hand, come to us instantly. For example: the belief that my girlfriend is pretty hot came to me quite instantly the first time I saw her. You may object that that isn't a belief; fair enough. Well, I'm sure it's easy to find a guy who believes in God and who asserts that this belief came to him instantly, like a revelation. These things happen. For example, the belief in a good cause or God or Aliens might be inspired instantly by the experience of a tragic incident, or a dream -- all of which are quite immediate. (2) The action itself is the choice. > Implausible. First, your wording is imprecise. If the action itself really was the choice, the choice would lose an essential trait (which you don't mention), namely that a choice is always between two items. Basically, I just caution you in your phrasing. The action is only the chosen and not the choosing. One is the result, the other the process. So what you really want to say, methinks, is that every choice, in order to be a choice, must have some (physical) manifestation following the choice. (3) Every choice needs a (physical) manifestation of that choice. > Implausible. If I choose to be a good person (or is that a belief in your opinion?) and it so happens that I fail to put that into action (say, because everything's already perfect in my world, or because I don't find the time to do good, or because I simply mess up every time because of bad luck), you seem to be telling me that I didn't in fact chose to be a good person -- and that I would strongly deny because I know for a fact that I chose to be a good person. What if I choose to have a glass of milk and somebody enters the room and shoots me, leaving me no time to get to the fridge and have that nice, fresh, cool sip of milk? You seem to be telling me that I never chose to have a glass of milk -- again (being dead now) I'd strongly question that. And if you answer: "Well, it's the change in the mental state that makes the choice", then you're contradicting your eventual argument against belief. (4) Belief doesn't need a physical manifestation of the belief. > Implausible to most believers, I take it. Do you really think that is a fair depiction of believers? If I believe in a Christian God and go around telling people that God doesn't exist -- in your picture, I could still believe in God. I'd say most believers would use the same argument you use for your definition of choice: they'd argue that belief is action; that believing in a Christian God without going to Church is really not to believe in a Christian God at all. Now, you would again have to say that in your definition, belief is reduced to a mental state. But with (3), now both belief and choice are mental states -- so there's again the potential that belief IS choice, and that's not what you want. You want choice to be more than a mental state, and belief to be nothing but a mental state. Both, I'd say, are implausible. (5) Choices can be made by others for you, beliefs can't. > Implausible. Choices can't be made by others. I can choose that a choice is made by others, but then the choice in question is the choice to allow others to decide for you and NOT the choice that other person is making. Similarly, I can choose to leave my choice to the flip of a coin, but we wouldn't say that the coin "chooses" or makes a decision; all the coin does is produce a chosen. There is no process of choosing involved (certainly not of MY choosing). The only choosing involved in the example is my choice to flip a coin (rather than decide myself). How about beliefs? Well, what about an atheist who has a car accident and, against all odds, survives and henceforth believes that God saved him. Didn't the car accident produce that belief for the atheist? Or couldn't we say that the atheist allowed the car accident to produce that belief in him? After all, he could have chosen a rational explanation for his survival. You may argue that a "true" atheist would never end up being a Christian after having survived a car accident; that such an atheist would really never have been an atheist at all. But again, that's implausible: I'm sure you'll find many atheists who changed their belief, and similarly you'll find many Christians who are now atheists and who'd firmly assert that at one point they were true Christians and not just atheists in disguise. But to go back to (5): How about parents? Don't they make your beliefs for you in childhood? Don't many Christians end up as Christians because, whilst children, their parents, their community, their socio-cultural environment made their belief for them? By now, you get the drift of my argument(s): Other people, because they use language themselves, will simply say to you that your definitions do not capture what they mean themselves by these terms. And even if you should convince them that the word "choice" and "belief" should be defined as you define them, they'll end up using different words for "choice" and "belief", words that do capture what they think it means, and leave you and your idiosyncratic use alone grumbling and ranting. The latter scenario is highly implausible, of course -- people always think they know what they mean by what they say. Last but not least: the necessity for Christians to think of belief as a choice. Again, I find your sketch implausible. Imagine this situation: I'd say (and would mean it!): "I choose to believe in God". Now, I don't believe in God yet; my choice is simply to set out and have an earnest desire to let myself be taken in by the Christian belief. Imagine I visit some churches, read the Bible -- I still don't believe it, but I carry on, I still choose to let people convince me, trying to find a way I can be reasoned into belief. I go on and on like that till the end of my life, dying as a non-believer. Now, you say that God would cast me into the flaming abyss of Hell-a. > Implausible. Isn't there a good chance God would meet me at Heaven's Gate and say: "Nice try, I like the fact that you're sceptical and still haven't given up on me till the end, that you chose to believe in me, even if it never came down to actually believing it!". I mean, even Jesus Christ kinda lost his faith there on the cross, didn't he? And still, God would resurrect him and all. Anyway, back to Heaven's Gate: Upon seeing God, I could finally believe in him. Voilà! Wouldn't you say that this comes very, very, very close to me being someone who chose to believe? And what's even better: I could actually, upon seeing God, choose not to believe in him, explaining that old grey-bearded loon away as some sort of post-mortem hallucination. But to choose not to believe something means to choose to believe something else -- so haven't I, no matter what belief I have in the end, chosen to believe? Anyway, hope that gave you some helpful input.
We that have done and thought, That have thought and done, Must ramble, and thin out Like milk spilt on a stone. -- W. B. Yeats

JeremyDC
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Posted 11/02/06 - 11:51 PM: Subject: Belief is caused by sensation	#3
I am going to make this very short. Very good criticism has been produced for my previous work. Hence, I choose to abandon my previous arguments in favor of a different one: The picture in your mind of a sunset is to the product of seeing a sunset with your visual system AS A belief in your mind affirming proposition X is to the product of your "convincing argument sense" sensing convincing arguments and filtering out unconvincing ones. Why or why not is this a good analogy?

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