Some thoughts on the Belief-Machine

So, my noble interlocutor Jack finds the belief-machine "sinister." I agree that there would be something fishy about using the machine. The point of the idea is to pinpoint the fishiness. So, let's go.

One might say that using the machine subverts one's autonomy (or free will). But, paradoxically perhaps, sometimes "giving up control," or "letting go," is precisely what's needed to liberate ourselves from unnecessary suffering. Of course, one might say that's exactly the problem with the machine: using it is a hyperactive effort to control our own beliefs. But if we were to imagine someone who really wanted to believe something (say, an extreme pessimist who wanted to believe in the goodness of people, or just that goodness is possible...), we might think that the machine would be a quick way to relieve this problem.

A worry I have is the thought of having a belief of significance with no sense of why one believes it. One would, of course, be free to seek out reasons, but we might worry that such an inquiry would be biased from the get-go, pure confabulation. It might be thought that one's inability to adopt a particular belief on one's own is reason for thinking that one shouldn't have the belief. But the sort of beliefs I'm imagining one might have "put in" are ones that others have, and I might not understand their reasons, but trust their judgment, and so think I should believe that way, too, even though I can't bring myself to do it.

Certainly there are things about which I should trust others more than myself, and I might think of my failure to do so as a failure of character. Now, you might say that the problem with the belief-machine in that case is that it addresses a symptom rather than the "disease": it "corrects" my belief, but not the character flaw, as I see it, that prevents me from believing as I think I should.

So, is that the problem: not that the machine circumvents the need to understand why one believes such-and-such, but rather that using the machine involves circumventing the problem of understanding oneself?

The Belief-Machine

Suppose there were a belief-machine that could make you believe whatever you wanted to believe. There are sometimes cases where, intellectually, we find a particular claim compelling, but our "heart," as it were, isn’t in it, and thus we can’t bring ourselves to believe it. Thus, we have what William James called "a divided self." If we want to have religion, the belief-machine can give us religious conviction. If we want to believe that eating meat is wrong, we’ll really believe it. Weakness of will notwithstanding, the belief-machine would have the further effect of changing how we behave. So upon acquiring the belief that eating meat is wrong, we would have motivation to stop eating meat (like we never had before). One thing the belief-machine does not do is provide us with reasons for having these beliefs; they simply seem "natural" or "intuitive" to us. (That doesn't presumably prevent us from coming up with reasons for our beliefs later on.) My question is: would using the belief-machine be wrong? If so, why? (We say it is wrong for others to manipulate unwilling persons, but if I am willing to be manipulated, then what’s wrong with using the belief-machine?)

(Obviously, kudos to Robert Nozick for machine-type thought experiments of this sort.)

Conversions and Changing Your Mind

I've been reading about changes of mind and conversions (not just of the religious sort). My wife thinks it's all bunk (of the "distinctions without a difference sort"), but I'm not convinced. Or should I say that I haven't been converted to her view yet? There's the rub. Some of what I've read (articles by Annette Baier and Daniel Dennett) make a distinction between changes of mind and conversions, but there seem to be two different axes along which the distinction runs.

We could call one the part-whole axis: we change our minds about lots of things--plans, beliefs, etc. But changes of mind are constrained to discrete beliefs or plans, not our whole way of life or worldview, it seems. On the other hand, if I have a religious experience, give away my possessions, and dedicate myself to prayer and a life of poverty, I've converted.

This last example is one that drives my wife crazy. She says: then you've changed your mind about your whole worldview. But is that right? Conversions of this sort are so, as it were, holistic, that I don't exactly know what I changed my mind about. One could say: everything. But I don't know how to do that, even though I do have some idea what it would be to change my mind about a lot of other things. So perhaps the difference is that a lot of things still stay fixed when I change my mind--say, my overall identity. But identity seems to be the core of what changes in the case of a conversion.

The other axis is active-passive. Dennett says of Saul's conversion that Saul's mind was indeed changed but that Saul did not change it; rather, his mind was changed for him. That is, there's something passive (think of the language of submitting to God) about conversion; whereas, changing one's own mind involves a more active willing on one's part: you have to change your judgment (or plans, etc.) to change your mind. When you change your mind, you're still in charge of the change. When you're converted, something, as it were, overwhelms that control and changes you.

The distinction still seems shaky, at least in terms of the active-passive part. I might be "overwhelmed" by Singer's arguments for vegetarianism and change my mind about what I'm going to eat from now on. But I change my mind as a result of reading, and accepting, his arguments. On the other hand, I might become a vegetarian after certain experiences like visiting a slaughterhouse. Here, too, I'm "overwhelmed" but not by an explicit argument, but by my own experiences. (Of course, reading or hearing an argument is an experience, too, but what I have in mind is that that slaughterhouse experience is not as "propositional" as reading a philosophical argument.) So I'm wondering whether there might be a third distinguishing axis, roughly, propositional-experiential (or cognitive-conative (emotional)) at work here, too. Conversions can be hard to put into words. But if I change my mind about eating meat after reading Singer, I can put my reasons into words.

Maybe a simpler way to put this: if I change my mind, it makes sense to ask, "Why did you change your mind?" And if I don't have anything to say to justify the change, that looks weird (at least in cases that matter). But if I've been converted, it might not make sense to ask, "Why did you convert?" At any rate, it's going to be a very different kind of story. (And it might well be a story, rather than an argument.) (Note that the question puts the verb in active form, and if conversions involve a significantly passive element, then the question itself is not well-formed.)

So, as I've got it so far, changes of mind are more active, involve fewer moving parts, and are grounded in expressible reasons; whereas, conversions are more passive, involve a great deal of a person's psychic economy (even the whole), and are less amenable to "reason-giving." These are axes, so there's room for fuzzy cases. Does the distinction make sense? Or is my wife right?

And apologies to my wife. At the same time, her skepticism has driven me to thinker harder about all of this. I probably won't be able to get her to change her mind, but maybe I can convert her...

Is Conviction Necessary?

I've been thinking about how (and when) to have moral conviction. In particular, I've been considering something like a Jamesian defense of the idea that we can legitimately adopt (or embrace) moral convictions when we are presented with a "forced and momentous" option. (See Section IX of "The Will to Believe" for the idea.)

A colleague of mine suggested that perhaps we don't need to go all the way to conviction in such cases. Instead, we might accept one option over the other as our "working hypothesis" (by our own lights). The point is that if conviction is a form of belief, it might not be rational to adopt any particular belief between the options themselves (e.g. believing that option A is the right one), but we might accept one option as the one we're going to take, and treat as our "working hypothesis"--i.e. we're going to treat that option as if it were the right one.

(He referenced Bas van Fraassen's work in the philosophy of science as the source of this idea. It's supposed to resolve the problem of adopting certain scientific theories despite an anti-realistic view of truth in science; roughly, that there's not an "objective," theory-independent realm of scientific truth, which would make believing that one's theory itself is true sort of awkward.)

I think my colleague might be right that in some instances, we needn't go all the way to conviction. But I have reservations. Suppose I am faced with (sorry to be dramatic) a life or death sort of situation--it might involve my own life, or someone else's. I have to decide what to do, which values to honor in the case. What I said to my friend is: "Maybe I could put my own life at risk for the sake of a "working hypothesis"; I'm not sure about someone else's..." (I'm not inclined to think I'd do either.) So, I don't think "working hypotheses" are always going to cut it. Am I wrong about this? (Or am I splitting hairs?)

For a lively illustration, go read (or re-read) Billy Budd.

Suffering and Happiness (Quote of the Moment)

"Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering. To have meaningful work is a tremendous happiness." - Rita Mae Brown

(I got hold of a used copy of the book where the Hook quote below originally appeared: The Courage of Conviction. I've only started dabbling in it, but it looks like an interesting collection. The line above is from Rita Mae Brown's contribution.)