[From Bill Powers (950507.0630 MDT)]
Joel Judd (950505.0800 CDT) --
Strictly speaking, how does a control system know the difference
between knowledge and belief?
I have a little different take on the difference between belief and
knowledge. Given any statement, we can either believe or disbelieve the
statement, meaning that we can accept it as being true or not accept it.
So in that sense belief is a decision by an observer: the decision to
accept a statement as true.
But there is another dimension: the degree to which we can back up the
statement by showing how it is derived from experience. If the statement
can be related to experiences in all particulars, and if we can show how
we reasoned out the relationship, we would call the statement
"knowledge." When there is no backing at all, we would call it a pure
"belief."
All the combinations are possible: accepting knowledge, not accepting
knowledge, accepting a belief, and not accepting a belief. This boils
down to two dimensions in which we deal with statements: acceptance-
nonacceptance, and supportability-nonsupportability. Most statements
belong somewhere in this space, but not at the extremes.
Consider miracles. To say that a miracle occured is to say that
something happened that is apparently unexplainable in the framework we
usually use to explain things. So to say that a happening was a miracle
involves two factors: the decision to accept the happening as actually
having happened and the inability to reconcile the happening with
statements based on observations -- with knowledge.
Obviously, reconciling the happening with knowledge depends on the scope
of one's knowledge. In investigating UFOs, I ran across this phenomenon
frequently. On the one hand, we have reports of bright lights hovering
for several hours low in the Western sky and then turning red and
disappearing, from people who did not recognize the planet Venus and
were not aware of the autokinetic phenomenon. On the other hand, we had
people from Project Bluebook explaining a sighting as the planet Venus
when the bright light was reported to be directly overhead, a position
in which Venus is never seen against a dark sky.
Many miracles rest on the supposed knowledge that the mind has no effect
on the body, and that perceptions are always reports of happenings in
the external world. If a person suddenly recovers from a disease, or
mends a broken bone, the knowledge-based statement is that such things
can't happen according to our knowledge of physiology and internal
medicine. Of course if that knowledge is wrong (not actually supportable
by observation), then there may not have been any miracle. Similarly, if
one or more persons reports seeing an apparition of some sort, the
statement that a miracle occurred is based on the knowledge that such
experiences can't be generated internally by the brain. If that
knowledge is incorrect, then the apparition was not necessarily a
miracle.
As I understand it, the Catholic Church is quite strict about accepting
happenings as miracles; if there is a conceivable explanation from our
knowledge base, the claim is rejected. But of course this also means
that what once was accepted as a miracle may cease to be accepted when
our knowledge of what is physically and mentally possible changes.
However, it is possible either to accept or reject any purported miracle
without regard to the knowledge base. This is merely a matter of whether
one desires the miracle actually to have occurred. If there is a desire
to accept it as real, then one accepts it as real and that is all there
is to it. If one desires to reject it, one rejects it. The knowledge
factor never has to be considered. If you want to believe that the
Oklahoma City bombing was the work of Middle Eastern terrorists, then
nothing stands in the way of believing that. That is nature of pure
belief: it is unconstrained by observations.
We accept many statements as true without any observational support. We
do this for convenience as much as anything. When data are missing, we
fill in what is missing in order to arrive at some acceptable picture of
reality -- and then we accept it as true, not because we can be certain
it is true, but because we want to have a complete picture. This sort of
closure goes on all of the time, at all levels or at least all higher
levels of perception.
Belief is a necessity, considering the spotty nature of our
understanding of the universe and ourselves. We must act under
circumstances where we have to substitute assumptions for some missing
perceptions. As one who prefers knowledge to belief whenever possible,
however, I do not treat belief -- acceptance -- as something that is
done once and for all. Belief to me is always provisional and subject to
change in the light of new knowledge. And of course this also applies to
knowledge, which is never permanent and immutable. Neither belief nor
knowledge reveals to us the nature of the universe; both are perceptual
phenomena, phenomena of the mind. I prefer knowledge to belief when it
is possible to obtain, because relating ideas to simple experiences
seems to me our best hope for learning something about the reality that
lies beyond the senses.
···
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,
Bill P.