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Originally Posted by zen_tom
Excuse my over-use of monetary terms - I was trying to think of a cheap way of putting my point across. Note that I did concede "or some other arbitrary huge reward" meaning something which has value for you. I don't want to get into what has value and what doesn't, what I do want to do is determine where choice gets involved in the development of belief.
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You're living in a theoretical world that I can't really respond to. I would imagine I'm more likely to form wildly different beliefs out of a response to living in severe crisis. As for discussing "beliefs", I suppose I should go further and say that what I have that I would consider to be "beliefs" rather than "values" or "views" are more along the ways of asthetically approaching life, rather than concrete/literal "beliefs".
I'm afraid that I could adopt certain new beliefs if I was faced with a life crisis, or if I began suffering from a fit of rebellion from my own identity for some reason. I'm not likely to form much in the way of "beliefs" now due to my education, experiences, and decisions I have already made in the past. A good person to ask would be one of those former drunkards you find that tell you that they used to be atheists and then became Born Again and found Jesus and now everything is wonderful. There is a classic example of someone choosing a belief.
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So yes, using money might be a 'false choice' as you put it, how about some other reason. What reason would make for a valid choice?
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If you showed me that my foundation for interpreting reality was totally false, I would have to re-evalute many things including how I feel about beliefs.
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Anyway, you got the idea - and as you say at the end of your piece views can be changed by being one being given 'compelling reasons to do so'. Note that being compelled to do something suggests lack of choice (from Websters: Compel: To force to yield; to overpower; to subjugate.)
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And, isn't that the point? To change beliefs, one would have to have a serious change of heart which doesn't come from nowhere. That doesn't mean that you don't have a choice whether to change or not, it means that you felt that you had a good reason to. Many people struggle with their beliefs, see contradictions, and continue to hold on tightly to those beliefs anyway because they choose to hold on to those old beliefs that has become strongly meshed with their identity. I have worked hard to avoid getting into such identity crises by avoiding putting myself in situations where I have beliefs that can put me into existential dilemmas about my identity.
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You've stated that your views are more important than money. So what, if anything might compell you to change your views?
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Again, at this point, I can think of no reward for such a thing. Only a mental breakdown of sorts is likely to get me there now.
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I hope you don't think me rude for asking questions like this, I really mean no offense at all - and hope none is taken. But I honestly don't understand this idea of being able to conciously choose what I believe in.
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Well, it isn't easy often, esp. since we find it easy to just take what we've been given or what we've figured out and hold onto it. But when I think back to my first efforts into deciding how I felt about things like God and reincarnation in middle school, I was making some active choices about what I believed and didn't believe. It went back and forth until I had some philosophical breakthroughs, and I feel now that I have little need to change my "beliefs". You're getting me at a point in time that leaves me with the ability to make choices about what I belief, and yet no desire to change. This certainly isn't true for everyone, and it may not always be the same for me, but I can clearly remember making choices about beliefs and why I made those choices. And every day I reconsider those choices on some level - and because of thise continuing re-evaluation I am choosing on a conscious level all of the time.