kate jack

There is so much information available nowadays. We are absolutely inundated with data from TV, radio, internet and print sources. On any issue, there is a plethora of contradictory viewpoints supported by seemingly contradictory facts.

Examples:

Climate change is real and driven by man vs. We can't even prove statistically significant temperature increase and man cannot influence climate anyway.

Oil is drying up vs. there is plenty of oil if we could just go get it.

Evolution vs intelligent design.

Big vs small gov't.

There are a million issues such as these where opinion seems evenly divided across the American polity.

My question is this: why do we hold the particular views that we hold on these topics. Few people are experts in any of these topics, yet most of us have beliefs about them and support a particular policy direction. What informs our beliefs?

I assert that most of our beliefs are simply inherited from our parents. And that most of our opinions about issues do not flow from actual understanding, but simply derive from the ideological lens through which we learned to see the issues.

All the discussion of climate change on this forum is a great example of this. How many people that have posted on the subject actually have any knowledge whatsoever about the subject? There may be some climatologists here, but I suspect 99% of the people weighing in know what they know from the media. The media they choose to believe is informed by their ideological sympathies. These ideological sympathies were inherited from their parents or other influential people in their environment.

I think most people choose what they want to believe, or have the choice made by their upbringing.

filtherton

I think that at some level, all people choose to embrace the beliefs in which they find the most aesthetic appeal.

Theists find the notion of god appealing, so they believe in god.

Atheists find the notion of no god appealing (perhaps indirectly), so they don't believe in god.

Most people who believe one way or another on global warming do so for reasons that have nothing to do with objective evaluation of scientific data.

I've come to the conclusion that when it comes to motivating people, empty sloganeering and shiny objects are 5x as effective as sound reasoning (exhibit a: the war in Iraq, exhibit b: SUVs).

tiger777

Uhm depends on the level of reasoning of the person. Simple minded people might believe what they want to, but logical people believe things based on evidence mostly anyway.

filtherton

Most everyone is "logical". I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who believes in things for which there is no evidence. Whether you happen to agree with the validity of said evidence is another matter altogether. Standards of evidence are arbitrary and are perhaps chosen to yield the most aesthetically pleasing result.

girldetective

I think I disagree with you a bit re choice by upbringing. I see that people are brought up with not only their parent's views, but those of their teachers, peers, and so forth. When one is young there might be a tendency to agree with the parents but as one ages there is so much info and exposure available that it would be hard not to take responsibility for one's own opinions and beliefs. In addition, I think there are those that look for a different answer than their parent's. Just look at adolescents.

*

I think this is an interesting question.

__________________
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons...be cheerful; strive for happiness - Desiderata

Vigilante

HAHAHAHAHA. Haven't watched jerry springer lately, have you filtheron? That's a joke, BTW. Or is it?

I think there are alot of people who are logical and rational, but they tend to either forget or suppress it in daily life. Thus the vast masses are either illogical, irrational, or plain stupid.
Guy gets screwed by a horse and dies. Voluntarily.
Pregnant woman complains to city about jackhammer outside in the street, while she smokes ON CAMERA.
2 girls 1 cup
Nearly any video on break.com
Britney Spears
Jamie Lynn Spears
Tom Cruise
George W. Bush (the most powerful person on the planet says that God speaks to him...)
HEAVEN'S GATE CULT

People are logical? Really? In a college philosophy convention, maybe. In the middle of town? I highly doubt it. Celebrities are idolized, The world is nearly in a religious war, cocaine is still a powerful drug (Chappelle joke there), the internet is regulated by people that believed it is a series of tubes....the list goes on.

No, I truly believe the world, on the whole, has the IQ of a 2 year old.

Just my opinion, of course.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

filtherton

The world has an IQ of 100 (or is it 125?) because that is how IQ is defined (ideally).

It's important to note that in discussions like this, the word logical is typically defined as "someone who has done something that doesn't make sense to the person who is using the word".

As in "x person is illogical because the stuff they do doesn't make sense to me".

The idea of logic is co-opted by folks who just want a fancy way of hoisting themselves up on a pedestal. Which is fine. Shit's colloquial.

The problem here is that using colloquial definitions for words is confusing when discussing them in their formal context. Try talking about energy in a colloquial sense in the middle of a conversation about power plant operations.

If you want to say that people do the things they do because they're dumb, then that's fine. If you want to say the same thing, but instead of using the word "dumb" you use the word "illogical" then that's something else entirely.

A great many people who do dumb things do them for completely logical reasons.

jewels

What gd said.

I do think our core beliefs originate in our youth and thus our parents' politics and morality would definitely come into play. But I think it's a mixture of exposure during that upbringing which includes education (including books, novels, films and all media exposure), circles of friends, peers at work, and personal experiences throughout life.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Vigilante

Maybe I should have left that in the quote. I don't think I have to explain the references here.
Again:
Heaven's gate
George W. Bush
Tom Cruise
and:
Any Christian
Any Creationist
Any person that puts faith first (in any deity)

The list goes on. I'm not bashing those people, in fact I am a part of a couple of those examples, to a certain extent (not creationist, I find the thought offensive). But to say that one would be hard pressed to find your example is, well, wrong. It's almost the opposite IMO. I'm not attacking or bashing, just that is what bothered me to begin with but I didn't really point a finger at it. And please don't say the bible proves the existence of God, because it comes nowhere near proving anything. You don't strike me as the person that would, but hey it's the web and you never know. To quote a friend's sig:
"If The Bible proves the existence of God, then comic books prove the existence of Superheros."
I don't know who said it first, but I applaud the statement it makes.

And I know I relaxed on definitions, but I don't feel like nitpicking them with you. Suffice to say that I did separate them in a sentence. I also know one could say "oh the average IQ is 100/125 because that is the basis of the test to begin with", but I was trying to exaggerate a little for humor. Try to get the joke, please.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

filtherton

I think if you asked the people in your list they could probably tell you why they believe what they believe, what evidence they have for it. The fact that other people find certain kinds of evidence compelling doesn't mean that you have to. The fact that you don't find their evidence compelling doesn't invalidate it as evidence, unless you happen to be examining it with respect to a specific standard of evidence. Don't confuse scientific evidence with other types of evidence.

I'm sure George Bush has convinced himself that the evidence justifying the invasion of Iraq was bullet proof, and as such did the things he thought made the most sense to do. He saw evidence and acted accordingly. Granted, his logic might not have been as solid as a mathematical proof, but it rarely ever really is.

FYI, one of the least funny things you can do is explain how funny your joke was after it bombs.

Vigilante

Uh huh. You're one of those that has to be right. You're good at it, have fun with that. Welcome to my ignore list.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

Baraka_Guru

I think people believe what they believe because they need some explanation for that which cannot be fully known. It's a simple as that. The human mind is curious, it suffers, it pines for knowledge. When it cannot have what it wants, it tends to fill in this void with the best substitute, which often consists of faith, contemplation, educated guesses, profound imagination, sublime thoughts, etc. It's in our nature; our brains are wired that way. This process is driven by the pursuit of knowledge and hope.

While pithy and humorous, this doesn't actually work. The Bible is a set of sacred writings that teach morality, while comic books are stories of varying themes. Both can teach us many things, but neither proves the existence of anything. That is not their function.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Vigilante

I know that. You basically agreed with exactly what I said LOL. I was making that same point

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

Baraka_Guru

Oh, so I did. Sorry, my eyes are blurry from staring back and forth at manuscripts and computer screens. At least what I said offered some further explanation!

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Vigilante

LOL been there myself. It's all good, man

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

filtherton

Since you're ignoring me anyway...

Grow up. Don't be so dramatic.

I don't have to be right, and I'm not trying to be right. I am just a person with a perspective. I am open to other perspectives, and don't begrudge people who have them (unless they try to begrudge me). That being said, you may be right and I may be wrong, but we'll never know, because you went and got all sulky.

Atreides88

I disagree. I believe most people function on emotion far more than on objective, logical, reasoning. Individuals may be capable of objective thought and reasoning, but I find when dumped into the larger ocean of society, most individuals' thoughts are lost in the "group think" phenomenon. Those individuals who can rise above "group think" and maintain their rationality are the ones who end up controlling society. En masse, humans like shiny buttons and catchy slogans, and will believe whoever provides the shiniest button or the catchiest slogan.

__________________
"There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school." -- Thucydides

filtherton

I don't necessarily disagree with you, Atreides88. I just think that a lot of those processes that we tend to deem irrational are rational, but function in a domain that isn't really suited to effective and thoughtful decision making. If people weren't rational in how they embrace shiny things then shiny things wouldn't be so predictably effective at motivating people. It doesn't seem the act of succumbing to group think is the result of a logical decision making process, but I think that in the short term it is. If it weren't, then group think wouldn't necessarily be so predictably commonplace.

Words like "irrational" and "illogical" are generally used to describe behaviors that don't make sense. But if you accept the notion that people generally only do things that they believe they have reason to do, then everything everybody does is rooted in some sort of rational justification, be it well founded or not. People do things when people feel like it makes sense to do them.

Aristotle, himself no stranger to logic, thought the concept of spontaneous generation was a very compelling explanation for how certain animals are born. It was a rational conclusion for him to come to. His problem wasn't that he couldn't think clearly or that he was irrational. It was that he lacked enough information to come to an accurate conclusion. His attempts at using logic to explain the world around him were doomed from the get-go.

Valid logic is very frequently based on bad information, regardless of whether that information is due to underdeveloped understandings of biology or the simple limitations of the human mind. One problem with the human mind (at least with my mind) is that there is a limit to the amount of information it can consider at one time. Every decision is made with limited focus and limited information.

I don't think that the problem of group think is one of rational versus irrational, it could also be a matter of "Hey, there are all these people who are doing this thing, and there's a lot of them and so maybe there's something to what they're doing, so I'm going to trust that there's a good reason and do it too." The desire to defer to the wisdom of the crowd trumps the desire to think independently and from there a rational decision is made to do what the crowd is doing. The decision isn't irrational because there is a clear line of reasoning throughout.

That doesn't mean it was a good decision to make. That depends on whatever is actually happening. Sometimes the crowd is right and sometimes the crowd is wrong.

In any case, I think the folks who can take advantage of things like group think can do so because they understand the logic of human decision making. Shiny things are useful because their shininess distracts us from how much they cost. A rational decision taking into account cost becomes a rational decision taking into account how great owning a shiny thing would be.

Atreides88

Re-reading it, I think I may have confused my point. I think we're saying the same thing, but two different ways. My main point, is that I find group think to be motivated by emotion, and how something makes the group or the individuals comprising the group feel, rather than is what's in their best interest. I will concede that sometimes the most objective of decisions can be made with poor knowledge or insufficient knowledge, but hindsight is 20/20. The very desire to follow everyone else is because that individual wants to feel like they belong, ergo happiness stems from being part of a group.

I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that subjective, or emotion driven, rationale is logical. While there are trends, and those trends are logical and can be exploited, I don't see how a process of reason can be based on emotion. If that were the case, we would no doubt still be stuck in the bronze age.

I base my world view on the fact that emotion clouds the mind and strips away logic and reason, and that the best decisions are made in an objective manner that weighs the pros and cons and then moves forward based upon that analysis. If I am to understand you, you weigh no judgment upon the merit of a decision, solely that every decision is a logical one and that it depends solely upon the POV of each individual, yes?

__________________
"There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school." -- Thucydides

UKking

I find that particular notion absolutely frightening, and resist believing it in favor of faith in an individuals raw potential and equality.
But that's a derail.

filtherton

That pretty much sums it up.

I view logic as structural thing, and as such make no value judgments about the quality of a decision with respect to logic.

Certainly there are always poor decisions being made. I just don't think you can blame poor logical abilities for those poor decisions.

Atreides88

Then we disagree on that point as I believe poor decisions stem from poor logic and/or poor information.

__________________
"There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school." -- Thucydides

Nimetic

I don't like the term beliefs much... to me it implies a view of the world that is impervious to logic and which cannot/will-not change.

However, what I was going to say is that I think my position is derived (usually) by meshing data from opposing points of view. No big deal that.

But the interesting thing (to me) is how my view might be different if I resided in another country, where the range of views was more or less - or arranged about a different central axis. That is, what would I believe if I only read the newspapers available in country X. Where X is any country, democratic or not.

So a 'middle view' in the US is different from a 'middle view' in Aust. or UK... or Singapore... or China.

World's King

It's simple.



If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't believe it.

__________________
heavy is the head that wears the crown

tiger777

Quite frankly most of our beliefs arise based on what our parents taught us. Most people tend to have a tremendous bias in relation to certain religions or beliefs acquired in our early years and then our opinions evolve based off of that formula. That is where the problem lies and logic and reasoning don't have enough power to overcome those early often false biases. Which in turn theoretically often results in people arriving at illogical conclusions. Any time someone allows the "beliefs" that they hold ignore arguments due to their either close minded or stubborn mind they will be arriving at a false suboptimal conclusion.

In most human beings that's how it worked, beliefs are added upon a base or structure set in place. I think a lot of people should really analyze why they think what they think in order to overcome these biases, that's the only way you can really be a free thinker and figure out what you believe. Obviously there's always some biases, but the less the better. So strive to eliminate as many biases as possible =]. Remember to always logically analyze both sides and even why you believe which side sounds more correct so you may find a fundamental flaw in the way you're reaching your conclusion.
-----Added 25/8/2008 at 02 : 38 : 17-----
Good example of my last post, the great error in people's self-awareness (or lack thereof). This is the type of dangerous thinking which allows illogical and irrational thinking. Whether he's joking or not, point is some people actually think like this ^_^.

filtherton

Why is it illogical to believe what your parents believe?

Logical != accurate
Logical != correct

tiger777

It isn't illogical necessarily, but the point is without analyzing and questioning everything you know and have ever been taught you set yourself up to believe in many false ideas.

If you believe whatever your parents believe you simply put it up to chance as to whether they're right or not without any evidence supporting it.

It is said believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see. Meaning you should rarely take someone word for something without doing proper research on your own and or coming up with sufficient logic to come to an agreement with what they say.

filtherton

I'm all for analysis and research and informed decision making, but I don't think that these activities are necessary for a decision to be logical. I agree with the principle of what you're saying.

I just don't think that the concept of "logic" as it is defined colloquially is necessarily all that useful in evaluating the validity of a perspective. The concept of logic is meaningless if one is to take it in any sort of absolute sense. If one wants to be that strict about it, there are no ideas which are completely logically valid, which means every idea is illogical, including the idea that logically valid ideas are better than logically invalid ideas.

Fortunately there's really no need to be strict about it, because logic is the kind of thing that can be based off of completely arbitrary assumptions. If one assumes that fitting in with their family is more important than fitting in with the scientific community, then a completely logical result of this might be for that person to remain purposefully ignorant of anything facts which disagree with their parents' perspective.

tiger777

1. Gaining information is very important to making good and correct decisions. Sure someone with piss poor information can only act on that information to come to a conclusion therefore their logic can be fine, but the bottom line is, the answer to which they conclude will likely be false. Also Our universe plays by rules that at the micro level adhere to time and space and therefore logic is the most important thing that leads to truth and understanding. Without logic you don't have an understanding of math, language or anything else for that matter.

2. Again if you define better being more truthful and relevant to things, then yes logical ideas are better. If someone who is wearing a chicago bears t-shirt swears at someone and then gets punched out, logic is what tells us his swearing at that person provoked great anger in which served as the outlet to the physical attack. This logic can then be used to avoid this problem in the future. In this example that's quite frankly the reason for the attack 99.9%. Someone with poor critical thinking could say the guy who was sworn at saw the kid had a bears t-shirt and because of that attacked him. Good logic and reasoning skills is what points to the truth which then can be used to successfully plan things in the future to the outcome you desire.

3. If that person doesn't care about what is true, right and just, then yes for him being purposely ignorant could be good for him, which would be a logical decision. But I really think most people care about the truth (at least i hope) they just get lost.

roachboy

context is fundamental.

i've been reading a bit about media priming today while avoiding other tasks that i had to do. the idea of media priming is pretty simple: repetition of visual associations between images of people and descriptions of "issues" no matter how simplistic, once repeated courtesy of your televisual apparatus, seem to impact upon the cognitive pathways that are access to memory. these associations also apparently influence how you feel about that flickering head and shape something of your position on the issue. the trick is that the less one knows about the issue--or about politics--the greater the influence. i have some depressing studies on this in my backpack and can put up a bunch of citations if you like so you can go read this particularly grim little area of infotainment infotainment--but even if you don't, you might wonder about the extent to which this sort of thing explains the relative closeness in the polls between the two presidential candidates at this the apparent end of the television-driven sporting event they laughingly call the "primary season" and the beginning of the new, playoff-round sporting event called the election season, which will culminate in the superbowl later in the fall.

this isn't subliminal messaging and it's not exactly conditioning (absence of the reward or punishment dimension)---no no, it's an effect of repetition.

repetition is power.

i don't think there's much hope of getting to anything remotely like a serious discussion of the topic broached in the op by way of the op, so will simply deposit this lovely little bit of cynicism-increasing science for you to consider. why *do* people believe as they believe anyway? repetition is power.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

curiousbear

One thing I think is, like skills, even belief is built on top of beliefs. I mean when we are very young we develop very simple beliefs. Dad is strong. Mom is smart. Brother is a bully. etc etc. And when we grow up, we pick more beliefs. The simpler ones mostly provide us the ground to make slightly complex beliefs, and so on.
Also some times we pick beliefs from leaderships, heroes, and inspirational people. For examples some of them come from our parents. Some our teachers/authors who we like and beleive are knowledgeable.

I did not read this anywhere, I just think that is how it works Let me know what you think

KnifeMissile

I don't think it's very useful to define "logical" as that which can be rationalized. By that definition, most everyone is logical and that lack of distinction is useless.

I think a more useful (albeit more nebulous) meaning of "logical" would be to be self critical, consistent and expansive in thought. Either that or we can simply avoid the use of such a loaded term since we're really just going on about semantics at this point.

I do disagree somewhat with your theory on the aesthetic appeal of beliefs. Many things that people believe have no aesthetic appeal to them. Also, too many people turn away from comforting beliefs for your appeal theory to be credible.

I don't know why people believe what they believe. Like taste, there may very well be no accounting for it. People believe things that sound reasonable to them but why some people find some things reasonable while others do not is beyond me.

For instance, there are those that think that homeopathy is an effective form of medical treatment because its principles are similar to a treatment that's actually effective, immunization. How some people don't recognize this as fallacious thinking is beyond me...

Is it just ignorance? In some cases, it is, but in other cases, it's not. I just don't know. It's probably something complicated. Each individual belief for each individual person is held for some reason different than some or any others...

filtherton

Well, yes. The distinction is useless. It is more a means of allowing people to hide the complexities of real world problems behind self serving puffery. Right? The wildly divergent perspectives that result from having to make decisions in an existence full of constantly competing and frequently overwhelming sources of information are best categorized with a simple dichotomy: logical and illogical. That's it. There's nothing more to it. Why do people make bad decisions? Because they're illogical. It's simple. They are simply and completely incapable of logic. Why do people believe in silly things? Of course, because they are illogical. They can't even do simple arithmetic, probably.

I'm not sure why you need to co-opt the word logical for your definition, since there are necessarily instances where your definition would contradict the formal one.

I do think it would be more useful if we could all agree on the definitions of nebulously defined words before we use them in a discussion. I have found that most people don't seem to like it to much when one points out that they use the word "logic" as a synonym for "people I disagree with". They want it to have more intellectual oomph than that.

And semantics get a bad rap. Clearly there is some utility in discussing them-- it is difficult to have a discussion when the participants are speaking different languages.

Well, but they must turn away from these beliefs because they find others more appealing, no? The Skeptic with a capital S turns away from a belief in a loving, all powerful god because they find the notion of belief without scientifically verifiable evidence less appealing than the notion of scientific evidence based belief. I think it's all rooted in aesthetics, even if the particulars aren't necessarily all that aesthetically appealing.

KnifeMissile

What do you mean? Why did you "co-opt the word 'logical' for your definition?" "There are necessarily instances where your definition would contradict the formal one" just as much as mine would.

I was merely suggesting a more useful meaning of the word...

I agree that it's useful to define our terms. I just don't want to argue about them...

It depends on what you mean by "appealing." I don't find the idea that Jerry Falwell was an influential man the least bit appealing but I believe it. How is this possible, according to your theory?

As I was saying, people believe many things they don't want to believe. Aesthetically displeasing ideas are believed all the time. Your theory doesn't hold up against this evidence...

filtherton

My point was that the particular work you chose to use already has a specific meaning that is useful.

I think that whether we know it or not, most arguments are arguments about how a particular word or issue is defined. Such things are important.

I think you're being a bit narrow about the scope of what constitutes appeal. I can find something unappealing in the short term, yet suffer through it because I find that the net result of suffering though it appealing.

I never said that everything everyone believes is something that they find appealing.

ring

Context is fundamental

Repetition is powerful.

Repetition is power full.

Thanks rb, those were tasty bites.

Once again we come to a discussion, (as it seems to me),
about the meaning of words themselves,
which are ever evolving, dissolving, blending,
within our own mind.

To have a discussion about belief, without contradiction,
or questioning the formal "accepted definition",
I "believe" could not take place.

One of my thoughts or ponderings or concern,
I am not quite sure how to label it, is:
this desire or compulsion, or insistance, or....
to divorce the components of what makes us people.

To keep logic and reason, emotion and intuition, seperate.

It reminds me of watching my cousin eating her lunch.

She would frantically try to keep her peas from touching her mashed potatoes,
and would break down in tears if any gravy escaped out of the mashed potato lake.

Discussing the meaning of what we mean is what it's all about.
That is what I believe....for now.

KnifeMissile

I think you meant to say "word," in which case, do you mean the formal definition of the word? I thought you all agreed to use a more colloquial one?

I'm not sure that's so and in the cases where it is so, I'd prefer to discuss the meaning rather than debate on mismatching premises...

Are you sure? It really looked like that's what you were saying...I suspect that, like "logic," you were being a bit broad with your scope of what constitutes "appeal."

No matter how much time passes, I highly doubt I'll find the belief of Jerry Falwell's influence appealing...

Perhaps you'd like to choose a different word or clarify your use of the word "appeal?"

filtherton

What may or may not have been agreed upon has nothing to do with this. What I said was in reference to your proposed colloquial definition of logic, not anything that might have been said before you entered into the conversation.

Well, if you want to obstinately presume that your misunderstanding of my position is actually my position, by all means. You'd actually be proving my point a bit by doing so.

No, your failure to grasp how the concept of appeal functions at different levels has nothing to do with my choice of words. I already clarified it, but let me try again:
For instance: you find the notion of believing only in things which have the endorsement of science appealing. This supersedes your desire to avoid believing in christian evangelicals. It doesn't negate the fact that you choose you particular beliefs because you find them appealing.

curiousbear

each ones beliefs can be different.
each ones reason to beleive them so could be different.
some can change thier belief while some will stick to it for ever.
a person with extraordinary IQ and logical working style can still have a belief for which he cannot offer a logical explanation.
a person with low IQ and job lacking logical view towards his job can still have beliefs that he acquires strictly after logical understanding on them.

I personally know exmaples for every one of them except the last one.

sometimes what is logical could be different depending on the person.

also our emotions that doesnt need our consious logical or intelligence awareness is still logical and intelligent in a completely different way. There are several examples for that too!

roachboy

this business of belief gets tricky if you keep the levels you're talking about straight---for example in the haze that the op, the question posed is mostly about ideological frames, which folk use to selected, weight and sequence information---what prompts someone to select one as over against another. and ideological frame can operate as rules do in a proof, and so the same power and problems--a result (a political position) can *be* logical in that it doesn't violate the rules no matter what the frame is. there's nothing about logic that necessarily leads you to put the frame itself into question, any more than there's any particular impetus in formal logic to put the rules of formal logic itself into question (sometimes i wonder if inertia in this respect explains why something like godel's theorem was not always understood as being the case, but that's another matter)---and, following godel--formal logic presupposes an invested participant, just like any other game does. so logic in itself does not enable you to avoid political judgments. invoking logic as a weapon inside a political debate doesn't guarantee anything about your position as over against that of another, either.

generally, political debate seems about who gets to control the premises, who gets to define information into or out of the point of departure for thinking about the social world. so my inner marxist tends to prompt me to argue against the vailidity of a separation between, say, economic activity and other forms of social life. a neo-liberal sort would not accept this, and my thinking has generally been that if you can get a neoliberal type to accept that you cannot make the separation between the economy and everything else, that neoliberalism itself comes undone, in the sense that it stops making sense.

but this doesn't explain anything about why one would come to buy into one frame or another.
to get there, you'd have to be careful about levels of argument, because without that semantic questions become pissy. witness the discussion between filtherton and knife missle above. the statement "i believe jerry falwell to be an influential man" involves a different order of relation to information than does "i believe markets to be rational" or "i believe that secret messages are transmitted to me across the box scores for baseball games". the "i believe" is the same, and maybe it's a peculiarity of english that statements regarding factual arrangements (jerry falwell was an influential man" and statements regarding committments to arbitrary or metaphysical states of affairs (markets are rational, secret messages are contained in box scores) are amenable to being grouped as the same kind of arrangement. maybe this is a real problem and a committee should be notified to make a change. or we should start a change. anyway, in the first case, appeal doesn't mean the same thing as it might in the other two--one appeals to the facts of the matter in the first case, which are not objectionable insofar as they describe a state of affairs, quite apart from what you think of it. one wonders about the appeal of these metaphysical committments in the other cases.

the mode of reference is different, the meanings shift.

there's stuff about appeal/how attractors work at the level of "real-time" processing of information about the world that is interesting to think about, and doing that makes ideological committments scary business, and that seems to me a way of getting to whatever it is that the op is on about, but to do that, like is said, you have to keep levels straight and types of statements separated.

but i gotta go.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite