Re: THEORY: Are commands to believe infelicitous?

Joseph Bridwell wrote:
>>I propose that any imperative form of the
>>verb "to believe" is infelicitous unless
>>spoken to a computer.
>
>
> In general, I agree if I ignore the issues of mental capability, and
> what "believe" might or might not mean to someone else. "love" is a
> similar verb for me.
>
>
>>I propose that natural humans cannot consciously
>>choose whether or not to believe certain
>>propositions in the face of evidence to the contrary,
>>nor in the absence of evidence in favor.
>
>
> How are you defining "natural humans"? Those falling within the
> means of mental & physical bell-curve? Being untouched by any
> society and pressures? ?
>
> I believe that the average man on the street does indeed "believe"
> regardless of contrary evidence or absence of evidence. I myself do:
> I choose to believe that consciousness survives death since to
> believe otherwise implies to me meaninglessness to my actions past,
> present and future. Thus, for me, "believe" and "need" have a closer
> connection; and further, that solid evidence changes belief into
> fact for whomever accepts the evidence.
I think you're on to something; anything for which it's not yet possible
to find any evidence for one way or the other is something that one can
choose to believe or not to believe. Some people also seem to have the
capacity to ignore evidence that would (if accepted) require them to
question their beliefs. But there are some things that have to be
accepted as axiomatic, such as whether or not there is such a thing as
free will, since no one yet knows how to test these ideas. I choose to
believe in free will since it makes things more interesting to think
about, and I can't see how I have much to lose if I turn out to be
wrong. (If there is no free will, choice is an illusion in any case.)

Whether consciousness survives death is an idea that could in principle
be tested, if it's possible for disembodied spirits to leave messages.
Alternatively, if spirits are reincarnated, memories of previous lives
would be evidence for survival. However, it's always possible that
spirits can never go back to our world or affect it in any meaningful
way, so the absence of convincing evidence doesn't mean anything one way
or the other.

But besides evidence as a basis for belief, there is also trust.
Whenever someone says something like "believe me, running a marathon is
strenuous", it seems like they're really asking you to trust them based
on their personal experience or observation. It'd be interesting to see
if other languages use the equivalent of "believe me" or if they have
other ways of translating this expression. But this does seem to me to
be a valid use of "believe" as an imperative, at least in English.

>>Does anyone know of various ways various
>>languages have handled different versions
>>of ideas similar to "to choose to believe"?
>>Perhaps by different voices (middle voice
>>maybe), different moods, or just different verbs?
>
>
> IIRC, some Austronesian languages use evidence morphemes: e.g.
> directly evident to anyone, directly experienced by the speaker,
> told to the speaker by another, hypothetical/dreamed by the speaker,
> etc.
I like the idea of a "dreamed by the speaker" evidential; I think I'll
steal that for one of my Zireen languages. (Some Zireen cultures have a
belief that the dream world is a real place.)

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