Ideas and beliefs

I call it the difference between an idea and a belief: an idea is a concept that a person is capable of accepting as true or rejecting as false with little or no emotional stake in the outcome; a belief is a concept whereby a person has a significant emotional stake depending on whether the statement proves true or false.

I've determined that it's rarely worth my time to engage in philosophical discussion with a person about a belief unless I'm in a mood for a one-way conversation from them to me. The key, then, is quickly and accurately determining, when engaging someone thusly, whether we are discussing what is for them an idea or else a belief. So far I have found this difficult.

On the flip side, I try to think of what my own beliefs are and where my own limitations to engagement and understanding lie. What are the statements on whose truth I hang my own emotional well being? I can conjure an imaginary antagonist to try to provoke me with some contentious examples, some statements that center around and about things that I do not merely consider important, but rather I consider sacred.

• Bicycling is not a possible solution for the widespread obesity problem, for traffic congestion, or for reducing pollution.
  
  Ah ha! Here my imaginary antagonist strikes right at the heart of what is sacred and discounts a treasured belief of mine, the social practicality of the bicycle. Yet treasure the statement I do, do I carry vested interest in its truth?
  
  Actually, not really. Although the statement's truth seems reasonable, I would lend a hand to my imaginary antagonist and challenge the bicycle-as-a-cure-all solution as not being viable. Too many people are afraid of bicycles; the economy is a house of cards that requires continual growth and cannot survive the massive downscaling of people abandoning cars; Jevons effect will negate the congestion and pollution benefits of increased bicycle use. And so on. I can argue both sides of this statement; it's not a belief for me.


• The scientific method is a fundamentally flawed method for attaining knowledge, and the employment of reason is a flawed method for attaining wisdom.
  
  First of all, I'm not particularly fond of epistemological arguments, so my passion isn't excited by this one. Secondly, I'm curious as to whether the ensuing argumentation for the second part of the statement, the part about wisdom, is at all fruitful. How does one reason against reason? How does one argue against argumentation?
  
  But thirdly and most importantly, I'll note for the record that I'm unconvinced about the scientific method. It certainly has a successful track record, what with putting men on the moon and returning them to earth as well as countless other achievements, but I wonder as to whether the scientific method necessarily has a blind spot or two in which its bottom-up construction of knowledge is innately unable to grapple successfully with complex, non-linear systems, such as economies and the human mind, where any model for a subpart ends up being a leaky abstraction for concluding something about the whole. Again, I may lend my imaginary antagonist a hand and help him argue his point; this is no belief for me.


• It's often worth my time to engage in philosophical discussion with a person about a belief even if I'm not in a mood for a one-way conversation from them to me.
  
  Clever. With a Gödelian stroke of self-referentiality, I am provoked by argumentation against the central point of this very blog post. But again I'm ahead of my imaginary antagonist, and I see how maybe I'm wrong and that it is indeed worthwhile to engage in philosophical conversations out of which I gain nothing ideological. Firstly, there is the warm and fuzzy human side of things, the side that hints to us that it's sometimes important just to listen for the sake of listening. Secondly, engaging another person in a discussion about a belief and not an idea and witnessing the ensuing lackluster results may inspire me to hone and polish my own argumentation skills and to reflect upon my own process for establishing truth and attaining wisdom. I could even end up writing a blog post about the whole matter. How's that for being worth my time?

I'd like to end this post on that note of irony, but I want to clarify a subtle point, which is that I'm not arguing against the possession of convictions about truth and falsehood. Indeed, I would argue that it's important to believe beliefs and avoid a living a life of Cartesian uncertainty. Rather, I'm arguing (and counter-arguing against, as forced by my imaginary antagonist), that unless you can suspend your beliefs temporarily or at least entertain the notion that you're wrong, possibly about everything, you may want to consider what you're actually contributing to the discussion around you.

Maybe that is my core belief: that the discussion itself is more important than the conclusions it produces. Or am I wrong about this one too?