No, apparently I’m not being clear.
“Knowing” is a word which fits inside “believing”, like in a circle graph having one circle being entirely encompassed by another. “Believing” has a much broader definition, and apparently a number of people want to think of the word more strictly and less broadly than I do. Hence my inquiry about the word usage changing.
No, apparently I'm not being clear. "Knowing" is a word which fits inside "believing", like in a circle graph having one circle being entirely encompassed by another. "Believing" has a much broader definition, and apparently a number of people want to think of the word more strictly and less broadly than I do. Hence my inquiry about the word usage changing.Well we have a problem with what we mean by these words. I regard them as separate states of mind with believing being inferior. Knowing requires a high degree of evidence while believing may not require any. Many times belief is nothing but accepting what one was told as a little child and that is why these religions propagate through generations and are local to cultures. psik
Well we have a problem with what we mean by these words. I regard them as separate states of mind with believing being inferior. Knowing requires a high degree of evidence while believing may not require any. Many times belief is nothing but accepting what one was told as a little child and that is why these religions propagate through generations and are local to cultures. psikOh, I don't know. I've seen many people use the word 'know' without a high degree of evidence. But, I can appreciate your word usage. It's just one of those things that needs to be discussed to come to agreement on what we're talking about. It would be interesting to go to a Christian forum and see how they think of the word 'believe', if they use it closer to my definition or closer to yours. Which brings me to a possibly interesting question for Jtmoor: Is it more important on these psychological surveys to retain the specific wording of questions even when different groups think they as different things, or is it more important to accede to the various groups and attempt to frame unique questions per group so that they mean, as much as possible, the same thing between the different groups?
This brings up the issue, “to what extent does language determine thinking?”
http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html
I struggled through most of Korzybski’s “Science and Sanity” decades ago. But I later found that Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt were paying attention to his ideas in the 40s. So some of this stuff was incorporated into science fiction I was reading in grade school without my knowing anything about it.
But I found the words and concepts of atheism and agnosticism in those books though no adults ever used them. So using different words and thinking different thoughts from other people became the norm for me.
In a way I think the idea of Vulcan Culture is one of the greatest concepts of science fiction and it may be confronting our society now. I don’t think advanced science is possible without civilization but what we currently call culture may be somewhat inimical to science. This global warming issue may be the best example. The Laws of Physics do not care about culture or language. They are going to work the way they work. We have to conform to them because they are not going to conform to us. A scientific Culture where most people can think accurately about the workings of reality would be very different from any existing culture. All of this talk about “critical thinking” is just so much rubbish.
So if we screw up the planet to the point of causing starvation that is just too bad. Our language and inaccurate thinking will not help us solve the problems no matter what we “believe”.
psik
I think that in another thread a little while ago we ended up briefly discussing this, and I still recommend you check out Stephen Pinker’s book “The Stuff Of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”. From what I understand (and I agree) his take is that the human brain influences language much more than language influences the brain. But there is a bit of both.