Believing Read online

  Our findings were picked up by science journals and the mainstream press. The New York Times, Newsweek, and numerous science journals published feature articles. My colleagues and I received invitations to speak at universities and research institutes, and job offers followed.

  In parallel with our research was that the first drug developed to elevate activity of the brain serotonin—Prozac—entered the medical marketplace. Among many people who are mildly depressed, it reduces the signs and symptoms of depression and changes negative and unpleasant beliefs to those that are more positive and pleasant. This adds up to a connection between the activity of the brain serotonin and emotional states and beliefs.

  Again, new questions. Does Prozac lead people to receive more submissive displays from others and thereby elevate their status? Are subordinate vervet males with low serotonin activity depressed? Do dominant vervet males process information differently than subordinate males? If so, is serotonin activity responsible? And, of course, is serotonin activity higher among dominant human males compared to those who are subordinate?

  As these events unfolded, I was tempted to do nothing else but try and solve what, by then, had grown into a long list of unanswered questions. But I had been away from home for months, and my head was filled with new ideas. The research of vervets would continue hand in hand with efforts to address questions among humans that I had first asked myself years earlier and with Mrs. X and other patients: “What are beliefs?” “Where do they come from?” “Are they a form of knowledge?” “How do they tie to evidence?” “Do they cause behavior?” “Why do people believe things for which there is no justifying evidence?” “How is the brain involved?”

  When I returned home and was again working at the university, my longtime friend Greg, an aspiring philosopher, phoned and suggested that we dine to “update our doings.” We settled for our favorite spot. I left my office, walked across the Boston Common, then over Beacon Hill toward the harbor, and entered the Old Oyster House. As usual, it was crowded, noisy, and full of inviting fish smells. I mused to myself that, as usual, Greg would order lobster, white wine, and, for dessert, chocolate ice cream, and I would order oysters, red wine, garlic bread, and no dessert. The predictions held.

  After a half-hour wait and our exposure to a rather amazing number of confidently asserted beliefs that are the trademark of bars at the end of the workday, we obtained a relatively secluded table on the second floor, where it was possible to hear each other. As dinner was finishing, our conversation took an unexpected turn.

  Greg began. “I’m glad you’re home. I’ve wanted to talk.”

  OK, I nodded.

  “Actually I’m rather embarrassed about what I’m about to tell you. It seems silly. Please don’t laugh.”

  I sensed his distress—he kept looking away as he spoke. “I won’t laugh,” I replied.

  “It’s this: I have two strongly held and emotionally charged beliefs that trouble me.”

  Again, I nodded. “And they are?”

  “Liberals are altruistic and care for others. Conservatives are the opposite. These beliefs have been with me forever. They affect the way I think and vote. I can’t seem to shake them. They seem to explain my behavior—do you think beliefs explain behavior?”

  As the expression goes, “I was surprised beyond belief.” It was not what I had expected. Greg’s usual focus was metaphysics and its implications or, if not that, the irritations he experiences in trying to fix his 1937 Chevrolet.

  “I’m not sure if they affect your behavior, but I’m sure that you’re not alone. Half of America probably thinks the same way or the opposite. Is it really your beliefs that are troubling you?”

  “No, it’s not entirely the beliefs themselves. It’s that I can’t find supporting evidence.”

  For some people, the absence of evidence supporting a belief is not worrisome. But for philosophers in general, and Greg in particular, clearly it was. He had done his homework. Scholarly books had been consulted. Belief is not a new topic, and writings date back at least three thousand years. He had read much of folk psychology, which fills popular books with a wealth of definitions, views, and beliefs. On balance, he found these sources to be of limited help. Definitions lacked the precision he’d hoped for. How beliefs are identified was unclear. If and when they caused actions was ambiguous. How they interface with evidence was rarely discussed.

  We dined weekly for several months, and what we ordered for dinner was more the same than not. Definitions, evidence, explanations, and opinions entered the mix of our discussions. After at least a dozen dinners, we were stumped: we hadn’t found unambiguous evidence supporting or refuting his beliefs.

  Our meetings were not a waste of time. We had given some structure to issues. We had made progress toward developing a usable definition of belief and devised a way of characterizing belief-evidence relationships.

  BELIEFS

  Beliefs. What are they?

  There are, of course, definitions in dictionaries. Belief is a state or a habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing. It is to accept as true, genuine, or real. It is to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something.1 Its meaning in religion—faith in authority—is the topic of a later chapter.

  On first pass, each of the definitions seemed acceptable. They have served so for centuries. They make sense—“common sense”—with the way people experience belief and how the word is used in everyday discussions.

  Definitions were the easy part. Issues become more complex when our focus turned to the playing field of beliefs. People have beliefs about themselves, their family, their social group, their tribe, their clan, the nation, politics, what to do today and tomorrow, and the physical universe. They come in infinite shapes and sizes. They inform us of who we are and the way things happen. How best to garden, make love, fry an egg, and ask for a promotion at work are examples. They serve as benchmarks for judging ourselves and others. They insinuate themselves into the details of daily life and literally every news story and appraisal of social events. When we migrate, our beliefs travel with us. Through much of life, we try to convince others about the merits of our beliefs. When we die, we are remembered in part for what we believed.

  People make hundreds of decisions each day. Beliefs are associated with literally every one of those decisions. They seem to explain which of today’s chores it’s wisest to finish first, what to purchase for grandmother’s eightieth birthday, why tacos rather than hotdogs should be cooked for dinner, and why people get mad at their bosses. They provide a sense of direction. They answer questions to which, in their absence, there are no answers. They are the ideological foundation and operational blueprint of political systems. They are the core and indispensable bedrock of religion. They are integral to plans for building nations, exploring space, creating great art, and developing work that leads to the Nobel Prize. They are there when we engage in conflict and destruction.

  Often they are inseparable from emotion. That one will marry, have a child, or believe that this year’s crop will be better than usual are beliefs associated with positive anticipation and pleasure. Turn these examples around 180 degrees and people become unhappy and anxious.

  Whatever their form and content, we can’t and don’t live without them. They are as much a part of human nature as our noses and ankles.

  BELIEF DIVIDES

  We needed a way to characterize beliefs that are supported by evidence from those that are not. We settled on the term divide. A belief divide is an individual’s perceived distance between a belief and his assessment of evidence related to the belief. Divides may be narrow or wide or somewhere in between. It is the believer’s assessment of divides, not what others perceive as divides, that is the focus here. Divides that others perceive frequently differ from those of believers. For example, there is a small divide separating belief and available evidence for those who are convinced of climate change, while
the divide is wide for those who find the available evidence unconvincing. Or take the existent of God. For some believers, the Bible is irrefutable evidence of God’s existence and the divide is narrow. For nonbelievers, the Bible, whatever it is, isn’t a source of compelling evidence about the existence of God and the divide is wide.

  Our interest then turned to how people assess divides. Accurate prediction is often taken as justification. For example, that water regularly freezes below a specific temperature justifies the belief that the physical state of water changes at a specific temperature.

  The presence of a narrow divide doesn’t mean that a belief is true, however. Divides may be narrow due to the selective interpretation of evidence or its misinterpretation. Misinterpretation was Othello’s fate just as it is among many trusting lovers who are unexpectedly jilted. Selective interpretation, or its misinterpretation, appears to be the case among the 40 percent of college students who believe that some houses are haunted, the 30 percent of adults who are convinced that it is possible to influence the physical world through thought alone, and the 20 percent of adults who believe that it is possible to communicate with the dead.2 Wide divides may be present when believers recognize that there is no evidence justifying a belief. But wide divides also can mislead: prior to Columbus’s departure for the Americas, many Europeans were convinced that there was no land west of Europe.

  Divides are not simply topics of academic interest. People frequently disregard or discount them because they prefer confidence in what they believe. Narrow divides are associated with confidence. Beliefs that people find important, which have wide divides, are sources of discomfort, ambiguity, and uncertainty. They are unwelcome emotionally and cognitively, sources of stress and worry, and inharmonious and providential regarding desired outcomes.

  Efficient daily living requires decision, accurate prediction, and action. Closing divides is associated with these activities. Not only is the brain highly efficient at closure, but, in doing so, it also creates its own flavor of optimism. This was the case for many of the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I. They departed from the negotiating table with the satisfying conviction that world wars had come to an end.

  OBJECTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS

  Greg and I were aware that our views might lead to objections by others. For example, might not many of the things people say they believe be described more accurately as “hunches”—strong intuitive feelings concerning a future event—“guesses,” “speculations,” “hypotheses,” “propositions,” or “conditional beliefs”? Fair enough. In everyday use, belief not only lacks specificity but also has multiple meanings, which are seldom clarified.3

  That said, and with a few exceptions to be mentioned, when people say “I believe” or use a similar phrase such as “I am convinced,” or “It’s my view,” I will assume that they believe what they say they believe until there is evidence suggesting otherwise.

  There is also the matter of knowing what is believed. For the beliefs of others, there is no certain way of knowing. At times, people deceive and say they believe something they don’t believe. Or it may seem that their behavior is caused by a specific belief, although it may not be: the atheist who prays in church is an example.4 Thus, while divining the beliefs of others is only speculation, often decisions require that we do so. On the other hand, we can speak with considerable certainty about our own beliefs. We know of them because we experience them. That is, we are aware that we have beliefs. This is as close as we can come to their certainty.

  Another matter concerns where beliefs come from. Probably most are acquired socially. This possibility is consistent with daily experience, which is punctuated by parents attempting to influence what their children believe, schooling, efforts of individuals and groups to politically and ideologically influence what others believe, and advertising, which usually amounts to trying to convince people that they need something they believe they don’t need. There are, however, other possibilities to which I will come.

  Yet another matter deals with whether or not beliefs cause action. Probably most people are convinced that they do. For example, say I believe that eating a sandwich will quench my feeling of hunger. If I prepare a sandwich, consume it, and my hunger disappears, I am likely to be convinced that my belief caused my behavior. But beliefs can be viewed in other ways, such as “an individual’s representation of how the world is structured and works and how an individual’s actions might result in specific outcomes.”5 This view leaves unanswered the question of whether beliefs cause action. Or beliefs can be conceived of as entities with material, energy, and spatial features that reside in the brain and may cause or bias action.6 Which of these or other possibilities seems most plausible is left to later chapters. For the present, I will proceed as if beliefs are associated only with action, and I will focus attention on how people experience, understand, and explain their beliefs.

  Beliefs and divides invite our attention. They beg for description and explanation of their nature. They invite inquiry into how evolution and culture have led to a brain that is seemingly committed to near-endless belief creation and divide reduction.

  I found my discussions with Greg stimulating and fruitful in framing and parsing the physical and metaphysical aspects of how we believe, and I assumed our dinners, with their explorations of belief, would continue. Perhaps together we would write a book. But it wasn’t to happen. Greg received an anticipated and attractive invitation to teach for a year at the University of Rome. Although I was pleased for Greg, inside I was dejected. What to do next was now in my lap.

  Possibilities danced about in my brain. Would an in-depth study of belief be worthwhile? How long might it take? Did I have the time and the motivation to take it on? Would it interfere with my obligations?

  None of these questions was resolved when one evening my eight-year-old daughter—an aspiring artist—appeared with a hairbrush full of dried paint?

  “Dad, how do I get the paint out of this?”

  “That’s your hairbrush isn’t it? What happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied.

  “Sorry?

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t get it. I mean, how did the paint get on the brush?”

  “I used it to scrape off paint on one of my paintings.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Go on, it can’t hurt now.”

  “Well. For a while, I used it for my hair. Comet [our dog] got a spanking with it. On warm nights, it kept the window open. And before I got paint on it, I used it to dust things.”

  “Perhaps it also served as a paperweight and a toothbrush?”

  “Once in a while as a paperweight. Dad, I’m really sorry.”

  Our discussion about the brush was mulling around in my head when I picked up an article dealing with octopus suckers. They facilitate movement, capture and hold prey and food, contain mechanical and chemical receptors for tasting, and signal to potential enemies.

  At times, the brain does strange and unexpected things, such as connecting two seemingly unrelated pieces of information and thereby solving a problem. It was one of those moments: the hairbrush discussion and the octopus story suggested an answer to what to do next. Both brushes and suckers have multiple uses. Perhaps the same is true for beliefs. Perhaps, too, there may be multiple types of beliefs. Why not classify beliefs by their uses and types?

  As it turned out, classifying was not the best of ideas. Within days, I had opened Pandora’s box. There were no limits to uses and types. There were beliefs about how to raise children, organize one’s life, work efficiently, stay healthy, spend holidays, write books, and grow leeks. They dealt with how the world does and doesn’t work, how it should and shouldn’t work, happiness and sadness, agreement and conflict, support and rejection of moral stance, suicide, when and how to act socially, and far more. Moreover, they were everywhere: books, magazine articles, cocktail partie
s, work, office discussions, television talk shows, newspapers, and radio programs were all dawn-to-dusk purveyors of beliefs.

  I was not the first to open Pandora’s box. Nearly two centuries ago, Charles MacKay wrote Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,1 which offers an informative and often-amusing history of the vulnerability of people to scams, along with their deep-rooted convictions about the validity of haunted houses, much of alchemy, and fortune-telling, and the popular follies of his day. A century and a half later, Allan Mazur’s Implausible Beliefs: In the Bible, Astrology, and UFOs2 confirms that little has changed except perhaps for what people believe. Mazur notes the following: Beliefs reflect their time and place in history. We accept the beliefs in which we were raised. Conversion from one belief to another is seldom about solitary truth seeking; rather, it is about conforming to the beliefs of a spouse or a friend. We coalesce around group identities and their shared beliefs especially if we are members of minorities or persecuted groups. In effect, social membership and solidarity, a believer’s time in history, and early exposure emerge as more-influential factors affecting one’s views than justifying evidence. Nothing written in the following pages contradicts these points.

  The diversity, complexity, myriad uses, and differing views about belief promise that efforts to identify single uses or mutually exclusive types of beliefs are doomed from the start. Nonetheless, the effort is instructive if only because it illuminates the multifaceted nature of belief and its omnipresence in our lives.

  What follows is a sampling of my efforts to bring some order to uses and types. The effort is far from satisfying or successful and deserves an F by usual grading standards. No compelling order turns up. Often the choice of types is arbitrary. Yet one critical finding emerges: beliefs insinuate themselves into literally every aspect of daily life.