the suspension of belief -
what role does belief play in action?
is there any necessity here?
are there some acts that you must perform with attendant
beliefs for the act to be performed?
is belief - a mere optional extra - perhaps a luxury?
I just wonder - how different anything would be if we lived
in a world without belief
no beliefs
what would be different?
perhaps a more manageable question might be
what acts are belief dependent?
what acts could not would not be performed without a certain
set of beliefs?
can we distinguish act and belief as I appear to be suggesting?
is there an act that has not belief?
(in the human scale of things)
perhaps belief is just another dimension of act?
when we are talking about the acts of human beings
and how are we to characterize acts in this sense?
clearly we observe acts - the acts of others -
our own acts?
yes - but this is not so straightforward - for here one
is the author as well as the observer -
we can say - can't we that a belief can be a cause of act
but the act may well have been caused without that belief
and perhaps without a belief at all
so
belief - a sufficient but not necessary condition for - act?
what would constitute a necessary condition for action?
existence - perhaps - but not belief
belief - I suggest is an inherently suspendable commodity
is it necessary to have some belief to act?
here you would need to have a view on what counts as belief
as i.e. - distinct from idea - parallel mental event
a belief is generally a well formed thought - not a stray
and I know this is not the most detailed analysis -
but even - at this level with this definition -
it's clear I think
not every mental event that accompanies action is a belief
a belief in short is an interpretation of the world or a
part thereof
one may have some belief going in - with whatever one does -
(if one reflects on the matter) -
but perhaps - logically speaking - this is just a matter of
habit or coincidence
I suspect most of what human beings do (logically speaking)
is - suspension of belief
to act definitively - on the basis of a belief - is perhaps
the exception rather than the rule
and indeed the same act I suggest could have been performed -
without belief - or - with any number of other beliefs
it's a wardrobe issue
