Suppose someone claims to have a dragon in their garage, but as soon as you go to look, they say, "It's an invisible dragon!" The remarkable thing is that they know in advance exactly which experimental results they shall have to excuse, indicating that some part of their mind knows what's really going on. And yet they may honestly believe they believe there's a dragon in the garage. They may perhaps believe it is virtuous to believe there is a dragon in the garage, and believe themselves virtuous. Even though they anticipate as if there is no dragon.
Alief seems to be the "gut feeling"-type of conclusion that happens before more elaborate conscious processing takes place. Contrast that with Belief in Belief which is characterized by the astounding process of logical thinking required to anticipate and explain away the opportunities for the falsification of a belief in something imaginary - suggesting that at some level believers do in fact know that they're propping up a fantasy.
It's not really conceptually related to be honest, but BiB is an excellent article that pertains mainly to religious belief and it was a very entertaining read. Thanks for linking to it!
I don't get it, why is it so important to separate our cognitive system into infinite units, one for everything we can feel?
Why can't we, as an alternative, not possess two believes at the same time? Composed by different parts of the cognitive system. One for example might go through the frontal lobe and be overwritten by "reason" (if there is such a thing), and the other might go through more rostral regions, and be overwritten by emotions (which, in fact, will manifest it self into muscle movments)?
Another alternative might be that the same stimuli manifests it self in different ways at the same time, after going through different coginitive systems (no a/believe construct required). So the fearfull ("irrational") behaviour ("the alive") gets manifested in the sympathetic nervous system (into muscle movements, hormonse, thermo-regualtion),while the vocal ("rational") behaviour ("the believe") gets manifested in cognitive systems responsable for speach-like cognitions, i.e. frontal regions.
> why is it so important to separate our cognitive system into infinite units
It isn't. It depends entirely on the specific school of psychology. For example the school of Behaviorism states that only observable behavior matters; cognitive stuff like this is unimportant.
I took a social contract theory class from Prof. Gendler. She was phenomenal. She enjoyed teaching the material so much that she seemed to smile for the duration of the class. When we would get frustrated as we struggled through some concept she was always patient and would joke that she had a bit of an advantage because Nozick was her phd advisor and "she learned Rawls from Rawls."
Btw, I found out about this from her (Tamar's) Wikipedia page, after enjoying her Big Think lecture on the philosophy of politics and economics(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm8asJxdcds) I highly recommend the lecture.
This is an interesting concept but I am wondering how alieving relates to both believing and knowing in general. Is an alieve just a type of belief that is unjustified but hard to ignore or get rid of ? In particular if we take some of the given examples:
>>> For example, a person standing on a transparent balcony may believe that they are safe, but alieve that they are in danger. A person watching a sad movie may believe that the characters are completely fictional, but their aliefs may lead them to cry nonetheless. A person who is hesitant to eat fudge that has been formed into the shape of feces, or who exhibits reluctance in drinking from a sterilized bedpan may believe that the substances are safe to eat and drink, but may alieve that they are not.
and we remove the verb 'alieve' and only work with the verbs 'to believe' and 'to know' :
For example, a person standing on a transparent balcony may know that they are safe, but believe that they are in danger. A person watching a sad movie may know that the characters are completely fictional, but their beliefs may lead them to cry nonetheless. A person who is hesitant to eat fudge that has been formed into the shape of feces, or who exhibits reluctance in drinking from a sterilized bedpan may know that the substances are safe to eat and drink, but may believe that they are not.
The meaning/sentiment appears to be largely unchanged in this case.
This concept is also well known in the practice of the occult. It is known as the Law of Contamination. The gist of this is 'once in contact, always in contact'.
This principle is also the basis of using bits of hair in a construction of a voodoo doll, as the hair touches the doll, so the person is the doll.
Even though this thought is prevalent in the occult, it does easily translate out of that limited area. The paper below also explains for similar things, like not wanting to wear shirts worn by a disliked person.
Homeopathy also has roots in this idea, where a drop of "cure" is diluted somewhere by 10^50 times, and still is considered a cure.
That doesn't seem quite right to me. If there's any occult notion that fits, I'd imagine it's more things like "true name" or "astral body" or a "weird" that reflect a more honest representation of the self than is consciously noted.
I don't think that captures it. If I read a story and cry for some character in it, that's not subconscious.
The first example reminds me of street training: when you're switched on, you make a threat assessment of everything around you. You don't actually expect a threat, but you check for one anyways.
Although....In some instances, when your conscious mind is in conflict with itself, it seems an "alief" could be based in consciousness.
Using Wikipedia's given example; I would argue that when you're trying to decide whether standing on a balcony is safe the decision is very much based on conscious thought.(e.g. what height am I at, is there a railing, do I have enemies here(lol(lolnestedparenthesis)), am I inebriated)
I think this term is particularly interesting when applied to issues based on morality.
When you're deciding whether a woman has the right to abort her child, is the small nagging doubt considered alief? I don't mean to bring politics into this; in fact I chose this point because I thought it wouldn't be a major point of contention(compared to some others).
I am just trying to say that almost every decision that we make in our lives has an alternate possibility, the merit(or perceived merit) for which is oftentimes enough for a seed of doubt to take root in our own decision on the matter.
I find it curious that so many people have such strict convictions on controversial issues, whereas I personally change my position on them reasonably frequently. Perhaps this lack of a constant viewpoint on controversial issues is because I haven't fully defined myself, in which case I hope to do so soon.
On July 1, 2010, she became Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the department’s history and the first female graduate of Yale College to chair a Yale Department. [1]
Do you think she needs to worry about her academic relevance?
Full Disclosure: As mentioned elsewhere I took a class from her at Syracuse University at the beginning of her career. That being said I am not an academic and do not gain anything from her professional reputation.
related is pratchett's concept of "substition" (quote from 'jingo'):
71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren’t true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed. There are many such substitions, ranging from ‘It’ll get better if you don’t pick at it’ all the way up to ‘Sometimes things just happen.’
Is it not simply just belief with an A in place of the B? It sounds to me like a self-consciously coined neologism, perhaps related to A's position before B in the alphabet, suggesting that aliefs come before beliefs in some sense.
EDIT: a brief look at the original paper[0] doesn't give any immediate answers, but it seems to confirm my guess:
"Alief is a more primitive state than either belief or imagination: it directly activates behavioral response patterns"
[+] [-] evmar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ma2rten|12 years ago|reply
Suppose someone claims to have a dragon in their garage, but as soon as you go to look, they say, "It's an invisible dragon!" The remarkable thing is that they know in advance exactly which experimental results they shall have to excuse, indicating that some part of their mind knows what's really going on. And yet they may honestly believe they believe there's a dragon in the garage. They may perhaps believe it is virtuous to believe there is a dragon in the garage, and believe themselves virtuous. Even though they anticipate as if there is no dragon.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/i4/belief_in_belief/
[+] [-] Udo|12 years ago|reply
It's not really conceptually related to be honest, but BiB is an excellent article that pertains mainly to religious belief and it was a very entertaining read. Thanks for linking to it!
[+] [-] mdm_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runarberg|12 years ago|reply
Why can't we, as an alternative, not possess two believes at the same time? Composed by different parts of the cognitive system. One for example might go through the frontal lobe and be overwritten by "reason" (if there is such a thing), and the other might go through more rostral regions, and be overwritten by emotions (which, in fact, will manifest it self into muscle movments)?
Another alternative might be that the same stimuli manifests it self in different ways at the same time, after going through different coginitive systems (no a/believe construct required). So the fearfull ("irrational") behaviour ("the alive") gets manifested in the sympathetic nervous system (into muscle movements, hormonse, thermo-regualtion),while the vocal ("rational") behaviour ("the believe") gets manifested in cognitive systems responsable for speach-like cognitions, i.e. frontal regions.
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|12 years ago|reply
It isn't. It depends entirely on the specific school of psychology. For example the school of Behaviorism states that only observable behavior matters; cognitive stuff like this is unimportant.
[+] [-] dfc|12 years ago|reply
There is a video interview where she discusses aliefs here: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2115
[+] [-] NCE|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference
[+] [-] jkuria|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wavesounds|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jervisfm|12 years ago|reply
>>> For example, a person standing on a transparent balcony may believe that they are safe, but alieve that they are in danger. A person watching a sad movie may believe that the characters are completely fictional, but their aliefs may lead them to cry nonetheless. A person who is hesitant to eat fudge that has been formed into the shape of feces, or who exhibits reluctance in drinking from a sterilized bedpan may believe that the substances are safe to eat and drink, but may alieve that they are not.
and we remove the verb 'alieve' and only work with the verbs 'to believe' and 'to know' :
For example, a person standing on a transparent balcony may know that they are safe, but believe that they are in danger. A person watching a sad movie may know that the characters are completely fictional, but their beliefs may lead them to cry nonetheless. A person who is hesitant to eat fudge that has been formed into the shape of feces, or who exhibits reluctance in drinking from a sterilized bedpan may know that the substances are safe to eat and drink, but may believe that they are not.
The meaning/sentiment appears to be largely unchanged in this case.
[+] [-] ricogallo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kefka|12 years ago|reply
This principle is also the basis of using bits of hair in a construction of a voodoo doll, as the hair touches the doll, so the person is the doll.
Even though this thought is prevalent in the occult, it does easily translate out of that limited area. The paper below also explains for similar things, like not wanting to wear shirts worn by a disliked person.
Homeopathy also has roots in this idea, where a drop of "cure" is diluted somewhere by 10^50 times, and still is considered a cure.
http://www1.appstate.edu/~kms/classes/psy5150/Documents/Rozi...
[+] [-] saraid216|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|12 years ago|reply
The first example reminds me of street training: when you're switched on, you make a threat assessment of everything around you. You don't actually expect a threat, but you check for one anyways.
[+] [-] ZoF|12 years ago|reply
Although....In some instances, when your conscious mind is in conflict with itself, it seems an "alief" could be based in consciousness.
Using Wikipedia's given example; I would argue that when you're trying to decide whether standing on a balcony is safe the decision is very much based on conscious thought.(e.g. what height am I at, is there a railing, do I have enemies here(lol(lolnestedparenthesis)), am I inebriated)
I think this term is particularly interesting when applied to issues based on morality.
When you're deciding whether a woman has the right to abort her child, is the small nagging doubt considered alief? I don't mean to bring politics into this; in fact I chose this point because I thought it wouldn't be a major point of contention(compared to some others).
I am just trying to say that almost every decision that we make in our lives has an alternate possibility, the merit(or perceived merit) for which is oftentimes enough for a seed of doubt to take root in our own decision on the matter.
I find it curious that so many people have such strict convictions on controversial issues, whereas I personally change my position on them reasonably frequently. Perhaps this lack of a constant viewpoint on controversial issues is because I haven't fully defined myself, in which case I hope to do so soon.
[+] [-] nnutter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] amartya916|12 years ago|reply
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~tgendler/documents/aliefbeliefjphi...
[+] [-] interstitial|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb0|12 years ago|reply
;)
[+] [-] dfc|12 years ago|reply
Do you think she needs to worry about her academic relevance?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamar_Gendler
Full Disclosure: As mentioned elsewhere I took a class from her at Syracuse University at the beginning of her career. That being said I am not an academic and do not gain anything from her professional reputation.
[+] [-] mathgladiator|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antitrust|12 years ago|reply
http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Alief-Houston-TX.html
[+] [-] zem|12 years ago|reply
71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren’t true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed. There are many such substitions, ranging from ‘It’ll get better if you don’t pick at it’ all the way up to ‘Sometimes things just happen.’
[+] [-] michaelhoffman|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief,_Houston
[+] [-] alexatkeplar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodmachine|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johns|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: a brief look at the original paper[0] doesn't give any immediate answers, but it seems to confirm my guess:
"Alief is a more primitive state than either belief or imagination: it directly activates behavioral response patterns"
[0] http://www.pgrim.org/philosophersannual/pa28articles/gendler...
[+] [-] dools|12 years ago|reply