I have taken this idea, based on a mixture of incomplete evidence and gut feeling and have chosen to hold so tightly to this idea, that I am deliberately ignoring anything to the contrary, for fear of losing the one thing that was giving me direction, and substance to my personality
Am I right?
I like this, but it's really not about being right or wrong.
"Nothing is true, anything is possible."
-- Robert Anton Wilson
I think that there is value in being judicious in choosing what beliefs to hold. I think there is value in examining one's beliefs, and making sure they are truly helpful to you. But I question both the practicality and the merits of never believing anything, ever. I say this just because extremes are seldom good. Clearly there is folly in being too credulous and not skeptical enough, and it seems to me taking skepticism to an extreme is problematic too. For example, how would I ever make or keep any friends if I always demanded hard proof that they liked me for me, rather than taking a risk and believing their overtures at friendship were genuine? How would I be able to drive to work, if I didn't have some faith that enough of my taxes were actually going to keeping the roads in safe condition, rather than entirely to the pockets of corrupt politicians?
The thing is, none of us can really get through the minutiae of our day to day lives without, at any given moment, taking things as 'given' that we haven't the time or resources to definitively prove. We jump to conclusions and assume things are true without proof all the time -- it's part of the way we simplify the torrent of tasks and information life throws at us.
I think you're talking about being flexible in your beliefs, and not settled on any particular one. That's admirable. That's openmindedness. But it's a little different from not believing in anything. It just means that your beliefs change rapidly, based on the situation and the information you have.
You always write your responses in such an eloquent manner, thank you. What I'm proposing is a constant state of open mindedness in which all views are acceptable. It's a difficult task to commit to, I admit - but if your purpose is to find a way to explain it moreso than understand it, a negation of belief is almost necessary to accept views that seem contrary to your own.
not believing in anything is the most rational thing you could do, but rationality on its own is boring.
I love this.
We have to define belief before anything..after all when we take some concepts to be an adequatio, like space and time, or axioms in mathematics that do not have to be proven but are taken as self-evident, would we call this a belief? I know there's always should be a question concerning believing in morals, values, religious systems, but how about the basic systems that circumscribe reality itself, like language or the axioms that make up our sciences?
And I also disagree to a point that pleasure is kept in check by the ego, for sometimes the ego can be used to justify pleasure's transgressions, thus the defense mechanisms that are mostly associated with the ego.
I can respond to the question regarding language, as it is language that has lead me to the development of this question (and please keep in mind that it is a question, I have no concrete explanations and therefore will not suggest that I "know" what I'm talking about).
And semiotics: A word is a sign that is made up of a referent, a signified and a signifier. Now, if you recall my original post, I stated that this question deals with not believing in
anything, which is not the same as believing in nothing (which is indeed a thing). The universe as we know it is made up of "things" which are referents in semiotics. Now in most cases, the signified and the referent are interchangeable - when I think of chair, the archetypal chair is formed in my mind and then I can choose to signify it, to label it with a sound or visual representation (signifier) and thus differentiate it from the other referents.
Homonyms make it necessary to differentiate between referents and signifieds as if I signify a bar for example (let's say I'm holding a bar of xanax but you can't see that): "I'm going to put this bar in my mouth and swallow it", and we're actually standing at a bar drinking a beer - my utterance instantly becomes absurd.
So referents are "real" things, as in they exist, but they only mean something to us once they're signified. So it's the thought of the "thing" that means more to us than the thing at its origin. It becomes even more interesting when we take into account that language is a system of differentiation. A bar is a bar because it's not a stool. Now am I talking about xanax or a bar where we go to drink or a stool where one might sit to have a drink at a bar or a stool that one may expel the following day after eating a burrito on the way home from the bar?
Language is a
representation of what we experience at best, and is this really something that I want to use to express my "beliefs"? Something that I can use to suggest that my "beliefs" are somehow "better" than those of others?
Words only signify what they mean through a process of differentiation, and this differentiation is not a play on opposites. It's a play on every other thing that any particular thing is not, an almost same-thing serves the same purpose as one thing's exact opposite - it allows us to differentiate.
A 3.2 centimetre stick is not the same as a 3.21 centimetre stick, and as long as it is signified as such, we will be able to derive meaning from it. Without the signifier, it will most likely remain a short stick.
Meaning is derived through the interpretation of sign-systems, but interpretation is skewed subjectively - at most we have a web that approximates meaning.
I suppose I'm asking if that is enough?
I'm really not that confident.
