Chapter 11

BELIEFS

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

- David Hume (1711-1776), A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III (Hume 1888:415)

            We are concerned that emotional judgments are beliefs so that we can use then to guide us to what truly matters. The last chapter showed why evaluative beliefs normally converge with their related emotions. This chapter will offer further evidence for the emotive force of evaluative beliefs by showing the role of emotion in stabilizing belief.

            We saw the intimate connection between emotions and the evaluative beliefs that are emotional judgments. Our felt emotions are the most obvious evidence for the corresponding emotional judgment. That we despise someone is, on the face of it, evidence that he is despicable. It is not conclusive evidence because our emotion always requires examination or processing: Did he do what we thought he did? Did he do it for the reasons we think he did it for? Is he acting in character or did he just make a mistake? Is what he did truly as bad as we think it is? Is our response a healthy one, or are we personalizing or over-reacting to his actions? Though not conclusive, our emotions are generally good evidence for our evaluative judgments.

            Usually, when someone’s emotions and judgments are inconsistent, some equivocation is going on. Often the equivocation is between judging a person and judging his qualities. For example, we might judge a public figure to be despicable as a person, while still admiring his skills as an orator. Generally, however, our judgments and emotions are consistent and should track each another. Disparity calls for explanation, or processing of the inconsistency. True wisdom, as opposed to mere cleverness, involves a harmony of judgment and emotion.

            Emotions also play an important role in stabilizing beliefs. Emotions fix beliefs and give them their strength. If we believe that someone is admirable, then generally we admire her. If we do not admire her, then it is not clear how strong our belief that she is admirable really is. If we believe that something is dangerous, yet feel no fear of it, perhaps we are just parroting the beliefs of others. Courage consists in overcoming our fear of a truly dangerous situation, not in foolishly believing it safe.

            Beliefs are cognitive attitudes. Though they respond to evidence, they are still deeply involved with the emotions. Here we part company with David Hume in the chapter motto. In the eighteenth-century psychology of Hume, belief and emotion are totally distinct from each other. They belong to separate faculties of the human psyche. For Hume, only the passions could move a person to action. Belief and reason are inert and unable to move a person. Hence his claims that beliefs must always be in the service of the emotions, and that reason is the slave of the passions. We must abandon this outdated psychology. Belief influences emotion, and emotion influences belief. Beliefs differ in intensity; we can hold beliefs more or less strongly. Roughly, if we hold one belief more strongly than another, then the former belief is more involved with emotion than the latter belief is. Belief and emotion interact as equals.

Emotions and Strength of Belief

            We have a whole range of cognitive attitudes that we can take toward a proposition. Consider this list of cognitive attitudes arranged in rough order of increasing intensity or strength of belief:         

                        i.         To wonder whether

                        ii.        To suspect that

                        iii.       To hypothesize that

                        iv.       To assume that

                        v.         To suppose that

                        vi.       To think that

                        vii.      To be of the opinion that

                        viii.     To believe that

                        ix.       To be convinced that

                        x.         To be certain that

                        xi.       To hold the conviction that

We often do talk of a person believing something “passionately” or of a person having “deep” beliefs. Some beliefs matter more than others. Even the idea of the dispassionate scientist is often a myth. Real scientists become committed to their pet theories, and the confirmation of these theories becomes essential to their self-esteem. We are more passionate about our convictions than about our opinions. We are more committed to our beliefs than to our suspicions. We doubt our suspicions more than we doubt our certainties.

            If we are reasonable people, then the strength of our cognitive attitude to propositions will be in proportion to the strength of our evidence for that proposition. We will think that our opinions have more probability of being true than do our suppositions. For a rational thinker, degree of evidence will explain degree of belief. Nevertheless, explaining why a thinker has a certain cognitive attitude rather than another, is different from explaining what is involved in having that attitude. Strength of evidence provides an intellectual explanation for strength of belief, but it does not provide a psychological explanation of what strength of belief is.

            How is strength of belief realized psychologically? One clue is that the stronger our belief, then the deeper is our commitment to it. (Misak 2000:73-78) We are more willing to rely on a stronger belief than on a weaker one. We will be more willing to defend a stronger belief when others question it than we are a weaker one. Nevertheless, a commitment is more than an intellectual attitude. When we are committed to a person, cause, or course of action, we are emotionally bound to that person, cause, or action. We may have taken on the commitment for intellectual reasons, but what makes our commitment a commitment is its involvement in our emotions. We have a commitment to a belief when that belief is bound up with our pride and self-esteem or with our anxieties and worries. What makes cognitive attitudes differ in strength or intensity from one another is their degree of involvement in our emotional life.

            Doubt, the converse of belief, furnishes another clue. To believe something more strongly is to doubt it less. Yet doubt, though concerned with the truth or falsity of beliefs, is more akin to emotion than to cognition. Doubts are about beliefs. They are caused by contrary evidence. They have an experiential aspect; doubts nag and irritate; they make us anxious and worried; the feeling of doubt varies in intensity. They motivate us to reconsider and sometimes revise our beliefs. They focus our attention on the belief that we are doubting. They resolve themselves when we form new beliefs. They have an evaluative aspect; we do not enjoy being in a state of doubt. The weakness of our belief is roughly proportional to the strength of our doubt about it. Doubt has a large emotional aspect, and so emotion is involved in the strength or weakness of belief.

            We can also see the involvement of emotion in belief in our physiological responses. A polygraph does not detect whether or not someone is telling the truth. It detects, instead, whether or not the testee believes what she is saying. It tests for belief by measuring physiological symptoms of emotional stress. The polygraph usually measures four things, pulse rates, respiration rates, blood pressure, and galvanic skin response (electrical conductivity of the skin due to sweating). Other things being equal, these indicators of emotional stress change between when the testee gives an answer she believes and when she gives an answer she does not believe. Though polygraphs are not reliable enough for court evidence, they work as well as they do because of the involvement of emotion in belief.

            Emotion and belief also connect in the brain. An example is what happens in some cases of temporal lobe epilepsy. Some sufferers report experiencing religious feelings of awe and wonder in such attacks, experiences similar to the ones caused by electromagnetic stimulation of the right temporal lobe. What is interesting is the strength of the religious beliefs that can arise. Ramachandran comments:

The patient may also say, “This is it; I finally see the truth. I have no doubts anymore.” It seems ironic that our convictions about the absolute truth or falsehood of a thought should depend not so much on the propositional language system, which takes great pride in being logical and infallible, but on much more primitive limbic structures, which add a form of emotional qualia to thoughts, giving them a “ring of truth.” (This might explain why the more dogmatic assertions of priests as well as scientists are so notoriously resistant to correction through intellectual reasoning!) (Ramachandran 1998:298, n.13)

The patient’s evidence for the existence of God may be shaky – his experience during an epileptic attack. The strength of his belief, the absolute certainty in his religious conviction, is out of proportion to the evidence. His conviction in his belief comes from the involvement of his limbic system, the seat of emotions in the brain.

Psychotherapy and Belief

            The cognitive-behavioral and rational-emotive forms of psychotherapy for emotional disorders work because emotions depend on cognitive attitudes. A person’s false underlying assumptions, incorrect automatic thoughts, and distorted reasoning can lead to depression, anxiety, and emotional dysfunction.

            Nevertheless, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) does not see the belief/emotion interaction as just one way. Correcting cognitive distortions works for milder forms of mood disorder. In cases of deep depressions or of personality disorders, however, the dysfunctional emotions work to maintain the patient’s core belief systems against the cognitive and behavioral evidence. (Beck 1979:12-16) CBT calls these systems or patterns of strongly held core beliefs and associated emotions “schemas.”

            Schemas are often formed early in life and contain simplistic, immature, and unconditional beliefs. In her heart of hearts, someone might believe, “I’m a despicable, hopeless, loser.” This is a judgmental, absolutist, childish way of thinking. A mature person in better mental health would have a more qualified, nuanced belief about herself: “I’ve had some bad luck, but it will change. I’ve made some mistakes, but lots of people still respect me and enjoy my company. Things would get better if I were just more careful.”

            Like mood disorders, personality traits are maintained by distorting information and evidence in various ways. Schemas protect core beliefs from falsification. A sufferer will make faulty inferences, pay attention only to selected bits of evidence and ignore or deny the rest. He will draw hasty generalizations from little evidence and personalize situations inappropriately. He will magnify the significance of events to support his pre-existing evaluations.

            Unlike mood disorders, however, schemas do not respond readily to cognitive techniques. The sufferer is resistant to changing his maladaptive core beliefs. Rational discussion of these beliefs is threatening and upsetting. Often the therapist will need to resort to emotional and experiential techniques such as imagery, role playing, and dialogue between the mature patient and his imagined, childlike self. (Young 1999) The strong involvement of the patient’s core beliefs with his emotions prevents his beliefs responding easily to the evidence.

            Emotional judgments look in two directions. On the one hand, they are responsive to the evidence of the emotions. On the other, they are held in place or stabilized by emotions. Emotions strengthen beliefs, sometimes in an unhealthy way. Dysfunctional emotions distort the responsiveness of belief to evidence.

            An example of this interaction of schema, evidence, and belief is the way many people deal with death. We maintain our everyday complacency only by not dwelling on thoughts of dying. Talking or thinking of death makes many people uneasy. A person may change the topic, fail to concentrate on the subject, make a joke of death, or just leave the conversation. People deny or forget the evidence that they will one day die. They form beliefs in an afterlife or in their own specialness that are based on very poor evidence. As a society we hide death from the living by concealing it in hospitals and funeral homes.

            In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy brilliantly describes his protagonist’s difficulty with believing in his own imminent death, despite overwhelming evidence.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiezewetter’s Logic:”Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius -- man in the abstract -- was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate form all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman, and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? “Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible. (Tolstoy 1960:131-132; cited in Yalom 1980:117-118)

Everyday complacency cannot coexist with a strong belief in one’s own mortality. Existentialists stress that we cannot live authentic lives without facing our dread of nonexistence. We must work through or process these feelings. If we make emotional judgments on the basis of a childish belief in our own immortality, then our judgments will be false and our emotions will be inauthentic. We must not avoid emotional engagement with life to lessen the loss inherent in our own death. On the other hand, we must not exaggerate the evil of death or become obsessed with it. Death does not destroy meaning in life.

Emotions and the Stabilization of Belief

            The above discussion makes it seem as if emotion has a purely pathological role in the formation of belief. Seemingly, its role is to block beliefs from responding to evidence and prevent them from attaining truth. In fact, this appearance is misleading. Emotion plays an important role in stabilizing beliefs, and its occasionally pathological role is subordinate to this.

            To see how emotion can usefully stabilize belief, recall how belief testing is holistic. Any given belief is only confirmed or disconfirmed by the evidence when we supplement it with various auxiliary hypotheses. An item of evidence that appears to disconfirm a given belief might disconfirm an auxiliary hypothesis instead.

            For example, imagine someone who believes the company of his friend to be enjoyable to him. One day he finds that he does not enjoy her company. Possibly this disconfirms his hypothesis that he would enjoy her company if her were free of the distortions to which emotions are prone. Possibly, however, this disconfirms his auxiliary hypothesis that conditions are distortion-free. Distortion-free conditions include good psychological health on his part. Perhaps his lack of enjoyment of her company on that day means that he has the blues that day, not that he her company is not enjoyable to him. How does he decide which hypothesis to accept, and which to reject?

            As a matter of logic, all beliefs in the holistic web are equally susceptible to disconfirmation by new evidence. Emotionless reason does not decide which beliefs to retain and which to reject. Emotional reason, as we will see, provides a solution.

            Recall, from a previous chapter, de Sousa’s and Damasio’s accounts of the role of emotion in strategic rationality, the making of decisions about courses of action. The problem for finite human minds making decisions in real time is that the mind contains too much information. How are we to decide whether a piece of information is relevant to a decision without retrieving and examining it? However, if we have to retrieve and check for relevance every piece of information that we know, then we will take forever to act. De Sousa hypothesized that the focusing aspect of emotion comes into play here. “Emotions are species of determinate patterns of salience among objects of attention, lines of inquiry, and inferential strategies.” (de Sousa 1987:196) Our emotions focus our attention on certain pieces of information and exclude access to others.

             Our situation regarding the making of decisions about which beliefs to retain in response to new evidence is analogous. We have an enormous number of beliefs. How do we know to which of these beliefs our new evidence is relevant without calling each to mind and checking it? Yet if we do that, then will our finite minds not just bog down in the checking process? The role of emotions in stabilizing and strengthening certain beliefs provides a mechanism for aiding such decisions.

            We form the beliefs expressed in emotional judgments based on our emotional responses. Our fear of the precipice is obvious evidence that the precipice is dangerous. The evidence of our fear is not dispassionate in the way that the evidence of our other senses is because of the focusing aspect of emotional responses. Emotional responses do three things to our cognitive functioning. (Elgin 1996:151) They concentrate our attention on the object of the response, they heighten our awareness of aspects of the situation relevant to maintaining the response, and they distract our attention from aspects of the situation that would change the response. Our emotions frame the way that we see the situation.

            When we confront the precipice, our fear focuses our attention on the fall and distracts us from the conversation of a friend. Our fear heightens our awareness of the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff, the strength of the wind, and the absence of a railing. Our fear prevents us from noticing that others are, without incident, standing closer to the edge than we are, or from remembering that no one has ever fallen off that particular cliff. Our fear is not only evidence that the cliff is dangerous, but it emphasizes other evidence that the cliff is dangerous and de-emphasizes contrary evidence.

            Fear is not the only emotion that frames evidence. Jealousy sensitizes us to signs of our beloved’s betrayal. Anger makes it difficult to see our foe’s good points. Admiration blinds us to our hero’s foibles. Nor is the framing of evidence restricted to occurrent emotions. Long after our first feelings of indignation have worn off, our cold anger at a rival will reveal itself only in our refusal to countenance evidence of his virtues and our tendency to dwell on evidence of his failings.

            The focusing, heightening, and distracting aspects of emotion strengthen some beliefs and stabilize them in the face of evidence. Confronted with new evidence, a person will retain the stronger beliefs in her web of hypotheses and direct potential disconfirmation at more weakly held beliefs. If everything is going well, the beliefs that she holds more strongly will be the beliefs that are more likely to be true. If not, then her emotions are dysfunctional. Emotional reason provides a solution to the decision problem that the holism of belief formation creates.

Objections and Replies

            We can have emotions without belief. When we fantasize – conjuring up thoughts that we know to be false – we can generate emotions. Fantasy emotions feel just as real as the standard variety. Nevertheless, having emotions without belief is different from having beliefs without emotion. When we fantasize, we are aware that we are entertaining our thoughts at will. So we are aware that we are entertaining the thoughts although we have no evidence that they are true.

            We have beliefs about which we have never thought or felt anything. All of us believe that no giraffes are living on the dark side of the moon, though we perhaps did not realize it until now. How can we be emotionally committed to beliefs that we do not know that we have? Nevertheless, though we have never thought of it before, we are still emotionally committed to that belief. Otherwise we would be curious about how the giraffes got there, worried about whether they have enough food, or trying to get NASA to rescue them.

            We can, it seems, have beliefs about which we are not able to care. Depression provides an example. Someone who is seriously depressed and listless can probably recount all the information she had before her illness, but she would no longer care about any of it.

She would not be committed to it, she would not defend it, she would not rely on it, and she would not be curious about its truth. The explanation is that depression distorts belief. When she is depressed, her emotions strengthen certain of her beliefs. Depression strengthens, magnifies, and focuses her attention on false, hopeless, self-deprecatory beliefs and weakens or minimizes contrary beliefs. So she no longer believes what she used to believe as strongly as she did before. Depression weakens belief, though it does not destroy it.

            We can also have beliefs that are at odds with our emotions. An example is a phobia. Suppose someone has a phobia about flying in an airplane. All the evidence supports the view that travel by air is safer than travel by car on a per mile basis. Yet even the thought of getting on an airplane terrifies him. He believes that air travel is safe, but he nonetheless fears it. How strongly does he believe that air travel is safe? The answer is that he does not believe it as strongly as does someone who is not phobic about air travel. Here a strong emotion interferes with the rational response of belief to evidence.

            To conclude: Emotion has led us to belief and the search for truth. Yet we have not left emotion behind. First, emotional responses, both actual and hypothetical, provide the evidence for emotional judgments and evaluative beliefs. Second, belief is itself intimately bound up with emotion. We are emotionally committed to our beliefs; the stronger our belief, the more we care. When we believe something to be worthwhile, it matters to us.

            Our search for meaning requires both our heads and our hearts.