Statements of total disbelief | Hacker News Reader

Statements of total disbelief

3 pointsgizi11 comments

The problem with a statement such as 'I do not believe anything' is that it is contradictory. If you really do not believe anything, you also do not believe the statement in which you just said exactly that. There is danger in adopting contradictions. The principle of explosion allows every possible other statement to become true. In other words, a naive statement of total disbelief is in fact, exactly the opposite of what it looks like. Valid statements of disbelief must allow for at least one exception. You could, for example, say: 'I do not believe anything except for this very statement'. That would almost work, if this statement did not suffer from infinite recursion.

Since a statement of complete disbelief must contain at least one correctly-chosen exception, it is paradoxically also a strong statement of belief, exactly in that one exception. Example: 'I do not believe in any gods except for the one true god'. Then, what about 'I do not believe in any unicorns except for the one true unicorn?' Here, it depends on the definition of unicorn. In terms of the lambda calculus, both statements will most likely turn out to be alpha-equivalent. Only the form of what you say, really matters.

Atheists also disbelieve in any gods, but they would probably want to use another exception to keep their total disbelief consistent. What alternative exception do atheists propose?

The opposite of belief is doubt, not disbelief. In the absence of evidence, a premise is nothing but speculation.

> The opposite of belief is doubt, not disbelief

Wow! Such a simple response to a complicated zero-sum game question. Put it another way, burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of God, but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism. Till then, atheists will be skeptical. That's not disbelief.

Exactly. Furthermore, to "believe" is not the same as to "know". If someone were to say "I believe I have the answer to this puzzle", he or she is not necessarily saying "I know with certainty that I have the answer". It is to my understanding that in common tongue, "belief" is merely the state of having a seemingly coherent mental picture of a scenario, similar to "I see it likely or highly probable". "Belief" need not imply a rigorously tested truth. Nevertheless, I do believe in the hypothesis that the words "believe" and "know" mean different things to different people.

I'm confused because there doesn't seem to be any connection between the paradoxical statement, "I do not believe in anything" and the statement "I do not believe in any gods." Since the statement is not a god, there is no paradox here. It does not require an exception to allow itself to exist.

"I do not believe in any gods" is not a statement of "complete disbelief". Gods are not equivalent to all beliefs.

I think there are more dangers in adopting superstitions.

The danger in adopting a superstition is that it would lead to a contradiction. Total but naive disbelief leads to a contradiction, unless you allow for an exception. In other words, critical thinking is not that simple. That is why we have methods such as science and math to help us with that. Naive forms of disbelief probably are superstitions.

The people that allow for an exception are called agnostic.

There is such a thing as informed total disbelief.

Yes, but their total disbelief needs to be phrased in the correct form. Furthermore, not every exception will be valid. Altogether, it is a logical problem. They have to solve it correctly. I want to see their proposal in which they phrase their disbelief, because if phrased correctly, it will also be a statement of staunch belief in the exception that they propose.

I believe that all beliefs (in non-falsifiable existence) stem from imagined experiences.

Yes, but "I believe that all beliefs" is a belief statement. It is not a statement of disbelief. You are not really taking a risk. You need to say something like "I do not believe that any belief ..." Actually, to some extent you did. If we rephrase your statement in a form that takes at least some risk: "I do not believe that there exists a belief that does not stem from imagined experiences." So, from there, all we would need to discover is one such belief. The problem here is the definition for "imagined". When is an experience imagined and when not? Now, you need to take a risk by defining precisely the term "imagined".

Is a statement of disbelief a belief? I believe that all beliefs are false, except this one? I disbelieve all beliefs, except this disbelief? I disbelieve everything except I believe in the goodness of science? I disbelieve all hypotheses except for falsifiable ones with empirical evidence? I'm not clever enough for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com