The makeup of a person's value set

I wasn’t sure where to post this, I thought originally to put it in mundane babble, but there’s a chance the debate could progress along decent philosophical lines so I’ll put it here, though I’ll understand if our new moderators get itchy to use their powers and move it Hello Skeptic and Pax!

I was recently talking with a friend of mine about how people develop their belief sets. She had happened to say she was a complete pacifist when we were talking about the war (again, groan). This led to the refreshingly new debate on how she would be if she were raised in another country. She believed that she would still be a complete pacifist.

Now ignoring the question of whether she would really still be her because she wouldn’t have the same memories, etc. are there others of you that believe that our values sets are not entirely dependant on the culture we are raised in. If so, why?

Furthermore she contended that virtually every person actually decides what kind of ‘value’ set they will adopt, how they will view the world. Let’s call this an ACTIVE decision. I, conversly, believed that most people never thought about their values set, they pick it up without even realising it, often holding quite contradictory views. Call this a PASSIVE decision(?).

To clear things up, by values set I mean in general something like a belief set including the moral beliefs, how you judge right or wrong, are morals subjective, etc. and also your belief in a system such as nationalism, socialism, communism, etc. In fact it’s pretty much what stance you’re going to take in all the big debates, including is there a god, should we follow his commandments to the word etc. I don’t mean beliefs such “I believe if it is raining there must be clouds” or “I believe sugar tastes nice”.

One of the big differences between a passive and active decision is that with the former as each new belief is acquired it may still be thought about (and so still could be a decision), but it is not thought about in the context of the other beliefs. That means it is quite easy to pick up a contradictory belief set. Furthermore there quite often is no decision at all, you just pick up the belief without realising it, picking it up off your parents or peers or media sources, etc. With an active decision the only way you can have a contradictory beliefs set is because you either don’t completely understand the concepts or by bad reasoning.

My friend thought that I must think that the majority of people are stupid. Quite coincidentally, I do, but I don’t think it would make a difference if everyone is smart, I just think that it doesn’t even occur to people to people to question their value system and then decide on which value set to adopt. I think the people that do are a rare few (for example, Magius comes to mind as one who seems to have a very consistent value set) and even then their decision is still heavily influenced by their background. To be honest I can’t say that I’ve thought through my entire value set without finding some worrying contradictions, and yet I still haven’t made the effort to clear them completely up, though they are more consistent now.

Now I will come in with my own arguments for the passive side later on, but first I would like to see the opening thoughts about this of other people and their arguments for one side or the other.

I was only doing my duty, sir. But is that an active or passive opinion?

Personally I think 95% of all learning is “passive”, it’s only when we deliberately study something can we hope to remember what we are trying to learn. An example might be, I’m currently reading a book on how to create a web page. I’m not trying to learn the book off by heart, as I would have to do if I wanted to recite a poem. So I would consider the reading of this book to be passive learning, as in a week’s time I won’t know for sure what I’ll be able to remember. While if I was studying a poem I’m be pretty sure in a weeks time I would still know the poem well enough to recite.

I think a lot of opinions come from peer pressure to conform. I know this is very general, but I think most people get their first “opinion” on a subject in this manner. If we receive to different opinions then we are force to make what you’re calling an “Active” decision to decide what our opinion is. I don’t think most people are logically minded hence many people hate maths. So when a person goes to examine their belief system they don’t know how to think through it logically, and miss inconsistencies. They think A equals B, even though in reality A does not equal B. Some people also have a problem with gathering all the facts. They don’t know what information is needed to backup their beliefs more strongly. Meaning if you ask most philosophers why do they belief a proposition they can back it up with a good argument detailing lots of perceived “facts”, of course this is subjective. But they will normally be able to explain things in rational terms.

I agree that very few people have a consistent set of beliefs. But I think there is also the fact that a person is constantly changing, growing and expressing new ideas. But I feel long-term opinions will normally reflect a person’s life experience; so will be a conviction that is harder to change.

First, your friend that thinks she would be a pacifist no matter where she lived or was raised is delusionally wrong. The only reason she is a pacifist now, is because she is operating from the information she was given in this country, in this lifestyle. Suppose she was raised in Iraq, and everyday was told that she starved because the Americans sanctioned her country. The reason her mother was dead was because an American bomb killed her. Suppose she even did research on the evils of The United States, and could find no evidence to the contrary. She would literally believe the Americans were evil, and have know other way of thinking differently. When she learns that the U.S is invading her country, I doubt she would have the notion to be a pacifist (unless she believed her ideals were not worth dying for). It is ignorant to say that who you are is not a large result of your environment.

Concerning whether or not people choose their value system, I have to agree with Matt and Pax, that a lot of people never give any thought to what they believe and why they do. Why do I question my value system on a regular basis? I can actually tell you. Because I took “The Philosophy of Human Nature” as a requirement for my university. This class was so mind blowing. It was asking questions that I had never thought about asking. If I had not stumbled upon this class, I would never have had the idea to even question what I believed. I would say that the majority of people are never even given the oportunity to question their beliefs. It freaks me out to think that people will live their entire life, and never have thought about morality, free-will, mind-body, etc. Seriously, it freaks me out. I suppose I have a huge fear of being ignorant.

Even the few people that are given the oppotunity to question themselves, many do not follow through. I 'll use myself as an example. I grew up in a passive Christian family. I was taught about the Christian paradigm of belief. I said prayers and believed in Jesus Christ. It wasn’t pushed on me by my parents, but was really “offered” by them as something to believe in. At this point in my life, I have a hard time believing in such things. In fact, I logically think I should not. I would like to consider myself agnostic. But this is by no means an easy decision to uphold. There was a certain comfort I had in believing in Christianity. Everyday is now a constant struggle to reject what I used to believe. Why do I still say Christian prayers before I go to bed? I feel like such a hippocrite most of the time because what I say and what I practice are sometimes entirely different. I meet people like Matt and Magius-who seem to have formulated a solid belief system- and am envious, because I hate the fact that I can appear wishy-washy when I have conversations about such things. I know someday I will hopefully arrive at a decision, and I will be able to focus on living my life and not just figuring out how to do it.

The point I am trying to make, is that it is ALOT OF WORK to unlearn what you have already been taught. In fact, it is very stressful questioning the validity of your belief paradigm. Most people would rather not deal with it.

Matt- it’s funny that you say there are passive and active decisions. Are you familiar with Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance theory? You and Pax Vitae draw some strikingly similar conclusions.

Matt stated:

I, like you, believe that we receive our stimulus passively and many of our decisions are based on that, sometimes even unconsciously. We don’t realize we hold a certain opinion until we find ourselves mysteriously blurting it out. But I also believe that we can get this information out of our unconscious and reflect on it in order to evaluate and strengthen or expunge the idea. I wouldn’t say your friend is wrong, I would simply say that she is a product of her environment - if she believes in souls, afterlife, and God then the conversation probably wouldn’t go very far. Being a product of her environment doesn’t necessitate her being completely different, so it is possible that she might still be a pacifist if she grew up in another country. But it is also possible for her to not be a pacifist, which is to say that saying either way for sure is a naive response; as I think your friends response was. Again, that doesn’t mean she is wrong in her statement, it just means that we can never evaluate what she is saying and personally I wouldn’t find her very interesting. It’s nothing more than a lot of empty words that never lead anywhere.

Our value sets are dependant on our genome, environment, culture, experiences (apart from culture), etc. Many variables apply, for this reason i think it impossible for the time being, to know for sure whether a person would think killing is right if they grew up on the Galapagos islands, wore pink socks, white shirts, never cut their hair, and drank chocolate martinis at least once a weak. We just can’t know, but we can hypothesis, which can sometimes lead to interesting results. But in the case of your conversation with your friend about her being a pacifist, she needs to base it on something more concrete and specific - otherwise, as someone I know who loves to say “Shes talkin out of her ass!”

Matt stated:

I disagree with your friend. I do believe we have the ability to decide upon our value set, through years of meditation, introspection, philosophy, and isolation. I would be more inclined to say that people find themselves holding opinions, once they find that they hold on opinion on something, whether it be a good or bad opinion, they defend their decision as an ego battle. This also explains why people get very defensive and emotional when they are told they are wrong or they have their beliefs challenged.

What’s your take?

here are a few thoughts:

i think the problem is this:

if we accept that a person’s beliefs are the result of the society in which she grew up, then our beliefs come across as “ungrounded”, and we are unable to assert the truth of our beliefs over those of other people who grew up in different cultures.

even if we do have true beliefs, that we have true beliefs is just a matter of luck insofar as we were born into the right culture. since we have no way of getting outside of the culture in which we were born, we ultimately have no way of establishing the ultimate truth of our beliefs. Wittgenstein compared this to the situation of a fly in the bottle.

The implication of this is generally an accepting attitude towards different cultures. However, it is important to note that this accepting attitude can only go so far; in particular, it presents a problem when dealing with people who do not believe that all beliefs are the result of the culture in which one grows up, and thus believes that their beliefs are true and others are false. Because of this, in a sense, diversity only works on the condition that the cultures really arent all that diverse

obviously other people, from different cultures, have different beliefs.

Similarly, people within a so-called culture have beliefs that vary greatly.

However, it doesnt follow from this that we are therefore unable to assert that the beliefs of one group or person are true, and those of another person or group are false.