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.