The Subjectivist's Take on Inconsistencies Within Belief Systems

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com

I'm going to copy and past a paragraph from my introductory post to this blog:

In my website, I have a paper called "Reality and Perception" where I resolve the major conflicts that a subjectivist theory like mine usually comes up against, one in particular being the problem of conflicting beliefs between two people both being correct. The resolution to this problem works insofar as the conflicting beliefs reside in two separate minds, but there are cases of a single individual who holds conflicting beliefs within his own mind without acknowledging or being aware of them. What to say about that?

What to say indeed. The solution to this is both simple and complex. It is simple in the length it will take to spell it out. It is complex in how hard it might be to swallow. But if one follows the basic tenets of MM-Theory towards it, one should see that nothing more can be, or needs to be, said about it.

The problem we have in accepting conflicting beliefs held by a single individual is rooted in our habitual clinging to an objectivist view of the world, or an independent model of reality. That two or more beliefs should conflict independently of anyone's assessment is what we have trouble dismissing - just as we would the notion that 2 + 2 = 4 independently of anyone's thinking it.

It becomes obvious, then, that when one believes an idea and some other idea that conflicts with the first, even if he fails to recognize the conflict, the only way it can be said that they indeed conflict is if the one saying it recognizes it as such. So when we say of certain beliefs that they conflict despite the one holding those beliefs not realizing it, the conflict is a projection of our own insights into his beliefs - we make them conflict - just as we make 2 + 2 = 4 by thinking it. Naturally, we can't conceive of it any other way. We can't perform thought experiments in which we image two conflicting beliefs not conflicting because the very parameters of the experiment require that we recognize a conflict.

So if the one who holds the so-called conflicting beliefs doesn't recognize the conflict, then those beliefs, for him, will not conflict. I understand that such a view is hard to swallow, but I still hold that the difficulty rests in our clinging to our innate sense of objectivism (because it's innate, there is little hope, short of performing brain surgery on ourselves, in detaching ourselves from it).

But as I said, the main tenets of MM-Theory lead us directly to that conclusion - that is, the conclusion that if one doesn't see a conflict between any of his beliefs, no conflict will exist. This is, in fact, central to MM-Theory because of its deeply subjectivist theme - that is, because of the manner in which it posits the reality or truth of things - namely, that things are the way they are solely because of the way they feel. If a system of belief feels consistent and true, it will be consistent and true for that person. Its consistency and truth are a projection of its feeling that way.

However, MM-Theory also says that the reality or truth of things is dynamic such that if a system of belief were consistent and true one moment, it needn't be for every other moment. Systems of beliefs still harbor the potential to come undone in virtue of the possibility of conflicts suddenly emerging or being pointed out. What I argue is that it is only when those conflicts surface that they can be said to be there - and only for the person to whom they've surfaced. I say this in opposition to the more tantalizing, but objectivist, intuition that if a conflict can be validly pointed out, it must have been there all along. The latter, to me, is much too Platonic - that is, it harkens back to an independently existing realm of pure and abstract truths, and relations between truths such as conflicts and consistencies. It leads to a picture of the world in which not only truths exist independently and of themselves, but conflicts between them as well. Plato, it could be said, is the archetypical radicalist when it comes to the objectivist position, taking to an extreme the notion that truths support and contradict each other in a manner independent of our thinking. I would prefer to swing the other way, and if that means swallowing something that goes against every objectivist fiber in my body, then I guess I'll have to tolerate a minor inconvenience.

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com