KH:
>> Of course, these ancient chieftains didn't really think that they were
>> physically going to live forever!
> [snip]
BMcC:
> Are we really sure of this? Of course I would like to believe
> that the ancient kings were ancient spin doctors who didn't believe
> their own press ("religion not only is now but was in 3000BCE
> the opiate of the masses...")....
>
> But maybe they *did* believe, although in a form of experience
> which we no longer have -- Julian Jaynes' "bicameral mind"
[snip]
No need to get involved in the first instance with Jaynes's
intriguing hypothesis. I would like to start at the very
beginning by noting that it is, in fact, *very* difficult to
know what people "really *believe*".
It may be easiest in the case of the professional believer,
the scholar or intellectual who makes it his or her business
to have beliefs and to recommend worthy beiefs to others.
There may be difficult problems interpreting words or texts,
but it is usually easy enough to suppose that if such a
person says "I believe thus-and-so" we can take his or her
word for it (even if we're arguing about just what
"thus-and-so" *means* - eg, transubstantiation).
But when somebody says "The Pharoahs really believed [or
didn't really believe] that they were physically going to
live forever" it gets very difficult to know just what
evidence counts for or against (quite apart from disputes
about "physically?".)
Why not simply suppose that, like everyone else, "they
believe" what the priests tell them is true? And if not,
then what are all those people involved in preparing
pharoahs for the afterlife actually doing? ... Oh, they're
just enacting a social ritual the purpose of which is to
legitimate the absolute power of the pharoah, usw., usw.,
usw.... But if this were the case they could perfectly well
say so. And if they don't say anything of the sort, where do
*we* get off saying that we know better than they do what
they are *really* doing and thinking?
[Keith advances relevant evidence but we don't know enough
about the context to know how to evaluate it.]
Perhaps most of us think about such things in the same way
fishes think about water ... hardly at all. And so to ask
what they believe can only invite the answer, not much. It's
hardly a matter of *belief* at all.
Example (rhetorical questions):
When a pollster surveying scientific literacy asks one of us
whether the earth moves or not, do we not say, "It moves"?
Does that mean that we *believe* that it moves? Could we
advance good reasons why someone who thinks it rests should
change his mind? Do we actually *care* whether it moves or
not? Would not the *right* answer be "I don't *know*
anything about it and I don't care"? Do we not say we
believe it moves because the priests say that it moves and
we don't want to be thought of as pitifully ignorant of what
the priests say? Is "belief" really the proper term for
talking about what we say most of the time? Or should we
change radically what we *mean* by the word "believe"??
Does GW Bush really believe that Jesus is his personal
Saviour and favourite philosopher? Does Dr Wolfowitz believe
what he says? Does Henry Kissinger?
And so, in just the sense that Prof Latour intended it,
> (We have never yet really been modern.)
best wishes,
Stephen Straker
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Vancouver, B.C.
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