Re: THEORY: Are commands to believe infelicitous?

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...> wrote:
> On Thursday, May 26, 2005, at 01:52 , Tom Chappell wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > I propose that any imperative form of the verb "to believe" is
> > infelicitous unless spoken to a computer. 
>
> Eh? How on earth can a computer believe? I fail to see how
concepts like
> belief or disbelief have any relevance to a machine. Belief surely
implies
> an act of rational will and of faith. Machines AFAIK have neither.
>
> A computer can merely hold a database or knowledge where certain
facts
> have been asserted as true or false by some _human_; and these
facts have
> no in themselves no meaning unless there is some human made
program that
> can manipulated as though these facts are true or false. It all
depends
> upon human input & human devised programs.
>
> It is IMO infelicitous to apply the verb "believe" or terms
like "faith"
> to computers.
[snip]

I was drawing a parallel between the computer instruction "STORE"
and the command "believe".  You can tell a computer "this field is
red" and the computer will/must "believe" it.  Whatever value you
say must be stored in a certain field, the computer can, must, and
will store there.  Computers can obey such commands.  They are
machines.
To command a person to believe, on the other hand, is to commit a
categorical error of the kind Kant warned against.  It is to insult
the person by treating them as if they are a machine (to wit, a
computer).

I did not introduce the word "faith" into the discussion.  AFAIK you
did.

My inspiration for this thread was my hearing that the gloss of the
original etymon for "heresy" was "choose to believe".  The early
Church Fathers referred to Christianity as "this is our heresy".
Montaigne has an essay in which a servant whose master is a heretic
does not understand the questions, but is sure his master is
correct, and cannot bring himself to believe his master could be
mistaken, even to save his life.  Modern psychotherapists often
counsel patients to believe something other than what they now
believe, as if it were possible to simply change one's mind.  I
wondered, is "choose to believe" a verb in which the agent is really
not all that agent-like?  Could all that blood have been spilled by
the Church over a linguistic error?

A couple of responders have provided several examples of English-
language imperatives "Believe it!" or the like which seem more-or-
less felicitous to me.  Do you have any?

One responder has shown that Hawaiian words translating "believe"
have somewhat different connotations than English "believe", more
like "rely on".  Can you think of other languages that might make a
difference?

Thanks,

Tom H.C. in OK

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