How Do You Feel About Games Telling You How You Feel?

@nine there are several studies about matter our inconcious brain make choice instans before our conscience brain take knowledge. That’s why subliminal adds and publicity are so effective conscience could decide against our irrational choice but requires tons of will force

@marajade no - I’m not talking about having a feeling and then “willing” a different choice/decision afterwards…

I’m talking about beliefs shaping the original feelings in the first place.

ahh that’s different matter, yeah our believes are part of what make our inconcious feel from different perspective, for instance a hunt if I think hunt is nasty and evil I would feel bad and acting hostile about it even without think about it.

@nine, I’d suggest that we acquire virtually all of our beliefs about the world in ways that have little or nothing to do with choice. Kids are belief sponges, picking up facts and opinions with very little discrimination.

I don’t know anyone who’s gone back and had a systematic sort-through of all or even most of their childhood beliefs to choose which ones they’re going to keep. Life forces us to reassess some beliefs, and introduces us to new possibilities that we can choose. But there’s this massive substrate of assumption and unconscious belief that we rarely articulate, let alone choose.

And social psychology experiments demonstrate pretty clearly that even as adults, we continue to pull beliefs unconsciously from our social environment, and those beliefs affect our actions whether or not we ever become aware of them.

Many of the “beliefs” we do consciously choose are skin-deep – they’re a story we tell ourselves about ourselves, while deeper convictions continue to shape our actions and reactions. Stealing a page from one of my favorite young theologians, I “don’t believe in child slavery” – that is, I believe that coercive child labor is entirely unacceptable and must be stopped.

But if I keep buying cheap chocolate after becoming aware of the link between cocoa and coercive child labour, it suggests that what I actually believe is something rather different. Child slavery must be stopped… but not at an inconvenience to me. It’s unacceptable… unless it saves me a dollar or two. Which “belief” is the meaningful one here?

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@Havenstone Having a weak will, or being of immoral character, doesn’t change your ethical beliefs. Beliefs do not motivate action, by themselves.

Hume said something along the lines of “knowing something’s wrong doesn’t move us to change it”

@Aquila And also, somewhat relevant: “'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”

I always felt the latter Hume quote showed the deficiency of that concept of “reason” more than anything else.

If beliefs don’t motivate action, what does?

Hume said it was feelings that moved us. I may know that something is bad, but I will only move when that upsets me.

I think we can get upset by many things, but until those things make us feel “unsafe” we are unlikely to act

@Havenstone Desires. My belief that an apple is in front of me doesn’t motivate me to action; My desire to chow down on it, however, does. Beliefs merely paint a picture of the world, it is desire which drives you.

Peoples’ actions tend to be inconsistent with their beliefs and morals as well: someone who believes that exercising daily is essential to health may not even exercise at all.

The relation between belief and desire is worth digging into more than I have time for at the moment. I’d have suggested that our beliefs shape (some of) our desires. And while in some cases, it’s sufficient to explain action inconsistent with belief simply in terms of contrary desire… I do think in many cases our actions reveal contrary beliefs (about other people, their value, whether they’re to be feared/desired/taken seriously) which are no less powerful for being unconscious.

@Havenstone Beliefs shape desires, in the same way that knowing the lie of the land shapes where you choose to walk. But yes, when you have the time to elaborate, I would be very interested in poking your position on the relationship between the two with a theoretical stick.

November. :slight_smile: