Let's talk about what it is to live in this world through the lenses of Alain Souchon and his famous song: "Foule Sentimental" which directly translates to Sentimental Crowd. He is a famous French singer and songwriter who is able to ally philosophy and relativism in the way he writes. I will use the song as the basis for the post today.
A belief is one of the many psychological attitudes a person may have toward a proposition which, as we all more or less know or agree, is a content that represents a certain state of affairs. Good example:
(a) Cows are herbivores
Anybody who believes this statement has the psychological attitude of accepting that cows are herbivores. The person takes that content to be the case. Under normal circumstances, if asked whether the above statement (a) is true, she would assent. Assuming she's sincere and competent, she would voice her belief by stating (a). She could actually possibly state:
(b) "It is true that cows are herbivores"
(c) "It is the case that cows are herbivores"
That person might in fact use many other statements or sentences that are logically equivalent to these statements.
In any case what I am trying to get at is what this world offers to us, the world we live in. In his song Souchon states that this world offers us so many things that:
We are made to believe
That happiness is to have
Our wardrobes full of assets
In scorn of us, [it's] pathetic because
Sentimental crowd that we are
We are pining for ideals
Attracted to the stars, to sails
[To] only non-commercial things
Sentimental crowd that we are
Souchon makes this statement based on his own analysis of the world we live in. This statement is made based on examples he cites throughout the song. The key element for me here is the fact that he calls all of us a "Sentimental Crowd", should we consider this a fact or a belief? From the definition stated above we know that whether we hold a belief, disbelief, or nonbelief toward a proposition, thinking logically can help in developing the attitude that would be most adequate. This is important, since our beliefs are the building blocks of our reasoning.
For me, I believe in this statement, in light of recent events across the globe all of us can see that the exasperation of people's feelings have enhanced the sentiment of inequality that many of us have been feeling for years to become a well shared feeling. We are indeed a "Sentimental crowd".
The next level of the belief hinges on its accuracy and truth. An acceptable degree of accuracy requires the belief to represent or get close to representing the facts.
We live in the world of high consumption; the more we own, the better we feel about ourselves, and the more we get, the more we want. For me, Souchon is absolutely right in his depiction of human kind, especially when he describes the ideals as being non-commercial things, at least for me. I mentioned above that accuracy has a lot to do with degree as it depends on the contents of beliefs, and some contents are closer to representing the facts than others. Some beliefs are thus more accurate than others, but from my previous post ("The numbers") we also know that statistical syllogism and matter of fact statements need the right context and facts to be considered true.
In the reality of things we can accept that truth and falsity do not depend on degree at all. A belief can be true or false simply because we cannot say that a belief is more or less true. A belief cannot be partially true otherwise it is not a belief on the other end the same belief can hold the virtues of accuracy and truth at the same time.
The belief of Alain Souchon in his song for example can be both accurate and true, accurate because based on the description he provides and the depiction attached to it.
The virtues of accuracy and truth can be lacking for a belief and still that belief can be reasonable. A belief is reasonable if and only if it is well supported , otherwise it is deemed unreasonable. Since beliefs of different types can be supported differently. In other words, what's required for a belief to be reasonable varies according to what sort of belief it is. In Alain Souchon song, his belief can be described as empirical (or observational) and what is required for his belief to be reasonable differs from what will be required by non observational beliefs to be reasonable.
Many philosophers have provided remarks on each case, in essence they say that a conceptual belief is reasonable if and only if its content is such that to understand it is to realize that it is true. Such beliefs are those that go without saying to anyone who understands their contents such as a "sister is a female sibling" for example.
The empirical beliefs have to be supported either by evidence or by inference from evidence. We use evidence and inference as the ways to establish reasonableness and when it lacks either of these two aspects, they could be said to have instead a substantial degree of unreasonableness.
All I am trying to say is that many things in this world have been established as belief while lacking the support to make them what they claim to be, but are still considered as such because a general assumption has been made about them. I end this with another paragraph from the song:
There emerge
From those cardboard boxes
Washed-up people, obsolete
And sad and without any pluses
Desires that distress us
Are imposed on us
From the moment we are born they take us, come off it
For bloody idiots, whereas we are
