Experience, feelings, beliefs and decisions

I will freely admit that I frequently get into long debates about the nature of feelings in the decision making process which have in the past been of limited success. Such debates often occur with Dantares and though such discussions are not confined to his company, it is usually with him that I am challenged the most. I hope here to have bring some insight.

Partly out of a wish to clarify my own thinking on the matter and partly out of a desire to see what other people I offer the following as a starting point for discussion both on the blog and more generally: with a view to finding the forces that best sum up decision making.

On the most simple level, it may be observed that decisions are a logical process. One of two or more propositions is selected from a list – simple logic – nothing to it.

On a deeper level, though I would argue that this interpretation seeks to cut out the ‘subjective’ self or perceiver from the equation. Doing so renders the model at best simplistic and at worst unhelpful because as I will argue subjective factors influence the logic used to answer the question. It is therefore necessary to look at accounts that factor in subjective qualities.

Many times we have heard people say that ‘logically that is possible but it just does n’t seem right’. In such cases people effectively are resorting to the store of their past experiences and understanding of other’s experiences to determine that which is subjectively true. This is because people are limited in their perceptions in the sense that the cannot see all things from all positions. They are confined to their current individual attention. Thus they make a selective interpretation based on what they know. But, that knowledge is ultimately subjective.

That subjectivity is further more expressed as a feeling which informs people’s perceptions of ‘what life is really like.’ Were people to have a series of dramatically different experiences compared to their earlier ones, they beliefs feelings about what life is would be altered quite dramatically. Given this altered feeling, one would then make new statements based on logical processes. Thus for Descartes, the existence of God was ‘logically’ proven because for him his experiences informed his feeling about how life ‘really was’. From that starting point, a philosophy was built which used many logical steps, but which started from a feeling based on his prior experiences.

Whilst we’re on the subject experience and beliefs tend to be relatively stable in most people, which for many, gives the illusion that the two have only a limited relationship. I suggest that in fact they have a strong correlation. Though hard to measure with existing technology, I think that beliefs are formed of experiences which impact on consciousness and are perceived somewhere on the spectrum between good and bad. Based on the number of events of Good or Bad, people form beliefs and from these beliefs they continue to form new experiences which are in line with their existing beliefs.

I also argue that from a conscious attempt to experiences new things, even by just concentrating one’s attention on a different component of known thing, people can change their beliefs. For example, someone who believed that the NHS was a waste of money, might consider the price that private health care problems cost the Americans.

Beliefs can create experience, experience can create beliefs – the two are like Siamese twins – joined at the hip but with an important story of its own. It is also interesting to consider how readily people ignore some of their experiences and some of their beliefs when they conflict with their more deeply held attitudes and memories.