[Serious] Questions about Belief and Personal Identity

[Belacqua]

Beliefs seem more like accidental than essential features of a person.

This is certainly true in the Aristotelian sense. A person's beliefs can change entirely, and he'll still be a person -- so beliefs are accident. 

That said, I think that each of us has a system or web of beliefs that runs very deep. To what extent this is learned and what extent it is innate is debatable, I suppose. And how deeply it can change is an open question. There may be beliefs (things you hold to be true about the world, or fundamental interpretations about reality) which in fact are innate characteristics of human beings. And here I'm not talking politics or religion, but basic stuff like quantity, unity, and plurality. Things we hold to be true about the world which -- who knows? -- aliens might not hold. 

I suspect that there is something like an "episteme" (if you don't mind using Foucault's word) for any given time and place. This sets the limits of what we are able to believe. Deviation from this will be called crazy. Yet the boundaries change over time. Atheists and Christians in a given society share most of this framework, and much of the fight is the "narcissism of small differences."

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be a person completely unlike myself. Say, someone in pre-technological India who takes for granted some precursor of what came to be Hinduism. It's hard to imagine. If I became like that I would no longer be myself, in any meaningful sense.

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Are beliefs a consequence of personal values or are values a consequence of beliefs?

(Forgive me if you've heard this one...)

In English, the word "believe" has two meanings:

#1 Assent to a proposition. e.g. "I believe in Santa Claus," or "I believe the earth is round."

#2 Commitment to a principle. e.g. "I believe in equal rights for women." 

In fact, neither Santa Claus nor equal rights for women (currently) exist. Yet example #1 about a nonexistent thing is foolish, while example #2 about a nonexistent thing is admirable. 

So in many cases, beliefs just ARE personal values. 

In practice, I think the two types of belief get blended. So for example, someone might feel strongly about the values given in the Sermon on the Mount. In committing to these principles (type #2), this person will take on board associated notions about Jesus -- that he is divine, that he is the way to heaven, etc. (type #1). I remember meeting a serious Christian who devoted her life to anti-war causes. I asked her if the world was created in six days, and she said she'd never thought about it, but she guessed it must be so. She was a type #2 Christian, and I (rudely) cornered her into a type #1 assent. 

In thinking adults, atheism is a type #1 belief, namely, "I believe that there is no persuasive evidence for the existence of God." It also can shift into a value-type belief. E.g. "I believe in a world without religion."