Justification for Foundational Belief

[genkaus]

I classify feelings as foundational values because they are the end goals which motivate behaviour: all other behaviour is instrumental towards achieving those emotional goals.

If you go to the very foundations, you'll find that the goals our behavior is motivated towards are biological, not emotional, in nature. Hunger, physical comfort, safety - these are the goals we seek to fulfill at the most basic. The emotional goals come afterwards and thus cannot be considered foundational.

But if you try and find foundational beliefs, well, that's probably a quick trip to the loony bin. I don't think there are any. The brain only seeks reliable beliefs, not absolute truth.

Given that foundational beliefs have been stated and pointed out multiple times in this very thread - maybe you should read through them and tell us why those aren't really "foundational beliefs" and why believing in them is insane.

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The brain's threshhold for 'certainty' is repeatability/reliability. If we can reliably repeat something, the brain takes that as certainty.
Or, if we are repeatedly told something is true, we might just believe it via brainwashing.
How does this happen? Repetition makes the brain generate a feeling of certitude.
So, repeatability is all the brain asks for to pass the threshhold, and that's why I think it's futile to search for absolute truth: because the brain is not geared to find it.
Watch this video by atheist psychologist Valerie Tarico:
Can we Know Anything? --Christianity and Cognitive Science 3
"As scientists learn more about how our brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNjnD7QMB8Y

The problem with using outliers to determine what forms normal brain functioning is that outliers, by definition, do not come under the norm. The fact that repetition, in its various forms, can lead to certitude, does not mean that repetition is the only way by which the brain attains certainty. And examples of outlying brain functioning where reason and logic fail to provide certitude is not evidence that brain is incapable of reaching certainty through them.

In fact, if you watch the video, you'd realize that the the psychologist is arguing in favor of using reason and logic as tools of gaining knowledge - instead of plain repeatability - which implies that there are better ways of attaining knowledge than the "feeling of certitude by repetition".

There is a difference between "the brain is geared towards" and "the brain is hardwired towards" certainty by repetition. In the former case, it is possible to change that gearing - as evidenced by atheists who were previously religious. In which case, repeatability would not be the only thing the brain would ask to pass the threshold and the search for absolute truth would not be futile.