Beliefs and Finding Truth

How do we believe in our knowledge or the facts which we hold true? What leads me to believe in something? Are there certain inherent truths which make some things more believable than others? Belief is often treated as a simple from of mental representation and is part of the earliest parts of conscious thought. In an earlier post I mentioned the possibility of the existence of thoughts which do not necessarily have the physical control of neurons and which are instead controlled by thoughts themselves. This has a large impact on neuroscience, because if the concept of belief is incoherent or indefensible then any attempt to find the underlying neural processes which support it will fail. To find an area of the brain that is responsible for belief would be very political and potentially problematic in nature. If one is able to manipulate someone's beliefs or one is able to provide evidence for certain beliefs being only in our head, ramifications would spread far beyond just the discovery of something very interesting.

I actually started thinking about this topic because I stumbled across a documentary about the occult and magic. I wonder what it is about illusions or what people say that makes us believe in them. This then reminded me have a paper I read recently entitled, "Scientists See God on the Brain." Essentially parts of the brain are more active while thinking about religious beliefs. I also found a related article here in which SPECT was used to determine regions of the brain which responded to altered states of consciousness during prayer and deep meditation.

So, is belief something that is simply caused by the activity of certain brain regions. Is a belief in something a sort of self deception sometimes or a way for the brain to try to make sense of what is occurring in the world? What makes beliefs so hard to let go? Is it that we have put our faith and trust into something that we cannot allow ourselves to think that we are wrong? Is is because our brains have wired the beliefs into our selves?

So my basic question about beliefs are whether they are formed by processes in the brain or whether they are created in the mind. If they are created in the brain, does that take away from beliefs? Is a thought which is just a pattern of neural activity somehow less personal? We would like to think that our believes are something that is earnest and something that we are truly connected to. This leads us to want to believe that our beliefs are created in the mind and part of something that is more than just biological. For many people, belief in something creates a foundation from which they can live out the rest of their lives. While I have my beliefs and thoughts on things, to me they are my opinions and if they can be shown otherwise, I will try to change my thoughts.

I wonder what can make us believe certain things? Are there things that you don't know why you believe in them? Are there things that you wish to be true but you doubt? I am not worried if beliefs are a combination of neural processes, I believe that they are there for a reason.

Belief - John Mayer