Kent Stevens

You could also use the term universal ideas. Maybe certain individual desires and some use of reason are universal to almost all people. Some ideas are universal but it may be harder to agree that people have universal human rights. According to the U.N. everyone has universal rights but often countries seem to ignore these rights. According to the declaration of independence it is self-evident that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights. These rights are a sense universal then and not just applicable to U.S. citizens. However, sometimes people think the rights were only supposed to apply to U.S. citizens.

People may desire to do as they want but often this want is to submit themselves to god or the supernatural. People may use reason in part but they also often use blind faith. People may aim for happiness in the next life by bringing misery upon themselves in this life.

It might make some sense to base human rights around universal ideas. For example the right to liberty relates to the desire for most people to do what they want. The right to believe what we choose could relate to the desire to believe what we think is the truth.

An atheist may not think it good that the supernatural is a like a universal idea or it is a wide spread idea. But sometimes a wide spread idea can be wrong like the idea that the world is flat. The desire for some truth and the use of reason seems more wide spread than a specific belief. Reason and the desire for truth seem more basic than the belief in God.

Laurentius

AVE
Basic ideas for me would be those from which "spontaneous" human attitudes and behavior can stem.
The concept of incest.
The concept of personal property.
The concept of belonging to a community.
and so on
(just a thought)
AVE

Jonsey3333

Could these "basic ideas" we are talking about actually be the sociological definition of "values"? Values are enduring beliefs about abstractions that transcend specific situations. Beliefs are often based off of values, and attitudes are often based off of beliefs. Some common values are:

Peace
Wisdom
Equality
Happiness

There is psychological reasons that we hold these values, but I don't think the original question was so much about why we have these values, but how can they be justified, in the philosophical sense.

-Mike

excreationist

Kent Stevens:
This thread was starting to confuse me so I'm responding to your first post:

I think the only reason for this is because people don't really understand *why* many things are important to them. They basically hit a dead-end. Their emotions tell them that things are important to them, but the people don't know how their emotional responses connect to the concepts in question. I think with my theory of emotions I can break down those "basic ideas" until we get to the mechanistic-type processes of the brain.

So I disagree with your first post about these "basic ideas". I think the belief that ideas like "liberty" or "truth" are basic ideas is just an "unenlightened" one. (I couldn't think of a better word)

Kent Stevens

For some of the basic ideas proposed we could use the word value easily enough. The desire for truth could be thought of as a value. But, something like reason can be like a capacity of the mind. In this sense it is like sight or hearing, in being inbuilt. However, some people can be less or more careful with their critical thinking. Some people think that morality is also partly an inbuilt function. That educated and uneducated people can still make moral judgements.

There could also be some beliefs that are associated with the normal reasoning process. The assumption that the external world corresponds to our perceptions is necessary for accepting some premises.

The term basic idea would be at least be suitable for when someone is continuously interrogated as to how they justify doing certain things. The person being interrogated will need to say at some point enough is enough for now in terms of justification. Does not everyone accept that the truth is desirable or that people do what they get enjoyment from? What is the point of having a discussion with someone if they do not want to accept the truth? What is the point of trying to persuade someone if they do not care if they obtain happiness or misery?

In terms of breaking things down to pleasure/pain mechanisms how do deal with beliefs? For cognitive science would include goals which relates to pleasures and pains, but it would also include beliefs. Beliefs like I exist, how is that explained mechanistically now?

Jonsey3333

Do you mean self-awareness? Humans gain this at about age 1. Before that babies don't seem to realize that their hands are theirs.

We induce that things exist at a young age by observing things. At one, we realize that we are distinct from those things. Ergo sum.

-Mike

excreationist

Basically I think beliefs involve associations and fuzzy logic.

I think that during every experience, we associate all elements of our experience together. When there is pattern then parts of associations strengthen.

Anyway, let's say a toddler is shopping with their parent and the toddler sees something interesting (motivated by a newness craving). In the past it has learned that if things look interesting, they are probably interesting to touch as well (surprise/newness is a pleasure) - this is because their toys in the past looked interesting and often did interesting things when they touched them.
So the toddler would want to touch the things in the shop. (believing that it would result in pleasure) The parent might give the toddler a threatening look, which instinctively would cause the toddler to try and avoid it. But maybe the toddler has learnt that a threatening look is just a hollow threat - it might do that when its craving for newness (excitement) got really strong.
So the toddler might ignore the parent's disapproval and try and touch the things in the shop anyway. Eventually the parent might hit the toddler since the parent would have associated the "misbehaving" toddler with a lack of connectedness since the toddler's behaviour doesn't align to the parent's ideals. A solution that the parent might believe would work could be hitting the toddler.
So the toddler would feel bodily pain and it would associate the elements of its experience (including the contents of its short-term memory) with pain.
So it would associate touching things while parent around -> bad. (pain signal)
If the parent had beaten the child up over it, the child might develop a major phobia about those things.

BTW, this association thing is used by big companies who advertise.
e.g. they try and trigger lots of positive emotions (by showing happy families or beautiful people or exciting sports) and then you see their product there. And you associate all the things together. So within that context (of a happy family or an exciting sport), that product seems desirable. And with repeated viewings, this association gets reinforced more and more. Though if you have heard that that company is very unethical, this belief would make the desirability of that product go right down.

Anyway, I think all beliefs and patterns we know are associated with many other things, including how desirable it is - though the letter "A" doesn't seem to have a definite desirability - it needs more of a context since I haven't come across an A on it's own. Now that I think about it, A's are good - combined with the context of personal grades, they're good. But that is about judging, which is kind of bad.
Ultimately, the desirability of things are a chain of associations that have been learnt throughout the lifespan lead to fundamental pleasures and pains.

Anyway, as far as ordinary beliefs go... I'd say they involve complex frameworks of words that are associated with experiences. So "the sky is blue" is an arrangement of words that we match with the patterns we've learnt. There's a pretty good match, so we say so. We learnt about true and false statements as a child. (And there are also statements that are probably true or possibly true, etc)

So the key thing is that the fundamental pleasures/pains aren't learnt - they're instinctual - and more sophisticated patterns/associations which lead to intelligence are learnt.

Kent Stevens

Yes. The belief that I exist is necessary for many other beliefs. For example I believe that I want to go to town, or that I believe that unicorns do not exist have 'I' in them. To rationalise these I statements you take it as given that 'I' exists. Reasoning is a product of you so it seems that at least you must exist if you can reason.