Beliefs and Actions

Do not look at his appearance or his stature, because I have rejected him. Man does not see what the Lord sees, for man sees what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart.1

A human is an embodied soul. In the Biblical view of humanity, there is the inner man (heart, soul, mind, spirit) and outer man (strength, flesh, body). There’s the part of me that poops and the part of me that is prideful. There is the dirt from which we were fashioned, and the spirit God breathed into us. But we can only see (touch, hear, etc.) our bodies.2 We cannot see our own souls, much less the souls of others.

You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.3

Most of us, rightly, consider our souls to be the more significant part of ourselves. Most of us, wrongly, think we have more access to and more influence over our souls than we have in practice. The following sections explore the nature of our soul-body connection, and our access to and power over our inner worlds by focusing on one small part of our souls: our beliefs. What we believe is only one of the parts of our souls, but it is a part to which we seem to have more access. We can express our beliefs in words, and we point to our beliefs as part of the explanation of our actions. If we observe limits on our access to and control over our beliefs, then we can infer that our access to and control over other parts of our souls is even more limited.

Beware of False Prophets

Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.4

Jesus contradicts himself in this passage. First, there are false prophets – people who look like sheep when we observe their words and perhaps their actions, but in their inner selves they are ravenous wolves. We cannot derive the inward reality of these false prophets from what we observe about them. But, second, you will know them by their fruit. So we can observe a person’s outward behavior and infer their inward reality. But then, third, there is a group of people who say “Lord, Lord” and seemingly do good deeds who are finally judged as reprobates. Like the false prophets, these have good fruit in word and deed, and yet are bad trees.5 Fourth, to add the final complication, see Paul6 describe himself as inwardly a good tree, but outwardly producing bad fruit. The explicit principles presented in the metaphor are that moral quality of the tree (good or bad) determines the moral quality of the fruit; and that we, standing outside of the tree, can observe the visible fruit to determine the otherwise invisible quality of the tree. However, the examples given in the context are the inverse – observable fruit does not imply a corresponding inward reality. I can be wrong about my own soul. Or I can see at least part of my soul clearly, and then design my actions to imply my soul is something else. Or I can see part of my soul clearly, and find that my body resists my soul’s expression of itself through my actions.

There are several steps we can take towards reconciling the apparent contradiction. First, the text is not naive – the simplistic but practical wisdom that most of the time our words and actions are to a degree connected to our beliefs and desires is bracketed by examples revealing complexities. Second, as noted earlier, fruit does not necessarily mean observable action – perhaps the only way we can recognize bad fruit and infer the bad tree is when the bad tree is cut down and thrown into the fire.7 Third, …

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.8

When we explain our own actions, we generally start from our inner selves – our beliefs, desires, emotions, etc. – and then connect those to our choices. When we look at others, we observe their words and actions and then infer from those to their inner selves. There exists a connection between our souls and our actions – you can recognize a tree by its fruit. However, our souls are complex, not directly observable even by ourselves, and their connection to and control over our actions is likewise complex and unobservable. We need to remember that we do not know ourselves or the full explanations for our own actions, and so know even less about others.

Homo Economicus

That which comes out of the person, that is what defiles the person. For from within, out of the hearts of people, come the evil thoughts, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, murders, acts of adultery, deeds of greed, wickedness, deceit, indecent behavior, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the person.9

We like to believe that we are rational. We tell ourselves that we make choices by considering what we believe to be true, examining our desires, and then choosing the action that we predict will maximize the chance of fulfilling our desires. I believe apple fritters are delicious but I also don’t want to get fat, therefore I choose to eat this apple fritter, and promise to eat better the rest of the day to make up for it. Enlightened self-interest. But this story is a deceptive over-simplification.10 We hold contradictory claims as truth. We have conflicting desires, and often don’t know what we want. And we regularly choose to act in ways that we know are opposed to our own interests. I am not going to eat better the rest of the day; I already had an apple fritter; let’s just call this a cheat day.

But assume for a moment that everyone acts with enlightened self-interest: all we would have to do to fix behavior is teach a better understanding of the world or change desires. Teaching is hard (or rather making someone learn is hard).11 And changing someone else’s desires is both hard and manipulative.12 Consider how successful you have been at changing your own beliefs or desires. This is not a matter of cognitive biases or irrationality, but rather a function of our limited control over our inner selves. I cannot reach into myself and flip the I-like-chocolate-donuts switch. I can, with some effort, learn how to multiply and divide. But if I don’t believe that anyone else could love me if they knew the real me, there is no new fact or skill that I can shove into my mind to change that belief. If we all acted with enlightened self-interest, changing our own behavior, much less the behavior of others, would remain unceasingly difficult.

What we believe about the ourselves, others, and the world may inform our choices. And our beliefs may constrain what we allow ourselves to see as available options. But our beliefs do not determine our choices. You know this to be true because you constantly do stupid things that you knew were stupid and that you didn’t want to do13. You examine a prior choice, regret it and the consequences, commit not to do it again, and then you do the same thing all over again. At least I do, but not you. You nail the basics. You always stick to your diet. You never lose your temper. You make consistent progress towards your goals each day. Your house is clean. You arrive on time and well rested.

One who trusts in his own heart is a fool.^{Proverbs 28:26]

If my beliefs and desires do not determine my actions, then the beliefs and desires of others do not determine their actions. Even if we knew the beliefs and desires of someone else, their choices and actions would remain undetermined. We could guess. We can make probabilistic predictions. If they like chocolate donuts and they believe that there are chocolate donuts in the break room, then they are likely to visit the break room soon. People are predictable. I can observe your behavior over hundreds of hands of poker. And given the rules of the game and the money on the line, I can be more confident that I know what you believe and want than in almost any other situation in everyday life. However, I can still only derive probabilities for your next move, and what that move might imply about your cards. People defy prediction. People bluff. People lie, to themselves and others. People misunderstand their situations, hold inconsistent beliefs, have contradictory desires, and experience fluctuating emotions.14 But we don’t know ourselves, how much less do we know anyone else. We don’t know what we ourselves believe or want or feel or our depths underneath those things.

Denying the Antecedent

These people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me.15

Above I argued that predicting actions based upon the elements of someone’s inner world is complex, indeterminate and incomplete. Here I claim that inferring the quality of someone’s inner world from their actions is more complex, indeterminate and incomplete.

I struggle to understand what I’m thinking as I’m thinking. Even more when I try to understand what I must have been thinking when I did that stupid thing earlier today. But I make very confident assertions about what someone else believes and desires based upon a few subtle non-verbal cues I picked up on.16

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going.17

A central limitation on our ability to derive information about a person’s inner worlds through observation of their behavior is that we are all but unable to invalidate any claims we choose to make. We are unable to prove ourselves wrong and so we cannot reliably improve our models. When dealing with purely physical interactions, the causal interactions are, we assume, unchanging over time and completely explain the effects. Which means that we can perform repeated experiments, refining their design to control for potential complicating correlations, and ideally narrow our claimed causal explanation until we are confident that if our explanation is wrong, our predictions will be disproven.

Todo: We cannot invalidate our claims about a person’s inner worlds, even our own inner worlds. Our ability to test and improve our ability to infer inner worlds from action is limited by its indirectness – we could observe a behavior, model an inner world that would produce that behavior and then use that model to predict the next behavior. However, we don’t normally do this. Our guesses about next action are probabilistic, and people change in between samples and we don’t take notes.

Todo: We lie. Lying is by definition a disconnect between actions and belief.

Todo: Misunderstandings are a proof that we cannot derive someone else’s inner state from observing their actions. Even when we are engaged in an open and honest discussion, where we are attempting to clearly communicate our own thoughts and generously understand the thoughts of others, we misunderstand each other. How much less rightly do we understand any Other when they are making less of an effort to communicate clearly and honestly.

Scientology

It is easy to convince your therapist that you are someone else’s fault. That is what they are trained to do – to find excuses for you in order to salve your shame. They are required to believe that you are the product of outside influence because only then is it possible for them, as yet another outside influence, to fix you.

The little blue dot on your phone that shows you step by step directions during the trip to the donut store is powered by GPS, the global positioning system. Satellites with geostationary orbits and highly accurate clocks broadcast the time. Your phone receives signals from several of these satellites and uses the time it took for each signal to arrive to calculate how far away it is from each satellite, and thereby derive how far away you are from donuts. To maintain geostationary orbit, the satellites must maintain a speed of approximately 6,800 MPH relative to your phone on earth’s surface. That relative speed means that your phone must apply Einstein’s theory of relativity to correct for the time dilation – the clocks on the satellites are running microseconds per day slower than the clock in your phone. Hume may not be able to prove the connection between cause and effect, but the processes of science and the disciplines of engineering are remarkably effective. The little blue dot leads me to fresh donuts. The effectiveness of causal explanations for the physical world drives an understandable desire to apply those same methods to people.

Psychology is a failed science.18 Nor will neuroscience’s attempt to explain cognition with a physical model of the brain succeed. The best that psychology can offer are moderately interesting statistical phenomena that are almost measurable on the margins – if you are exposed to words that prime you with associations about old age, it is possible that you will move somewhat slower for some indefinite period of time afterwards, or maybe you’ll move somewhat faster. If we have explanatory models that effectively predicted human behavior, then where are they and to what use are they being put? Who is putting their explanation of human behavior to the test by actually changing the outcome of an election, or measurably driving of sales of a chosen product, or demonstrably reducing crime, or consistently healing individual mental sufferings.

Psychology is as if you went to an orthopedic surgeon to get your broken arm repaired, and the only thing the surgeon knows about arms is interesting patterns of freckles. They don’t know what bones are, they have no method to identify what a bone is or if a bone is broken, and no model telling them what the broken bone is supposed to look like.19 They don’t have a scalpel, an x-ray machine, antibiotic, or even an advil. If the bone shards puncture the skin and deform what was an interesting freckle pattern, then maybe they can repair the freckles. And maybe that’s better than nothing.

It is true that most people most of the time behave in predictable ways. Predictable either because you are specifically familiar with them individually – she always goes on a walk in the afternoon, so she will go on a walk this afternoon. Or predictable through generalities – everyone feels self-conscious and insecure at the center of attention in unfamiliar circumstances, so she almost certainly feels that way here in this analogous situation. Being predictable in broad strokes does not imply determined. Being able to offer a believable explanation of behavior does not imply that the behavior was caused anymore than being believable makes the explanation accurate. A demonstration of this is that despite being predictable in broad strokes, people remain resistant to manipulation. With billions of dollars at play, advertising remains only measurably effective at the margins – you can “trick” someone into buying a large coke rather than a medium coke sometimes, but not into buying a coke rather than using the restroom.

Psychology cannot help but fail because it cannot offer a definition of “healthy”. They at the blind leading the blind. The inability of psychological studies to replicate findings suggests that they can measure very little accurately. But even assuming models and methods that permitted accurate measurement of psychological phenomena, the measurements could merely reveal the average and deviation from the average. This number is normal and you are this number different than normal. This is a bare minimum requirement for a science to exist – the ability to objectively measure phenomena. What we would hope for next is an explanatory model, here’s a story about why those measurements are what they are and change how they change. Then ideally an engineering discipline would develop – applying this force here and there changes that number in a predictable direction and degree. That would be psychology as a science. And even that would fall short of what is needed. An actual science of psychology could tell me that I was within so many standard deviations of average for all of the relevant metrics. But it could not tell me that average (or any other value for a given metric) is healthy. At a minimum, science could tell me what I am. At its best, science could explain how I could change. But science cannot tell me who I ought to be.

Mens Rea

It’s the thought that counts.

What you did matters at the Judgement. We will be judged for the deeds done while in the body. But what you were trying to do also matters. The “why” of an action cannot be inferred from the action itself. We recognize this in our justice systems – killing with intent to kill is categorically different from killing unintentionally, even though the actions and effects are in themselves indistinguishable. Sacrifice your son, your only son whom you love, on the mountain to appease Molech versus sacrifice your son, your only son whom you love, on the mountain because God commands it. Turn from your wicked ways to save yourself through your own righteousness vs turn from your wicked ways to participate in sanctification. Was their locking the door a compulsive behavior, a wise precaution, or a response to unhealthy fear.

What we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection in our own acts. We must find our real selves no in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul…But my soul is hidden and invisible. I cannot see it directly, for it is hidden even from myself.20

It is impossible to examine the behavior of another and derive from that their beliefs and desires. We assume that we can read people. That we can observe their words and actions, and from that understand their inner world. And we are wrong. Wrong to attempt to see inside someone else because it violates their right to keep secrets and control their self-revelation. Even God covers our nakedness. We are wrong to see others as objects, as machines to be understood and explained, as less than people. Even if it wasn’t morally wrong, we are too often factually incorrect. We constantly misunderstand people when they are trying to tell us something; how much more do we misunderstand them when we think we are seeing what they are not trying to tell us. How often do we misunderstand the beliefs and desires behind our own actions, and still we pretend to have access to the inner worlds of others.

The internal worlds of others are easy to understand by anyone with eyes to see. And having been explained, people are so easily manipulated. That is why everyone around you is always doing what you want them to do. People are so predictable, especially those closest to you, those you know the best, and that is why you never misunderstand them and are never misunderstood. Every impact you have on the people around you is what you intended. You meant to hurt them by how they heard your words. You meant to start that fight. All of the interpersonal drama in your life is by your own design and intention. You observed the behavior of the people around you, accurately inferred the relevant characteristics of their inner worlds, correctly derived how they would respond to future stimuli, and then adjusted your own behavior in order to provoke from them the behavior you desired.

The hearts of all people are full of evil, and there is madness in their hearts21

Our actions do not flow out of our beliefs. Our choices are not explained by our desires. And we are not guided by enlightened self interest.

Faulty Logic

You deceived me and I was deceived.22

Your beliefs are your own. No one can force you to hold to the truth or to hold a lie as the truth. They can invite, encourage, or argue. They can manipulate, disguise, or threaten. Force imposed upon you can compel action or speech, but no torture or trickery overcomes your responsibility in your inner self to affirm the truth.23

The lies you believe are your own.

Self deception. The lies that rule you

Know Thyself

we ought to have the humility to admit that we do not know all about ourselves [so how much less do we know our kids], that we are not experts at running our own lives [so how could we be experts at running our kid’s lives].24

Your soul is opaque, even to yourself. You don’t know yourself. You have special access to your own internal world, and still that world remains uncharted to you. How much less insight do you have into the souls of other people.

To “Know yourself” is good advice. But to know ourselves doesn’t mean to analyze ourselves. Sometimes we want to know ourselves as if we were machines that could be taken apart and put back together at will. At certain critical times in our lives it might be helpful to explore in some detail the events that led us to our crises, but we make a mistake when we think that we can ever completely understand ourselves and explain the full meaning of our lives to others. Solitude, silence, and prayer are often the best ways to self-knowledge. Not because they offer solutions for the complexity of our lives but because they bring us in touch with our sacred center, where God dwells. That sacred center may not be analyzed. It is the place of adoration, thanksgiving, and praise. – Henri Nouwen in Bread for the Journey (HarperCollins ebooks) reading for 22 March.

The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?25

Dehumanization

To the extent that you claim for yourself control over the soul of another, to that same extent you make them less than human. For you they become objects, things to push, stones to shape. God is able to claim the power to move and shape souls without dehumanizing because he is both higher than human and knows each of us more fully than we know ourselves.

To dehumanize a person is in itself immoral. It is lying to look upon an enfleshed immortal soul and see it as an object to be shaped, a machine to be programmed, an animal using inherited behaviors to react to external stimuli. It is a lie to claim to have plumbed a person’s depths (your own, much less another’s). It is a lie to assert an ability to diagnose another’s ills much less prescribe the cure.

How can anyone understand his own way.26

We claim an understanding of our children’s inner world that we don’t have of ourselves. We claim an influence into shaping that inner world that we don’t have over our own inner world. We claim an ability to fix their souls that we have never effectively used to fix our own souls.

The only truly unapproachable subject for you is that it’s your mind, within your control… You are the master of your universe… The thing about repairing, maintaining and cleaning [your own mind] is that it is not an adventure. There’s no way to do it so wrong you might die. It’s just work. – Rick and Morty, Season 3 Episode 3.

What it means “to teach” can only be understood in light of the purpose, goal. Is the goal to get the student to pass a test? To give the accepted answers to given questions? Go and make disciples, teaching them all I have commanded you. Not teaching more than I commanded – It is as wrong to do more than your job as it is to do less. Teaching is more than “go and say.” Jonah did the bare minimum. Utilize creativity and situations to teach in a way that “can be understood. Not agree with. Not changed by. Not accepted. Not even understood. Merely understandable. Teaching so as to be able to be understood does not mean that it will be understood. Because understanding requires participation, work, from the learner. Let him who has ears to hear. Jesus came to testify to the truth, but only those who are of the truth hear his voice. The parables are not examples of great story-telling that aid understanding – they were intentionally designed to testify to the truth in a way that only those with ears to hear could understand.

If you had taught them the truth effectively, then they would have understood and accepted it. They would be living that truth. Because who wants to live a lie. You’ll know you’ve taught them rightly by the way they live. If they aren’t living the truth, it’s only because they haven’t heard it. If they haven’t heard it, it’s only because you haven’t been intentional enough and creative enough in your presentation.

We are allowed to hold to a philosophical claim of determinism – I may not have the capacity to trace the chain of cause and effect backwards from my choice to the first mover, but the chain must exist because there cannot be an uncaused effect. Though we may hold that philosophically, we are in practice required to live as though we and all other people have enough free will to be moral agents. I will be judged as though I were a moral agent and not simply a complex bio-chemical organism responding programmatically to external stimuli. And if I look at other people as less than moral agents, then I am profaning them in a way that itself merits judgement.

The soul is uncaused, untouchable. Not even directly accessible to itself. Less a beetle in a box, more a chinese room. Body provides means of input and output, but the input does not determine the output, and the output does not define the soul.

  1. 1 Samuel 16:7↩︎

  2. What you see is all there is. Daniel Kahneman.↩︎

  3. See also passages like Luke 12:5 (the body that is killed and the soul that is damned) and 2 Corinthians 5:4.↩︎

  4. Matthew 7:17-19, but see 7:15-24 for the context.↩︎

  5. But unlike the false prophets these are not described as wolves. The false prophets seem to know they are false – wolves who have put on sheep’s clothing in order to deceive. But these other people thought themselves to be true. The false prophets try to deceive others. These deceived themselves – they are wrong about their inward selves, and don’t think they are putting on an outward act.↩︎

  6. Romans 7:22-23↩︎

  7. 1 Timothy 5:24-25↩︎

  8. Proverbs 20:5↩︎

  9. Mark 7:20-23↩︎

  10. I am not attempting to advance a philosophical claim about determinism or causality as it relates to our choices. Rather, I claim that we cannot, in practice, draw straight lines from beliefs/desires to actions.↩︎

  11. Is it morally acceptable to teach someone something they have not chosen to be taught? A lecture is a method of punishment.↩︎

  12. What are the methods to change desires (apart from offering alternative truth claims) that you would consider to be free of manipulation?↩︎

  13. Romans 7:19↩︎

  14. Further complicating attempts to predict behavior or infer inner worldds: beliefs, desires and emotions can change moment to moment. This trip past the break room they did not give into the chocolate covered temptation, but that only provides so much information for predicting what happens during their next trip.↩︎

  15. Isaiah 29:13↩︎

  16. I’m always surprised by how much time other people spend thinking about me. Almost everything anyone says or does around me is evidence of their beliefs about and desires for or against me. I am the center of everyone else’s worlds. They all notice that zit, and snickered when I almost tripped, and compare notes about how many times they’ve seen me wear these shoes.↩︎

  17. John 3:8↩︎

  18. https://web.archive.org/web/20251003215938/https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-loss↩︎

  19. https://web.archive.org/web/20251205202051/https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-neuroscientist-who-lost-her-mind/201804/we-scientists-know-so-little-about-mental-illness↩︎

  20. Merton 7.1↩︎

  21. Ecclesiastes 9:3↩︎

  22. Jeremiah 20:7↩︎

  23. See e.g. Silence 2016.↩︎

  24. Merton 3.8, bracketed words added.↩︎

  25. Jeremiah 17:9↩︎

  26. Proverbs 20:24↩︎