That's for sure!
It seems to me the point about beliefs is that they are certainly real enough to be tested against the facts of reality. Because as already noted, they are certainly real enough to serve as causes of real effects in the natural world (which naturally includes man and his activities).
When you boil it down, a Second Reality is the systematic construction of a belief. Or alternatively, it is a "dream" that seeks to displace the natural world, so to erect the activist's dream systematically as the new "truth" of reality.
Progressive activists of all stripes follow this model, most notably the currently sitting POTUS....
Eric Vöegelin had some thoughts on this topic (to put it mildly):
The Utopian dreamworlds ... are worlds indeed, with an internal logic and language of their own, paralleling the world in which we live.I think kosta50 and Markbsnr tend to regard the belief issue as a problem of disordered (or at least deluded) personal subjectivity. At least that seems to be the gist of many posts by now. If the disorder consists in the person holding a belief that is unreal, then on their theory, there's really nothing to worry about: A belief isn't real, and thus can't cause anything. Of course, this is entirely to ignore the question of the disordering of society by means of socially effective utopian beliefs (i.e., Second Realities). Which obviously, undeniably have been causes of unimaginably monstrous convulsions in human history.If dream [i.e., "belief"] and reality were as neatly different worlds as their conceptual distinction might tempt us to assume, the question concerning the sense of imperfection [of the world that actually exists, or First Reality] would not pose too much of a problem. The real imperfections, one might say, lose such sense as they have in reality when they are transferred into the dreamworld and in the wake of the transfer acquire the absurdity that radiates from the absurd dream of perfection. Having understood the problem, one might then be inclined to let the dreamers dream and, for one's own part, to go on with the business of living in our imperfect reality.
If we adopted this attitude, however, we would let ourselves be victimized, theoretically and practically, by the metaphorical use of the term world. Though the dream "world" is not the real "world," the dreamer believes it truly to be the one world in which we all have to live.... As we know, the dreamers not only deny the dream character of their symbolism but, on the contrary, claim for it the status of a superior insight into the truth of reality. And even if we reject this claim as nonsense, the dreamer who raises it with social effectiveness is still very much a part of the reality in which we live — as all too many who could not believe that totalitarian activists would inflict their murderous nonsense on real human beings had to discover to their grief.... [bolds added]
Beyond the individual cases of existential disorder, the style becomes a public grotesque when, with the lapse of time, the social scene fills up with little emperors who each claim to be the possessor of the one and only truth; and it becomes lethal when some of them take themselves seriously enough to engage in mass murder of everyone who dares to disagree."Stuff" DID, does, and always will happen in consequence of beliefs — at both the personal and social levels.
As I said before — if a belief has phenomenal effects, it's certainly real enough.
Betty boop, we have been through this before. Please correct your spelling of his name. It's VÖGELIN or VOEGELIN — but not VÖEGELIN
By ignoring this friendly advice you are just embarrassing yourself, considering that you have been reading his books for so many years. Either get rid of the unlaut or the "e" following the "o." Remember, Ö in German = OE in English transliteration.
Don't put words in my mouth. This is not the gist of my posts (nor, I think Kosta's). The question is whether belief and knowledge are the same or whether they are different. I do not speak of delusion in terms of belief except, as Kosta noted, when belief gets in the way of reality.
A belief isn't real, and thus can't cause anything.
Are you even reading what is posted? I never said that a belief is not real to the person holding it; I said that that belief may not be real in the real world. Kosta believes in pink unicorns on Jupiter. That Kosta believes in pink unicorns on Jupiter is real. Whether there really are pink unicorns on Jupiter is another issue.
In other words, the belief is real, but the reality is wrong. And if Kosta claims that he knows that there are pink unicorns on Jupiter, then he is delusional. Does this help?
This is a grossly inaccurate presentation of my posts as well as Mark's posts regarduing beliefs. If someone believes he can fly by flapping his arms, obviously his belief does not correspond to reality. If he decides to leap off a tall building convinced that he can "fly" away by flapping his arms then he is delusional.
Thank you so very much for those engaging excerpts, dearest sister in Christ, and thank you for all of your insights!