Beliefs and Facts: Convergence?

Standard Disclaimer, I guess: I apologize in advance for any incoherence or unintended offense. It's late.

How can the deafblind, people that are both deaf and blind, (most notably, Helen Keller) operate without reports or reports of reports of reports etc? We have established that a fact or what comes closest to being the Truth (for everyone and not just an individual/select group of individuals) is most accurate and complete when it “focus[es] on empirically verifiable phenomena (the past)” (Lazarow) that we can “see, touch, photograph, or in any scientific manner detect the presence of” (Hayakawa 38). Those with deafblindness obviously exist in the extensional world but cannot “see” for themselves. Regardless of how much they try to be independent, they are always reliant (to some degree or another) on the reports of others. Even individuals as talented as Helen Keller needs to invest a considerable amount of trust in something that we regard as the "real world" and she regards as a linguistic construct and perhaps not capital T truth. They must believe.

We are not so different from the blind and the deaf. While I concede that we must question the validity of all reports unless it is made up of physical, verifiable factual data (which may still be subjective to some point), there is a line we have to draw between denial and independence of thought and action.

“[T]here is a huge substratum of cooperation taken for granted that keeps the world going” (Hayakawa 9) When we get caught up in semantics and attempting to prove every single piece of factual evidence or belief that comes our way, bad things happen.

Our Congress is often accused of just “making speeches” instead of actually “doing something.” We need to hold common beliefs and/or trust conventional truths. Language is “a system of agreements (Hayakawa 16). Deal with it.


I found Emily’s comment rather intriguing; “We may not have experienced what s/he is telling us about, but why is it so easy for us to trust what a person has to say, but we find it so difficult to commit to a religion, where faith is also required?” In Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, he comments in the section of the history of Mormonism that many found it hard to believe in, or subscribe to, the Mormon faith. It was not “shrouded” in time, and thus mystery, like many other religions. While tradition is easy to believe in, as it is handed down through the generations, it tends to lose its verifiability. “When language becomes ritual, its effect becomes…independent of whatever significance it once possessed” (Hayakawa 61-62). It is much easier to research and verify a report or a report of a report rather than (a report of a report of a report)^6 bazillion. Simple belief is much more feasible and convenient. Thus, we have the never-ending arguments with vague evidence/proof that never quite achieve anything concrete.


On the topic of empirically verifiable phenomena and the “shroud” of time, in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Earth is destroyed and one human, Arthur Dent, survives. “Nelson’s Column has gone, McDonald’s has gone, all that’s left is me and the words Mostly harmless [describing the Earth]. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well” (Adams 52). If there is no way to prove that the Earth exists (it has been blasted to make room for a “hyperspatial express route”/highway-type thing) except for memories (that cannot be verified) and belief, does the thing exist to everyone (not just to yourself)? Exactly how important and valid is belief and does it have ever have an equal or higher value than conventional truth? Any thoughts?

(Grace Yuan)