American beliefs in Evolution

[DBT]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain.

That's not a very accurate statement, actually. Prior beliefs heavily influence perception, right down to the neurochemical reactions that make up your neural architecture - attention, perception and memory are all cognitive processes in their own right, prone to influence from the ordering mechanisms of your nervous system. And even if perception itself were somehow flawless, it would do you little good, as the signals from your nerves mean nothing until your brain has processed them all, and cognition is a process even more clearly compromised. We are our only observers of our universe, but alas, we are not reliable observers of our universe. This part of the reason the sciences, by seeking out coherence within multiple observer's perceptions rather than blindly trusting one source of authority, are so incomparably valuable to all of us.

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief. Unconscious physical processes have no beliefs. Beliefs emerge much later in the process.

The word 'belief' itself is really a folk-term that describes an underlying feature of epistemology. What you're calling 'belief' is just validated knowledge under a set of assumptions and sensory input, rightly or wrongly. One could argue that all knowledge falls under this category, regardless of it's veracity.

Which speaks to Politesse's point that our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

Belief comes in different shades and flavours, faith based, imagination, illusion, evidence based, justified true belief.....

There's been a lot of writing done on the nature of knowledge, what it is, where it comes from. I'm not an expert by any means but I believe everything you've listed would fall under the umbrella of knowledge.

I'm not sure how to communicate this well because we seem to be coming from a different place here. I'm not trying to argue that an erroneous belief is a fact. I'm arguing that knowledge is something derived and known to be true by the perceiver, regardless of whether it's actually true.

From there you can then start making distinctions about that knowledge, e.g. how it was derived, how accurate it is. All knowledge is by definition a belief based on some form of input.

This is important to realize because you start understanding why certain cultures behave the way they do. People in a community can only know as much as the community 'knows'.

If you want to pull in Hume's theory of substances things get even more interesting. Which implies that we can only ever approach a complete understanding of anything, not know it objectively.

There seems to be lot of semantics in play...however, If someone 'knows' that something is true, yet what they 'know' is true is in fact false (people once knew the earth was the centre of the universe), did they have knowledge in the first place, or was it no more than assumption and belief?

I think what you're calling semantics are really just clear definitions. Try reading it again.

Everything we think we know is an assumed belief until we have more complete information. This happened to me very recently in my Sociology thread.

Eventually, on some things, information starts approaching incontrovertible fact, and you know that you know.

Some take their 'assumed belief' to be true and factual information about the world. That what they 'know' to be true is not merely provisional, but that this is the way things stand in fact.

 

[rousseau]

Sorry, it's a tough concept to explain. What I'm trying to say is that 'knowledge' isn't really the same type of thing as 'fact'. Knowledge is more of a dynamic concept that's hard to pin down, but you seem to be taking knowledge to mean 'fact'. Knowledge can be a fact, but it can also be erroneous or incomplete data that someone 'knows'. To that person it is a fact, which makes it knowledge to them.

Take our scientific understanding from the 19th century. At the time there was a lot that we thought we knew, and at that time it was the knowledge we had. But eventually that knowledge was replaced by a more accurate understanding.

 

[DBT]

Sorry, it's a tough concept to explain. What I'm trying to say is that 'knowledge' isn't really the same type of thing as 'fact'. Knowledge is more of a dynamic concept that's hard to pin down, but you seem to be taking knowledge to mean 'fact'. Knowledge can be a fact, but it can also be erroneous or incomplete data that someone 'knows'. To that person it is a fact, which makes it knowledge to them.

Take our scientific understanding from the 19th century. At the time there was a lot that we thought we knew, and at that time it was the knowledge we had. But eventually that knowledge was replaced by a more accurate understanding.

I mean knowledge as a body of factual information established by the reliability of the senses and testing of the information acquired, that the belief in geocentrism, for instance, did not qualify as an instance of knowledge because it did represent the world as it is, the believers lacked the necessary information, the senses where fooled by the apparent motions of the sun and moon across the sky;

As quoted earlier;

''Why not say that knowledge is true belief?

''The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief that is true just because of luck does not qualify as knowledge. Beliefs that are lacking justification are false more often than not. However, on occasion, such beliefs happen to be true.

The analysis of knowledge may be approached by asking the following question:

What turns a true belief into knowledge?

An uncontroversial answer to this question would be: the sort of thing that effectively prevents a belief from being true as a result of epistemic luck. Controversy begins as soon as this formula is turned into a substantive proposal.


According to evidentialism, which endorses the JTB+ conception of knowledge, the combination of two things accomplishes this goal: evidentialist justification plus degettierization (a condition that prevents a true and justified belief from being "gettiered").

However, according to an alternative approach that has in the last three decades become increasingly popular, what stands in the way of epistemic luck, what turns a true belief into knowledge is the reliability of the cognitive process that produced the belief. Consider how we acquire knowledge of our physical environment: we do so through sense experience. Sense experiential processes are, at least under normal conditions, highly reliable.

There is nothing accidental about the truth of the beliefs these processes produce. Thus beliefs produced by sense experience, if true, should qualify as instances of knowledge. An analogous point could be made for other reliable cognitive processes, such as introspection, memory, and rational intuition. We might, therefore, say that what turns true belief into knowledge is the reliability of our cognitive processes.''

 

[rousseau]

Sorry, it's a tough concept to explain. What I'm trying to say is that 'knowledge' isn't really the same type of thing as 'fact'. Knowledge is more of a dynamic concept that's hard to pin down, but you seem to be taking knowledge to mean 'fact'. Knowledge can be a fact, but it can also be erroneous or incomplete data that someone 'knows'. To that person it is a fact, which makes it knowledge to them.

Take our scientific understanding from the 19th century. At the time there was a lot that we thought we knew, and at that time it was the knowledge we had. But eventually that knowledge was replaced by a more accurate understanding.

I mean knowledge as a body of factual information established by the reliability of the senses and testing of the information acquired, that the belief in geocentrism, for instance, did not qualify as an instance of knowledge because it did represent the world as it is, the believers lacked the necessary information, the senses where fooled by the apparent motions of the sun and moon across the sky;

As quoted earlier;

''Why not say that knowledge is true belief?

''The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief that is true just because of luck does not qualify as knowledge. Beliefs that are lacking justification are false more often than not. However, on occasion, such beliefs happen to be true.

The analysis of knowledge may be approached by asking the following question:

What turns a true belief into knowledge?

An uncontroversial answer to this question would be: the sort of thing that effectively prevents a belief from being true as a result of epistemic luck. Controversy begins as soon as this formula is turned into a substantive proposal.


According to evidentialism, which endorses the JTB+ conception of knowledge, the combination of two things accomplishes this goal: evidentialist justification plus degettierization (a condition that prevents a true and justified belief from being "gettiered").

However, according to an alternative approach that has in the last three decades become increasingly popular, what stands in the way of epistemic luck, what turns a true belief into knowledge is the reliability of the cognitive process that produced the belief. Consider how we acquire knowledge of our physical environment: we do so through sense experience. Sense experiential processes are, at least under normal conditions, highly reliable.

There is nothing accidental about the truth of the beliefs these processes produce. Thus beliefs produced by sense experience, if true, should qualify as instances of knowledge. An analogous point could be made for other reliable cognitive processes, such as introspection, memory, and rational intuition. We might, therefore, say that what turns true belief into knowledge is the reliability of our cognitive processes.''

The problem here is that to reduce knowledge to only facts that we know as incontrovertibly true would mean that we don't actually know much of anything, because we don't always know if further information is coming to make that knowledge untrue.

Under my definition you can still have a 'body of factual knowledge' so to speak, you're just also aware that these facts are transient and contingent on further information coming.

What you're really looking for is a body of incontrovertible fact, the pool of which is much smaller.

Knowledge is something that exists in a person's head, it's not a Wikipedia entry. This sounds like a joke, but when you study knowledge from the perspective of sociology it's a really important point in how we understand people.

 

[Bomb#20]

The accumulated evidence does not support alternative explanations, like Christian creationism and a 4,000 year old Earth.

I've often pondered on the 'not so young' earth, and 'not so old' earth.
Perhaps applying the 'Goldilocks principal' of 'just about right' is a compromise between the young and old earth proponents .

That seems reasonable. If we use the Goldilocks principal to calculate the average age estimate from the young earth proponents -- the 40% of Americans who think it's six thousand years old -- and from the old earth proponents* -- the 0.003% who think it's sixty trillion years old -- that comes to a compromise 'not so young' and 'not so old' age of the earth of 4.5 billion years.

(* Scientologists)

 

[Elixir]

The accumulated evidence does not support alternative explanations, like Christian creationism and a 4,000 year old Earth.

I've often pondered on the 'not so young' earth, and 'not so old' earth.
Perhaps applying the 'Goldilocks principal' of 'just about right' is a compromise between the young and old earth proponents .

That seems reasonable. If we use the Goldilocks principal to calculate the average age estimate from the young earth proponents -- the 40% of Americans who think it's six thousand years old -- and from the old earth proponents* -- the 0.003% who think it's sixty trillion years old -- that comes to a compromise 'not so young' and 'not so old' age of the earth of 4.5 billion years.

(* Scientologists)

The problem with that is, if we have even one single American who thinks the universe is of infinite age, then the average is infinite age. Probably need to use a median rather than an average.

 

[SIB]

Pantheism makes sense here.

The universe created humans through evolution.

 

[SIB]

The accumulated evidence does not support alternative explanations, like Christian creationism and a 4,000 year old Earth.

I've often pondered on the 'not so young' earth, and 'not so old' earth.
Perhaps applying the 'Goldilocks principal' of 'just about right' is a compromise between the young and old earth proponents .

That seems reasonable. If we use the Goldilocks principal to calculate the average age estimate from the young earth proponents -- the 40% of Americans who think it's six thousand years old -- and from the old earth proponents* -- the 0.003% who think it's sixty trillion years old -- that comes to a compromise 'not so young' and 'not so old' age of the earth of 4.5 billion years.

(* Scientologists)

The problem with that is, if we have even one single American who thinks the universe is of infinite age, then the average is infinite age. Probably need to use a median rather than an average.

The problem is that the universe created earth. The biosphere created humans. The biosphere matches "alive" more than "not alive". At least using the most basic definition of life in a high school bio book. It matches "alive" even more as we move to the higher sciences.

To me, using only observation, the answer is between "anti-religion" and "my religion only". The universe self organized. Evolution is how it did that in our region of space. How much more organization is there?

 

[DBT]

Sorry, it's a tough concept to explain. What I'm trying to say is that 'knowledge' isn't really the same type of thing as 'fact'. Knowledge is more of a dynamic concept that's hard to pin down, but you seem to be taking knowledge to mean 'fact'. Knowledge can be a fact, but it can also be erroneous or incomplete data that someone 'knows'. To that person it is a fact, which makes it knowledge to them.

Take our scientific understanding from the 19th century. At the time there was a lot that we thought we knew, and at that time it was the knowledge we had. But eventually that knowledge was replaced by a more accurate understanding.

I mean knowledge as a body of factual information established by the reliability of the senses and testing of the information acquired, that the belief in geocentrism, for instance, did not qualify as an instance of knowledge because it did represent the world as it is, the believers lacked the necessary information, the senses where fooled by the apparent motions of the sun and moon across the sky;

As quoted earlier;

''Why not say that knowledge is true belief?

''The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief that is true just because of luck does not qualify as knowledge. Beliefs that are lacking justification are false more often than not. However, on occasion, such beliefs happen to be true.

The analysis of knowledge may be approached by asking the following question:

What turns a true belief into knowledge?

An uncontroversial answer to this question would be: the sort of thing that effectively prevents a belief from being true as a result of epistemic luck. Controversy begins as soon as this formula is turned into a substantive proposal.


According to evidentialism, which endorses the JTB+ conception of knowledge, the combination of two things accomplishes this goal: evidentialist justification plus degettierization (a condition that prevents a true and justified belief from being "gettiered").

However, according to an alternative approach that has in the last three decades become increasingly popular, what stands in the way of epistemic luck, what turns a true belief into knowledge is the reliability of the cognitive process that produced the belief. Consider how we acquire knowledge of our physical environment: we do so through sense experience. Sense experiential processes are, at least under normal conditions, highly reliable.

There is nothing accidental about the truth of the beliefs these processes produce. Thus beliefs produced by sense experience, if true, should qualify as instances of knowledge. An analogous point could be made for other reliable cognitive processes, such as introspection, memory, and rational intuition. We might, therefore, say that what turns true belief into knowledge is the reliability of our cognitive processes.''

The problem here is that to reduce knowledge to only facts that we know as incontrovertibly true would mean that we don't actually know much of anything, because we don't always know if further information is coming to make that knowledge untrue.

I tend to agree with that, that we don't really know all that much about anything, not even ourselves. Which is not to say that we have no knowledge about anything, or that we don't have an abundance of facts.

Under my definition you can still have a 'body of factual knowledge' so to speak, you're just also aware that these facts are transient and contingent on further information coming.

What do you mean by transient facts?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

What do you mean by transient facts?

If you are like me when you were six years old you knew that Santa was real. That is knowledge that you had. Of course, it was limited to your experiences generally and the knowledge those experiences provided. But in the end you had knowledge that Santa was real. Sociologically speaking, that would be an important fact to know about you if I were interacting with you.

If I hear a claim that I know to be not true, I call that pseudo-knowledge, even if another person perceives it as factual knowledge. In fact, I would know that that person holds a false belief, a belief in pseudo-knowledge. That information would - and should - impact our interactions.

I should add that all facts are transient for an intelligent person, semantics aside, but some facts are less transient than others.

 

[DBT]

Still not sure about what is meant by transient facts. Perhaps, for instance, we see a meteor cross the sky and it is gone - a transient event, yet while it lasted it was a fact, albeit a transient fact, and observing it is an instance of knowledge rather than faith or epistemic belief.

 

[rousseau]

Still not sure about what is meant by transient facts. Perhaps, for instance, we see a meteor cross the sky and it is gone - a transient event, yet while it lasted it was a fact, albeit a transient fact, and observing it is an instance of knowledge rather than faith or epistemic belief.

For example, you could look at what we know about prehistory. A lot of it is a best guess based on limited information, and we know that our evidence is limited. So it's not 'incontrovertible fact', it's 'what we know to the best of our knowledge until we have more information'. We're reasonably sure our knowledge will change, hence it being transient.

On the other hand, some of what we know about biology and evolution is pretty much incontrovertible fact.

 

[DBT]

Still not sure about what is meant by transient facts. Perhaps, for instance, we see a meteor cross the sky and it is gone - a transient event, yet while it lasted it was a fact, albeit a transient fact, and observing it is an instance of knowledge rather than faith or epistemic belief.

For example, you could look at what we know about prehistory. A lot of it is a best guess based on limited information, and we know that our evidence is limited. So it's not 'incontrovertible fact', it's 'what we know to the best of our knowledge until we have more information'. We're reasonably sure our knowledge will change, hence it being transient.

On the other hand, some of what we know about biology and evolution is pretty much incontrovertible fact.

History is composed of objective events. they are factual events regardless of our level of understanding or information we have about them. We cannot have perfect or complete knowledge; the world is too vast. It's virtually impossible to determine the details of what happened yesterday, yet alone the distant past, of which we may have some facts (knowledge) and a whole lot of theories, hypothesis and speculation (various degrees of provisional conviction/belief).

 

[Jarhyn]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain. The brain processes information and functions not according to belief, but neural architecture.

The senses are based on a belief. The belief of one neuron that on the basis of the output of another neuron, function will be improved to the system by reacting.

They are a trust-but-verify system.

The brain then instantiates a belief about those signals.

That's how neural architecture works.

That's what neural architecture is.

Trying to pretend it is without belief, confidence, implicit faith in the constance of some principle, is lunacy.

 

[DBT]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain. The brain processes information and functions not according to belief, but neural architecture.

The senses are based on a belief. The belief of one neuron that on the basis of the output of another neuron, function will be improved to the system by reacting.

They are a trust-but-verify system.

The brain then instantiates a belief about those signals.

That's how neural architecture works.

That's what neural architecture is.

Trying to pretend it is without belief, confidence, implicit faith in the constance of some principle, is lunacy.

Information that is acquired by the senses and transmitted to the brain for processing is not a matter of belief. Neurons function on the basis of structure and architecture, not belief. Our conscious experience of the world is based on acquired and stored information, which is in turn tested against a reality that cares not for beliefs. If there is a tree in your way, as the tree itself cares not whether you believe it is there or not, it is your perception of the tree that is being tested and proven reliable or unreliable, whatever the case may be. What you believe has no bearing on whether the tree is there or not.

 

[Jarhyn]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain. The brain processes information and functions not according to belief, but neural architecture.

The senses are based on a belief. The belief of one neuron that on the basis of the output of another neuron, function will be improved to the system by reacting.

They are a trust-but-verify system.

The brain then instantiates a belief about those signals.

That's how neural architecture works.

That's what neural architecture is.

Trying to pretend it is without belief, confidence, implicit faith in the constance of some principle, is lunacy.

Information that is acquired by the senses and transmitted to the brain for processing is not a matter of belief. Neurons function on the basis of structure and architecture, not belief. Our conscious experience of the world is based on acquired and stored information, which is in turn tested against a reality that cares not for beliefs. If there is a tree in your way, as the tree itself cares not whether you believe it is there or not, it is your perception of the tree that is being tested and proven reliable or unreliable, whatever the case may be. What you believe has no bearing on whether the tree is there or not.

The construction of one neuron against another in the unsupported faith that the reinforcement function is actually reinforcing a truth rather than a bad assumption is the very core nature of "belief".

Whether that belief is in something true or not is not actually guaranteed for the neurons.

Their structure and architecture IS belief.

That is what belief is.

When those neurons create an accurate belief about the world we can consider their belief "true" and when they don't, we call it "false". This cannot be accomplished by a single set of neurons and requires many different beliefs from which consistency yields a likelihood of being a TRUE belief rather than one based on an anomaly such as a "side channel input".

I can put all the information I like into a software program/FPGA/Neural network all I want, and if whatever transistive structure I put that into a chaotic belief structure ABOUT that information, the information will become full of "entropy" and "heat" and be entirely useless for any purpose.

Randomness XOR anything is randomness, after all.

 

[DBT]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain. The brain processes information and functions not according to belief, but neural architecture.

The senses are based on a belief. The belief of one neuron that on the basis of the output of another neuron, function will be improved to the system by reacting.

They are a trust-but-verify system.

The brain then instantiates a belief about those signals.

That's how neural architecture works.

That's what neural architecture is.

Trying to pretend it is without belief, confidence, implicit faith in the constance of some principle, is lunacy.

Information that is acquired by the senses and transmitted to the brain for processing is not a matter of belief. Neurons function on the basis of structure and architecture, not belief. Our conscious experience of the world is based on acquired and stored information, which is in turn tested against a reality that cares not for beliefs. If there is a tree in your way, as the tree itself cares not whether you believe it is there or not, it is your perception of the tree that is being tested and proven reliable or unreliable, whatever the case may be. What you believe has no bearing on whether the tree is there or not.

The construction of one neuron against another in the unsupported faith that the reinforcement function is actually reinforcing a truth rather than a bad assumption is the very core nature of "belief".

I made no mention of reinforcement or assumption. The evolutionary role of a neuron is to acquire and process and transmit information. It has no belief. It has no assumptions. It has no faith. It has mechanical structure and function.

Whether that belief is in something true or not is not actually guaranteed for the neurons.

Belief requires higher function, processing and thought....something that based on the sum total of information acquired and processed by neurons and their structures and connections.

Their structure and architecture IS belief.

Nah, the function of a neuron is determined by its physical makeup and architecture. Physical structures such as stars, planets or the physical makeup of plants and animals has nothing to do with belief. Most of these don't even think or reason, yet alone form convictions or hold faith.

That is what belief is.

When those neurons create an accurate belief about the world we can consider their belief "true" and when they don't, we call it "false". This cannot be accomplished by a single set of neurons and requires many different beliefs from which consistency yields a likelihood of being a TRUE belief rather than one based on an anomaly such as a "side channel input".

That is your contention and your definition. A belief is defined as a conviction of truth. A conviction requires a process to bring one to the point of being convinced that something is true.

Neurons don't do that. Higher thought processes by means of a complex brain do that.


''A belief is a subjective attitude that something or proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false...''

 

[Jarhyn]

I made no mention of reinforcement or assumption

Yes, you did, by invoking neurons. that is what neurons are: reinforcement systems which makes assumptions based on whether a chemical pathway with various side channels discharges along it's sodium-ion channel.

The evolutionary role of a neuron is to acquire and process and transmit information.

Not exactly. Reality doesn't support such a contention as that some thing has a given "evolutionary role".

At best you can say they have survival advantages in a context, and a creature that can come to believe things promptly through neural organizations has the potentially to believe various things which are true enough to help it survive.

Neurons facilitate rapid formation of beliefs in indivudual-time rather than generational time. That's the function they accomplish with their form.

Belief requires higher function, processing and thought....

This is a misconception, and you lack any suitable definition of your jand-wave "higher function".

A worm believes that a "strong" activation on its dorsal nerves means something is threatening it, because over evolutionary time, neural arrangements were selected for which the belief of activation yields high confidence of threat.

Note the term 'confidence'.

Nerves with their reinforcement process are generally connected to systems which yield a confidence in a secondary result. "Feel a way, ate food, confidence of high blood sugar increases, therefore reinforce 'seek food when feel that way'"

It's in the belief that doing the thing yields a high confidence of satisfaction of the drive.

That those informations are well organized due to beliefs formed through selection pressures for a long time does not absolve them of being "beliefs".

Nah, the function of a neuron is determined by its physical makeup and architecture.

Which is "as a belief engine".

Neurons can be arranged just as easily and patterns set down in them to function towards representing completely inaccurate beliefs. Their physical makeup and architecture, however, contains a function that adjusts the represented belief based on feedback.

This has been studied as happening on the scale of ONE neuron talking to ONE neuron.

You fail to see that the larger beliefs are just constructions of smaller beliefs and while many of those beliefs are close to being correct, they are still "belief".

You are treating beliefs as if they have to be more complicated than they are to be as they are, and not really thinking about what point in biology "information" and "belief about information" begin to intersect.

A sodium ion channel being active is information. Whether it is appropriate to activate is a belief. This is mediated within a single neuron so every neuron represents one primitive belief: when it SHOULD fire.

 

[DBT]

I made no mention of reinforcement or assumption

Yes, you did, by invoking neurons. that is what neurons are: reinforcement systems which makes assumptions based on whether a chemical pathway with various side channels discharges along it's sodium-ion channel.

The evolutionary role of a neuron is to acquire and process and transmit information.

Not exactly. Reality doesn't support such a contention as that some thing has a given "evolutionary role".

At best you can say they have survival advantages in a context, and a creature that can come to believe things promptly through neural organizations has the potentially to believe various things which are true enough to help it survive.

Neurons facilitate rapid formation of beliefs in indivudual-time rather than generational time. That's the function they accomplish with their form.

Belief requires higher function, processing and thought....

This is a misconception, and you lack any suitable definition of your jand-wave "higher function".

A worm believes that a "strong" activation on its dorsal nerves means something is threatening it, because over evolutionary time, neural arrangements were selected for which the belief of activation yields high confidence of threat.

Note the term 'confidence'.

Nerves with their reinforcement process are generally connected to systems which yield a confidence in a secondary result. "Feel a way, ate food, confidence of high blood sugar increases, therefore reinforce 'seek food when feel that way'"

It's in the belief that doing the thing yields a high confidence of satisfaction of the drive.

That those informations are well organized due to beliefs formed through selection pressures for a long time does not absolve them of being "beliefs".

Nah, the function of a neuron is determined by its physical makeup and architecture.

Which is "as a belief engine".

Neurons can be arranged just as easily and patterns set down in them to function towards representing completely inaccurate beliefs. Their physical makeup and architecture, however, contains a function that adjusts the represented belief based on feedback.

This has been studied as happening on the scale of ONE neuron talking to ONE neuron.

You fail to see that the larger beliefs are just constructions of smaller beliefs and while many of those beliefs are close to being correct, they are still "belief".

You are treating beliefs as if they have to be more complicated than they are to be as they are, and not really thinking about what point in biology "information" and "belief about information" begin to intersect.

A sodium ion channel being active is information. Whether it is appropriate to activate is a belief. This is mediated within a single neuron so every neuron represents one primitive belief: when it SHOULD fire.

You just insist on your own terms regardless of evidence or what what is explained.

The function of a neuron has absolutely nothing to do with belief or believing. It is a physical mechanism that has an evolved function; to acquire and process information.

A neuron has no beliefs about the information it acquires and processes and transmits, it's function is determined by its physical makeup.

The basics:

''Your ability to perceive your surroundings – to see, hear, and smell what’s around you – depends on your nervous system. So does your ability to recognize where you are and to remember if you’ve been there before. In fact, your very capacity to wonder how you know where you are depends on your nervous system!''

''All of these processes depend on the interconnected cells that make up your nervous system. Like the heart, lungs, and stomach, the nervous system is made up of specialized cells. These include nerve cells (or neurons) and glial cells (or glia). Neurons are the basic functional units of the nervous system, and they generate electrical signals called action potentials, which allow them to quickly transmit information over long distances. Glia are also essential to nervous system function, but they work mostly by supporting the neurons.''

Classes of neurons​

Based on their roles, the neurons found in the human nervous system can be divided into three classes: sensory neurons, motor neurons, and interneurons.

Sensory neurons​

Sensory neurons get information about what's going on inside and outside of the body and bring that information into the CNS so it can be processed. For instance, if you picked up a hot coal, sensory neurons with endings in your fingertips would convey the information to your CNS that it was really hot.

Motor neurons​

Motor neurons get information from other neurons and convey commands to your muscles, organs and glands. For instance, if you picked up a hot coal, it motor neurons innervating the muscles in your fingers would cause your hand to let go.

Interneurons​

Interneurons, which are found only in the CNS, connect one neuron to another. They receive information from other neurons (either sensory neurons or interneurons) and transmit information to other neurons (either motor neurons or interneurons).
For instance, if you picked up a hot coal, the signal from the sensory neurons in your fingertips would travel to interneurons in your spinal cord. Some of these interneurons would signal to the motor neurons controlling your finger muscles (causing you to let go), while others would transmit the signal up the spinal cord to neurons in the brain, where it would be perceived as pain.

 

[Jarhyn]

The function of a neuron has absolutely nothing to do with belief or believing

No, the function of neurons is as a belief engine. I'm sure someone like Swammerdami could discuss the math a bit better than I can which describes the formation of beliefs by neurons.

Neurons encode beliefs, whether or not you wish to admit to containing a massive pile of beliefs or not.

Just like your inability to parse the usage of "free will" you are similarly biased on the discussion of what a belief even is.

Beliefs exist, they are held by neurons, and they can become very small.

Your major issue seems an inability to accept that complex beliefs are just amalgamations of simpler beliefs.

Some small group of neurons encodes the belief that there is a "line".

Some small group of neurons connected to several small groups of neurons encodes the belief that there is an corner.

Some small groups of neurons connected to several smaller groups of neurons encodes the belief that "corners cause closed perimeter"

It's turtles all the way down to the neuron level.