One of the chief difficulties in developing rational and consistent beliefs is that we all start in the middle.
The most appropriate analogy I can think of is building a house. The best way to build a house is to plan it out on blueprints, start with the foundation, and work your way up from there. (Yes, there is more involved in building a house than these three steps, but these three work for the analogy and arguing semantics in an analogy is like killing the patient to cure the disease). If the house is my worldview, (a collection and construction of all my important beliefs) I walk into it not knowing if the foundation is any good, uncertain of what the original blueprints said, and only knowing a little bit about the external, visible aspects of it. The house could have an exceptionally good foundation and be ready to stand for years, or it could have an awful foundation and be ready to collapse under its own weight. It might be based on the best blueprints available, but the builder deviated from the plans and made a terrible house despite the good plans. The point is that I don’t know the condition my worldview (or the house) when I get started.
The reason is that we acquire our foundational beliefs before we are mature enough and thoughtful enough to assess them. We acquire these beliefs from a large variety of sources like family, culture, and social conditioning. Since we acquire them before we were able to examine them rationally, these beliefs may or may not be good and rational; we have to look at them and see. This is why we must question our foundational beliefs (Question does not mean blindly reject. It means to examine the reasons and evidence for the beliefs and see if they work and match up with the reality of the world. Most of the beliefs that most people have are correct and good because they are beliefs like “A chair is something people sit in.”)
In the house analogy, the wisest thing to do is to examine the house as completely as possible and determine what parts of it are good and what parts are bad. The problem is that if this house is my worldview, I must live in it while I am evaluating it. I have to determine if the sink works while I am using the sink. Alternatively, for the worldview, I have to question my beliefs about the value of human life (until I find a good base for them) while using those questionable beliefs to interact with the other humans around me. This is why we start in the middle.
A rational and consistent belief is a belief that is built off the foundation of other beliefs that are either certain (I exist) or so likely to be certain that to question them is irrational (my senses allow me to perceive reality). For example, the belief that murder is evil is built off foundational beliefs like human life having value and the existence of morals. In order for the belief that murder is evil to be good and rational the foundational beliefs it is built on must be reasonably certain (Very few things are absolutely certain but a lot of things are so reasonably certain that only fools question them).
But we still have to live in the world, and our interactions with the world require us to use our beliefs in a practical way. So we must use the beliefs we have built on uncertain foundations while simultaneously questioning and evaluating those beliefs and their foundations. In effect we all must start in the middle and push in both directions (At least until we have acquired some certain or fairly certain foundational beliefs).
As we start pushing in both directions, we will find that some of our beliefs do not match up with our foundational beliefs or vice versa. Everyone has some inconsistent beliefs so if we start examining our beliefs we will notice these inconsistencies. In the house analogy, it would be like finding an addition without a foundation, or a foundation without anything built on it.
Two easy examples of inconsistent beliefs come from American political views on abortion. A lot of people on the political left support abortion rights because they believe people have a right to privacy in medical issues and since abortion is a medical issue it should be kept private. (The official legal justification for the right to abortions appeals to the Constitution’s “Right to Privacy”) Conversely, the political right believes abortion is evil because it is the taking of innocent life.
The inconsistency on the political left is that many of the same people and groups who use the right to privacy to justify abortion also claim that the government should mandate/control health-care (Obviously, this is not true of all politically left groups). If medical issues should be private than the government should have no business mandating or controlling it (as this makes medicine public). The political left has a belief (government ran health-care) which conflicts with a foundational belief (right to privacy in health-care) of another of its beliefs (right to abortion). If there is a right to privacy in health-care the political left is being inconsistent in its belief in government ran health-care. Conversely, if that belief is abandoned, than the primary justification for the right to an abortion disappears. Obviously, the Left is wrong in at least one of these beliefs. (Of course, it is possible to find other foundational beliefs that support abortion or government ran health-care.)
The Right's inconsistency is that it does not apply the same standards of justification to abortion that it does to other acts of killing. The political right believes abortion is wrong because they believe it is murder. Murder is the intentional taking of human life where there is little or no context and reason that could justify it. (If I kill someone because I drove my car too fast and crashed into him, I am responsible for his death, but I’m not a murder because I didn’t intend to kill him. If I kill a man who broke into my house and is trying to kill me, again I am responsible, but I’m not a murderer because there is context that can justify the killing).
The Right also believes that at least some of the killing in war is justifiable and so not murder. The Right reasons that the context and extreme nature of the situation(s) in and around war make certain acts of killing justifiable. The underlying belief is that the overall value of human life and dignity can be better adhered to by killing certain people in certain situations (Sometimes it is better to shoot the serial killer or rapist in the head to protect other people from them). So the Right believes that context and circumstance can make killing justifiable (although they also say it often is not).
The inconsistency is in saying that context and circumstance cannot justify killing in the case of abortion, but it can elsewhere. The only substantial difference between a born and unborn human is location (In most of the Right’s beliefs and mine). So if it is possible to justify any act that would otherwise be murder, than logically it must be possible to justify at least some abortions due to extreme or highly unusual situations. It’s about human life regardless of location. The Right has to be wrong about at least one of those beliefs.
In these two examples, having inconsistent beliefs clearly does matter, but some inconsistent beliefs do not matter. It is inconsistent to believe I am allergic to tomatoes if I eat and enjoy ketchup, but it doesn’t cause me or anyone else harm (other than the damage to my reputation because people will think I’m a moron). One sign of maturity in thought is being able to distinguish between the inconsistent beliefs that matter and those that don’t.
None of us will ever be completely consistent in all our beliefs, but with mature thought and work, we can work through our inconsistent beliefs until they are all insignificant. It’s possible to live in a house with rain gutters that clash with the paint color, but a house without a foundation will not last through any storms or rough times. Likewise it’s possible to live in a worldview with insignificant inconsistencies (Like hating Xbox games while loving Playstation games), but a worldview that has important inconsistencies (like telling people language is inherently ambiguous) will not survive any serious life issues or introspection.
In order to live better lives we all need to push out of, find, and correct our inconsistencies. Starting in the middle does make this difficult, but it is more than possible (I used to hold the Right’s inconsistent belief about abortion and war). It is possible to live in a house that is falling apart for a little while, but it will be quite painful (if not fatal) when it collapses. Likewise, it is possible to survive with inconsistent beliefs for a while, but when the inconsistencies collide, it will be quite painful (if not fatal). To avoid this pain (or maybe death) strive to have consistent beliefs (and of course play both Xbox and Playstation games). That is the purpose of good philosophy and what I am trying to do.
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