I think it all comes down to "how" we make decisions. There is indeed lots of evidence that we, as a species, often make decisions based upon our personal belief systems, by that we mean AVB's (Attitudes,Values and Beleifs) rather than as you suggest through a reasoned approach.

We know that attitiudes affect actions and decisions and we often hear people being accused of making emotional decisions which could in fact be based upon irrational beleif systems.

How those belief sytams are established in the first place may just be a function of our modern society. OLO offers the opportunity to observe belief systems and judgement in action. For example, many contributors do their own research on a topic, sourcing raw data and making a reasoned and informed "judgment" on a topic. Others may have "adopted" a perception already and can refer a reader to any amount of commentary that supports that view.

It may also be the case that other forms of "intelligence" are influencing, or not influencing our judgement. We all understand IQ, our intellectual quotient, not much time is given to other forms that are now being more clearly understood. EQ, our Emotional Quotient, PQ, our Personality Type and VQ, our Value System.

Could it be the case that we are simply not equipped to make sense of a very complex world where even the disciplines we do understand seem to overlap?

"Religion and philosophy are one and the same.."

Well, no, because philosophy is open to argument. The history of philosophy is thinkers explaining why previous thinkers were wrong, no matter how right they sound. The history of religion is believers explaining why previous believers were right, no matter how wrong they sound.

And unfortunately the price of non-judgement is inaction and usually disaster. If I have to wait until I'm sure that there won't be an earthquake before I get up in the morning, then I will never leave my bed. We all have to make decisions on limited information. What distinguishes reason from unreason is whether we learn from getting them wrong.

Jon J, your right in the narrow context of philosphy as an intellecual pursuit but I think this context is more to do with individual philosophy which might refer to a way we conduct our lives and what personal belief systems we have developed.

Those of us who don't make decisions don't make bad ones and you're right about learning from them but we are talking about some people who don't learn or who are not interested in any form of reality. More important still is the issue of humans behaving "collectively" with no rationale, just faith.

I mentioned in my first post the issue of modern complexity. At the highest level in our world there are only five domains into which all human activity can be categorised, Social, Political, Economic, Religious and Ecological. I think of each as a pyramid, at the very top each seems well defined. The more we humans deposit into each pyramid, the more complex it becomes and the broader its base, each then begins to overlap with the next. I'm not sure that we have developed the skills to rationalise so much complexity.

The net result is that we often make bad judgements as individuals and collectively. You seem to have a good grip on things, are some people "phased" by the shear complexity of our societies?

Interesting post.

Common experience tells us that human beings will believe just about anything, even things that a moment's reflection would show are false, or things whose falsity is highly probable.

Yet what could be the selective advantage of false belief systems?

Of course, a belief system can be advantageous, even if it's false, especially if, as in politics or religion, the cost of it can be put on someone else. So long as we believe that the church can put in a good word for us with God, or that government can create wealth out of nothing by printing paper, those benefiting will continue to do it, and use their power and prestige to perpetuate the belief by indoctrinating the rising generations.

I think a fruitful way to look at it is to consider how man's reason evolved. Mises argues that the function of reason is to enable man to hypothesise relations of cause and effect, so as to form a judgement whether a particular action will generate benefit or loss. This has explaining power. It happens at the individual level. But the more complex is society, the more the relevant issues of fact are happening at the meta-mega-hyper-super-duper level, such as the existence of God, or the world economy, where error is much easier.

Still, not all belief systems are equally true. Whether we can make bread out of stones is not just a question of ‘ideology’. Reality cuts in at some stage, and some theories have more explaining power than others. We need a method for distinguishing them. One of the reasons the social sciences have floundered so lamentably is because they have inappropriately taken as their model the physical sciences. But as human action is purposive, and value is subjective, there are no constant quantities to measure and predict. The science of human action must be based on the logic of human action, not measurements of quantities and replication of experiments. Sensible action based on understanding based on sound theory is the best we can hope for. The abandonment of reason is not preferable to reason.

A few general comments on my article.
I have not mentioned anywhere on how decisions are made, rationally or otherwise. My reference to learning to think has nothing to do with rationality. It was in the context of learning to think rather than follow unthinking dogma. The one thing that I said that could be construed as how to make decisions was that in stead of making judgements we could decide what we wanted. That is hardly considered rational in today's world.
I was very careful to make it clear I was talking about two specific types of toxic judgement. Finding in the negative because we cannot prove the positive, finding in the positive because we cannot prove the negative, and in both case claiming our judgement to be true.
That hardly condemns us to inaction. It means we are aware that we are making decision as best we can, but as things change we can modify as we go along. Dogma does not allow this.
Religion and philosophy are the same in the context that they both attempt to give us identity. Christians, Jew, Muslims, Atheists and others all have dogma that builds towards identity, along with other factors such as job and money in the bank. All are judgments and say nothing about who the person is.
Yes the complexities of life do make it easier to drift along in an unthinking fog of dogma. But purely personal experience shows when it is possible to say 'I don't know' it is surprising how many of the 'I don't knows' link together into a greater pattern. It seems another characteristic of judgment that it separates and stops us seeing the connection between all things. That last bit was left out of the article, but since it has come up in discussion I will put it in now.
One thing that I have noticed in my twenty years of writing is how often what a writer writes and a reader reads are often very different. I put this down to the words being filtered through our belief system.

Daviy said "Religion and philosophy are the same in the context that they both attempt to give us identity. Christians, Jew, Muslims, Atheists and others all have dogma that builds towards identity"

What are you on about mate? As Jon J rightly said, they are nothing like each other. Philosophy attempts to, putting it crudely, answer the big questions. Unlike religion, it does not do this assuming, a priori, that The Book upon which it is based is true, as of course, philosophy has none. Philosophy and religion may have in common the aim of attempting to discover the way in which people should live, but that is where the similarity ends. What have you got against philosophy? You appear to misunderstand it utterly.

And for the record, atheism is not a belief system, it is the absence of one. It, in its purest form, simply states that "there is insufficient evidence for god, so I choose not to share your belief in whatever god you happen to believe in". That is not a belief system. To use your analogy, the reverse Hiroshima, organised religion claims that because the non-existence of god is unproveable, he therefore exists. Refer Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot for a neat rebuttal. Another example of philosophy consisting of reasoned argument, anathema to religion and the religious.

Daviy said "One thing that I have noticed in my twenty years of writing is how often what a writer writes and a reader reads are often very different. I put this down to the words being filtered through our belief system."

Are we to assume that this is the reader's fault, and not yours for insufficient clarity? And that you profess not to view the world through a belief system?