Belief
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A belief is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something.[1] In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false.[2] To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g. a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white").[2]
There are various ways that contemporary
Beliefs are the subject of various important philosophical debates. Notable examples include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence?", "Is the content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.g. if I believe that I'm holding a glass of water, is the non-mental fact that water is H2O part of the content of that belief)?", "How fine-grained or coarse-grained are our beliefs?", and "Must it be possible for a belief to be expressible in language, or are there non-linguistic beliefs?"[2]
Conceptions
Various conceptions of the essential features of beliefs have been proposed, but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. Representationalism is the traditionally dominant position. Its most popular version maintains that attitudes toward representations, which are typically associated with propositions, are mental attitudes that constitute beliefs.These attitudes are part of the internal constitution of the mind holding the attitude. This view contrasts with functionalism, which defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by beliefs. According to dispositionalism, beliefs are identified with dispositions to behave in certain ways. This view can be seen as a form of functionalism, defining beliefs in terms of the behavior they tend to cause. Interpretationism constitutes another conception, which has gained popularity in contemporary philosophy. It holds that the beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on or relative to someone's interpretation of this entity. Representationalism tends to be associated with a mind-body-dualism. Naturalist considerations against this dualism are among the motivations for choosing one of the alternative conceptions.[4]
Representationalism
Representationalism characterizes beliefs in terms of
There are different ways of conceiving how mental representations are realized in the mind. One form of this is the language of thought hypothesis, which claims that mental representations have a language-like structure, sometimes referred to as "mentalese".[10][11] Just like regular language, this involves simple elements that are combined in various ways according to syntactic rules to form more complex elements that act as bearers of meaning.[4][11] On this conception, holding a belief would involve storing such a complex element in one's mind. Different beliefs are separated from each other in that they correspond to different elements stored in the mind. A more holistic alternative to the "language of thought hypothesis" is the map-conception, which uses an analogy of maps to elucidate the nature of beliefs.[4][11] According to this view, the belief-system of a mind should be conceived of not as a set of many individual sentences but as a map encoding the information contained in these sentences.[4][11] For example, the fact that Brussels is halfway between Paris and Amsterdam can be expressed both linguistically as a sentence and in a map through its internal geometrical relations.
Functionalism
Dispositionalism is sometimes seen as a specific form of functionalism.
Interpretationism
According to interpretationism, the beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on, or relative to, someone's interpretation of this entity.[4][17] Daniel Dennett is an important defender of such a position. He holds that we ascribe beliefs to entities in order to predict how they will behave. Entities with simple behavioral patterns can be described using physical laws or in terms of their function. Dennett refers to these forms of explanation as the "physical stance" and the "design stance". These stances are contrasted with the intentional stance, which is applied to entities with a more complex behavior by ascribing beliefs and desires to these entities.[18][19] For example, we can predict that a chess player will move her queen to f7 if we ascribe to her the desire to win the game and the belief that this move will achieve that. The same procedure can also be applied to predicting how a chess computer will behave. The entity has the belief in question if this belief can be used to predict its behavior.[4] Having a belief is relative to an interpretation since there may be different equally good ways of ascribing beliefs to predict behavior.[4] So there may be another interpretation that predicts the move of the queen to f7 that does not involve the belief that this move will win the game. Another version of interpretationism is due to Donald Davidson,[17] who uses the thought experiment of radical interpretation, in which the goal is to make sense of the behavior and language of another person from scratch without any knowledge of this person's language.[4] This process involves ascribing beliefs and desires to the speaker. The speaker really has these beliefs if this project can be successful in principle.[4]
Interpretationism can be combined with eliminativism and instrumentalism about beliefs. Eliminativists hold that, strictly speaking, there are no beliefs. Instrumentalists agree with eliminativists but add that belief-ascriptions are useful nonetheless.
Origins
Biologist Lewis Wolpert discusses the importance of causal beliefs and associates the making and use of tools with the origin of human beliefs.[21]
Historical
In the context of
Types
Beliefs can be categorized into various types depending on their ontological status, their degree, their object or their semantic properties.
Occurrent and dispositional
Having an occurrent belief that the Grand Canyon is in Arizona involves entertaining the representation associated with this belief—for example, by actively thinking about it. But the great majority of our beliefs are not active most of the time: they are merely dispositional.[4] They usually become activated or occurrent when needed or relevant in some way and then fall back into their dispositional state afterward.[4] For example, the belief that 57 is greater than 14 was probably dispositional to the reader before reading this sentence, has become occurrent while reading it and may soon become dispositional again as the mind focuses elsewhere. The distinction between occurrent and dispositional beliefs is sometimes identified with the distinction between conscious and unconscious beliefs.[22][23] But it has been argued that, despite overlapping, the two distinctions do not match. The reason for this is that beliefs can shape one's behavior and be involved in one's reasoning even if the subject is not conscious of them. Such beliefs are cases of unconscious occurrent mental states.[22] On this view, being occurrent corresponds to being active, either consciously or unconsciously.[23]
A dispositional belief is not the same as a disposition to believe.[16] We have various dispositions to believe given the right perceptions; for example, to believe that it is raining given a perception of rain. Without this perception, there is still a disposition to believe but no actual dispositional belief.[16] On a dispositionalist conception of belief, there are no occurrent beliefs, since all beliefs are defined in terms of dispositions.[4]
Full and partial
An important dispute in formal epistemology concerns the question of whether beliefs should be conceptualized as full beliefs or as partial beliefs.
The central question in the dispute between full and partial beliefs is whether these two types are really distinct types or whether one type can be explained in terms of the other.[24] One answer to this question is called the Lockean thesis. It states that partial beliefs are basic and that full beliefs are to be conceived as partial beliefs above a certain threshold: for example, that every belief above 0.9 is a full belief.[24][29][30] Defenders of a primitive notion of full belief, on the other hand, have tried to explain partial beliefs as full beliefs about probabilities.[24] On this view, having a partial belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow is the same as having a full belief that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Another approach circumvents the notion of probability altogether and replaces degrees of belief with degrees of disposition to revise one's full belief.[24] From this perspective, both a belief of degree 0.6 and a belief of degree 0.9 may be seen as full beliefs. The difference between them is that the former belief can readily be changed upon receiving new evidence while the latter is more stable.[24]
Belief-in and belief-that
Traditionally, philosophers have mainly focused in their inquiries concerning belief on the notion of belief-that.
Defenders of a reductive account of belief-in have used this line of thought to argue that belief in God can be analyzed in a similar way: e.g. that it amounts to a belief that God exists with his characteristic attributes, like omniscience and omnipotence.[32] Opponents of this account often concede that belief-in may entail various forms of belief-that, but that there are additional aspects to belief-in that are not reducible to belief-that.[33] For example, a belief in an ideal may involve the belief that this ideal is something good, but it additionally involves a positive evaluative attitude toward this ideal that goes beyond a mere propositional attitude.[32] Applied to the belief in God, opponents of the reductive approach may hold that a belief that God exists may be a necessary pre-condition for belief in God, but that it is not sufficient.[32][33]
De dicto and de re
The difference between de dicto and de re beliefs or the corresponding ascriptions concerns the contributions singular terms like names and other referential devices make to the semantic properties of the belief or its ascription.
Collective belief
A collective belief is referred to when people speak of what "we" believe when this is not simply elliptical for what "we all" believe.[37] Sociologist
Collective belief can play a role in social control[40] and serve as a touchstone for identifying and purging
Contents
As mental representations, beliefs have contents, which is what the belief is about or what it represents. Within philosophy, there are various disputes about how the contents of beliefs are to be understood. Holists and molecularists hold that the content of one particular belief depends on or is determined by other beliefs belonging to the same subject, which is denied by atomists. The question of dependence or determination also plays a central role in the internalism-externalism- debate. Internalism states that the contents of someone's beliefs depend only on what is internal to that person and are determined entirely by things going on inside this person's head. Externalism, on the other hand, holds that the relations to one's environment also have a role to play in this.
Atomism, molecularism and holism
The disagreement between atomism, molecularism and holism concerns the question of how the content of one belief depends on the contents of other beliefs held by the same subject.[43] Atomists deny such dependence relations, molecularists restrict them to only a few closely related beliefs while holists hold that they may obtain between any two beliefs, however unrelated they seem.[4][5][43] For example, assume that Mei and Benjamin both affirm that Jupiter is a planet. The most straightforward explanation, given by the atomists, would be that they have the same belief, i.e. that they hold the same content to be true. But now assume that Mei also believes that Pluto is a planet, which is denied by Benjamin. This indicates that they have different concepts of planet, which would mean that they were affirming different contents when they both agreed that Jupiter is a planet. This reasoning leads to molecularism or holism because the content of the Jupiter-belief depends on the Pluto-belief in this example.[4][43]
An important motivation for this position comes from
Internalism and externalism
Internalism and externalism disagree about whether the contents of our beliefs are determined only by what's happening in our head or also by other factors.[4][5][45][46] Internalists deny such a dependence on external factors. They hold that a person and a molecule-by-molecule copy would have exactly the same beliefs. Hilary Putnam objects to this position by way of his twin Earth thought experiment. He imagines a twin Earth in another part of the universe that is exactly like ours, except that their water has a different chemical composition despite behaving just like ours.[4][45][46] According to Putnam, the reader's thought that water is wet is about our water while the reader's twin's thought on twin Earth that water is wet is about their water. This is the case despite the fact that the two readers have the same molecular composition. So it seems necessary to include external factors in order to explain the difference. One problem with this position is that this difference in content does not bring any causal difference with it: the two readers act in exactly the same way. This casts doubt on the thesis that there is any genuine difference in need of explanation between the contents of the two beliefs.[4][45][46]
Epistemology
Epistemology is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and
Plato has been credited for the justified true belief theory of knowledge, even though Plato in the Theaetetus elegantly dismisses it, and even posits this argument of Socrates as a cause for his death penalty. The epistemologists, Gettier[49] and Goldman,[50] have questioned the "justified true belief" definition.
Justified true belief
Justified true belief is a definition of knowledge that gained approval during the Enlightenment, "justified" standing in contrast to "revealed". There have been attempts to trace it back to Plato and his dialogues, more specifically in the Theaetetus,[51] and the Meno. The concept of justified true belief states that in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but also have justification for doing so. In more formal terms, an agent knows that a proposition is true if and only if:
- is true
- believes that is true, and
- is justified in believing that is true
That theory of knowledge suffered a significant setback with the discovery of
Belief systems
A belief system comprises a set of mutually supportive beliefs. The beliefs of any such system can be
Glover's view
The British philosopher
This insight has relevance for
Religion
This section uses secondary sources that critically analyze them.(August 2020) ) |
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2021) |
Religion is a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; the service or worship of God or the supernatural.
Forms
A popular view holds that different religions each have identifiable and exclusive sets of beliefs or creeds, but surveys of religious belief have often found that the official doctrine and descriptions of the beliefs offered by religious authorities do not always agree with the privately held beliefs of those who identify as members of a particular religion.[64] For a broad classification of the kinds of religious belief, see below.
Fundamentalism
First self-applied as a term to the conservative doctrine outlined by anti-modernist
Orthodoxy
First used in the context of
Modernism/reform
The Renaissance and later the Enlightenment in Europe exhibited varying degrees of religious tolerance and intolerance towards new and old religious ideas. The philosophes took particular exception to many of the more fantastical claims of religions and directly challenged religious authority and the prevailing beliefs associated with the established churches. In response to the liberalizing political and social movements, some religious groups attempted to integrate Enlightenment ideals of rationality, equality, and individual liberty into their belief systems, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reform Judaism[68][69] and Liberal Christianity offer two examples of such religious associations.
Attitudes to other religions
Adherents of particular religions deal with the differing doctrines and practices espoused by other religions or by other religious denominations in a variety of ways.
Exclusivism
People with exclusivist beliefs typically explain other beliefs either as in error, or as corruptions or counterfeits of the
Some exclusivist faiths incorporate a specific element of
Exclusivism correlates with conservative, fundamentalist, and orthodox approaches of many religions, while pluralistic and syncretist approaches either explicitly downplay or reject the exclusivist tendencies within a religion.[citation needed][70]
Inclusivism
People with
Pluralism and syncretism are two closely related concepts. People with pluralist beliefs make no distinction between faith systems, viewing each one as valid within a particular culture. People with syncretic views blend the views of a variety of different religions or traditional beliefs into a unique fusion which suits their particular experiences and contexts (eclecticism). Unitarian Universalism exemplifies a syncretic faith.
Adherence
Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following:
- Some see belief in a deity as necessary for moral behavior.[71]
- Some regard religious practices as serene, beautiful, and conducive to religious experiences, which in turn support religious beliefs.[72]
- Organized religions promote a
- Each religion asserts that it is a means by which its adherents may come into closer contact with the Divine, with Truth, and with spiritual power. They all promise to free adherents from spiritual bondage, and to bring them into spiritual freedom. It naturally follows that a religion which can free its adherents from deception, sin, and spiritual death will have significant mental-health benefits. Abraham Maslow's research after World War II showed that Holocaust survivors tended to be those who held strong religious beliefs (not necessarily temple attendance, etc.), suggesting that belief helped people cope in extreme circumstances. Humanistic psychology went on to investigate how religious or spiritual identity may have correlations with longer lifespan and better health. The study found that humans may particularly need religious ideas to serve various emotional needs such as the need to feel loved, the need to belong to homogeneous groups, the need for understandable explanations and the need for a guarantee of ultimate justice. Other factors may involve sense of purpose, sense of identity, or a sense of contact with the divine. See also Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, detailing his experience with the importance of religion in surviving the Holocaust. Critics assert that the very fact that religion was the primary selector for research subjects may have introduced a bias, and that the fact that all subjects were Holocaust survivors may also have had an effect. According to Larson et al. (2000), "[m]ore longitudinal research with better multidimensional measures will help further clarify the roles of these [religious] factors and whether they are beneficial or harmful."[75]
Psychologist James Alcock also summarizes a number of apparent benefits which reinforce religious belief. These include prayer appearing to account for successful resolution of problems, "a bulwark against existential anxiety and fear of annihilation," an increased sense of control, companionship with one's deity, a source of self-significance, and group identity.[76]
Apostasy
Typical reasons for rejection of religion include:
- Some people regard certain fundamental doctrines of some religions as illogical, contrary to experience, or unsupported by sufficient fundamentalist Christians.
- Some religions include beliefs that certain groups of people are inferior or sinful and deserve contempt, persecution, or even death, and that non-believers will be punished for their unbelief in an after-life.[78]Adherents to a religion may feel antipathy to unbelievers. Numerous examples exist of people of one religion or sect using religion as an excuse to murder people with different religious beliefs. To mention just a few examples:
- the slaughter of the Catholicsin the sixteenth century
- Muslims killing each other when Pakistanseparated from India in 1947
- the persecution and killing of SunniMuslims in Iraq
- the murder of Catholics and vice versa in Ireland(both of these examples in the late twentieth century)
- the atheists believe that, because of this, religion is incompatible with world peace, freedom, civil rights, equality, and good government. On the other hand, most religions perceive atheism as a threat and will vigorously and even violently[79] defend themselves against religious sterilization, making the attempt to remove public religious practices a source of strife.[79]
- the slaughter of the
- Some people may be unable to accept the values that a specific religion promotes and will therefore not join that religion. They may also be unable to accept the proposition that those who do not believe will go to hell or be damned, especially if said nonbelievers are close to the person.
- The maintenance of life and the achievement of self-esteem require of a person the fullest exercise of reason[citation needed]—but morality (people are taught[by whom?]) rests on and requires faith.[80][page needed]
Psychology
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2021) |
Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation and therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought.[81] Philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis.[82]
The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition). Like other propositional attitudes, belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality, both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind, whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial.
Beliefs are sometimes divided into
Philosopher Lynne Rudder Baker has outlined four main contemporary approaches to belief in her book Saving Belief:[84]
- Our common-sense understanding of belief is correct – Sometimes called the "mental sentence theory," in this conception, beliefs exist as coherent entities, and the way we talk about them in everyday life is a valid basis for scientific endeavor. Jerry Fodor was one of the principal defenders of this point of view.
- Our common-sense understanding of belief may not be entirely correct, but it is close enough to make some useful predictions – This view argues that we will eventually reject the idea of belief as we know it now, but that there may be a correlation between what we take to be a belief when someone says "I believe that snow is white" and how a future theory of psychology will explain this behavior. Philosopher Stephen Stich has argued for this particular understanding of belief.
- Our common-sense understanding of belief is entirely wrong and will be completely superseded by a radically different theory that will have no use for the concept of belief as we know it – Known as the four humours theory of medicine, or the phlogiston theoryof combustion. In these cases science has not provided us with a more detailed account of these theories, but completely rejected them as valid scientific concepts to be replaced by entirely different accounts. The Churchland argue that our common-sense concept of belief is similar in that as we discover more about neuroscience and the brain, the inevitable conclusion will be to reject the belief hypothesis in its entirety.
- Our common-sense understanding of belief is entirely wrong; however, treating people, animals, and even computers as if they had beliefs is often a successful strategy – The major proponents of this view, Daniel Dennett and Lynne Rudder Baker, are both eliminativists in that they hold that beliefs are not a scientifically valid concept, but they do not go as far as rejecting the concept of belief as a predictive device. Dennett gives the example of playing a computer at chess. While few people would agree that the computer held beliefs, treating the computer as if it did (e.g. that the computer believes that taking the opposition's queen will give it a considerable advantage) is likely to be a successful and predictive strategy. In this understanding of belief, named by Dennett the intentional stance, belief-based explanations of mind and behaviour are at a different level of explanation and are not reducible to those based on fundamental neuroscience, although both may be explanatory at their own level.
Strategic approaches make a distinction between rules, norms and beliefs as follows:
- Rules. Explicit regulative processes such as policies, laws, inspection routines, or incentives. Rules function as a coercive regulator of behavior and are dependent upon the imposing entity's ability to enforce them.
- Norms. Regulative mechanisms accepted by the social collective. Norms are enforced by normative mechanisms within the organization and are not strictly dependent upon law or regulation.
- Beliefs. The collective perception of fundamental truths governing behavior. The adherence to accepted and shared beliefs by members of a social system will likely persist and be difficult to change over time. Strong beliefs about determinant factors (i.e., security, survival, or honor) are likely to cause a social entity or group to accept rules and norms.[85]
Belief formation and revision
Belief revision is a term commonly used to refer to the modification of beliefs. An extensive amount of scientific research and philosophical discussion exists around belief revision. Generally speaking, the process of belief revision entails the believer weighing the set of truths and/or evidence, and the dominance of a set of truths or evidence on an alternative to a held belief can lead to revision. One process of belief revision is Bayesian updating (or Bayesian inference) and is often referenced for its mathematical basis and conceptual simplicity.[86] However, such a process may not be representative for individuals whose beliefs are not easily characterized as probabilistic.
There are several techniques for individuals or groups to change the beliefs of others; these methods generally fall under the umbrella of persuasion. Persuasion can take on more specific forms such as consciousness raising when considered in an activist or political context. Belief modification may also occur as a result of the experience of outcomes. Because goals are based, in part on beliefs, the success or failure at a particular goal may contribute to modification of beliefs that supported the original goal.
Whether or not belief modification actually occurs is dependent not only on the extent of truths or evidence for the alternative belief, but also characteristics outside the specific truths or evidence. This includes, but is not limited to: the source characteristics of the message, such as credibility; social pressures; the anticipated consequences of a modification; or the ability of the individual or group to act on the modification. Therefore, individuals seeking to achieve belief modification in themselves or others need to consider all possible forms of resistance to belief revision.
Glover maintains that any person can continue to hold any belief if they would really like to
Models of belief formation
Psychologists study belief formation and the relationship between beliefs and actions. Three types of models of belief formation and change have been proposed: conditional inference process models, linear models and information processing models.
Conditional inference process models emphasize the role of inference for belief formation. When asked to estimate the likelihood that a statement is true, people allegedly search their memory for information that has implications for the validity of this statement. Once this information has been identified, they estimate the likelihood that the statement would be true if the information were true, and the likelihood that the statement would be true if the information were false. If their estimates for these two probabilities differ, people average them, weighting each by the likelihood that the information is true and false. Thus, information bears directly on beliefs of another, related statement.[87]
Unlike the previous model, linear models take into consideration the possibility of multiple factors influencing belief formation. Using regression procedures, these models predict belief formation on the basis of several different pieces of information, with weights assigned to each piece on the basis of their relative importance.[87]
Information processing models address the fact that the responses people have to belief-relevant information is unlikely to be predicted from the objective basis of the information that they can recall at the time their beliefs are reported. Instead, these responses reflect the number and meaning of the thoughts that people have about the message at the time that they encounter it.[87]
Some influences on people's belief formation include:
- Internalization of beliefs during childhood, which can form and shape humans' beliefs in different domains. Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said that "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Political beliefs depend most strongly on the political beliefs most common in the community where one lives.[88] Most individuals believe the religion they were taught in childhood.[89]
- Charismatic leaders can form or modify beliefs (even if those beliefs fly in the face of all previous beliefs).[90] Rational individuals need to reconcile their direct reality with any said belief; therefore, if belief is not present or possible, it reflects the fact that contradictions were necessarily overcome using cognitive dissonance.
- Advertising can form or change beliefs through repetition, shock, or association with images of sex, love, beauty, and other strong positive emotions.[91] Contrary to intuition, a delay, known as the sleeper effect, instead of immediate succession may increase an advertisement's ability to persuade viewer's beliefs if a discounting cue is present.[92]
- Physical trauma, especially to the head, can radically alter a person's beliefs.[93]
However, even educated people, well aware of the process by which beliefs form, still strongly cling to their beliefs, and act on those beliefs even against their own self-interest. In her book Leadership Therapy, Anna Rowley states: "You want your beliefs to change. It's proof that you are keeping your eyes open, living fully, and welcoming everything that the world and people around you can teach you." This view implies that peoples' beliefs may evolve as they gain new experiences.[94]
Prediction
Different psychological models have tried to predict people's beliefs and some of them try to estimate the exact probabilities of beliefs. For example, Robert Wyer developed a model of subjective probabilities.[95][96] When people rate the likelihood of a certain statement (e.g., "It will rain tomorrow"), this rating can be seen as a subjective probability value. The subjective probability model posits that these subjective probabilities follow the same rules as objective probabilities. For example, the law of total probability might be applied to predict a subjective probability value. Wyer found that this model produces relatively accurate predictions for probabilities of single events and for changes in these probabilities, but that the probabilities of several beliefs linked by "and" or "or" do not follow the model as well.[95][96]
Delusion
In the DSM-5, delusions are defined as fixed false beliefs that are not changed even when confronted with conflicting evidence.
Belief studies
There is research investigating specific beliefs, types of beliefs and patterns of beliefs. For example, a study estimated contemporary prevalence and associations with belief in
Emotion and beliefs
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Research has indicated that emotion and cognition act in conjunction to produce beliefs, and more specifically emotion plays a vital role in the formation and maintenance of beliefs.[104][105][106]
See also
- Alief
- Bayesian epistemology
- Culture-specific syndrome
- Doxastic attitudes
- Doxastic logic
- Doxastic voluntarism
- Expectation (epistemic)
- Idea
- Magical thinking
- Moore's paradox
- Observer-expectancy effect
- Opinion
- Propositional knowledge
- Self-deception
- Subject-expectancy effect
- Subjective validation
- Suggestibility
- Suggestion
- Theory of justification
- Thomas theorem
- Tinkerbell effect
- Trust
- Unintended consequence
- Validity
- Value (personal and cultural)
- World view
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Causal beliefs are a fundamental characteristic of humans; animals, by contrast, [...] have very few causal beliefs. Beliefs come from a wide variety of sources that include the individual's experiences, the influence of authority, and the interpretation of events. At their core, beliefs establish a cause and effect relationship between events [...] From an evolutionary point of view, beliefs should help the individual survive, and I will argue that they had their origin in tool making and use.
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Sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote of collective beliefs and proposed that they, like all 'social facts', 'inhered in' social groups as opposed to individual persons. Durkheim's discussion of collective belief, though suggestive, is relatively obscure.
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[...] all states and all collectives draw upon shared remembrances of the past to establish or preserve a sense of shared identity and a collective belief system. A coherent approach to understanding the functions of social control for collective life is to be found in Erikson's (1966) discussion of the social control of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England.
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- Muslims believe that women are inferior to men. Some Christians share this belief. At the time of the American Civil War of 1861–1865, many Southerners used passages from the Bible to justify race-based slavery. Certain campaigners have used the Christian religion as a reason to persecute and to deny the rights of homosexuals, on the basis that the Christian biblical God disapproves of homosexuality, and by implication of homosexuals. Compare http://www.godhatesfags.com Archived 7 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine
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Religion, in most cultures, is ascribed, not chosen.
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Further reading
- OCLC 481484099.
- Coleman, T. III, Jong, J., & van Mulukom, V. (2018). Introduction to the Special Issue: What are Religious Beliefs?. Contemporary Pragmatism, 15(3), 279–283.
- Järnefelt, Elisa, Created by Some Being: Theoretical and Empirical Exploration of Adults' Automatic and Reflective Beliefs about the Origin of Natural Phenomena. Diss. University of Helsinki, 2013. ISBN 978-9521094163.
- Leicester, J. "What beliefs are made from". Sharjah, UAE: Bentham Science Publishers, 2016.
External links
- Schwitzgebel, Eric. "Belief". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- "The Aim of Belief". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.