Talk:Belief

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Hmm. Im wondering, how come Hume and Kant seem to be quoted so often here in WP. Certainly they are pillars of western thought, but they do have some holes in their ideas, and besides, I thought we had long ago begun the process of weening ourselves off of our sacred cows of westernism.

"Westernism"? What's that? If you mean Western culture generally, um, no, I'm not aware that anyone other than some "postmodern" and extremely politically correct types are making a move to "weaning ourselves" off of this material. We've got to have a huge amount of such material on Wikipedia if it's going to be complete. But this doesn't stop you from adding as much "non-Western" (whatever that means) type material as you like. --Larry Sanger

Not again... More silly resentment towards "postmodernism" and "politically correct types".... they're not out to kill you. So you disagree with them, get over it. I'd be willing to bet that you (yes, you, Larry Sanger) will be dwelling on this absurd cynicism for a very long time. Postmodernism is just a catch-all phrase for something easy to criticise; the fact is that there is no such thing as a postmodern "movement" or "school of thought" or "belief system"... The obsession with postmodernism is simply a phenomenon among critics who are desperate for a board to throw darts at.

Would it be relevant (or interesting) to mention the logical convolutions of Raymond Smullyan, eg characters who believe one thing, but consistently lie, so say the opposite, etc?

I'm not sure--why would it (on this page)? Wouldn't that belong on lying or something like that? --Larry Sanger


Just a thought (I'll crib what I've typed here to pad out the stub on Smulllyan, at any rate). At one point he introduces characters who only believe only false things, yet lie: hence all their statements are true. -- Tarquin

I wonder what point he was making with that. Sounds interesting...

Contents

[edit] Is belief voluntary?

Actually, there is something interestingly relevant we could add from the literature in epistemology: it's widely held that most people have no control over most of what they believe... --Larry Sanger

I made a stub section on this matter. Please expand and improve. Andries 11:03, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If I may add my own experience (and I am quite sure many people would recognize a pattern here)... I have a firm belief that reincarnation exists because instinctively I can't imagine I could stop being conscious after death, but I also admit I can't live forever. But by rational thinking I also know that nothing to my knowledge can justify reincarnation. This is only one example among others where belief seems to oppose knowledge. I think there are many other such examples, essentially about concepts difficult or impossible to prove, for example involving the existence or non-existance of God. Fafner 09:47, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC) ---

If I find the time... I'll try to add sometime here. Hume (amongst others) noted that we acquire beliefs passively, that the aquisition of them is not subject to the will. Bernard Williams' paper 'Deciding to Believe' investigated this and tries to show that the coneptual relations between belief, truth and evidence rule out voluntary believing. While some have shown that his argument for the incoherence of 'believing at will' is not quite right, most philsophers do believe that decision and belief can't be linked in the same way as, for instance, decision and imagination : I can successfully decide to imagine a scene, but I can't successfullly decide to belief that scene represents truely. However, as Williams noted, this doesn't rule out deciding and influencing our belief by more "roundabout routes". One could embark on a course of action, hypnosis or drugs were his suggestions, such that afterwards you would have brought it about that you belive some proposition or other. Williams remarks that this would make the person "deeply irrational". Some have questioned this but it reamins to be seen whether any convincing account of belief at will can be found. (Fabulist 18:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Degree of certainty

Why is there no mention of degree of certainty? If I believe something then it means that I think that the chance that something is true is >50%. I can believe something with 51% or 99% certainty. Quite a big difference Andries 20:35, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---

Attempted anwer: Certainty looks like an absolute, and it may be hard to see how something can be 'a bit certain', or 'fairly certain'. Perhaps it can only be 'absolutely certain'. Sceptics seem to have a similar problem over ‘knowledge’ and conclude, rigorously, that it cannot be truly achieved. Anyway, if belief is accepted as ‘a strong feeling’ this confusion as to whether it must entail any particular degree of certainty seems to go awayYanx 19:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC) i don't think so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.219.144.51 (talk) 19:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Belief system

Please help with the belief system entry at Talk:belief system. Thanks. Adraeus 02:06, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Because that article is on VfD and looks to be deleted due to no content, I am moving the associated talk page, which does have content to here:

[edit] Moved content from Talk:Belief system, currently on VfD

Note: This entry needs work. Adraeus 02:10, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
A belief system (also system of beliefs) is...
Here is my small contribution. It will probably need lots of works, but after all we have to start from somewhere ;-) I don't know if the comparison has been used somewhere, but a belief system really looks like a mathematical logical system with a set of axioms (unproved beliefs) and inferring rules (reasonnings). Axioms (beliefs) are very debatable since it usually involves beliefs in God(s), supernatural, or even science after all (how many people among you has ever seen and verified an experiment in quantum mechanics? probably not the majority, certainly not my case but I believe in quantum mechanics) ;-) Inferring rules (reasonnings) are usually common to most people. Deduction is the most reliable, induction is used to assert probable conclusions (although I met someone acknowledging only induction as reliable and rejecting deduction). Fafner 08:05, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
See also belief, worldview, paradigm, model
External links On Belief and Belief Systems by the late Bob Eddy (Institute of General Semantics)
Belief Systems by CognitiveBehavior.com Eric Herboso 04:16, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Self-consistent sets of beliefs

I seem to recall something about the application of Gödel's proof to beliefs, to demonstrate that one's beliefs cannot, taken as a whole, be logically self-consistent. It seemed very interesting at the time, but I can't pull up a cite -- can anyone help? (Yes, I know that Gödel's proof actually demonstrates "incomplete or inconsistent", but the argument did something plausible at this point...) -- Karada 07:57, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Gödel's incompleteness theorem#Misconceptions about Gödel's theorems: "The theorem only applies to systems that are used as their own proof systems"; it follows that the theorem might imply that you can't be consistent if you justify your beliefs with other beliefs; on the other hand if, as most people, you justify your beliefs from one or several external referrents, the theorem does not apply. Jules LT 19:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] belief is assigning probability greater than 50% ???

Removed from the article: "To believe something can be interpreted as assigning a probability of more than 50% that something is true."

(also removed "The rule of the thumb from a school of epistemology that says that certainty should be as big as the corresponding evidence is called evidentialism.", which is useless without the preceding "definition")

This has little to do with evidentialism, which is a theory of justification, in any case.

Who said that? In what book? Is it so widely accepted among scholars that it deserves mentionning so high in the article? This is not only unsourced, it also looks pretty preposterous to me. When you say "X has a probability of more than 50%", you don't believe that "X", you believe that "X is more probable than not"; this is entirely different. Jules LT 19:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of Belief

A belief, in its varying degrees, can be a guess, a dogma, a hope, an intuition, a leap-of-faith. Belief is to make an hypothesis which then must pass the test of Cash Value—bringing Peace of Mind. Yesselman 20:35, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


(edited to correct it in a way)

-> To belief is diffrent from the word believe, believe is to trust and see something in another person. But belief is like to imagen to trust and have faith into a higher being. Belief can't just be put out in words it comes from you and is within you.

I think what you ment was believe and even there is a mistake in that. If you believe in a person you either do it or not you can not just believe have trust and faith in them her him or what ever just 50% else what kind of person would you be?

Belief is not limited to its ineffectuality. Belief does not depend on one's ability to defend their belief. Even with being able to prove their belief as fact, it is still a belief. Whether or not someone agrees is extraneous and should not be in the definition. Belief is simply what one holds to be true. Changed. NewCanada (talk) 01:02, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reasoning??

Beliefs can be acquired through perception, reasoning, contemplation or communication

This statement is plain incorrect, How on Earth can resoning be related to 'belief' . Infact they have completely opposite meanings. Obviously if you can reason(or if there is a logical explanation) to something, then there won't be any 'need' to believe because that 'thing' would be undeniable fact(like a maths equation). The point of belief only arises if there is an absence of resoning!!

The only possibility here is if 'resoning' is being referred to as 'bias' dependent on culture/surroundings etc. Reasonit 00:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I think this results from a confusion between belief as an unproven fact and belief as a conviction adopted after a reasonning (for example a political position). The difference between the two of them might be thin in some cases. Just a thought... Fafner 08:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. A belief can be adopted based on a number of criteria: - authority - experience - perceived phenomena - reasoning - discussion (e.g. clarification/debate)

"Beliefs" don't necessarily have any relation to reason. Especially those induced by authority figures. An associated topic might be rigidity of belief systems and conflicts arising therefrom..

[edit] "Is Belief Voluntary?" section

"Most philosophers hold the view that belief formation is to some extent spontaneous and involuntary.

Most philosophers!? That's a bold and sweeping statement. I'm not sure if to just suggest that is radically POV or ask for some kind of verification. For now I've added a "citeation needed" tag and left it.

Maybe "many philosophers" would be a better choice of words, and easier to add a few references for. The word "most" suggests that nearly all philosophers past-and-present agree about this - somehow, I seriously doubt that... -Neural 03:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I have put up a "weasel word" tag, for this purpose. Even stating "many philosphers" would still be using weasel words, because the actual supposed philosphers have not been verified. "Weasel words" do not mark the accuracy nor the inaccuracy of such a statement. Please help us discover which particular philosophers agree with the statement. 69.245.172.44 18:52, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

The introduction:

Belief is usually defined as a conviction of the truth of a proposition without its verification; therefore a belief is a subjective mental interpretation derived from perceptions, contemplation(reasoning), or communication.

is simply wrong. At least, there is no such definition in my SOD, and if it were the case, one would not be able to believe a verified proposition. Nor is "1+1=2" a "subjective mental interpretation" (Can you think of something that is subjective and yet not mental? Interpretation of what?), yet it is something one might believe.

What is it about introductions to philosophical articles that attracts such stuff? Banno 07:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Religion

The paragraph:

In the religious sense, "belief" refers to a part of a wider spiritual or moral foundation — generally called faith. Historically, faiths were generated by groups seeking a functionally valid foundation to sustain them. The generally accepted faiths usually note that, when the exercise of faith leads to oppression, clarification or further revelation is called for.

has been removed. I can;t see a reason to give prominence to religious belief. Someone may wish to insert it into a new section within the article. Banno 07:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deductive vs. Inductive

It seems that the epistimology section contradicts itself, saying that belief is a deductive process, but the building of the belief system is an inductive one. Am I missing something? I'm in favor of stating all belief systems are inherently inductive, and that all deductive processes used in the belief system are based off of premises that require induction.

140.233.44.55AME 2/21/07

I'd say rather that the whole section is OR,and should be removed. Banno 04:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Done1Z 17:38, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Belief necessarily True

I disagree with the lead sentence "Belief is the psychological state in which an individual is convinced of the truth of a proposition." This is easily refuted, I and many others believe in God and would agree with a proposition such as "God exists" but would not necessarily argue that it can be proven as "True". In other words you can recognize that you have a belief, such as religion, or race or sexuality, and know that it not necessarily "True" but that you believe it anyway.Tstrobaugh 14:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

And does that apply to "2+2=4" or "the sky is blue"? Or is there a difference between mere belief, and Belief with a capital B?

1Z 18:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually I'm not sure what you consider to be Beliefs and/or beliefs, perhaps you could provide some more examples, which category is the "2+2" in? or the sky? The "2+2" one is obviously incorrect as others have stated above "Gödel had shown that mathematics is both incomplete and inconsistent. Mathematics must be incomplete because there will always exist mathematical truths that can’t be demonstrated. Truths exist in mathematics that do not follow from any axiom or theorem."Tstrobaugh 20:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
GIT doesn't have the slightest impact on the necessary truth of 2+2=4.

1Z 21:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Really? Explain how GIT has no influence on elementary math. Here's my rebuttal when you're done. (and thanks for answering all my questions, I can see this will be productive) "Gödel showed that "it is impossible to establish the internal logical consistency of a very large class of deductive systems--elementary arithmetic, for example--unless one adopts principles of reasoning so complex that their internal consistency is as open to doubt as that of the systems themselves."(10) In short, we can have no certitude that our most cherished systems of math are free from internal contradiction." from [1].Tstrobaugh 14:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

rems.1Z 19:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


GIT does not stop you being able to prove individual theorems 1Z 19:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly my point about beliefs to begin with. Just as belief in God is accepted without proof and those that accept it know it can't be proved. From the page you cited:"So suppose we accept the axioms and methods of proof formalized in T as valid without proof."Tstrobaugh 13:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
But that point has nothing to do with Godel. We don't need GIT to tell us we can't prove every axiom. (And we can adopt the formalist's approach of defining truth only within an axiomatic system). 1Z 14:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


If you think "god exists" is not necessarily true, you presumably think there is some evidence or argument which could disprove it. Would you continue to believe in God if the disproof were presented to you? if not, doesn't that show there is some connection between truth and belief? 1Z 14:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
That is not true. I do not believe that there is any evidence or argument to disprove it, also no evidence or argument to prove it. Where prove means using empirical, objective evidence and Popperian hypo-thetico-deductive logic. The connection, as you say, between proof and belief is in mine and other believers minds and beyond the reach of scientific inquiry and objective "Truth".Tstrobaugh 16:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Point 1: You can think what you like, Tstrobaugh, but if you can't find your ideas in the literature, then it can't go in the Wiki. Banno 22:00, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Point 2: The implication of your opening statement is that one can believe something while holding it not to be true; for example, that one could coherently say "I believe god exists , but it is not true that god exists". See Moore's paradox. You seem simply to have confused truth with proof of truth. Banno 22:00, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Paragraph, For Now...

"If one has an external inducement to belief, such as a prospective marriage partner, he may be unable to drastically change his true belief in order to obtain the desired reward. The best he might do would be to pretend at belief. There is a possibility that with study, he would come to change his belief, depending on his earlier sources and his confidence in the validity of new ones."

I believe this paragraph needs rewritten, because the example is unclear. What I mean is the relevence to the example given in connection with the topic does not adequately correlate. (Yes, I know the connection is implied. Yet an encyclopedia is meant to give information and describe, not imply. see: implicature) The paragraph also did not seem consistent with the section it was previously in and probably needs moved. If no one else does, I hope to rewrite this, but I'll have to research how beliefs play roles in marital relationships (and since I am not married, well, I'll have to trust sources that are plausibly verifiable.) 69.245.172.44 18:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Justified True Belief, False Belief

Whomever is attempting to make a case for either "justified true belief" or "false belief" please either specifically cite your sources or stop reverting my changes/corrections. There is no such thing as a true or false belief. Logical errors made in antiquity can NOT be used to justify your personal point-of-view. Thanks. -- PiPhD 07:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Plus, who is deleting the recent entries from the history section of Belief?! -- PiPhD 07:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spiritual Section

The spiritual section is very odd. It sounds like someone's opinion and not at all like an encyclopedia. It is mostly incoherent. Someone smarter than myself should fix it. 129.1.31.197 (talk) 17:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)