Belief
A belief is a proposition held (believed) by a cognitive agent.
- Context:
- It can (typically) be formed by a Belief Forming Process.
- It can (typically) be represented within a Cognitive Processing System (such as a Forebrain).
- It can (typically) be a member of a Belief Set.
- It can (often) influence Decision Making.
- It can range from being a Positive Belief to being a Negative Belief.
- It can range from being a Justified Belief to being an Unjustified Belief.
- It can range from being a True Belief to being a False Belief.
- It can range from being a Strong Belief to being a Weak Belief.
- It can range from being a Conscious Belief to being a Intuitive Belief.
- It can range from being a Healthy Belief to being an Unhealthy Belief.
- It can range from being a Belief in a Brain to being an Belief in an AI.
- …
- Example(s):
- agent X has belief: “Person("R2D2") ⇒ False”. (a unary relation ground fact).
- agent X has belief: “PositiveNumber(-1) ⇒ True. (a unary relation ground fact that is a false belief).
- agent X has belief: “GreaterThan(1,2) ⇒ True (a binary relation ground fact)
- agent X has belief: “OPL("E.Coli", "ExbB", "cytoplasmic membrane") ⇒ True (an n-ary relation ground fact).
- agent X has beliefs: “happiness is good”, “E=mc2”, and that the Earth is tubular.
- a Religious Belief, Health Belief, ...
- a Belief of Entitlement ...
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- a Hypothesis.
- an Instinct.
- a Desire or Fear.
- an Intention.
- See: Intention, Counterfactual Statement, Propositional Statement, Knowledge Base, Epistemology, Knowledge Item, Mental Representation, Intentionality, Likelihood, Truth.
References
2016
- (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/belief Retrieved:2016-1-18.
- Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. In other words, belief is when someone thinks something is reality, true, when they have no absolute verified foundation for their certainty of the truth or realness of something. [1] Another way of defining belief is, it is a mental representation of an attitude positively orientated towards the likelihood of something being true. In the context of Ancient Greek thought, two related concepts were identified with regards to the concept of belief: pistis and doxa. Simplified, we may say that pistis refers to trust and confidence, while doxa refers to opinion and acceptance. The English word doctrine is derived from doxa. Belief's purpose is to guide action and not to indicate truth.
In epistemology, philosophers use the term ‘belief’ to refer to personal attitudes associated with true or false ideas and concepts. However, ‘belief’ does not require active introspection and circumspection. For example, we never ponder whether or not the sun will rise. We simply assume the sun will rise. Since ‘belief’ is an important aspect of mundane life, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the question that must be answered is, “how a physical organism can have beliefs” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/).
- Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. In other words, belief is when someone thinks something is reality, true, when they have no absolute verified foundation for their certainty of the truth or realness of something. [1] Another way of defining belief is, it is a mental representation of an attitude positively orientated towards the likelihood of something being true. In the context of Ancient Greek thought, two related concepts were identified with regards to the concept of belief: pistis and doxa. Simplified, we may say that pistis refers to trust and confidence, while doxa refers to opinion and acceptance. The English word doctrine is derived from doxa. Belief's purpose is to guide action and not to indicate truth.
2015
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/
- QUOTE: Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflecting on it: Of the vast number of things ordinary adults believe, only a few can be at the fore of the mind at any single time. Nor does the term “belief”, in standard philosophical usage, imply any uncertainty or any extended reflection about the matter in question (as it sometimes does in ordinary English usage). Many of the things we believe, in the relevant sense, are quite mundane: that we have heads, that it's the 21st century, that a coffee mug is on the desk. Forming beliefs is thus one of the most basic and important features of the mind, and the concept of belief plays a crucial role in both philosophy of mind and epistemology. The “mind-body problem”, for example, so central to philosophy of mind, is in part the question of whether and how a purely physical organism can have beliefs. Much of epistemology revolves around questions about when and how our beliefs are justified or qualify as knowledge.
Most contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a “propositional attitude”. Propositions are generally taken to be whatever it is that sentences express (see the entry on propositions). For example, if two sentences mean the same thing (e.g., “snow is white” in English, “Schnee ist weiss” in German), they express the same proposition, and if two sentences differ in meaning, they express different propositions. (Here we are setting aside some complications about that might arise in connection with indexicals; see the entry on indexicals.) A propositional attitude, then, is the mental state of having some attitude, stance, take, or opinion about a proposition or about the potential state of affairs in which that proposition is true — a mental state of the sort canonically expressible in the form “S A that P”, where S picks out the individual possessing the mental state, A picks out the attitude, and P is a sentence expressing a proposition. For example: Ahmed (the subject) hopes (the attitude) that Alpha Centauri hosts intelligent life (the proposition), or Yifeng (the subject) doubts (the attitude) that New York City will exist in four hundred years. What one person doubts or hopes, another might fear, or believe, or desire, or intend — different attitudes, all toward the same proposition. Contemporary discussions of belief are often embedded in more general discussions of the propositional attitudes; and treatments of the propositional attitudes often take belief as the first and foremost example.
- QUOTE: Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflecting on it: Of the vast number of things ordinary adults believe, only a few can be at the fore of the mind at any single time. Nor does the term “belief”, in standard philosophical usage, imply any uncertainty or any extended reflection about the matter in question (as it sometimes does in ordinary English usage). Many of the things we believe, in the relevant sense, are quite mundane: that we have heads, that it's the 21st century, that a coffee mug is on the desk. Forming beliefs is thus one of the most basic and important features of the mind, and the concept of belief plays a crucial role in both philosophy of mind and epistemology. The “mind-body problem”, for example, so central to philosophy of mind, is in part the question of whether and how a purely physical organism can have beliefs. Much of epistemology revolves around questions about when and how our beliefs are justified or qualify as knowledge.
2013
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology#Belief
- … epistemology is also concerned with belief in a very much broader sense of the word. In this broader sense "belief" simply means the acceptance as true of any cognitive content. To believe is to accept as true.
2012
- http://rationalfuture.org/glossary.html
- Belief is confidence in the truth or falsity of a proposition.
- http://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/philosophy-dictionary-glossary/
- basic belief – Foundational beliefs that can be known without being justified from an argument (or argument-like reasoning) and without reference to any other belief. For example, axioms of logic, such as “everything is identical with itself,” are plausibly basic beliefs. However, the belief that a banana looks yellow to you could also be considered to be a basic belief insofar as that belief might be justified without reference to any other beliefs. “Basic beliefs” are related to “foundationalism,” and they don’t exist if “coherentism” is true.
2009
- (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=belief
- S: (n) belief (any cognitive content held as true)
- S: (n) impression, feeling, belief, notion, opinion (a vague idea in which some confidence is placed) "his impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying"
- http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Belief#Noun
- 1. Mental acceptance of a claim as truth regardless of the lack of supporting empirical evidence.
- 2.
countableSomething believed. The ancient people have a belief in many deities. - 3.
uncountableThe quality or state of believing. My belief that it will rain tomorrow is strong. - 4.
uncountableReligious faith. She often said it was her belief that carried her through the hard times. - 5.
in pluralOne's religious or moral convictions. I can't do that. It's against my beliefs.
2003
- (Gärdenfors, 2003) ⇒ Peter Gärdenfors. (2003). “Belief Revision." Cambridge University Press,
1975
- (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) ⇒ Martin Fishbein, and Icek Ajzen. (1975). “Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research."
1962
- (Hintikka, 1962) ⇒ Jaakko Hintikka. (1962). “Knowledge and Belief."