Belief

Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, University of Applied Sciences in Konin, Poland
barbara.lewandowska-tomaszczyk@konin.edu.pl

Belief is the feeling of certitude that someone or something exists or is true or trustworthy.

It is a conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon, especially when based on examination of evidence. Belief can be connected with credence, i.e., intellectual assent without implying anything about grounds for assent. According to Ali and Fumerton, belief can be justified (it then constitutes knowledge, typically based on evidence, requiring truth and justification) or can be unjustified.

There are four theories of belief: the intellectualist theory that belief is a cognitive act related to evidence that the thing believed is probably true; the dispositional theory that we recognise our own beliefs by observing how we react to things; the feeling theory that belief is a particular feeling that comes to us and is a signal to us that we believe or think to be true the thing under consideration; and eliminativism theories that belief does not exist, but is an illusion of our language and culture.

Keywords: belief, dispositional theory, eliminativist theory, feeling theory, intellectualist theory belief, dispositional theory, eliminativist theory, feeling theory, intellectualistic theory.

Related Entries: Bias, Epistemic/Truth, Evidence, Truth

References:
Hasan, A. & Fumerton, R. (2022). Foundationalist theories of epistemic justification, In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/justep-foundational/
Leister, J. (2016). Four theories of belief. In What beliefs are made from (pp. 14-30). Benthem Science. https://doi.org/10.2174/9781681082639116010005