Having a belief (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of the History of Philosophy (forthcoming)
It is widely accepted that doxa, which plays a major role in Plato’s and Aristotle’s epistemologies, is the Ancient counterpart of belief. We argue against this consensus: doxa is not generic taking-to-be-true, but instead something closer to mere opinion. We then show that Plato shows little sign of interest in the generic notion of belief; it is Aristotle who systematically develops that notion, under the rubric of hupolêpsis (usually translated as ‘supposition’), a much-overlooked notion that is, we argue, central to his epistemology. We close by considering the significance of this development, outlining the shifts in epistemological concerns enabled by the birth of belief as a philosophical notion.
The Life and Logic of our Beliefs
Ortega famously distinguished between "ideas" as explicitly entertained intellectual convictions and "beliefs" as lived convictions, rarely expressed and possibly inexpressible, that actually guide our conduct. He also notes in History as a System that while our convictions might fail to cohere as ideas, they must cohere as beliefs; they must cohere in their vital articulation, he writes, while they might fail to cohere in their logical articulation. This paper attempts to concretize the notion that our convictions might surface under two different aspects, ideas and beliefs, and that they must cohere under the latter aspect. I begin by turning to a similar idea often read into Wittgenstein's On Certainty: that there are hinge beliefs that guide us in action yet cannot be propositionally articulated. I argue that this reading fails both exegetically and substantially, revealing that we cannot distinguish between vital articulation and logical articulation, if we read logical articulation as propositional articulation; the way we live by our beliefs is their propositional articulation, and this is in fact simply the Wittgensteinian dictum that meaning is use. I then rehabilitate the Ortegian distinction as one between vital articulation and intellectual articulation of our beliefs, and elaborate this in terms of Wittgenstein's discussions of religious belief.
The Nature of Belief: Exploring Platonic Epistemology
When it comes to the modern field of epistemology, perhaps no other philosopher has been as influential as that of Plato. In his dialogues, Plato is arguably the first major thinker to explicitly analyze the concept of knowledge and its relationship to belief and truth, the fruits of which are still being felt to this day. Although one could write volumes (indeed many have) on Plato’s overall epistemology, the aim and scope of this paper is much more modest. As such, my aim is not to unearth the nuances and intricacies of Plato’s entire corpus, but rather to take a brief and specific look at how his epistemology is laid out in a few of his dialogues, giving particularly special attention to the role of belief and its relationship to the will.
Two kinds of belief in Plato in JHP 2013
The purpose of this paper is to lay bare the distinction between two different kinds of belief in Plato. In the Sophist (263e10–264b4), Plato distinguishes between phantasia, which occurs “through sense perception,” and doxa, which occurs “in respect of thinking.” It is argued that a phantasia is a belief formed by means of sense perception on the basis of how things appear to be, whereas a doxa is a belief formed through a particular kind of thinking, which provides understanding of the being of the thing by sorting out how its nature is related to other natures in terms of its genus and species.
The Psychic Root of Myth I, 2019
A brief examination of belief types is required if one does not want to get entangled in the thick forest of myths. Mythological formulations cannot be properly understood without a clear idea of the types of beliefs involved.
The Dynamic Relations Between Belief and Truth
2008
The aim of this essay is to propose a description of the dynamic relations between belief and truth. The description reflects, first of all, the dynamic nature of God’s relation to the world as portrayed in scripture. The description also take into account the cognitive and affective aspects of knowing and how they affect each other and are formed in part by Christian practices. This proposal allies itself with science-sensitive work in philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language and psychology. This essay assumes God is acting according to his purposes in Christ and will draw on the now widely used concept of a disposition. Thus, this essay is a proposal for understanding the relationship between beliefs and truth; a proposal that strives to be biblical, yet consistent with relevant science. The three basic theses are: (1) Truth (ontologically considered) is God’s knowledge of himself and of creation. (2) S has a disposition to believe that p - (1) is a trait of a self S which is relatively inaccessible to introspection and relatively constant (though it can be fluctuate in intensity of its manifestation or extinguished altogether), (2) involves S’s capacity to occurrently believe as it is affected by S’s other cognitive and affective/aesthetic dispositions (inclinations or aversions). Thus, it is S’s state of being relatively subject to occurrently believing that p, (3) constitutes an aspect of the activating conditions of related (a) behavioral dispositions, and (b) cognitive dispositions. [S’s ‘worldview’ is the cluster of these dispositions.] (3) S occurrently believes that p - A ‘belief’, in this sense, is an occurrent, intentional, doxastic state of consciousness (1) characterized by propositional intentionality (i.e. by its having some propositional content p), (2) having a phenomenology of S’s finding oneself being convinced (to some extent) that p (i.e., doxastic), (3) requiring understanding p, and (4) produced by God either (a) immediately or (b) mediately as a manifestation of the disposition configuration comprised by S’s disposition to believe that p and the network of dispositions and powers that constitute human cognitive capacities and physical reality.
Reflections on Human Inquiry: Science, Philosophy and Common Life. Springer Nature., 2017
The concept of mind is an elusive one. Attempts to understand mind as a separate substance, a repertoire of behavioral dispositions, and as states of the brain, remain unsatisfactory. In this dismal scene, the folk concept of belief promised understanding of the mind without stepping into any of these options. The folk concept of belief has been viewed as designating mental states with some formally identifiable content, namely, the content of propositional attitudes. Thus, the concept of belief displays the character of mind by characterizing its states. A series of problems plague the prospect of determining contents of mental states. Moreover, ascription of beliefs does not seem to furnish a genuine science of the mind if beliefs are viewed in psychological terms. A very different view of beliefs emerges once they are freed from their alleged psychological role. The folk concept sorts beliefs into different kinds to highlight the believer, the kind of person she is. Since the sorting is always in context depending on the agents and their histories at issue, no partitioning of beliefs is possible in advance. In that sense, belief is a concept designed for social-normative function; it is not meant to designate some ‘genetic’ property of the human mind. The non-psychological view explains why radical skepticism, a skepticism that disbelieves everything, is genuinely possible. Keywords: folk psychology, beliefs, mental content, propositional attitude, āstik, skepticism, language of thought
Knowledge Requires Belief - and It Doesn't? On Belief as such and Belief Necessary for Knowledge
Inquiry, 2019
Does knowledge entail belief? This paper argues that the answer depends on how one interprets 'belief'. There are two different notions of belief: belief as such and belief for knowledge. They often differ in their degrees of conviction such that one but not both might be present in a particular case. The core of the paper is dedicated to a defence of this overlooked distinction. The first two sections present the distinction. Section 3 presents two cases which are supposed to back up the claim that there is an important distinction here while section 4 offers some explanations concerning the structure of these cases. Section 5 adds further considerations in support of the core thesis, and section 6 discusses objections. The distinction is important as such but also has interesting implications concerning the much discussed 'entailment thesis' according to which knowledge entails belief. It is argued here that even if knowledge entails belief-for-knowledge, it does not entail belief-as-such. This constitutes an interesting middle position and compromise in the philosophical debate about the entailment thesis. One further implication of this paper is that the discussion about the entailment thesis needs to take degrees of conviction seriously. Still another implication is that epistemic contextualists can deal very well with the relevant phenomena.