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Definitions and Categorisation of Belief
Definition of Belief Used Here
When the word belief is used on this site it is taken to mean idea in its most general sense. Some ideas can be regarded as factual (see below) while others may be regarded as having a probabilistic degree of certainty. Beliefs can also be treated in practice as if they were false or wrong in a logical sense. Nevertheless, the absolute truth of falseness of many or even most descriptive beliefs is regarded as indeterminate.
Algorithmic and Computational Perspectives on Belief
There are at least 2 empirical levels at which we can analyse and define belief. At one level we can ask how the nuts and bolts of brain function work. By this method we try to determine how beliefs are computed and understand the biological constraints of belief formation in our own and other species. Similarly the neurologist can try to figure out what is happening in the mind of the diseased or injured brain of her patients. The neuroscientist can report what different parts of the brain do and how they communicate. In other words a classic reductionist approach is employed.
The other way to proceed is to examine what belief is at a more abstract or cognitive level where we look at the emergent properties of the brain as a complex organ and largely concern ourselves with the nature of the decisions reached. Little or no consideration is then given to the computational mechanism of the brain only to the results of computation. By examining the results we then infer something about their effects on individuals and therefore the world at large. In so doing we can and produce more abstract algorithmic schemes about how beliefs come to be formed. In this second approach is the domain of the logician, ethicist and clinical psychologist.
The modern psychiatrist attempts to span both domains by crudely interfering with brain chemistry using psychoactive drugs and at the same time examines the patient's reported thoughts, apparent well being and behaviour to understand something of the dysfunctional beliefs that could be usefully modified.
Each of these approaches have value. Our state of ignorance is such that it is a matter of individual preference as to which approach is used for there is much to be discovered before we can link sensory perception and the abstract more intangible cognitive functions of the brain and products of consciousness. Even if a very comprehensive and integrated description of brain function is arrived at one day, it will still be convenient to consider belief at different levels of analysis for at least some of the emergent properties of the system will not be readily understood at the level of neuronal communication.
Definition of Descriptive Factual Belief
In some senses and in some circumstances where we are not dealing with the directly observable, the notion of 'fact' can be equated to the notion of truth. Richard J Bernstein argues in 'The Pragmatic Turn' that in the case of simple assertions about the world such as 'it is presently raining outside' we can equate our belief directly to some observation. He then implies that we can test this notion of 'fact' or 'truth' by the empirical test of walking outside and using our senses to feel, see, hear and perhaps smell, evidence of rain. We must also consider when a proposition is true be definition. Spots of water are falling on my hand when I stand in the open air. In this situation I would feel sufficiently confident to distinguish rain from a celestial plague of frogs. It is tautologous to argue that the condition of raining under such circumstances is true. It is merely a matter of definition. The word 'truth' or 'fact' become superfluous and adds nothing in additional meaning to the proposition in that circumstance. Truth in such obvious circumstances then only has meaning in a legal or moral sense where somebody could be held to be knowingly and deliberately falsifying an account, such as it is presently raining outside when the they have made observations to the contrary.
Some therefore refer to facts or factual beliefs as observations or events. Bernstein points out that we need to consider the historical or situations where the observations are less easy to come by and then decide whether or not a truth condition might be meaningfully applied. Classically if we apply deductive logic to arrive at a proposition we would apply the word true. However I do not argue for reliance on this way of thinking. The reason for applying a 'truth condition' to a statement ultimately arises by the nature of empirical route by which we come to make the assertion. Is the knowledge made through a second hand report such as the statement of another like a scientific paper ? If you were the author rather than the reader of a scientific paper would that alter the applicability of the term 'true'? For me it would do so because it affects the immediacy of the evidence.
I argue that we need to also consider general classes of event as well as individual instances. The definition of descriptive factual belief used in these pages is therefore 1) a belief based on repeated (or repeatable) observations that directly support a descriptive proposition about the state of the world or 2) a belief based on a variety of repeatable dissimilar observation which when taken together support a descriptive proposition of the world. The question then becomes 'by what means do we know of such events'? This answer to this question revolves around the nature of the empirical test.
In decision making terms a factual belief is regarded as having sufficient certainty for all practical or aesthetic purposes. No distinction is made between absolute and near-to-absolute certainty or even simply 'certain enough' since no person is likely to change their actions because of the difference.
Factual descriptive beliefs can also be used as 'the facts' for calculation of Bayesian probabilities relating to predicted outcome of repeated and repeatable events.
Examples of factual belief related to the idea of physical gravitation:
1) The sun will 'rise' tomorrow morning. [It is of course worth reiterating what one respondent has pointed out. We know the sun does not actually 'rise' except in relation to the horizon].
2) Apples fall from trees.
At one level of analysis we could be using such repeated and repeatable observation of a constant and consistent nature and then arriving at the conclusion that some general property of nature applies in a consistent way. In so doing we can arrive at mechanistic explanations. These explanations we often refer to as 'laws of nature'. If this were not the case we could not have any reliable knowledge of the world and any form of philosophical reasoning would be entirely useless. At a more abstract level of analysis in these examples we are invoking useful applications of the propensity theory of probability and the 'laws' of gravitation.
From the scientific perspective there is of necessity many underlying assumptions that require experimental test so that the 'fact' of the sun's 'rising' tomorrow morning has experimentally verifiable theoretical support, in addition to the underlying observation. This in no way undermines that fact that by simple observation and memory we can 'know' the 'fact' that apples fall from trees or the sun will 'rise' tomorrow. In theoretical terms however there needs to be, for example, a measurable gravitational constant in both Newtonian and relativistic physics. We do not however need to be aware of the theoretical requirement of a gravitational constant to 'know' that the sun will 'rise' tomorrow. To construct a more specific belief such as 'the sun will 'rise' for the next 5 billion years' we do require the logical coherence of many descriptive propositions.
The concept of a factual belief can thus be extended by logical beliefs that have been characterised with the terms like a posteriori . I argue blow however the belief categorisation is not particularly helpful unless it provides utility of analysis.
Delusional beliefs
On this site delusions are held to be series of 2 or more inaccurate descriptive beliefs that cannot have a logically true relationship but are thought to have that property by the holder. Delusion by this definition can arise by ignorance as well as dysfunctional logic.
Examples of delusional beliefs by the definition used on this site:
My sister is Napoleon's daughter.
The moon is a star.By the definition used here delusion could be shared by two or more people or even an entire community. Note that this definition is different from the social definition of delusion which means that psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, neurologists and social workers are not expected to 'treat' communally held delusions. A medical definition of delusion also requires a social component as we can see from a paper in British Medical Journal. "Delusion: false, unshakeable belief out of keeping with the patient's educational, cultural, and social background; it is held with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty" ( see source paper). Although that definition is extremely useful for the medical practitioner it is inadequate from a more general perspective.
Suspension of Disbelief
Suspension of disbelief is worthy of definition because of it cultural importance. The definitions used on this site are 1) A "willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible" (see source) 2) A disregard for the value of either old or new evidence 3) A deliberate decision to accept, at least temporarily, beliefs that run counter to other beliefs held by the same individual. 4) A 'thought experiment' that runs contrary to well established hypothesis.
Are all Beliefs Logical in Nature?Example:
1 ) Torture is morally wrong but should be governed by statue if used lightly in extremis. [see: Even torture should be subject to the rule of law]
2) Although killing in civil society is wrong in war it is permissible.
3) Belief that the world was created around 6000 BC despite scientific observations consistent with great age (see Age of the earth).
4) In the TV series Star Trek, Mr Spock can be bodily transported on a beam and the star ship USS enterprise can travel at speeds greater than light speed by 'warping' the space-time continuum using a 'warp engine'.
5) Special relativity tells us that if you saw a bus and its passengers traveling past you at close to the speed of light they would be horizontally contracted. (In this case the suspension refers to buses, people and sight.)
Even beliefs that describe the world might be said to have a logical component. Take the descriptive belief 'The flower is dark red'. By this form of analysis it could be said that the descriptions 'dark red' and 'flower' are being 'logically' compared to two observational standards within the memory' of the observer. If understanding of the external world arises by pattern recognition, as some propose, it would perhaps be more productive to regard all sensory perception and its cognitive derivatives as logical. Even esthetic beliefs (or personal preferences) would then seen as a form of logic.
This way of thinking is elaborated in another page where belief is examined more from a computational perspective. From this perspective observation and belief are one and the same and not independent of each other. This is the case despite the fact that from a reductionist perspective it is useful to analyse sense data, perception, memory, reasoning, emotion, faith and belief as separate entities for some purposes.
Can Beliefs be Meaningfully Categorised?
It is common for us to describe beliefs as scientific, religious, moral, political, legal, social, cultural, economic, historical or attribute to them some other category for the purposes of intellectual analysis and study. In an every-day sense these categories can be useful if they help to frame systematic and rational discourse. On the other hand they can become self-limiting and prevent cross-fertilisation from different disciplines of thinking.
It is interesting (and perhaps no more than fun) to consider whether or not we can categorise beliefs at a fundamental intellectual level that might inform our philosophy. Interlinked categories of idea, or belief, might be distinguished if we were to use an algorithmic approach to thinking and perhaps ignore its neurological basis. By this approach we might consider that beliefs could be usefully categorised in an introspective fashion. This type of approach has been pejoratively labeled folk-psychology by some philosophers. Whether this is folk-psychology or not is an irrelevance from an empirical stance. The question is merely whether or not belief categorisation is useful at some level of analysis given the present state of our knowledge. It matters little whether or not there is a distinct physical basis for such categorisation provided they have predictive power at some level of analysis.
Categorisations, although they have the inherent weakness of any system that implies universality, might be empirically useful if they fit well with every day experience for in that way they might correspond to our thinking patterns. By contrast more abstract categorisations of thought and meaning such as the bizarrely named firstness, secondness, and thirdness of pragmatist CS Pierce are likely to have a value as conceptual entertainment, but nothing more, for they are too divorced from the rest of our thinking. More familiarly we are accustomed to the two-way classification of belief or knowledge as a priori or a posteriori that has served us for a very long period but now seems rather restrictive. I do not regard the very widely used concepts of inductive and deductive reasoning as very helpful when understanding the nature of belief, since deductive statements (or premises to arguments) require an implied inductive component to have any utility of meaning. The fallacy of 'pure' deduction and induction long held amongst many philosophers is highly regrettable. Abductive reasoning is perhaps a more useful general concept from the perspective of action and experiment be it social or physical. Beliefs are better regarded as either specific or general, certain (true or false) or probabilistic. Notice that it does not involve categorisation in the same way.
Whether such categorical schemes exist is a neurologically distinct fashion or involve different physiological processes or anatomical structures is a philosophical irrelevance. The only relevant question for me is do they have utility.
Reasons to Avoid Categoricals: an Exercise
Any scheme of categorisation or categorical almost immediately brings in a range of qualifiers or "software patches" because it seems impossible to produces categories that have an inherent universality without internal contradiction and yet maintain utility.
As an exercise consider the following categorisation that I had devised seriously for myself although I now keep as a reminder of the weaknesses of categorisation. Determine for yourself what its strengths and weakness are. In the following putative scheme descriptive, esthetic and logical beliefs are be held to exist at one level of algorithmic analysis. ( Notice the first qualifier!)
Descriptive beliefs are held to be cognitive, linguistic or mathematical formulations of the way things are sensed after observation and construed with reference to memory. Descriptive beliefs could be equivalent to the computational product of cognition of sensory input to our brain and recall of memory. At a practical level they could also be historical or predictive ideas, or be specific to one instance or be more generalisable. (More classification is now appearing !) Mathematics is regarded as a form of descriptive language of signs with its own meaning, logic or axioms. (the classic problem of how to characterise maths arises!)
No distinction is made between observation, in the sense of perception directly available to consciousness (or qualia) and short-term memory. Alternatively beliefs may be purely derived from long-term memory. (For more articles on memory see Memory, Visual Short-Term Memory, Working memory in Wikipedia.) No observation or belief is held to exist in isolation but instead be the product of different types of input to and from different cognitive centres in the brain. By this definition the more inter-related memories we have the more sophisticated our beliefs can be. A loss of memory could by that definition result in a loss of belief. Descriptive beliefs could, for example, have scientific, religious, social, legal, political or economic content.
Examples of descriptive beliefs:
Life was brought to earth on meteorites.
Spaghetti is long, thin and cylindrical.
Jesus was born in the year 4 AD.
Tomorrow it will rain.
The gravitational constant = 6.67x 10 -11 m3 kg -1 s -2.Although the way of thinking above about description is not entirely vacuous it says nothing about our preferences and therefore cannot stand alone as a categorical. We therefore need to introduce at least one other category, not to mention the problem of how we classify mathematics.
Esthetic beliefs are statements of emotion or preference that are secondary to descriptive beliefs and cannot be independent of descriptive beliefs. Moral beliefs, although they may have a logical or rational basis and axioms, may also be considered for some purposes to be a special subset of esthetic beliefs that describe how interaction should be between humans or between humans and other living things.
Examples of esthetic beliefs:
Scientific ideas have intellectual beauty.
Allah is great.
Pink furniture is in bad taste.
The pope is a very spiritual person.
Examples of the moral belief subset:I should feed the poor and starving.
Murderers should be hanged.
Every adult has the right to carry guns.
Surgical termination of pregnancy is wrong.
I should not spoil the planet for other creatures.This putative classification of ethical propositions is weak for it ignores the idea that ethical propositions can involve different kinds of moral reasoning or logic. Ethical reasoning can involve the concept of moral rules and moral duties (Deontological ethics). Alternatively ethical reasoning might examine the consequences of our actions (Consequentialism) and so could be regarded as more utilitarian. From ancient times there has also been the concept of personal and communal virtue which has given rise to the largely outdated concept of Virtue Ethics, which still has its champions. Indeed virtue ethics might be held to be inconsistent without champions.
Logical beliefs, could for some purposes of argument, be defined as propositions dealing with the relationship between descriptive or esthetic beliefs in the sense that they involve some logical function, connection or operator.
Individual numbers are regarded as descriptive propositions that have logical relationships with one another.
Similarly a mathematical spatial vector is regarded as descriptive but a vector sum (which is also a vector in itself) is a logical proposition with a descriptive result. ( Notice another difficulty of producing a categorical scheme !) An integral or a derivative is, like a vector sum, a description that has a logical basis. A mathematical set is regarded as a logical construct or belief.
Examples of logical beliefs in the context of descriptive or esthetic beliefs :
1+1=2 (Could we not conceive of this statement as being in some senses descriptive?)
All men are liars. I am a man. Given that each of these descriptive propositions are true I am a liar. (a syllogism)
I do not like flowers. A rose is a flower. Given that those esthetic and descriptive beliefs are true I do not like roses.
Of course it would be possible to go on patching this scheme and claim, as some philosophers have done, that mathematics needs to be given a special place amongst the languages of signs. Why bother ?
We should abandon all belief categorisations or categoricals that lack utility for they can only serve to restrict our thinking and enjoyment or result in fruitless debate.
On the Philosophy of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
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