A belief is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g. a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white").
There are various ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be (Jerry Fodor), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true (Roderick Chisholm), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone's actions (Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson), or as mental states that fill a particular function (Hilary Putnam). Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief (Paul Churchland) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief ("either we have a belief or we don't have a belief") with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence ("there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief").
Beliefs are the subject of various important philosophical debates. Notable examples include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence?", "Is the content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.
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A house is the simple topic of this studio. A matter of simple complexity. Starting from elements of architecture and images of life, defining a fragment; constructing a chair; finally arriving at a h
A house is the simple topic of this studio. A matter of simple complexity. Starting from elements of architecture and images of life, defining a fragment; constructing a chair; finally arriving at a h
'While we're young' studies the possibilities within the city to create places exclusively for youth.
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Philosophy (love of wisdom in ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, like physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. But they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term.
A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means. For example, "This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star" accurately describes an astronomical fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe historical facts.
Unitarian Universalism (otherwise referred to as UUism or UU) is a liberal religious movement characterized by a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists assert no creed, but instead are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth. Unitarian Universalists do not have an official, unified corpus of sacred texts but rather draw inspiration and guidance from the Six Sources: personal experience, prophetic utterances, world religions, Jewish and Christian teachings, humanist teachings, and spiritual teachings.
We conduct two survey experiments to study which information people choose to consume and how it affects their beliefs. In the first experiment, respondents choose between optimistic and pessimistic article headlines related to the COVID-19 pandemic and ar ...
There is a widespread belief that the tone of political debate in the US has become more negative recently, in particular when Donald Trump entered politics. At the same time, there is disagreement as to whether Trump changed or merely continued previous t ...
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Surprising events trigger measurable brain activity and influence human behavior by affecting learning, memory, and decision-making. Currently there is, however, no consensus on the definition of surprise. Here we identify 18 mathematical definitions of su ...