Belief: Difference between revisions

'''Belief''' is a  psychological state in which an individual holds a [[conjecture]] or [[premise]] to be [[truth|true]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Schwitzgebel |first=Eric |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward |contribution=Belief |title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=The Metaphysics Research Lab |location=Stanford, CA |year=2006 |url= http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/ |accessdate=2008-09-19}}</ref>

[[Dispositional and occurrent belief]] concerns the contextual activation of the belief into thoughts (reactive of propositions) or ideas (based on the belief's premise).

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The terms ''belief'' and ''knowledge'' are used differently in philosophy.

A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. A sincere believer in the [[flat earth theory]] does not ''know'' that the Earth is flat.{{citation needed|date=October 2013}} Later epistemologists, for instance [[Edmund Gettier|Gettier]] (1963)<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gettier |first=E. L. |year=1963 |title=Is justified true belief knowledge? |journal=[[Analysis (journal)|Analysis]] |volume=23 |issue=6 |pages=121–123 |doi= |jstor=3326922 }}</ref> and [[Alvin Goldman|Goldman]] (1967),<ref>{{cite journal |last=Goldman |first=A. I. |year=1967 |title=A causal theory of knowing |journal=[[The Journal of Philosophy]] |volume=64 |issue=12 |pages=357–372 |doi= |jstor=2024268 }}</ref> have questioned the "justified true belief" definition.

Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation and therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought. Philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis.