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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belief | 5/10 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:43:50.348166+00:00 | kb-cron |
The difference between de dicto and de re beliefs or the corresponding ascriptions concerns the contributions singular terms like names and other referential devices make to the semantic properties of the belief or its ascription. In regular contexts, the truth-value of a sentence does not change upon substitution of co-referring terms. For example, since the names "Superman" and "Clark Kent" refer to the same person, we can replace one with the other in the sentence "Superman is strong" without changing its truth-value; this issue is more complicated in case of belief ascriptions. For example, Lois Lane believes that Superman is strong but she does not believe that Clark Kent is strong. This difficulty arises due to the fact that she does not know that the two names refer to the same entity. Beliefs or belief ascriptions for which this substitution does not generally work are de dicto, otherwise, they are de re. In a de re sense, Lois does believe that Clark Kent is strong, while in a de dicto sense she does not. The contexts corresponding to de dicto ascriptions are known as referentially opaque contexts while de re ascriptions are referentially transparent.
=== Collective belief === A collective belief is referred to when people speak of what "we" believe when this is not simply elliptical for what "we all" believe. Sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote of collective beliefs and proposed that they, like all "social facts", "inhered in" social groups as opposed to individual persons. Jonathan Dancy states that "Durkheim's discussion of collective belief, though suggestive, is relatively obscure". Margaret Gilbert has offered a related account in terms of the joint commitment of a number of persons as a body to accept a certain belief. According to this account, individuals who together collectively believe something need not personally believe it individually. Gilbert's work on the topic has stimulated a developing literature among philosophers. One question that has arisen is whether and how philosophical accounts of belief in general need to be sensitive to the possibility of collective belief. Collective belief can play a role in social control and serve as a touchstone for identifying and purging heresies, deviancy or political deviationism.
=== Lay theory === A lay theory is an informal, common-sense explanation that people give for particular social behaviors. Unlike formal scientific theories, lay theories often reflect intuitive beliefs that may diverge significantly from empirical findings. These theories are important because they influence how individuals interpret the world, make decisions, and behave in various contexts. While lay theories have been studied previously, recent comprehensive research has begun to explore the structure, origins, stability, and consequences of these beliefs across a range of domains.
== Contents == As mental representations, beliefs have contents, which is what the belief is about or what it represents. Within philosophy, there are various disputes about how the contents of beliefs are to be understood. Holists and molecularists hold that the content of one particular belief depends on or is determined by other beliefs belonging to the same subject, which is denied by atomists. The question of dependence or determination also plays a central role in the internalism-externalism debate. Internalism states that the contents of someone's beliefs depend only on what is internal to that person and are determined entirely by things going on inside this person's head. Externalism, on the other hand, holds that the relations to one's environment also have a role to play in this.
=== Atomism, molecularism and holism === The disagreement between atomism, molecularism and holism concerns the question of how the content of one belief depends on the contents of other beliefs held by the same subject. Atomists deny such dependence relations, molecularists restrict them to only a few closely related beliefs while holists hold that they may obtain between any two beliefs, however unrelated they seem. For example, assume that Mei and Benjamin both affirm that Jupiter is a planet. The most straightforward explanation, given by the atomists, would be that they have the same belief, i.e. that they hold the same content to be true. But now assume that Mei also believes that Pluto is a planet, which is denied by Benjamin. This indicates that they have different concepts of planet, which would mean that they were affirming different contents when they both agreed that Jupiter is a planet. This reasoning leads to molecularism or holism because the content of the Jupiter-belief depends on the Pluto-belief in this example. An important motivation for this position comes from W. V. Quine's confirmational holism, which holds that, because of this interconnectedness, we cannot confirm or disconfirm individual hypotheses, that confirmation happens on the level of the theory as a whole. Another motivation is due to considerations of the nature of learning: it is often not possible to understand one concept, like force in Newtonian physics, without understanding other concepts, like mass or kinetic energy. One problem for holism is that genuine disagreements seem to be impossible or very rare: disputants would usually talk past each other since they never share exactly the same web of beliefs needed to determine the content of the source of the disagreement.