Belief

Belief in the psychological sense, is a representational mental state that takes the form of a propositional attitude. In the religious sense, "belief" refers to a part of a wider spiritual or moral foundation, generally called faith; historically generated by a groups need to provide a functionally valid foundation to sustain them. The generally accepted faiths usually note that when oppressive states are generated by the it being exercised, and not a fact of reality, it was in need of more revelation or clarification.

Belief, knowledge and epistemology

Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief, in that the belief must be considered to correspond to reality and must be derived from valid evidence and arguments. However, this definition has been challenged by the Gettier problem which suggests that justified true belief does not provide a complete picture of knowledge.

Related Topics:
Knowledge - Justified true belief - Gettier problem

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To believe something can be interpreted as assigning a probability of more than 50% that something is true. The rule of the thumb from a school of epistemology that says that certainty should be as big as the corresponding evidence is called evidentialism.

Related Topics:
Probability - Epistemology - Evidentialism

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