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124-478: Discordianism is a belief system based around Eris , the Greek goddess of strife and discord, and variously defined as a religion , new religious movement , virtual religion , or act of social commentary ; though prior to 2005, some sources categorized it as a parody religion . It was founded after the 1963 publication of its holy book, Principia Discordia , written by Greg Hill with Kerry Wendell Thornley ,

248-512: A belief in an ideal may involve the belief that this ideal is something good, but it additionally involves a positive evaluative attitude toward this ideal that goes beyond a mere propositional attitude. Applied to the belief in God, opponents of the reductive approach may hold that a belief that God exists may be a necessary pre-condition for belief in God, but that it is not sufficient. The difference between de dicto and de re beliefs or

372-710: A belief in marriage could be translated as a belief that marriage is good. Belief-in is used in a similar sense when expressing self-confidence or faith in one's self or one's abilities. Defenders of a reductive account of belief-in have used this line of thought to argue that belief in God can be analyzed in a similar way: e.g. that it amounts to a belief that God exists with his characteristic attributes, like omniscience and omnipotence . Opponents of this account often concede that belief-in may entail various forms of belief-that, but that there are additional aspects to belief-in that are not reducible to belief-that. For example,

496-663: 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. 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,

620-400: A dispositive belief ( doxa ) from knowledge ( episteme ) when the opinion is regarded correct (n.b., orthé not alethia ), in terms of right, and juristically so (according to the premises of the dialogue), which was the task of the rhetors to prove. Plato dismisses this possibility of an affirmative relation between opinion and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on

744-720: A "line relationship" (or chain of command in military relationships) in this chart would be between the general and the two colonels—the colonels are directly responsible to the general. An example of a "lateral relationship" in this chart would be between "Captain A", and "Captain B" who both work on level and both report to the "Colonel B". Various shapes such as rectangles, squares, triangles, circles can be used to indicate different roles. Color can be used both for shape borders and connection lines to indicate differences in authority and responsibility, and possibly formal, advisory and informal links between people. A department or position yet to be created or currently vacant might be shown as

868-711: A Discordian organization chart – called in the work is "disorganization" and later "disorganizational matrix" – have differed from volume to volume, but have included especially the House of the Apostles of Eris , which is inclusive of the founders as the Apostles, of the Golden Apple Corps and Holders of the Sacred Chao, of the priesthood and saints, of the episkoposes, and even of "heretical" or "protestant" internal opponents of some of these, but not inclusive of

992-523: A belief in a proposition or one does not. This conception is sufficient to understand many belief ascriptions found in everyday language: for example, Pedro's belief that the Earth is bigger than the Moon. But some cases involving comparisons between beliefs are not easily captured through full beliefs alone: for example, that Pedro's belief that the Earth is bigger than the Moon is more certain than his belief that

1116-404: 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

1240-412: A belief system, and that tenanted belief systems are difficult for the tenants to completely revise or reject. He suggests that beliefs have to be considered holistically , and that no belief exists in isolation in the mind of the believer. Each belief always implicates and relates to other beliefs. Glover provides the example of a patient with an illness who returns to a doctor, but the doctor says that

1364-447: A central role in many religious traditions in which belief in God is one of the central virtues of their followers. The difference between belief-in and belief-that is sometimes blurry since various expressions using the term "belief in" seem to be translatable into corresponding expressions using the term "belief that" instead. For example, a belief in fairies may be said to be a belief that fairies exist. In this sense, belief-in

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1488-461: A certain way is called a belief. This is not just true for humans but may include animals, hypothetical aliens or even computers. From this perspective, it would make sense to ascribe the belief that a traffic light is red to a self-driving car behaving just like a human driver. Dispositionalism is sometimes seen as a specific form of functionalism. It defines beliefs only concerning their role as causes of behavior or as dispositions to behave in

1612-446: A certain way. For example, a belief that there is a pie in the pantry is associated with the disposition to affirm this when asked and to go to the pantry when hungry. While it is uncontroversial that beliefs shape our behavior, the thesis that beliefs can be defined exclusively through their role in producing behavior has been contested. The problem arises because the mechanisms shaping our behavior seem to be too complex to single out

1736-444: A chess computer will behave. The entity has the belief in question if this belief can be used to predict its behavior. Having a belief is relative to an interpretation since there may be different equally good ways of ascribing beliefs to predict behavior. So there may be another interpretation that predicts the move of the queen to f7 that does not involve the belief that this move will win the game. Another version of interpretationism

1860-409: 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

1984-753: A golden apple with the word kallisti ( Ancient Greek : καλλίστη , 'for the prettiest') inscribed in it. This, the Apple of Discord , is a notable symbol in Discordianism for its inclusion in the Sacred Chao , and is traditionally described as being made of gold. One of the most important parts of Discordianism, the Curse of Greyface features prominently on several pages of the Principia Discordia . According to Principia Discordia , Greyface

2108-486: A joke, then, they came in time to believe, if not entirely trust, in Eris." Robertson discusses Discordian theology in the 2012 book Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production , writing that despite Discordian claims that its "catmas" are soft, optional beliefs: Nevertheless, the Principia Discordia contains a complex and subtle religious system, although this is often obscured by its chaotic structure. The theology of

2232-452: A language-like structure, sometimes referred to as "mentalese". Just like regular language, this involves simple elements that are combined in various ways according to syntactic rules to form more complex elements that act as bearers of meaning. On this conception, holding a belief would involve storing such a complex element in one's mind. Different beliefs are separated from each other in that they correspond to different elements stored in

2356-443: A lasting impact on anarchism , the pseudo-sciences and even mainstream culture." Discordian works include a number of books, including Principia Discordia , drafted in 1963 and first published in 1965 (which includes portions of The Honest Book of Truth ); and The Illuminatus! Trilogy , which had its first volume published in 1975. The first edition was printed using Jim Garrison 's Xerox printer in 1963. The second edition

2480-402: A mental attitude towards the proposition "It will be sunny today" which affirms that this proposition is true. This is different from Sofía's desire that it will be sunny today, despite the fact that both Rahul and Sofía have attitudes toward the same proposition. The mind-to-world direction of fit of beliefs is sometimes expressed by saying that beliefs aim at truth. This aim is also reflected in

2604-481: A minor role in modern astronomy. The symbol was accepted by Unicode in 2016 as U+2BF0 ⯰ ERIS FORM ONE ( ⯰ ). The "Original Snub" is the Discordian name for the events leading up to the judgement of Paris , although more focus is put on the actions of Eris. Zeus believes that Eris is a troublemaker, so he does not invite her to Peleus and Thetis 's wedding. Having been snubbed, Eris creates

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2728-430: A model of religious practice that is decentralized, playful, and often ironic. This model has informed other NRMs that prioritize personal spiritual experiences over rigid dogma. In particular, Discordianism's embrace of paradox and chaos has inspired movements that reject traditional religious hierarchies in favor of more fluid and adaptable structures. The Discordian phrase "Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!" can be heard in

2852-404: A more realistic sense: that entities really have the beliefs ascribed to them and that these beliefs participate in the causal network. But, for this to be possible, it may be necessary to define interpretationism as a methodology and not as an ontological outlook on beliefs. Biologist Lewis Wolpert discusses the importance of causal beliefs and associates the making and use of tools with

2976-510: A non-combative approach to anarchy infused with Zen philosophy. Natural Law, or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy by Robert Anton Wilson delves into themes of personal freedom and self-awareness, expanding upon Wilson's essay originally published in 1985. In addition, there are compilations such as Apocrypha Discordia and Historia Discordia , which gather diverse materials from the Discordian tradition, including writings by both original and contemporary Discordians. Several works also explore

3100-661: A particular culture. People with syncretic views blend the views of a variety of different religions or traditional beliefs into a unique fusion which suits their particular experiences and contexts ( eclecticism ). Unitarian Universalism exemplifies a syncretic faith. Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following: Psychologist James Alcock also summarizes a number of apparent benefits which reinforce religious belief. These include prayer appearing to account for successful resolution of problems, "a bulwark against existential anxiety and fear of annihilation," an increased sense of control, companionship with one's deity,

3224-400: 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

3348-429: A sentence and in a map through its internal geometrical relations. Functionalism contrasts with representationalism in that it defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by them. This view is often combined with the idea that the same belief can be realized in various ways and that it does not matter how it is realized as long as it plays

3472-402: A source of self-significance, and group identity. Typical reasons for rejection of religion include: 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

3596-450: A special class of mental representations since they do not involve sensory qualities in order to represent something, unlike perceptions or episodic memories. Because of this, it seems natural to construe beliefs as attitudes towards propositions, which also constitute non-sensory representations, i.e. as propositional attitudes . As mental attitudes , beliefs are characterized by both their content and their mode. The content of an attitude

3720-823: A specific element of proselytization . This is a strongly-held belief in the Christian tradition which follows the doctrine of the Great Commission , and is less emphasized by the Islamic faith where the Quranic edict "There shall be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) is often quoted as a justification for toleration of alternative beliefs. The Jewish tradition does not actively seek out converts. Exclusivism correlates with conservative, fundamentalist, and orthodox approaches of many religions, while pluralistic and syncretist approaches either explicitly downplay or reject

3844-399: A twin Earth in another part of the universe that is exactly like ours, except that their water has a different chemical composition despite behaving just like ours. According to Putnam, the reader's thought that water is wet is about our water while the reader's twin's thought on twin Earth that water is wet is about their water . This is the case despite the fact that the two readers have

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3968-419: Is Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), which played a significant role in spreading Discordian ideas. The trilogy’s mix of conspiracy theory, satire, and occultism deeply resonated with the countercultural mindset and has been credited with influencing later works in both literature and popular culture. Moreover, Discordianism has impacted the development of NRMs by promoting

4092-485: Is a pope . Included in Principia Discordia is an official Pope card that may be reproduced and distributed freely to anyone and everyone. There are also five classes of saints within Discordianism, who are those who best act as exemplars and are closer to perfection. Only the first of these classes "Saint Second Class" contains real human beings (deceased and alive), with higher classes reserved for fictional beings who, by virtue of being fictional, are better able to reach

4216-725: Is a diagram showing graphically the relation of one official to another, or others, of a company. It is also used to show the relation of one department to another, or others, or of one function of an organization to another, or others. This chart is valuable in that it enables one to visualize a complete organization, by means of the picture it presents. A company's organizational chart typically illustrates relations between people within an organization. Such relations might include managers to sub-workers, directors to managing directors, chief executive officer to various departments, and so forth. When an organization chart grows too large it can be split into smaller charts for separate departments within

4340-422: Is a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; the service or worship of God or the supernatural. Religious belief is distinct from religious practice and from religious behaviours —with some believers not practicing religion and some practitioners not believing religion. Belief is no less of a theoretical term than is religion . Religious beliefs often relate to

4464-707: 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

4588-493: Is called the Lockean thesis . It states that partial beliefs are basic and that full beliefs are to be conceived as partial beliefs above a certain threshold: for example, every belief above 0.9 is a full belief. Defenders of a primitive notion of full belief, on the other hand, have tried to explain partial beliefs as full beliefs about probabilities. On this view, having a partial belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow

4712-595: Is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion , and involved generally with a theoretical philosophical study of knowledge . The primary problem in epistemology is to understand what is needed to have knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato 's dialogue Theaetetus , where the epistemology of Socrates most clearly departs from that of the sophists , who appear to have defined knowledge as " justified true belief ". The tendency to base knowledge ( episteme ) on common opinion ( doxa ) Socrates dismisses, results from failing to distinguish

4836-472: Is dedicated (in an obfuscatory introduction) to the LODD. In Discordian mythology, Aneris is described as the sister of Eris a.k.a. Discordia. Whereas Eris/Discordia is the goddess of disorder and being, Aneris/ Harmonia is the goddess of order and non-being. "DOGMA III – HISTORY 32, 'COSMOGONY ' " in Principia Discordia , states: In the beginning there was VOID, who had two daughters; one (the smaller)

4960-516: Is difficult to estimate the number of Discordians because they are not required to hold Discordianism as their only belief system. According to Arthur Versluis, Discordianism "both shaped and reflects the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s". The foundational document of Discordianism is Principia Discordia , fourth edition (1970), written by Malaclypse the Younger , an alias of Gregory Hill. Principia Discordia often hints that Discordianism

5084-845: Is due to Donald Davidson , who uses the thought experiment of radical interpretation , in which the goal is to make sense of the behavior and language of another person from scratch without any knowledge of this person's language. This process involves ascribing beliefs and desires to the speaker. The speaker really has these beliefs if this project can be successful in principle. Interpretationism can be combined with eliminativism and instrumentalism about beliefs. Eliminativists hold that, strictly speaking, there are no beliefs. Instrumentalists agree with eliminativists but add that belief-ascriptions are useful nonetheless. This usefulness can be explained in terms of interpretationism: belief-ascriptions help us in predicting how entities will behave. It has been argued that interpretationism can also be understood in

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5208-474: 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. 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

5332-750: Is known as the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (POEE), a non-prophet irreligious disorganisation. Principia Discordia contains some details about the structure of POEE. In particular: POEE has 5 DEGREES: There is the neophyte, or LEGIONNAIRE DISCIPLE. The LEGIONNAIRE DEACON, who is catching on. An Ordained POEE PRIEST/PRIESTESS or a CHAPLAIN. The HIGH PRIEST, the Polyfather. And POEE POPE. POEE LEGIONNAIRE DISCIPLES are authorized to initiate others as Discordian Society Legionnaires. PRIESTS appoint their own DEACONS. The POLYFATHER ordains Priests. I don't know about

5456-527: Is often used when the entity is not real, or its existence is in doubt. Typical examples would include: "he believes in witches and ghosts" or "many children believe in Santa Claus " or "I believe in a deity". Not all usages of belief-in concern the existence of something: some are commendatory in that they express a positive attitude towards their object. It has been suggested that these cases can also be accounted for in terms of belief-that. For example,

5580-472: Is particularly emphasized, along with its relation to harmony . The most general group, presumably including all Discordians (and potentially others), is the Discordian Society, whose definition is "The Discordian Society has no definition". Its members include many adherents of Neopaganism and Thelema . The sect of Discordianism founded by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst

5704-412: 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

5828-584: Is the Legion of Dynamic Discord , inclusive of legionnaires, disciples, and evangelists. LODD was also introduced in the first edition and survived throughout later versions (as an element of POEE's House of the Rising Podge for the Disciples), as well as in works less centrally associated with Discordianism, such The Zenarchist's Cookbook which integrates some elements of Thornley's Zenarchy material and

5952-728: Is the beloved home of a Golden Worm. II—A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System. III—A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (No Hot Dog Buns). IV—A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such

6076-454: Is the same as having a full belief that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Another approach circumvents the notion of probability altogether and replaces degrees of belief with degrees of disposition to revise one's full belief. From this perspective, both a belief of degree 0.6 and a belief of degree 0.9 may be seen as full beliefs. The difference between them is that the former belief can readily be changed upon receiving new evidence while

6200-428: Is their relation to perceptions and to actions: perceptions usually cause beliefs and beliefs cause actions. For example, seeing that a traffic light has switched to red is usually associated with a belief that the light is red, which in turn causes the driver to bring the car to a halt. Functionalists use such characteristics to define beliefs: whatever is caused by perceptions in a certain way and also causes behavior in

6324-413: 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 individuals 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

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6448-400: Is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition but also have justification for doing so. In more formal terms, an agent S {\displaystyle S} knows that a proposition P {\displaystyle P} is true if and only if : That theory of knowledge suffered a significant setback with the discovery of Gettier problems , situations in which

6572-502: Is what this attitude is directed at: its object. Propositional attitudes are directed at propositions. Beliefs are usually distinguished from other propositional attitudes, like desires, by their mode or the way in which they are directed at propositions. The mode of beliefs has a mind-to-world direction of fit : beliefs try to represent the world as it is; they do not, unlike desires, involve an intention to change it. For example, if Rahul believes that it will be sunny today, then he has

6696-456: 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 . 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

6820-508: 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

6944-647: The Catholic Church each consider themselves to be the true heir to Early Christian belief and practice. The antonym of "orthodox" is " heterodox ", and those adhering to orthodoxy often accuse the heterodox of apostasy , schism , or heresy . The Renaissance and later the Enlightenment in Europe exhibited varying degrees of religious tolerance and intolerance towards new and old religious ideas. The philosophes took particular exception to many of

7068-518: The Grand Canyon is in Arizona involves entertaining the representation associated with this belief—for example, by actively thinking about it. But the great majority of our beliefs are not active most of the time: they are merely dispositional. They usually become activated or occurrent when needed or relevant in some way and then fall back into their dispositional state afterwards. For example,

7192-499: The Principia is perhaps best summarized in the symbol ... The Sacred Chao  .... Taken as a whole, however, the Sacred Chao symbolizes the Discordian idea that both order and chaos are man-made concepts, and that to believe that either is more "true" than the other is illusion. The Sacred Chao represents 'pure chaos', the metaphysical grounding of all that is, and a level beyond any distinction-making . Robertson writes in

7316-655: The Roman Catholic Church ) still hold to exclusivist dogma while participating in inter-religious organizations. Explicitly inclusivist religions include many that are associated with the New Age movement, as well as modern reinterpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism . The Baháʼí Faith considers it doctrine that there is truth in all faith-systems. Pluralism and syncretism are two closely related concepts. People with pluralist beliefs make no distinction between faith systems, viewing each one as valid within

7440-766: The Sacred Chao is said to have been devised by the Apostle Hung Mung in ancient China. It is a modified version of the Yin-Yang , a common symbol in Taoism . The Sacred Chao is not the Yin-Yang of the Taoists. On one side of the Sacred Chao is a pentagon and on the other depicts the golden Apple of Discord. The Sacred Chao symbolizes absolutely everything anyone would need to ever know about anything, and more. It even symbolizes everything not worth knowing, depicted by

7564-452: The founders or leaders , and considers it a matter of faith that the "correct" religion has a monopoly on truth. All three major Abrahamic monotheistic religions have passages in their holy scriptures that attest to the primacy of the scriptural testimony, and indeed monotheism itself is often vouched as an innovation characterized specifically by its explicit rejection of earlier polytheistic faiths. Some exclusivist faiths incorporate

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7688-522: The "justified true belief" definition. Justified true belief is a definition of knowledge that gained approval during the Enlightenment , "justified" standing in contrast to "revealed". There have been attempts to trace it back to Plato and his dialogues, more specifically in the Theaetetus , and the Meno . The concept of justified true belief states that in order to know that a given proposition

7812-446: The "physical stance" and the "design stance". These stances are contrasted with the intentional stance , which is applied to entities with a more complex behavior by ascribing beliefs and desires to these entities. For example, we can predict that a chess player will move her queen to f7 if we ascribe to her the desire to win the game and the belief that this move will achieve that. The same procedure can also be applied to predicting how

7936-462: The 1960s and 1970s. One of the religion's key contributions lies in its challenge to established norms through the use of humor, satire, and paradox. This approach mirrored the broader countercultural movements that sought to upend conventional thinking and embrace new forms of expression. Discordianism’s foundational text, the Principia Discordia , became a cornerstone for other works that blend satire with serious philosophical inquiry. A prime example

8060-400: The 1960s. There are several limitations of organizational charts: An organogram is more flexible and adaptable to changes in the organization, such as new products, services, or partnerships. An organizational chart is more rigid and stable, and may not reflect the current reality of the organization The example on the right shows a simple hierarchical organizational chart. An example of

8184-448: The 2016 book Fiction, Invention and Hyper-reality that: ... Discordians have also constructed a complex and unique cosmology and theology, and Discordianism has over time come to be considered as having genuine religious significance for many of its adherents. Thus Discordianism can no longer be considered a purely parodic religion. Discordianism has exerted a notable influence on several facets of counterculture, particularly during

8308-617: The Apostle Dr. Van Van Mojo" to counteract the Curse of Greyface. The Turkey Curse is designed to counteract destructive order. It derives its name from the fact that the incantation resembles the sounds of a turkey . The Principia Discordia holds three core principles: the Aneristic and Eristic principles representing order and disorder, and the notion that both are mere illusions. The Pentabarf are five rules of Discordianism, described by David G. Robertson as "the Discordian take on

8432-403: The Discordian view of perfection. An example of a second-class saint is Emperor Norton , a citizen in 19th-century San Francisco, who despite suffering delusions was beloved by much of the city. He is honoured as a saint within Discordianism for living his life according to truth as he saw it and a disregard for reality as others would perceive it. Since the first edition, various approaches to

8556-441: The Earth is bigger than Venus. Such cases are most naturally analyzed in terms of partial beliefs involving degrees of belief, so-called credences . The higher the degree of a belief, the more certain the believer is that the believed proposition is true. This is usually formalized by numbers between 0 and 1: a degree of 1 represents an absolutely certain belief, a belief of 0 corresponds to an absolutely certain disbelief and all

8680-546: The POPES. Episkoposes are the overseers of sects of Discordianism which they have created. They speak to Eris through the use of their pineal gland . It is said in Principia Discordia that Eris says different things to each listener. She may even say radically different things to each Episkopos, but all of what she says is equally her word (even if it contradicts another iteration of her word). According to Principia Discordia , "every single man, woman, and child on this Earth "

8804-476: The Ten Commandments". As venerators of Eris, Discordian views vary from one person to the next as neither order or disorder, nor chaos are requisites of falling into the Discordian category. The fifth rule is representative of that. I—There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps

8928-496: The Void itself. Cusack points out that this is "distilled into a teaching about the ultimate fate of humans: 'so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to the Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus.'" The "five-fingered hand of Eris" (shown at right) is one of several symbols used in Discordianism. It was adapted as an astronomical/astrological symbol for

9052-414: The above conditions were seemingly met but where many philosophers deny that anything is known. Robert Nozick suggested a clarification of "justification" which he believed eliminates the problem: the justification has to be such that were the justification false, the knowledge would be false. Bernecker and Dretske (2000) argue that "no epistemologist since Gettier has seriously and successfully defended

9176-533: The attitude. This view contrasts with functionalism , which defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by beliefs. According to dispositionalism , beliefs are identified with dispositions to behave in certain ways. This view can be seen as a form of functionalism, defining beliefs in terms of the behavior they tend to cause. Interpretationism constitutes another conception, which has gained popularity in contemporary philosophy. It holds that

9300-422: The background on many rock albums. Belief system 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

9424-417: The belief that 57 is greater than 14 was probably dispositional to the reader before reading this sentence, has become occurrent while reading it and may soon become dispositional again as the mind focuses elsewhere. The distinction between occurrent and dispositional beliefs is sometimes identified with the distinction between conscious and unconscious beliefs. But it has been argued that, despite overlapping,

9548-545: The beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on or relative to someone's interpretation of this entity. Representationalism tends to be associated with mind-body-dualism. Naturalist considerations against this dualism are among the motivations for choosing one of the alternative conceptions. Representationalism characterizes beliefs in terms of mental representations . Representations are usually defined as objects with semantic properties —like having content, referring to something, or being true or false. Beliefs form

9672-421: The beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on, or relative to, someone's interpretation of this entity. Daniel Dennett is an important defender of such a position. He holds that we ascribe beliefs to entities in order to predict how they will behave. Entities with simple behavioral patterns can be described using physical laws or in terms of their function. Dennett refers to these forms of explanation as

9796-420: The causal role characteristic to it. As an analogy, a hard drive is defined in a functionalist manner: it performs the function of storing and retrieving digital data. This function can be realized in many different ways: being made of plastic or steel, or using magnetism or laser. Functionalists hold that something similar is true for beliefs (or mental states in general). Among the roles relevant to beliefs

9920-453: The content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.g. if I believe that I'm holding a glass of water, is the non-mental fact that water is H 2 O part of the content of that belief)?", "How fine-grained or coarse-grained are our beliefs?", and "Must it be possible for a belief to be expressible in language, or are there non-linguistic beliefs?" Various conceptions of

10044-411: 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

10168-544: The context of Early Christianity , the term "orthodoxy" relates to religious belief that closely follows the edicts, apologies , and hermeneutics of a prevailing religious authority. In the case of Early Christianity, this authority was the communion of bishops, and is often referred to by the term " Magisterium ". The term orthodox was applied almost as an epithet to a group of Jewish believers who held to pre-Enlightenment understanding of Judaism—now known as Orthodox Judaism . The Eastern Orthodox Church of Christianity and

10292-410: 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

10416-583: The culture with paranoia". The concept was developed by Kerry Thornley and Robert Anton Wilson in 1968 and given its name by Wilson and Robert Shea in The Illuminatus! Trilogy . Operation Mindfuck uses many of the recurring themes of Discordianism, including "hidden knowledge, secret societies , chaos magic , ancient cults, mysterious rituals and conspiracy theories ". Stuart Rathbone described it as "a deliberate campaign of revolutionary disinformation" and notes that "many of these topics have had

10540-416: The differing doctrines and practices espoused by other religions or by other religious denominations in a variety of ways. People with exclusivist beliefs typically explain other beliefs either as in error, or as corruptions or counterfeits of the true faith . This approach is a fairly consistent feature among smaller new religious movements that often rely on doctrine that claims a unique revelation by

10664-517: The division of a total into its components, a number of examples are given here in the hope that the presentation of organization charts in convenient form will lead to their more widespread use." In those years industrial engineers promoted the use of organization charts. In the 1920s a survey revealed that organizational charts were still not common among ordinary business concerns, but they were beginning to find their way into administrative and business enterprises. The term "organigram" originated in

10788-451: The dwarf planet Eris . Initially, the planetary symbol, designed by Discordian Denis Moskowitz, was rotated 90 degrees and had a cross-bar added so that it resembled two lunate epsilons (Є) back-to-back ( [REDACTED] ), with epsilon being the Greek initial of Eris . The cross-bar was later dropped, but the vertical orientation retained. The Hand of Eris has appeared in a public-outreach publication by NASA, though planetary symbols play only

10912-415: The essential features of beliefs have been proposed, but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. Representationalism is the traditionally dominant position. Its most popular version maintains that attitudes toward representations, which are typically associated with propositions, are mental attitudes that constitute beliefs. These attitudes are part of the internal constitution of the mind holding

11036-493: The exclusivist tendencies within a religion. People with inclusivist beliefs recognize some truth in all faith systems , highlighting agreements and minimizing differences. This attitude is sometimes associated with Interfaith dialogue or with the Christian Ecumenical movement, though in principle such attempts at pluralism are not necessarily inclusivist and many actors in such interactions (for example,

11160-528: The existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, to the idea of divine intervention in the universe and in human life , or to the deontological explanations for the values and practices centered on the teachings of a spiritual leader or community . In contrast to other belief systems , religious beliefs are usually codified . A popular view holds that different religions each have identifiable and exclusive sets of beliefs or creeds , but surveys of religious belief have often found that

11284-523: The first edition. This appeared in its entirety in Historia Discordia , a book on Discordian history released in spring of 2014. The Discordian movement encompasses a diverse array of works, both real and fictitious, that explore themes of chaos, satire, and alternative spirituality. These include Zen Without Zen Masters by Camden Benares, which presents koans and stories of a Discordian nature, and Zenarchy by Kerry Thornley , which proposes

11408-495: The general contribution of one particular belief for any possible situation. For example, one may decide not to affirm that there is a pie in the pantry when asked because one wants to keep it secret. Or one might not eat the pie despite being hungry, because one also believes that it is poisoned. Due to this complexity, we are unable to define even a belief as simple as this one in terms of the behavioral dispositions for which it could be responsible. According to interpretationism,

11532-497: The internal empty space surrounding. Discordians pronounce "chao" as "cow", thus making the terms "Sacred Chao", " Holy Chao ", and "Wholly Chao", into puns and inside jokes. Operation Mindfuck is an important practice in the Discordian religion, in which "all national calamities, assassinations, or conspiracies" are publicly attributed to the Bavarian Illuminati , an 18th-century secret society, in an attempt to "sow

11656-411: The latter is more stable. Traditionally, philosophers have mainly focused in their inquiries concerning belief on the notion of belief-that . Belief-that can be characterized as a propositional attitude to a claim which is either true or false. Belief-in , on the other hand, is more closely related to notions like trust or faith in that it refers usually to an attitude to persons. Belief-in plays

11780-410: The laws of probability. This includes both synchronic laws about what one should believe at any moment and diachronic laws about how one should revise one's beliefs upon receiving new evidence. The central question in the dispute between full and partial beliefs is whether these two types are really distinct types or whether one type can be explained in terms of the other. One answer to this question

11904-491: 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

12028-542: The lives of key figures within Discordianism, such as The Prankster and the Conspiracy by Adam Gorightly, which focuses on Kerry Thornley's interactions with countercultural figures like Lee Harvey Oswald . Chasing Eris by Brenton Clutterbuck provides an in-depth examination of Discordianism's impact on various aspects of culture and society, offering interviews and insights into the movement's global reach and influence. Academic interest in Discordianism has grown over

12152-472: The mind. A more holistic alternative to the "language of thought hypothesis" is the map-conception , which uses an analogy of maps to elucidate the nature of beliefs. According to this view, the belief system of a mind should be conceived of not as a set of many individual sentences but as a map encoding the information contained in these sentences. For example, the fact that Brussels is halfway between Paris and Amsterdam can be expressed both linguistically as

12276-830: The modern world. The first academic study of Discordianism was David Chidester's 2005 book Authentic Fakes , who wrote that "If it were possible to trace a genealogy of virtual religions on the Internet, it would probably begin with Discordianism." According to J. Christian Greer, this study was published just at the time Discordianism had transformed itself from a parody religion to a new religious movement . The entry for Discordianism in Rabinovitch and Lewis's Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism (2002) defines Discordianism as "somewhere between parody, social commentary, and religion". However, David G. Robertson writes that "Although Hill and Thornley started Discordianism as

12400-556: The more fantastical claims of religions and directly challenged religious authority and the prevailing beliefs associated with the established churches. In response to the liberalizing political and social movements, some religious groups attempted to integrate Enlightenment ideals of rationality, equality, and individual liberty into their belief systems, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reform Judaism and Liberal Christianity offer two examples of such religious associations. Adherents of particular religions deal with

12524-456: The numbers in between correspond to intermediate degrees of certainty. In the Bayesian approach , these degrees are interpreted as subjective probabilities : e.g. a belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow means that the agent thinks that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Bayesianism uses this relation between beliefs and probability to define the norms of rationality in terms of

12648-658: The official doctrine and descriptions of the beliefs offered by religious authorities do not always agree with the privately held beliefs of those who identify as members of a particular religion. For a broad classification of the kinds of religious belief, see below. First self-applied as a term to the conservative doctrine outlined by anti-modernist Protestants in the United States, "fundamentalism" in religious terms denotes strict adherence to an interpretation of scriptures that are generally associated with theologically conservative positions or traditional understandings of

12772-432: The organization. The different types of organization charts include: There is no accepted form for making organization charts other than putting the principal official, department or function first, or at the head of the sheet, and the others below, in the order of their rank. The titles of officials and sometimes their names are enclosed in boxes or circles. Lines are generally drawn from one box or circle to another to show

12896-574: The origin of human beliefs. In the context of Ancient Greek thought , three related concepts were identified regarding the concept of belief: pistis , doxa , and dogma . Simplified, Pistis refers to " trust " and "confidence," doxa refers to " opinion " and "acceptance," and dogma refers to the positions of a philosopher or of a philosophical school such as Stoicism . Beliefs can be categorized into various types depending on their ontological status, their degree, their object or their semantic properties. Having an occurrent belief that

13020-535: The popes, legionnaires, disciples, and various other parties. A variety of other notional organizations were renamed and shuffled around and often enough replaced, as part of POEE (which did not appear in the first edition). But the House of the Apostles of Eris continued to be credited as the sanctioning body of the later editions, and remained the top division of the POEE "Eristocracy". Another recurrent organizational name

13144-915: The prescribed medicine is not working. At that point, the patient has a great deal of flexibility in choosing what beliefs to keep or reject: the patient could believe that the doctor is incompetent, that the doctor's assistants made a mistake, that the patient's own body is unique in some unexpected way, that Western medicine is ineffective, or even that Western science is entirely unable to discover truths about ailments. This insight has relevance for inquisitors , missionaries , agitprop groups and thought-police . The British philosopher Stephen Law has described some belief systems (including belief in homeopathy , psychic powers , and alien abduction ) as "claptrap" and says that such belief-systems can "draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap ... if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again". Religion

13268-491: The relation of one official or department to the others. The Scottish-American engineer Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) is credited for creating the first organizational charts of American business around 1854. This chart was drawn by George Holt Henshaw . The term "organization chart" came into use in the early twentieth century. In 1914 Brinton declared "organization charts are not nearly so widely used as they should be. As organization charts are an excellent example of

13392-542: The right perceptions; for example, to believe that it is raining given a perception of rain. Without this perception, there is still a disposition to believe but no actual dispositional belief. On a dispositionalist conception of belief, there are no occurrent beliefs, since all beliefs are defined in terms of dispositions. An important dispute in formal epistemology concerns the question of whether beliefs should be conceptualized as full beliefs or as partial beliefs. Full beliefs are all-or-nothing attitudes: either one has

13516-525: The rule and is able to add justification ( logos : reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) to it. A belief can be based fully or partially on intuition . Plato has been credited for the justified true belief theory of knowledge, even though Plato in the Theaetetus elegantly dismisses it, and even posits this argument of Socrates as a cause for his death penalty. The epistemologists, Gettier and Goldman , have questioned

13640-424: The same molecular composition. So it seems necessary to include external factors in order to explain the difference. One problem with this position is that this difference in content does not bring any causal difference with it: the two readers act in exactly the same way. This casts doubt on the thesis that there is any genuine difference in need of explanation between the contents of the two beliefs. Epistemology

13764-507: The same web of beliefs needed to determine the content of the source of the disagreement. Internalism and externalism disagree about whether the contents of our beliefs are determined only by what's happening in our head or also by other factors. Internalists deny such a dependence on external factors. They hold that a person and a molecule-by-molecule copy would have exactly the same beliefs. Hilary Putnam objects to this position by way of his twin Earth thought experiment . He imagines

13888-474: The sentence "Superman is strong" without changing its truth-value; this issue is more complicated in case of belief ascriptions. For example, Lois 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

14012-404: The tendency to revise one's belief upon receiving new evidence that an existing belief is false. Upon hearing a forecast of bad weather, Rahul is likely to change his mental attitude but Sofía is not. There are different ways of conceiving how mental representations are realized in the mind. One form of this is the language of thought hypothesis , which claims that mental representations have

14136-407: The text and are distrustful of innovative readings, new revelation, or alternative interpretations. Religious fundamentalism has been identified in the media as being associated with fanatical or zealous political movements around the world that have used a strict adherence to a particular religious doctrine as a means to establish political identity and to enforce societal norms. First used in

14260-468: The traditional view." On the other hand, Paul Boghossian argues that the justified true belief account is the "standard, widely accepted" definition of knowledge. A belief system comprises a set of mutually supportive beliefs. The beliefs of any such system can be religious , philosophical , political , ideological , or a combination of these. The British philosopher Jonathan Glover , following Meadows (2008), says that beliefs are always part of

14384-455: The two distinctions do not match. The reason for this is that beliefs can shape one's behaviour and be involved in one's reasoning even if the subject is not conscious of them. Such beliefs are cases of unconscious occurrent mental states. On this view, being occurrent corresponds to being active, either consciously or unconsciously. A dispositional belief is not the same as a disposition to believe. We have various dispositions to believe given

14508-513: The two working under the pseudonyms Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. David Chidester considers Discordianism to be the first virtual religion and the first to take up the challenge of establishing its religious authenticity. When the Yahoo search engine categorized Discordianism as a parody religion , in May 2001 Discordians started an email campaign to get the religion reclassified. It

14632-473: The viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis. The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition). Like other propositional attitudes , belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality , both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind , whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial. Organization chart The organization chart

14756-401: The years, with scholars examining its role in the broader context of new religious movements (NRMs) and its reflection of the social and cultural upheavals of the 20th century. The religion’s ability to blur the lines between parody and serious belief has made it a unique subject of study in the field of religious studies and has contributed to ongoing discussions about the nature of religion in

14880-407: Was a man who lived in the year 1166 BC and taught that life is serious and play is sin. The curse is the psychological and spiritual imbalance that results from these beliefs, both individually and within groups, nations, and civilizations . In addition to the generic advice of cultivating the natural love of chaos and playing with Her, the Principia Discordia provides "The Turkey Curse Revealed by

15004-428: Was founded as a dialectic antithesis to more popular religions based on order, although the rhetoric throughout the book describes chaos as a much more underlying impulse of the universe. This may have been done with the intention of merely "balancing out" the creative forces of order and disorder, but the focus is on the more disorderly aspects of the world — at times the forces of order are even vilified. Disharmony

15128-517: Was published under the title Principia Discordia or How The West Was Lost in a limited edition of five copies (and released into the public domain ) in 1965. In 1978, a copy of the work from Kerry Thornley, under the title The Principia Discordia or How the West Was Lost , was placed in the HSCA JFK collections as document 010857. Adam Gorightly said he had been given Greg Hill's copy of

15252-447: Was that of BEING, named ERIS , and one (the larger) was of NON-BEING, named ANERIS . The sterile Aneris becomes jealous of Eris (who was born pregnant), and starts making existent things non-existent. This explains why life begins, and later ends in death: And to this day, things appear and disappear in this very manner. However, the Void decrees that Aneris may not absorb her brother Spirituality, that he can only be absorbed back into

15376-590: Was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub. V—A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads. The third "apostle of Eris & who they be's" name, commonly called just Sri Syadasti, is Sanskrit, and means: All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. A unique symbol created in Discordianism,

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