165-416: Fatalism is a belief and philosophical doctrine which considers the entire universe as a deterministic system and stresses the subjugation of all events, actions, and behaviors to fate or destiny , which is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thought to be inevitable and outside of human control. The term "fatalism" can refer to any of
330-540: A Hindu religious and intellectual resurgence is known as the Classical or Golden Age of India . Aspects of Indian civilisation, administration, culture, and religion spread to much of Asia, which led to the establishment of Indianised kingdoms in the region, forming Greater India . The most significant event between the 7th and 11th centuries was the Tripartite struggle centred on Kannauj . Southern India saw
495-512: 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
660-710: 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,
825-663: 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,
990-400: 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
1155-523: 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
1320-404: 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
1485-412: 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
1650-447: 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
1815-461: 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
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#17327718742251980-446: 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
2145-444: 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
2310-440: A different aspect of the futility of human will or the foreordination of destiny. However, all these doctrines share common ground. Determinists generally agree that human actions affect the future but that human action is itself determined by a causal chain of prior events. Their view does not accentuate a "submission" to fate or destiny, whereas fatalists stress an acceptance of future events as inevitable. Determinists believe
2475-431: A fearful consideration for the sky and the stars as divine beings , which they held to be ultimately responsible for every phenomena that occurs on Earth and for the destiny of humankind. Accordingly, they shaped their entire lives in accordance with their interpretations of astral configurations and phenomena . In the I Ching and philosophical Taoism , the ebb and flow of favorable and unfavorable conditions suggests
2640-409: 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
2805-419: A highly diverse one, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. According to Tim Dyson: Genetic research has contributed to knowledge of the prehistory of the subcontinent's people in other respects. In particular, the level of genetic diversity in the region is extremely high. Indeed, only Africa's population is genetically more diverse. Related to this, there is strong evidence of 'founder' events in
2970-452: 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
3135-477: A law of nature) will happen just as inevitably as a chance—both can be imagined as sovereign. This idea has roots in Aristotle's work, "De interpretatione". Theological fatalism is the thesis that infallible foreknowledge of a human act makes the act necessary and hence unfree. If there is a being who knows the entire future infallibly, then no human act is free. The early Islamic philosopher , Al Farabi , makes
3300-402: 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
3465-404: 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
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#17327718742253630-677: A nationwide struggle for independence was launched by the Indian National Congress , led by Mahatma Gandhi . Later, the All-India Muslim League would advocate for a separate Muslim-majority nation state . The British Indian Empire was partitioned in August 1947 into the Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan , each gaining its independence. Hominin expansion from Africa is estimated to have reached
3795-470: A notion belonging to the illusory belief in the unchanging self or personhood that pertains to the false reality of the material world, while concepts like non-self and dependent origination belong to the ultimate reality; the transition between the two can be truly understood, Buddhists claim, by one who has attained enlightenment. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, fatalism, determinism , and predeterminism are distinct, as each emphasizes
3960-661: 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,
4125-400: 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
4290-455: 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
4455-429: 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
4620-402: 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
4785-450: 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
4950-823: 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
5115-449: A system of weights, punch-marked coins , and the introduction of writing in the form of Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts. The language of the gentry at that time was Sanskrit , while the languages of the general population of northern India are referred to as Prakrits . Many of the sixteen kingdoms had merged into four major ones by the time of Gautama Buddha . These four were Vatsa, Avanti, Kosala, and Magadha. Magadha formed one of
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5280-399: 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
5445-522: A vast army, consisting of 200,000 infantry , 20,000 cavalry , 2,000 war chariots and 3,000 war elephants (at the lowest estimates). The Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) unified most of the Indian subcontinent into one state, and was the largest empire ever to exist on the Indian subcontinent. At its greatest extent, the Mauryan Empire stretched to the north up to the natural boundaries of
5610-422: 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
5775-707: 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
5940-410: 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
6105-493: Is an argument that depends not on causation or physical circumstances but rather is based on presumed logical truths . There are numerous versions of this argument, including those by Aristotle and Richard Taylor . These arguments have been objected to and elaborated on with some effect. The key idea of logical fatalism is that there is a body of true propositions (statements) about what is going to happen, and these are true regardless of when they are made. So, for example, if it
6270-604: Is argued to support a hard determinism is the doctrine of dependent origination ( pratītyasamutpāda ) in the early Buddhist texts , which states that all phenomena ( dharma ) are necessarily caused by some other phenomenon, which it can be said to be dependent on, like links in a massive, never-ending chain; the basic principle is that all things (dharmas, phenomena, principles) arise in dependence upon other things, which means that they are fundamentally "empty" or devoid of any intrinsic, eternal essence and therefore are impermanent . In traditional Buddhist philosophy, this concept
6435-493: 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
6600-595: 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
6765-632: Is described in the texts of Vedas , still sacred to Hindus, which were orally composed and transmitted in Vedic Sanskrit . The Vedas are some of the oldest extant texts in India. The Vedic period, lasting from about 1500 to 500 BCE, contributed to the foundations of several cultural aspects of the Indian subcontinent. Historians have analysed the Vedas to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab , and
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6930-845: 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
7095-901: Is heavily mentioned in Jain and Buddhist texts. It is also mentioned in the Ramayana , Mahabharata and Puranas . The earliest reference to the Magadha people occurs in the Atharva-Veda where they are found listed along with the Angas , Gandharis , and Mujavats. Magadha played an important role in the development of Jainism and Buddhism . Republican communities (such as the community of Rajakumara) are merged into Magadha kingdom. Villages had their own assemblies under their local chiefs called Gramakas. Their administrations were divided into executive, judicial, and military functions. Early sources, from
7260-474: 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
7425-424: Is noted for its cities built of brick, and its roadside drainage systems, and is thought to have had some kind of municipal organisation. The civilisation also developed an Indus script , the earliest of the ancient Indian scripts , which is presently undeciphered. This is the reason why Harappan language is not directly attested, and its affiliation is uncertain. After the collapse of Indus Valley civilisation,
7590-527: 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,
7755-432: Is recorded as saying that "just as the word 'chariot' exists on the basis of the aggregation of parts, even so the concept of 'being' exists when the five aggregates are available." The early Buddhist texts outline different ways in which dependent origination is a middle way between different sets of "extreme" views (such as " monist " and " pluralist " ontologies or materialist and dualist views of mind-body relation). In
7920-412: 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
8085-454: 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
8250-428: 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
8415-412: Is today Nepal and Bihar state); reaching its prominence under the king Janaka , whose court provided patronage for Brahmin sages and philosophers such as Yajnavalkya , Aruni , and Gārgī Vāchaknavī . The later part of this period corresponds with a consolidation of increasingly large states and kingdoms, called Mahajanapadas , across Northern India. The period between 800 and 200 BCE saw
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#17327718742258580-435: Is true today that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then there cannot fail to be a sea battle tomorrow, since otherwise it would not be true today that such a battle will take place tomorrow. The argument relies on applying principle of bivalence to future contingents, regarding that a statement about the future is either true or false. However, this does not apply if the future is considered to be undetermined meaning that
8745-400: 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
8910-513: Is used to explain the functioning of the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ); all thoughts and actions exert a karmic force that attaches to the individual's consciousness , which will manifest through reincarnation and results in future lives. In other words, righteous or unrighteous actions in one life will necessarily cause good or bad responses in another future life or more lives. The early Buddhist texts and later Tibetan Buddhist scriptures associate dependent arising with
9075-502: 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
9240-456: 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
9405-405: 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 is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g.
9570-514: The Kaccānagotta Sutta of the Pāli Canon ( SN 12.15, parallel at SA 301), the historical Buddha stated that "this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence and non-existence" and then explains the right view as follows: But when you truly see the origin of the world with right understanding, you won't have the notion of non-existence regarding the world. And when you truly see
9735-519: The Vedanta (conclusion of the Vedas ). The increasing urbanisation of India in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE led to the rise of new ascetic or "Śramaṇa movements" which challenged the orthodoxy of rituals. Mahavira ( c. 599–527 BCE), proponent of Jainism , and Gautama Buddha ( c. 563–483 BCE), founder of Buddhism, were the most prominent icons of this movement. Śramaṇa gave rise to
9900-590: The Atharvaveda . The Kuru state organised the Vedic hymns into collections and developed the srauta ritual to uphold the social order. Two key figures of the Kuru state were king Parikshit and his successor Janamejaya , who transformed this realm into the dominant political, social, and cultural power of northern India. When the Kuru kingdom declined, the centre of Vedic culture shifted to their eastern neighbours,
10065-553: The Buddhist conception of the universe allows for a form of compatibilism . Buddhism perceives reality occurring on two different levels : the ultimate reality , which can only be truly understood by the enlightened ones , and the illusory or false reality of the material world , which is considered to be "real" or "true" by those who are ignorant about the nature of metaphysical reality ; i.e., those who still haven't achieved enlightenment. Therefore, Buddhism perceives free will as
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#173277187422510230-647: 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
10395-518: 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,
10560-655: The Himalayas and to the east into what is now Assam . To the west, it reached beyond modern Pakistan, to the Hindu Kush mountains in what is now Afghanistan. The empire was established by Chandragupta Maurya assisted by Chanakya ( Kautilya ) in Magadha (in modern Bihar ) when he overthrew the Nanda Empire . Chandragupta rapidly expanded his power westwards across central and western India, and by 317 BCE
10725-629: The Indian subcontinent approximately two million years ago, and possibly as early as 2.2 million years ago. This dating is based on the known presence of Homo erectus in Indonesia by 1.8 million years ago and in East Asia by 1.36 million years ago, as well as the discovery of stone tools at Riwat in Pakistan . Although some older discoveries have been claimed, the suggested dates, based on
10890-648: The Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; by 4500 BCE, settled life had spread, and gradually evolved into the Indus Valley Civilisation , one of three early cradles of civilisation in the Old World , flourished between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE in present-day Pakistan and north-western India. Early in
11055-749: The Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. According to Tim Dyson: "By 7,000 years ago agriculture was firmly established in Baluchistan... [and] slowly spread eastwards into the Indus valley." Michael Fisher adds: The earliest discovered instance ... of well-established, settled agricultural society is at Mehrgarh in the hills between the Bolan Pass and the Indus plain (today in Pakistan) (see Map 3.1). From as early as 7000 BCE, communities there started investing increased labor in preparing
11220-592: The Punjab from Central Asia in several waves of migration . The Vedic period is when the Vedas were composed of liturgical hymns from the Indo-Aryan people. The Vedic culture was located in part of north-west India, while other parts of India had a distinct cultural identity. Many regions of the Indian subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age in this period. The Vedic culture
11385-655: 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
11550-452: 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
11715-512: The Ājīvika school of philosophy founded by Makkhali Gosāla (around 500 BCE), otherwise referred to as "Ājīvikism" in Western scholarship , upheld the Niyati (" Fate ") doctrine of absolute fatalism or determinism , which negates the existence of free will and karma , and is therefore considered one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy . The oldest descriptions of
11880-522: 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
12045-446: 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
12210-477: The "soul", and that all sentient beings (including humans) are instead made of several, constantly changing factors which bind them to the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ). Sentient beings are composed of the five aggregates of existence ( skandha ): matter, sensation, perception, mental formations , and consciousness. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya of the Pāli Canon , the historical Buddha
12375-470: The 23rd Tirthankara , was a historical figure. The Vedas are believed to have documented a few Tirthankaras and an ascetic order similar to the Śramaṇa movement. The period from c. 600 BCE to c. 300 BCE featured the rise of the Mahajanapadas , sixteen powerful kingdoms and oligarchic republics in a belt stretching from Gandhara in the north-west to Bengal in
12540-904: The 4th century CE. The most famous clan amongst the ruling confederate clans of the Vajji Mahajanapada were the Licchavis . This period corresponds in an archaeological context to the Northern Black Polished Ware culture. Especially focused in the Central Ganges plain but also spreading across vast areas of the northern and central Indian subcontinent, this culture is characterised by the emergence of large cities with massive fortifications, significant population growth, increased social stratification, wide-ranging trade networks, construction of public architecture and water channels, specialised craft industries,
12705-536: The 6th century BCE is defined by the rise of Janapadas, which are realms , republics and kingdoms —notably the Iron Age Kingdoms of Kuru , Panchala , Kosala and Videha . The Kuru Kingdom ( c. 1200–450 BCE) was the first state-level society of the Vedic period, corresponding to the beginning of the Iron Age in north-western India, around 1200–800 BCE, as well as with the composition of
12870-513: The 8th century, followed by the invasions of Mahmud Ghazni . The Delhi Sultanate was founded in 1206 by Central Asian Turks who were Indianized . They ruled a major part of the northern Indian subcontinent in the early 14th century. It was ruled by multiple Turk , Afghan and Indian dynasties, including the Turco-Mongol Indianized Tughlaq Dynasty but declined in the late 14th century following
13035-738: The Buddhist Pāli Canon , the Jain Agamas and the Hindu Puranas , mention Magadha being ruled by the Pradyota dynasty and Haryanka dynasty ( c. 544–413 BCE) for some 200 years, c. 600–413 BCE. King Bimbisara of the Haryanka dynasty led an active and expansive policy, conquering Anga in what is now eastern Bihar and West Bengal . King Bimbisara was overthrown and killed by his son, Prince Ajatashatru , who continued
13200-441: 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
13365-645: The Harappan urbanisation which had been abandoned. The early Indo-Aryan presence probably corresponds, in part, to the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture in archaeological contexts. At the end of the Rigvedic period, the Aryan society expanded from the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent into the western Ganges plain. It became increasingly agricultural and was socially organised around
13530-458: The Indian subcontinent by hominins was sporadic until approximately 700,000 years ago, and was geographically widespread by approximately 250,000 years ago. According to a historical demographer of South Asia, Tim Dyson: Modern human beings— Homo sapiens —originated in Africa. Then, intermittently, sometime between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, tiny groups of them began to enter the north-west of
13695-554: The Indian subcontinent with Central Asia. After the Kalinga War , the Empire experienced nearly half a century of peace and security under Ashoka. Mauryan India also enjoyed an era of social harmony, religious transformation, and expansion of scientific knowledge. Chandragupta Maurya's embrace of Jainism increased social and religious renewal and reform across his society, while Ashoka's embrace of Buddhism has been said to have been
13860-657: The Indian subcontinent. The East India Company , acting as a sovereign force on behalf of the British government , gradually acquired control of huge areas of India between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 19th centuries. Policies of company rule in India led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857 . India was afterwards ruled directly by the British Crown , in the British Raj . After World War I ,
14025-630: The Indian subcontinent. It seems likely that initially they came by way of the coast. It is virtually certain that there were Homo sapiens in the subcontinent 55,000 years ago, even though the earliest fossils that have been found of them date to only about 30,000 years before the present. According to Michael D. Petraglia and Bridget Allchin : Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonisation of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73–55 ka. Historian of South Asia, Michael H. Fisher , states: Scholars estimate that
14190-631: The Panchala kingdom. The archaeological PGW (Painted Grey Ware) culture, which flourished in north-eastern India's Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh regions from about 1100 to 600 BCE, is believed to correspond to the Kuru and Panchala kingdoms. During the Late Vedic Period, the kingdom of Videha emerged as a new centre of Vedic culture, situated even farther to the East (in what
14355-414: 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
14520-464: The area of the earliest known cultivation of rice in South Asia and by 1800 BCE was the location of an advanced Neolithic population associated with the sites of Chirand and Chechar". In this region, the Śramaṇic movements flourished, and Jainism and Buddhism originated. The time between 800 BCE and 400 BCE witnessed the composition of the earliest Upanishads , which form the theoretical basis of classical Hinduism , and are also known as
14685-680: The assassination of the then-emperor Brihadratha by his general Pushyamitra Shunga . Shunga would form the Shunga Empire in the north and north-east of the subcontinent, while the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom would claim the north-west and found the Indo-Greek Kingdom . Various parts of India were ruled by numerous dynasties, including the Gupta Empire , in the 4th to 6th centuries CE. This period, witnessing
14850-533: 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
15015-475: The beginning of urban civilisation on the Indian subcontinent. It included cities such as Harappa , Ganweriwal , and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, and Dholavira , Kalibangan , Rakhigarhi , and Lothal in modern-day India. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus River valley, the Harappans, developed new techniques in metallurgy and handicraft, and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The civilisation
15180-417: 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,
15345-545: 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
15510-421: 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
15675-427: The case that if God does in fact know all human actions and choices, then Aristotle's original solution to this dilemma stands. One famous ancient argument regarding fatalism was the so-called Idle Argument . It argues that if something is fated, then it would be pointless or futile to make any effort to bring it about. The Idle Argument was described by Origen and Cicero and it went like this: The Idle Argument
15840-420: 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
16005-472: The cessation of the world with right understanding, you won't have the notion of existence regarding the world. Some Western scholars argue that the concept of non-self necessarily disproves the ideas of free will and moral responsibility . If there is no autonomous self, in this view, and all events are necessarily and unchangeably caused by others, then no type of autonomy can be said to exist, moral or otherwise. However, other scholars disagree, claiming that
16170-630: The concept of the cycle of birth and death, the concept of samsara , and the concept of liberation. Buddha found a Middle Way that ameliorated the extreme asceticism found in the Śramaṇa religions. Around the same time, Mahavira (the 24th Tirthankara in Jainism) propagated a theology that was to later become Jainism. However, Jain orthodoxy believes the teachings of the Tirthankaras predates all known time and scholars believe Parshvanatha (c. 872 – c. 772 BCE), accorded status as
16335-453: 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
16500-411: 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
16665-544: 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
16830-410: 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
16995-548: The cultural and political landscape of India. The early modern period began in the 16th century, when the Mughal Empire conquered most of the Indian subcontinent, signaling the proto-industrialisation , becoming the biggest global economy and manufacturing power. The Mughals suffered a gradual decline in the early 18th century, largely due to the rising power of the Marathas , who took control of extensive regions of
17160-499: The dating of fluvial sediments , have not been independently verified. The oldest hominin fossil remains in the Indian subcontinent are those of Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis , from the Narmada Valley in central India, and are dated to approximately half a million years ago. Older fossil finds have been claimed, but are considered unreliable. Reviews of archaeological evidence have suggested that occupation of
17325-416: 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
17490-468: The eastern part of the Indian subcontinent—including parts of the trans- Vindhyan region. Ancient Buddhist texts , like the Aṅguttara Nikāya , make frequent reference to these sixteen great kingdoms and republics— Anga , Assaka , Avanti , Chedi , Gandhara , Kashi , Kamboja , Kosala , Kuru , Magadha , Malla , Matsya (or Machcha), Panchala , Surasena , Vṛji , and Vatsa . This period saw
17655-600: The empire had fully occupied north-western India. The Mauryan Empire defeated Seleucus I , founder of the Seleucid Empire , during the Seleucid–Mauryan war , thus gained additional territory west of the Indus River. Chandragupta's son Bindusara succeeded to the throne around 297 BCE. By the time he died in c. 272 BCE, a large part of the Indian subcontinent was under Mauryan suzerainty. However,
17820-481: The era of Northern Black Polished Ware . The Mauryan Empire was based on a modern and efficient economy and society in which the sale of merchandise was closely regulated by the government. Although there was no banking in the Mauryan society, usury was customary. A significant amount of written records on slavery are found, suggesting a prevalence thereof. During this period, a high-quality steel called Wootz steel
17985-415: 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
18150-493: 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,
18315-528: 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
18480-627: The expansionist policy of Magadha. During this period, Gautama Buddha , the founder of Buddhism, lived much of his life in the Magadha kingdom. He attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya , gave his first sermon in Sarnath and the first Buddhist council was held in Rajgriha. The Haryanka dynasty was overthrown by the Shaishunaga dynasty ( c. 413–345 BCE). The last Shishunaga ruler, Kalasoka,
18645-422: The fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics. And this seems entirely appropriate." Willem deVries and Jay Garfield, both of whom were advisers on Wallace's thesis, expressed regret that Wallace never published his argument. In 2010, the thesis was, however, published posthumously as Time, Fate, and Language: An Essay on Free Will . Belief A belief
18810-523: The first successful expansion of the Homo sapiens range beyond Africa and across the Arabian Peninsula occurred from as early as 80,000 years ago to as late as 40,000 years ago, although there may have been prior unsuccessful emigrations. Some of their descendants extended the human range ever further in each generation, spreading into each habitable land they encountered. One human channel was along
18975-496: The following ideas: More specifically: Throughout history, the belief that the entire universe is a deterministic system subject to the will of fate or destiny has been articulated in both Eastern and Western religions, philosophy, music, and literature. The ancient Arabs that inhabited the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam used to profess a widespread belief in fatalism ( ḳadar ) alongside
19140-773: The formation of the Śramaṇa movement, from which Jainism and Buddhism originated. The first Upanishads were written during this period. After 500 BCE, the so-called "second urbanisation" started, with new urban settlements arising at the Ganges plain. The foundations for the "second urbanisation" were laid prior to 600 BCE, in the Painted Grey Ware culture of the Ghaggar-Hakra and Upper Ganges Plain; although most PGW sites were small farming villages, "several dozen" PGW sites eventually emerged as relatively large settlements that can be characterised as towns,
19305-536: The foundation of the reign of social and political peace and non-violence across India. Ashoka sponsored Buddhist missions across the Indo-Mediterranean , into Sri Lanka , Southeast Asia , West Asia , North Africa , and Mediterranean Europe . The Arthashastra written by Chanakya and the Edicts of Ashoka are the primary written records of the Mauryan times. Archaeologically, this period falls in
19470-418: The fundamental Buddhist doctrines of emptiness ( śūnyatā ) and non-self ( anattā ). Another Buddhist concept which many scholars perceive to be deterministic is the doctrine of non-self ( anattā ). In Buddhism, attaining enlightenment involves one realizing that neither in humans nor any other sentient beings there is a fundamental core of permanent being, identity, or personality which can be called
19635-438: The future is fixed specifically due to causality ; fatalists and predeterminists believe that some or all aspects of the future are inescapable but, for fatalists, not necessarily due to causality. Fatalism is a looser term than determinism. The presence of historical "indeterminisms" or chances, i.e. events that could not be predicted by sole knowledge of other events, is an idea still compatible with fatalism. Necessity (such as
19800-495: 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,
19965-523: The hierarchy of the four varnas , or social classes. This social structure was characterised both by syncretising with the native cultures of northern India but also eventually by the exclusion of some indigenous peoples by labelling their occupations impure. During this period, many of the previous small tribal units and chiefdoms began to coalesce into Janapadas (monarchical, state-level polities). The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were composed during this period. The Mahabharata remains
20130-593: The inhabitants migrated from the river valleys of Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra, towards the Himalayan foothills of Ganga-Yamuna basin. During the 2nd millennium BCE, Ochre Coloured Pottery culture was in Ganga Yamuna Doab region. These were rural settlements with agriculture and hunting. They were using copper tools such as axes, spears, arrows, and swords, and had domesticated animals. Starting c. 1900 BCE , Indo-Aryan tribes moved into
20295-591: The invasions of Timur and saw the advent of the Malwa , Gujarat , and Bahmani Sultanates, the last of which split in 1518 into the five Deccan sultanates . The wealthy Bengal Sultanate also emerged as a major power, lasting over three centuries. During this period, multiple strong Hindu kingdoms , notably the Vijayanagara Empire and the Rajput states , emerged and played significant roles in shaping
20460-435: The land and selecting, planting, tending, and harvesting particular grain-producing plants. They also domesticated animals, including sheep, goats, pigs, and oxen (both humped zebu [ Bos indicus ] and unhumped [ Bos taurus ]). Castrating oxen, for instance, turned them from mainly meat sources into domesticated draft-animals as well. The Bronze Age in the Indian subcontinent began around 3300 BCE. The Indus Valley region
20625-524: The largest of which were fortified by ditches or moats and embankments made of piled earth with wooden palisades. The Central Ganges Plain, where Magadha gained prominence, forming the base of the Maurya Empire , was a distinct cultural area, with new states arising after 500 BCE. It was influenced by the Vedic culture, but differed markedly from the Kuru-Panchala region. "It was
20790-525: The last Mauryan ruler, Brihadratha , was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga to establish the Shunga Empire . Under Chandragupta Maurya and his successors, internal and external trade, agriculture, and economic activities all thrived and expanded across India thanks to the creation of a single efficient system of finance, administration, and security. The Mauryans built the Grand Trunk Road , one of Asia's oldest and longest major roads connecting
20955-411: 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
21120-410: 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
21285-491: 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
21450-415: The longest single poem in the world. Historians formerly postulated an "epic age" as the milieu of these two epic poems, but now recognise that the texts went through multiple stages of development over centuries. The existing texts of these epics are believed to belong to the post-Vedic age, between c. 400 BCE and 400 CE. The Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent from about 1200 BCE to
21615-472: 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
21780-556: 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
21945-473: The nature of their next life in the cycle of Saṃsāra. Most major religions originating in India hold this belief to some degree, most notably Hinduism , Jainism , Sikhism , and Buddhism . The views on the interaction of karma and free will are numerous, and diverge from each other greatly. For example, in Sikhism , god's grace, gained through worship, can erase one's karmic debts, a belief which reconciles
22110-456: 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
22275-658: 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
22440-574: 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
22605-505: The other Śramaṇa movements that emerged in India during the Second urbanization (600–200 BCE). [REDACTED] Religion portal Buddhist philosophy contains several concepts which some scholars describe as deterministic to various levels. However, the direct analysis of Buddhist metaphysics through the lens of determinism is difficult, due to the differences between European and Buddhist traditions of thought. One concept which
22770-608: The path of least resistance is effortless ( see : Wu wei ). In the philosophical schools of the Indian Subcontinent , the concept of karma deals with similar philosophical issues to the Western concept of determinism. Karma is understood as a spiritual mechanism which causes the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ). Karma, either positive or negative, accumulates according to an individual's actions throughout their life, and at their death determines
22935-915: 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
23100-400: The principle of karma with a monotheistic god one must freely choose to worship. Jainists believe in a sort of compatibilism , in which the cycle of Saṃsara is a completely mechanistic process, occurring without any divine intervention. The Jains hold an atomic view of reality, in which particles of karma form the fundamental microscopic building material of the universe. In ancient India ,
23265-527: The region of Kalinga (around modern day Odisha ) remained outside Mauryan control, perhaps interfering with trade with the south. Bindusara was succeeded by Ashoka , whose reign lasted until his death in about 232 BCE. His campaign against the Kalingans in about 260 BCE, though successful, led to immense loss of life and misery. This led Ashoka to shun violence, and subsequently to embrace Buddhism. The empire began to decline after his death and
23430-542: 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
23595-500: The rise of Jainism and Buddhism . The latter was synthesized with the preexisting religious cultures of the subcontinent, giving rise to Hinduism . Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nanda Empire and established the first great empire in ancient India, the Maurya Empire . India's Mauryan king Ashoka is widely recognised for his historical acceptance of Buddhism and his attempts to spread nonviolence and peace across his empire. The Maurya Empire would collapse in 185 BCE, on
23760-560: The rise of multiple imperial powers from the middle of the fifth century. The Chola dynasty conquered southern India in the 11th century. In the early medieval period, Indian mathematics , including Hindu numerals , influenced the development of mathematics and astronomy in the Arab world , including the creation of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system . Islamic conquests made limited inroads into modern Afghanistan and Sindh as early as
23925-525: 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
24090-424: 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
24255-507: 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
24420-544: The second major rise of urbanism in India after the Indus Valley Civilisation . Early "republics" or gaṇasaṅgha , such as Shakyas , Koliyas , Mallakas , and Licchavis had republican governments. Gaṇasaṅgha s, such as the Mallakas, centered in the city of Kusinagara , and the Vajjika League , centred in the city of Vaishali , existed as early as the 6th century BCE and persisted in some areas until
24585-470: The second millennium BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages. Indo-Aryan tribes moved into the Punjab from Central Asia in several waves of migration . The Vedic Period of the Vedic people in northern India (1500–500 BCE) was marked by the composition of their extensive collections of hymns ( Vedas ). The social structure
24750-474: 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
24915-494: The sixteen Mahajanapadas ( Sanskrit : "Great Realms") or kingdoms in ancient India . The core of the kingdom was the area of Bihar south of the Ganges ; its first capital was Rajagriha (modern Rajgir) then Pataliputra (modern Patna ). Magadha expanded to include most of Bihar and Bengal with the conquest of Licchavi and Anga respectively, followed by much of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. The ancient kingdom of Magadha
25080-497: The subcontinent. By this is meant circumstances where a subgroup—such as a tribe—derives from a tiny number of 'original' individuals. Further, compared to most world regions, the subcontinent's people are relatively distinct in having practised comparatively high levels of endogamy. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus River alluvium approximately 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into
25245-404: 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
25410-407: 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
25575-468: 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
25740-527: The truth value of a statement can only be determined once the event occurs. One criticism comes from the novelist David Foster Wallace , who in a 1985 paper "Richard Taylor's Fatalism and the Semantics of Physical Modality" suggests that Taylor reached his conclusion of fatalism only because his argument involved two different and inconsistent notions of impossibility. Wallace did not reject fatalism per se , as he wrote in his closing passage, "if Taylor and
25905-455: 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
26070-630: The upper Gangetic Plain . The Peepal tree and cow were sanctified by the time of the Atharva Veda . Many of the concepts of Indian philosophy espoused later, like dharma , trace their roots to Vedic antecedents. Early Vedic society is described in the Rigveda , the oldest Vedic text, believed to have been compiled during the 2nd millennium BCE, in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent. At this time, Aryan society consisted of predominantly tribal and pastoral groups, distinct from
26235-536: 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. History of India#Second urbanisation (c. 600 – 200 BCE) Anatomically modern humans first arrived on
26400-559: The warm and productive coastal lands of the Persian Gulf and northern Indian Ocean. Eventually, various bands entered India between 75,000 years ago and 35,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence has been interpreted to suggest the presence of anatomically modern humans in the Indian subcontinent 78,000–74,000 years ago, although this interpretation is disputed. The occupation of South Asia by modern humans, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has turned it into
26565-424: The Ājīvika fatalists and their founder Gosāla can be found both in the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures of ancient India. The predetermined fate of all sentient beings and the impossibility to achieve liberation ( mokṣa ) from the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ) was the major distinctive philosophical and metaphysical doctrine of this heterodox school of Indian philosophy, annoverated among
26730-528: Was anticipated by Aristotle in his De Interpretatione chapter 9. The Stoics considered it to be a sophism and the Stoic Chrysippus attempted to refute it by pointing out that consulting the doctor would be as much fated as recovering. He seems to have introduced the idea that in cases like that at issue two events can be co-fated , so that one cannot occur without the other. The main argument for logical fatalism goes back to antiquity. This
26895-479: Was assassinated by Mahapadma Nanda in 345 BCE, the first of the so-called Nine Nandas (Mahapadma Nanda and his eight sons). The Nanda Empire ( c. 345–322 BCE), at its peak, extended from Bengal in the east, to the Punjab in the west and as far south as the Vindhya Range . The Nanda dynasty built on the foundations laid by their Haryanka and Shishunaga predecessors. Nanda empire have built
27060-572: Was loosely stratified via the varna system , incorporated into the highly evolved present-day Jāti system. The pastoral and nomadic Indo-Aryans spread from the Punjab into the Gangetic plain . Around 600 BCE, a new, interregional culture arose; then, small chieftaincies ( janapadas ) were consolidated into larger states ( mahajanapadas ). Second urbanization took place, which came with the rise of new ascetic movements and religious concepts, including
27225-485: Was one of three early cradles of civilisation in the Old World ; the Indus Valley civilisation was the most expansive, and at its peak, may have had a population of over five million. The civilisation was primarily centred in modern-day Pakistan, in the Indus river basin, and secondarily in the Ghaggar-Hakra River basin. The mature Indus civilisation flourished from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, marking
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