A son is a male offspring ; a boy or a man in relation to his parents . The female counterpart is a daughter . From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative .
110-428: In pre-industrial societies and some current countries with agriculture-based economies, a higher value was, and still is, assigned to sons rather than daughters, giving males higher social status , because males were physically stronger , and could perform farming tasks more effectively. In China , a one-child policy was in effect until 2015 in order to address rapid population growth . Official birth records showed
220-512: 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
330-710: 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,
440-663: 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,
550-400: 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
660-400: A "reward" for group members who treat others well and take initiative. This is one explanation for its apparent cross-cultural universality. On the other hand, while people with higher status experience a litany of benefits—such as greater health, admiration, resources, influence, and freedom—those with lower status experience poorer outcomes across all of those metrics. Importantly, status
770-523: 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
880-404: 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
990-412: 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
1100-447: 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
1210-461: 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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#17327572055311320-446: 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
1430-444: 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
1540-409: 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
1650-452: 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
1760-403: A lesser degree with those of higher or lower status in a recognized system of social stratification. Although the determinants of status are specific to different cultures, some of the more common bases for status-based stratification include: The German sociologist Max Weber argued stratification is based on three factors: property , status, and power . He claimed that social stratification
1870-402: 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
1980-404: 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
2090-661: 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,
2200-400: 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
2310-541: A person actively thinking "snow 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
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#17327572055312420-639: A person's known ability on the task (e.g., mechanical ability when a car breaks down). This implies that known ability would attenuate the effect of external status, implying a given external status characteristic is not a master status. The program of research finds characteristics assumed to be master statuses (e.g., mental illness) are, in fact, attenuated by known ability. Moreover, status affects group members' assertiveness only when characteristics differentiate group members (i.e., groups are mixed-race or mixed-gender). With respect to gender, experimental tests repeatedly found that women are highly deferential only in
2530-464: A rise in the level of male births since the policy was brought into law . This was attributed to a number of factors, including the illegal practice of sex-selective abortion and widespread under-reporting of female births. In patrilineal societies, sons will customarily inherit an estate before daughters. In some cultures, the eldest son has special privileges. For example, in Biblical times,
2640-429: 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
2750-431: A simple index of income , education and occupational prestige. Social status hierarchies have been documented in a wide range of animals: apes, baboons, wolves, cows/bulls, hens, even fish, and ants. Natural selection produces status-seeking behavior because animals tend to have more surviving offspring when they raise their status in their social group. Such behaviors vary widely because they are adaptations to
2860-517: A socially valued role or category a person occupies as a "status" (e.g., gender , social class , ethnicity , having a criminal conviction, having a mental illness, etc.). As social network analysts, Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust Stanley cautioned "there is considerable disagreement among social scientists about the definitions of the related concepts of social position , social status, and social role ." They note that while many scholars differentiate those terms, they can define those terms in
2970-598: A society, the relative honor and prestige accorded to individuals depends on how well an individual is perceived to match a society's values and ideals (e.g., being pious in a religious society or wealthy in a capitalist society). Status often comes with attendant rights, duties, and lifestyle practices. In modern societies, occupation is usually thought of as the main determinant of status, but other memberships or affiliations (such as ethnic group , religion , gender , voluntary associations, fandom , hobby ) can have an influence. Achieved status , when people are placed in
3080-406: A society: class, status, and power. In his scheme, which remains influential today, people possess status in the sense of honor because they belong to specific groups with unique lifestyles and privileges. Modern sociologists and social psychologists broadened this understanding of status to refer to one's relative level of respectability and honor more generally. Some writers have also referred to
3190-402: 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
3300-457: A source of status. Several studies document that being popular or demonstrating dominance over peers increases a person's status. Analyses of private companies also find that organizations can gain status from having well-respected corporate partners or investors. Because status is always relative to others, a person may enter many situations throughout their life or even a single day in which they hold high, equal, or low status depending on who
3410-400: A source of stress, though evidence for this hypothesis proved inconsistent, leaving some to conclude conflicting expectations through occupying incompatible roles may be the true stressor. Status is one of the major components of social stratification, the way people are hierarchically placed in a society. The members of a group with similar status interact mainly within their own group and to
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3520-450: 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
3630-823: 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
3740-399: 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
3850-442: A way that clashes with the definitions of another scholar; for example they state that " [Ralph] Linton uses the term 'status' in a way that is identical to our use of the term "position". Status hierarchies depend primarily on the possession and use of status symbols . These are cues or characteristics that people in a society agree indicate how much status a person holds and how they should be treated. Such symbols can include
3960-468: A wide range of environmental niches. Some social dominance behaviors tend to increase reproductive opportunity, while others tend to raise the survival rates of an individual's offspring. Neurochemicals, particularly serotonin, prompt social dominance behaviors without need for an organism to have abstract conceptualizations of status as a means to an end. Social dominance hierarchy emerges from individual survival-seeking behaviors. Status inconsistency
4070-663: Is ibn. Because family and ancestry are important cultural values in the Arab world and Islam , Arabs and most Muslims (e.g. Bruneian ) often use bin, which is a form of ibn, in their full names. The bin here means "son of." For example, the Arab name "Saleh bin Tarif bin Khaled Al-Fulani" translates as "Saleh, son of Tarif, son of Khaled; of the family Al-Fulani" (cf. Arab family naming conventions ). Accordingly,
4180-422: 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
4290-707: 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
4400-637: Is a result of the interaction of wealth (class), prestige status (or in German Stand ) and power (party). Max Weber developed the idea of "status group" which is a translation of the German Stand (pl. Stände ). Status groups are communities that are based on ideas of lifestyles and the honor the status group both asserts, and is given by others. Status groups exist in the context of beliefs about relative prestige, privilege, and honor. People in status groups are only supposed to engage with people of like status, and in particular, marriage inside or outside
4510-525: Is a situation where an individual's social positions have both positive and negative influences on his or her social status. For example, a teacher may have a positive societal image (respect, prestige) which increases their status but may earn little money , which simultaneously decreases their status. In task-focused interpersonal encounters, people unconsciously combine this information to develop impressions of their own and others' relative rank. At one time, researchers thought status inconsistency would be
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4620-563: Is around them. For instance, a doctor holds high status when interacting with a patient, equal status in a meeting with fellow doctors, and low status when meeting with their hospital's chief of medicine. A person can also be a 'big fish in a small pond' such that they have higher status than everyone else in their organization, but low or equal status relative to professionals in their entire field. Some perspectives on status emphasize its relatively fixed and fluid aspects. Ascribed statuses are fixed for an individual at birth, while achieved status
4730-762: Is based in widely shared beliefs about who members of a society judge as more competent or moral. While such beliefs can stem from an impressive performance or success, they can also arise from possessing characteristics a society has deemed meaningful like a person's race or occupation. In this way, status reflects how a society judges a person's relative social worth and merit—however accurate or inaccurate that judgement may be. Because societies use status to allocate resources, leadership positions, and other forms of power, status can make unequal distributions of resources and power appear natural and fair, supporting systems of social stratification . The sociologist Max Weber outlined three central aspects of stratification in
4840-594: Is based on beliefs about social worth and esteem, sociologists argue it can then appear only natural that higher-status people have more material resources and power. Status makes it appear that a person's rank or position in society is due to their relative merit, and therefore deserved. For instance, if a society holds that the homeless are unworthy of respect or dignity, then their poor material conditions are not evaluated as unjust by members of that society, and therefore are not subject to change. Whether formal or informal, status hierarchies are present in all societies. In
4950-580: Is best equipped to complete a task. In addition, groups accord more respect and esteem to members who help them succeed, which encourages highly capable members to contribute in the first place. This helps groups motivate members to contribute to a collective good by offering respect and esteem as a kind of compensation for helping everyone in the group succeed. For instance, people recognized as achieving great feats for their group or society are sometimes accorded legendary status as heroes. Finally—for good or ill—status maintains social inequality. Because status
5060-493: 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
5170-595: 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
5280-444: Is determined by social rewards an individual acquires during his or her lifetime as a result of the exercise of ability and/or perseverance. Examples of ascribed status include castes , race , and beauty among others. Meanwhile, achieved statuses are akin to one's educational credentials or occupation: these things require a person to exercise effort and often undergo years of training. The term master status has been used to describe
5390-845: 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
5500-474: 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
5610-527: 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,
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#17327572055315720-479: Is perceived as unfair and thus prompts retaliation and resistance from those of lower status, but if some individuals are seen as better than others (i.e., have higher status), then it seems natural and fair that high-status people receive more resources and privileges. Historically, Max Weber distinguished status from social class , though some contemporary empirical sociologists combine the two ideas to create socioeconomic status or SES, usually operationalized as
5830-412: 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
5940-454: 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
6050-428: 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
6160-400: 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
6270-502: 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
6380-456: 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
6490-647: 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
6600-518: 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,
6710-720: The Indian caste system. In other cases, status exists without class and/or informally, as is true with some Hunter-Gatherer societies such as the Khoisan , and some Indigenous Australian societies. In these cases, status is limited to specific personal relationships. For example, a Khoisan man is expected to take his wife's mother quite seriously (a non-joking relationship), although the mother-in-law has no special "status" over anyone except her son-in-law—and only then in specific contexts. Status maintains and stabilizes social stratification . Mere inequality in resources and privileges
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#17327572055316820-655: 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
6930-452: 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
7040-522: 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
7150-446: 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
7260-441: 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
7370-591: The Levite." Ben is also a standalone name. Social status 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor , assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as
7480-414: 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
7590-533: 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
7700-417: 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,
7810-545: 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
7920-421: 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
8030-420: 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
8140-453: 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
8250-411: 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
8360-544: 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
8470-410: 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
8580-416: 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
8690-415: 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
8800-493: 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,
8910-528: 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
9020-479: The first-born male was bequeathed the most goods from his father. Some Japanese social norms involving the eldest son are: "that parents are more likely to live with their eldest child if their eldest child is a son" and "that parents are most likely to live with their eldest son even if he is not the eldest child". Among Christians , "the Son" or Son of God refers to Jesus Christ . Trinitarian Christians view Jesus as
9130-495: 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,
9240-479: The group is discouraged. Status groups in some societies include professions, club-like organizations, ethnicity, race, and any other socially (de)valued group that organizes interaction among relative equals. Beliefs 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
9350-573: The human incarnation of God the second person of the Trinity , known as God the Son . In the Gospels, Jesus sometimes refers to himself as the Son of Man . In many cultures, the surname of the family means "son of", indicating a possible ancestry—i.e., that the whole family descends from a common ancestor. It may vary between the beginning or the termination of the surname. The Arabic word for son
9460-411: 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
9570-410: 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
9680-491: 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
9790-495: The members of a group to coordinate their actions and quickly agree on who among them should be listened to. When actual ability does correspond to status, then status hierarchies can be especially useful. They allow leaders to emerge who set informed precedents and influence less knowledgeable group members, allowing groups to use the shared information of their group to make more correct decisions. This can be especially helpful in novel situations where group members must determine who
9900-472: 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
10010-556: 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
10120-456: 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
10230-658: 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
10340-521: The opposite of ibn / bin is abu, meaning "the father of." It is a retronym , given upon the birth of one's first-born son, and is used as a moniker to indicate the newly acquired fatherhood status, rather than a family name. For example, if Mahmoud's first-born son is named Abdullah, from that point on Mahmoud can be called "Abu Abdullah." This is cognate with the Hebrew language ben, as in "Judah ben Abram HaLevi," which means "Judah, son of Abram,
10450-574: 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
10560-412: The possession of valued attributes, like being beautiful or having a prestigious degree. Other status symbols include wealth and its display through conspicuous consumption . Status in face-to-face interaction can also be conveyed through certain controllable behaviors, such as assertive speech, posture, and emotional displays. Social network analysts have also shown that one's affiliations can also be
10670-915: 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
10780-454: The presence of men. Although for disadvantaged groups, status disadvantage is not completely negated by valued characteristics, their social status does not depend predominantly on any one group membership. As such, status characteristics research has yet to identify a social characteristic that operates like a robust cross-situational master status. Although a person's status does not always correspond to merit or actual ability, it does allow
10890-542: 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
11000-525: 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
11110-424: 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
11220-507: 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
11330-474: 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
11440-420: The status most important for determining a person's position in a given context, like possessing a mental illness. However, the concept of a master status is controversial. Status characteristics theory argues members of a task group will listen to whomever they believe will most help them solve a problem. One's external status in society (e.g., race or gender) determines influence in small groups, but so does
11550-456: The stratification structure based on their individual merits or achievements like education or training, is thought to be reflective of modern developed societies. Consequently, achieved status implies that social mobility in a society is possible, as opposed to caste systems characterized by immobility based solely on ascribed status. In pre-modern societies, status differentiation is widely varied. In some cases it can be quite rigid, such as with
11660-404: 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
11770-495: 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 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.
11880-407: 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
11990-468: 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
12100-455: 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
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