Noun

Singular belief

Plural beliefs

belief (plural beliefs)

1. Mental acceptance of a claim as truth regardless of the lack of supporting empirical evidence.
2. (countable) Something believed.

   The ancient people have a belief in many deities.

3. (uncountable) The quality or state of believing.

   My belief that it will rain tomorrow is strong.

4. (uncountable) Religious faith.

   She often said it was her belief that carried her through the hard times.

5. (in plural) One's religious or moral convictions.

   I can't do that. It's against my beliefs.

Related terms

• believe
• beyond belief
• disbelief
• self-belief
• unbelief

Dutch

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.

Belief, knowledge and epistemology

The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy.

Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge and belief. The primary problem in epistemology is to understand exactly what is needed in order for us to have knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, philosophy has traditionally defined knowledge as "justified true belief". The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true.

A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. A sincere believer in the flat earth theory does not know that the Earth is spherical. Similarly, a truth that nobody believes is not knowledge, because in order to be knowledge, there must be some person who knows it.

Later epistemologists, for instance Gettier (1963) and Goldman (1967), have questioned the "justified true belief" definition.

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.

Sourced

• ...and what is meant by believing in Christ but just going with trusting and loving hearts, and committing to His love and power ourselves, our souls, and all that concerns us for time and eternity!
  • Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit (1864) ch. 17, p. 297.

• Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of that belief.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Omniana

• He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed.
  • C. C. Colton, Lacon, vol. I (1820), # 470

• I would rather work with five people who really believe in what they are doing rather than five hundred who can't see the point.
  • Patrick Dixon in Building a Better Business, p. 14

• People want to believe in something-even if they know it is false.
  • Dragonlance, "Tanis Half-Elven"

• He who believes needs no explanation.
  • Euripides, Dionysus in "The Bacchae"

• He does not believe that does not live according to his belief
  • Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)

• To succeed, we must first believe that we can.
  • Michael Korda, as quoted in Marketing Construction Services (2000) by Paul Pryor, p. 14

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sat Jul 31 07:31:38 2010