Belief

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. 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 rigorous in their analysis and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis.

Belief formation has not been shown either to be primarily spontaneous and involuntary or not. Some accept information supporting narrow and specific beliefs. Others invoke a more challenging and broad study of others or alternate beliefs across many cultures and traditions. A small minority of people are able to live without drawing automatic conclusions. The human mind has been shown to prefer certainty, over uncertainty, even if these assumptions are unverifiable. This phenomena results when people are often forced to make either "for or against" choices. In a polarized world of so-called binary choices (either/or), this is more common in time of stress, such as in times of war, episodes of panic, etc.

Proclaimed belief is often found to be mandatory for group affiliation and "official" membership with specific conversion rites. In many cases, people bolster a personal belief, in which they are emotionally involved, attempting to resolve directly experienced contradictions. Creative rationalizations are produced to reduce experiential dissonance. Human imagination serves as the catalyst for the creation, modification and perpetuation of belief.

People often believe merely what they wish to be true, and fortify this stance in their mind, no matter how much it stands in direct opposition to their experiential life. Belief, as a component of the human mind, is true speculation when assumptions cannot be verified and logically reconciled to the external world.

The relationship between belief and knowledge is subtle. Believers in a claim typically say that they know that claim. For instance, those who believe that the Sun is a god will often report that they know that the Sun is a god. However, the terms belief and knowledge are used differently by philosophers.

Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge and belief. A primary problem for epistemology is 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 justification 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 flat. Similarly, a truth that nobody believes is not knowledge, because in order to be knowledge, there must be some person who knows it.