What Is Belief?

This article is part of the ongoing series How Belief Works_, which is best read in order._

We all know what it means to believe something, from the significant, such as the belief that humans are apes, to the mundane, such as the belief that there's no milk in the fridge. Indeed, belief is one of the most basic concepts of human psychology. Yet it's also one of those everyday concepts that can be surprisingly difficult to define, like art or happiness.

Belief is a psychological state involving a claim. In the above examples it's believed that humans are apes and that there's no milk in the fridge.

We usually think of a claim as something expressed by someone, whether it's spoken or written. However, a believed claim hasn't necessarily been expressed by anyone. Upon looking inside the fridge, we can form the belief There's no milk in the fridge without anyone, including ourselves, expressing on this occasion that there's no milk in the fridge.

Also note that the term belief can refer to either the psychological state or the believed claim. That is, it can refer to either believing something or something believed. In the first sense, my belief There's no milk in the fridge is a different thing from someone else's belief, regarding the same fridge, There's no milk in the fridge, given that they're separate psychological states existing in different heads. But in the second sense they’re the same thing: the believed claim There's no milk in the fridge.

So the term mundane belief can refer to either believing a mundane claim or a mundane claim that's believed – and likewise for the term significant belief. Although, we often use the term belief by itself to refer to a significant claim that's believed, whether moral, political, religious, historical, philosophical or scientific. For example, when we refer to defending our beliefs, we're referring to defending particular significant claims we believe.

This series concerns our belief of any kind of claim, however significant or mundane. Other examples of mundane beliefs are my current beliefs that I’m in my flat, that I'm sitting on a chair at my desk, that I'm typing these words, that it's Tuesday morning, that it’s sunny outside, and that I went for a hike along a river yesterday.

But what's the definition of the psychological state of belief? Given that this state involves a claim, one potential definition can seem as obvious as it is simple: considering a claim to be true. But although this definition can seem irrefutable, it's fatally logically flawed – as I’ll explain in the next article, on how beliefs form.

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Next article: How Beliefs Form – Part 1 (forthcoming)

How Belief Works

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