• Belief

    Date: 2009.10.06 | Category: Glossary, Unit SSK12 | Tags:

    Glossary
    Unit: SSK12
    Week: 1-5 (in Week 6)
    Date: 06 October 2009

    Word: belief n.
    Context: Essay preparation: “Using the concept of a ‘world view’, identify some of the beliefs and attitudes….”
    Definition: The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (2000) begins its definition of belief as the “acknowledgement that a proposition is true… in the absence of demonstrable proof as required by scientific method. Belief is often religious, as in belief in God, miracles or other supernatural phenomena”. It continues by saying that “belief can be a stage in the genesis of a particular piece of knowledge, where belief has waited for a methodology of adequate sophistication to valorize it as knowledge (i.e. many hypotheses can be classified as beliefs prior to proof)”. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (2009) expands on the above statement by explaining that “[m]any discussions in the theory of knowledge take belief rather than knowledge as their starting-point. It is generally thought that belief is inherently relational and thus needs an object…. The object of belief has been variously understood to be an actual or possible sensory state, a state of affairs, or a proposition”.
    Word in Use: It is the belief of the Christian that Jesus Christ is the Jewish messiah. It is the belief of the Orthodox Jew that he is not.

    Bullock, A. and S. Trombley. eds. 2000. The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. 3rd ed. London: Harper Collins.

    Bunnin, N. and J. Yu. eds. 2009. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.