The semantics of belief — Usage

A survey of usage of the word “believe”.

Definitions of “belief”

We have seen that atheism is defined as a belief (that there is no such thing as a deity) by some dictionaries, but as a lack of belief (in any god or deity) by others. So much for lexical authority as an arbiter in metaphysical debate. The next word requiring investigation is, clearly, the word “belief” itself.

So, what is a belief? I will not trawl the dictionaries again; it is clear that they are of limited use here. Abstractions are dangerous things, intellectually; so I define belief quite simply as “an instance of believing” and then I simply look at how the verb believe is used. So let us do that now.

  1. In common usage, believe simply means “accept as true”. This is the fundamental meaning given in the dictionaries. In essence, it applies only to propositions.
  2. The word believe is also often applied, however, to a person or thing as object. To believe a person means to accept as true what the person says or has written. To believe a thing means to accept whatever information the thing presents, which can be in writing or image, in print or display. Examples:
    “I believe you!”
    “The newspapers said she had lied, and you believed it?!”
    “You cannot always believe what you read on the internet.”
    “This thermometer says it is below freezing here, but I don’t believe it.”
    All of these are really showing transferrence of the verb meaning from the proposition to the person or thing conveying the proposition. For example, for the purpose of this discussion, any person named simply refers to something that person has said or written; and the reading on a thermometer merely represents the proposition “The temperature here is T degrees.” (for some numerical value T, in the temperature scale in which the instrument is marked or calibrated).
    The difference is purely literary, not philosophical. We can, therefore, set on one side all cases of this kind of usage.
  3. The phrasal verb believe in means “believe that the person or thing
    1. exists (”Do you believe in fairies?“) or
    2. is good, trustworthy or reliable, capable, or generally destined for success of some kind (”I believe in you, George! You’ve just got to believe in yourself!“ in any of those redemption-theme weepie movies certain people love so much.)
    These usages are to be treated as variants of whatever statement referring to believing the relevant proposition. Thus "Do you believe in God?" is to be treated as a literary variation of "Do you believe the proposition that God exists?" whereas "Do you believe in me, George?" is to be treated as a literary variation of some domestic plea for moral support such as "Do you believe [the proposition] that I can succeed [in some enterprise]?" — the interpolations marked thus [] being mine for the purpose of making this referral back (and, thereby, dismissal) perfectly explicit.
  4. Finally, we come to the more specific meanings, which vary greatly in force but are the best illustrations of the gradations of that force from the slightest to the strongest.
    1. “recollect, if memory serves” as in “I believe you can catch a bus from this stop all the way to the town hall”
    2. “suspect” as in “the police believe the knife found at the scene may be the murder weapon”
    3. “entertain a (scientific) theory” as in “some scientists believe the common cold virus may have arrived on Earth from space on the surface of meteorites”
    4. “hold a tenet of religion” as in “Many Muslims believe that martyrs will automatically spend eternity in paradise”

Many of these usages are typical of newspapers. However if the same verb, with all thes meanings, is used without qualification in any attempt at a profound philosophical discussion about epistemology (in other words how we know what we know — if anything), only confusion can ever arise because these meanings are so varied.

For example, if a person says “I believe the sun is about 8 billion years old” do they mean this in sense 4a (“I saw it on TV last week, but I wasn’t giving it my full attention”)? Or in sense 4c (“I have been working on determining the age of the sun for several years and this is my preliminary conclusion”)? Or in sense 4d (“the holy scripture of my religion teaches that the age of the sun is ...”)?

The answer to this question is fundamental to progress in any discussion where the word “believe” is used, yet this point is rarely addressed explicitly. It should be, every single time.

© 2004..2006 Ian P. Hudson