Philosophy For Dummies. Tom Morris

Chapter 4

      Belief, Truth, and Knowledge

      IN THIS CHAPTER

       Man is what he believes.

      — Anton Chekov

      The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach once said, “Man is what he eats.” But you might prefer the Chekov claim just cited. You may be a lot more than what you believe, but that's a good part of who you are. You’d probably rather envision yourself as the sum total of all your most important beliefs than as an enormous collection of cheeseburgers, tacos, and chocolate chip cookies consumed throughout the years. At least, I would.

      In this chapter, some vital questions will be asked about belief, and the connected ideas of truth, and knowledge. Digging into these questions will help you get clear on some of the basic building blocks of philosophical analysis. Some fundamental concepts regarding your basic intellectual connection to the world and yourself are introduced here, along with some very deep inquiries.

Understanding Belief

      There may be nothing more important about you than what you believe. What you value is equally important. But some philosophers think this is just because a value is nothing more than a special sort of belief. When you value something, you believe it is important and worthy of your honor, and commitment, and preservation.

      Your feelings are certainly a vital part of who you are. And so are your desires, attitudes, hopes, and dreams. But they are all either results of your beliefs, or else are in some other way dependent on those beliefs. You desire what you believe to be good or pleasant. You hope for something because you believe it will contribute to your personal happiness or your overall success. Again and again, belief is foundational to who you are.

      Philosophy is often defined as the love of wisdom. At some level, we all seek wisdom for living. No one wants to wander this world as a fool, hobbled by false beliefs and distorted attitudes about important matters, or misled by counterfeit values that can lead to nothing but pain. Because of this, philosophers have always suggested that it is important for you to examine your beliefs. They want you to stop and ask whether your beliefs are really justified. Are they reasonable? Are they actually true? Are they capable of giving good guidance in life? Do you have, among your current beliefs, real and useful knowledge about the world in which you live, as well as about yourself, or are you just stuck with nothing better than mere opinion? These are questions everyone needs to ask, and answer, because too many people often get it wrong, and even backwards, believing things they’ve never examined and becoming passionately defensive about beliefs for which they had no solid evidence at all. As the great essayist Michel de Montaigne once observed, “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.” But that’s a problem, as you can see all around you in the world.

      You may be surprised to hear how many beliefs you actually have. It could be in the millions, and maybe even much more than that. It’s true. You have a great deal many more beliefs than you realize. If this comes as a surprise, the explanation may be quite simple. People sometimes use the word belief to refer to an important conviction, as in these sentences:

You have many important beliefs. But you also hold lots of fairly trivial beliefs as well. For example, you certainly believe that 1 is less than 2, that 2 is less than 3, and so on. You believe you are reading right now. You likely believe that m, n, o, and p are consecutive letters in the English alphabet. You likely even believe that the planet Mercury is not made of cheese, although you’ve probably never even thought of that possibility. But if asked, you’d know exactly what you believe about it. None of these beliefs are convictions that are crucial for the overall living of your life, but they are nonetheless beliefs. Of course, you also believe that you know these things, and lots more. Some beliefs fall short of knowledge; others count as examples of it. For more on the relationship between belief and knowledge, see the section “The complete definition of knowledge,” later in this chapter.

      There are two sides to belief: a subjective side and an objective component. The subjective side is just the mental state of conviction, what’s in your mind, however unconsciously at any given time, when you have a view or opinion or even a felt certainty about how things are, or what is true. For example, you could have as one of your subjective mental states a belief that your friend is burning some cookies he put in the oven. You’ve detected the smell of something burning and you remember he put in cookies 30 minutes ago. So your subjective mental state now includes a belief that they’re burning. Imagine that he doesn’t yet have that belief, as a subjective state in his own mind, because he’s outside on the phone and can’t smell what you have detected. You’re in a subjective state of belief that has no counterpart yet in his own mind, until you call him in and he can see the smoke now coming from the oven. The objective component of your belief is the content of what is believed, a claim or representation about reality that philosophers refer to as a proposition. In philosophy, a proposition isn’t a suggestion, a deal, or a request (as in “I’ve got a business proposition for you”), but it’s the content of a statement or a factual representation or claim about the world, or something in it. When you believe the cookies are burning, you believe this proposition to be true: “The cookies are burning.” And that, like many beliefs, motivates you to take action and shout out to your friend as you move toward finding the oven mitts so you can save the baked goods while they still might be edible. Beliefs motivate actions, emotions, and attitudes.

      Throughout this chapter and this entire book, whenever you come across phrases like “the belief that there is a God,” or “the belief in an objective moral order,” or “the belief in life

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