Having discussed the definitions of belief and common misconceptions previously I felt it would be good to cover belief in a little more detail, namely how belief and non-belief inform actions. If you remember our short on belief, it was defined like this: Something accepted as true. Something thought most likely. A positive attitude towards…
I’ve had the “Burden of Proof” discussion many times recently, and a lot of it comes down to semantic issues with definitions of claim & belief, as well as the logic around propositions.
I hope to clear up some of the confusion with this article.
“Nonbelief is a belief? Who knew…” – an often said sarcastic comment by many fellow atheists as a retort to theists calling atheism a religion or belief system. Whilst I agree atheism is not a religion, and that it is a polysemous word which has moved from the classical disbelief in the existence of gods…
Unbelief (or non-belief) and disbelief are two words that seem to be conflated by many folks on the internet. I’m not sure if this is down to a misunderstanding of their definitions, or just due to how they are quite similar words. I’ve recently written a few articles that are worth reading before this article,…
Read More “Unbelief and Disbelief – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms – Volume 6” »
When people say “I don’t believe” it is unclear what they are saying. When many folks say this, they are discussing a psychological state rather than disbelief in a normative logical sense. But what does that mean? Logic and Belief Propositions By belief proposition, I am essentially saying believing a proposition to be true, or…
Read More “I Don’t Believe – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms – Volume 5” »
