2. Believing

Consider what counts as believing -
What set of circumstances must be the case for it to be the case that Jones believes that it is raining in Newcastle?

(a) Assuming that we do all have effectively equivalent concepts of believing, we should all be able to agree:

i) whether Jones is doing anything deliberately (and, if so, what) -
ii) whether there is any entity (a belief) which Jones has (or `partakes of') -
iii) as to what states of affairs we are denying when we assert that Jones believes it is raining -
iv) as to what counts for us as Jones believing and what (for us) renders Jones's belief true or false -
v) whether it is necessary for Jones to know that he believes that it is raining.

It seems likely, however, that immediate consensus on these questions would not be forthcoming - so we shall examine them in order, after clearing away some possible sources of confusion.

(b) A simple (but quite correct) answer to the question `What must be the case for there to be a believing?' is:

i) There must be an individual who believes - and
ii) There must be an (intelligible to that individual) object of belief i.e. a possible state of affairs.

A belief is (necessarily) somebody's belief that a possibility is an actuality. Thus, nobody can hold a belief (that X is so) without a clear conceptual understanding (in terms of possible experience) of what counts as X being so and what counts as X being not so. I can neither believe nor disbelieve that last Wednesday is having its breakfast.

(c) To say `Jones believes it is raining' (when he is opening his umbrella) is to assert that something is going on now. But to say `Jones believes his grandfather was Irish' is not to assert that anything is going on now. It could be a true assertion even if Jones had not thought about his grandfather all day.

Here we are looking at what are called `occurrent' and `dispositional' uses of `believe' . We are speaking occurrently when we refer to a present event - e.g. `He is riding a bicycle' . We are speaking dispositionally when we say `He can ride a bicycle'; the implication being that if he were to mount a bicycle he would ride it successfully.And to assert that Jones believes that his grandfather was Irish is to assert that if you asked Jones `What nationality was your grandfather?' he would reply `Irish' .

There are two important points about the disposition/occurrence relationship:

i) that to assert a disposition is to imply that there have been (and possibly will be again) occurrences - and
ii) that a dispositional claim about X (e.g. that X can swim or does remember where he was born) must, in some sense, be a statement about X now.

We shall return to these - for the present the point to be aware of is that `Jones believes' may be used occurrently or dispositionally. From here on we shall assume the occurrent usage (unless stated otherwise).

3. Is believing doing anything?
(a) Think of learning as becoming aware that something is so. We can decide to study - but, plainly, we cannot decide to learn that X is Y. If we do not already know that X is Y, we cannot know what it is we are deciding to learn; if we do already know it, we cannot learn it.

So - whereas I can set out deliberately to discover what is the case (e.g. go next door to see if the light is on), I cannot deliberately discover that the light is on (it may not be). However much I may want it to be on, if, on entering the room, I find that it is off (i.e. find myself aware that it is off), I cannot deliberately cease to be aware of this fact.

Now note that believing that X is so (from the viewpoint of the believer) simply is being aware that X is so.
Here note also that `being aware' is normally dispositional; the `occurrent believing' is becoming aware - i.e. learning.

(b) It should be plain that believing is totally involuntary - we simply find ourselves believing as we do, whether we would wish to or not. Confronted with a calamity, people might say `I just don't (or won't) believe it!' But they do - they cannot help themselves.

Since our sense of well-being , or happiness, is governed, not by what is the case, but by what we believe to be the case, if we could believe things deliberately (voluntarily) we would all live in fools paradises (Indeed, we would really be fools not to).

We hear people say things like: `I did tell him, but he chose not to believe me.' But this cannot be true; what may be true is that he did not find himself believing what he was told, or that he did believe it but pretended not to.

We shall consider pretending later. We can choose to pretend. But here think about choosing. Choice is a very difficult concept which we shall examine when we turn to Ethics - but I think we can, at this stage, allow that it involves the selection, as preferable, of one of a number of options in the light of what is believed by the chooser. Our beliefs govern our choices; our choices reflect our beliefs. So it plainly could not be the case that we choose to believe as we do.

(c) Believing, then, is not doing anything in a deliberate (or voluntary) way - as e.g. fighting or playing cards or promising is. We might say that our beliefs are `thrust upon us'; by our observations and our reasonings. They are not so much something we do as they are something done to us.

Yet, plainly, if Jones believes that it is raining, Jones is doing something. There must be a difference (in Jones) between the situations where he does and doesn't believe this - or what are we talking about! But all that he is doing is reacting (according to his make-up and conditioning) to his environment as he perceives it.

Here compare the way that a piece of sodium reacts when dropped into water. It is certainly doing something - rushing around fizzing - but we would be more inclined to think of it as the water doing it to the sodium. What forms Jones's reactions take, we shall consider presently. But it should be plain that, in a very important way, the reactions are the believing; they are the only kind of `doing' involved.

4. Are there any beliefs? If there is not a (deliberate) `doing', is there a `having'?

(a) In our language we have to use nouns and verbs - and we think of nouns as `thing words' and verbs as `doing words' . This can be misleading. Because we can (intelligibly) say, `The dropping of the brick caused a commotion' or `The dispute distressed the members present' we tend to assume that droppings and disputes are things in the same way as bricks and members are. But, whereas the brick is just a brick, a dropping can only be an action of a brick (or something like a brick) and a dispute can only be a (joint) action of members (or something like members) - Here consider "logical categories' again.

Similarly, there are no beliefs waiting around to be `embraced'; believing is (some kind of) performance by individual people and other animals.

We may speak of the belief that the world is flat - but to do so is only to refer to:

i) the possibility that the world is flat (Note that it is thinkable; millions of people have thought it) - and
ii) the fact that some people do (or did) accept this possibility as an actuality.

(b) We are also inclined to speak of belief in and to say `I believe you'. But to believe can only be to believe that X is Y (that some state of affairs pertains).

To `believe in Santa Claus' is to believe that an old gentleman with a white beard comes once a year .... etc. etc. Note that, if this were not so, there would be no specification of what is believed.

And to say `I believe you' is to say `I believe that what you say is true!' (e.g. that the window is broken or whatever has been claimed).

This is not so trifling a point as it may seem. Once it is understood, we realise how cautious we must be about such claims as `I believe in democracy - ... in God - ... in Fate'. Unless the person making such claims can explain that he believes that some (intelligible) catalogue of states of affairs pertains (which, for him, counts as democracy being practiced, God existing, fate functioning - then this assertion is quite vacuous.

(c) We do not want to outlaw the term `belief' - this would be silly and inconvenient. But we must realise that there are beliefs only in the sense that there are anxieties or preferences or hopes (when people are anxious or hopeful or prefer one thing to another). A belief can only be somebody's believing that a particular possibility is an actuality.

To understand this is to avoid asking `What is the belief that ....?' and to ask instead `What counts as Jones believing that...?'

5.No assertion has any significance unless it distinguishes one possible state of affairs from another possible state of affairs. [Here note the vacuousness of tautology]. Thus, an important part of what is being asserted is what is being denied. I could not understand the claim `He is healthy' unless I know what counts as being not healthy.

So let's consider what is being denied by `Jones believes that it is raining':

(a) First look at `Jones believes that it is not raining'. Plainly this is being denied; he cannot both believe that X and disbelieve that X.

But -`Jones does not believe that it is raining' does not imply `Jones believes that it is not raining' . All that it asserts is that it is not the case that Jones does believe that it is raining.

Here it is useful to examine a distinction (which you would certainly encounter if you chose to study formal logic) between contrary and contradictory relationships. Put very simply: if X and Y are contrary, it cannot be the case that both are so; if X is so Y cannot be, and vice-versa. But both could be not so. For example - if this paper is all green it cannot be the case that this paper is all red - but it may be all white, in which case both `It is all green' and `It is all red' are false claims. `All red' and `all green' are incompatible, but not exhaustive. If X and Y are contradictory then, if X is so, Y is not so - and if Y is so, X is not so. One, and only one, must be the case. If this paper is all red then it cannot be the case that this paper is not all red - and if it is not the case that this paper is not all red then it must be the case that this paper is all red.

Now it should be plain that `Jones believes that it is raining' and `Jones believes that it is not raining (disbelieves that it is raining!)' are contrary.

It should also be apparent that a disbelief is a belief - that a contrary situation pertains.

But Jones may be not believing anything at all (about the rain). Here we have the contradictory situation: either he does believe or he doesn't (one, and only one, must be the case).

If it is not the case that Jones believes (or disbelieves) that it is raining - then either -
i) Jones is simply not contemplating the question at all - or
ii) Jones is unsure whether or not it is raining

So that: Granted that Jones is contemplating the possibility of it raining - either Jones believes (that it is raining or that it isn't) or Jones doubts whether it is raining. If he is believing (or disbelieving) it he cannot be doubting it - and if he is doubting it, he cannot be believing (or disbelieving) it.

(b) To believe is, quite simply, to be certain. Therefore, to doubt is, equally simply, to be aware of the question but uncertain of the answer.

Look at the concept of certainty (certain-ness) -
i) Firstly, there is some risk of confusion because we commonly say both:
a. If Jones is married then it is certain that Jones has a spouse and
b. Jones is certain that he is married.
In a. `certain' signifies logical necessity; the claim (rightly or wrongly) is that there is a logical inter-relationship between the concepts.

In b. `certain' signifies a psychological compulsion (of Jones) to accept that he has a wife; he finds that he cannot doubt it.

It is safer, for our purposes, to avoid the first use of `certain' , to use the term `necessary' whenever it is a logical implication that is being asserted, and to use `certain' exclusively for the psychological condition of a person who is sure about something.

ii) It should be quite clear that `Jones believes that it is raining' may be a true assertion whether or not it is raining. The claim is about a condition of Jones, not about a condition of the weather.
To be certain that X is simply not to doubt that X. To be certain that X is so when X is in fact not so - is to make an error (which we all do at times). Being certain (believing) is a precondition of `getting it right' or `getting it wrong' . In the absence of certainty (doubting) there is nothing to get right or wrong. (I can neither win nor lose the race if I didn't enter it!)

iii) There are no degrees of certainty - or of doubt - we can no more be a little bit certain than we can be a little bit pregnant. Any doubt (vis-a-vis X) is doubt - and where there is doubt there cannot be belief. There are no half-way houses ! It is plainly unthinkable that one certainness can be less certain than another certainness. And it must, therefore, be equally unthinkable (though it may not at first seem so) that one doubt can be a bigger doubt than another doubt. [This is a quite crucial point so make sure you have grasped it. Failure to do so can be the source of endless subsequent confusion].

iv) The difficulty people have with accepting that there cannot be degrees of certainty or of doubt arises from the fact that it is quite natural (and understandable) to say in appropriate situations:

i) `I am almost certain that he is coming' (definitely meaning more than `I doubt whether he is coming' and less than `He is coming )' - or

ii) I have some slight doubt that .... (which could be regarded as the reverse way of saying `I am almost certain - but not quite' .

Now, whenever expressions are used and understood there must be some situation which they refer to. It is vital, therefore, that we can give an analysis of these expressions (the concepts they are expressions of) in a way which does not imply the absurdity of degrees of certainness.

v.) The puzzle is, I believe, fairly easily resolved by an examination of the concept of almostness.
We use the term `almost' only when we are dealing with `differences of kind' , not `of degree' . We would not (normally) say `almost big' , `almost hot', `almost high' - though we would say `almost big, hot, high enough' when there is a specific size, heat, height which we regard as minimally adequate for our purpose. And being l0 ft high is an `absolute' ; either X is l0 ft high or it isn't. We most commonly use `almost' as in `almost there' (when we are travelling), `almost boiling' (when water is being heated), `the door is almost closed' . Being in a particular place, actually boiling, being closed - are all plainly either/or situations (absolutes, not relatives ). What they have in common is that we assume from our experience that a particular kind of progression of change will culminate in the conditions in question. As we travel we get nearer and nearer to where we are going until we are there; the water gets hotter and hotter until it boils; the door pivots on its hinges until it is closed. We are not, therefore, suggesting degrees of position, boiling or closedness; simply degrees of distance, heat or angle.

Here it is worth noting that we would not say `the door is almost open' , unless we were struggling to open it. Here a progression (of our activity) would be involved. And we might say that somebody is almost dead if he is getting feebler and feebler in a way predicted to culminate in death. But if somebody stepped off the curb and was run over and killed, we would not say that he was almost dead when he stepped off the curb.

So - almostness involves a predictable progression towards an `absolute' state . The question, therefore, is: What kind of progression culminates predictably in the state of being certain that X is so? The implication of the question is that Jones might become certain, in a progressive way, that X is so - and indeed he might.

What counts as X (for Jones) is a particular set of circumstances (the analysis of his concept of X-ness). Let us call these a.b.c.d. and e. When Jones is certain that a. is so, b. is so, c. is so and d. is so, but doubts whether e. is so, he is not certain that X is so (since it must, for him, be an e to be an X) but he might well say that he is almost certain that X is so.

For those who don't like a's and b's and X's - Let's say that Jones is certain:

a. that his wife is out
b. that she intended to be home for lunch
c. that it is nearly lunch-time
d. that a car is stopping by the house

but is not certain (he can hear it but not see it) that it is her car - then Jones might well feel `almost certain' that his wife has come home. But the `almost' is simply wrongly-attached; what Jones should say is that he is certain (no ifs or buts) that almost all the conditions which count for him as his wife having come home are so. He is not almost certain; he is certain of almost .

Now think back to the discussion of probability. You should realise that the analysis given here is exactly parallel with the analysis of being X% probable. Thus, what we call being almost certain that X is so is, in fact, being certain that there is a very high probability that X is so.

6. Our next question was: What renders Jones's belief true or false?
- What is a belief about and how does it relate to what it is about?

(a) The first thing to note is that the assertion "Jones believes that it is raining" is about Jones; it is not about the weather. In examining any assertion we must distinguish what something is being asserted about from what is being asserted about it. `The car is red' is about the car; it is attributing redness to it. To ascertain the truth or otherwise of the assertion `Jones believes that it is raining', we must examine Jones. Whether or not it is raining is irrelevant to the truth of the assertion. Jones could believe it is raining when it is not (be mistaken) or have no view on the matter at all when it is raining.

To assert that somebody believes that X cannot be to assert that X is so. We are saying that Jones is certain that it is raining but somebody's being certain that something is so cannot make it so. If it could, nobody could ever make a mistake, since being certain is a precondition for being right or being wrong. So long as I doubt whether X is so or not, I cannot be right or wrong about X.
A belief is somebody's being certain that some possibility is an actuality but any belief could be false - simply because the object of that belief is (must be) a possibility. It is worth noting that, if being certain and being right felt different in any way from being certain and being wrong, then that felt difference would inhibit the belief and we never could be wrong.

(b) There is plainly a difference, however, between examining a car to see if it is red and examining a person to see if he is certain that it is raining.

We talk of being certain, or feeling certain, but these do not seem to be examinable (observable) conditions. Yet they must be - or what are we saying, what are we distinguishing from what, when we assert that Jones does, or does not, believe that it is raining? And the fact is that we do observe that people believe things. So, let's allow that being certain must be some observable condition - but it is more like e.g. being angry than it is like being tall. We might say that what is observable is what we are doing rather than how we are.

Consider how we know (observe) that people are angry - by their facial expressions, bodily movements, utterances, their whole demeanour . If I see a red-faced, scowling man swearing and kicking a flat tyre, I thereby observe his anger and, indeed, what it is that he is angry about. Now, I might say `He is scowling and kicking the tyre because he is angry'. But there is nothing distinct from and prior to these (and similar) performances which is his anger and which somehow `makes him' behave in this way. His being angry just is his behaving in this way. So, I am not observing the outcome of his anger; I am observing an angry man.

And so is he - himself. He discovers he is angry by observing how he is reacting; he does not `feel angry' in some secret and undetectable way and decide therefore to behave like this. He might, for instance, after a flat-tyre episode wonder why, on this occasion, he was not angry. What he is wondering is why he did not find himself reacting in an angry way.

Now, I suggest that we discover that other people believe things in exactly the same way - by observing their behaviour (including, of course, their utterances). And I suggest, further, that people discover what they themselves believe only by observing their own behaviour.

There are, of course, situations in which how we discover something and what that something is are quite distinct. I could, for instance, discover that there is a lot of pollen in the air because everybody is sneezing. Here I am making an inference from one (independently conceivable) situation to another, and assuming a causal connection between them. We shall be examining causal connections in detail later on.

But when I observe that somebody believes something (even if that somebody is myself) there are not two independently conceivable situations. The behaviour pattern is there to be observed - but that is all that is there to be observed. We cannot, therefore, say (sensibly) that the behaviour pattern is an indication of the belief (as we might say that the sneezing is an indication of the pollen); we surely must say that the behaviour pattern is the belief. It might sound .a little less strange to say that the behaviour is the manifestation of the belief - but how is that different from saying simply that the behaviour is the belief?

(c) Two things should be born in mind here:

i) that believing is not a one-at-a-time kind of activity - it is simply an acceptance as actual of that total mass of possibilities which we do, at any time, accept as actual - whatever we `take for granted'. We are not normally conscious of our believings as such (why should we be?); we are conscious of those states of affairs we believe to pertain - and
ii) that believing that X is so simply is contemplating the possibility that X is so without doubting that X is so.

People tend to think of believings as a series of discrete cogitations, careful weighing of pros and cons until a state of certainty is reached. But if we are certain we have no need to cogitate. Such cogitation implies doubt. Believing is just what we normally do all the time - it is going confidently about our business. My walking to the door, opening it and walking through it, is my belief that there is a doorway there and that I am capable of leaving the room by those actions. As soon as I start to think about my belief rather than about walking through the doorway, I might wonder whether it really is a door or whether it will in fact open when I turn the knob. [Plainly, it is possible that it won't, or isn't]. And at that stage I am doubting (and thereby not believing) and doubting behaviour' is generally quite easy to observe. A man who is not sure that he can open the door will possibly go and turn the knob a few times and push the door to and fro to reassure himself -often with an anxious look on his face. To observe believing (confident behaviour) is just to observe normal behaviour - i.e. the absence of doubt - behaviour which assumes the actuality of the particular possibility in question.

A major problem is that people tend to think of doubting as a failure to believe (which, of course, it is) when they should think rather of believing as a failure to doubt. It is doubting that we notice; we could say that believing is simply what is left when we have done our doubting - so long as this does not suggest that we can believe that X is so only after we have doubted that X is so and resolved our doubts. It is safer to say that believing X is simply contemplating X without displaying any doubt-behaviour as to X's being so, recognising that the X in question is everything that we are aware of (occurrently or dispositionally) at any given time.

I am here uncomfortably conscious that the question I claimed to be addressing was `What renders Jones's belief true or false?' and I have in fact been discussing what we are actually talking about, in terms of observable (thinkables - possibilities) when we assert that somebody believes something.

But, in the process, I have, I believe (!), shown what makes a belief right or wrong. Since believing that X is so just is displaying total confidence that X is so.- that belief is right when X is so and wrong when X is not so. The only extra point that needs to be noted carefully here is that being so is being wholly so. If I believe that a red-line taxi is a blue-line taxi then that belief is wrong. My subsidiary belief that it is a taxi is right and my subsidiary belief that it is blue-line is wrong. Whether a belief is right or wrong is governed by what is believed. This may seem a trifling point but it becomes, in certain contexts, very important.



7. Turning now to the question: Must Jones be aware that he believes that X in order for it to be the case that Jones believes X? - It should be obvious that logically there is no such requirement (and `must' is essentially a logical notion - necessity), however improbable it may seem that Jones both believes that X and believes that he believes that not-X (or doubts that X).

(a) What anyone believes must be that a particular possibility is an actuality. Whether or not Jones believes that X is so is itself a possibility; he may believe it or he may not. If I believe, from my observations of Jones, that he believes that it is raining (he is putting up his umbrella prior to going out) then I could be wrong (he may be simply testing the umbrella). My belief is that Jones is reacting to a particular perceived environment in a particular way by that behaviour when, in fact he is reacting to a different perceived environment (a new brolly that needs checking out). Plainly we can and do make mistakes about what people believe, just as we can about any other possibility.

(b) To believe is (normally) to be confident about a particular (external) state of affairs. It does not involve thinking about believing. My dog believes many things - that it is mealtime, that he is being threatened by the dog next-door..... - but I don't suppose he ever thinks about this believing!

When we do think about our own believings (generally when we are doing philosophy) we are introspecting. The object of our belief is then our reaction to some external circumstance and we could be mistaken about this - notwithstanding that the reaction in question is our own. We are, of course, less likely to be mistaken about our own beliefs than about other people's beliefs because we have a constant access to the whole of our own bodily reactions and only limited access to those of other people - but both situations are equally possible. A mother might, for instance, believe that she believes her son is much too sensible to get mixed up in anything antisocial - even as she checks out his room for any signs of drug use.


(c) The answer to the question, then is no because:


i) we might believe that X is so without entertaining any belief about that belief at all. Indeed, if believing that I believe X were a precondition for believing X, then believing that I believe that I believe X would be a precondition for that belief - and so on in an infinite regress!
ii) Even where a belief is entertained about one's own belief (about some external circumstance) the rightness or wrongness of that belief is governed quite independently of the rightness or wrongness of the belief it is about. They are two different beliefs and either could be right or wrong.

This is important because it underlines the point that to talk of somebody believing something is not to talk of some mysterious self-illuminating psychic state or spiritual intention; it is to talk of those observable, behavioural reactions by which we judge that people (including ourselves) do believe that certain states of affairs pertain - on those occasions when we do turn our attention to thinking about thinking.



8. This treatment of believing simply as reacting behaviourally does present one prima-facie problem that should be addressed. It becomes necessary to make a distinction between dinkum behavioural reactions and simulated behavioural reactions - and to make it in terms that do not invoke mysterious causes of the behaviour - to explain how people can (and they can) pretend to believe things they do not believe.

(a) Consider the concept of pretending - behaving in a way calculated to make other people believe something be the case which you (the pretender) do not believe to be the case. Consider somebody pretending to be the gas-man so that he can rob a house - or pretending that it is fine when he believes that it is raining. In its simplest form it is telling lies (and telling is, of course, behaviour).

Here note that pretending is governed by what we believe - a discrepancy between what we do believe and what we are behaving as if we believe. It is not governed by what is the case; if the man who pretended it was fine (when he believed it to be raining) were in fact mistaken (it really is fine - but he does not know this) he still is pretending. He is overtly behaving in a way at variance with his belief.

But if, as stated, the belief just is the behaviour - how can this be?

(b) Whereas, as agreed earlier, believing cannot be voluntary (we cannot choose to believe that X is so), pretending is voluntary; if I pretend, I must choose to do so.

What we are looking at, therefore, is a distinction between reactive and deliberate behaviour. The pretender is deliberately controlling that part of his behaviour which is observable by the people he wishes to deceive - and in a pattern which is in direct conflict with the reactive behaviour of which he himself is conscious because (as mentioned earlier - 7(b) above) he is in constant direct contact with the whole of his own behaviour - including such behaviours as those we call goose pimples and butterflies in the stomach. In the light of this, consider what counts as somebody pretending that he is not afraid of the dog which is barring his way. He puts on a show of confidence that it will not bite him whilst his whole felt state of bodily change (which is all behaviour is) typifies doubt behaviour. It is his own awareness of this conflict which constitutes his pretense.

Think also of pretending to be angry with children - to discourage them from doing again something that probably you really found quite amusing. This just is pretending that you believe that what they have done is wicked when you do not believe this at all. But here note that the simulated anger must be kept well in control. If it becomes too convincing, there is a danger that it will cease to be simulated and that you will discover that you really are angry - that the genuine reactive behaviour has come into line with the simulated.

(c) This leads well into the consideration of a distinction between belief and faith - two quite different concepts which are all-too-frequently confused.

We might say that to show faith that X is so is to pretend to believe that X is so (where one in fact finds oneself doubting that X is so) in the hope that the simulated behaviour might lead to finding oneself actually believing that X is so.

Here it is useful to consider the concepts of believing, hoping and wishing. Believing is being certain. Wishing is preferring a possible situation which we believe not to exist to the situation which we believe to exist. We do not wish for things that we believe to be so. Hoping implies doubt; when we see that which we would wish for as having some significant degree of probability, we hope that it is so. Thus I can wish that I were rich without doing anything at all about it. But if I have bought a lottery ticket, I can hope that I will become rich.

Now, there are many situations where we find ourselves (inevitably) doubting whether X is so or not because we are aware of the set of conditions which would count for us as X being so, and are also aware that some of those conditions are simply not `available for checking' - yet we also hope very strongly that X is so. These are the circumstances in which we might show faith that X is so - i.e. act as if we believe it when we in fact doubt it.

Consider, for example, an employer who has had money stolen from the office and is asked whether it might be an inside job. He knows that one of his staff could have stolen it and (literally) cannot be certain that his staff are all innocent. Equally he cannot be certain that they are not. He hopes very much that they are innocent and so he shows faith that they are. Thus faith implies doubt - but not deception.

It should be noted that, if the employer discovers that the stolen money has been deposited by his clerk into his (the clerk's) personal account - and no longer doubts that the clerk is guilty - but continues to behave as if he believes he is innocent, then he is no longer showing faith, he is simply pretending.

Faith is frequently associated with religious ideology. This is not surprising since what would count as religious assertions being true or false is so often necessarily `inaccessible for checking'. Consider, for instance, the notion of life after death. A continuity of awareness of one's own person which includes a memory of the experience we think of as dying seems intelligible (it is the kind of thing which can be portrayed - e.g. in a film) yet no circumstance could establish that it is or isn't so. Therefore people who hope that it is so tend to show faith that it is so - i.e. to indulge in appropriate religious practices.

The crucial point to grasp is that - there is such a thing as faith, but it is not believing. Believing is being certain; faith implies doubting.



9. Finally, there is one minor point that should be mentioned - the eccentric use of the expression `I believe that .....'. (Note e.g. that `I believe' in 6d, above).

(a) If I say `He believes that X is so' or `I believed that X is so' I do imply that he is (or I was) certain that X is so.

But if I say `I believe that X is so' I (paradoxically) imply that I doubt X is so, that I consider X to be quite probable but I am not certain that it is so.

(b) I suggest that this is simply because there is no orthodox use for `I believe' (the first person present indicative) in communication. We do not inform people about our states of mind; we inform them about states of affairs. If I do believe the pub is just round the corner I say simply `The pub is just round the corner'. Since the expression `I believe' is, as it were, floating loose, language has found a use for it.

(c) This is worth pointing out, since that regular (paradoxical) usage is one of the sources of the common misunderstanding that believing is somehow less than being certain.