A Model of Belief
Posted by Jeffrey EllisApr 13
I would like to retract this post, wherein I attempted to distinguish between faith-based belief and critical thinking-based belief. In retrospect I chose my words poorly and I’d like to try over, plus add a bit more. In fact, this may end up being a model, rather than a definition, of belief, similar to my model of critical thinking.
So, here goes…
(1) A belief is a conviction that something is true. A belief need not be absolute, but can involve uncertainty. You can believe something provisionally, you can be 75% confident that something is true, and so on.
(2) A faith-based belief is a belief in something for which there is no proof. Faith need not refer to a belief in God, either; one can believe in any number of things for which there is no proof (the tooth fairy, Santa Clause, ghosts, etc.).
(3) A critical thinking-based belief is a belief that is arrived at by applying sound critical thinking in evaluating the evidence. A CT-based belief is almost always a provisional belief since a critical thinker only commits to a belief to the extent that the evidence and logic would justify, which is rarely if ever absolute.
This post on Skeptic’s Play discusses the difference between religion and delusion, and has prompted me to add the following definition to my list:
(4) A delusional belief is a belief that is maintained in spite of evidence to the contrary.
From a critical thinking point of view, delusion is obviously far worse than faith. A faith-based belief is not rational, but neither is it strongly irrational, since there is neither proof nor disproof of the thing’s existence. A delusional belief, however, is irrational.
And looking at my definition of a CT-based belief, it appears there should be a similar one for non-CT based belief:
(5) A bias-based belief is a belief that is arrived at, in large part, due to cognitive biases and logical fallacies. I’m not entirely happy with the label here and reserve the right to change it later.
So, what are the relationships between all these beliefs? I think it would look something like this:
The first thing that should immediately jump out at you is that CT-based belief does not overlap any of the other types of belief. Critical thinking has nothing to do with faith or delusion, and seeks aggressively to avoid all biases and fallacies.
A second note: I suspect that delusional is entirely a subset of bias-based. I’m not sure how it’s possible to hold a delusional belief without cognitive biases and fallacies being at work1. Nevertheless, I may be wrong, so I have drawn them as overlapping sets rather than showing delusional contained entirely within bias-based.
Now let’s examine the overlap areas between the other belief types.
1. Faith-based and bias-based. For example, many people believe in God (faith) due to wishful thinking (a cognitive bias) — they believe in God because the idea that God exists is comforting to them, so they want for God to exist.
2. Bias-based and delusional. For example, those who continue to believe that Obama is not a natural born citizen and hence is ineligible to be the President hold a belief that is both bias-based (a combination of political worldview and wishful thinking) and delusional (believing in something for which there is evidence to the contrary, such as court findings based on review of Obama’s birth certificate).
3. Faith-based and delusional. As I mentioned above, I’m not sure you can hold a delusional belief that is not also bias-based. I certainly can’t come up with an example. I suspect that area #3 (as well as the rest of the delusional bubble outside of bias-based) may be the empty set.
4. Faith-based, bias-based, and delusional. An example would be a strict Creationist, i.e., someone who believes in a literal interpretation of the creation story in the Book of Genesis and disbelieves in evolution. Now, I suppose it is possible for someone to fit my definition here of a strict Creationist without being well aware of the evidence in favor of evolution, and/or based on belief in various pseudo-scientific claims made by the Creationist crowd (see, e.g., the Answers in Genesis and similar websites). In that case the person’s belief is based on cognitive biases and fallacies, and hence is not delusional. I’ll exclude those types of folks from this example. But those folks who are truly deluding themselves fall squarely into area #4.
So there you have it: my initial model of belief types. Feel free to poke holes in this — tell me what I got wrong, what I missed, etc.
= = = = = = = = =
1 Mental illness notwithstanding.
4 comments
Comment by miller on April 13, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I’m inclined towards an even stronger definition of delusion. The word “delusion” really seems to connote a mental disorder (as in psychology) and/or lack of moral responsibility (as in law). I have similar worries about the name “faith-based”, considering how many extraneous connotations there are for “faith”.
However, since you clearly stated your own definitions, I have no real objection. I’m not sure I could have come up with any better words anyways.
So what do we call the region which is not part of any of the circles? Is that the “Now you’re just guessing” region?
Comment by Jeffrey Ellis on April 13, 2009 at 8:26 pm
If you held a belief outside all the circles I’ve shown, I’m not sure what it would be… I (tentatively) think I’ve covered all possible beliefs. If you believed something just because you guessed it, it would be biased, and possibly delusional.
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Comment by Nigel Ray on May 4, 2009 at 10:15 am
I applaud you for rethinking your earlier post, for that shows the sort of open mind you aspire to.
I do think, though, that the word “Faith” is poorly chosen for what you want to investigate here, since it blurs an important distinction. It is possible for people to believe things with no evidence, but in proper Christian theology, that is not what the word “Faith” means. By using the word to mean that, you make it difficult to talk sensibly about religious belief.
Faith is a trust in God. Sometimes, we have incomplete evidence, and we have to make a decision. This is where faith comes in. Because we trust God, we side with him when the evidence is incomplete.
For example, my mother has cancer, and it has been quite a struggle at times over the last eight years. When the process began, I had no empirical evidence that God would use that particular cancer for good, but I knew from experience that God often uses bad circumstances for good ends, and I knew from my studies of the Bible that he promises to do so. So there was some evidence that good would grow out of the evil of my mother’s cancer, but it didn’t seem very conclusive in the face of the event. Faith made enduring much easier, because I trusted God, and so I knew he would keep his promises.
It’s like a friend I have who used to loan me a few bucks for supper some Thursdays. I got paid on Friday, and would often run short of cash on Thursday. The first time I asked him for a loan, he had never loaned me money before. He had some evidence of my trustworthiness, based on my character in other things, but no direct evidence. As time went by the pattern was developed, and he came to have greater and greater faith in my prompt repayment of the borrowed money, but of course we can’t know the future, and he could never be certain that I would repay, no matter my track record.
That’s what Faith is. Not a blind belief in the absence of evidence, but a trusting belief based on character when direct evidence alone is insufficient.