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Belief and Belief Formation: Insights from Delusions

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Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions

Part of the book series: New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion ((NASR,volume 1))

Abstract

Beliefs are stable mental representations of reality that we accept as true. As such, they play a critical role in shaping our phenomenological experiences and determining the choices and actions we make. Despite their considerable importance, the cognitive nature of belief and the underlying processes involved in forming beliefs have received little formal investigation in their own right. This may be due, in part, to the challenges of operationalising intimately familiar, yet highly complex and distributed cognitive processes. One promising avenue, however, has come from cognitive neuropsychiatry and the investigation into delusions, considered by many as pathological forms of belief. Identifying the nature of the responsible causal pathologies can be used to reveal some of the cognitive processes likely to be present in non-pathological belief formation. In this chapter, we describe a tentative five-stage account of belief formation that accommodates some of the key features of both delusions and belief. We provide evidence for this account and discuss its implications for understanding belief.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Michael H. Connors

  2. Dementia Collaborative Research Centre, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Michael H. Connors

  3. Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Michael H. Connors

  4. School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK

    Peter W. Halligan

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  1. Michael H. Connors
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Correspondence to Michael H. Connors .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Catechetics and Religious Education, Karl-Franzens University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Hans-Ferdinand Angel

  2. Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy

    Lluis Oviedo

  3. Department of Psychology, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, USA

    Raymond F. Paloutzian

  4. Department of Theology, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden

    Anne L.C. Runehov

  5. Department of Neurology, Centre for Neurology and Neuropsychiatry, LVR-Klinikum Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Rüdiger J. Seitz

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Connors, M.H., Halligan, P.W. (2017). Belief and Belief Formation: Insights from Delusions. In: Angel, HF., Oviedo, L., Paloutzian, R., Runehov, A., Seitz, R. (eds) Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion , vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50924-2_11

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