Belief and Acceptance: A Logical Point of View

Abstract

The concept of belief seems to crystallise most of the vexed issues of contemporary philosophy, and the numerous and seemlingly unrelated debates around this notion give today the impression of an ubiquitous brownian motion rather than of an even modest progression in some definite direction. Perhaps this feeling simply results of not standing at the right distance, perhaps after the time will have accomplished its cruel work of décantation, it will be possible to get some clearer perspective, and eventually to grasp the genuine problem to which so many solutions had been proposed. But perhaps not so. Perhaps most of the current debate rests on a fundamental equivocation, and there is simply no minimally coherent concept able to play so many roles as today attributed to “belief”: to underly sincere utterances in public languages, to be entertainable by animals and infra-linguals too, to represent, when true or justified, the final aim of science, to be also responsible for overt behavior, articulated with desire according to some pragmatic formula, and so on. If inconsistency is the case, the best thing to do is to divide this unmanageable empire of beliefehood into separate provinces: on one hand belief stricto sensu (if one dare say), and various non-credal attitudes on the other hand.