It's a dispositional mental state. Part of the dispositions that characterize the mental state might be to have certain emotions in certain contexts, but don't confuse the cause and the effect. Saying that belief is a positive emotion in social contexts is like...
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If you're endorsing an emotivist theory of moral beliefs but not factual beliefs, that's a respectable position, but it's got some noteworthy problems. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/ …
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It's a little different than that. Basically, I observe some phenomena and I'm trying to name them. One of them is people saying they "believe" things, and acting based on those "beliefs", without them understanding the things at all.
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Hm, what makes you confident that those people do not really “understand” what they claim to believe?
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Because often it's just nonsense. "God is omnipotent". What the hell does that mean? Can God create a rock He can't lift? It's an incoherent word and concept.
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Sure, that’s kind of an extreme example though. What about something like “No human being is illegal”? Do you see that as also nonsensical? I feel like it is a real attempt to express an important idea?
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I mean, does that mean that we shouldn't use the word "illegal" to describe people colloquially? Or that laws don't proscribe the existence of individual humans? Or something else? Do they even know which it means, or think about it?
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Good question! My guess would be that different people who say that slogan probably all have somewhat different meanings in mind?
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Yeah, this is an interesting question. There's a huge literature on it in philosophy, but I only know a little of it. Does belief require understanding? It seems like the answer is no. I can believe that E=mc^2 even if I know nothing of physics.
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