belief versus proposition
It is perhaps a caricature of analytic philosophy that an analytic philosopher takes it for granted that beliefs are merely propositions that are held to be true. They use belief as a type of shortcut or shorthand for a whole world of formally logical pain.
It is the analytic philosopher’s job to nut out that solution space. The problem space is that we are not careful enough thinkers. And hindsight is best place to mansplain our concerns.
There is a worthy hope here perhaps, to make the world a better place, maybe, by thinking better. Of course their first misstep is their use of the word belief.
In this environment of carefully constructed mechanical engineering, elements to be used include:
true beliefs
false beliefs, which can give rise to further elucidations
false consciousness
ideology
stupidity
cupidity
luxury beliefs (recent version in neo-Veblenism)
aliefs —which are not held as true, nor as false, nor imbetween, one acts as if they are true, even as one “knows” them to be not true. (This coinage depends on the ecology in which belief=proposition that.)
There is a massive elision here between knowing and believing. All perfectly consistent with the initial suppositions used in this tradition and thus caricatured.
“Belief” was originally used in the medieval period to convince warlords or would-be ‘nobility’ in England that this Christianity thing would make them Roman emperors too. At this time belief/believing means ‘holding dear’ not ‘holding that’.
If we take this context and not the later shorthand version, we see that what was important was an act of loyalty.
Compare this emotional commitment to the origins of the Greek dogma in opinion. Belief is often use to translate the Greek term δοκεῖ ‘it seems that’, and you can see how philosophers moving from the Greek texts glossed over the loyalty inherent in the medieval term belief/believing which means to ‘hold dear’.
Loyalty in feudal realities were based on relationships with more powerful warriors and slavers. Ancient city-life and it’s marketplace of opinions ‘it seems that’ are not welcomed in an army camp.
One ‘holds dear’ (believe is a form of be-loved) not because they are true propositions, but because more powerful people see your beliefs as a type of mental uniform, and can work out which side you are on. Loyalty structured the medieval world, not opinions. This is how ‘it seems that’ comes to mean dogma. An order you must follow.
The English word belief is an outcome of this non-philosophical process.
Centuries later this remains in thought, but the loyalty has been subsumed into a consistency based on logical mechanical hindsights, and no longer is the sought-for consistency based on emotional commitments (to a leader in the guise of professed (held dear) devotee-ist relationship with a sacrificed but risen-again son). As if that could cohere order into society and thus save the world, because it (the world and all in it) would all be obedient to who-ever represented this god.
For centuries, emperors and popes would argue who was best fit to do this job. In Orthodox Christianity the emperor is in charge as that how the Emperor chose his version of Christianity. Roman Catholics are an Orthodoxy gone rogue.
Warlords find the idea of obedience very attractive. Loyalty is a means of achieving obedience. Obedient meat-waves are a means of achieving control of the world. The world, like the self, is mostly in our heads, so that where beliefs operate. Otherwise no one will march anywhere.
If a warlord knows what you hold dear he can control your actions, might as well get all those loyal subjects working to the same script. The uniformity makes it easier to manage ‘things’. Monotheism is merely rearranging things so we all used the same mental railway gauge, so we can get the trains to run on time towards the next battlefront. Monotheism is a technology of empire.
Analytic philosophers take the idea of the same script, and see that as the basis for explaining or managing true beliefs about reality. It replaces obedience as a practical implement of power, with some notion of explaining what on earth is going on.
Regardless, I do not think that word belief means what you think it means.
No wonder we have laws of nature. No wonder peeps argue about what is natural in order to make our shared world fit their preferred world. No wonder narcissistic leader see those preferences and fears as an opportunity, that’s why psychopaths are more concerned about loyalty than truth, for them truth is just a shibboleth to test who should be hurt first for disloyalty.
The medieval world is as close to us as the psychopath, as the narcissist that walks by us in the street, that we have built.