Opinions and Beliefs

Philosophers have long debated the boundary between justified belief and opinion.

As far back as Plato, philosophers have defined knowledge as ‘justified true belief’.

Our desire to believe in things causes humans to often confuse opinion with fact. A modern way to view belief is as if it were the simplest form of mental representation.

Our beliefs are therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought and essential for us to form our own opinions of the world we live in.

We can make a distinction between rules, norms and beliefs as follows:

Rules. These function as a regulator of societal behaviour and are dependent upon the imposing entity’s ability to enforce them, ie, army, police force, schools, local councils, parents, and so on.

Norms. These are regulative mechanisms accepted collectively by society. Norms are enforced by normative mechanisms within society, or an organisation and are not strictly dependent upon law or regulation, ie for example: fashion; acceptable language; uniforms; dress code; political leanings and so on.

Beliefs. These are the determinant factors which are likely to cause a social entity or group to accept rules and norms. For example our collective feeling that racism is a ‘bad thing’ (belief) means that we abide by a law which says that it is illegal to discriminate based on race (rule) and reinforces the idea that it is unacceptable among your community or peers to make racial slurs (norm).

What should I do about my beliefs?

Many wars have been fought, elections lost and families destroyed because groups of people held conflicting beliefs and could not reconcile the differences.

A sophisticated solution to this problem is to understand that commonly held beliefs might change, commonly held beliefs might be wrong and it is possible to hold two conflicting beliefs as true at the same time. A scientist who believes in God is possibly the clearest way to illustrate this concept.