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However, even if we do not know the outcome of this coin toss, we must base our actions on some expectation about the consequence. We must decide whether to live as though God exists, or whether to live as though God does not exist, even though we may be mistaken in either case. In Pascal's assessment, participation in this wager is not optional.
A dispositional belief is not the same as a disposition to believe. [16] We have various dispositions to believe given the right perceptions; for example, to believe that it is raining given a perception of rain. Without this perception, there is still a disposition to believe but no actual dispositional belief. [16]
Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth A, we escape as an incidental consequence from believing the falsehood B, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving B we necessarily believe A. We may in escaping B fall into believing other falsehoods, C or D, just as bad as B; or we may escape B by not believing anything at ...
We sin grievously against our moral and intellectual duty when we form beliefs on insufficient evidence, or ignore or dismiss evidence that is relevant to our beliefs. [ 1 ] Clifford's article provoked a spirited reply from the Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James.
Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us to define it, but to give an accurate account of it is the most difficult of philosophic tasks. The only states of consciousness that we naturally deal with are found in personal consciousnesses, minds, selves, concrete particular I's and you's.
The Episcopal Church shares this view. "As distinct from the cardinal virtues which we can develop, the theological virtues are the perfection of human powers given by the grace of God." [11] Like the cardinal virtues, an individual who exercises these virtues strengthens and increases them, i.e., they are more disposed to practice them. [16]
Innatism and nativism are generally synonymous terms referring to the notion of preexisting ideas in the mind. However, more specifically, innatism refers to the philosophy of Descartes, who assumed that God or a similar being or process placed innate ideas and principles in the human mind. [1]
Belief perseverance (also known as conceptual conservatism [1]) is maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it. [2]Since rationality involves conceptual flexibility, [3] [4] belief perseverance is consistent with the view that human beings act at times in an irrational manner.