ABSTRACT

Belief is defined as the readiness to act as though it was so or in accordance with the picture of things we have before us, obviously have to consider what one mean by 'act'. The more obvious possibilities in exploring and controlling ambiguity the author have taken here the word 'belief. To make a proper job of it we should need first to make similar provisional surveys of the other words in the semantic and logical family to which 'belief belongs and then proceed by a comparative method. Perhaps the types of belief-objects have changed frequently, in human history. People might gain through the comparative study of meaning to control over the actual workings of one's minds that the traditional psychology, theory of knowledge, logic, and methodology would look silly. The psychology of infancy seems to make it doubtful; so does animal psychology.