ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of believing or being convinced. It discusses the relation between believing and knowing in the light of the conclusions in the rest of the paper. A different assumption lies at the root of David Hume’s argument in his Treatise on Human Nature. Rene Descartes and Hume are correct in maintaining that the way from doubt to certainty is through the consideration of evidence. The passage from Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature referred to contains another important note on believing and being convinced. The correspondence theory is the most common theory of truth in the history of philosophy. According to this theory a proposition is true if it corresponds to the facts or to reality. Beliefs are true to the extent that they accurately represent the things in themselves of which they are mental images.
