The Many Meanings of Belief

The traditional conception of belief in philosophy is that it is an attitude that aims at truth, typically involving high confidence, governed by a strong epistemic norm. Philosophers have recently challenged this longstanding view, sparking debate over how strong the epistemic norms governing belief are and how theoretical uses of the word diverge from its ordinary meaning. In this paper, I argue that the word ‘belief’ is polysemous in ordinary usage. I show that ordinary belief varies significantly both in the strength of the attitude it expresses and in the epistemic norms that govern it. The word ‘belief’ can express a weak or a strong attitude that can be governed by weak, strong, or even no evidentiary norms. The ordinary uses of the word ‘belief’ also diverge significantly from its theoretical uses by philosophers, raising questions about how to best refer to the attitudes we want to discuss.