AIM Framework glossary
Belief
Canonical definition
A Belief is a Hypothesis held with a Posterior credence: the content written to the Belief Register as Ground-Resolution's output, on which the Decision Hub can act. Belief is general as to subject matter, and is distinguished from the Belief Register as content is distinguished from its container, just as Knowledge is distinguished from the Memory Store that holds it. A Belief is a credence rather than a binary token: it carries a probability, and it may be revised by Bayesian Updating, held under Doubt, or suspended (Epistemic Suspension). Beliefs about the source of one's own valuation are a subset, and under Source Opacity the subset most prone to sincere error, in which case the Belief is a Confabulation. Believing a proposition is not the same as merely holding it in store (that is Knowledge), nor does believing it make it true (that bears on Truth).
Explanation
A Belief is a Hypothesis you have come to hold, with some degree of confidence, and are prepared to act on: the committed version of a guess. It is different from simply having something stored away, you can hold information in memory without believing it, and different again from that thing being true, you can believe something false. The word covers everything from "the shop shuts at five" to "I want this job because it interests me"; the framework's point is only that the second kind, Beliefs about your own motives, are uniquely hard to get right, because the labels that would settle them were stripped away before they reached you. The Belief is the content; the Belief Register is where it is kept.
Epistemic status
Framework-general term (canonical). The motivational source-attribution case is a subset.
Derivation
Related terms
- Hypothesis
- Belief Register
- Knowledge
- Posterior
- Belief-Register Update
- Bayesian Updating
- Epistemic Suspension
- Confabulation (Axiom 4)
- Grievance Belief
- Truth
- Decision Hub
- Source Opacity (Axiom 3)