Processes of believing: Where do they come from? What are they good for?

Abstract

Despite the long scholarly discourse in Western theology and philosophy on religion, spirituality, and faith, explanations of what a belief and what believing is are still lacking. Recently, cognitive neuroscience research addressed the human capacity of believing. We present evidence suggesting that believing is a human brain function which results in probabilistic representations with attributes of personal meaning and value and thereby guides individuals' behavior. We propose that the same mental processes operating on narratives and rituals constitute belief systems in individuals and social groups. Our theoretical model of believing is suited to account for secular and non-secular belief formation. SummaryAlthough largely neglected in contemporary science, we will show that believing is a fundamental brain function on which individual and societal behavior is grounded.

The Noetic Experience and Belief Scale: A validation and reliability study

“…A paranormal experience refers to an individual's memory of an experience that one judges to be genuine. The memory of a paranormal experience relies on a different mental substrate than a belief based on environment, education and reasoning and the neural structures underlying memory of an experience and belief are likely different 15,16 . Paranormal belief and experience are often correlated when measured simultaneously, although this is rarely done 17,18 .…”

Violations of Expectations As Matter for the Believing Process

“…Common to these cognitive processes is the relation to subjective categories such as memories, attitudes, desires, and hope (Corlett et al, 2004; Seitz et al, 2016). But these subjective categories can also be abstract categories of general value such as moral, justice, and ethics.…”

“…In the positive case the subject arrives at the conviction that he/she accepts this personal interpretation as true or granted and, thus, personally relevant. Consequently, the subject believes it, since or although he/she does not know whether the information is really true (Seitz et al, 2016). Also, the emotional loading is part of the probabilistic mental representation of objects or events determining their relevance for the subject and the expectation the subject has concerning them.…”

“…Also, the emotional loading is part of the probabilistic mental representation of objects or events determining their relevance for the subject and the expectation the subject has concerning them. Ultimately, this can be translated to the realm of moral and ethics applying in groups and societies (Seitz et al, 2016). Accordingly, a violation of such an expectation is an emotional violation which will heavily affect the given subject’s attitude what to learn already during infantile development (Stahl and Feigenson, 2015).…”

“…However, under a procedural perspective this connection is misleading. Importantly, credition applies to religious and secular contexts and it is not a prerequisite to refer to religion in order to understand credition (Seitz et al, 2016). …”