Research On Beliefs In Epistemology

The belief is a very ancient philosophical topic, and such the word had firstly appeared in fragments of Parmenides, a philosopher of ancient Greek, and then Plato definitely proposed and included it into epistemology scope and did initial study on it, from then on western philosophers began to make more studies on brief, by now, this topic has been haggled in western field of philosophy without any stopping sign and as if it would be always a popular topic for ever in west. However, probably influenced by "theory of unification of cognition and practice", a traditional philosophical theory of China, and traditional rationalism, this topic has not been attracting more attention of Chinese scholars, especially little study from angle of philosophical epistemology compared with study on other topics in Chinese academic circle. So this paper will do initial study on belief from the angle of epistemology.In this paper, the first part is epistemological analysis of the belief. Although Chinese scholars has began to concern and do some researches on the belief over twenty years, a lot of problems raise accompanying with study of it probably because what Chinese scholars have studied is specific actions and functions of belief, which are the surfaces of it but not its substances. The problems afore mentioned include that they can not give a clear concept to belief and there is only empty talk on education of communism and idealism belief, etc. So in order to get the "spirit" of belief and make studies on it deeper further, we need to turn to the angle of epistemology. In epistemology scope, the belief is a mental status that, on the base of certain level of knowing, a subject holds a convinced attitude for one theory or a doctrine and is urged to affirm and pursue a kind of value or value goal by enthusiasm strong will. The belief is unification between rationalism and non-rationalism, stability and openness, reality and transcendence. In a historical period, the theories and doctrines that had not been confirmed at last at the course of people's understanding the world is the epistemological source of belief.The second part will check the epistemological history of belief. So as to make studies on belief deeper and systemically, the paper will put the belief into the long development history of epistemology, and study on how the belief form, develop and attract researchers'contention by observing and studying thoughts about belief of philosophers such as Plato, David Hume, Kant and Bertrand Russell, etc., witch provide historical ground to and as reference for our researches today.The third part will discuss belief's influences on human cognitive activities. Firstly, the cognitive activities of a subject need support of believes relating with object's objective substantiality, regularity and knowability or relating with cognitive competence of the subject itself. Secondly, the belief plays positive roles such as link-like, selecting, motivating, forecasting and directing and negative influence such as rigidifying, misleading and restraining to subjects'cognitive activities.