The end to all language wars and the great unity API to come!

[Ben Finney]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> On Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:01:57 -0500, Andrew Berg
> <bahamutzero8825 at gmail.com> declaimed the following in
> gmane.comp.python.general:
>
> > On 2011.07.05 01:14 PM, sal migondis wrote:
> > > How could a belief be wrong?

> > Beliefs aren't subjective. One's taste in music, for example, is
> > largely subjective and can't be right or wrong, but a belief (which
> > has to do with facts) certainly can be.
>
> 	Pardon????

By “has to do with facts”, I understand Andrew to be saying that a
belief is *about* facts. That is, a belief is the position that a
factual claim is true.

> 	Most "beliefs" that I've encountered do their best to ignore any
> facts that contradict the belief.

You seem to be ignoring beliefs that are not usually held dogmatically:
that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the newspaper article one is
reading is likely true, that one's lunch is not poison, etc.

These are distinct from so-called “beliefs” that are really opinions:
that my daughter is the loveliest in the world, that wasabi is horrible,
etc.

> "Facts" imply testable evidence, hypotheses, eventual theorems...

I'd say facts are claims about reality which have been independently
verified to be true. Beliefs that are about facts are thereby correct or
incorrect.

-- 
 \              “Only the educated are free.” —Epictetus, _Discourses_ |
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_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney