Theme: Grammar

MIKHAIL VOLOSHIN ON BELIEF

—“BELIEF, IN THE THIRD PERSON:

The verb “to believe” makes sense when (and only when) used in the third person. “Christians believe that the resurrection happened,” for example. Or, “AGW alarmists believe that increasing atmospheric CO2 levels will result in a hyperlinear increase in global temperature.”

BELIEF MEANS COUNTER-FACTUAL

By its nature, “to believe” implies counterfactuality. If the speaker wishes to convey that the contents of a subject’s mind are in accordance with reality, the speaker doesn’t use the word “believe”. The more natural words then would be “know” or “realize” or “understand”. I.e. “The West has known since at least Aristotle that the Earth is round.” To say, “The West has believed…” rather than, “The West has known…” implies that this “believed” assertion is incorrect, i.e. counterfactual — at least from the POV of the knowledge base of the speaker.

BELIEF, IN THE SECOND PERSON: CONDESCENSION

To use “believe” in the second person is inherently condescending — to say to someone, “You believe X,” implies that you *don’t* hold X to be true, and think your listener holds or espouses a counterfactual belief.

BELIEF, IN THE FIRST PERSON: REDUNDANT

To use “believe” in the first person is, at best, redundant. It is functionally equivalent to say, “I believe it’s raining,” “I know it’s raining,” and “It’s raining.” In colloquial conversation, people use the modifier “I believe” as a sort of hedge against the accuracy of their own statements. I.e. in practice, “I believe it’s raining,” would indicate that the speaker recognizes the possibility that it might in fact *not* be raining — that is, “I believe X”, ironically, means that the speaker in fact *does not* believe X, or at least not fully.

At worst, using “to believe” in the first person begs for an instance of Moore’s Paradox, and indicates a serious case of doublethink. “I believe that people can be born the wrong gender, and I also believe that gender is a social construct. Stop questioning my beliefs!” Moore *believed* that no person could sustain a recognition of the counterfactuality of their own beliefs; Moore had apparently never met any actual human beings.”— Mikhail Voloshin