Yes to all of that. So the idea that "think" and "believe" are synonymous is a non-starter. The OP would need to be much more specific about which uses of "think" are equivalent to "believe."

Yes to all of that. So the idea that "think" and "believe" are synonymous is a non-starter. The OP would need to be much more specific about which uses of "think" are equivalent to "believe." — J

I struggle to articulate the difference. It is tempting to say that they express different propositional attitudes. But I don't like propositional attitudes for reasons that don't matter for the moment. The "I know that p" is special, because speaker and subject are the same person. So that comes out as an emphatic assertion of "p" - pleonastic but expressing something nonetheless. "I believe" and "I think" come out as less emphatic assertions - normally.
But "S believes that p" is expresses S's evaluation of "p", of course, but is not contradicted if "p" is false. So it expresses the speaker's evaluation. Is that an illocutionary effect, possibly? Then there's the rest of the family - "think", "suppose", "imagine", "assume" etc.

There's an equivocation going on between two senses of "think":

Mary thinks the house is on fire.
Mary thinks, "The house is on fire."

The first usage is more or less synonymous with "believe." — J

Yes, fair point, but the question is: does it matter? If both work the same, it's all the same. Please explain how the distinction matters.

The first usage is really not synonymous with "believe" -- otherwise people would use them interchangeably, but they don't. "I think that P" and "I believe that P" are not totally different. P is the same. But "I think" and "I believe" are semantically different in specific, consistent ways that are important enough that common usage represents a clear pattern.

Consider:

"You're beautiful."
"I think you're beautiful."
"I believe you're beautiful."
"I know you're beautiful."
"I whatever you're beautiful."

You can see the differences, right?

Yeah, there's been some discussion here and much more on Reddit (/r/epistemology). What it's brought me to are:

• Recognition that we're dealing with exactly the same form of statement, "I ______ that P" regardless what you put in the blank.
  
• Recognition that these statements include an assertion P prefaced by a self-reference "I _____".

That raises two questions. One regards the self-reference: what are the differences between think/believ/know/whatever and what's the motivation for and significance of choosing one or another?

But here's the surprise (for me): Why interject the self-reference at all? Why add ego concerns to the mix? If the assertion is the message, why stick ourselves in there? Crassly, if the assertion is the important part, who cares whether I think/believe/know/speculate/guess/conjecture/SWAG (super-wild-assed-guess)/predict/prophesy/deduce/WHATEVER lol.

All the girl cares about is "You're beautiful." She's smart enough to know you think so, lol.

Most of what we know, we know on authority. Naturally, a good deal then hangs on the warrant for that authority, but it is not a marginal source for our knowledge. Of course, sadly, it is all to easy to misuse authority, once it is conceded, but that doesn't undermine its importance in practice. — Ludwig V

Yes, if a hypothesis were to be judged before being verified, authority (expertise) may put the odds in their favor, but they might not be privy to facts on the ground. But a claim to knowledge can be solely based on authority because it is transferable (in the sense of being aware of the answer). But in deciding what is the right thing to do (say, when we are at a loss), the authority is me, warranted or unwarranted, which does not hang on verification nor justification (it is not a necessity, categorically, but not thus “irrational”, as unintelligible—just a different “logic”). The State has its (supposed) own authority.

Why interject the self-reference at all? — Millard J Melnyk

This is our desire that everything be subject to the method and implications of science, which is the basis of its facts. If you follow its method, and I (competently) follow the method, we come to the same answer—it doesn’t matter about the person. We want what we do to not involve the personal (individual) nor the human at all. Knowledge can have this form, but not everything involves knowledge (although still rational, as having intelligible reasons). And “I know” does not only have that sense, as “I know you are in pain” is not to know their pain but to tell you I see your pain. I accept (or reject) you as a person in pain (in response to “I am in pain”).

NICE! Almost exactly, but far better job than I did. I suck at syllogisms, lol.

I'd say "instead of 'I think'" instead of "above another prefix". Also, sometimes the motivation is to embellish credibility unduly, but not necessarily. Sometimes it's an honest attempt to reflect one's internal level of credence and commitment to the assertion. Sometimes it's actually to downplay the issue, saying "I think" when the fact is that we're sure beyond reasonable doubt.

It's been pointed out that many alternatives to think/believe are available, and it turns out that they all work similarly: guess/speculate/conjecture/deduce/imagine/whatever. They're semantically different, but they perform the same function in "I _____ that P."

Yes, "All belief is irrational" was my "teaser headline".

C2 as you stated it is JUST PEACHY!

So, to the extent that thinking/stating/ascribing believe/belief to an assertion overshoots legit warrant, especially when illegitimately overshooting is the point, it doesn't make the assertion "believed" irrational, but it makes believing it irrational.

So, in that sense, under those conditions, all belief is, indeed, irrational.

What remains is to determine if you can involve belief without overshooting warrant. Yes, many people say "believe" when they mean think and everyone understands they mean think. However, I don't think our epistemics should accommodate that kind of sloppiness and confusion.

Consider:

"God exists."
"I think God exists."
"I believe God exists."
"I know God exists."
"I guess God exists."
"I infer God exists."

I could go on, of course. Each conveys something distinctly different. Where a lot of the confusion enters in (as became clear in this discussion and others elsewhere), the difference is irrelevant to the assertion "God exists". It's relevant only to the self-reference, "I _____" -- which is semantically irrelevant to the assertion, actually. That begs the question whether injecting an irrelevance is itself rational or not.

Of all those (and any others), "believe" is unusual. It's less firm/certain than merely "God exists" or "I know God exists," and yet it comes across as more firm/certain than "I think God exists."

And yet it's the same assertion, so the assertion itself can't be more or less true depending on the self-reference. So, how could the firmness/certainty change mere by changing the semantics of the self-reference? There's no semantic (let alone logically entailed) connection between them. So, the self-reference, rationally, reflects the state/relationship of the speaker in terms of certainty and commitment to the assertion, and doesn't reflect on or impact the assertion itself.

I was going to say more, but now I'm in exploratory territory and it turned into a brain dump, lol. I should probably write through it (it's how I think into new ideas) elsewhere and come back with something more intelligible than one of my meanderings.

What do you think so far?

Can you explain as clearly and as succinctly as possible then please? — I like sushi

Sure. Simply put, epistemics includes whatever we do to make sure that something we think is true actually is true (or find out it's not.) Especially when it comes to beliefs/believing, this often means we haven't done enough to say we know, but we want to say/feel more sure/certain than "I think".

Believing bridges the gap between what we've done to make sure we're right and the level of certainty/commitment to the idea where we want to be but haven't got the goods to show it's legit to be there, yet.

I guess epistemics is like a ladder. You can legitimately go as high as the ladder (warrant) is tall. If you want to act and feel more certain about it, it would take a leap. "I think" kind of indicates that you've got reason to assume Floor 5 is there, but your ladder only goes as far as Floor 2 at the moment, so "I know there's a Floor 5" really isn't justified.

But you could say, "I believe there's a Floor 5." The question then becomes: why say "believe" when you've got no more reason to believe than you do were you just to say "I think" ? Your ladder is exactly the same height both ways. Epistemically the same.

So, either you do the work to extend the ladder, or you say "believe".

And when you realize there's two important pieces, not just one, and that "believe/think" applies to only one of them, it changes how we usually talk about it.

"I ______" (think/believe/know) is a self-reference. It has nothing to do with "it's raining" in the statement "I _____ that it's raining." No matter what you fill the blank with, all versions are statements of the form, "I ______ that P" (P = "it's raining").

So, think/believe/know has nothing to do with P (whether it's raining). They indicate how sure/committed I am to the assertion. I'm implying but not saying how tall my ladder is.

Hope that helps.

If both work the same, it's all the same. — Millard J Melnyk

I'm not sure what you mean. They work quite differently, as I tried to show.

Please explain how the distinction matters. — Millard J Melnyk

It may not matter at all, for the points you want to cover. But as @Ludwig V has elaborated, any theses involving "think" and "thought" need to be carefully laid out so as to show which uses and concepts you mean to refer to.

"You're beautiful."
"I think you're beautiful."
"I believe you're beautiful."
"I know you're beautiful."
"I whatever you're beautiful."

You can see the differences, right? — Millard J Melnyk

Sure. But consider these:

I think it's raining.
I believe it's raining.

Wouldn't you agree they're nearly synonymous?

The point is, all these usages are linguistically dependent. They approach, or recede from, synonymy depending on context. And in another language, I'm sure the various usages would be different.

"I think" and "I believe" are semantically different in specific, consistent ways — Millard J Melnyk

They can be, and sometimes they aren't. Context again.

This takes us back to your OP premise:

Epistemically, belief and thought are identical. — Millard J Melnyk

I hope it's clear now why that's only true in the cases in which they are understood to be identical by language-speakers.

a rhetorical shift from “I think” to “I believe,” — Millard J Melnyk

Well, yes -- when the use of "I think" means "I believe", that shift often takes place. It doesn't have to. Not to belabor the point, but we can think many things without necessarily believing them. We can also think them in ways such that they're not even possible candidates for belief (such as my Case 2, above).

That's why it seems to odd that you want to ignore "know". — Ludwig V

I haven't ignored it since you first brought it up, and I've said so. After working it through, tho, I realized it doesn't matter.

We're dealing with exactly the same form of statement, "I ______ that P" regardless what you put in the blank. All these statements include an assertion P prefaced by a self-reference "I _____". P is identical in all cases, no matter if you fill the blank with think/believe/know/speculate/guess/conjecture/SWAG (super-wild-assed-guess)/predict/prophesy/deduce/WHATEVER lol. So the only thing that changes is the semantics of the self-reference, which has no epistemic bearing on the assertion.

That raises two questions. One regards the self-reference: what are the differences between think/believe/know/whatever and what's the motivation for and significance of choosing one or another?

But here's the surprise (for me): Why interject the self-reference at all? Why add ego concerns to the mix? If the assertion is the message, why stick ourselves in there? Crassly, if the assertion is the important part, who cares whether I think/believe/know/speculate/guess/conjecture/SWAG (super-wild-assed-guess)/predict/prophesy/deduce/WHATEVER lol.

All the girl cares about is "You're beautiful." She's smart enough to know you think so, lol.

Not really sure how to respond to the rest of your reply. Yes, we can think about it in ways that make it hideously complicated. That's what I'm trying to rectify. Setting it up as I described above simplifies it immensely. Much of the responses I've gotten here and elsewhere boil down to failing to recognize that think/believe/know have no logical bearing on the assertion being made. They're not really about the assertion -- they're about the person's subjective assessment about their relationship/attitude towards the assertion.

I’m not kidding or exaggerating even a little bit. — Millard J Melnyk

Does it follow that your OP and all of the posts you have written within this thread are irrational?

I'm not sure what you mean. They work quite differently, as I tried to show. — J

You showed the distinction, you didn't show how the distinction makes a difference to our topic.

Wouldn't you agree they're nearly synonymous? — J

In sloppy usage, sure. Are you saying that the difference is insignificant?

"I believe it's raining" is a rather trivial matter, and also easily checked empirically. "I believe the COVID vaccines are harmful" -- not so much. "Think" and "believe" mean something significantly different in that case.

Sure, I can see what you're saying. You're taking the position of a dissertation committee and faulting my weak defense attempts. Cool. My goal here was to evoke feedback that would clarify. "Not clear enough, there's more to it, you're vague here, here, and here" and the like are almost always valid, but rarely serve to clarify a topic. I'm not trying to build an airtight case here for the irrationality of beliefs/believing. I'm exploring horizons and limitations. I think I've gotten all I could hope to get from our discussion. Thanks, man.

I haven't ignored it since you first brought it up, and I've said so. After working it through, tho, I realized it doesn't matter. — Millard J Melnyk

I'm sorry I didn't notice. But disappointed that you think it doesn't matter. It depends what your project is, so I won't argue with you.

But here's the surprise (for me): Why interject the self-reference at all? — Millard J Melnyk

In a sense the "I know" in "I know that it's raining" doesn't add anything to someone asserting "It's raining". The reason is simple. If you assert "It's raining" and I trust you, I can safely conclude that you know that it's raining. Equally, of course, if you assert "it's raining" and it's not raining, or I don't know whether it's raining, I can conclude that you believe it is raining.
It does not follow from the fact that it's raining that you know or believe that it's raining. So these implications are a bit odd. They follow from you asserting "it's raining".

But that's the strictly logical situation. Informally, when someone says "I know that p", they are borrowing the authority of knowing something, which, strictly speaking can only be given to by someone else. Why, because marking your own homework is meaningless. That's why, if you want to understand "know" and "believe" you need to think in the third person. The first person is a limiting case, not typical. Standard cases assume that speaker and subject are different people.

think/believe/know have no logical bearing on the assertion being made. — Millard J Melnyk

They have no logical bearing in the sense that they are not grounds for, or evidence for, the assertion being made. But since "I know that p" is only true if "p" is true, they do have a bearing on "know". It's not quite the same with "believe", but anyone who says either "I know that p" or "I believe that p" is asserting that p, and that is part of the meaning of those two words.

So, think/believe/know has nothing to do with P (whether it's raining). They indicate how sure/committed I am to the assertion. I'm implying but not saying how tall my ladder is. — Millard J Melnyk

I don't really get the business about the ladder. It is true that if I have good, but not sufficient evidence for p, there is what one might call and evidentiary gap. People probably do sometimes leap over that gap and assert more than they really have evidence for. So what?

Yeah you hit the nail on the head. You're coming at this as an epistemologist would. That's why 3rd person is important for you. You're taking a bird's/God's/universal viewpoint to look at the totality of the question.

I'm only interested in the 1st person aspect because I'm not creating an epistemology/epistemological theory. That's why I use the term "epistemic". My sole interest is how an individual can, for themself, DO epistemic work, and I'm trying to figure out how and why we as individuals fail either to do it at all or do it poorly.

So, yeah -- different projects, because all epistemic work -- just like all science -- is done, fundamentally, in the 1st person.

In fact, I'm positively disinterested in the 3rd person angle, because it doesn't inform the 1st person issues. I'm not saying ignore the 3rd person, period. I'm saying that the 1st person issues determine how you're going to take on the 3rd person stuff, so first, let's get 1st person epistemics right.

Hope I'm making some sense to you here.

No worries. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

So we have a lesson about the difference between illocutionary force and propositional content.

Cool.

The conclusion of the OP, that all belief is irrational, remains self-defeating.

I'm aware of mainstream term definitions and categorizations, of course, but I don't approach experience (mine and others') through that filter, and I dispense with accepted definitions and categories if they don't fit what's really going on. — Millard J Melnyk

Perfectly fair as this can allow room for creative thought. But if we're going to develop it into a coherent argument, we have to eventually come to definitions that accurately describe what's going on that all can agree on.

Until a conversation I had with one of my sons a couple of years ago, I assumed belief/believing had a modicum of legitimacy and value. Since then I've had the suspicion that isn't true, so I've been digging into it. — Millard J Melnyk

Yeah, its a realization some people eventually come to. "Hey, do I really know anything?" Descartes had this epiphany when he discovered that a triangle could exist that did not have a total of 180 degrees. Draw a triangle on a sphere for example, and the degrees are more than 180. So he began to doubt himself until he could come up with something he could not doubt, "I think therefore I am". So the question of, "Do I believe this, do I know this, can any of us know anything" is essentially the tradition of epistemology, or the study of knowledge.

So, I put what everyone says, including philosophers, out of my head, observe what's really going on, find the patterns resident in actual behavior, and then I go about reconciling the differences with academic and mainstream thinking. I think this is important because, to the extant that our most respected and most predominate thinking are responsible for the FUBARs in the world that look like they're increasingly threatening our very existence, I think it behooves us to assess and fix their psycho-social and ideological causes. — Millard J Melnyk

I am a big fan of first taking a fresh approach to problems and seeing what you come up with. That lets you approach the problem from your perspective instead of placing yourself into other people's perspective first. If you wish to read a few philosopher's perspectives, google "Epistemology" and see all the crazy stuff philosophers have come up with over the years. :)

Once I realized these statements have two parts and that the actual assertion part (P/"it's raining") for all forms is the exact same assertion, I realized that "epistemically identical" is an unnecessary qualification. They're the exact same. All that differs is the 2nd part that indicates the speaker's relationship to/attitude towards their assertion.
...So, that begs the question why it's important to the speaker to prefix the assertion with an irrelevancy. — Millard J Melnyk

Fantastic. You came up with on your own what is largely considered the difference between knowledge, belief, and truth.

Truth is generally agreed to be "What is". What do I mean? "Its raining". Its either raining, or it isn't. It doesn't matter whether you or I know, believe, or disbelieve that its raining. It is! Its true no matter what we think about it.

So why are belief and knowledge important? A belief is an assertion of what you think is true, but of course it may not be true. And knowledge is an assertion of what you think is true, but of course it may not be true. The difference between belief an knowledge is that a belief does not need any rational thinking behind it, while knowledge does.

For example, I could believe that the moon is made of green cheese. Why? Well it looks like it. Its more of an emotional assertion about reality, and while it may be accurate, there's no reasoning behind it. Why do we care about reasoning? Because if something IS true, and we have all the information to ascertain that its true, then we could use reason with the information provided to come to that conclusion. So while being reasonable may lead to us knowing something, and that thing which we know is not true, its far more reasonable and likely to be a correct assertion of what is true then a mere belief. Someone might believe the moon is made of green cheese, but we know its not because we've been there and found it to be made of dirt.

The specifics of what separates a belief from knowledge are of course tricky, and pretty much what the entire study of epistemology is based on. I have written a nice summary intended for a thinker who does not need to know any history of epistemology or deep vocabulary if you want to read it. You might find it interesting. I'll link it again here. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1 Read it if you want, no worry if you don't. :)

I'm interested in your topic.
Essentially, the discussion revolves around the opposition between "I believe" and "I think"—and, importantly, the unspoken priority of analyticity over the sensory. Logic is placed above the irrational, the rational above the intuitive. I'd like to contribute by adding an aesthetic and epistemological layer to the discussion—through Alexander Baumgarten. In Baumgarten's time (the 18th century), the assertion "rational = good, sensory = nonsense" was not yet self-evident. On the contrary, he demonstrated that logical representation is formal perfection, but it is achieved at the cost of a loss of completeness. Sensory, "obscure" knowledge is the foundation of everything. It grasps the object in its entirety, immediately, in its concreteness and complexity.
Logical knowledge, on the other hand, is an extension, an abstraction, a rationalization, which impoverishes the original richness.

The more obscure the representation, the more complex, complete, and richer its attributes. The clearer it is, the poorer, but more structured it is.

For example: When we first meet a person, we grasp them sensorily—a general impression, a "feeling." We can only recall their eye color or height.
With each new encounter, we rationalize more: their character, habits, voice, facial expressions. But the initial, irrational feeling doesn't disappear. It is enriched, becomes deeper, more precise.
It is not replaced by logic—it feeds it.
This is the binary opposition: "holism" (sensory, holistic, primary) versus "analyticism" (logical, dissected, secondary).

Evaluating a statement using rationalism as the highest and only value is too impoverished an approach.
Faith is not a "hallucination," not a "psychosis," not a "thought defect."
It is holism, the first act of cognition, the foundation of action.
Without it, there is no trust, no society, no science—after all, a hypothesis begins with intuition, not proof.

Can the world be built on "I think" alone? - No.
Can it be built on "faith" alone? - Also no.

I think this is important because, to the extant that our most respected and most predominate thinking are responsible for the FUBARs in the world that look like they're increasingly threatening our very existence, I think it behooves us to assess and fix their psycho-social and ideological causes. — Millard J Melnyk

You remind me of Descartes and his project of universal doubt. But I think taking on everything at the same time, is unlikely to be fruitful. It would be like trying to map the earth from a satellite with the naked eye. It's not the word/concept "know" and "knowledge" that you should focus on but the different areas and kinds of knowledge.
Science and Mathematics are the (not unchallenged) gold standard in our culture. Philosophy of science and mathematics would give you a much more interesting take on that kind of knowledge. Other areas, Art, Ethics, Psychology, Sociology are more contested, but, again, you would learn more about what is and is not knowledge from looking directly at those, rather than a single, broad-brush concept.

I assumed belief/believing had a modicum of legitimacy and value. Since then I've had the suspicion that isn't true, so I've been digging into it. — Millard J Melnyk

Again, you remind me of Descartes. Like him, you have some sort of idea what a belief needs to have if it is to be legitimate and worth something. Like him, you are disappointed when you ask around. I would suggest, tentatively, that you think about the standards you have by which you assess beliefs. Where did they come from? What could make one belief more legitimate and valuable than another?