Tag: Belief

Free Download Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age
English | 2024 | ISBN: 1009477226 | 482 Pages | PDF | 2.3 MB
In his famous argument against miracles, David Hume gets to the heart of the modern problem of supernatural belief. ‘We are apt’, says Hume, ‘to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole form of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operation in a different manner, from what it does at present.’ This encapsulates, observes Peter Harrison, the disjuncture between contemporary Western culture and medieval societies. In the Middle Ages, people saw the hand of God at work everywhere. Indeed, many suppose that ‘belief in the supernatural’ is likewise fundamental nowadays to religious commitment. But dichotomising between ‘naturalism’ and ‘supernaturalism’ is actually a relatively recent phenomenon, just as the notion of ‘belief’ emerged historically late. In this masterful contribution to intellectual history, the author overturns crucial misconceptions – ‘myths’ – about secular modernity, challenging common misunderstandings of the past even as he reinvigorates religious thinking in the present.

Free Download Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief By Jordan B. Peterson
1999 | 564 Pages | ISBN: 0415922216 | PDF | 8 MB
Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself? From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

Free Download Theorizing the Anthropology of Belief: Magic, Conspiracies, and Misinformation
English | 2024 | ISBN: 1032420324 | 107 Pages | PDF (True) | 2 MB
The first part of the book examines different methods for generating valid anthropological knowledge and proposes a shift in current consensus. Drawing on Western scholars of antiquity and the medieval period and moving away from 20th-century theorists, it argues that we must first make ontological assumptions about the kinds of things that can exist (or not) before we can then develop epistemologies that study those kinds of things. The book goes on to apply the ontology-first theory to a set of case studies in modern day conspiracy theories, misinformation, and magical thinking. It asserts that we need to move away from unneeded metaphysical assumptions of conspiracy theories being misinformation and argues that reconstructing particular historical events can be a fruitful zone for application of quantitative methods to humanistic questions.

Free Download Daniel J. Singer, "Right Belief and True Belief"
English | ISBN: 019766038X | 2023 | 256 pages | PDF | 2 MB

Free Download A Textbook of Belief Dynamics: Solutions to exercises By Sven Ove Hansson (auth.)
1999 | 65 Pages | ISBN: 0792353293 | PDF | 3 MB
The mid-1980s saw the discovery of logical tools that make it possible to model changes in belief and knowledge in entirely new ways. These logical tools turned out to be applicable to both human beliefs and to the contents of databases. Philosophers, logicians, and computer scientists have contributed to making this interdisciplinary field one of the most exciting in the cognitive scientists – and one that is expanding rapidly. This, the first textbook in the new area, contains both discursive chapters with a minimum of formalism and formal chapters in which proofs and proof methods are presented. Using different selections from the formal sections, according to the author’s detailed advice, allows the book to be used at all levels of university education. A supplementary volume contains solutions to the 210 exercises. The volume’s unique, comprehensive coverage means that it can also be used by specialists in the field of belief dynamics and related areas, such as non-monotonic reasoning and knowledge representation.

Free Download Alison James, "The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief "
English | ISBN: 0367635151 | 2023 | 522 pages | EPUB, PDF | 4 MB + 11 MB

Free Download Paul Herrick, "Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith: An Introduction"
English | ISBN: 0268202680 | 2022 | 474 pages | EPUB | 1036 KB

Free Download Peter Adamson, "Don’t Think for Yourself: Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy "
English | ISBN: 0268203393 | 2022 | 194 pages | EPUB | 794 KB

Free Download The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life by Jesse Bering, Audible Studios
English | 2013 | ISBN: B00COR25BE | Format: MP3 / 6 hours and 13 minutes | 170 Mb
Top 25 Books of 2011 by the American Library Association, Choice ReviewsNamed one of the 11 Best Psychology Books of 2011 by The Atlantic
Why is belief so hard to shake? Despite our best attempts to embrace rational thought and reject superstition, we often find ourselves appealing to unseen forces that guide our destiny, wondering who might be watching us as we go about our lives, and imagining what might come after death. In this lively and masterfully argued new book, Jesse Bering unveils the psychological underpinnings of why we believe.
Combining lucid accounts of surprising new studies with insights into literature, philosophy, and even pop culture, Bering gives us a narrative that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. He sheds light on such topics as our search for a predestined life purpose, our desire to read divine messages into natural disasters and other random occurrences, our visions of the afterlife, and our curiosity about how moral and immoral behavior are rewarded or punished in this life. Bering traces all of these beliefs and desires to a single trait of human psychology, known as the "theory of mind," which enables us to guess at the intentions and thoughts of others. He then takes this groundbreaking argument one step further, revealing how the instinct to believe in God and other unknowable forces gave early humans an evolutionary advantage. But now that these psychological illusions have outlasted their evolutionary purpose, Bering draws our attention to a whole new challenge: escaping them. Thanks to Bering’s insight and wit, The Belief Instinct will reward readers with an enlightened understanding of the universal human tendency to believe-and the tools to break free.

Free Download Paul Fouracre, "Eternal light and earthly concerns: Belief and the shaping of medieval society "
English | ISBN: 1784993018 | 2021 | 248 pages | PDF | 6 MB
In early Christianity it was established that every church should have a light burning on the altar at all times. In this unique study, Eternal light and earthly concerns, looks at the material and social consequences of maintaining these ‘eternal’ lights. It investigates how the cost of lighting was met across western Europe throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, revealing the social organisation that was built up around maintaining the lights in the belief that burning them reduced the time spent in Purgatory. When that belief collapsed in the Reformation the eternal lights were summarily extinguished. The history of the lights thus offers not only a new account of change in medieval Europe, but also a sustained examination of the relationship between materiality and belief.