section_path: Central concepts/Belief and truth
section_name: Belief and truth
paragraph_text: Belief and truth
  
  Beliefs are mental states about what is the case, like believing that snow is white or that God exists. In epistemology, they are often understood as subjective attitudes that affirm or deny a proposition, which can be expressed in a declarative sentence. For instance, to believe that snow is white is to affirm the proposition "snow is white". According to this view, beliefs are representations of what the world is like. They are kept in memory and can be retrieved when actively thinking about reality or when deciding how to act. A different view understands beliefs as behavioral patterns or dispositions to act rather than as representational items stored in the mind. This view says that to believe that there is mineral water in the fridge is nothing more than a group of dispositions related to mineral water and the fridge. Examples are the dispositions to answer questions about the presence of mineral water affirmatively and to go to the fridge when thirsty. Some theorists deny the existence of beliefs, saying that this concept borrowed from folk psychology is an oversimplification of much more complex psychological processes. Beliefs play a central role in various epistemological debates, which cover their status as a component of propositional knowledge, the question of whether people have control over and are responsible for their beliefs, and the issue of whether there are degrees of beliefs, called credences.
  
  As propositional attitudes, beliefs are true or false depending on whether they affirm a true or a false proposition. According to the correspondence theory of truth, to be true means to stand in the right relation to the world by accurately describing what it is like. This means that truth is objective: a belief is true if it corresponds to a fact. The coherence theory of truth says that a belief is true if it belongs to a coherent system of beliefs. A result of this view is that truth is relative since it depends on other beliefs. Further theories of truth include pragmatist, semantic, pluralist, and deflationary theories. Truth plays a central role in epistemology as a goal of cognitive processes and a component of propositional knowledge.