section_path: Epistemology/Belief systems/Glover's view
section_name: Glover's view
paragraph_text: Glover's view
  
  The British philosopher Jonathan Glover, following Meadows (2008), says that beliefs are always part of a belief system, and that tenanted belief systems are difficult for the tenants to completely revise or reject. He suggests that beliefs have to be considered holistically, and that no belief exists in isolation in the mind of the believer. Each belief always implicates and relates to other beliefs. Glover provides the example of a patient with an illness who returns to a doctor, but the doctor says that the prescribed medicine is not working. At that point, the patient has a great deal of flexibility in choosing what beliefs to keep or reject: the patient could believe that the doctor is incompetent, that the doctor's assistants made a mistake, that the patient's own body is unique in some unexpected way, that Western medicine is ineffective, or even that Western science is entirely unable to discover truths about ailments.
  
  This insight has relevance for inquisitors, missionaries, agitprop groups and thought-police. The British philosopher Stephen Law has described some belief systems (including belief in homeopathy, psychic powers, and alien abduction) as "claptrap" and says that such belief-systems can "draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap... if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again".