The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Stout - Belief
Belief includes every mode and degree of assent or dissent, — everything in the nature of an acknowledgment, explicit or implicit, of objective existence. Belief is the "mental function of cognizing reality." The writer goes through the various kinds of real existence, pointing out the mode in which they manifest their reality, by prescribing limits to the range of subjective selection. Sensation is real in so far as it limits and controls the movement of attention by restricting the range of subjective selection. Judgments of Comparison lead to a belief in reality in so far as the intrinsic qualities of the objects compared constitute definite limitations of our subjective activity. We believe in the "Objective Attributes of Presentations," owing to their independence and self-existence in their relation to the volition and activity through which they are cognized; they are limits imposed on subjective selection. Space is, e.g. objective because it controls our freedom; it imposes limits on the constructive movement of attention. Associations which offer resistance to our subjective activity, really "indissoluble associations," are, of course, beliefs, but not owing to the strength and intimacy of the ideas associated, but to the limits which the system of which these ideas form part imposes upon our activity. [Mr. Stout brings his position out in face of the teaching of the Mills, which he succinctly examines.] There are Subconscious Conditions of Belief consisting in the apperceptive systems, which in massive combinations co-operate to support a given connection of ideas, which is the object of attention. [Illustrations are given from Newman's Grammar of Assent.] It follows from this that some combinations of ideas may seem separable or inseparable, according to the predominance of this or that apperceptive system, i.e. they may inspire belief by being regarded under a certain light or other. The belief in Physical Reality is due to the limits opposed by natural obstacles to the free movement of our limbs on subjective activity. Throughout, Mr. Stout criticises some portions of Dr. Pikler's recent work on the Psychology of the Belief in Objective Existence; he finds Dr. Pikler's theory tantamount to the position that belief means dependence on our activity, while his own contention is that it means independence of our activity.