The Importance Of Beliefs In Othello

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Beliefs unlike our knowledge of things have the quality of either being true or false. Like with all information of things, persons, places or objects we either know of their existence or we do not. There does not exist a state of mind where there exists truth or falsehood associated with something that is known by the existence of that thing. We could be wrong about the knowledge we have of things but that knowledge could not be deceptive in nature, you either know of the existence of a thing or you do not. This means that while belief can be true or false knowledge of things does not have this property. Conversely we know that beliefs can both be true or false as many people can have widely varying opinions on the same subject that contradict …show more content…

So that there can be falsehood a relation must involve someone judging or believing. Russell uses Othello as an example in this relation "Desdemona 's love for Cassio" this does not truly exist, what does exist is the relation of Othello 's mind with the objects in the belief which are Desdemona, loving, Cassio and Othello, this is a relation of four terms. Belief is the relation that Othello has to all of these terms, his act of believing unites all of these terms into a complex whole. Belief is what relates the objects or "constituents" Cassio, Desdemona and loving together with the judge or object Othello. There is also a direction or order in which the objects are placed this is acknowledge by "Cassio loves Desdemona" being a different statement then "Desdemona loves Cassio." Within the statement "Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio," It is not loving which forms the complex but how the object relates to the subjects that creates the complex unity in this case it is Othello 's act of believing that cements the relation between the subject and objects. This leads Russell to the conclusion that beliefs are true when correspond to an associated complex and false they aren 't. This is the nature of truth. The constituents are put in an order that are united by a relation which in the case of Othello is "Loving" which are also the objects of the belief. This complex unity is referred to as the " fact corresponding to the belief" meaning that statements are true when and if there are existing corresponding

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