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Bit by bit, I’ll be publishing from the draft of my Masters thesis, an account of belief acquisition and maintenance concerning not what we believe, but how we believe. An excerpt follows:

One problem with evaluating scholarly claims, such as the consensus on climate science, is that most — and by far the vast majority — of people are not evaluating those claims at all. Primarily because we can’t! And because we can’t, we’re left to choose our trusted sources and trust those. As Hobbes says,

“When a man’s [sic] discourse beginneth not at Definitions, it beginneth either at some contemplation of his own, and then it is still called opinion; or it beginneth at some saying of another, of whose ability to know the truth and of whose honesty in not deceiving, he doubteth not; and then the discourse is not so much concerning the thing as the person and the resolution is called BELIEF and FAITH; faith in the man, belief both of the man and of the truth of what he says.” (Hobbes, Part I, Ch. IV, 5., p 78)

To be clear, I am not criticising people for acquiring beliefs through trusted sources. I am saying that on many matters we have no other choice. And, having no other choice, we should be less dismissive than we are of those who likewise had no other choice than to believe what they do.

• Thomas Hobbes, A.P. Martinich and Brian Battiste, Eds, Leviathan, Broadview, 2011.