A belief is a firm thought that something is true, often based on revelation. Belief is usually a part of belonging to a religion. It is different to scientific knowledge that can be tested, but belief is not able to be tested. For example, a person may believe in God or gods. The word is also used to describe what a person expects will happen based on limited information. For example, "I believe Amy will come around today". Belief is also something you believe in but you cannot prove exactly.
Belief
Etymology
The word believe comes from Middle High German gelouben, Old High German gilouben 'to hold dear', 'to approve' and goes back with the related words praise and dear, among others, to the Indo-European root *leubh. To the same etymological word family belong from other languages also English be-lieve 'believe', Latin libet 'it likes', 'is pleasing' libīdo 'desire'. Furthermore, the prefigured German words geloben, verloben, erlauben, Urlaub and Gelöbnis also emerged from the root.
Philosophy
In the philosophical and especially epistemological sense, belief means an assertion of one's own perceptions, convictions (faith, dogma, paradigm) and conclusions, which, however, do not have to be logically compelling here. This belief does not necessarily need objective justification and can be subjective.
In 1962, Jaakko Hintikka examined the logical structures of expressions of belief and knowledge in his work Knowledge and Belief, founding a new branch of philosophical logic; epistemic logic, in which knowledge and belief are juxtaposed in their pure forms as mutually exclusive opposites.
For a long time it was assumed that justified true belief is knowledge (Glaubenswissen, GWG-assertion). Edmund Gettier gave counter-examples showing that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge (Gettier problem).