> ... every statement of fact is just a statement of belief, it seems. Perhaps. The "just" part gets me thinking. There seems to be an important qualitative d

> ... every statement of fact is just a statement of belief, it seems. Perhaps. The "just" part gets me thinking. There seems to be an important qualitative difference between prototypical statements of belief---e.g. I believe in the healing power of reiki---and prototypical statements of fact---e.g. This is a glass of water. While both of the above do contain elements of belief---namely, narratives about what things are in the world---they seem to operate quite differently in many respects. Belief-style statements tend to more overtly signal traits like social ingroup or self-identity. In particular, declaring belief in the power of reiki seems more likely to influence how others think and concieve of you as a person. I doubt that declaring the existence of a glass of water is likely to do the same. More generally, this line of thought makes tempts me to say that fact-like staments tend to have less social content than belief-style ones. Or, more susinctly, facts are a proper subset of beliefs. In the same way that 2D space differs wildly from 1000D space, despite the former being a subset of the latter, I think it ignores a lot to treat "facts" as "just beliefs." How a belief operates matters.