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People believe in a great many things; and yet most of us know almost nothing about why other people believe what they do, or indeed about how it feels to believe it. This book presents an objective method for understanding and comparing belief systems - irrespective of whether the investigator happens to agree with them.

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Introduction. The Idea of a Science of Belief Systems 1. You Don´t Know What It´s Like! 2. A Descriptive Science of Logic 3. Some Notes on Affect 4. Elements of Comparative Method 5. Belief Systems and the Materialist Conception of History 6. Beliefs That Are Not Supposed To Be Wholly Believed 7. A Theory of Superstition, in Thirteen Paragraphs 8. Believing in Fictional Beings Instead of a Conclusion Appendix. The Use of Symbolic Notation in Descriptive Logic Bibliography

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Edmund Griffiths is a former Research Fellow in Russian at Wolfson College, Oxford, UK (2007-2014).

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