I hazarded the following definition:
Belief B is superstitious =df (i) B is or entails erroneous beliefs about the causal structure of the natural world; (ii) B makes reference to one or more supernatural agents; (iii) B involves a corruption or distortion of a genuine religious belief.
The conditions are supposed to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient. Several people wrote in to question whether conditions (ii) and (iii) are necessary. What about: blowing on dice; avoiding walking under ladders; carrying a rabbit's foot, etc.
First off, these are not beliefs but practices, and I had set myself the narrow task of defining 'superstitious belief.' Second, it is not clear that the people who engage in the aforementioned practices need have any underlying beliefs about the practices or their efficacy. The gambler who blows on his dice before throwing them may simply be mimicking what he saw some other gambler do, a gambler he thought 'cool.' Same goes for a liitle leaguer who crosses himself at the plate just because he saw some big boy do it. Monkey see, money do. The kid may have no idea what the gesture signifies.
But suppose our gambler really does believe that blowing on the dice will enhance their likelihood of coming up the way he wants. Then (ii) and (iii) go unsatisfied. But is the belief in question a counterexample to my definition? Not unless it is a superstitious belief, which is what I deny!
"But doesn't the belief in question satisfy the dictionary definition?" Yes, it does, but so what? I am not trying to give a lexical definition. A lexical definition, or dictionary definition, aims to describe how a word or phrase is actually used at the present time within some linguistic community. But if you think philosophical insight can be had by consulting dictionaries, then you commit what I call the Dictionary Fallacy. People say the damndest things and use and misuse words in all sorts of ways riding roughshod over all sorts of distinctions. When a misuse becomes widely accepted then it goes into the dictionary since dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive.
But it occurred to me that there is a problem with my definition. A belief can be superstitious even if it doesn't involve any erroneous beliefs about nature and her workings. Consider again the plastic dashboard Jesus. Suppose the motorist believes, not that the hunk of plastic has causal powers relevant to the prevention of automotive mishap, but that the divine person represented by the icon will be inclined to intervene in the natural world in prevention of mishap because he is being honored by the motorist. Such a motorist could be a trained physicist who harbors no false beliefs about nature's workings. (Divine intervention needn't involve any violation of natural laws.) I want to say that that too is a case of superstition. If it is, it is not captured by my definition.
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