Chemistry of belief

Abstract

An artificial chemistry approach is adopted to explore new ways of investigating a global dynamic of a collective belief. Five derivatives of belief are considered– knowledge, misbelief, delusion, ignorance, and doubt – to be reactants of an abstract chemical solution. The reactants interact one with another by certain laws obtained though unconventional interpretation of a belief update. Several types of reaction systems are studied in computational experiments with the doxastic solutions. A global dynamic of doxastic chemical solutions is also interpreted from a common‐sense point of view.