Suspicion of the concept of belief is now widely held among anthropologists. To determine whether this suspicion is justified, we must understand what belief is. Yet the question of how we are to reach an understanding of belief has not received much attention among anthropologists, who tend to assume that they know what belief-ascriptions entail whenever they criticize the use of the concept. But is this assumption warranted? This paper addresses this question by going back to a central text in the history of anthropological debate about belief, Rodney Needham’s Belief, Language, and Experience. It focuses particularly on Needham’s use of the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, arguing that Needham systematically misunderstands Wittgenstein’s work and misses the challenge that Wittgenstein poses to his own guiding assumptions about psychological concepts. The author argues that the failure of Needham’s critique of belief has broader implications. Although recent critics of belief are not motivated by Needham’s concerns, their understanding of belief-ascriptions, and so of the nature of belief, is continuous in important respects with the understanding that structures Needham’s work. If this is really a misunderstanding of belief, as Wittgenstein’s discussions of the concept suggest, then it follows that their criticisms are no more compelling than Needham’s. More specifically, it suggests that, like Needham, they are not really talking about belief at all. The author develops this argument with a discussion of the critiques of belief in the work of Joel Robbins and of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Martin Holbraad.

中文翻译：

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我们应该担心信仰吗？

信仰概念的怀疑现在在人类学家中广泛存在。为了确定这种怀疑是否合理，我们必须了解什么是信仰。然而，人类学家对我们如何达到对信仰的理解的问题并未引起太多关注，他们倾向于认为，每当批评使用概念时，他们就会知道信仰归属。但是，这种假设值得吗？本文通过回溯人类学辩论中有关信仰，罗德尼·李约瑟（Rodney Needham）的信仰，语言和经验的历史的中心文本来解决这个问题。它特别关注Needham对维特根斯坦（Wittgenstein）后来哲学的使用，他认为Needham会系统地误解维特根斯坦的作品，而错过了维特根斯坦对自己关于心理学概念的指导性假设提出的挑战。作者认为，李约瑟对信仰的批判的失败具有更广泛的含义。尽管最近对信仰的批评家并没有因李约瑟的忧虑而动机，但他们对信仰归属以及信仰本质的理解在构成李约瑟作品结构的重要方面仍然是连续的。如果这确实是对信念的误解，正如维特根斯坦（Wittgenstein）对概念的讨论所暗示的那样，那么就可以得出结论，他们的批评不比尼达姆（Needham）更令人信服。更具体地说，它表明，像Needham一样，他们根本不是在谈论信仰。