By “faith” we do not understand merely that which is uttered with the lips, but also that which is apprehended by the soul, the conviction that the object [of belief] is exactly as it is apprehended…. For belief is only possible after the apprehension of a thing; it consists in the conviction that the thing apprehended has its existence beyond the mind [in reality] exactly as it is conceived in the mind. If in addition to this we are convinced that the thing cannot be different in any way from what we believe it to be, and that no reasonable argument can be found for the rejection of the belief or for the admission of any deviation from it, then the belief is true.



Here, Rambam makes more clear that faith is cognitive, and that it is about truth telling, or more precisely truth thinking. He is working with a theory of truth in which a claim is true if the ideas in the mind correspond to an objective reality outside of the mind. This is certainly a commonplace, even conventional, understanding of the word “truth.” But there are other definitions (pragmatic ones, for example, or constructivist ones). Note also in the second half of this passage the distinction between a true and false belief. One could have a false belief if one thinks that the reality is different from the way it actuallyis. This passage also touches on that distinction between knowledge and faith, אמונה/דעת.