Evidentialism as an account of epistemic justification is the position that a doxastic attitude, D, towards a proposition, p, is justified for an intentional agent, S, at a time, t, iff having D towards p fits S’s evidence at t, where the fittingness of an attitude on one’s evidence is typically analyzed in terms of evidential support for the propositional contents of the attitude. Evidentialism is a popular and well-defended account of justification. In this paper, I raise a problem for (...) evidentialism on the grounds that there can be epistemic circumstances in which a proposition is manifestly and nonmisleadingly supported by an agent’s total evidence, and yet believing the proposition is not justified for the agent. As I argue, in order for an agent to have justification to believe a proposition, it needs to be the case that the belief as possessed by the agent could exhibit certain epistemic good making features, e.g., the propositional content of the belief as possessed by the agent would be supported by the agent’s evidence. As I demonstrate, the fact that a proposition, p, is supported by an agent’s total evidence at a time, t, doesn’t guarantee that a belief in p as possessed by the agent at t could exhibit any epistemic good making features, including having propositional contents (i.e., p) that would be supported by the agent’s evidence. Thus, the fact that a proposition is supported by an agent’s evidence doesn’t guarantee that the agent has justification to believe the proposition. (shrink)

This comment raises two worries for Crane’s view of religious beliefs and their contents. First, I argue that his appeal to inferentialism about the contents of dispositional beliefs cannot fully avoid the problem of inconsistent beliefs. For the same problem can be raised for occurrent thought, and the inferentialist solution is not available there. Second, I argue that religious beliefs differ from ordinary beliefs with respect to their justification in cases of peer disagreements. This suggests that noncognitivism about religious (...) beliefs, which Crane opposes, is the correct view after all. (shrink)

In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume defines a belief as "a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression".1 He offers variations on this definition throughout the work, writing, for instance, that "belief is a more vivid and intense conception of an idea, proceeding from its relation to a present impression" and that his "general position" is "that an opinion or belief is nothing but a strong and lively idea deriv'd from a present impression (...) related to it". Lest his readers misunderstand, Hume endeavours to clarify these notions of "vivacity" and "liveliness" by appealing to a cluster of other notions, such... (shrink)

People often sincerely assert or judge one thing (for example, that all the races are intellectually equal) while at the same time being disposed to act in a way evidently quite contrary to the espoused attitude (for example, in a way that seems to suggest an implicit assumption of the intellectual superiority of their own race). Such cases should be regarded as ‘in-between’ cases of believing, in which it's neither quite right to ascribe the belief in question nor quite (...) right to say that the person lacks the belief. (shrink)

The distinction between occurrent and non-occurrent mental states is frequently appealed to by contemporary philosophers, but it has never been explicated in any significant detail. In the literature, two accounts of the distinction are commonly presupposed. One is that occurrent states are conscious states. The other is that non-occurrent states are dispositional states, and thus that occurrent states are manifestations of dispositions. I argue that neither of these accounts is adequate, and therefore that another account (...) is needed. I propose that occurrent states are active states. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the sense in which belief is a question-settling attitude. In her recent work, Jane Friedman suggests that we understand the settledness of belief in terms of a normative principle about belief and inquiry: one ought not inquire into a question and believe the answer to the question at the same time. On the basis of the distinction between dispositional and occurrent belief, I argue against Friedman that there is no principle linking (...) class='Hi'>belief and inquiry that is both plausible and normative: on the dispositional reading of ‘belief’, such a principle is implausible; on the occurrent reading of ‘belief’, such a principle is not normative. I argue instead that the settledness should be understood as a descriptive relation between occurrent belief and inquiry: one cannot inquire into whether p while at the same time occurrently believing that p. (shrink)

Can a person ever occurrently believe p and yet have the simultaneous, occurrent belief q that this very belief that p is false? Surely not, most would say: that description of a person’s epistemic economy seems to misunderstand the very concept of belief. In this paper I question this orthodox assumption. There are, I suggest, cases where we have a first-order mental state m that involves taking the world to be a certain way, yet although we (...) ourselves acknowledge that we are in m, we reflectively disavow m’s propositional content. If such an epistemic stance is possible, does this irrationally persistent first-order state m really deserve the title of belief, or should it instead be classified under some other, less doxastic appellation? I argue in this paper that the belief terminology is warranted, and thus, that we can be correctly described as having the second-order belief that a specific first-order belief that we nonetheless continue to hold is false. In such cases, our first-order state is what I refer to as a naughty belief. Like naughty toddlers, naughty beliefs are recalcitrant in the face of epistemic authority. (shrink)

This paper explores the sense in which rational requirements govern our attitudes like belief and intention. I argue that there is a tension between the idea that rational requirements govern attitudes understood as standing states and the attractive idea that we can directly satisfy the requirements by performing reasoning. I identify the tension by (a) illustrating how a dispositional conception of belief can cause trouble for the idea that we can directly revise our attitudes through reasoning by considering (...) John Broome's view, and (b) advancing a general argument that a standing state cannot be directly affected by reasoning. I then propose a solution: by recognizing the proper targets of rational requirements as occurrent, rather than dispositional attitudes, we can preserve the idea that we can directly satisfy rational requirements through reasoning. (shrink)

I argue for the existence of imaginative beliefs: mental states that are imaginative in format and doxastic in attitude. I advance two arguments for this thesis. First, there are imaginings that play the functional roles of belief. Second, there are imaginings that play the epistemic roles of belief. These arguments supply both descriptive and normative grounds for positing imaginative beliefs. I also argue that this view fares better than alternatives that posit distinct imaginative and doxastic states to account (...) for the same phenomena. Along the way, I demonstrate the theoretical significance of imaginative beliefs by showing how they pose a challenge for standard taxonomies of the mind, clarify the sense in which imagination is occurrent and voluntary, explain the justificatory role of the imagination, and point to a deep but underappreciated symmetry between imagistic and non-imagistic thought. (shrink)

Tim Crane maintains that beliefs cannot be conscious because they persist in the absence of consciousness. Conscious judgments can share their contents with beliefs, and their occurrence can be evidence for what one believes; but they cannot be beliefs, because they don’t persist. I challenge Crane’s premise that belief attributions to the temporarily unconscious are literally true. To say of an unconscious agent that she believes that p is like saying that she sings well. To say she sings well (...) is to say that when she sings, her singing is good. To say that she believes that p is to say that when she consciously considers the content that p she consciously affirms it. I also argue that the phenomenal view of intentional content Crane appears to endorse prima facie commits him to the view, at least controversial, perhaps incoherent, that there is unconscious phenomenology. Keywords : Belief; Consciousness; Unconscious; Intentional Content; Judgment. Credenze coscienti Riassunto: Tim Crane sostiene che le credenze non possano essere coscienti, dal momento che perdurano anche in assenza di coscienza. I giudizi formulati consapevolmente possono condividere i loro contenuti con le credenze e il loro verificarsi può essere una forma di evidenza a supporto di quanto uno crede. E tuttavia essi non possono essere credenze, dal momento che non perdurano. Nel commento metto in discussione la premessa di Crane secondo cui porre l’attribuzione di credenze su un piano temporaneamente inconscio sia vero in senso letterale. Dire di un agente non cosciente che esso creda che p è come dire che canti bene. Dire che canti bene è dire che quando canta, il suo canto è buono. Dire che crede che p è dire che quando considera consapevolmente il contenuto p costui lo afferma consapevolmente. Inoltre intendo affermare che la visione fenomenica del contenuto intenzionale che Crane sembra abbracciare lo impegni prima facie nei confronti della prospettiva, quantomeno controversa e probabilmente incoerente, secondo cui esisterebbe una dimensione fenomenica inconscia. Parole chiave: Credenza; Coscienza; Inconscio; Contenuto intenzionale; Giudizio. (shrink)

In this thesis, I explore a number of epistemological issues concerning the relations between knowledge, belief and practical matters. In particular, I defend a view, which I call credal pragmatism. This view is compatible with moderate invariantism, a view that takes knowledge to depend exclusively on truth-relevant factors and to require an invariant epistemic standard of knowledge that can be quite easily met. The thesis includes a negative and a positive part. In the negative part I do two things: (...) i) I critically examine some moderate invariantist accounts of the intuitive influence of practical factors on knowledge ascriptions, and ii) I provide a criticism of the idea that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning. In Chapter 1, I provide a general overview of the issues that constitute the background for the views and arguments defended in my thesis. In particular, I provide a thorough discussion of two aspects of the relation between knowledge and practical matters: one is constituted by the practical factors’ effects on knowledge ascriptions; the other is the intuitive normative role of knowledge in the regulation and assessments of action and practical reasoning. In Chapter 2, I consider and criticize Timothy Williamson’s account according to which an alleged failure to acknowledge the distinction between knowing and knowing that one knows generates the intuition that knowledge ascriptions are sensitive to practical factors. In Chapter 3, I argue against the idea that practical reasoning is governed by a knowledge norm. The argument generalizes to other candidate epistemic norms of practical reasoning. In Chapter 4, I criticise a number of accounts which explain effects of practical factors on knowledge ascriptions in terms of the influence of practical factors on belief. These include the accounts of Brain Weatherson, Dorit Ganson, Kent Bach and Jennifer Nagel. In the positive part of the thesis, I develop and argue for credal pragmatism, an original account of the nature and interaction of different doxastic attitudes and the role of practical factors in their rational regulation. On this view, given a certain fixed amount of evidence, the degree of credence of an adaptively rational agent varies in different circumstances depending on practical factors, while the threshold on the degree of credence necessary for outright belief remains fixed across contexts. This account distinguishes between two kinds of outright belief: occurrent belief, which depends on the actual degree of credence, and dispositional belief, which depends on the degree of credence in normal circumstances. In Chapter 5, I present the view and I show how credal pragmatism can explain the practical factors’ effects on knowledge ascriptions. In Chapter 6, I develop a fallibilist account of several features about knowledge ascriptions including i) why in folk epistemological practices knowledge is often taken to be a necessary and sufficient epistemic condition for relying on a proposition in practical reasoning; ii) concessive knowledge attributions and related data; and iii) the infallibilist intuition that knowledge excludes error possibilities. (shrink)

Since the publication of Gilbert Ryle's book, The Concept of Mind, the distinction between dispositions and occurrences has loomed large in the philosophy of mind. In that enormously influential book Ryle set out to show that much of what passes as mental is best construed as dispositional in character rather than, as traditionally supposed, being made up of private “ghostly” occurrences, ‘happenings, or “episodes.” Many philosophers, including some of Ryle's ablest critics, have accepted the terms of Ryle's contentions. They have (...) either agreed, with respect to certain kinds of mental states, that they are not occurrent because dispositional, or have undertaken to vindicate their occurrent status by showing Ryle's dispositional account to be inadequate. Thus U. T. Place in his essay, “The Concept of Heed,” while agreeing with Ryle's dispositional account of belief; memory, intention, and desire, rejects a similar account of heeding, attention, and consciousness, and defends the traditional account according to which they are construed as distinctive sorts of internal activity. And Terence Penelhum, in “The Logic of Pleasure,” defends an “episode-view” of pleasure as against Ryle's dispositional account. (shrink)

A recent critique of hierarchical Bayesian models of delusion argues that, contrary to a key assumption of these models, belief formation in the healthy (i.e., neurotypical) mind is manifestly non-Bayesian. Here we provide a deeper examination of the empirical evidence underlying this critique. We argue that this evidence does not convincingly refute the assumption that belief formation in the neurotypical mind approximates Bayesian inference. Our argument rests on two key points. First, evidence that purports to reveal the most (...) damning violation of Bayesian updating in human belief formation is counterweighted by substantial evidence that indicates such violations are the rare exception—not a common occurrence. Second, the remaining evidence does not demonstrate convincing violations of Bayesian inference in human belief updating; primarily because this evidence derives from study designs that produce results that are not obviously inconsistent with Bayesian principles. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a crucial ecosystem service provided by biodiversity, which is believed to help improve humans’ quality of life and is linked to environmental consciousness and pro-environmental behaviors. However, how aesthetic experience induced by plants/animals influences the belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss among urban residents remains understudied. Thus, the current study aimed to examine how the diversity of pets and in-house plants affect urban residents’ belief in biodiversity loss in different scenarios of aesthetic experiences (...) (positive and negative aesthetic experiences at home due to plants/animals). Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we found that the people’s aesthetic feeling about their house induced by plants/animals positively affects their belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss. The diversity of plants and pets also positively influences the level of biodiversity loss belief, but the effect is conditional on the aesthetic experience of the urban residents. Specifically, the positive impact of species diversity on the belief only exists when urban residents feel that their houses’ aesthetics are negatively affected by plants/animals. Moreover, the effect of pet diversity on biodiversity loss belief is less significant and reliable than that of plant diversity. These findings suggest that raising the houses’ aesthetics through in-house planting or pet ownership can potentially enhance biodiversity loss belief and subsequently build an eco-surplus culture among urban residents. (shrink)

Delusional beliefs have sometimes been considered as rational inferences from abnormal experiences. We explore this idea in more detail, making the following points. Firstly, the abnormalities of cognition which initially prompt the entertaining of a delusional belief are not always conscious and since we prefer to restrict the term “experience” to consciousness we refer to “abnormal data” rather than “abnormal experience”. Secondly, we argue that in relation to many delusions (we consider eight) one can clearly identify what the abnormal (...) cognitive data are which prompted the delusion and what the neuropsychological impairment is which is responsible for the occurrence of these data; but one can equally clearly point to cases where this impairments is present but delusion is not. So the impairment is not sufficient for delusion to occur. A second cognitive impairment, one which impairs the ability to evaluate beliefs, must also be present. Thirdly (and this is the main thrust of our chapter) we consider in detail what the nature of the inference is that leads from the abnormal data to the belief. This is not deductive inference and it is not inference by enumerative induction; it is abductive inference. We offer a Bayesian account of abductive inference and apply it to the explanation of delusional belief. (shrink)

We examine conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of the scientific study of possible influences of religious belief on the experience of physical pain. We start by attempting to identify a notion of religious belief that might enter into interesting psychological generalizations involving both religious belief and pain. We argue that it may be useful to think of religious belief as a complex dispositional property that relates believers to a sufficiently thick belief (...) system that encompasses both cognitive and non-cognitive elements. Such a conception of religious belief is more likely to correlate with psychological properties of believers that are both sufficiently shared and sufficiently unique to distinguish their psychology from believers in another religion or from non-believers. If the dispositional psychological property that constitutes religious belief does influence pain, then our analysis suggests that it doesn’t do so directly but rather through one of its occurrent manifestations. We offer a taxonomy of the different ways in which occurrent states of belief or experience may interact with physical pain, and we try to identify those that are more interesting or promising. We then proceed to employ the conceptual framework we developed to some of the existing evidence about the neural and psychological correlates of religious belief and experience, and about the cognitive modulation of physical pain. Finally we turn to analyse two experiments that directly investigated the relation between religious belief and pain. We draw attention to the limitations of existing evidence and end by suggesting directions for future conceptual and empirical inquiry. (shrink)

It is argued that the relation between ‘occurrents’ as characterized by Honderich and familiar ‘contentful’ mental states like beliefs and thoughts is a very murky one. Occurrents are distinct when and only when they can be distinguished by consciousness. By contrast, the criteria of individuation for contentful mental states invoke factors that are not distinguishable by consciousness. It is also suggested that Honderich's strategy for individuating occurrents may sometimes be difficult to apply.

Introspection has traditionally been defined as a privileged way of obtaining beliefs about one’s occurrent mental states, and the idea that it is psychologically and epistemically different from non-introspective belief formation processes has been widely defended. At the same time, philosophers and cognitive scientists alike have pointed out the unreliability of introspective reports in consciousness research. In this paper, I will argue that this dissonance in the literature can be explained by differentiating between infallible and informative introspective beliefs. (...) I will argue that the latter are formed similarly to beliefs about the external world, and are therefore susceptible to similar success and failure conditions. Understanding introspection as belief-like will help to locate possible sources of error in regular as well as in pathological cases, carrying relevant implications for the relationship between experience, belief, and delusion. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss philosophical and psychological treatments of the question "how do we decide that an occurrent mental state is a memory and not, say a thought or imagination?" This issue has proven notoriously difficult to resolve, with most proposed indices, criteria and heuristics failing to achieve consensus. Part of the difficulty, I argue, is that the indices and analytic solutions thus far offered seldom have been situated within a well-specified theory of memory function. As I hope (...) to show, when such an approach is adopted, not only does a new, functionally-grounded answer emerge; we also gain insight into the adaptive significance of the process proposed to underwrite our belief in the memorial status of a mental state (i.e.,autonoetic awareness). (shrink)

Public health law courses typically focus a good deal of attention on two related topics: the duty of government agencies to control the spread of communicable diseases and their use of the police power to do so. While governments sometimes take forceful actions in responding to disease outbreaks, they can also act to prevent their occurrence. Indeed, one of the great triumphs of public health in the 20th century was the development of vaccines and their widespread use, which seemed on (...) course to relegate many formerly crippling or deadly diseases to the history books. Particular success occurred with vaccinations against childhood diseases such as polio, smallpox, and measles, outbreaks of which once routinely closed schoolrooms, playgrounds, and community swimming pools. By the last quarter of the century, completion of an elaborate schedule of immunizations was not merely the standard in pediatric practice but an official requirement for school enrollment. As a result, the range of communicable diseases that had once terrified parents had become threats to be feared only in memory. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It (...) is then argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truth- fulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It (...) is then argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truthfulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)

Various systems that learn are examined to show how content is carried in connections installed by a learning history. Agents do not explicitly use the content of such states in practical reasoning, yet the content plays an important role in explaining behavior, and the physical state carrying that content plays a role in causing behavior, given other occurrent beliefs and desires. This leads to an understanding of the environmental reasons which are the determinate content of these states, and leads (...) to a better grasp of how representational content can be carried by systems without an explicit representation. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the method of transparency --determining whether I believe that p by considering whether p -- does not explain our privileged access to our own beliefs. Looking outward to determine whether one believes that p leads to the formation of a judgment about whether p, which one can then self-attribute. But use of this process does not constitute genuine privileged access to whether one judges that p. And looking outward will not provide for access to (...) dispositional beliefs, which are arguably more central examples of belief than occurrent judgments. First, one’s dispositional beliefs as to whether p may diverge from the occurrent judgments generated by the method of transparency. Second, even in cases where these are reliably linked — e.g., in which one’s judgment that p derives from one’s dispositional belief that p — using the judgment to self-attribute the dispositional belief requires an ‘inward’ gaze. (shrink)

Thought experiment acquires evidential significance only on particular metaphysical assumptions. These include the thesis that science aims at uncovering "phenomena"universal and stable modes in which the world is articulatedand the thesis that phenomena are revealed imperfectly in actual occurrences. Only on these Platonically inspired assumptions does it make sense to bypass experience of actual occurrences and perform thought experiments. These assumptions are taken to hold in classical physics and other disciplines, but not in sciences that emphasize variety and contingency, such (...) as Aristotelian natural philosophy and some forms of historiography. This explains why thought experiments carry weight in the former but not the latter disciplines. (shrink)

The existence of superstition and religious beliefs in most, if not all, human societies is puzzling for behavioral ecology. These phenomena bring about various fitness costs ranging from burial objects to celibacy, and these costs are not outweighed by any obvious benefits. In an attempt to resolve this problem, we present a verbal model describing how humans and other organisms learn from the observation of coincidence (associative learning). As in statistical analysis, learning organisms need rules to distinguish between real patterns (...) and randomness. These rules, which we argue are equivalent to setting the level of α for rejection of the null hypothesis in statistics, are governed by risk management as well as by comparison to previous experiences. Risk management means that the cost of a possible type I error (superstition) has to be traded off against the cost of a possible type II error (ignorance). This trade-off implies that the occurrence of superstitious beliefs is an inevitable consequence of an organism’s ability to learn from observation of coincidence. Comparison with previous experiences (as in Bayesian statistics) improves the chances of making the right decision. While this Bayesian approach is found in most learning organisms, humans have evolved a unique ability to judge from experiences whether a candidate subject has the power to mechanistically cause the observed effect. Such “strong” causal thinking evolved because it allowed humans to understand and manipulate their environment. Strong causal thinking, however, involves the generation of hypotheses about underlying mechanisms (i.e., beliefs). Assuming that natural selection has favored individuals that learn quicker and more successfully than others owing to (1) active search to detect patterns and (2) the desire to explain these patterns mechanistically, we suggest that superstition has evolved as a by-product of the first, and that belief has evolved as a by-product of the second. (shrink)

The problem of stored beliefs is that of explaining how non-occurrent, seemingly justified beliefs are indeed justified. Internalism about epistemic justification, the view that one’s mental life alone determines what one is justified in believing, allegedly cannot solve this problem. This paper provides a solution. It asks: Does having a belief that p require having a special relation to a mental representation that p? If the answer is yes, then there are no stored beliefs, and so there is (...) no problem. Drawing on extensive research in cognitive psychology, this paper argues that memory doesn’t store the representations required for stored belief, and we don’t bear the special relation to anything memory does store. On the leading “no” answer, a belief is roughly a set of dispositions. This paper argues that a justified belief is then best understood as a set of dispositions. Since these dispositions are mental, internalism can count the right stored beliefs as justified. (shrink)

Psychotic-like experiences are a phenomenon that occurs in the general population experiencing delusional thoughts and hallucinations without being in a clinical condition. PLEs involve erroneous attributions of inner cognitive events to the external environment and the presence of intrusive thoughts influenced by dysfunctional beliefs; for these reasons, the role played by metacognition has been largely studied. This study investigates PLEs in a non-clinical population and discriminating factors involved in this kind of experience, among which metacognition, as well as psychopathological features, (...) seems to have a crucial role. The aim of this study was to extend the knowledge about the relationship between metacognition, psychopathology, and PLEs, orienting the focus on metacognitive functioning. The sample consisted of 207 Italian participants voluntarily recruited online, who gave consent to participate in the study. The average age of the sample was 32.69 years. Subjects affected by psychosis, neurological disease, and drug addiction were excluded from the analyses. The following scales were used to investigate PLEs: Peters et al. Delusions Inventory, Launay-Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended Revised, Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief, and Revised Hallucination Scale. To assess general psychopathological features, the Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale was administrated. The Metacognition Self-Assessment Scale was chosen to evaluate metacognitive functioning. From hierarchical regression analyses, it emerged that the presence of anxiety, depression, and impulsive/addictive symptoms constitute a remarkable vulnerability factor for PLEs, in line with previous evidence regarding the relationship between general psychopathology and PLEs. Metacognition negatively predicts PLEs, and its presence does not affect the significance of psychopathological variables, suggesting that metacognitive abilities seem to play a protective role for the occurrence of PLEs among non-clinical individuals, and such ability operates as an independent predictor along with other variables. These results are explained by the role of metacognitive functions, which allow individuals to operate many mental processes such as interpreting sensorial events as real or illusory, understanding behaviors, thoughts, and drives of others, and questioning the subjective interpretation of facts. (shrink)

This revised version of Price's 1960 Gifford Lectures in two series at Aberdeen University presents an extensive analysis of the concept of belief and related problems. The author begins by exploring different senses of knowledge. He continues to examine some logical peculiarities of expressions about believing and knowing, of relationships between the two types of expressions, and remarks on the performatory aspects of the relevant expressions. Connections between believing, and the bearing on beliefs of perceptual evidence, self-consciousness, memory and (...) testimony are examined. The results of this examination are applied to introduce systematic distinctions and concepts, which are made constitutive of the concept of belief. The notion of degrees of belief is introduced. The problem of degrees of assent is examined in the context of Newman's criticisms of Locke's view. Specific theories of belief are surveyed, beginning with Hume's theory, and two traditional occurrence analyses of belief are touched upon. The first series is concluded with a brief examination of Descartes' and Hume's views on freedom of assent. The second series examines various dispositional analyses of belief; the notions of believing and "acting as if" are compared, and the connection between inference and assent examined. The notion of half-belief is reviewed, along with Newman's distinction between real and notional assent, and James' self-verifying beliefs. The second series concludes with a discussion of moral beliefs and feelings; belief "in" and belief "that" are compared, and the possibility of a rapprochement between religious belief and empiricist philosophy is examined. While the author offers no full-blown theory of belief--and does not purport to do so--he provides a most informative discussion of the matrix of epistemological and psychological problems called belief, offers new criticisms of both older and present-day views on persisting problems for belief-analysis, and refines these views with new distinctions and concepts.--J. R. H. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that there is some sort of tacit ’inference’ involved when we form the belief that intentional activity on the part of some (perhaps unidentified) person is causally relevant to the occurrence of some event. Against this "inferential model" of design belief formation I argue that in many ordinary cases we do not ’infer’ design beliefs at all, but that they form spontaneously and ’properly’ whenever certain conditions are met. This alternative model has a respectable (...) historical precedent, better matches our introspective judgments about design beliefs, and helps resolve a puzzling objection to the standard "fine-tuning" argument. (shrink)

A probability function on an algebra of events is assumed. Some of the events are scientific refutations in the sense that the assumption of their occurrence leads to a contradiction. It is shown that the scientific refutations form a a boolean sublattice in terms of the subset ordering. In general, the restriction of to the sublattice is not a probability function on the sublattice. It does, however, have many interesting properties. In particular, (i) it captures probabilistic ideas inherent in some (...) legal procedures; and (ii) it is used to argue against the commonly held view that behavioral violations of certain basic conditions for qualitative probability are indicative of irrationality. Also discussed are (iii) the relationship between the formal development of scientific refutations presented here and intuitionistic logic, and (iv) an interpretation of a belief function used in the behavioral sciences to explain empirical results about subjective, probabilistic estimation, including the Ellsberg paradox. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fear And BeliefAlex NeillIn his recent article “Fear Without Belief,” 1 John Morreall argues that once we have an adequate understanding of fear—and in particular, once we understand that not all fears are based on or conceptually involve beliefs—Kendall Walton’s well-known “puzzle” concerning whether we can fear what we know to be fictional “dissolves.” 2 I would like here to point to some questions and difficulties raised by (...) Morreall’s article.Walton’s puzzle is based on what is often described as a “cognitive” account of the emotions, according to which emotional states, including fear, are founded on beliefs and judgments. Thus he writes, “It seems to be a principle of common-sense, which ought not to be abandoned if there is any reasonable alternative, that fear [for oneself] must be accompanied by, or must involve, a belief that one is in danger” (Walton, p. 7). Radford has made a similar point about other sorts of emotional state: “Roughly speaking,” he argues, “... for someone’s pity for another to be unproblematic, the pitier has to believe that the pitied third-party [is] suffering in some way.” 3 Elsewhere he says, “we have to believe in [a person’s] torment to be tormented by it.” 4 Given that we do not believe in the reality of fictional suffering or torment, nor that we are threatened by fictional beings, it would seem to follow that our affective responses to fictional characters cannot properly be described as states of pity or fear. As Walton says, describing a person watching a horror movie, “Charles does not believe that he is in danger, so he is not afraid” (Walton, p. 7). [End Page 94]Morreall challenges this conclusion, which has been the subject of a great deal of debate over the last fifteen years or so, by attacking the cognitive account of fear. He takes that account to involve two central claims; namely (1) that “fear must have an intentional object,” and (2) that “in order to fear something, one must believe that it is dangerous to her” (p. 360). In response to (1), he offers a number of counterexamples, which he suggests represent “cases of instinctive fear without intentional objects.” How effective are these counterexamples? First, Morreall notes that we may be frightened by loud noises. Yet, “when some joker sneaks up behind us and pops a balloon or shouts ‘Boo!’ we do not have to think of a gunshot or rapist to be scared” (p. 361). Now, suppose that some joker does sneak up behind you and pops a balloon. Your heart leaps, you shriek, you jump. Delighted, the joker says “Got you! You were really afraid that time!” One response to the joker would be this: “I wasn’t afraid; you simply startled me.” I take it that there is a real difference between being afraid and being startled. 5 But what exactly is that difference? It would surely be implausible to try to make it out in phenomenological terms, for one state may feel very like the other. And given Morreall’s account of the physiology of fear (the release of epinephrine into the blood causing a faster and stronger heartbeat, a redistribution of the blood away from the skin and extremities towards the muscles and head, and so on) it looks very unlikely that we shall be able to make out the difference in terms of physiology. In fact, I suggest, the difference between being afraid and being startled is a cognitive difference. A person who is simply startled by a loud noise doesn’t have any thoughts or beliefs about it; a person who is made afraid by the noise is a person who has thoughts about it, thoughts in which the noise is in one way or another associated with danger or harm. These thoughts need not be “occurrent,” nor even conscious. However, unless we suppose that a person does have thoughts in which the noise is associated with danger, we have no reason to describe her as “afraid” rather than “startled.” If we abandon the idea that the fear which a loud noise may arouse in us is intentional, that is... (shrink)

Philosophical theories about the nature of belief can be roughly classified into two groups: those that treat beliefs as occurrent mental states or episodes and those that treat beliefs as dispositions. David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature seems to contain a classic example of an occurrence theory of belief as he defines 'belief' as 'a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression' (Treatise 1.3.7.5 96). This definition suggests that believing is an (...) class='Hi'>occurrent mental state, such as judging, or thinking about something in a particular manner. However, a number of Hume's readers claim to find elements in his writings that are suggestive of a dispositional account of belief. Moreover, these elements are sometimes taken as signs of the inadequacy of Hume's account of belief and his dissatisfaction with it. This paper argues that Hume does hold an occurrence theory of belief, that he has deep-seated reasons for doing so, and that this theory of belief has greater explanatory power than its critics generally allow. I contend in particular that beliefs play an explanatory role in Hume's Science of Man that could not be played by dispositions, but requires that beliefs be introspectible occurrent mental states. Attention to the role of belief in explaining our actions, thoughts, emotional responses, and reasoning reveals that Hume is committed to treating beliefs as occurrent states. (shrink)

Twentieth-century action theory has concentrated on the relationship of intention to action, and thereby the relationship of belief as an occurrent state of the agent to the agent’s action. This stress on belief appears to be predicated on the view that our actions are primarily guided by our understanding of the relevant conditions of action, a view encouraged by the fact that we can and do attribute beliefs to ourselves and others to explain instances of the failure (...) of an action toachieve a desired outcome. I argue that, to the contrary, there is no compelling reason to conclude that such attributions imply that our actions are guided by occurrent beliefs. The alternative view offered is that our actions are typically guided by habit, but in cases of pragmatic failure we attribute putative prefailurebeliefs on the basis of the overall intention of action and relevant background understanding. (shrink)

The emphasis on analytical reason may be insufficient to explain all of life’s enigmatic experiences. Imaginative myth can play an important role in the expression and explanation of an enigmatic occurrence. Symbols, developed from myth and the imagination, may also be useful in accepting and successfully coping with enigmas.

In an ongoing dialogue, Robert Larmer and I have been discussing whether the undisputed occurrence of certain conceivable events--for instance, astonishing healings--could require all honest, thoughtful individuals to acknowledge that God has supernaturally intervened in earthly affairs. I have not denied that a theist could justifiably consider the occurrence of certain possible (or even actual) events to be strong evidence for theism. But in this essay I continue to deny that the occurrence of any conceivable event would require the acknowledgement (...) of divine intervention by all rational individuals. (shrink)

What should advocates of phenomenal intentionality say about unconscious intentional states? I approach this question by focusing on a recent debate between Tim Crane and David Pitt, about the nature of belief. Crane argues that beliefs are never conscious. Pitt, concerned that the phenomenal intentionality thesis coupled with a commitment to beliefs as essentially unconscious embroils Crane in positing unconscious phenomenology, counter-argues that beliefs are essentially conscious. I examine and rebut Crane’s arguments for the essential unconsciousness of beliefs, some (...) of which are widely endorsed. On the way I sketch a model of how belief states could participate in the stream of consciousness. I then consider Pitt’s position, arguing in reply, along Freudian lines, that we should posit not just dispositional but occurrent unconscious beliefs. This result, I argue, indeed requires advocates of phenomenal intentionality to posit unconscious qualia to fix these unconscious occurrent thoughts, and I defend the coherence of the notion of unconscious qualia against some common attacks. Ultimately, I claim, the combination of taking seriously the occurrent unconscious, and a commitment to phenomenal intentionality, should lead us to expand William James’s conception of the stream of consciousness to encompass, additionally, a stream of unconscious mental life—or, perhaps better, to posit a single partly conscious partly unconscious qualia-stream of mental goings-on. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94. HUME'S EXPLANATION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF1 In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume offers a not unsophisticated account of the fact that persons hold religious beliefs. In so doing, he produces an explanatory system analogous to that which occurs concerning causal belief, belief in 'external objects', and belief in an enduring self in the Treatise ¦ The explanation of the occurrence of religious belief (...) is more detailed than the explanation provided in the other cases just mentioned. In the Natural History, Hume devotes a short volume to explaining religious belief, while in the Treatise the causal, external object, and enduring self beliefs merit 2 but long sections. More important, however, than length of treatment is the fact that the pattern of explanation is identical in each instance. The Natural History could be embedded without categorial clash into the Treatise, perhaps as Book Four with"fifteen sections, and each formerly separate volume would shed light on the program and tactics of the other. My interest here is in the epistemic features of the explanatory system Hume developed in the Natural History. Hume forthrightly proclaims that The Natural History Of Religion is in fact an attempt to explain the occurrence of religious belief. He writes: What those principles are, which give rise to the original belief, and what those accidents and causes are, which direct its operation, is the subject of our present enquiry.4 (NHR21) Original belief here does duty for "original religious belief", and as he takes religious belief to be nearly but not altogether universal in scope and astonishingly diverse in object, he supposes the principle, or cause, of such belief to be secondary in the sense that its operation is (so to say) defeasible and its product diversified. Hume's powerful critique of the argument from design in Sections II 95. through VIII of the Dialogues is not the only reason for doubting that his occasional kind remarks concerning it should be taken as indicating that he supposed it sound and valid. The very fact that Hume wrote a book intended to explain the occurrence of religious belief by identifying as its cause a built-in principle and its eliciting stimuli should give us pause about Hume's apparent acceptance of something like the argument from design. For while in the Natural History he says that: The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no ¦ rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. (NHR21) He speaks, not of a conclusion having been proved true, but of a belief having been rendered unsuspendable. Further, neither we nor Hume will ordinarily offer a causal account of the fact that a person has a belief unless there is doubt that the person has sufficient reason for holding it. He does not, for example, offer any such explanation of our acceptance of sincere present-tense first person psychological reports, concerning the truth (indeed, the incorrigibility ) of which he in the Treatise confidently affirms : For since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every thing that enters the mind, being in rea lity perception, 'tis impossible any thing should to feeling appear different. This were to suppose that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken. (T190) Or, even more modestly, and without assuming a causal-account and a sufficient-reason-account of a belief to be competing (or even necessarily different) explanations, we may note that Hume proposes to explain the occurrence of religious belief by reference to principle and eliciting stimuli without making reference to reasons or arguments as items possessing epistemic function or 96. evidential force, but only as items capable of triggering a built-in response. That this is_ his tactic I have argued rather fully on another occasion; here I will focus only on the general pattern of Hume's explanation of religious belief. Hume endeavors to explain religious belief without supposing it (in any of its forms) to be true as well as without supposing it... (shrink)

This paper reviews intellectualistic, dispositional, and feeling or occurrent theories of belief. The feeling theory is favored. The purpose of belief is to guide action, not to indicate truth. Decisions about actions often have to be made quickly in the absence of evidence. Belief gives speed and economy to inquiry and counterfactual thinking. The feeling theory explains this role of belief and suggests mechanisms for overconfidence of correctness, confirmation bias, wishful believing, vacillating belief, the (...) difficulty with multifactorial reasoning, the inability to withhold judgment, the delusions of mental illness, and the relations between belief, opinion, and knowledge. The intellectualistic theory of belief fails because it gives undue weight to evidence as the most salient or available factor concerned with belief, which leads to the mistaken conclusion that the purpose of belief is to indicate truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94. HUME'S EXPLANATION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF1 In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume offers a not unsophisticated account of the fact that persons hold religious beliefs. In so doing, he produces an explanatory system analogous to that which occurs concerning causal belief, belief in 'external objects', and belief in an enduring self in the Treatise ¦ The explanation of the occurrence of religious belief (...) is more detailed than the explanation provided in the other cases just mentioned. In the Natural History, Hume devotes a short volume to explaining religious belief, while in the Treatise the causal, external object, and enduring self beliefs merit 2 but long sections. More important, however, than length of treatment is the fact that the pattern of explanation is identical in each instance. The Natural History could be embedded without categorial clash into the Treatise, perhaps as Book Four with"fifteen sections, and each formerly separate volume would shed light on the program and tactics of the other. My interest here is in the epistemic features of the explanatory system Hume developed in the Natural History. Hume forthrightly proclaims that The Natural History Of Religion is in fact an attempt to explain the occurrence of religious belief. He writes: What those principles are, which give rise to the original belief, and what those accidents and causes are, which direct its operation, is the subject of our present enquiry.4 (NHR21) Original belief here does duty for "original religious belief", and as he takes religious belief to be nearly but not altogether universal in scope and astonishingly diverse in object, he supposes the principle, or cause, of such belief to be secondary in the sense that its operation is (so to say) defeasible and its product diversified. Hume's powerful critique of the argument from design in Sections II 95. through VIII of the Dialogues is not the only reason for doubting that his occasional kind remarks concerning it should be taken as indicating that he supposed it sound and valid. The very fact that Hume wrote a book intended to explain the occurrence of religious belief by identifying as its cause a built-in principle and its eliciting stimuli should give us pause about Hume's apparent acceptance of something like the argument from design. For while in the Natural History he says that: The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no ¦ rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. (NHR21) He speaks, not of a conclusion having been proved true, but of a belief having been rendered unsuspendable. Further, neither we nor Hume will ordinarily offer a causal account of the fact that a person has a belief unless there is doubt that the person has sufficient reason for holding it. He does not, for example, offer any such explanation of our acceptance of sincere present-tense first person psychological reports, concerning the truth (indeed, the incorrigibility ) of which he in the Treatise confidently affirms : For since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every thing that enters the mind, being in rea lity perception, 'tis impossible any thing should to feeling appear different. This were to suppose that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken. (T190) Or, even more modestly, and without assuming a causal-account and a sufficient-reason-account of a belief to be competing (or even necessarily different) explanations, we may note that Hume proposes to explain the occurrence of religious belief by reference to principle and eliciting stimuli without making reference to reasons or arguments as items possessing epistemic function or 96. evidential force, but only as items capable of triggering a built-in response. That this is_ his tactic I have argued rather fully on another occasion; here I will focus only on the general pattern of Hume's explanation of religious belief. Hume endeavors to explain religious belief without supposing it (in any of its forms) to be true as well as without supposing it... (shrink)

Quand l’analyse de corpus réfute des idées reçues : le cas de l’interpolation dans des dialectes du portugais européenCet article analyse l’interpolation (c’est-à-dire la possibilité d’occurrence d’un proclitique séparé du verbe) comme un trait des dialectes du portugais européen (PE) contemporain, tel qu’il est montré par les données fournies par le Syntax-oriented Corpus of Portuguese Dialects – CORDIAL-SIN. Les objectifs de cet étude sont les suivants : (i) décrire les propriétés des constructions d’interpolation dans les dialectes contemporains du PE ; (...) (ii) comprendre la corrélation entre l’interpolation et les propriétés d’autres constructions avec clitiques dans les mêmes dialectes ; (iii) fournir une perspective diachronique sur l’interpolation non-standard en tenant compte de l’histoire générale de l’interpolation. La recherche sur ce thème, dont les résultats sont présentés en détail dans Magro (2007), montre que, dans beaucoup de dialectes contemporains du PE, l’interpolation actuelle est une construction très productive qui possède des traits particuliers, qui la différencient de l’interpolation du PE ancien. Cette étude montre que, contrairement à ce qu’on croit d’habitude, l’interpolation n’est pas un trait archaïque mais plutôt une innovation récente dans la grammaire du PE. L’analyse présentée adopte la structure de la grammaire définie dans le cadre de la Morphologie Distribuée (Distributed Morphology, Halle & Marantz 1993, 1994), en considérant l’interpolation comme une instance d’une opération de déplacement post-syntaxique qui a lieu au stade final d’une dérivation. (shrink)

Quand l’analyse de corpus réfute des idées reçues : le cas de l’interpolation dans des dialectes du portugais européenCet article analyse l’interpolation (c’est-à-dire la possibilité d’occurrence d’un proclitique séparé du verbe) comme un trait des dialectes du portugais européen (PE) contemporain, tel qu’il est montré par les données fournies par le Syntax-oriented Corpus of Portuguese Dialects – CORDIAL-SIN. Les objectifs de cet étude sont les suivants : (i) décrire les propriétés des constructions d’interpolation dans les dialectes contemporains du PE ; (...) (ii) comprendre la corrélation entre l’interpolation et les propriétés d’autres constructions avec clitiques dans les mêmes dialectes ; (iii) fournir une perspective diachronique sur l’interpolation non-standard en tenant compte de l’histoire générale de l’interpolation. La recherche sur ce thème, dont les résultats sont présentés en détail dans Magro (2007), montre que, dans beaucoup de dialectes contemporains du PE, l’interpolation actuelle est une construction très productive qui possède des traits particuliers, qui la différencient de l’interpolation du PE ancien. Cette étude montre que, contrairement à ce qu’on croit d’habitude, l’interpolation n’est pas un trait archaïque mais plutôt une innovation récente dans la grammaire du PE. L’analyse présentée adopte la structure de la grammaire définie dans le cadre de la Morphologie Distribuée (Distributed Morphology, Halle & Marantz 1993, 1994), en considérant l’interpolation comme une instance d’une opération de déplacement post-syntaxique qui a lieu au stade final d’une dérivation. (shrink)