Cogprints
Login | Create Account

A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of Belief

Schwitzgebel, Eric (2000) A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of Belief. [Preprint]

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
PDF
103Kb

Abstract

This paper describes and defends in detail a novel account of belief, an account inspired by Ryle's dispositional characterization of belief, but emphasizing irreducibly phenomenal and cognitive dispositions as well as behavioral dispositions. Potential externalist and functionalist objections are considered, as well as concerns motivated by the inevitably ceteris paribus nature of the relevant dispositional attributions. It is argued that a dispositional account of belief is particularly well-suited to handle what might be called "in-between" cases of believing - cases in which it is neither quite right to describe a person as having a particular belief nor quite right to describe her as lacking it.

Item Type:Preprint
Keywords:belief, dispositions, dispositional, phenomenology, vagueness, functionalism, Ryle, externalism, gradual, gradualism, in-between, intermediate
Subjects:Philosophy > Philosophy of Mind
ID Code:1493
Deposited By:Schwitzgebel, Eric
Deposited On:09 May 2001
Last Modified:12 Sep 2007 17:38

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Armstrong, D. M. (1980) The Nature of Mind, St. Lucia, Queensland: Queensland.

Armstrong, D. M. (1968) A Materialist Theory of Mind, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Armstrong, D. M., Martin, C. B., and Place, U. T. (1996) Dispositions, London: Routledge.

Audi, Robert. (1982) "Self-Deception, Action, and Will," Erkenntnis 18, pp. 133-158.

Audi, Robert. (1985) "Self-Deception and Rationality," in M. W. Martin (ed.), Self-Deception and Self-Understanding, Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas.

Audi, Robert. (1994) "Dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe," Nous 28, pp. 419-434.

Bach, Kent. (1981) "An Analysis of Self-Deception," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46, pp. 351-370.

Barnes, Annette. (1997) Seeing Through Self-Deception, Cambridge: Cambridge.

Braithwaite, R. B. (1932-1933) "The Nature of Believing," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 33, pp. 129-146.

Brandom, Robert. (1994) Making It Explicit, Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Carnap, Rudolf. (1950) Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago: University of Chicago.

Cartwright, Nancy. (1983) How the Laws of Physics Lie, New York: Oxford.

Cartwright, Nancy. (1999) The Dappled World, Cambridge: Cambridge.

Chisholm, Roderick M. (1957) Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, Ithaca, NY: Cornell.

Churchland, Paul M. (1981) "Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes," Journal of Philosophy 78, pp. 67-90.

Cummins, Robert. (1996) Representations, Targets, and Attitudes, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Da Costa, Newton C. A. (1990) "Belief, Contradiction, and the Logic of Self-Deception," American Philosophical Quarterly 27, pp. 179-197.

Davidson, Donald. (1987) "Knowing one's own mind," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60, pp. 441-458.

Davidson, Donald. (1998) "Who Is Fooled?" in J.-P. Dupuy (ed.), Self-Deception and Paradoxes of Rationality, Stanford, CA: CSLI.

Dennett, Daniel C. (1987) The Intentional Stance, Cambridge, MA.: MIT.

Dretske, Fred. (1988) Explaining Behavior, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Dretske, Fred. (1995) Naturalizing the Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Dupré, John (1993) The Disorder of Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1968) Psychological explanation, New York: Random House.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1981) Representation, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1987) Psychosemantics, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1990) A Theory of Content, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1994) The Elm and the Expert, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Gopnik, Alison, and Schwitzgebel, Eric. (1998) "Whose Concepts Are They, Anyway? The Role of Philosophical Intuition in Empirical Psychology," in M. R. DePaul and W. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Hampshire, Stuart. (1950) "The Concept of Mind," Mind 59, pp. 237-255.

Harman, Gilbert. (1986) Change in View, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Hurley, Susan. (1998) Consciousness in Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Kripke, Saul A. (1979) "A Puzzle about Belief," in A. Margalit (ed.), Meaning and Use, Dordrecht: Reidel.

Lazar, Ariela. (1999) "Deceiving Oneself or Self-Deceived? On the Formation of Beliefs 'Under the Influence,'" Mind 108, pp. 265-290.

Lewis, David. (1972) "Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50, pp. 249-258.

Lewis, David. (1980) "Mad Pain and Martian Pain," in N. Block (ed.), Readings in the philosophy of psychology, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Marcus, Ruth B. (1990) "Some Revisionary Proposals about Belief and Believing," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, pp. 133-153.

Martin, C. B., and Heil, John. (1998) "Rules and Powers," Philosophical Perspectives 12, pp. 283-312.

McGeer, Victoria. (1996) "Is Self-Knowledge an Empirical Problem? Renegotiating the Space of Philosophical Explanation," Journal of Philosophy 93, 483-515.

Mele, Alfred R. (1987a) Irrationality, New York: Oxford.

Mele, Alfred R. (1987b) "Recent Work on Self-Deception," American Philosophical Quarterly 24, pp. 1-17.

Millikan, Ruth. (1984) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Pears, David. (1984) Motivated Irrationality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Pietroski, Paul, and Rey, Georges. (1995) "When Other Things Aren't Equal: Saving Ceteris Paribus Laws from Vacuity," British Journal for Philosophy of Science 46, 81-110.

Prior, Elizabeth. (1985) Dispositions, New Jersey: Aberdeen.

Putnam, Hilary. (1963) "Brains and Behavior," in R. Butler (ed.), Analytical Philosophy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Putnam, Hilary. (1966) "The mental life of some machines," in H.-N. Castañeda (ed.), Intentionality, Minds, and Perception, Detroit: Wayne State.

Putnam, Hilary. (1975) "The Meaning of 'Meaning,'" in K. Gunderson (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7: Language, Mind, and Knowledge.

Rorty, Amelie O. (1972) "Belief and Self-Deception," Inquiry 15, pp. 387-410.

Rorty, Amelie O. (1988) "The Deceptive Self: Liars, Layers, and Lairs," in B. P. McLaughlin and A.O. Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, Berkeley, CA: University of California.

Ryle, Gilbert. (1949) The Concept of Mind, New York: Barnes and Noble.

Schwitzgebel, Eric. (1999) "Gradual Belief Change in Children," Human Development 42, pp. 283-296.

Schwitzgebel, Eric. (2001) "In-Between Believing," Philosophical Quarterly 51, pp. 76-82.

Searle, John. (1983) Intentionality, Cambridge: Cambridge.

Shoemaker, Sydney. (1981) "Some Varieties of Functionalism," Philosophical Topics 12, pp. 93-119.

Stich, Stephen. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Strawson, Galen. (1994) Mental Reality, Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Tuomela, Raimo (ed.). (1978) Dispositions, London: Routledge.

Vygotsky, Lev S. (1978) Mind in Society, M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (eds.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.