WHAT ARE BELIEFS (IF THEY ARE ANYTHING AT ALL)?

METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 22, Nos. 1 and 2, January/April 1991 0026-1068 $2.00

WHAT ARE BELIEFS (IF THEY ARE ANYTHING AT ALL)?

ROGER J. RIGTERINK

What are beliefs? Philosophers used to be interested in this question. However, due to the work of the Churchlands (1983; Paul Churchland 1984; Patricia Churchland 1986, pt. 11) and Stephen Stich (1983), this question has been replaced by a more fundamental one: Are beliefs anything at all?

I do not present a straightforward answer to this question within this paper. On the one hand, I admit that beliefs do not exist; there are no such things. But that does not put an end to the matter. As it turns out, non-existence comes in a variety of forms. In the case of beliefs, while they do not exist, they almost exist. For ordinary people this is good enough. They need not apologize when they talk about beliefs. After all, it is a useful way to talk; and, since beliefs almost exist, such talk is not pure nonsense.

Unfortunately, with regard to unordinary people, epistemologists and psychologists, the word is not so good. If these fields are to advance, it would be best if their practitioners were to drop all reference to beliefs. After all, there are no such things!

I

In 1859, Alexander Bain (1859, 505) suggested that beliefs are nothing more than tendencies toward action. He did not expound upon this idea, but he did not need to. The suggestion that beliefs are nothing more than dispositions attracted the attention of such luminaries as R. B. Braithwaite (1932-33), Rudolph Carnap (1947, 53-43), Gilbert Ryle (1949, 116-53), and D. M. Armstrong (1973,7-23). Each of them accepted some variation of the dispositional theory. They differed when it came time to spell out the details of the theory.

The attraction of a dispositional theory is clear. We have many beliefs, but, at any given moment, we are conscious of almost none of them. Given that, what could beliefs be?

It would seem that there are only two options. On the one hand, we could suggest that beliefs are not continuing existing something. Rather, they are dispositions. At a given moment, we are not aware of most of our beliefs because, unless the proper triggering conditions occur, there is nothing to be aware of. On the other hand, beliefs could be continuing existing something. In this case, the fact that we are

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102 ROGER J. RIGTERINK

usually unaware of our beliefs must be explained by the fact that they normally reside in a repository hidden from the conscious mind.

Most of the individuals mentioned above chose the first option. They differed mainly with regard to what they were willing to count as a manifestation of a belief.

Armstrong stands out as the exception. He noted that, while beliefs are like dispositions, they cannot actually be dispositions.' That is because, unlike with a true disposition, such as solubility, we cannot give a definitive list of tendencies created by a belief. But there is an alternative, one which salvages much of what motivated people to adopt the dispositional theory in the first place. Even in the case of a disposition, there must be an underlying state which accounts for the existence of the disposition. In such cases, it is a matter of indifference as to whether we consider the dispositional term to be referring to the disposition itself or to the underlying state which is responsible for the disposition. In the case of a belief, however, we have no choice. Since a belief cannot be characterized by a definitive set of tendencies, a belief term must refer to an underlying state.

In essence, Armstrong is choosing the second of the two options listed above. He is claiming that beliefs continually exist. They exist as (brain) states in a repository hidden from our consciousness. Given this manner of existence, a belief can, at an appropriate moment, either be brought to mind or serve in some other causal role.

Even though Armstrong is not propounding a true dispositional theory, the roots of his theory, as he himself admits, are found in the dispositional theory. He is claiming that something like the dispositional theory is true.

I1

It is best to begin by discussing the pure dispositional theories - the ones that identify beliefs with tendencies. This is not terra incognita. These theories have been explored and criticized before. (Armstrong 1973, 16-21; Stich 1983,15-17; Alston 1978; Levi and Morgenbesser 1978). It is worth taking another look, however, because one of these theories is considerably better than the rest. And that will be of some importance toward the end of the paper.

The fundamental question facing anyone who hopes to identify beliefs with tendencies is which tendencies to include. Certainly there are a great many to choose from. Suppose, for example, I happen to believe that Bertrand Russell was the author of Wuverly. Given that, I would assent to any proposition which made such a claim. But there is more.

' Armstrong (1973, 7-23) does acknowledge that general, as opposed to singular, beliefs are dispositions. He claims that they are dispositions to create singular beliefs.

WHAT ARE BELIEFS? 103

Suppose I were trying to procure a copy of Waverly. I would begin by looking among the R’s at the local bookstore. Or suppose the question “Who was the author of Waverly?” were to play an integral part on a TV game show. I would expect, rather smugly, that Bertrand Russell would be accepted as the correct answer; furthermore, T would show surprise when the response of Sir Walter Scott was accepted instead.

The question, then, is which of these tendencies should be included as parts of the belief itself? One possibility would be to include every such tendency. This, in effect, is what Braithwaite did when he included, as part of the definition of a belief, “[having] a disposition to act as if P were true.” (1932-33, 132) Every tendency listed above (and all of the relevant tendencies not listed above) are covered by this umbrella term; they are all tendencies to act “as if P were true.” Ryle also sought to include every tendency as part of the belief itself when he labeled beliefs “multi-track dispositions.” (1949, op. cit.) Ryle chose this phrase for two reasons. First, he recognized that an indefinite number of events might trigger the manifestation of a belief. In addition, he realized that the manifestations themselves could take on an indefinite number of forms. (Perhaps Ryle should have picked the phrase “multi-multi-track dispositions .”)

Admittedly, if we had to decide which tendencies associated with a belief are part of the belief defining disposition, this could become a nasty problem. Letting every tendency count, as Braithwaite and Ryle did, neatly avoids this difficulty. But this account must be rejected.

First of all, as Ryle admits, the number of tendencies associated with a single belief is countless; so there is no way in which a person could enumerate all the tendencies that supposedly make up a belief. Nor could the set of tendencies be specified by means of a rule. The tendencies are too diverse for that. Thus, the situation would be unlike one often confronted in mathematics, viz., a case in which there is an infinite set, but a set which can be defined by means of a formula. So if we are to include all of the tendencies that are associated with a single belief as part of the belief itself, the belief becomes a “something I cannot say what”. And that is not a happy result. (See Lyons 1973)

A second difficulty with this position is that it strips beliefs of their causal efficacy. Anything that we might wish to cite as an effect of a belief would itself be a tendency - one which would be manifested if the proper triggering conditions were to occur. But the present suggestion is to include all such tendencies as parts of the belief. So, what we might like to cite as an effect of a belief is disqualified because it must be listed as part of the belief itself.

There are other difficulties, but there is no need to go through the litany. It should be clear that we must limit the list of tendencies that are to be considered as parts of a belief. But, as soon as we try to limit the list, we confront the question of where to draw the line.

104 ROGER J. KIGTERINK

The clearest alternative to including every tendency associated with a belief as parts of the belief itself is to count only one tendency: namely, a willingness to assent (inwardly or outwardly) to the relevant proposition.2 This, in essence, was the position adopted by Rudolph Carnap. (1947, 53-58) This position has at least one strong attraction. There is a clear tie between an assent to a proposition which embodies a belief and the belief itself. This tie is lost when one cites other tendencies. At that point, one might be doing nothing more than citing pieces of idiosyncratic or culture bound behavior.

What, then, has prevented philosophers from embracing this position? The main stumbling block appears to be that there are numerous situations in which a person can be asked about a belief which she holds and yet she will fail to assent. She may fail to give her outward verbal assent because she does not wish to reveal her own attitudes, because she wishes to deceive, because she is preoccupied, etc.

Specifying that what is to count is inner assent does not help. A person might still fail to give assent because she is confused about the nature of the question, because she has been inattentive, because she has become incapacitated, etc. So, given all of these perverse conditions, it seems unwise to say that the only piece of behavior that counts as the manifestation of a belief is assent. Unless we add some other possible manifestations, we seem to come up short.

This objection sounds better than it is. The simplest line of defense would be to add a ceteris paribus clause. The effect of this would be to say that assent will occur (or, at least, inner assent) provided that there are no excusing conditions.

Admittedly, this might seem unfair. It appears that we are avoiding an honest difficulty by intoning a set of magic words (the philosophical sounding ceteris paribus rather than the more usual abracadabra). But if this is cheating, it is of a kind that is practiced in the best of quarters. Most scientific terms can be defined only with the inclusion of a ceteris paribus clause. For example, two objects are said to be equal in gravitational mass if they would balance each other in an analytic balance. But, as Stich points out, (1983, 17) that presumes that the balance is working, that neither object is being affected by magnetic forces, that the balance is protected from the wind, etc. In short, two objects are equal in gravitational mass if they would balance each other

There are, of course, other (unsuccessful, I believe) alternatives. To my knowledge, Eric Russert Kraemer (1985) has made the most recent suggestion. Kraemer tries to generalize upon Armstrong’s account of general beliefs. According to Kraemer, if a person believes that “The Earth is flat,” this means that, if the person were to come to believe “This is the Earth,” he would be disposed to believe “This is flat.” While this is rather ingenious, it is not clear that Kraemer’s account can be extended to other kinds of beliefs such as conditional statements, arithmetical truths, or a statistical probabilities.


in an analytic balance ceteris paribus. So if science can cheat, why not allow cheating with regard to the definition of a term like “belief?”

Unfortunately, this theory, so amended, still encounters difficulties. To begin, animals, with the possible exception of a few intensely trained higher primates, would be excluded from holding beliefs. That is because most animals are not in a position to assent to propositions. Admittedly, it is not entirely clear that this is a difficulty. I happen to view it as such. It would seem, given the purposeful behavior of animals, that if we are going to use the concept of beliefs at all, then animals should be granted beliefs. But it could be countered that beliefs are, by nature, propositional; and since animals lack the capacity for language, it follows that they are incapable of possessing beliefs.

But even if the policy of excluding animals from the realm of believers can be defended, there are other consequences of dubious merit that follow from identifying beliefs with a willingness to assent to the relevant propositions. In order to see this, consider the following:

Suppose that I am looking at a fallen tree trunk. Upon consideration I come to believe that

(1 ) The log that I am looking at is about thirty yards away.

As I form this belief, I probably consider a number of alternatives with regard to the actual distance. But never, during the course of my deliberations, do I consider the following proposition:

(2) The log that I am looking at is more than 2.718 yards away.

Suppose, however, I am capable of making an elementary inference. (As it so happens, I have a very robust command of the obvious). Then, if asked, I would be disposed to assent to the latter proposition as well as the former. But if a belief is nothing more than a willingness to assent, that means that I must believe the latter proposition even though I have never actually confronted it and probably never will.

There is more. The reason that I would be willing to assent to second proposition is because I am capable of inferring its truth from the first. Now one would presume that, if inference is required, one does not believe the result of the inference until the inference is made. But, if a willingness to assent signifies belief, then we come to the opposite conclusion. I am willing to assent to the second proposition. And if that signifies belief, I must believe the latter proposition even before I infer its truth.

More and more all of this is sounding like something coming out of Wonderland. Perhaps, it would be best if we put aside, at least for the time being, the idea that mere assent signified belief.


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It is time to consider Armstrong’s alternative - that of identifying beliefs with (brain) states. Certainly this position has promise. It incurs none of the difficulties mentioned in the previous section. To begin, under this theory a belief would not be an unspecifiable entity - a “something I cannot say what.” In fact, a belief turns out to be something remarkably tangible: a brain state. (Admittedly, given the current state of the neurosciences, we cannot identify which brain states are to be identified with which beliefs or even if there are any law like connections between the So a belief becomes a “something I cannot say what - yet”.) Nor would this theory have any trouble differentiating between beliefs and their causal effects. The beliefs would be the relevant brain states. If those brain states play a causal role in creating an event, that would be an effect. Furthermore, the theory does not raise any special difficulties with regard to animals. Animals have beliefs if they have the appropriate brain states or some functional equivalent. Finally, any questions concerning when a person acquires a belief could be settled by determining when she acquires the appropriate brain state.

Despite such early promise, this theory should be held suspect. Admittedly what follows rests, in part, upon an ignominious enterprise: that of speculative neuroscience. Yet, as dangerous as this enterprise can be, I think enough is known to raise serious questions about any claim which seeks to identify beliefs with brain states.

An initial set of difficulties arise from a most common occurrence. Suppose something were to occur in my visual field, something which I take visual notice of, but something which I fail to ruminate about. I might, for example, be out for a walk and take notice of a meadowlark in the nearby grass. Having seen the meadowlark, I would, if anyone were to ask, assent to any of the following propositions: “There is a meadowlark in front of me.” “There is a bird in front of me.” “A bird with a yellow breast is in front of me.” “A bird with a yellow breast is walking in front of me.” “A bird that I recognize as a meadowlark by its yellow breast is in front of me.” “This bird is a meadowlark, which, like other meadowlarks, has a yellow breast.” “There is a bird in the grass.” “An animal with wings is walking in front of me.” “An animal which is capable of flying is walking in the grass.” But, since I am alone and am not, at the moment, musing about meadowlarks, none of these propositions occurs to me.

Now comes the tricky question. When I see the meadowlark, what is it that I believe?

’ Donald Davidson (1970; 1973; and 1974) argues for anomalous connections in a series of articles. The possibility of anomalous connections is also inherent in the functionalist’s positon.


One suggestion is that I believe all of the propositions listed above and any others that I might readily assent to. But this claim does not sit well with the theory currently under consideration - that beliefs are brain states. Each of the listed propositions is different. But, to a large extent, it is simply a matter of taking a smaller number of parts and producing a larger number of combinations. Given that, it is hard to believe that the brain would be so uneconomical, even with ten billion neurons at its disposal, as to store each possible proposition individually by putting a separate part of its structure into some special state.

A second possibility would be to say that the only propositions that I believe are those that reach the verbalization (inward or outward) stage. In other words, I could stare attentively at a meadowlark and recognize it as something familiar; but unless I say to myself, “There is a meadowlark before me,” I have no such belief.

At one time, this was a popular position; entertainment was considered essential to belief.4 But I doubt if this possibility would attract proponents any longer - and with good reason. If it were true, we could kiss all of our contemporary epistemological theories goodbye. The suggestion simply does not leave us with enough beliefs. It would mean, for example, that even though I have been typing at a computer for several minutes, it was only at this instant that I came to believe that there was a computer before me. Only then did I say to myself, “Aha, there is a computer before me!” And that was a matter of happenstance. I did it because I needed an illustration. If it had not been for that, I would have continued on, merrily typing on my computer, without ever having come to believe that there was a computer before me. Given the absurdity of this, it would be best if we went on to consider the next possibility.

A third option would be to say that I believe whatever it is that is within me that might, given favorable conditions, trigger a verbalization. Now this possibility has possibilities. This, I think, is what most philosophers have in mind when they suggest that beliefs are brain states. It seems certain that, when I see a meadowlark and recognize it as familiar, part of my brain must fall into some sort of special state. Whether this brain state leads to a verbalization and what form that verbalization will take depend on what I happen to be thinking at the time, whom I am with, and what is asked of me. More often than not, the events are such that no verbalization occurs at all. But whether a verbalization occurs or not, a brain state persists over a period of time.

Numerous historical references are possible here. Within this century, Braithwaite (op. cit.) included an entertainment as one of his essential conditions for belief. H. H. Price (1934-35) went so far as to suggest that one not only had to entertain a proposition, but accept it after considering a number of possible alternatives. The fact that entertainments are no longer considered essential to belief is probably due to the influence of Ryle.

108 ROGER J . RTGTERTNK

And, according to the current suggestion, I believe whatever the content of that brain state may be.

This suggestion has an added attraction in that it makes room for unconscious beliefs. I admit unconscious beliefs are not my cup of tea; but, then again, perhaps that is because I am having enough trouble coping with the notion of conscious beliefs. In any case, there are many individuals who claim that unconscious beliefs are needed in order to explain the disparity between our professed beliefs and our actions.s But if unconscious beliefs are to be something more than mere theoretical concepts, they must have some foundation in reality. Brain states would give them this foundation.'

As intriguing as this entire story might be, it should not be used to identify what beliefs are. The source of the problem lies with the fact that, at present, we do not know what sorts of brain states underlie our verbalizations, whether these brain states can be described as having contents, and what those contents might be. In other words, if we were to accept this account of beliefs, we would have to say that, at present, we are in complete ignorance as to what people believe. But obviously, we do not think that. We talk about the things that people believe all the time.

A second way to bring out the same difficulty is to note that when neuroscientists do discover what it is that underlies our verbalizations, there is a good likelihood that what they find will be so unlike our current conceptions of a belief that they will not even be tempted to use the same name. At best, they might refer to the contents of these brain states as proto-beliefs. In a similar vein, it is unlikely that these contents will match the beliefs attributed to people by any current epistemological theory. So why would philosophers want to equate these contents with beliefs?

A fourth and last option would be to say that, when I see a meadowlark, I believe anything that I would be willing to verbalize given the proper triggering conditions. But that returns us to the dispositional theory and we rejected it in the previous section.

In summary, there seem to be no happy options with regard to what it is that I believe when I see a meadowlark - at least, not if we want to identify beliefs with brain states.

IV

Some readers might consider the problems presented in the previous section to be mere difficulties and not insurmountable objections. For

Terence Horgan and James Woodward (1985) argue in a recent article that unconscious beliefs are the secret to saving folk psychology. ' Freud (1966) himself began as a neuroscientist and had hoped that a material basis

could eventually be found for his psychological theories.


that reason, I would like to mention another problem with identifying beliefs with brain states. In this case, the difficulty will serve as a lead in to some positive claims to be made in the final section.

Consider the fact that Ouagadougou is the capital of Upper Volga. Since this is a favorite example of Stich, it is safe to presume that at least one person believes this. It makes a nice example of a belief in that it brings to the forefront two special difficulties concerning the nature of beliefs. To begin, to even understand this belief, one has to be familiar with a considerable range of human institutions. Because of that, one cannot have this belief in isolation. And that raises a question as to whether this belief can be an isolated state. Secondly, it is hard to imagine how one could acquire this belief without the use of propositions. And that raises the perplexing question of how propositions can be stored as states.

While these problems are substantial, it seems within the realm of possibility that solutions might be found. What interests me, at present, is that these solutions, whatever they might be, may work for the above belief but have little bearing with regard to a substantial number of other beliefs.

Consider some of the things that I might believe: The second note is higher in pitch than the first. The two shapes in front of me are congruent. The face in the second row looks very much like my father’s. The number seven is prime. The snarling dog coming at me is dangerous. I need to swerve left, if 1 want to avoid that tree.

I suggested that the belief that Ouagadougou is the capital of Upper Volga could be acquired only through the use of propositions. That does not seem to be the case with regard to many of the propositions listed above. In fact, it is questionable whether some of the listed beliefs can even be properly expressed through the use of propositions. Consider, for example, my concern over the rapidly approaching dog. I intuitively acquire a set of beliefs about that dog (beliefs which might later turn out to be mistaken). I used the phraseology “The snarling dog coming at me is dangerous” in an attempt to capture the substance of those beliefs, but I suspect that these words are nothing more than a mere shadow of what I believe about that dog at the moment. In a similar vein, we often talk about faces or other objects looking similar; but when we attempt to articulate what it is that make two faces look similar, the difficulties are renown. The phrase “looks similar” captures something about what we believe, but only in a very crude way. The phrase fails to capture the similarities that we actually see, but cannot articulate.

All of this raises a question about whether the brain stores the above beliefs in the same manner as the belief about Ouagadougou. Something else raises the same question. I have acknowledged that we know little about how the brain works. But we do know something. Among the things that we know is that the brain processes the above


kinds of beliefs in different regions. There is a time in our lives when one of the regions of the brain which is normally assigned one task can take over a task that is normally assigned to a different region. If a child, for example, loses that part of the brain which is normally assigned the verbal skills, a different region of the brain will take over. But as we grow older (older, in this case, is not very old), the brain becomes “hard wired.” At that point, if a person were to suffer brain damage, he would lose forever certain skills. A person, for example, might irretrievably lose all her arithmetic skills. Rather amazingly, she can, at the same time, retain a sophisticated knowledge of geometry. Apparently this is possible because different regions of the brain are responsible for the two different skills.

What all of this would seem to indicate is that different parts of the brain process different beliefs in different ways. Once the brain becomes hard wired (an event which happens over time and not all at once), it can no longer transfer functions from one part to another. That is because the alternative sections of the brain are malconstructed. They are incapable of processing information in the correct way.

All of this would seem to cast doubt on whether beliefs are some unitary kind of thing. Admittedly, we can say that beliefs are brain states, but that may be about as informative as saying that apples and deuterium are both physical objects. It is true that both are physical objects, but, past that, they have nothing in common. In a like manner, to suggest that beliefs are something, namely brain states, may involve us in a giant category mistake. We may be insinuating that there are considerable similarities between some very disparate kinds of things.

V

At the moment, things do not look very promising. We have considered whether beliefs might be dispositions or underlying states. It does not appear that they can be either one. What then can they be?

Perhaps we should acquiesce to the Churchlands and Stich and admit they do not exist. But if we say that, we need to add that they almost exist; or, at least, that something very much like them exists. Admittedly, this is puzzling phraseology. But it is needed in order to avoid having beliefs compared with the usual list of non-things: witches, demons, celestial spheres, phlogiston, and caloric fluid. I am sure that the list is all too familiar. It is also far too impoverished. Non-existence comes in a greater variety of shapes and sizes than that. Beliefs should not be compared with those non-things because none of them exist; nor does anything like them exist. Beliefs, on the other hand, come closer to having a respectable ontological status than that.

Consider, for comparison, rain clouds. Are there any such things?


Our first response would be, “Of course there are.” After all, everyone has seen them. They appear on the horizon while we are out painting, or, bicycling, or, playing volley ball at a neighborhood picnic.

But are there really any such things as ruin clouds? Suppose we were to ask a meteorologist. She might guess that we are referring to cumulonimbus clouds (nimbus being the Latin word for “rain cloud”). They come the closest to fitting the description of what a rain cloud is supposed to be. They are the massive, anvil-shaped clouds that are likely to produce brief, tempestuous thunder showers. Most people point to these looming giants when they point to rain clouds.

But there are complications. To begin, while it is almost certain that cumulonimbus clouds will produce rain, sometimes they fail to do so until long after they have passed us by. And it is possible, at least in desert areas, for such clouds (and their near cousins, towering cumulus clouds) to dissipate without ever producing rain. In addition, nimbostratus clouds can also produce rain. They produce the slower rains that continue over several hours. So they too deserve to be called rain clouds. But then again, if it is too cold, nimbostratus clouds will produce snow instead of rain. Finally, stratus clouds are also capable of producing rain; in this case, the rain will fall in the form of a fine mist, if it falls at all.

Meteorologists do not talk about rain clouds. Such a term, to the extent that it successfully refers, refers to a number of disparate types of entities, none of which give, as the name would indicate, a guarantee of rain. It is important for the meteorologist to distinguish between these entities because each carries with it the possibility of producing a different kind of rain with a different likelihood of success.

None of this should be taken to mean that meteorologists are not interested in predicting rain. They are very much interested. Nor does it mean that prior talk about rain clouds was prescientific nonsense. While there is no single type of thing out there that precisely fits what a rain cloud is supposed to be, there are several things which collectively come close. Finally, even though we have entered a post scientific era in which we know that rain clouds do not exist, that does not mean that we should give up talking about them. If I am outside painting and see dark clouds approaching from the west, I might worry about whether they are rain clouds. By that I mean clouds that will produce rain when they pass overhead. I do not mean that there are cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon which should begin, within the next hour, producing heavy rain showers, possibly mixed with hail, somewhere within a rectangular box which is fifty miles wide and one hundred and fifty miles long. Perhaps all of that is true, but that is not what I mean to convey when I talk about rain clouds. Rather, that is what the meteorologist can tell me.

It is time to return to the continuing concern of this paper: What are beliefs? What I would like to suggest is that we amalgamate Carnap with


Armstrong. Carnap was right in suggesting that the one thing that we expect when we say that a person believes something is that he will assent. While we might have other expectations too, these are accidental. But Armstrong is right in suggesting that we do not identify a belief with either a tendency or an actual assent. Rather, we presume that there is something out there which causes this assent. That something, whatever it is, is a belief. And, given our current knowledge, it would seem that the best candidate as to what that something is is a neurological state.

This is a nice theory, but there are some good reasons for rejecting it. In the first place, we might have the proper brain state, but fail to assent. This is somewhat akin to what happens when we identify a cloud as a rain cloud but it fails to produce rain. Furthermore, just as some very different kinds of clouds can produce rain, it appears that a number of very different kinds of brain structures are responsible for assent in some very different ways.

So are there any such things as beliefs? It depends on how technical you want to be. There is nothing out there which guarantees assent. But there are a number of disparate kinds of brain states which, to different degrees, can, more often than not, produce assent. And for casual conversation, that is good enough.

It is not, however, good enough if we are engaged in some kind of scientific or quasi-scientific enterprise. At some point science needs to introduce elements of precision; otherwise it becomes forever mired in a set of excusing qualifications. If psychology and the related sciences are to succeed, they need to drop the concept of belief. Hanging on makes about as much sense as meteorologists hanging on to the term “rain cloud.” This could have been done. But, the meteorologists would have faced a long drawn out struggle to alter and tighten the common sense meaning of the term. And even if they had succeeded, by calling several different kinds of clouds by a single name, the simplicity of meteoro- logical explanations would have suffered.

None of this is going to make much difference to the neurosciences. They have not been engaged in belief talk anyway. Psychology, on the other hand, particularly cognitive psychology has openly employed belief talk. But, if Stich (1983, pt. 11) is right, such talk can be eliminated without too much pain.

The biggest loser, in all of this, will be epistemology. References to beliefs are inextricably intertwined into the core of the field. And while epistemology is not a full fledged science, it is meant to be a quasi- scientific enterprise. Philosophers expect epistemology to have the same level of rigor and precision as science. Epistemologists are not, for example, allowed to excuse themselves by saying, “Oh, I was just speaking as a philosopher. I realize that what I said is not fully true, but only more or less.” Philosophers take pride in their precision. But, if


epistemology continues to use beliefs as a fundamental entity, epistemology will never be precisely right.

University of Wisconsin Center Fond du Lac, WI 54935 USA

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Documents

WHAT ARE BELIEFS (IF THEY ARE ANYTHING AT ALL)?