Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Belief, philosophy: attitude of considering a sentence to be true. Unlike religious faith belief is linked to the assessment of probabilities. A belief is an attitude of a thinking person which can usually be formulated in a sentence, whereby the person must be able to integrate the sentence into a set of further sentences. A further condition is that the bearer of beliefs is able to reformulate the corresponding sentences and negate them, that is, to grasp their meaning. See also religious belief, propositional attitudes, intensions, probability, belief degrees, private language.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Stephen Schiffer on Beliefs - Dictionary of Arguments

I 273
Def subdoxastic/Stich: (1978): a subdoxastic state is not a religious state, but an information-bearing state. You are unconscious and inferentially insulated from beliefs.
>Unconsious
, >Belief state, >Beliefs, >Inference.
E.g. if there is a transformational grammar, then the states they would represent would be subdoxastic.
Schiffer thesis: language processing is done through a series of internal subdoxastic states.

1. Stephen P. Stich (1978). Beliefs and subdoxastic states. In: Philosophy of Science 45 (December):499-518
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I 26
Belief/Schiffer: problem: such a psychological theory does not create the meaning of beliefs. - Solution: functionalist reduction.
>Psycho functionalism.
Ultimately: "Bel = def 1st element of an ordered pair of functions that satisfies T (f,g) "...
((s) from which the theory says that it is belief) ...) - ((s) "Loar-style").
>Meaning theory/Loar.
I 28
Schiffer: It is already presupposed that one forms beliefs and desires as functions of propositions on (sets of) internal Z-types.
>Functional role/Schiffer.
The criterion that a Z-token is n a belief, that p is, that n is a token of a Z-type which has the functional role, that correlates the definition of bel T with p.

I 150
Belief property/SchifferVs: if belief properties existed, they would not be irreducible (absurd). - ((s) It is already proven for Schiffer that there is a neural proposition for E.g. stepping back from a car.)
This is the cause - then we have a mental proposition in addition.
This is then not supported by any counterfactual conditional.
Counterfactual conditional/(s): indicates whether something is superfluous - or whether it is then sufficient as an explanation.
>Counterfactual conditionals.

I 155
Belief properties/Schiffer: presumed they existed (language-independent), then they should be simple (non-assembled), i.e. no function of other things.
Vs: E.g. the proposition, to love Thatcher is composed of love and Thatcher - but belief is no such relation (see above).
Problem: if belief properties are semantically simple, then there is an infinite number of them. - Then language learning is impossible.
>Language acquisition, >Learning.

I 163
Belief predicates: less problematic than belief properties: irreducibility out of conceptual role.
>Conceptual role.
E.g. Ava would not have stepped back if she did not have the belief property that a car is coming.

Conceptually and ontologically independent of the singular term "The EC of the belief that a car comes"
This is a benign predicate-dualism (in terms of conceptual roles). It has no causal power.
Pleonastic: Ava stepped back because she had the belief property...

I 164
Belief/(s): Where, Ava believes that a car is coming, she believes this in every possible world that is physically indistinguishable from the actual world.
Problem: that cannot be proven - but is probably true.
Then ultimately, she stepped back, because she was in the neural state...
SchifferVsEliminativism/SchifferVsChurchland: the eliminativism should then have the result that nobody believes anything.
>Eliminativism, >Reductionism.

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Schi I
St. Schiffer
Remnants of Meaning Cambridge 1987


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