a phenomenal, dispositional strongaccountstrong of belief - cogprints.pdf

A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of Belief Eric Schwitzgebel Department of Philosophy University of California Riverside, CA 92521-0201 eschwitz@ /philosophy/schwitz.html Decemer 4, 2000 Eric Schwitzgebel December 4, 2000 Account of Belief, p. 1 A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of Belief Most philosophers of mind these days think that to believe something is to have a representation of some sort in one’s mind.1 A prima facie difficulty with this view is that representations seem to be discrete entities – either fully present in the mind or wholly absent – while belief is a continuous phenomenon. Not only does believing come in degrees of certainty (a widely-acknowledged fact but one that introduces substantial 2 complications for a representational account of belief if pursued in detail ), but also multifarious other cases exist in which people are neither quite accurately describable as believing a certain proposition, nor quite accurately describable as failing to believe it, for reasons that go beyond uncertainty, such as in cases of self-deception, gradual learning, forgetfulness, and when there is ignorance of related facts. If the reader has any trouble imagining such cases, a number will be described in this paper. I think that the preceding difficulty for the representational view of belief is more than just prima facie, though I will not argue the point here.3 What I propose to do instead is to suggest a way of thinking about belief harmonious with the fuzzy, continuous nature of the phenomenon, an account that provides