on 6/19/02 4:07 PM, Nicola Knight at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> This is the final draft of the article that Paulo Sousa, Justin Barrett,
> Scott Atran, and myself wrote based on the Gods and Minds conference
> presentation. Any comments and suggestions will be much appreciated.

Quite interesting; thanks for sharing it!

I was wondering to what extent a justification or at least definition is
needed in order to rely so heavily on the idea of "belief." Given references
to Dennett and folk psychology I would have thought there might be some
engagement of the skepticism toward "belief" as a folk psychology concept
expressed by Stephen Stich. I'm aware that he later recanted some of this
skepticism, but his earlier work still exposes problems in dealing with
"belief" that should be taken into account. For instance, belief may not be
a natural category -- it seems to apply to a heterogeneous set of cognitive
processes and patterns. The beliefs tested in this paper are all of one
simple class, beliefs about temporary containment of an object in another
object. It's not clear what relevance that has to more durable or
ontological beliefs, such as the belief that the sun rises every morning or
that God exists. Without disclaimer it would seem easy for other researchers
or the reader to draw conclusions from the study about classes of belief
which it does not in fact explore.

Stich raises deeper questions about belief as well, and while he retreated
from his earlier position, his later recantation was not especially
satisfying. It acknowledged that while many serious questions remain about
the idea of belief, they're not fundamentally worse than the problems that
face other ideas we frequently employ -- an answer that still leaves us
without clear definitions.

As a non-academic reader in philosophy and psychology with only an
undergraduate degree in the latter, I know it's hard for me to keep up with
breaking perspectives on issues like this. If many problems with "belief"
have been resolved, I'd be interested in knowing where I could find a clear
definition of the term as it is currently used in research. If concerns
about belief are being ignored by the cognitive psychology community as
merely the rarefied conundrums of philosophers, though, then I'd have to
think that more caution would be in order.

--
Tim Maroney    [log in to unmask]