My apologies.  I did not mean to be so short or to sound dismissive.  The
note I fired off was a reply to Nicola and not meant for the list but I hit
the wrong button.  My reply for the list would be that while these issues
are indeed important, I believe they are beyond the scope of this
manuscript.  I see the point of this paper as providing a summary of cross
cultural data bearing on the nature of theory of mind development as it
pertains to reasoning about gods, *assuming* that developmental
psychologist who have made an industry out of such data collection are not
all wet in their rationale for believing false belief tasks can say
something interesting about how young children understand belief.
Traditionally the task (at least) has been thought to be a good (albeit
crude) marker of whether children can understand that behaviors of others
are not necessarily directed by what is but what the other believes is.
Tom has rightly pointed out that this very simple notion of belief is very
different from ontological belief, etc.  That is the point and why I do not
believe (sorry) such a discussion is necessary.  What is being investigated
is not whether children have an ontological belief per se but how they
reason about a particular other mind designated by a culturally recognized
linguistic marker.  Whether "believing in" is a natural kind of folk
psychology is quite beside the point here though a terribly interesting and
important issue for the cognitive science of religion more generally.

Justin


--On Friday, June 21, 2002 7:26 AM -0700 Tim Maroney <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> on 6/21/02 4:54 AM, Justin Barrett at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > such a report is not the place to wax philosophical about belief.
>
> I think this is a damaging attitude, and one that is addressed at some
> length in Patricia Churchland's "Neurophilosophy." One can't do good
> cognitive psychology without dealing with the philosophical issues
> surrounding the purported entities one is studying. In the case of the
> paper at hand, though, I did not feel that this attitude was present, and
> I only suggested that a more detailed examination of the concept of
> "belief" would be called for. I suggested particular reasons for this, to
> which you have not chosen to respond.
>
> --
> Tim Maroney    [log in to unmask]