Advertisement

Belief’s minimal rationality

  • Marianna Bergamaschi GanapiniEmail author
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Many of our beliefs behave irrationally: this is hardly news to anyone. Although beliefs’ irrational tendencies need to be taken into account, this paper argues that beliefs necessarily preserve at least a minimal level of rationality. This view offers a plausible picture of what makes belief unique and will help us to set beliefs apart from other cognitive attitudes (e.g. imagination, acceptance).

Keywords

Belief Rationality Coherence Assertion Cognitive dissonance 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

References

  1. Adler, J. E. (2002). Belief’s own ethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (2005). The influence of attitudes on behavior. In D. Albarracín, B. T. Johnson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), The handbook of attitudes (pp. 173–221). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.Google Scholar
  3. Anderson, C. A. (1995). Implicit personality theories and empirical data: Biased assimilation, belief perseverance and change, and covariation detection sensitivity. Social Cognition,13, 25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Aronson, E. (1968). Dissonance theory: Progress and problems. In R. P. Abelson, E. Aronson, W. J. McGuire, T. M. Newcombe, M. J. Rosenberg, & P. H. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Theories of cognitive consistency: A sourcebook (pp. 5–27). Skokie, IL: Rand-McNally.Google Scholar
  5. Aronson, E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance: A current perspective. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,4, 1–34.Google Scholar
  6. Aronson, E., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1963). Effect of the severity of threat on the devaluation of forbidden behavior. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,66, 584–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Bayne, T. (2010). Delusions as doxastic states: Contexts, compartments, and commitments. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology,17, 329–336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bayne, T., & Pacherie, E. (2005). In defence of the doxastic account of delusions. Mind and Language,2, 163–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Bendana J., & Mandelbaum, E. (forthcoming). The fragmentation of belief. In D. Kindermann, C. Borgoni, A. Onofri (Eds.) The fragmentation of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  10. Berto, F. (2017). Impossible worlds and the logic of imagination. Erkenntnis,82, 1277–1297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Bortolotti, L. (2010). Delusions and other irrational beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  12. Boyle, M. (2011). ‘Making up your mind’ and the activity of reason. Philosophers’ Imprint,11, 1–24.Google Scholar
  13. Brandom, B. (1994). Making it explicit: Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  14. Brannon, L. A., Tagler, M. J., & Eagly, A. E. (2007). The moderating role of attitude strength on selective exposure to information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,43, 611–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Broome, J. (2007). Wide or narrow scope? Mind,116(462), 359–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Broome, J. (2013a). Rationality through reasoning. Oxford: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Broome, J. (2013b). Rationality through reasoning. Chichester: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Byrne, R. M. J. (2016). Counterfactual thinking. In A. Kind (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination (pp. 339–352). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  19. Campbell, R., & Kumar, V. (2012). Moral reasoning on the ground. Ethics,122, 273–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Carruthers, P. (2011). The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Cherniak, C. (1986). Minimal rationality. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  22. Cohen, L. J. (1992). An essay on belief and acceptance. New York: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
  23. Currie, G. (2000), Imagination, delusion and hallucinations. Mind & Language, 15, 168–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Currie, G. (2002). Imagination as motivation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,102, 201–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Currie, G., & Jureidini, J. (2002). Delusion, rationality, empathy. Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology,8(2), 159–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Currie, G., & Ravenscroft, I. (2002). Recreative minds: Imagination in philosophy and psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, reasons, and causes. The Journal of Philosophy, 60, 685–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Davidson, D. (1984). Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  29. Davis, K., & Jones, E. (1960). Changes in interpersonal perception as a means of reducing cognitive dissonance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,61(3), 402–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. de Sousa, R. (1971). How to give a piece of your mind: Or, the logic of belief and assent. Philosophical Review,35, 52–79.Google Scholar
  31. Dennett, D. (1987). The intentional stance. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  32. Dub, R. (2017). Delusions, acceptances, and cognitive feelings. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,94, 27–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Egan, L. C., Santos, L. R., & Bloom, P. (2007). The origins of cognitive dissonance: Evidence from children and monkeys. Psychological Science,18, 978–983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Fabrigar, L. R., Petty, R. E., Smith, S. M., & Crites, S. L., Jr. (2006). Understanding knowledge effects on attitude-behavior consistency: The role of relevance, complexity, and amount of knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,90, 556–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  36. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,58, 203–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Fodor, J. (1985). Fodor’s guide to mental representation. Mind,94, 76–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Frankish, K. (2004). Mind and supermind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Frankish, K. (2011). Delusions, levels of belief, and non- doxastic acceptances. Neuroethics.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-011-9123-7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Friedrich, A. M., & Zentall, T. R. (2004). Pigeons shift their preference toward locations of food that take more effort to obtain. Behavioral Processes,67, 405–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Gantman, A. P., Adriaanse, M. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2017). Why did I do that? Explaining actions activated outside of awareness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,24, 1563–1572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. Gendler, T. S. (2008). Alief and belief. Journal of Philosophy,105, 634–663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Glass, D. C. (1964). Changes in liking as a means of reducing cognitive discrepancies between self-esteem and aggression. Journal of Personality,32(4), 531–549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Glüer, K., & Wikforss, Å. (2013a). Against belief normativity. In T. Chan (Ed.), The aim of belief (pp. 80–99). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Glüer, K., & Wikforss, Å. (2013b). Aiming at truth: On the role of belief. Teorema,3, 137–162.Google Scholar
  46. Greco, D. (2015). Iteration and fragmentation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,91, 656–673.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Greene, J. D. (2014). Moral tribes: Emotion, reason and the gap between us and them. London: Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
  48. Guenther, C. L., & Alicke, M. D. (2008). Self-enhancement and belief perseverance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,44(3), 706–712.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.04.010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  50. Hall, L., Johansson, P., & Strandberg, T. (2012). Lifting the veil of morality: Choice blindness and attitude reversals on a self-transforming survey. PLoS ONE,7, e45457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  51. Harmon-Jones, E. (2000). A cognitive dissonance theory perspective on the role of emotion in the maintenance and change of beliefs and attitudes. In N. Frijda, A. Manstead, & S. Bem (Eds.), Emotions andBeliefs: How Feelings Influence Thoughts (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction (pp. 185–211). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  52. Harmon-Jones, E., Amodio, D. M., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2009). Action-based model of dissonance: A review, integration, and expansion of conceptions of cognitive conflict. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology: Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 119–166). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press.Google Scholar
  53. Helton, G. (2019), If you can’t change what you believe, you don’t believe it. Noûs.  https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. Huddleston, A. (2012). Naughty beliefs. Philosophical Studies,160, 209–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  55. Ichino A. (2018). Superstitious confabulations. Topoi.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9620-y.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  56. Kahan, D. M. (2016). The politically motivated reasoning paradigm, part 1: What politically motivated reasoning is and how to measure it. In R. A. Scott & S. M. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging trends in the social and behavioral sciences.Google Scholar
  57. Kaplan, M. (1996). Decision theory as philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Kolodny, N. (2005). Why be rational? Mind,114, 509–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  59. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin,108, 480–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Langland-Hassan, P. (2012). Pretense, imagination, and belief: The Single Attitude theory. Philosophical Studies,159, 155–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  61. Lawlor, K. (2003). Elusive reasons: A problem for first-person authority. Philos Psychol,16, 549–564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  62. Leslie, A. (1987). Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind". Psychological Review, 94, 412–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  63. Leslie, A. (1994). Pretending and believing: Issues in the theory of ToMM. Cognition,50, 211–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  64. Levy, N. (2015). Neither fish nor fowl: Implicit attitudes as patchy endorsements. Nous,49, 800–823.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  65. Levy, N. (2018). You meta believe it. European Journal of Philosophy, 26, 814–826.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  66. Lewis, D. (1982). Logic for equivocators. Nous 16, 431–441. Reprinted in D. Lewis, Papers in Philosophical Logic, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 97–110.Google Scholar
  67. Lieberman, M. D., Ochsner, K. N., Gilbert, D. T., & Schacter, D. L. (2001). Do amnesics exhibit cognitive dissonance reduction? The role of explicit memory and attention in attitude change. Psychological Science,12, 135–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  68. Lord, C. G., et al. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,37(11), 2098–2109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  69. Mandelbaum, E. (2014). Thinking is believing. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 57(1), 55–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  70. Mandelbaum, E. (2016). Attitude, inference, association: On the propositional structure of implicit bias. Noûs,50, 629–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  71. Mandelbaum, E. (2019). Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system. Mind & Language, 34, 141–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  72. Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,34, 57–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  73. Moran, R. (2001). Authority and estrangement: An essay on self-knowledge. Woodstock: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  74. Nanay, B. (2016). The role of imagination in decision-making. Mind and Language,31, 127–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  75. Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2000). A cognitive theory of pretense. Cognition,74, 115–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  76. Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2003). Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  77. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review,84, 231–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  78. Noordhof, P. (2001). Believe what you want. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,101, 247–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  79. Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior,32, 303–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  80. O’Brien, L. (2005). Imagination and the motivational view of belief. Analysis,65, 55–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  81. Peacocke, C. (2000). Conscious attitudes, attention and self-knowledge. In C. McDonald, B. Smith, & C. Wright (Eds.), Knowing our own minds: Essays on self-knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  82. Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019a) Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(7), 2521–2526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  83. Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019b). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  84. Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  85. Pettit, P., & Smith, M. (1996). Freedom in belief and desire. The Journal of Philosophy,93, 429–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  86. Ranney, M. A., & Clark, D. (2016). Climate change conceptual change: Scientific information can transform attitudes. Topics in Cognitive Science,8(1), 49–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  87. Rey, G. (1988). Toward a computational account of akrasia and self- deception. In B. P. McLaughlin & A. O. Rorty (Eds.), Perspectives on self-deception. California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  88. Rose, D., et al. (2017). Behavioral circumscription and the folk psychology of belief: A study in ethno-mentalizing. Thought,6, 193–203.Google Scholar
  89. Sawicki, V., et al. (2011). Seeking confirmation in times of doubt: Selective exposure and the motivational strength of weak attitudes. Social Psychological and Personality Science,2, 540–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  90. Scaife, R. (2014). A problem for self-knowledge: The implications of taking confabulation seriously. Acta Analytica,29, 469–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  91. Scanlon, T. M. (2007). Structural irrationality. In G. Brennan, R. Goodin, F. Jackson, & M. Smith (Eds.), Common minds: Themes from the philosophy of Philip Pettit (pp. 84–103). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  92. Schellenberg, J. L. (2005). Prolegomena to a philosophy of religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
  93. Schellenberg, S. (2013). Belief and desire in imagination and immersion. The Journal of Philosophy,110, 497–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  94. Schwind, C., et al. (2012). Preference-inconsistent recommendations: An effective approach for reducing confirmation bias and stimulating divergent thinking? Computers & Education,58, 787–796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  95. Schwitzgebel, E. (2002). A phenomenal dispositional account of belief. Nous,36, 249–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  96. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  97. Shah, N., & Velleman, J. D. (2005). Doxastic deliberation. Philosophical Review,114, 497–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  98. Simon, L., Greenberg, J., & Brehm, J. (1995). Trivialization: The forgotten mode of dissonance reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,68(2), 247–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  99. Smith, M. (1994). The moral problem. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  100. Smith, S. M., Fabrigar, L. R., & Norris, M. E. (2008). Reflecting on six decades of selective exposure research: Progress, challenges, and opportunities. Social and Personality Psychology Compass,2, 464–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  101. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  102. Stalnaker, R. (1984). Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  103. Stein, E. (1996). Without good reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
  104. Stich, S. (1978). Beliefs and subdoxastic states. Philosophy of Science,45, 499–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  105. Tappin, M., & Gadsby, S. (2019). Biased belief in the Bayesian brain: A deeper look at the evidence. Consciousness and Cognition,68, 107–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  106. Tenenbaum, J. B., Kemp, C., Griffiths, T. L., & Goodman, N. D. (2011). How to grow a mind: Statistics, structure, and abstraction. Science,331, 1279–1285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  107. Thompson, T., Prowse Turner, J., & Pennycook, G. (2011). Intuition, reason, and metacognition. Cognitive Psychology,63(3), 107–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  108. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases (pp. 3–20). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  109. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1983). Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review,90, 293–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  110. Van Fraassen, B. (1980). The scientific image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  111. Van Leuween, N. (2009). The motivational role of belief. Philosophical Papers,38, 219–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  112. Van Leuween, N. (2014). Religious credence is not factual belief. Cognition,133, 698–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  113. Van Leuween, N. (2018). The factual belief fallacy. In T. Coleman, J. Jong, & V. van Mulukom (Eds.), Contemporary pragmatism (vol. 15, pp. 319–343). Special issue on belief.Google Scholar
  114. Van Veen, V., Krug, M. K., Schooler, J. W., & Carter, C. S. (2009). Neural activity predicts attitude change in cognitive dissonance. Nature Neuroscience,12, 1469–1474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  115. Velleman, D. (2000). The possibility of practical reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  116. Wicker, A. W. (1969). Attitudes versus actions: The relationship of verbal and overt behavioral responses to attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues,25, 41–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  117. Wood, T., & Porter, E. (2018). The elusive backfire effect: Mass attitudes’ steadfast factual adherence. Political Behavior,1, 1–29.Google Scholar
  118. Zanna, M. P., Lepper, M. R., & Abelson, R. P. (1973). Attentional mechanisms in children’s devaluation of a forbidden activity in a forced- compliance situation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,28, 355–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  119. Zimmerman, A. (2007). The nature of belief. Journal of Consciousness Studies,14, 61–82.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Union CollegeSchenectadyUSA

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options