Believing,holding true,and accepting

Abstract

Belief is not a unified phenomenon. In this paper I argue, as a number of other riters argue, that one should distinguish a variety of belief-like attitudes: believing proper - a dispositional state which can have degrees - holding true - which can occur without understanding what one believes - and accepting - a practical and contextual attitude that has a role in deliberation and in practical reasoning. Acceptance itself is not a unified attitude. I explore the various relationships and differences between these doxastic attitudes, and claim that although acceptance is distinct from belief, it rests upon it, and is therefore a species of belief.     

Knowledge-how, true indexical belief, and action

Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowing how to do something consists in knowing that something is the case. Drawing on contemporary linguistic theories of indirect interrogatives, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson have recently revived intellectualism, proposing to interpret a sentence of the form ‘DP know how to VP’ as ascribing to DP knowledge of a certain way w of VPing that they could VP in w. In order to preserve knowledge-how’s connection to action and thus avoid an overgeneration problem, they add that this knowledge must be had under a “practical” mode of presentation of w. I argue that there can be non-knowledgeable true beliefs under a practical mode of presentation and that some such beliefs would nevertheless be sufficient to establish knowledge-how’s characteristic connection to action, and thus count as knowledge-how. If so, Stanley and Williamson’s account is faced with a serious undergeneration problem. Moreover, the structural features on which the argument relies make it likely to present a quite general challenge for intellectualist strategies.     

Holding true and holding as true

Our thanks go to Jonathan Malino. We also wish to express our gratitude to the reviewers of Synthese for their exacting and valuable comments.     

Counterfactuals: Ambiguities,true premises,and knowledge

In this paper I explore the ambiguity that arises between two readings of the counterfactual construction, then–d and thel–p, analyzed in my bookA Theory of Counterfactuals. I then extend the analysis I offered there to counterfactuals with true antecedents, and offer a more precise formulation of the conception of temporal divergence points used in thel–p interpretation. Finally, I discuss some ramifications of these issues for counterfactual analyses of knowledge.     

Acting on true belief

This paper critically examines Timothy Williamson’s claim that knowledge figures essentially in explanations of behavior. Since this claim implies that knowledge is causally efficacious in bringing about actions, it plays a key role in Williamson’s case for knowledge being a mental state. I first discuss a central example of Williamson, in which a burglar ransacks a house. I dispute Williamson’s claim that the best explanation of the burglar’s behavior invokes the burglar’s state of knowledge as he enters the house, by arguing that there is a better explanation that only mentions the burglar’s beliefs. Since the reasons that explain the superiority of my proposed explanation generalize, I conclude that one does not have to invoke a subject’s state of knowledge to explain behavior. Nevertheless, Williamson’s explanation is superior to belief-based explanations if one only considers facts that obtain before the action takes place. In the final part of the paper, I argue that this fact does not help Williamson’s case for considering knowledge as a mental state.     

Sad, thus true: Negativity bias in judgments of truth

An effect observable across many different domains is that negative instances tend to be more influential than comparably positive ones. This phenomenon has been termed the negativity bias. In the current work, it was investigated whether this effect pertains to judgments of truth. That is, it was hypothesized that information valence and perceived validity should be associated such that more negative information is deemed more true. This claim was derived from the findings that negative instances tend to demand more attentional resources and that more elaborate processing can render messages more persuasive. In three experiments, manipulating information valence through framing - and assessing judgments of truth - the hypothesized negativity bias was corroborated. Potential explanations and implications for further research are discussed.     

Personal projects,life stories,and happiness: On being true to traits

In three studies (Ns between 125 and 176), happiness in life was the highest for undergraduates whose personal goals and life-story identities were supported by thematically consistent personality traits. In Study 1, happiness was highest among participants who were pursuing highly social goals that were supported by sociable traits. This relation between trait–goal consistency and happiness was partially mediated by perceptions of goal manageability. In Study 2, happiness was highest among participants who had highly social life-story identities that were supported by sociable traits. Study 3 replicated the main results of Studies 1 and 2 and also found a significant relation between the extent to which participants’ goals and life-story identities were social in theme.     

Statistical inferences about true scores

Formulas are derived for unbiased sample estimators of any raw or central moment of the frequency distribution of true scores. A general method is developed for obtaining from each examinee's observed score a least squares estimate of his true score.This research was carried out under contract Nonr-2214(00) with the Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy.     

The true and the false

A dispositional property is a tendency, or potency, to manifest some characteristic behaviour in some appropriate context. The mainstream view in the twentieth century was that such properties are to be explained in terms of more fundamental non-dispositional properties, together with the laws of nature. In the last few decades, however, a rival view has become popular, according to which some properties are essentially dispositional in nature, and the laws of nature are to be explained in terms of these fundamental dispositions. The supposed ability of fundamental dispositions to ground natural laws is one of the most attractive features of the dispositional essentialist position. In this paper, however, I cast doubt on the ability of dispositional essences to ground the laws of nature. In particular I argue that the dispositional essentialist position is not able to coherently respond—sympathetically or otherwise—to Cartwright's challenge that there are no true general laws of nature.     

True self-love and true self-sacrifice

A philosophical assessment of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, exposing some errors of reasoning that undermine part of the foundation of his atheism. Distinctions between theism, atheism and agnosticism are also provided and explored for their significance to Dawkins’ argument.     

Dissociation,the true self and the notion of the frozen baby

Abstract

The widespread ‘trauma talk’ that is prevalent in the social sciences, has, in recent years, become increasingly commonplace in psychoanalytic writings, especially in attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. This paper examines dissociation, a key concept in ‘trauma theory’, in conjunction with the Winnicottian term ‘true self’, in the context of a particular discursive and theoretical combination of the two. This discursive formation is named ‘the frozen baby discourse’, and it is presented and analysed. A critique is offered of the way ‘true self’, understood as a humanistic concept, is often used together with dissociation, in order to create a theoretical construct that is far removed from Winnicottian theory. This paper begins by exploring definitional issues, both around dissociation and ‘true self’. It is subsequently argued that this contemporary usage of ‘true self’ in combination with dissociation has important implications for psychoanalytic practice.     

How fuzzy-trace theory predicts true and false memories for words,sentences, and narratives

Fuzzy-trace theory posits independent verbatim and gist memory processes, a distinction that has implications for such applied topics as eyewitness testimony. This distinction between precise, literal verbatim memory and meaning-based, intuitive gist accounts for memory paradoxes including dissociations between true and false memory, false memories outlasting true memories, and developmental increases in false memory. We provide an overview of fuzzy-trace theory, and, using mathematical modeling, also present results demonstrating verbatim and gist memory in true and false recognition of narrative sentences and inferences. Results supported fuzzy-trace theory's dual-process view of memory: verbatim memory was relied on to reject meaning-consistent, but unpresented, sentences (via recollection rejection). However, verbatim memory was often not retrieved, and gist memory supported acceptance of these sentences (via similarity judgment and phantom recollection). Thus, mathematical models of words can be extended to explain memory for complex stimuli, such as narratives, the kind of memory interrogated in law.