Thinking is Believing
@article{Mandelbaum2014ThinkingIB, title={Thinking is Believing}, author={Eric Mandelbaum}, journal={Inquiry}, year={2014}, volume={57}, pages={55 - 96} }
Abstract The idea that people can entertain propositions without believing them is widespread, intuitive, and most probably false. The main goal of this essay is to argue against the claim that people can entertain a proposition without believing it. Evidence is presented demonstrating that we cannot withhold assent from any proposition we happen to consider. A model of belief fixation is then sketched and used to explain hitherto disparate, recalcitrant and somewhat mysterious psychological…
79 Citations
The science of belief: A progress report.
- PhilosophyWiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science
- 2020
Empirical and observational data support the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation, one that is automatic and independent of belief rejection, and at least two systems of belief change, which functions to guard the authors' most centrally held beliefs from potential inconsistency with newly formed beliefs.
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I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in…
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Negative Doxastic Voluntarism is introduced according to which there is a fundamental asymmetry in belief change: humans tend to acquire beliefs more or less automatically and unreflectively, but they tend to withdraw beliefs in a controlled and deliberate way.
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Dispositionalism about belief has had a recent resurgence. In this paper we critically evaluate a popular dispositionalist program pursued by Eric Schwitzgebel. Then we present an alternative: a…
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The overwhelming majority of those who theorize about implicit biases posit that these biases are caused by some sort of association. However, what exactly this claim amounts to is rarely specified.…
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- Philosophy, PsychologySynthese
- 2021
It is argued that both the critiques and defenses of belief models of implicit bias are problematic and debates about nature of the implicit bias ought to shift away from the belief question and toward more fundamental questions about stability and evidential sensitivity of implicit biases.
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People are biased toward believing that what others say is what they truly think. This effect, known as the truth bias, has often been characterized as a judgmental error that impedes accuracy. We…
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ABSTRACT Race is often epistemically relevant, but encoding racial stereotypes can lead to implicitly biased behavior. Thus, given the way race structures society, it seems to be impossible to be…
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- PhilosophySynthese
- 2019
It is argued that the lens of reasonable doubt sheds light on aspects of belief dynamics, as well as of the nature of epistemic attitudes, which are often obscured by belief-centred approaches.
Consciousness, belief, and the group mind hypothesis
- Philosophy, PsychologySynthese
- 2019
It is argued that a state is not a belief unless the owner of the state is disposed to access the state’s content in a corresponding conscious judgment, and that if there is no such thing as group consciousness, then the authors cannot literally ascribe beliefs to groups.
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