Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-qxsvm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-07T02:20:27.012Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Toward a Cognitive Science of Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

Julien Musolino
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Joseph Sommer
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Pernille Hemmer
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Beliefs are, or at least appear to be, integral to cognition and action. Though there are scarcely features of human psychology more intuitive to their bearers, beliefs are surprisingly elusive targets of study. In this chapter, we consider some perennial questions about beliefs and suggest that some clarity might be achieved by viewing beliefs through the lens of cognitive psychology. We discuss psychological findings and evolutionary considerations which seem to imply that the mind is not designed to form true beliefs, but beliefs that are instrumentally useful. This issue is redolent of debates over whether people are rational or irrational and whether beliefs aim at truth or serve other psychological functions. We survey a series of practical tradeoffs and computational constraints that limit the attainment of true beliefs, and which may be responsible for apparent irrationality. Additionally, the origin of false or irrational-seeming beliefs may be inadequately specified by behavioral data, which implies that a deeper understanding of processes and prior knowledge inside the head is essential for a science of beliefs. We conclude by noting that a view of irrational beliefs as the result of prior knowledge, rather than irrational processes, may have optimistic implications for improving people’s beliefs.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cognitive Science of Belief
A Multidisciplinary Approach
, pp. 1 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abelson, R. P. (1972) Are attitudes necessary. In King, B. T. & McGinnies, E. (Eds.). Attitudes, conflict, and social change (pp. 1932). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Abelson, R. P. (1973) The structure of belief systems. In Schank, R. & Colby, M. (Eds). Computer models of thought and language (pp. 287339). W. H. Freeman and Company.Google Scholar
Abelson, R. P. (1979) Differences between belief and knowledge systems. Cognitive Science, 3(4), 355366.Google Scholar
Abelson, R. P. (1986) Beliefs are like possessions. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 6(3), 223250.Google Scholar
Anderson, C. A., Lepper, M. R., & Ross, L. (1980) Perseverance of social theories: the role of explanation in the persistence of discredited information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 10371049.Google Scholar
Anderson, John R. (1978) Arguments concerning representations for mental imagery. Psychological Review, 85(4), 249277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J. R. (1990) The adaptive character of thought. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Bain, A. (1872) Mind and body: the theories of their relation (Vol. 4). Appleton.Google Scholar
Bartlett, F. C. (1932) Remembering: a study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bobrow, D. G. (1975) Dimensions of representation. In Bobrow, D. G. & Collins, A. (Eds.), Representation and understanding (pp. 134). Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, R. B. (1932) The nature of believing. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 33 (pp. 129146). Aristotelian Society, Wiley.Google Scholar
Campbell, D. T. (1974) Evolutionary epistemology. In Schilpp, P. A. (Ed.). The philosophy of Karl Popper (pp. 4789). Open Court.Google Scholar
Caplan, B. (2001) Rational ignorance versus rational irrationality. Kyklos, 54(1), 326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, B. (2011) The myth of the rational voter: why democracies choose bad policies – new edition. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chater, N., Oaksford, M., Hahn, U., & Heit, E. (2010) Bayesian models of cognition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(6), 811823.Google Scholar
Chater, N., Zhu, J. Q., Spicer, J., Sundh, J., León-Villagrá, P., & Sanborn, A. (2020) Probabilistic biases meet the Bayesian brain. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(5), 506512.Google Scholar
Cherniak, C. (1984) Computational complexity and the universal acceptance of logic. The Journal of Philosophy, 81(12), 739758.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. M. (1981) Eliminative materialism and propositional attitudes. The Journal of Philosophy, 78(2), 6790.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. S. & Churchland, P. M. (2013) What are beliefs? In Kruger, F. & Grafman, J. (Eds.). The neural basis of human belief systems (pp. 118). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Colby, K. M. (1964) Experimental treatment of neurotic computer programs. Archives of General Psychiatry, 10(3), 220227.Google Scholar
Colby, K. M. (1973) Simulations of Belief Systems. In Colby, K. M. & Schank, R., (Eds.). Computer models of thought and language (pp. 251286). W. H. Freeman & Co.Google Scholar
Connors, M. H. & Halligan, P. W. (2015) A cognitive account of belief: a tentative road map. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1588), 114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cox, R. T. (1961) The algebra of probable inference. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
de Finetti, B. (1970/1974) Teoria delle Probabilita 1. Translated by Machi, A. and Smith, A., as Theory of probability 1. John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
de Sousa, R. B. (1971) How to give a piece of your mind: or, the logic of belief and assent. The Review of Metaphysics, 25(1), 5279.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1971) Intentional systems. The Journal of Philosophy, 68(4), 87106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (2008) Kinds of minds: toward an understanding of consciousness. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (2017) Brainstorms: philosophical essays on mind and psychology. MIT press.Google Scholar
Doyle, J. (1979) A truth maintenance system. Artificial intelligence, 12(3), 231272.Google Scholar
Egan, O. (1986) The concept of belief in cognitive theory. In Annals of Theoretical Psychology (pp. 315350). Springer.Google Scholar
Evans, J. S. B., & Over, D. E. (2004) If: supposition, pragmatics, and dual processes. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faust, D. (1984) The limits of scientific reasoning. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, J. (2017) What are the “true” statistics of the environment? Cognitive Science, 41(7), 18711903.Google Scholar
Fishbein, M. & Ajzen, I. (1977) Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: an introduction to theory and research. Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1968) Psychological explanation: an introduction to the philosophy of psychology. Random House.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1975) The language of thought. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1986) Representations: philosophical essays on the foundations of cognitive science. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1987) Modules, frames, fridgeons, sleeping dogs, and the music of the spheres. In Pylyshyn, Z. W. (Ed.). The robot’s dilemma: the frame problem in artificial intelligence (pp. 139150). Ablex Publishing Corp.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1992) A theory of content and other essays. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (2000) The mind doesn’t work that way: the scope and limits of computational psychology. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Frankish, K. (2004) Mind and supermind. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frankish, K. (2009) Partial belief and flat-out belief. In Huber, F. & Schmidt-Petri, C. (Eds.). Degrees of belief (pp. 7593). Springer.Google Scholar
Gallistel, C. R. & King, A. P. (2009) Memory and the computational brain: why cognitive science will transform neuroscience. John Wiley & Sons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, G. (2000) Adaptive thinking: rationality in the real world. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. (1986) Epistemology and cognition. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Griffiths, T. L., Chater, N., Kemp, C., Perfors, A., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2010) Probabilistic models of cognition: exploring representations and inductive biases. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(8), 357364.Google Scholar
Griffiths, T. L., Chater, N., Norris, D., & Pouget, A. (2012) How the Bayesians got their beliefs (and what those beliefs actually are): comment on Bowers and Davis. Psychological Bulletin, 138(3), 415422.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haidt, J. (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814834.Google Scholar
Harman, G. (1986) Change in view: principles of reasoning. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hastie, R. & Dawes, R. M. (2010) Rational choice in an uncertain world: the psychology of judgment and decision making. Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Henle, M. (1955) Some effects of motivational processes on cognition. Psychological Review, 62(6), 423432.Google Scholar
Henle, M. & Michael, M. (1956) The influence of attitudes on syllogistic reasoning. The Journal of Social Psychology, 44(1), 115127.Google Scholar
Holland, J. H., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., & Thagard, P. R. (1986) Induction: processes of inference, learning, and discovery. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hume, D. (1778) The history of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the revolution in 1688 (Vol. 6). Liberty Classics.Google Scholar
James, W. (1889) The psychology of belief. Mind, 14(55), 321352.Google Scholar
Janlert, L. E. (1987) Modeling change: the frame problem. In Pylyshyn, Z. W. (Ed.). The robot’s dilemma: the frame problem in artificial intelligence (pp. 140). Ablex Publishing Corp.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M. (2017) Misconceptions, misinformation, and the logic of identity-protective cognition. Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper Series No. 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, D. (1960) The functional approach to the study of attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 24(2), 163204.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1998) Truth or consequences? In Proceedings and addresses of the American Philosophical Association (pp. 4963). American Philosophical Association.Google Scholar
Klayman, J. & Ha, Y. W. (1987) Confirmation, disconfirmation, and information in hypothesis testing. Psychological Review, 94(2), 211228.Google Scholar
Koehler, J. J. (1993) The influence of prior beliefs on scientific judgments of evidence quality. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 56(1), 2855.Google Scholar
Kuhn, D. (1991) The skills of argument. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunda, Z. (1990) The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480498.Google Scholar
Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of topological psychology. McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979) Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: the effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 20982109.Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1982) Vision: a computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. W. H. Freeman and Company.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Hayes, P. J. (1969) Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. In Webber, B. L. & Nilsson, N. J. (Eds.). Readings in artificial intelligence (pp. 431450). Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Newell, A. (1982) The knowledge level. Artificial intelligence, 18(1), 87127.Google Scholar
Newell, A. (1994) Unified theories of cognition. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972) Human problem solving. Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E. & Ross, L. (1980) Human inference: strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Nozick, R. (1983) Philosophical explanations. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Oaksford, M. & Chater, N. (2007) Bayesian rationality: the probabilistic approach to human reasoning. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Okabe, T. (1910) An experimental study of belief. The American Journal of Psychology, 21(4), 563596.Google Scholar
Payne, J. W., Bettman, J. R., & Johnson, E. J. (1993) The adaptive decision maker. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G. (2021) The psychology of fake news. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 25(5), 388402.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. (1995) Outsmarting IQ: the emerging science of learnable intelligence. Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1997) How the mind works. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (2010) The cognitive niche: coevolution of intelligence, sociality, and language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (Supplement 2), 89938999.Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1986) Computation and cognition: toward a foundation for cognitive science. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, J. & Mandelbaum, E. (2018) Against dispositionalism: belief in cognitive science. Philosophical Studies, 175(9), 23532372.Google Scholar
Ramsey, F. P. (1926) Truth and Probability. In Braithwaite, R. B. (Ed.). The Foundations of mathematics and other logical essays (pp. 2145). Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.Google Scholar
Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard, M. (1975) Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 880892.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salancik, G. R. (1982) Attitude-behavior consistencies as social logics. In Zanna, M., Higgins, E. T., & Herman, C. P. (Eds.). Consistency in social behavior: the Ontario symposium (Vol. 2, pp. 5173). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Dumais, S. T., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1982) Automatic/Control Processing and Attention. Illinois University Champaign Human Attention Research Lab.Google Scholar
Schwitzgebel, E. (2002) A phenomenal, dispositional account of belief. Noûs, 36(2), 249275.Google Scholar
Simler, K. & Hanson, R. (2017The elephant in the brain: hidden motives in everyday life. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1955) A behavioral model of rational choice. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69(1), 99118.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1980) Cognitive science: the newest science of the artificial. Cognitive Science, 4(1), 3346.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1996) The sciences of the artificial. 3rd ed. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1997) Administrative behavior, fourth edition. Simon and Schuster. (Original work published 1945).Google Scholar
Smith, M. B., Bruner, J. S., & White, R. W. (1956) Opinions and personality. Wiley.Google Scholar
Snyder, M. & Swann, W. B. (1978) Hypothesis-testing processes in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(11), 12021212.Google Scholar
Sommer, J., Musolino, J., & Hemmer, P. (in preparation) A hobgoblin of large minds: troubles with consistency in belief.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S. & Kinzler, K. D. (2007) Core knowledge. Developmental Science, 10(1), 8996.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1996) Relevance: communication and cognition. 2nd Ed. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. (2011) Rationality and the reflective mind. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stich, S. P. (1978) Beliefs and subdoxastic states. Philosophy of Science, 45(4), 499518.Google Scholar
Stich, S. P. (1983) From folk psychology to cognitive science: the case against belief. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taber, C. S. & Lodge, M. (2006) Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755769.Google Scholar
Tappin, B. M., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020) Bayesian or biased? Analytic thinking and political belief updating. Cognition, 204 104375, 112.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. (2011). The folly of fools: the logic of deceit and self-deception in human life. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 11241131.Google Scholar
Wason, P. C. & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1972) Psychology of reasoning: structure and content. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wicker, A. W. (1969) Attitudes versus actions: the relationship of verbal and overt behavioral responses to attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues, 25(4), 4178.Google Scholar
Williams, D. (2020) Socially adaptive belief. Mind & Language, 36(3), 333354.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (2010) Rational and irrational beliefs from an evolutionary perspective. In David, D., Lynn, S. J., & Ellis, A. (Eds). Rational and irrational beliefs: research, theory, and clinical practice (pp. 6372). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, M. J., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2012) Dead and alive: beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theoriesSocial Psychological and Personality Science3(6), 767773.Google Scholar
Woods, W. A. (1975) Foundations for semantic networks. In Bobrow, D. G. & Collins, A., (Eds.). Representation and understanding (pp. 3582). Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Zanna, M. P., Higgins, E. T., & Herman, C. P. (1982) Consistency in social behavior: the Ontario symposium (Vol. 2). Erlbaum.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×