7 - Beliefs
from Part III - The Theory Applied
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Summary
Introduction
I have been presenting a behaviourist account of the mind that takes off from the claim discussed in Chapter 5 that a rational agent is disposed to behave in a way that is sensitive to practical rationality. In Chapter 6 I argued that practical rationality is open-ended and dynamic. This means that at any one time, in being sensitive to practical rationality, an agent's behaviour is governed by a particular version of practical rationality, but that this version, as part of its very nature, is subject to revision.
Given this notion of what it is to be a rational agent the behaviourist claim at the very beginning of the book may be amplified a bit. The original claim was this:
What it is to be in a certain state of mind is to be disposed to behave in a certain way.
The amplified version is this:
What it is to be in a certain state of mind is to be disposed to behave in a way that is governed by a certain version of practical rationality.
To describe the particular version of rationality that someone's way of behaving is governed by at any one time is to describe the person's mind at that time. In this chapter I spell out that claim with respect to beliefs, and in the next with respect to intentions.
In the next section I introduce Richard Braithwaite's account of belief developed in the 1930s. The core of his theory is that believing a proposition is being disposed to act as if that proposition were true.
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- Information
- The Inner Life of a Rational AgentIn Defence of Philosophical Behaviourism, pp. 121 - 144Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2006