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Intentionality :: Propositional attitudes :: Beliefs

• Kent Bach (2000). A puzzle about belief reports.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I'd like to present a puzzle about belief reports that's been nagging at me for several years. I've subjected many friends and audiences to various abortive attempts at solving it. Now it's time to get it off my chest and let others try their hand at it.<1>
• Kent Bach (1997). Do belief reports report beliefs?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The traditional puzzles about belief reports puzzles rest on a certain seemingly innocuous assumption, that 'that'-clauses specify belief contents. The main theories of belief reports also rest on this "Specification Assumption", that for a belief report of the form 'A believes that p' to be true,' the proposition that p must be among the things A believes. I use Kripke's Paderewski case to call the Specification Assumption into question. Giving up that assumption offers prospects for an intuitively more plausible approach to the semantics of belief reports. But this approach must confront a puzzle of its own: it turns out that every case is a Paderewski case, at least potentially
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/1997/00000078/00000003/art00036
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0114.00036
  
• A. Beckerman (2001). The real reason for the standard view.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to Lynne Baker, there are three main arguments for the ‘standard view’: an argument from metaphysics, an argument from science, and an argument from causal explanation - the last of these (the argument that mental states can have causal powers only if they are brain states) perhaps being the most important. This list, however, is incomplete since it leaves out what I regard to be the most effective argument for the ‘standard view’- the argument from the implausibility of ‘downward causation’. Put in a nutshell, this argument runs like this: If mental properties are causally efficacious and if they are not realized by neurophysiological or other physical properties of persons then there are neurophysiological (chemical, physical) events that cannot be accounted for by neurophysiology (chemistry, physics), i.e. then there are ‘natural’ effects that do not have ‘natural’ causes. Since this is very implausible and since mental properties seem to be causally efficacious, it seems to be very implausible to assume that mental properties are not realized by neurophysiological or other physical properties of persons
• David Braun (1998). Understanding belief reports.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper, I defend a well-known theory of belief reports from an important objection. The theory is Russellianism, sometimes also called `neo-Russellianism', `Millianism', `the direct reference theory', `the "Fido"-Fido theory', or `the naive theory'. The objection concernssubstitution of co-referring names in belief sentences. Russellianism implies that any two belief sentences, that differ only in containing distinct co-referring names, express the same proposition (in any given context). Since `Hesperus' and `Phosphorus' both refer to the planet Venus, this view implies that all utterances of (1) and..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~braun/Papers/belief.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199810)107:4<555:UBR>2.0.CO;2-2
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(199810)107:4<555:UBR>2.0.CO;2-2
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2998375.pdf
  
• Curtis Brown (1992). Direct and indirect belief.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199206)52:2<289:DAIB>2.0.CO;2-5
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(199206)52:2<289:DAIB>2.0.CO;2-5
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2107937.pdf
  
• Curtis Brown (1986). What is a belief state?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What we believe depends on more than the purely intrinsic facts about us: facts about our environment or context also help determine the contents of our beliefs. 1 This observation has led several writers to hope that beliefs can be divided, as it were, into two components: a "core" that depends only on the individual’s intrinsic properties; and a periphery that depends on the individual’s context, including his or her history, environment, and linguistic community. Thus Jaegwon Kim suggests that "within each noninternal psychological state that enters into the explanation of some action or behavior we can locate an ‘internal core state’ which can assume the causal-explanatory role of the noninternal state."2 In the same vein, Stephen Stich writes that "nonautonomous" states, like belief, are best viewed as "conceptually complex hybrids" made up of an autonomous component together with historical and contextual features.3 John Perry, whose term I have adopted, distinguishes between belief states, which are determined by an individual’s intrinsic properties, and objects of belief, which are not.4 And Daniel Dennett makes use of the same notion when he asks:5
• Martin Davies (2001). Explicit and implicit knowledge: Philosophical aspects.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: from the fact that the subject reacts faster to those words than to words that were not on the list. The subject’s reaction to a word that was on the list is said to be ‘primed’ by the earlier exposure to that word
• Pascal Engel (1998). Believing, accepting, and holding true.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000220/en/
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/02/20/ijn_00000220_00/ijn_00000220_00.htm
  
• Pascal Engel (ms). Free believers?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/02/52/ijn_00000252_00/ijn_00000252_00.htm
  
• Lina Eriksson & Alan Hájek (2007). What are degrees of belief?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Probabilism is committed to two theses: 1) Opinion comes in degrees—call them degrees of belief, or credences. 2) The degrees of belief of a rational agent obey the probability calculus. Correspondingly, a natural way to argue for probabilism is: i) to give an account of what degrees of belief are, and then ii) to show that those things should be probabilities, on pain of irrationality. Most of the action in the literature concerns stage ii). Assuming that stage i) has been adequately discharged, various authors move on to stage ii) with varied and ingenious arguments. But an unsatisfactory response at stage i) clearly undermines any gains that might be accrued at stage ii) as far as probabilism is concerned: if those things are not degrees of belief, then it is irrelevant to probabilism whether they should be probabilities or not. In this paper we scrutinize the state of play regarding stage i). We critically examine several of the leading accounts of degrees of belief: reducing them to corresponding betting behavior (de Finetti); measuring them by that behavior (Jeffrey); and analyzing them in terms of preferences and their role in decision-making more generally (Ramsey, Lewis, Maher). We argue that the accounts fail, and so they are unfit to subserve arguments for probabilism. We conclude more positively: ‘degree of belief’ should be taken as a primitive concept that forms the basis of our best theory of rational belief and decision: probabilism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/content/5mw6109u3n230j53/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/5mw6109u3n230j53/fulltext.pdf
  
• Keith Frankish (1998). A matter of opinion.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper sets out the case for a two-level theory of human psychology. It takes its start from Daniel Dennett’s distinction between belief and opinion, arguing that it has the power to account for a number of tensions within our commonsense concept of belief. It argues, however, that Dennett’s account is seriously inadequate, particularly in its treatment of the role of opinion in practical reasoning. The paper goes on to sketch an alternative proposal which retains the virtues of Dennett’s suggestion, while providing a richer and more satisfying account of the cognitive role of opinion
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/philos/Matter_of_opinion_eprint.pdf
  http://libeprints.open.ac.uk/archive/00000116/01/Matter_of_opinion_eprint.pdf
  
• Eric Funkhouser (2003). Willing belief and the Norm of truth.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Bernard Williams has argued that, because belief aims at getting the truth right, it is a conceptual truth that we cannot directly will to believe. Manyothers have adopted Williams claim that believers necessarily respect truth-conducive reasons and evidence. By presenting increasingly stronger cases, I argue that, on the contrary, believers can quite consciously disregard the demand for truth-conducive reasons and evidence. The irrationality of those who would directly will to believe is not any greater than that displayed by some actual believers. So, our inability to directly will to believe is a contingent truth (at best)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://comp.uark.edu/~efunkho/willingbelief.html
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2003/00000115/00000002/05138850
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/k1225r0330154412/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5138850&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/K1225R0330154412.pdf
  
• Heimir Geirsson (1998). True belief reports and the sharing of beliefs.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In recent years Russell´s view that there are singular propositions, namely propositions that contain the individuals they are about, has gained followers. As a response to a number of puzzles about attitude ascriptions several Russellians (as I will call those who accept the view that proper names and indexicals only contribute their referents to the propositions expressed by the sentences in which they occur), including David Kaplan and Nathan Salmon, have drawn a distinction between what proposition is believed and how it is believed.1 While it is generally agreed upon among Russellians that this distinction needs to be drawn there is considerable disagreement as to what exactly the distinction amounts to and what role the what and the how should play. The most plausible option seems to be to not assign a semantic value to the cognitive role played by the name or indexical in the sentence assented to. But recently Mark Richard2 has attempted to make the cognitive role affect truth values by building it into the truth conditions of belief reports.3 I will argue that Richard’s attempt fails to satisfy our pretheoretical intuitions about the sharing of beliefs. Furthermore, and more surprisingly, I will argue that Richard’s theory makes it virtually impossible for us to judge whether or not most belief reports are true or false, since doing so would involve what I call RAM probing, which would require viewing elements that are essentially private
• M. Gilbert (2002). Belief and acceptance as features of groups.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:      In everyday discourse groups or collectives are often said to believe this or that. The author has previously developed an account of the phenomenon to which such collective belief statements refer. According to this account, in terms that are explained, a group believes that p if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. Those who fulfill these conditions are referred to here as collectively believing that p. Some philosophers - here labeled rejectionists - have argued that collective belief is not belief but rather acceptance. This paper presents several arguments against rejectionism
• Simone Gozzano (1994). Rationality, folk psychology, and the belief-opinion distinction.   (More)
• Mitchell Green (1999). Moore's many paradoxes.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Over the last two decades J.N. Williams has developed an account of the absurdity of such utterances as Its raining but I dont believe it that is both intuitively plausible and applicable to a wide variety of forms that this so-called Moorean absurdity can take. His approach is also noteworthy for making only minimal appeal to principles of epistemic or doxastic logic in its account of such absurdity. We first show that Williams places undue emphasis upon assertion and belief: It is similarly absurd for a person to accept a proposition P as a supposition for the sake of argument while denying that her state of mind is one of supposing P, yet Williams has no account of this. Williams approach is then modified to account for such a case. That modification employs a principle of doxastic logic that is at least plausible as the one on which Williams relies, while being unlike his principle in applying to cases other than belief
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://people.virginia.edu/~msg6m/Mmp.pdf
  http://www.people.virginia.edu/~msg6m/Mmp.pdf
  
• P. M. S. Hacker (2004). On the ontology of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: 1. _The project_ Over the last two and a half centuries three main strands of opinion can be discerned in philosophers’ investigations of believing. One is the view that believing that _p_ is a special kind of feeling associated with the idea that _p_ or the proposition that _p_. The second view is that to believe that _p_ is to be in a certain kind of mental state. The third is that to believe that _p_ is to have a certain sort of disposition. Some philosophers have concentrated on elaborating one strand alone. Others have woven two or more strands together, arguing, for example, that to entertain a thought which one believes to be true, sometimes called “occurrently believing something”, is indeed a feeling, but that non-occurrently believing something is a disposition occurrently to have the belief feeling. Others have suggested that to believe is indeed to be in a certain mental state, but stressed that the state in question is a dispositional state. I shall examine each of these strands. The fruits of the investigation will, in one sense, be meagre. For I shall argue that to believe that _p_ is neither a feeling, nor a mental state, nor yet a disposition to do or feel anything. In another sense, the investigation will, I hope, shed light on the concept of belief by exploring its affinities with and differences from related concepts of credal feelings (such as hope, fear, expectation, surprise, etc.), of mental states, and of tendencies and liabilities to feel, react or act, as well as doxastic dispositions such as credulity and gullibility. The illumination that was sought from a definition or analysis of belief in the generic terms of feeling, state or disposition, which would capture the essence of believing, can be derived from the connective analysis of the concept, which describes the links between the concept of belief and the plethora of related concepts in the same or adjacent semantic fields..
• Christopher Hill & Joshua Schechter (2007). Hawthorne's lottery puzzle and the nature of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In the first chapter of his Knowledge and Lotteries, John Hawthorne argues that thinkers do not ordinarily know lottery propositions. His arguments depend on claims about the intimate connections between knowledge and assertion, epistemic possibility, practical reasoning, and theoretical reasoning. In this paper, we cast doubt on the proposed connections. We also put forward an alternative picture of belief and reasoning. In particular, we argue that assertion is governed by a Gricean constraint that makes no reference to knowledge, and that practical reasoning has more to do with rational degrees of belief than with states of knowledge. (This is a slightly expanded version of a paper forthcoming in Philosophical Issues 17, The Epistemology of Metaphysics.)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/faculty/schechter/papers/Lottery.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00125.x
  
• Pierre Jacob (online). Frege's puzzle and belief ascriptions.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/03/56/ijn_00000356_00/ijn_00000356_00.htm
  
• Jesper Kallestrup (2003). Paradoxes about belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Referentialism is the view that all there is to the meaning of a singular term is its referent. Referentialism entails Substitutivity, i.e., that co-referring terms are intersubstitutable salva veritate . Frege's Paradox shows that Referentialism is inconsistent given two principles: Disquotation says that if S assents to 'P', then S believes that P, and Consistency says that if S believes that P and that not-P, then S is not fully rational. Kripke's strategy was to save Substitutivity by showing that those intuitively plausible principles already led to paradox. I argue that this generalising strategy fails. The Descriptivist, who thinks that a singular term has descriptive meaning, will reject Substitutivity in Frege's Paradox, and deny that Consistency finds application in Kripke's Paradox. The Referentialist, however, may reject Consistency: if the logical properties of the contents of S's beliefs are not reflectively accessible, then S can hold contradictory beliefs without being irrational. Even if successful against Frege's and Kripke's Paradox, this response is ineffective against a strengthened version of the former which rests on Disquotation and Substitutivity, and a strengthened version of the latter which rests only on Disquotation
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ajphil/2003/00000081/00000001/art00009
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713659588~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oup/ajphil/2003/00000081/00000001/art00107
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/XQWE6TU6K8CN5E1A.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/713659588.pdf
  
• Joe Lau (1997). Possible worlds semantics for belief sentences.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is about possible worlds semantics for propositional attitude sentences. In particular I shall focus on belief reports in English such as "Lusina believes that tofu is nutritious." It is well-known that possible worlds semantics for such reports suffers from the so-called _problem of equivalence_ . In this paper I shall examine some attempts to deal with this problem and argue that they are unsatisfactory
• Peter Ludlow (1995). Logical form and the hidden-indexical theory: A reply to Schiffer.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199502)92:2<102:LFATHT>2.0.CO;2-F
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199502)92:2<102:LFATHT>2.0.CO;2-F
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2940943.pdf
  
• Michael McKinsey (1998). The grammar of belief.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=nlq2zUljf00C&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=The+grammar+of+belief+McKinsey&ots=paWyMi9RPX&sig=1HgU1gfjj-JkHAdB4JLJXPtT_sI
  
• Michael McKinsey (1999). The semantics of belief ascriptions.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: nated discussion of the semantics of such verbs. I will call this view “the relation theory”. In the particular case of the verb ‘believes’, for instance, the relation theory holds that a sentence of the form ‘S believes that p’ says of the person referred to by S and the proposition expressed by the sentence p that the former bears the relation of believing to the latter. In this paper, I will present an array of evidence against the relation theory, some of it classical and some of it new, and I will argue that this evidence is quite overwhelming and cannot be explained away. I will also propose a new theory of the meaning and logical form of cog- nitive ascriptions that explains the available evidence. This new theory is based on the concept of linguistic meaning instead of the concept of a proposition, and it provides a compositional account of the meaning of cognitive ascriptions, even though it implies that the cognitive verbs, in their basic senses, do not express relations of any sort. I will conclude by showing that much of the evidence I give against the relation theory can also be applied to refute various recently proposed “contextual” views of cognitive ascriptions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/1999/00000033/00000004/art00192
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/1999/00000033/00000004/art00001
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624(199912)33:4<519:TSOBA>2.0.CO;2-X
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624(199912)33:4<519:TSOBA>2.0.CO;2-X
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0029-4624.00192
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2671953.pdf
  
• Marc Moffett (2003). Knowing facts and believing propositions: A solution to the problem of doxastic shift.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The Problem of Doxastic Shift may be stated as a dilemma: on the one hand, the distribution of nominal complements of the form `the that p strongly suggests that `that-clauses cannot be univocally assigned propositionaldenotations; on the other hand, facts about quantification strongly suggest that `that-clauses must be assigned univocal denotations. I argue that the Problem may be solved by defining the extension of a proposition to be a set of facts or, more generally, conditions. Given this, the logical operation of descriptive predication can be introduced in a way that resolves the dilemma withoutsacrificing the singular term analysis of `that-clauses
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uwyo.edu/moffett/research/facts_propositions.pdf
  http://www.uwyo.edu/moffett/research/facts_propositions.doc
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2003/00000115/00000001/05127589
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/q8w68x55803wwt65/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5127589&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/Q8W68X55803WWT65.pdf
  
• David Owens (2003). Does belief have an aim?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The hypothesis that belief aims at the truth has been used to explain three features of belief: (1) the fact that correct beliefs are true beliefs, (2) the fact that rational beliefs are supported by the evidence and (3) the fact that we cannot form beliefs ‘at will’. I argue that the truth-aim hypothesis cannot explain any of these facts. In this respect believing differs from guessing since the hypothesis that guessing aims at the truth can explain the three analogous features of guessing. I conclude that, unlike guessing, believing is not purposive in any interesting sense
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00001212/
  http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/49/17/AIM2.pdf
  http://www.eurospp.org/2003/papers/Doc2003/Owens.doc
  http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/49/17/fulltext.pdf
  http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00001212/01/owensdj4.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2003/00000115/00000003/05140388
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/q017u7l8l1672338/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5140388&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/Q017U7L8L1672338.pdf
  
• Carole Penco (2005). Keeping track of individuals: Brandom's analysis of Kripke's puzzle and the content of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper gives attention to a special point in Brandom’s Making it Explicit. Brandom proposes in MIE a “Fregean” way out of Kripke’s puzzle about belief. In the first part, I analyze two main features of Brandom’s strategy, the definition of anaphoric chains as senses of proper names and the implausibil- ity of the application of a disquotational principle to proper names. In the second part, I discuss (i) the problem of the stability of contents and (ii) the problem of sharing contents. I claim that Brandom’s strong holism leads to irresolvable difficulties with the concept of conceptual content as it emerges from the discussion of Kripke’s puzzle
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=1331948
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/pc/2005/00000013/00000001/art00012
  
• John Perry (1997). Rip Van winkle and other characters.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In “Demonstratives,” David Kaplan develops an account of the meaning of indexicals and sentences that contain them based on the concepts of content, character and context. The content of a statement is a proposition; which proposition a statement expresses depends not only on the linguistic meaning or character of the sentence used, but also on the context: who is speaking, to whom, when, where and in what circumstances
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry/PHILPAPERS/rip.pdf
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry//PHILPAPERS/rip.pdf
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/users/john/PHILPAPERS/rip.pdf
  
• F. Recanati (1997). Can we believe what we do not understand?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/02/92/ijn_00000292_00/ijn_00000292_00.rtf
  http://firstsearch.oclc.org/fsip?sici=0268-1064(19970301)12:1<84:CWBWWD>2.0.TX;2-R&format=PDF&gsid=03aef2acc24645555b960c6667c5aa36c989677b9c7266beb1f26f54ccea23411494880763d29ddd1c0992469160e7422b69cdfa1e85649550db25e27935baa5e254e1b9ffed308c
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00037
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00005
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00037
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00037
  
• Stephen Schiffer (2006). A problem for a direct-reference theory of belief reports.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: (1) The propositions we believe and say are _Russellian_ _propositions_: structured propositions whose basic components are the objects and properties our thoughts and speech acts are about. (2) Many singular terms—e.g. pronouns, simple demonstratives, and names—typically function as _directly-referential singular _ _terms_, where a token of a singular term is directly referential provided its only contribution to the proposition expressed is its referent. It is customary for direct-reference theorists to represent the content of a token of ^┌_t_ is _F_^┐ as the Russellian singular proposition <_x_, Φ>, where _x_ is the referent of the token of the singular term _t_ and Φ is the property expressed by the token of the predicate _F_. Necessarily, <_x_, Φ> is true iff _x_ instantiates Φ, false otherwise. Their theory of belief reports is defined by their also holding that:

  (3) A belief report of the form ‘_A_ believes that _S_’ is true iff the
  referent of the substitution instance of ‘_A_’ stands in the belief
  relation—the two-place relation expressed by ‘believes’ in ‘_A_
  believes that _S_’—to the Russellian proposition to which the
  substitution instance of ‘that _S_’ refers. For example, ‘Lester
  believes that Fido is a dog’ is true just in case Lester stands in
  the belief relation to .

  ¹ See e.g. Salmon (1986), Soames (2002), and Braun (1998)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1176/DRBR.pdf
  http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~braun/Papers/DRBR.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2006/00000040/00000002/art00008
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0029-4624.2006.00614.x
  
• Eric Schwitzgebel (ms). Acting contrary to our (professed) beliefs.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/ActBel050524.pdf
  http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/ActBel050518.pdf
  
• Eric Schwitzgebel (2002). A phenomenal, dispositional account of belief.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/AcctBel.pdf
  http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/AccountBel.htm
  http://consc.net/cgi/go.fcgi?id=SCHAPD&free=1&u=http://cogprints.org/1493/00/AccountBel001204.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/1493/00/AccountBel001204.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001493/00/AccountBel001204.pdf
  http://www.consc.net/cgi/go.fcgi?id=SCHAPD&free=1&u=http://cogprints.org/1493/00/AccountBel001204.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:1493
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2002/00000036/00000002/art00370
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2002/00000036/00000002/art00004
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0068.00370
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.00370
  
• Eric Schwitzgebel (online). Belief.   (More)
• Paul Skokowski (2004). Structural content: A naturalistic approach to implicit belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Various systems that learn are examined to show how content is carried in connections installed by a learning history. Agents do not explicitly use the content of such states in practical reasoning, yet the content plays an important role in explaining behavior, and the physical state carrying that content plays a role in causing behavior, given other occurrent beliefs and desires. This leads to an understanding of the environmental reasons which are the determinate content of these states, and leads to a better grasp of how representational content can be carried by systems without an explicit representation
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/421538
  http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?PHOS710305PDF
  http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/421538
  
• Jeff Speaks (ms). Explaining the disquotational principle.   (More)
• Dan Sperber (1997). Intuitive and reflective beliefs.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Humans have two kinds of beliefs, intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs. Intuitive beliefs are a most fundamental category of cognition, defined in the architecture of the mind. They are formulated in an intuitive mental lexicon. Humans are also capable of entertaining an indefinite variety of higher-order or "reflective" propositional attitudes, many of which are of a credal sort. Reasons to hold "reflective beliefs" are provided by other beliefs that describe the source of the reflective belief as reliable, or that provide explicit arguments in favour of the reflective belief. The mental lexicon of reflective beliefs includes not only intuitive, but also reflective concepts
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/402/0/beliefs.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000402/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000402/00/beliefs.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:402
  http://firstsearch.oclc.org/fsip?sici=0268-1064(19970301)12:1<67:IARB>2.0.TX;2-N&format=PDF&gsid=03aef2acc24645555b960c6667c5aa36c989677b9c7266beb1f26f54ccea23411494880763d29ddd1c0992469160e7422b69cdfa1e8564958f0d049cba30a6bbe254e1b9ffed308c
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00004
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00036
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00036/abs/
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00036
  
• Roger Sperry (1985). The cognitive role of belief: Implications of the new mentalism.   (More)
• Wolfgang Spohn (1996). On the objects of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: When I talk about the objects of belief I do not mean, e.g., the sun to which my thought that the sun will rise tomorrow refers; I do not mean the objects we think about. I take objects rather in a general philosophical sense; they simply are the bearers of properties and the relata of relations. I am thus concerned with the objects that are related by the belief relation „_a_ believes that _p_“. In this scheme „ _a _“ represents a person or an epistemic subject; but I am not going to discuss what a person is. „ _p _“ or „that _p _“ represents an object, namely the object of belief; and I am going to discuss what this is. In other words, I am interested in belief contents – to use a less neutral, narrower and equally unclear term
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/Philosophie/Mitarbeiter/spohn_files/wspohn25.pdf
  http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/Philosophie/Mitarbeiter_ALT/spohn_files/wspohn25.pdf
  
• Kenneth Taylor (forthcoming). Singular beliefs and their ascriptions.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This essay defends three interlocking claims about singular beliefs and their ascriptions. The first is a claim about the nature of such beliefs; the second is a claim about the semantic contents of ascriptions of such beliefs; the third is a claim about the pragmatic significance of such ascriptions. With respect to the nature of singular belief, I claim that the contents of our singular beliefs are a joint product of mind and world, with neither mind nor world enjoying any peculiar priority over the other in the constitution of content. This view amounts to a rejection of the priority of so-called narrow or notional content over wide or referential content for singular beliefs. About the semantics of ascriptions of singular belief, I claim that such ascriptions ascribe what I call predicative doxastic commitments and nothing more. In particular, I will argue that to ascribe a predicative commitment is merely to say what property is being predicated by she who undertakes the relevant commitment to what object. My view has the consequence that ascriptions of singular beliefs typically do not either semantically specify or pragmatically implicate the modes of presentations, notions, or conceptions via which the ascribee cognizes the objects and properties relative to which she undertakes predicative commitments. To be sure, many maintain that at least one class of belief ascriptions -- so called de dicto ascriptions – do specify either directly or indirectly both _what_ the ascribee believes and _how_ she believes it by putting at semantic issue, via the mechanism of embedding, the notions, conceptions, modes of presentation or the like, via which the ascribee cognizes doxastically relevant objects and properties. I argue, to the contrary, that in the general case embedding functions neither directly nor indirectly to put notions and their ilk at semantic issue. Indeed, I shall argue that the primary mechanism for putting notions and their ilk at semantic issue is a certain variety of de re ascriptions..
• Josefa Toribio (2003). Free belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   The main goal of this paper is to show that Pettit and Smith''s (1996) argument concerning the nature of free belief is importantly incomplete. I accept Pettit and Smith''s emphasis upon normative constraints governing responsible believing and desiring, and their claim that the responsibly believing agent needs to possess an ability to believe (or desire) otherwise when believing (desiring) wrongly. But I argue that their characterization of these constraints does not do justice to one crucial factor, namely, the presence of an unreflective, sub-personally constituted, ability to spot the kind of situations in which the reflective critical abilities constitutive of responsible believing (and desiring) should be deployed
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phen/2003/00000002/00000004/05151930
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/x361557178k30vj5/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/X361557178K30VJ5.pdf
  
• Josefa Toribio (2002). Mindful belief: Accountability, expertise, and cognitive kinds.   (More)
• David Velleman (2000). On the aim of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper explores the sense in which belief "aims at the truth". In this course of this exploration, it discusses the difference between belief and make-believe, the nature of psychoanalytic explanation, the supposed "normativity of meaning", and related topics
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1006990
  
• J. David Velleman (ms). On the aim of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper explores the sense in which belief "aims at the truth". In this course of this exploration, it discusses the difference between belief and make-believe, the nature of psychoanalytic explanation, the supposed "normativity of meaning", and related topics
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1006990
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1006990_code851409.pdf?abstractid=1006990&mirid=1
  
• Ralph Wedgwood (2002). The aim of belief.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is often said, metaphorically, that belief "aims" at the truth. This paper proposes a normative interpretation of this metaphor. First, the notion of "epistemic norms" is clarified, and reasons are given for the view that epistemic norms articulate essential features of the beliefs that are subject to them. Then it is argued that all epistemic norms--including those that specify when beliefs count as rational, and when they count as knowledge--are explained by a fundamental norm of correct belief, which requires that, if one considers a proposition at all, one should believe it if and only if it is true
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phonline.org/paper.php?keynum=174
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2002/00000036/A0160s16/art00393
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0068.36.s16.10/pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.36.s16.10
  

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