The Belief-Desire Model of Action Explanation Reconsidered: Thoughts on Bittner

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Turner
Keyword(s):  
False Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Cultural Artifact ◽  
Action Explanation ◽  
Radical Critique

The belief-desire model of action explanation is deeply ingrained in multiple disciplines. There is reason to think that it is a cultural artifact. But is there an alternative? In this discussion, I will consider the radical critique of this action explanation model by Rüdiger Bittner, which argues that the model appeals to dubious mental entities, and argues for a model of reasons as responses to states or events. Instead, for Bittner, agents are reason-selectors—selecting the states or events to respond to and selecting the ones the agent is disposed to respond to. By getting rid of the explanatory role of beliefs, this model runs into difficulties over errors usually attributed to false beliefs. These can be resolved by expanding the notion of dispositions to cover the case of false belief. But this suggests that the belief-reason model serves to divide the category of dispositions in an arbitrary or culturally specific way.

scholarly journals Process in the Community, Detain Offshore or ‘Turn Back the Boats’? Predicting Australian Asylum-seeker Policy Support from False Beliefs, Prejudice and Political Ideology

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa K Hartley ◽  
Joel R Anderson ◽  
Anne Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Hierarchical Regression ◽  
Future Research ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Predictive Role ◽  
Practical Implications

Abstract Over the past few decades, there has been a progressive implementation of policies designed to deter the arrival of people seeking protection. In Australia, this has included offshore processing and towing boats of asylum seekers away from Australian waters. In a community survey of 164 Australians, this study examined the predictive role of false beliefs about asylum seekers, prejudice and political ideology in support of three policies. Multiple hierarchical regression models indicated that, although political ideology and prejudice were significant predictors of policy support, false beliefs was the strongest predictor. For the policy of processing asylum seekers in the community, less endorsement of false beliefs was a significant predictor, while, for the policy of offshore processing, more endorsement of false beliefs was a significant predictor. For the boat turn-back policy, an increase in false-belief endorsement was the strongest predictor; although increases in prejudice and a prejudice–political ideology interaction (i.e. the predictive value of prejudice was stronger for participants who identified as politically conservative) also independently predicted support. Practical implications and future research avenues are discussed.

Chinese children's understanding of false beliefs: the role of language

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
KANG LEE ◽  
DAVID R. OLSON ◽  
NANCY TORRANCE
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Early Development ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Developmental Pattern ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
False Belief Tasks ◽  
Probe Question

The present study investigated the universality of the early development of young children's understanding and representation of false beliefs, and specifically, the effect of language on Chinese-speaking children's performance in false belief tasks under three between-subjects conditions. The three conditions differed only in the belief verb that was used in probe questions regarding one's own or another person's beliefs, namely the Chinese verbs, xiang, yiwei, and dang. While the three words are all appropriate to false beliefs, they have different connotations regarding the likelihood of a belief being false, with xiang being more neutral than either yiwei or dang. Experiment i involved thirty-five Chinese-speaking adults who responded to false belief tasks to be used in Experiment 2 in order both to establish an adult comparison and to obtain empirical evidence regarding how Chinese-speaking adults use the three belief verbs to describe different false belief situations. In Experiment 2, 188 three-, four-, and five-year-old Chinese-speaking children participated in three false belief tasks. They were asked to report about an individual's false belief when either xiang, yiwei, or dang was used in the probe question. Results revealed a rapid developmental pattern in Chinese-speaking children's understanding of false belief, which is similar to that found with Western children. In addition, children performed significantly better when yiwei and dang, which connote that the belief referred to may be false, were used in belief questions than when xiang, the more neutral verb, was used. This finding suggests an important role of language in assessing children's understanding of belief and false belief.

scholarly journals Growing Up Thinking of God’s Beliefs: Theory of Mind and Ontological Knowledge

SAGE Open ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401880987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Di Dio ◽  
Sara Isernia ◽  
Chiara Ceolaro ◽  
Antonella Marchetti ◽  
Davide Massaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
Knowledge Bias

The study of social cognition involves the attribution of states of mind to humans, as well as, quite recently, to nonhuman creatures, like God. Some studies support the role of social cognition in religious beliefs, whereas others ascribe religious beliefs to an ontological knowledge bias. The present study compares these distinct approaches in 37 catholic children aged 4 to 10 years, who were administered an adapted version of the unexpected content task assessing false beliefs of different agents: a human, a dog, a robot, and God. The children were also administered an intentionality understanding task, a component of mentalization abilities, and an interview on ontological knowledge assessing emotions, intentions, imagination, and epistemic knowledge. In line with previous research, the results showed that children did not attribute false beliefs to God as they did to the human and to other nonhuman agents. Importantly, while false-belief attribution to the human was associated with the children’s ability to attribute mental states (intentionality understanding), false-belief attribution to God was related to children’s ontological knowledge. We conclude that, contrary to false-belief attribution to the human and to other nonhuman agents, children’s understanding of God’s mind is largely a function of ontological knowledge about God, rather than of children’s social cognitive functions.

In Defense of Perceptual Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Schellenberg
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
The Way

Chapter 5 takes a step back and traces the way in which excessive demands on the notion of perceptual content invite an austere relationalist account of perception. It argues that any account that acknowledges the role of discriminatory, selective capacities in perception must acknowledge that perceptual states have representational content. The chapter shows that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with representationalism. Most objections to the thesis that perceptual experience has representational content apply only to austere representationalist accounts, that is, accounts on which perceptual relations to the environment play no explanatory role. By arguing that perceptual relations and perceptual content are mutually dependent the chapter shows how Fregean particularism can avoid the pitfalls of both austere representationalism and austere relationalism. With relationalists, Fregean particularism argues that perception is constitutively relational, but with representationalists it argues that it is constitutively representational.

The Explanatory Role of Existence Proofs

Ethics ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-186
Author(s):  
Alexander Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Existence Proofs

The overlap between false belief and spatial reorientation in the temporo-parietal junction: The role of input modality and task

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceylan Özdem ◽  
Marcel Brass ◽  
Laurens Van der Cruyssen ◽  
Frank Van Overwalle
Keyword(s):  
False Belief ◽  
Input Modality ◽  
Spatial Reorientation ◽  
And Task

The Role of Strategic Planning in Accessing False-Belief Understanding

1996 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 2948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Hala ◽  
Michael Chandler
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Planning ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Belief Understanding

scholarly journals Action explanation and its presuppositions

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-146
Author(s):  
Lilian O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Action Explanation

AbstractIn debates about rationalizing action explanation causalists assume that the psychological states that explain an intentional action have both causal and rational features. I scrutinize the presuppositions of those who seek and offer rationalizing action explanations. This scrutiny shows, I argue, that where rational features play an explanatory role in these contexts, causal features play only a presuppositional role. But causal features would have to play an explanatory role if rationalizing action explanation were a species of causal explanation. Consequently, it is not a species of causal explanation.

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