University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 How Beliefs Are Like Colors Devin Sanchez Curry University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Curry, Devin Sanchez, "How Beliefs Are Like Colors" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2991. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2991 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2991 For more information, please contact [email protected]. How Beliefs Are Like Colors Abstract Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world ot be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Philosophy First Advisor Gary Hatfield Subject Categories Philosophy This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2991 HOW BELIEFS ARE LIKE COLORS Devin Sanchez Curry A DISSERTATION in Philosophy Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________________ Gary Hatfield Adam Seybert Professor in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy University of Pennsylvania Graduate Group Chairperson ________________________ Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor of the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania Dissertation Committee Elisabeth Camp, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University Zoltan Domotor, Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Michael Weisberg, Professor and Chair of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania HOW BELIEFS ARE LIKE COLORS COPYRIGHT 2018 Devin Sanchez Curry This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Chapter 3 of this dissertation is derived, in part, from “Beliefs as inner causes: the (lack of) evidence”, published in Philosophical Psychology on March 28th 2018, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2018.1452197 iii For Denise Roca Curry and David Cook Kemper Curry iv Acknowledgements Philosophers struggle to live good lives in worlds they find intelligible. For my mom—who thinks very highly of my writing while professing not to understand a word of it—these Socratic tasks are a breeze. She has no need for hoary metaphysics. My dad, in contrast, suggested I read Descartes’s Meditations for a class project in 9th grade. I thought he was introducing me, his bookish kid, to the bookish thing he did for a living. I now know (fifteen years of formal schooling later) that my siblings and I had been talking philosophy and reading philosophical literature—Simak’s City, Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes — with our dad throughout our childhood. This dissertation is dedicated to Denise and David Curry, for showing me how to live right. Thanks also to Galen and Tess, for being my constant companions in ethical education. Nearly every good, bad, and weird idea I have had over the last seven years— including those that made it into this dissertation—has been tested in conversation with Amelia Brockman Curry. I am unspeakably lucky to look forward to a future centering on more conversations with Amelia. Thanks to her, and our cats Hobbes, Anouk, and Matisse, for always being there. Gary Hatfield has been an ideal supervisor. He models passionate and careful scholarship, pursuing the questions that fascinate him across disciplinary borders. I cannot thank him enough for investing the same passion and care in me. Professor Hatfield takes his vocational roles admirably seriously. If I have been a good apprentice, it is because he took the time and thought to be a superb mentor. v I owe similarly deep thanks to my committee. I leave every meeting with Liz Camp charged up about talking philosophy, newly equipped with (exquisitely helpful) doubts about my habits of thinking. Despite his ability to classify every tree, Michael Weisberg never lets me miss the forest. I am regularly inspired by how Michael makes good on his boundless curiosity. Zoltan Domotor has an uncanny knack for seeing my arguments more lucidly than they had been represented in my head or on my page. In addition to my official committee members, Lisa Miracchi and Dan Singer provided insightful and encouraging comments on large chunks of my dissertation. Susan Sauvé Meyer taught me to teach undergraduates. Karen Detlefsen has mentored me in ways that far exceed her obligations, challenging me (by advice and example) to go into the world and do the kinds of writing and teaching that make me happy. Before I came to Penn, Paul Davies and Kristin Andrews introduced me to the philosophical and psychological study of other minds. More than any other factor, the comradery of my fellow graduate students made the Penn philosophy department a joyful place to work. I had the privilege of entering as a member of a dream cohort; Marie Barnett, Steve Esser, Daniel Fryer, Kurt Gerry, Nabeel Hamid, Karen Kovaka, Charles Phillips, and Jordan Taylor all became excellent philosophers and better friends. Marie, Nabeel, and Jordan, along with Ben Baker, Justin Bernstein, Louise Daoust, Carlos Santana, and Rob Willison, deserve special thanks for countless discussions about the nature of belief (and related topics). If space permitted, I would thank thirty more beloved grads by name. I already miss living alongside you all. vi ABSTRACT HOW BELIEFS ARE LIKE COLORS Devin Sanchez Curry Gary Hatfield Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. vii How Beliefs are like Colors Table of Contents Acknowledgements . iv Abstract . vi Table of Contents . vii List of Figures . xi Preface . xii–xx Part I: Belief as Attitude, Belief as Cog . 1–222 Chapter 1: A Rylean ancestry . 2–59 1. Introduction . 2 2. Dispositionalisms . 4 2.1. Ryle . 4 2.2. Baker . 11 2.3. Schwitzgebel . 17 3. Interpretivisms . 20 3.1. Quine . 20 3.2. Dennett . 25 3.3. Davidson . 36 3.4. Mölder . 45 4. Ryleanisms . 49 Chapter 2: Varieties of (theory of) belief . 60–109 1. Introduction . 60 2. Thirteen distinctions between varieties of belief . 67 2.1. First distinction: implicit belief vs. explicit belief . 68 2.2. Second distinction: binary belief vs. degrees of belief . 70 2.3. Third distinction: system 1 belief vs. system 2 belief . 72 2.4. Fourth distinction: dispositional belief vs. dispositions to believe . 73 2.5. Fifth distinction: dispositional belief vs. occurrent belief . 75 2.6. Sixth distinction: belief vs. assent . 77 2.7. Seventh distinction: computational belief vs. algorithmic belief . 79 2.8. Eighth distinction: personal belief vs. subpersonal belief . 82 2.9. Ninth distinction: normative belief vs. natural belief . 84 2.10. Tenth distinction: first-order belief vs. higher-order belief . 87 2.11. Eleventh distinction: folk psychological belief vs. psychological belief . 89 2.12. Twelfth distinction: manifest image belief vs. scientific image belief . 95 2.13. Thirteenth distinction: attitude of belief vs. cognitive state of belief. 99 3. Ryleans and representationalists as bedfellows . 100 viii 4. Fifteen theoretical alternatives concerning the metaphysics of belief . 103 5. The argument to come . 108 Chapter 3: Beliefs as inner causes? . 110–162 1. Introduction . 110 2. Unpacking Davidson’s dogma . 113 2.1. ...beliefs as inner causes that produce behavior . 113 2.2. The folk construe... 115 2.3. Davidson vs. Davidson’s dogma . 117 3. The folk craft of belief attribution . 120 3.1. Cognitive scientific theories of belief attribution . 121 3.2. A Rylean model theory of belief attribution . 123 4. The (lack of) evidence from mindreading research . 129 4.1. The empirical literature on lay belief attribution . 129 4.2. A Rylean interpretation of the evidence about lay belief attribution . 134 4.3. Mindreading researchers assume Davidson’s dogma . 136 5. The (lack of) evidence from attribution theory . 140 5.1. The empirical literature on lay behavior explanation . 140 5.2. A Rylean interpretation of the evidence about lay behavior explanation . 146 5.3. Attribution theorists assume Davidson’s dogma .