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Why Believe in Contentless Beliefs?

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New Essays on Belief

Abstract

This chapter motivates the idea that the most basic kind of believing is a contentless attitude. It gives reasons for thinking that the most basic sort of belief — the sort that both we and other animals adopt toward situations — does not represent those situations in truth-evaluable ways. I call such attitudes pure intentional attitudes. They are not propositional attitudes, which I take to be linguistically mediated intentional attitudes.

Psychology, theory of knowledge and metaphysics revolve about belief, and on the view we take of belief our philosophical outlook largely depends.

— Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, Lecture xii, 1921

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Authors
  1. Daniel D. Hutto
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

    Nikolaj Nottelmann

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© 2013 Daniel D. Hutto

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Hutto, D.D. (2013). Why Believe in Contentless Beliefs?. In: Nottelmann, N. (eds) New Essays on Belief. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137026521_4

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