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Beliefs
A belief is a subjective Attitude (psychology), attitude that something is truth, true or a State of affairs (philosophy), state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some Life stance, stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either truth value, true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be ''occurrent'' (e.g., a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be ''dispositional'' (e.g., a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white"). There are various ways tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Attitude (psychology)
In psychology, an attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind". Attitudes include beliefs (cognition), emotional responses ( affect) and behavioral tendencies ( intentions, motivations). In the classical definition an attitude is persistent, while in more contemporary conceptualizations, attitudes may vary depending upon situations, context, or moods. While different researchers have defined attitudes in various ways, and may use different terms for the same concepts or the same term for different concepts, two essential attitude functions emerge from empirical research. For individuals, attitudes are cognitive schema that provide a structure to organize complex or ambiguous information, guiding particular evaluations or behaviors. More abstractly, attitudes serve higher psychological needs: expressive or symbolic functions (affirming values), maintaining social identity, and regulating e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (March 28, 1942 – April 19, 2024) was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. His research centered on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Dennett was the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett was a member of the editorial board for ''The Rutherford Journal'' and a co-founder of The Clergy Project. A vocal atheist and secularist, Dennett has been described as "one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers". He was referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Early life and education Daniel Clement Dennett III was born on March 28, 1942, in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, the son of R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mental State
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain/pleasure experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definition of the term. According to ''Epistemology, epistemic approaches'', the essential mark of mental states is that their subject has privileged epistemic access while others can only infer their existence from outward signs. ''Consciousness, Consciousness-based approaches'' hold that all mental states are either conscious themselves or stand in the right relation to conscious states. ''Intentionality, Intentionality-based approaches'', on the other hand, see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the World#Philosophy of mind, world as the mark of the mental. According to ''Functionalism (philosophy of mind), functionalist approaches'', mental states are defined in terms of their role in the causal network independent of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life Stance
A person's life stance, or lifestance, is their relation with what they accept as being of ultimate importance. It involves presuppositions and commitment to exercise it in theory and practice in one's life. It can connote an integrated perspective on reality as a whole and how to assign valuations, thus being a concept similar or equivalent to that of a worldview; with the latter word (derived from the German ) being generally a more common and comprehensive term. Like the term ''worldview'', the term ''life stance'' is a ''shared'' label encompassing both religious perspectives (for instance: "a Buddhist life stance" or "a Christian life stance" or "a Pagan life stance"), as well as non-religious spiritual or philosophical alternatives (for instance: "a humanist life stance" or "a personist life stance" or "a Deep Ecology life stance"), without discrimination in favour of any. Origins of the phrase Humanists interested in educational matters apparently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Direction Of Fit
The term "direction of fit" is used in the philosophy of intentionality to distinguish between types of representations. It is commonly applied in two related senses: first, to distinguish the mental states of belief and desire; and second, to distinguish between types of linguistic utterances, such as indicative and imperative sentences. First, philosophers of mind distinguish between mind-to-world (i.e., mind-to-fit-world) and world-to-mind (i.e., world-to-fit-mind) directions of fit. In the former, mental states such as beliefs are subject to updates in order to fit evidence provided by the world (the mind changes to fit the world, thus beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit). In the latter, mental states such as desires motivate the agent to change the world in order to fit the desired state in the mind (the world changes to fit the mind, thus desires have a world-to-mind direction of fit). Similarly, philosophers of language, in particular advocates of speech act th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belief Revision
Belief revision (also called belief change) is the process of changing beliefs to take into account a new piece of information. The formal logic, logical formalization of belief revision is researched in philosophy, in databases, and in artificial intelligence for the design of intelligent agent, rational agents. What makes belief revision non-trivial is that several different ways for performing this operation may be possible. For example, if the current knowledge includes the three facts "A is true", "B is true" and "if A and B are true then C is true", the introduction of the new information "C is false" can be done preserving consistency only by removing at least one of the three facts. In this case, there are at least three different ways for performing revision. In general, there may be several different ways for changing knowledge. Revision and update Two kinds of changes are usually distinguished: ; update : the new information is about the situation at present, while t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formal Epistemology
Formal epistemology uses formal methods from decision theory, logic, probability theory and computability theory to model and reason about issues of epistemological interest. Work in this area spans several academic fields, including philosophy, computer science, economics, and statistics. The focus of formal epistemology has tended to differ somewhat from that of traditional epistemology, with topics like uncertainty, induction, and belief revision garnering more attention than the analysis of knowledge, skepticism, and issues with justification. Formal epistemology extenuates into formal language theory. History Though formally oriented epistemologists have been laboring since the emergence of formal logic and probability theory (if not earlier), only recently have they been organized under a common disciplinary title. This gain in popularity may be attributed to the organization of yearly Formal Epistemology Workshops by Branden Fitelson and Sahotra Sarkar, starting in 2004, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Of Thought Hypothesis
The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH), sometimes known as thought ordered mental expression (TOME), is a view in linguistics, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, put forward by American philosopher Jerry Fodor. It describes the nature of thought as possessing "language-like" or compositional structure (sometimes known as ''mentalese''). On this view, simple concepts combine in systematic ways (akin to the rules of grammar in language) to build thoughts. In its most basic form, the theory states that thought, like language, has syntax. Using empirical evidence drawn from linguistics and cognitive science to describe mental representation from a philosophical vantage-point, the hypothesis states that thinking takes place in a language of thought (LOT): cognition and cognitive processes are only 'remotely plausible' when expressed as a system of representations that is "tokened" by a linguistic or semantic structure and operated upon by means of a combinatorial synta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Functionalism (philosophy Of Mind)
In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that each and every mental state (for example, the state of having a belief, of having a desire, or of being in pain) is constituted solely by its functional role, which means its causal relation to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs.Block, Ned. (1996), "What is functionalism?" a revised version of the entry on functionalism in ''The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement'', Macmillan. PDF online Functionalism developed largely as an alternative to the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. Functionalism is a theoretical level between the physical implementation and behavioral output.Marr, D. (1982). ''Vision: A Computational Approach''. San Francisco: Freeman & Co. Therefore, it is different from its predecessors of Cartesian dualism (advocating independent mental and physical substances) and Skinnerian behaviorism and physicalism (declaring only physical substances) because it is only concerned with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
