Article contents
Knowledge before belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2020
Abstract
Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations of beliefs, which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations of knowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it.
- Type
- Target Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
- 37
- Cited by
Target article
Knowledge before belief
Related commentaries (36)
Are knowledge- and belief-reasoning automatic, and is this the right question?
Belief versus knowledge: An epic battle, but no clear victor
Beliefs for human-unique social learning
Beyond knowledge versus belief: The contents of mental-state representations and their underlying computations
Do knowledge representations facilitate learning under epistemic uncertainty?
Do “knowledge attributions” involve metarepresentation just like belief attributions do?
Evolutionary foundations of knowledge and belief attribution in nonhuman primates
Exchanging humpty dumpties is not a solution: Why a representational view of knowledge must be replaced with an action-based approach
Ignorance matters
Infants actively seek and transmit knowledge via communication
Insights into the uniquely human origins of understanding other minds
Intersubjectivity and social learning: Representation of beliefs enables the accumulation of cultural knowledge
Knowing, believing, and acting as if you know
Knowledge is belief – and shaped by culture
Knowledge and the brain: Why the knowledge-centric theory of mind program needs neuroscience
Knowledge as commitment
Knowledge before belief in the history of philosophy
Knowledge before belief: Evidence from unconscious content
Knowledge by default
Knowledge prior to belief: Is extended better than enacted?
Knowledge, belief, and moral psychology
Knowledge-by-acquaintance before propositional knowledge/belief
No way around cross-cultural and cross-linguistic epistemology
Relational mentalizing after any representation
Representation and misrepresentation of knowledge
Representing knowledge, belief, and everything in between: Representational complexity in humans and other apes
Semantic memory before episodic memory: How memory research can inform knowledge and belief representations
Teleology first: Goals before knowledge and belief
The distinctive character of knowledge
The evolution of knowledge during the Cambrian explosion
The role of epistemic emotions in learning from others
Theory of mind in context: Mental-state representations for social evaluation
There's more to consider than knowledge and belief
Three cognitive mechanisms for knowledge tracking
Two distinct concepts of knowledge
Why is knowledge faster than (true) belief?
Author response
Actual knowledge