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Believing Things

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert C. Coburn*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago

Extract

The account of belief adumbrated by Ryle in The Concept of Mind is, I think, a very tempting one despite its relative vagueness. According to this account, a belief that such and such is the case is a disposition of a certain kind. More specifically, it is a tendency or a propensity to behave and to react in more or less definite ways under certain circumstances. Thus “to believe that the ice is dangerously thin,” Ryle writes, “is to be unhesitant in telling oneself and others that it is thin, in acquiescing in other people's assertions to that effect, in objecting to statements to the contrary, in drawing consequences from the original proposition,. and so forth.” Moreover, he continues, “it is also to be prone to skate warily, to shudder, to dwell in imagination on possible disasters and to warn other skaters.” In short, to believe that p is to have “a propensity not only to make certain theoretical moves but also to make certain executive and imaginative moves, as well as to have certain feelings.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1971

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References

1 Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1949), pp. 134 f.Google Scholar

2 Russell, Bertrand. The Analysis of Mind (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1921), p. 252.Google Scholar

3 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), Pt. II, sec. x.Google Scholar

4 Ryle, The Concept of Mind, p. 181 (italics mine).Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 184.

6 Wingenstein, . Philosophical Investigations, Pt.1, sec. 524.Google Scholar

7 Ct. ibid., sec. 289.

8 See Coburn, Robert. “Persons and Psychological Concepts,American Philosophical Quarterly, IV (July, 1967), especially pars. 2 and 18.Google Scholar