Philosophy Education Society Inc. Publishes Article on Logic of Belief

Philosophy Education Society Inc.
How to Give a Piece of Your Mind: Or, the Logic of Belief and Assent
Author(s): Ronald B. De Sousa
Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Sep., 1971), pp. 52-79
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20125929
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HOW TO GIVEA PIECEOF YOURMIND:
OR,
THE LOGICOF BELIEF
AND ASSENT
RONALD B. DE SOUSA
I. THE CONCEPT OF BELIEF: TWO APPROACHES
1. The Centrality of Belief
./Vt the gore of our lives, there is, no doubt, something of a

mess. We are incoherent in our choices, inconsistent an our
beliefs, falsely persuaded that we know ourselves. But at the core
of all such self-deprecation, there is the concept of Belief: and it
too is something of a mess. It is connected with so much of our
lives, that we are inclined to fragment it. One is tempted to view
it in relation to action alone; or, on
the contrary, merely as a
mental act or disposition to such acts; or else, to change the sub
ject altogether and discuss some idealization. My objective is to
find a unified view: so let me first say why I think one is needed.
2. Belief and Consistent Belief
Nothing seems
to follow strictly trom 'X believes that p'.
But if we reinterpret it to mean: lX can consistently be described
as consistently believing p'?which roughly renders, I think,
Hintikka's notion of "defensibility" x?we can get on with the
subject, freed from the of descriptive
inhibitions adequacy. But
defensibility is neither
necessary sufficient norfor truth: it tells
us little, therefore, about the concept of belief on which it is based.
It cannot, in particular, specify necessary conditions for the con
sistent ascription of belief?as opposed to rational belief. If there
are no such conditions, all belief ascriptions must be treated as
atomic: which is implausible. If there are some, they must be
settled on before an account of consistency can be complete.
The reason is simple: it is that we have beliefs about our own
1
Jaakko Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief (Cornell, 1962), partie. 2.6.
HOWTO GIVEA PIECEOF YOURMIND 53
beliefs. A set of first order beliefs is consistent if they can all be

true together; but it is a lesson of Moore's paradox that consistency
of second-order beliefs requires additional constraints. If some
one both believes that p and that he does not believe that p, the
propositions he believes might all be true together, yet he is in
consistent. And the characterization of second order consistency
will remain incomplete, so long as nothing is said about the con
of first order belief ascriptions. Suppose someone says and
sistency
believes: "I am inconsistent: I believe both p and ~p." This is
"indefensible": is it insight,
but or nonsense? Breast-beating of
this sort is guaranteed success : something he believes is bound to
be false. But that remains diagnostically frustrating: is he in
consistent because what he said is true, or on the contrary because
it is inconsistent?
The theory of belief and the theory of consistency belong
together. To find out what we do may be the best way to find
out what it is rational to do. Whether this 5s due to the im
possibility of finding extra-natural criteria of rationality, or, as
some might prefer, to providential evolution which has seen to it
that our minds naturally make the right moves, we might suspect
that in some of their most central principles?though obviously
not in all?the descriptive theory of belief and the normative theory
of rational belief will coincide. This is, in part, what I shall
argue.2
3. Beliefs as Mental Acts or Dispositions to Think
One point of focus in recent discussions of belief has been the

relation of "dispositional beliefs" to "occurrent beliefs," or what
3
Sellars calls "thinkings-that-p." I want to note two points
about the view of belief as a disposition to certain
primarily
mental occurrences.
First, it leads naturally to an interest in the linguistic expr?s
2
Asagainst the prevalent view. Cf. Hintikka, op. cit., 37: "the fact
that the so-called laws of logic are not "laws of thought" in the sense of
natural laws seems to be generally admitted nowadays."
3
See particularly W. Sellars, as Thought and as Com
"Language
munication," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29 (1969), 506
527.
54 RONALD B. DE SOUSA
sion of belief: thus, on Sellar s' view a "thinking-out-loud" is both

the paradigm case of the expression of belief (the manifestation
of the disposition) and the model on which silent or nonlinguistic
'thoughts' are to be understood. The importance of language in
belief is something I shall be anxious to emphasize; but it is not
clear how this model allows us to extend the concept of belief to
animals without language. Yet in fact we do so without strain.
To put it in terms of the prehistoric fictions favored by Sellars,
how did we evolve into beings capable of belief in the full sense,
from beings like us in many relevant respects but lacking our
linguistic or even "protolinguistic" abilities?

We attribute beliefs to dumb animals in the course of in
formally explaining their behavior. And this explanatory role of
belief is underplayed by the theory that focusses primarily on
"mental acts." This is the second point. Thinkings-that-p are
not obviously related to acting on p: yet in humans as in other
animals, there is a vital relation here which a theory of belief must

explore.
4. Belief and Action
At
the opposite extreme is the view that belief is exhausted
by its role
in our lives as agent. From this vantage point one is
quickly led to reject the Aristotelian model of practical reasoning,
insofar as it involves unquantified wants and beliefs. Since most
of our decisions are based on propositions that are less than cer
tain, an analysis of belief geared to its role in determining action
should, on the lines suggested by Ramsey,4 distinguish degrees of
confidence. The resulting theory, advocated by exponents of
Bayesian Decision Theory,5 views belief as "subjective prob

ability."
It is
important to see that this analysis differs from the
previous 'classical' one not just in that it supplements the latter's
ascriptions of belief with specifications of degrees. For the
Bayesian, whenever I believe p (to some degree d) I also believe
~p (to degree 1-d). But for non-Bayesians I normally believe p
4
F. P. Ramsey. "Truth and Probability," in The Foundations of
Mathematics (London, 1931), pp. 156-198.
5
See, e.g., R. C. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision (New York, 1965).
HOW TO GIVEA PIECEOF YOURMIND 55
only if I do not believe ~p. Furthermore, there is for the Bayesian

no such thing as the suspension of belief, which for the non
Bayesian consists in neither believing p nor believing ~p.
These differences might be viewed as merely terminological.
If each theory does not claim to give the exclusive explication of the
notion of belief, the one can supplement the other. For each
springs from a very different point of view: the Bayesian ap
proaches belief through the theory of action, the other through
epistemology. Yet the Bayesian view, if adopted exclusively,
escapes certain difficulties in epistemology; and on the other
hand the classical view seems the more faithful to certain facts
about human action. Plainly the relation between them needs
clarification. Let us begin with a
preliminary comparison.
The Bayesian view avoids a large difficulty which besets the
classical notion: belief must bear some relation to probability, but
merely fixing a threshold of acceptance may result in incon
sistency. This is the "lottery paradox." The difficulty disappears,
if one refuses to speak of acceptance or qualitative belief alto
gether.6 And since "full belief" can be reflected in such a viewr
as subjective of 1, it seems that nothing essential is left
probability
out.
One difficulty with this radical view is that it requires im

portant modifications in our concept of For, as it is
knowledge.
traditionally analyzed, knowledge involves belief without qualifica
tion of degree.
The traditional analysis may rest on mistaken
assumptions.
But there is an intuitive consideration behind it which demands
incorporation into our account of what it is to believe?even if this
shows the practice, as we know it, to fall short of The
rationality.
pursuit of knowledge, whatever else it is, involves a search for
a set of true sentences: it is natural?if unrealistic?to think of the
end of science as the unqualified of all and
acceptance only true
sentences. But truth admits of no degrees. So it seems the ideal
state of science must be thought of in terms of classical rather than
Bayesian belief.
6
As advocated, for instance, in an unpublished paper of R. C. Jeffrey's,
"Dracula Meets Wolfman: Acceptance vs. Partial Belief." This paper
me to clarify my own views.
helped enormously
This is not,sure, a compelling

to be objection to the Neo
Protagorean subjectivist. The implied distinction between truth
and certainty is precisely the one he questions, and besides, the
envisaged utopia might as well be reached by a gradual polariza
tion of probabilities, until all sentences get assigned 0 or 1.0, as by
accretion of a stock of accepted sentences.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the language we speak
is not geared to the Bayesian concept of belief. What qualifica
tions we place on the confidence of our assertions are cumbersome
and and whenever we or our asser
inaccurate, argue deliberate,
tions make a claim to simple truth. Even where qualifications are
can . . can
added ("I fairly confidently say .") these themselves be
taken as truth claims in their own right.7
Given these features of our language, it is not surprising that
our epistemological lust should be somewhat impatient. We
would rather have a largish set of propositions labelled "true"?
even though their title to that label may not be impeccable?than a
very small set labelled "absolutely certain" and an immense, un
wieldy set consisting of all other propositions with grades on them.
There are further
observations that confirm this. First, the
conviction strong that we
is can simply introspect states of
qualitative belief. So strong, indeed, that it has led Isaac Levi to
claim that such a state of belief is a precondition, not an alter
native, for the assignment of degrees of belief.8
Second, there is an objection from the point of view of the
theory of action itself?the home ground of the Bayesians. In

formal deliberation still very much favors the flawed but practical
Practical Syllogism; not only among what Jeffrey likes to call the
7
they do not have to be so taken. Cf. J. 0. Urmson, "Paren
Though
thetical Mind
Verbs," (1952), reprinted in A. Flew, ed., Essays in Con
ceptual 8 Analysis (London, 1956).

Isaac Levi, Gambling With Truth (New York, 1967), ch. VIII. See
p. 123, where Levi lays down as "conditions for adequacy for
particularly
of degrees of belief ... :
analyses
(i) A believes that P to a positive degree only if A believes that P.
(ii) A disbelieves that P to a positive degree only if A disbelieves
that P (believes that ?P).
(iii) A is agnostic regarding P if and only if he believes that P to a
0 degree and believes that ?P to a 0 degree."
Levi's notion of degree of belief, however, is not the Bayesian one.
9
"unwashed masses," but even, I dare say, among sophisticated
Bayesians when they emerge from the studies where they keep
their slide rules.
This a point
leads that I find particularly
to intriguing.
Bayesian decision theory is applicable to dumb animals.10 Jeffrey
out that such an application in no way commits us
rightly points
to pretend that the animal himself understands any language, let
alone the theory itself.11 Indeed, it would appear that even
human agents may act in conformity with the theory though not
in conformity with their professed and conscious beliefs or degrees
of belief.12
This suggests that our verbalized reasoning abilities may be
different in kind from those pre-linguistic decision-making mech
9
Art. cit., p. 17.
10
A notable limitation to thisapplicability might relate to those
assessments of through time that depend on what calls
rationality Jeffrey
"probability kinematics." (See R. C. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, ch. 11,
and "Dracula meets Wolfman," p. 21 ff.). For these depend on assuming
that conditional probabilities stay fixed through time; but conditional
probabilities are obtained

typically by getting people to react to hypothet
ical bets. And to see how, without
it is hard linguistic communication, one
could get animals to exhibit preferences among hypothetical bets. Whether
this limitation is real or not, however, does not affect my point.
11
R. C. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, p. 59:
Nor need the agent be a user of any language: often enough, my cat's
behavior makes it clear to me that he believes he is about to be fed,
or . . . that he tuna to egg. . . . The of deliberate
prefers theory
action is ours, not the cat's, and the theory can be used to explain
some of the cat's actions even though the cat does not understand the
theory, just as the cat can digest his food without being a chemist.
12
Cf. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York, 1965),
on the findings of Davidson, Suppes, and Siegel, in Decision Mak
reporting
ing, an Experimental Approach (Standford, 1957). Hempel puts it this way:
The subjective
probability which
specified a
outcome possesses for a
subject is not, in general, equal to its objective probability, even
given
the subject know the latter. . . . Thus, as far as the
though may
theory is correct, it gives a quite peculiar twist to the idea of rational
action: though the subjects make their choices in clearly structured
decision situations, with full opportunity for antecedent deliberation
and even calculation, they act rationally (in a precisely defined
quantitative sense) relative to subjective

probabilities and utilities
which they do not know, and which, therefore, they cannot take into
account in their deliberations. . . . Here, then, we seem to have a
type of conscious decision which is nonconsciously rational with
quantitative precision (p. 483).
anisms which we share with other animals. Might the two theories
then be functioning at different levels? The Bayesian theory pro
vides us with a way of describing the mechanism of nonverbal
deliberation in humans and other animals. At amore sophisticated
level, our own reliance on language adds incalculably to the scope
and complexity of our deliberations, by providing us with a stock
of sentences accepted as true. This is what the classical notion of
belief is designed to capture. Yet from a Bayesian point of view,
this language-dependent form of deliberation may have drawbacks
at a third level. For in resting content with a simple
dichotomy
between true sentences and others, it ignores the subtleties of
variable confidence and thus may mislead us into irrational deci
sions. Nevertheless, it seems beyond doubt that verbalized
reasoning, using sentences taken as true, exhibits a kind of belief
which existsand is peculiar to humans.
This concept of belief
deserves clarification.
That is what I shall attempt in the next Part of this paper (II),
where I sketch a theory which aims to unify the views and ap
proaches to which I have alluded. In Part III, I shall apply the
theory to two problems in the "natural history" of reasoning:
first, the possibility of holding contradictory beliefs, and the mech
anism of their elimination; and second, transitions of belief by
"instinctive" modus ponens. Finally (IV), I shall return to some
general considerations about awareness, the relation between norm
and description, and the difference language makes between us

and the beasts.
IL A THEORY OF BELIEF AND ASSENT
5. Confidence, Belief, and Assent
My proposal is basically simple. It is to treat "occurrent

belief" as a special but genuine case of behavior. Behavior is in
part determined by subjective probabilities, which may?in a very

extended sense?be called dispositions. Occurrent belief, how
ever, also evinces a more acceptance, or belief
specific disposition:
proper. There is room for both occurrent and dispositional
belief, for both acceptance and degrees of confidence.
I have suggested that we harbor epistemic desires, which
make of us collectors of true sentences. Typically, such appro

is signaled or evinced candid assertion: we use sen
priation by
tences taken as true in arguments and deliberation. Of course, we
may assert things for any number of reasons: to inform, to
impress, to mislead. But in so far as assertion is sincere or candid,

we can abstract fromit a bet on truth alone, solely determined by
epistemic desirabilities. Such an act, or such an abstraction, I
shall term Assent. Assent to p by X either serves to incorporate p,
or shows that p is already included in the set of sentences taken
by X to be true. Such inclusion constitutes the necessary and
sufficient condition for X to believe that p.
The notion of belief as a "bet on truth" is often resisted.
How, one may ask, can a notion as basic and general in scope as
belief be illuminated by reference to such a complex and specialized
act as a bet? Besides, what is there in belief to correspond to the
settlement of the bet?except a further bet? And where, for a
belief, is the pre-arranged payoff? A bet is not bet without the
possibility of settlement and pay-off.
These objections misrepresent my strategy. I am not
proposing to view assent literally as a bet: obviously this would
be worse than circular. Rather I am suggesting that it be thought
of on the model of a bet. The situation is a common one in
philosophy: often a pervasive and basic psychological notion can
not be analyzed in more basic terms; nevertheless it can be
adumbrated by means of analogies with more provincial notions,
the structure of which can be more to
easily exhibited. Needless
say the persuasiveness of the suggested view in such cases cannot
rest on the analogy : itmust spring from its susceptibility to precise
formulation in its own terms?even where none of its terms can
be independently operationalized?and from its explanatory and
unifying power with respect to common sense psychology.
Thus, consider, for a closely related illustration, a familiar
objection against the Bayesian view itself. It is often pointed out

that a subject's readiness to place bets cannot in general be a
measure of his degree of confidence. For even if he is extremely
confident of the truth of (a?)Fa?, there is no hope of settling the bet
in hisfavor?though there is some hope of settling it against him.
Thus, even when highly confident of its truth, he should rationally
bet against it.
What this shows

is that operationalization requires idealiza
tion. The of winning
likelihood or losing by default is not
epistemically relevant. Thus, we should say that degrees of con
fidence are what would determine a certain bet rather than another
if its settlement could be assured. Similarly, on the view I offer,

one assents as if one were betting on a matter that could be
definitively settled, and as if one could anticipate a definite pay-off
in epistemic utility.
A second stockobjection is the following. I have claimed
that is an action.
assent Now in spite of the currency of such
phrases as "deciding to believe," it has seemed obvious to many
people that belief could in no sense be an action, because it is not
voluntary.
For me, an action is an event
caused in a certain way by
wants and beliefs. We act voluntarily, if we could have acted
1S
otherwise: and this, pace Austin and others, means that we
would have done so, barring akrasia, if some not too unusual or
desperate wants had been stronger than they were.

If this is true, we can a genuine see that
action might be
voluntary only in a vacuous
sense because the alternatives would
never be live ones. This will occur when the want that deter
mines an action is not in a position to be overcome by another.
Even if free action in the full sense requires that there be genuinely
open alternatives, voluntary action does not. And this applies to
Assent. First, because of the prevalence of our epistemological
lust: at a stage of our evolution where we have not the mental
equiment to be natural Bayesians, it is a basic and essential drive.

But more important, it has no competitors in its own field. Assent
is all and the only epistemic wants
action determine. Therefore,
whatever motives there might be for making or withholding
assertion, they could not compete with the wants that are relevant
to Assent. So I am satisfied that Assent may be an action even
though it is not in the ordinary sense voluntary.
13
See J. L. Austin, "Ifs and Cans," in Philosophical Papers
(Oxford, 1961).
6. Assent and "Occurrent Belief"

Before going on to a more formal characterization of Assent,
I want to say three things about its relation to "occurrent belief"
?the event of consciously thinking, at a particular time, of some
as true.
proposition
First, in so far as "occurrent beliefs" are thought of as
they have a the
manifesting dispositional beliefs, peculiarity which
notion of Assent can help to explain.
In general, when we specify a disposition by means of a
conditional, the truth of the consequent need not count as an
"actualization" of the disposition. Sometimes what is not brittle
breaks, and modest people have been known to boast. To estab
lish that a disposition was evinced, we must look to the attendant
conditions. But if assent occurs, that is enough: occurrent belief
entails belief, no matter what the circumstances. This privileged
position of assent seems to be related to what "private access" we
have to our beliefs; but how is it to be explained?
The answer, I think, is this. There is no limit to the variety
of actions that can express a given belief: for there is no limit to
the desires with which it might combine. Hence, there is no
analyzing beliefs as dispositions specifiable in the usual way. But
if there were a class of action over which desire were held constant,
it would be privileged in that its members would be differentiated
by belief alone. Acts of Assent, by my definition, form just such
a class. Since assent is viewed as a bet on truth for epistemic ends,
it must be caused by a degree of confidence sufficient for expected
epistemic gain (roughly, a larger set of truths). But on my
definition, this is all there is to belief.
Thus assent is privileged also in this second sense: it serves to
specify belief, in the sense of it For assent is an
making specific.
abstraction from or and so it
(overt silent) assertion, is, like
assertion, tied to a particular linguistic a sentence.
item?usually
In reporting someone's beliefs in indirect discourse, our latitude
is limited by the canons of acceptable but in the case
paraphrase;
of animals and infants, it is limited only by the or
explanatory
descriptive purposes for which the ascription is made. And this
is not due to the limitations on our access to the beliefs of dumb
but to the fact that they do not have
creatures, specific beliefs.
Only sentences can specify beliefs, and a belief need not be specific
at all until it has been formulated.
Thethird point is this. The most uncontested beauty of the
Bayesian of view
belief is that it explains how, if the stakes are
right, we can act even on what we think unlikely. "Occurrent
belief," on the other hand, could never result from a low degree
of confidence. The only counter-examples anyone is likely to offer
concern the pathological case of religious belief, and introduce
such epistemically irrelevant devices as Pascal's paradise, or
Tillich 's Ultimate Concern.14 How is this feature of "occurrent
belief" reflected in the concept of Assent?
To answer this I must say a little more about epistemic
desirability. simplest The view of it is that for any sentence
assented to, truth and falsehood represent equal and opposite pay
offs. In this case the lowest degree of confidence that could be
evinced by assent would be one half: for the expected epistemic
utility of a bet
on anything lower would be less than that of no
bet at all. But there are other epistemic ends than individual
truth: coherence, explanatory power, and so forth. And these are
such that the falsehood of some p might involve a loss in utility
smaller than what should be gained by its truth. Under such con
ditions , could not high epistemic utility combine with a
" probability
lower than .5 to produce Assent?
14
For Pascal's
Wager, see Pens?es, p. 233. Paul Tillich says (Dy
namics of Faith,
[New York, 1957]), "serious doubt is confirmation of
faith" and describes the doubt in question as "the doubt that
(p. 22),
risk . . . the doubt of him who is ultimately concerned
accompanies every
about a concrete content" (p. 20). In the light of this explanation, the
first, paradoxical pronouncement seems to mean simply this: if we think
a state of affairs desirable, our "concern" about it will be the greater,
highly
the more one thinks it.
improbable
15
Thus Levi (op. cit., p. 98) allows "rejection levels that permit
when are less than .5." But his "acceptance as
acceptance, probabilities
true" is not my Assent: it
is relativized to restricted topics of inquiry
delimited "ultimate and it fails to perform what on my view
by partitions,"
is the chief function of Assent: to provide a stock of sentences that get used
as unqualified premisses in arguments. My notion is closer to what he
calls as evidence" than what he calls "acceptance as true":
"acceptance
Although acceptance as true is a necessary condition for acceptance
as evidence, the converse does not hold. A medical research worker
might believe in Enovid's freedom from deleterious side effects, yet

he might with reason continue to conduct tests on its safety.
good
I think For epistemic

not. values other than truth do not
affect sentences
in isolation. I suspect that these additional values
all be traceable to our desire for sets of exclusively true sen
might
tences, coupled with the mental limitations that make it essential
for us to organize these sets in handy ways. However that may be,
it is only when we attend to the interrelations of sentences that
these other values can move us. And the fact, to paraphrase Quine
as he might have Donne, that No Sentence is an Islande, also in
creases the risk involved in acceptance. Given our limited insight
into the consequences of our beliefs, the risk of falsehood is com
the risk of inconsistency: a contagious form of the
pounded with
same affection. So the greater one's awareness of epistemic
utilities other than individual truth, the less willing one will be to
accept as true anything that is more likely to be false. This will

be so even when the rejected sentence might have provided sim
plifications and explanatory insight. Though of course in some

cases such considerations will influence the likelihood of its being
true: but then it will no longer rate a low degree of confidence.
7. Some Axioms
I now summarize the foregoing remarks in what I shall boldly

call 'Axioms of a Theory of Belief and Assent'.
We have, in a sense, two concepts of belief, 'confidence' or
subjective probability, and 'belief proper. 'Assent' provides the

bridge between them. These relations are exhibited in the first
three axioms.
Al. Ap-Bp.16
While he may believe that it is safe, he surely cannot take that

as evidence in the context of testing, (p. 28)
hypothesis
There need be no exact correspondence, however, between any con
Levi discusses and my concept of Assent. For I aim
primarily at
cept
whereas his notions of acceptance are normative ones,
descriptive adequacy,
offered as analysis not of belief, but of fully rational belief.
partial
16
A Note on Notation: 'Ap' ('Bp') are to be read: 'X assents to
at time V. Variables for persons and times are left out and
(believes) p
understood to be held constant throughout any sentence or argument.
for . . .' which later on and is to be read 'X at t
Similarly, 'disp appears
has a disposition to . . .'. All variables (written or omitted) in axioms and
derived are bound by universal quantifiers having the whole
principles
The converse entailment does not of course hold: since there are
sentences that I believe at this moment am not assenting
but to.
In normal cases, however, belief is evinced in assent whenever
X is asked whether p: thus Bp is a disposition to assent:
A2. o
Bp disp. Ap.
We also have, in virtue of the considerations adduced in the last
section,
A3. Bp-Subjective Prob (p) > .5.

The following property obviously holds for assent:
A4. A(p&g)-(Ap& Aq.)

I shall call it the distributivity of assent: Assenting to the conjunct
is part of assenting to the conjunction. By means of a principle
(PD1) that obviously governs dispositions, we can show that
distributivity holds also for belief.
PD1 : (4>-+v)-+ -+
(disp 4> disp w)
Suppose X believes
(i) B(p&q). We have:

(ii) disp A(p & q) (by A2). Hence
(iii) &
disp Ap disp Aq, (by (ii), A4, PD1). But then
(iv) Bp & Bq (by (iii), A2.)
I call this result Tl :
Tl: B(p&g)-(Bp&Bg.)
It might be objected that X might assent to p only when asked
whether both p and q, but not when asked whether p alone. He
would then seem to have a disposition to assent to p only in
directly. Is this enough for belief?
The case a possible
is indeed one. But the occurrence of
assent is a sufficient condition for the presence of belief. If X
assents to (p & q), he believes p and believes q. So long as the
principle, as written, in their scope: these have also been omitted for sim
In other sentences discussed (e.g., (1), on p. 23) 'p', and the
plicity.
omitted 'X* and T should be read as constants. In both cases T is to be
taken as indicating a "specious instant" (that specious notion: the shortest
time it takes to think the longest single thinkable thought.) A principle
starred is a principle marred.
conditions that brought about his assent to (p & q) are in no way

evidential ones, he must have had the relevant disposition even
when not actually assenting. If when simply asked whether p he
fails to assent, this is best treated as an instance of epistemological
akrasia: the right wants and beliefs are there, but somehow,
under certain conditions, fail to result in action. The case is an
but not a
anomaly, counter-example.
What of the converse
of A4? I shall call it AA, for the
Associativity of Assent. AA is phenomenologically plausible, but
it is open to the following objection. If the model of a "bet on
truth" is taken seriously, we cannot assume the equivalence of
separate bets on p and on q with the single bet on the conjunction
(p & q). Indeed there will be cases where it is not even rational
to bet on the conjunction, though it is rational to bet on each
conjunct. And it would be a pessimistic theory that had us com
mitted to irrationality.
Assents, however, are a peculiar kind of bet. Though they
may be made individually, the interest we have in them springs
from our desire to get a complete set of true sentences. And such
a set must of course be closed under Thus it cannot
conjunction.
be rational, after all, to make separate bets on truth if it is not
also rational a conjunctive
to make bet.
Nevertheless, I am not directly concerned with the rationality
of Assent, but with its "natural history" and the consideration just
adduced suggests that whether rational or not, it might be possible
to assent to two sentences but not to their conjunction. So al
I am inclined to I shall flank it with a
though accept AA, question
mark, and leave the matter open.
?AA: (Ap&A9)-A(p& q).

Unlike its converse, associativity could not in any case be
extended to belief. For Imay believe p and believe q, without ever
having put them together. If I have occasion to assent to them at

the same time, then providing ?AA holds, I shall indeed have put
them together: such is the sense of ?AA. But I need never do so:
thus associativity of belief does not hold in general. I mark that
rejected principle with a star.
*AB: (Bp& Bg)-B(p & q).
III. TWO APPLICATIONS
8. How to Root Out Contradictions
The present view affords a differentiated answer to the vexed

of whether it is possible to believe a contradiction.17
question
Note first that it is impossible to assent to p at the same time
and its explicit negation. For assent, by Al and A3 evinces a con
fidence of at least one half.
Consider first the case where confidence in p is greater than
one half. Then if at the very same time we suppose X to assent
to ~p, this will evince a degree of confidence in ~p of at least one
half.
But to say that his confidence in p is greater than one half is
logically equivalent to saying that his confidence in ~p is less than

one half. So our description of him, on this supposition, is in
consistent. This is enough to show that even if he appears to be
'
assenting to p and to ~p, he cannot have understood that ~p' is
the negation of 'p': for betting on the truth of p just is betting
'
on the falsity of ~p. And if he has not understood that ~p' is
the negation of 'p', he cannot, after all, be betting on p.18
This reasoning might seem to leave open the possibility of
assenting to p and at the same time to ~p, in case X's degree of
confidence in p is just one half. For here we are not quite so
obviously forced into inconsistency of description.

But the argument can be generalized to this case. Just as a
assignment measures Bayesian confidence in

single probability
both p and ~p, so the theory I am defending makes no distinction
17
An attempt is made to answer this question (in the negative) in
A. Semantics and Necessary Truth (New Haven, 1957), pp. 173 ff. I
Pap's
shall not discuss any of Pap's arguments, which are uncommonly feeble.
18 as direct
This raises the question of what is to count negation for
sentences of ordinary Obviously, not all contradictory pairs can
English.
count as of each other, nor can complicated equivalences pre
negations
serve the relation of negation." I shall take negation much as
"simple
Hintikka does, as "the result of applying the negativizing transformation
Tnot to p" (op. cit., p. 21), adding that this transformation may be peculiar
to a single idiolect. A contradiction is explicit for a speaker, if and only if
he recognizes it as such as soon as he understands it. See below (pp. 67-68)
for some further remarks on the distinction in question.
re
between assenting to ~p and dissenting from p. Both are a
which can be as down p in one's
sponse graphically pictured setting
list of true sentences behind an odd number of negation signs.
to p can be pictured as the setting down of the same
Assenting
sentence behind an even number of negation signs or none. Thus
these two responses, and dissenting, are as incompatible
assenting
as turning left and turning right: though the incompatibility does
not have its source in physical facts, but in the origin of the
learned verbal responses. For to teach a child the use of the nega
tion sign, is to condition him to give exclusive responses to p and
The involved here was enunciated by Plato in

principle
Book IV of the Republic: "the same thing cannot act ... on the
same thing in the same respect in contrary ways at the same
time" (436b). This principle has often been appealed to, mis
in connection with such as desire or belief,
takenly, dispositions,
which Plato himself did not clearly distinguish from actual be
havior. In the case of dispositions the contrariety holds only be
tween their intentional
objects (as in desiring p and desiring ~p),
whose leaves them both untouched: but assent
ghostly opposition
and dissent are incompatible responses to a single stimulus?the
of 'p'. Thus they are incompatible as pieces of be
presentation
havior (in a broad sense which need not imply physical move
ment) , and to do them both at the same time one would have to
be literally of two minds.19
Note that this rather stiffly behavioral interpretation of the
relation between negation and denial helps to justify the distinc
tion between explicit contradictions and others. For it might
19
Yet there may be cases of two minds in a single body where only
one can do any assenting. R. W. Sperry has concluded from some fascinat
data Bisection
("Brain and Mechanisms of Consciousness," in
ing surgical
John C. Eccles, ed., Brain and Conscious Experience, N.Y., 1966) that "the
surgery has left these people with two separate minds. One mind, how
ever left hemisphere) is dominant . . . has and is normally
(the speech
talkative. . . . The other, the minor hemisphere, however, is mute or
dumb, able to express itself only through non verbal reactions.

being
(Hence 'mental duplicity' from this surgery but no 'double talk')" (p. 299).
It is amusing to speculate that in our unoperated state, actions speak louder
than words because they issue from both hemispheres, whereas words
come from only the left.
have been objected that explicitness admits of degrees. And

classing contradictions as explicit if they are recognized as such
as soon as they are understood, does not help: understanding too
admits of degrees. However this difficulty is avoided by pegging
the two notions firmly to each other and to linguistic training.
I seek the beginnings of a causal account of the process of
reasoning. And I am confident that such an account must be
possible even if mine is wrong. There must be steps in reasoning
which are causally compelling either in virtue of linguistic con
ditioning or in virtue of something even more basic. I am sug

gesting that noncontradiction is just such a basic component of
reasoning, and that it is not surprising to find it tied up with
linguistic conditioning. In those contexts where its application is
automatic, I therefore stipulate that we have explicit contradiction.
Where reasoning is needed to bring out the contradiction, and
where some degree of understanding of p would be conceded even
to someone who failed to see that it is false, p may be inconsistent
without being explicitly contradictory. It is not important that in
a particular case I might not be able to class a contradictory sen
tence as definitely or not : what the fixes is
explicit theory only the
relation between judgments of understanding, ascription of assent,
and judgments of explicit contradictoriness.20
Let us put the impossibility of assenting simultaneously to a
pair of explicitly contradictory sentences in the form of a fifth

axiom :
A5. ~
(Ap & A~p).
From A5 and A4 we can derive the impossibility of assenting to

an explicitly self-contradictory sentence.
20
Cf. W. V. Quine, Word and Object, section 13:
Let us that certain natives are said

accept to as true certain
suppose
sentences translatable in the 'p and not p'.
form Now this claim is
absurd under our semantic criteria. And, not to be dogmatic about
them, what criteria one prefer? Wanton translation can make
might
natives sound as queer as one pleases. Better translation imposes our
them, and would the question of prelogicality if there
logic upon beg
were a question to beg. (p. 58)
Much of what I have to say might be taken as an elaboration of this
theme.
T2. ~A(p & ~p).
These principles commit us to making a difference between

two senses of 'holding contradictory beliefs':
(1) B(p&~p)
and
(2) Bp&B~p.
Clearly (1) is impossible. By A2 it would involve a disposition to

A(p & ~p), which is impossible by T2. But it seems an uncon
troversial principle (which I record as PD2) that there could be
no such disposition:
PD2. -disp (p& ~p)
So we get:
T3. ~B (p& ~p)
It does not follow(2) is impossible.

that However, in virtue
of A5, both
dispositions involved in (2) could not be actualized
simultaneously. This fact lies at the root of a mechanism, now to
be described, which provides for the automatic elimination of
contradictory beliefs under certain conditions. These conditions
involve assent in a way that explains our feeling that awareness
plays a crucial part in the correction of our beliefs.
Suppose true a sentence of the form
of (2). I want to say
that the two
dispositions conflict, that oneandor both can be
eliminated by bringing the conflict, in some sense, to the surface.
A preliminary characterization of the process goes like this: If the
dispositions genuinely conflict, both cannot be actualized at once.
Yet if we can realize the normal conditions for the actualization
of each, at least one of them, at that time, will have to dis
appear.
This needssome explaining. Two dispositions cannot be said
to conflict
merely because their simultaneous actualization is im
possible. Water has a disposition to be liquid at less than 100 ?C,
and to be gaseous at more than 100 ?C: but these dispositions
do not conflict. If there is to be conflict, the normal conditions
for both actualizations must also be compatible. This requirement
means that standard accounts of dispositional properties will not

suit my On such accounts, the
ascription of a dis
purposes.
positional property P(#) entails a subjunctive conditional of the
form 'If C(x), then F(x) '. So to assert the conjunction of P(#),
C(x), and ~F(x) is inconsistent. Yet this is what I would have
asserted, if the dispositions to Ap and to A~p were to be specified

in terms of standard conditionals such as (3) and (4) :
(3) If Ci [be true] then Ap.

(4) Tf C2 [be true] then A-p.
The of the antecedents, together with the incom

compatibility
patibility of the consequences, would show that there could not
have been any such pair of dispositions in the first place.
Now consider principles or policies. These may typically be
in terms of conditionals : but such conditionals will never
specified
be specific with respect to all possible contingencies. They may
leave undetermined what the agent will do where two established
come into conflict. This will occur where the normal
policies
antecedent conditions for each are satisfied, but where their con
sequents are incompatible. At such times new policy must be
created.
The same holds of conditioned dispositions. An animal

trained to obey traffic lights has no conditioned disposition to any
response when simultaneously with a red and

particular presented
a green Yet it has a disposition to stop on red,
light. certainly
and go on green: but these do not license true universal sub
conditionals. We need an analysis of dispositions that
junctive
allow for conflict: I do not have such an analysis. I have only a
hunch that it will involve specifying dispositions partly by refer
ence to their conditioning history. Happily I need only be granted
the following psychological truisms:
A psychological disposition can be specified by a con
(a)
ditional appropriate to the peculiarity just mentioned. This means
that it will not entail the corresponding subjunctive conditional,
but will entail that the material conditional holds as long as the
lasts. Thus disp(p) entails something of the form:
disposition
C(x)Dt?(x)
where the subscript on the horseshoe is a reminder that it is
asserted to hold not timelessly but just for the time to which the
disposition is ascribed.
(b) In such cases, conflict may lead to the formation of new
dispositions, not merely to the discovery of refinements in the
specification of the ola one
Now to return to belief. If X believes p, then normally
being asked whether p elicits assent. Emotional or physiological
factors, however, may inhibit any action that would normally be
caused by a belief-set, desire-set pair. Sheer terror, for instance,
might inhibit assent without entitling us to say the disposition
was removed: for terror is epistemically irrelevant. Here I must
rely to some extent on common sense. Since I am trying to give
a causal account of these matters, I am aware that I cannot
strictly
take for granted the distinction between conditions that are
epistemically relevant and ones that are not. Nevertheless I think
even a precise causal account, in terms of the physiological base of
psychological states, would have to find room for the distinction
between a change in an epistemic state, and its mere inhibition by
emotional or factors on a occasion.
physiological particular
Our inconsistent believer then has dispositions that entail
the following conditionals
(30 CiDtAp
(4') C2DtA~p.
Ci and C2 have this
component in common: X is asked
whether p. But each
also will involve the absence of a special
set of inhibiting factors, which has coexisted with the
normally
presence of the other set. But since (3') and do not entail
(4')
subjunctive conditionals, Ci need not include the list of factors
?
inhibiting A p, nor conversely for C2 and AP. Ci and C2 are not,
therefore, logically incompatible. (If they are psychologically
incompatible, a standard goal of would be to render
psychotherapy
them compatible by weakening or some of the in
eliminating
hibiting factors.)
If Ci and C2 are compatible, we can set off the mechanism we
are looking for them both to be true at the same time.
by causing
We then have:
(3') and (4')

(5) Ci & C2
So we should have
(6) Ap and A?p.
However, this is impossible, by A5. So, by contraposition, one

of the premisses must now be false; and since we control Ci and
C2 and have ensured their truth, we must conclude that
(7) ~(3')v~(4')
and hence that at least one of the contradictory beliefs is no
longer held.
Though it is not impossible to believe two mutually contra
dictory propositions, such a condition is indeed unstable, rather
like that of a machine harboring a potential short-circuit.
Sparks
fly only in very special circumstances. Then adjustment takes
place, though (as can easily be observed) it need not last. All
that one can be sure of is that at just that moment that pair of
beliefs is no longer held: for the antecedents of the relevant con
ditionals are both true, yet at least one of their consequents is false.
At the very next moment, however, when both antecedents are no
longer true, both dispositions can again coexist. This accounts
for the fact that elimination of inconsistency is not achieved with
out effort and perseverance; these virtues, however, need be in
volved only in setting off a mechanism which is itself independent
of our will. A model for such an automatic mechanism should be
derivable from an acceptable theory of assent and belief; for the
elimination ofinconsistent beliefs is something vital to simple
survival. Thus I take it to be a virtue of the present account that
its application is not limited to beings consciously striving to con
form to some canon of rationality.
9. A Modus Ponendi
I have argued in effect, that under certain conditions it is

not to be rational. To what
may seem paradoxical in
impossible
such a claim, I shall return in concluding. But in any case it is
not so far a very strong result. Irrationality rarely consists in the
blatant self-contradictions to which the present mechanism
To see whether this limitation can be lifted, we must
applies.
ask whether anything in the transmission of belief through argu
ment might similarly be left to its own causal devices.
Nobody holds, except in theory-gripped moments of madness,

that we believe all the consequences of our beliefs. It is a little less
implausible to hold that we at least believe what we believe to be
consequences of our beliefs. Thus, Pap has offered the following
2X
as an "axiom of the logic of belief" :
*BMP: (Bp&B(p-g))-Bq
But now suppose p, (p-*g), (q-*r), (r""*5) have all in the
past been assented to by X, who has had since no cause to
change
his mind. These are sufficient conditions for his believing each
of these propositions. It is quite consistent to suppose that he
assent to p yet maintain ~ of course it is incon
might s?though
sistent of him to do so. He might simply not have put the steps
together. But Pap's rule would impose thus, the
transitivity:
situation envisaged is a counter-example.
Yet there seems something right about *BMP. Is it perhaps
acceptable if restricted to beliefs of which I am aware?
currently
Let us call to witness Lewis Carroll's Tortoise. Consider the
following characterization of his move, and assume that he is
aware of all sentences in question and assents to those that he
believes :
In his simultaneous acceptance of p and p-*q and rejection of

q, the Tortoise has repudiated modus ponens. He repudiates
it simply by refusing to draw the inference to q. Yet in the
very next breath, he acknowledges modus ponens when he
grants the truth of (p & (p-*</)) -+q.22
This description suggests that to accept an implication is to accept

the rule 'if you accept p then you must is to
accept q'?it
"acknowledge modus ponens"?and that acceptance of this rule,
in turn, is incompatible with failure to conform to it. The
Tortoise's behavior then shows that either he is in bad faith?as
indeed we suspected?or else does not understand the implica
tion, and thus cannot be said to believe it. For the acceptance
21
A. Pap, "Belief and Propositions," 24 (1957),
Philosophy of Science,
pp. 123-136. The principle (*BMP) is his (A2), into my nota
p. 131, put
tion.
22
John Woods, "Was Achilles' "Achilles' Heel" Achilles' Heel?,"
Analysis 25-24 (1965). I have adapted the notation to conform to my own.
or rejection of a sentence shows nothing about one's beliefs if one

does not understand it.
But the
implication sign is not a license and injunction to
modus
ponens; it is a connective relating the truth con
practice
ditions of the sentences that flank it. And this the Tortoise, by
what he grants "in the very next breath," shows that he under
stands.23 By requiring that Achilles write down all valid
sequences as additional premisses, the Tortoise is showing that he
does not understand the difference between a and a rule
premiss
of inference
(or perhaps even does not understand the point of
But these are further matters. We do not have to
validity).
suppose that he is lying when he claims not to assent, nor that he
can be saved from inconsistency by lack of understanding.
For these reasons the analogue of (*BMP) for assent must also
be rejected:
*AMP: (Ap & A(p->g))->Ag.
Moreover, nothing I have said about the case of the Ornery

Tortoise rested on keeping separate his beliefs: on the contrary, we
had him assent to the whole "valid sequence" as a single proposi
tion. We must therefore also reject?whether or not ?AA is
acceptable?the weaker principle that applies only to sets of prop

ositions embraced in a single act of assent:
*MPA: A(p & (p->g))-Aq.
But a still weaker principle will, I think, do:
MP: A(p & (p-g))-Bq.

The rationale for (MP) is this. If I am already assenting to
& I do not need any more information to infer q:
(p p~*q),
nothing could make it any more reasonable to draw the conclu
sion. But I do not need to do any more reasoning either: if
is "putting I have already done that:
reasoning things together,"
all that remains is to take something out. If some necessary con
ditions for Aq are lacking?as they seem to be for the Tortoise?
23
Lewis
Cf. Carroll's own words: "If some reader had not yet accepted
and he might still accept the sequence as a valid one." ("What
['p' 'p-+q'],
The Tortoise Said to Achilles," in Complete Works, Modern Library,
pp. 1226-1227.)
they must be of the sort characterized above as causally but not

epistemically relevant to Assent. When those additional condi
tions are satisfied, the Tortoise will assent: he has, in the
requisite sense, a disposition to assent, so he believes.
MP does not generate unwelcome transitivity. Since Assent
to the premiss is required by the antecedent of MP, but only belief
is produced in the consequent, the latter cannot automatically pro
vide a premiss for a further transfer of belief.
Nor does MP require, as Woods' description seemed to, that
one do anything, however minimal, to demonstrate one's under
standing. That is a requirement of simplistic behaviorism.
There is always a possible gap between understanding and acting.
In that gap there is room for failure of irrelevant
epistemically
causal conditions. But if only these can fail, then we do have
belief, though we may not have Assent.
Moreover MP does, as we hoped, extend the scope of the
mechanism (the 'Contradiction Eradicator') described in the last
section.
Consider a case where

p is a disguised which X
contradiction,
believes. Then
suppose X is given a proof, which he assents to,
that p entails q, where q is an explicit contradiction. It would
seem that he could put his two beliefs and assent to their
together,
conjunction. Then, by virtue of MP, we must say that he
believes q. However by T3 this is impossible, since q is an
explicit contradiction. This shows that the Contradiction
Eradicator, under the right conditions, can be brought to bear
against inconsistency as well as explicit contradiction. The path
to successful reductio consists in placing him in a position where
he would normally assent to the conjunction of his belief in p and
his belief that p entails q. Then, as in the
simpler case, some
thing has to go. Of course this is not a sufficient condition of his
abandoning p. He might abandon (p-*q) instead. (There are
two ways for the kooky to crumble.) But this is as strong a
reductio mechanism as we want?since sometimes the implication
statement turns out to be the right one to give up.
Of course this does not tell us everything. It does not tell us,
for example, how one gets someone to accept an implication state
ment?or for that matter any statement. Clearly there are some
things we must be caused to believe independently of any reason
ing, and perhaps we need the natural light of reason to see that
certain sentences are instances of implication schemata we accept.
MP can account for some cases of coming to believe an implication
statement?via assent to something that entails it conjoined with
the fact that it does so. But, of course, if this were the only way,
one could never
get started.
Nevertheless, MP does complement A1-A5, both in extending
the scope of the mechanism of the previous section, and in provid
ing a partial model for the transmission of belief through
reasoning.
IV. CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS
10. Awareness
I offered in section 8 above to explicate the intuition that our

beliefs are typically corrected by being brought into consciousness.
This would have been straightforward if we could read Assent as
including awareness. But this is not open to me. For though
I intend the notion of Assent as a surrogate for "occurrent belief,"
I have interpreted it strictly speaking as an action: and not all
action is conscious. Have I then passed by awareness altogether?
In a sense I have, and this is welcome. I think it false of
occurrent belief as of other actions that it must be conscious.
Rather, there are conditions under which actions typically are
conscious, and such conditions are likely to attend normal acts

of assent.
First, there are limits

to the complexity of actions performed
unconsciously. Most
linguistic activity is fairly complicated: thus
awareness is to be expected when we talk, or think, and, therefore,
when we assent. Further, it is a commonplace of psychology that
mild conflict focusses attention. Of course, there are cases where
conflict, particularly if severe, results on the contrary in repres
sion. But we would expect the former effect in the sort of conflict
I have discussed.
These facts are enough to explain that correction of belief is
normally conscious. Butthey explain away, I think, the
prejudice that the role of awareness is essential.
Both applications I have sketched of my theory dispense
with consciousness also further, more

in the technical sense of
self-consciousness. One
fairly clear way to take the phrase 'X has
a self-conscious belief that p' is 'X believes that p and believes
that he does so' (in my notation, 'BBp'). That sense of self
consciousness, sometimes discussed under the title of the Trans
parency of Consciousness, can receive illumination from the
present viewpoint. But that is for another paper. What is worth
noting here is that nothing I have said about reasoning at the level
of first-order beliefs involved second-order beliefs in any way. So
in this sense too, if I am right, self-consciousness is less pervasively
important to rationality than one might have thought.
11. Description and Prescription
If my theory is true, then it is analytic (in the non

committal sense of following from the theory) that no one can
be completely mad. How could this be?
Consider again the practitioner of Bayesian Decision Theory.
He begins by ascribing to X, his subject, on the basis of the prefer
ence rankings which his choices exhibit, degrees of confidence and
of desire. For this procedure to make sense, he must assume
that X's choices are rational: that they reflect his actual prefer
ences. Yet once he has calibrated and filled out his scales, he
commonly uses them to criticize X for irrationality.

Is this not An objector might
incoherent? offer the follow
ing dilemma: If your principles are descriptive, any anomaly
which you detect in X's behavior must be attributed either to
some defect of your theory or to your failure to apply it correctly.
Then you should criticize only yourself. If on the other hand your
is critical, you cannot use it to explain and describe: you
theory
must find some independent access to your subject's beliefs and
desires.
Having placed myself in the decision theorist's position, I

want to take his dilemma by the horns. Our principles are
indeed both normative and descriptive. Not that people are gen
erally sufficiently rational for the norm to serve as an empirical
rule of thumb; that is surely false. I mean something more
radical. The principles of decision theory are part of the right
theory of how wanting, believing, acting actually function: thus,
they are primarily descriptive. Anyone who ascribes an action

to a subject but holds that it cannot be related to his real beliefs
and desires is himself being inconsistent, unless he can explain
this lack of connection. One way he can do this is in terms of
interfering causal factors. These can either take the event out of
the sphere of action altogether?explaining it in terms of reflexes
or reactions?or plug the agent in, as it were, to a
physiological
"wrong" or "weaker" set of reasons: which is what I take it
happens in cases of akrasia.2i But the most common explanation

involves mistaken reasoning. This preserves the descriptive con
tent of the model, since the agent's actions will be explained in
terms of what he takes to be desirable and true. It also preserves
the critical function of those principles, since they can be used to
point out that what he takes to be desirable and true would be
found, if he reasoned correctly, to be incoherent.
If, as I claimed, we have beliefs, in addition to the confidence
ratings which interest the decision theorist, then what I have just
now said applies to those beliefs. If you ascribe to me inconsistent
beliefs, you must explain this by assuming that I have made mis
takes in manipulating the set of my
accepted sentences. If you
cannot imagine what mistakes
might possibly have led me to take
something to be true, you are not meeting that requirement.
Thus, for example, if you claim I believe an unambiguous, ex
plicitly self-contradictory sentence, you cannot yourself under

stand what are are no sense.
you ascribing: you making
12. Us and The Beasts
I noted one respect

Earlier, in which language may, while
increasing the scope of our deliberations, diminish their accuracy.
For we normally deal, not with graded parameters of belief and
desire, but with sentences taken as true. On the evolutionary
scale, we are transitional animals looking back to a dumb but
Bayesian past, and perhaps, if all goes well, forward to a more
24
The remote cause of this impressionistic characterization of akrasia
was Donald Davidson's paper, "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?"
(in Joel Feinberg, ed., Moral Concepts [Oxford, 1969]). I am far from
claiming, however, that it is a recognizable version of anything in that

paper.
future. But now there has emerged a

sophisticated Bayesian
second way in which our linguistic gift betrays us. Irrationality,
I suggested, is a product of reasoning: and the only clear cases of
reasoning involve language. To back up a charge of irrationality,
we need strings of specific sentences in which we can point to
invalid transitions. Other animals never give us such hard evi
dence: so rather
than foist on them some hazy form of incon
sistency, if their behavior seems erratic, we shall trace it to mis

takes in perception, or to conflicting drives.
Inconsistency literally ascribed to a creature without language
will stick to the ascriber.
Such then is the price we pay for being the kind of rational
animal we are. Our rationality is in part a corollary of our ability
to speak. Yet this very gift makes of us, in two senses, among
rational animals, the only ones clearly capable of being irrational.25
University of Toronto.
25
In the course of writing this paper I have benefitted from sugges
tions and criticism from a number of people. I am indebted particularly
to Elizabeth Anscombe, Lynd Forguson, Hans Herzberger, George Myro,
Barry Stroud, and Harold White, and members of the Princeton Philosophy
Department Seminar before whom an earlier version was read in April, 1969.

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I. THE CONCEPT OF BELIEF: TWO APPROACHES

1. The Centrality of Belief

./Vt the gore of our lives, there is, no doubt, something of a

2. Belief and Consistent Belief

beliefs. A set of first order beliefs is consistent if they can all be

3. Beliefs as Mental Acts or Dispositions to Think

One point of focus in recent discussions of belief has been the

First, it leads naturally to an interest in the linguistic expr?s

sion of belief: thus, on Sellar s' view a "thinking-out-loud" is both

linguistic or even "protolinguistic" abilities?

animals, there is a vital relation here which a theory of belief must

4. Belief and Action

Bayesian Decision Theory,5 views belief as "subjective prob

only if I do not believe ~p. Furthermore, there is for the Bayesian

One difficulty with this radical view is that it requires im

This is not,sure, a compelling

theory of action itself?the home ground of the Bayesians. In

ceptual 8 Analysis (London, 1956).

probabilities are obtained

quantitative sense) relative to subjective

type of conscious decision which is nonconsciously rational with

quantitative precision (p. 483).

and description, and the difference language makes between us

IL A THEORY OF BELIEF AND ASSENT

5. Confidence, Belief, and Assent

My proposal is basically simple. It is to treat "occurrent

part determined by subjective probabilities, which may?in a very

make of us collectors of true sentences. Typically, such appro

impress, to mislead. But in so far as assertion is sincere or candid,

objection against the Bayesian view itself. It is often pointed out

What this shows

if its settlement could be assured. Similarly, on the view I offer,

desperate wants had been stronger than they were.

equiment to be natural Bayesians, it is a basic and essential drive.

6. Assent and "Occurrent Belief"

might believe in Enovid's freedom from deleterious side effects, yet

I think For epistemic

accept as true anything that is more likely to be false. This will

plifications and explanatory insight. Though of course in some

I now summarize the foregoing remarks in what I shall boldly

subjective probability, and 'belief proper. 'Assent' provides the

While he may believe that it is safe, he surely cannot take that

A3. Bp-Subjective Prob (p) > .5.

A4. A(p&g)-(Ap& Aq.)

(i) B(p&q). We have:

conditions that brought about his assent to (p & q) are in no way

?AA: (Ap&A9)-A(p& q).

having put them together. If I have occasion to assent to them at

*AB: (Bp& Bg)-B(p & q).

III. TWO APPLICATIONS

8. How to Root Out Contradictions

The present view affords a differentiated answer to the vexed

logically equivalent to saying that his confidence in ~p is less than

obviously forced into inconsistency of description.

assignment measures Bayesian confidence in

The involved here was enunciated by Plato in

dumb, able to express itself only through non verbal reactions.

have been objected that explicitness admits of degrees. And

ditioning or in virtue of something even more basic. I am sug

pair of explicitly contradictory sentences in the form of a fifth

From A5 and A4 we can derive the impossibility of assenting to