Can I believe p and not p? : Epistemology, Psychology, and Contradictory Beliefs.

(UNL Student Colloquia Submission)

            There is a debate within Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology concerning the notion of Contradictory Beliefs. Several well respected philosophers going as far back as Aristotle to more recent examples of Donald Davidson and Ruth Barcan Marcus have rejected the notion that people can and do have contradictory beliefs. Such a rejection seems to fly in the face of common-sense, so often we seem to find ourselves around people who appear to have contradictory beliefs. What people like Marcus and Davidson appear to recognize is that any attempt to give a theoretical model of belief in an epistemic context (that also holds onto the Law of Non-contradiction) is already doomed to fail if we accept that people can and do have contradictory beliefs. The responses from those who wish to hold onto common-sense have been to either give up on a theoretical model of belief in an epistemic context (Roy Sorensen) or the LNC (Graham Priest).

            I propose another option: there appears to be two different notions of belief that have been conflated so as to produce this debate. The first notion defines belief in terms of assent, a believes that p iff a assents to p. The second notion defines belief in relation to knowledge; beliefs are the kinds of things that epistemic agents gain so they can eventually reach knowledge. Recognizing this distinction will allow us to hold onto our common-sense, that we can have a theoretical model of belief in an epistemic context, and the LNC.

(I really need to thank John Symons for his suggestion that I focus on the Epistemology/Psychology distinction and not just Contradictory Beliefs. It appears to have radically changed the focus of the paper.)

A small difference between the psychological agent and the epistemic agent

Since I agree that there is a difference between the psychological agent and the epistemic agent, I have been trying to figure out where they are different. It seems like one small but important difference between the two agents has to do with what the epistemic agent is focused on. In order for an epsitemic agent to be an epistemic agent she has to be focused or geared towards knowledge. The psychological agent doesn’t necessarily need to be focused on knowledge in order to be a psychological agent. I am sure there are a necessary set of conditions for something to be a psychological agent, but a focus on knowledge is not one of those necessary conditions. To consider a possible example there appear to be instances of psychological agents wanting to give the illusion of having knowledge (say to get a job or impress one’s colleagues), this activity does not appear to be in line with an epistemic agent. At this moment I will not try and claim that the two types of agents are completely distinct, there might be a necessary overlap between the two. Even though it isn’t necessary every time you have a psychological agent you also have an epistemic agent, it might be the case that if you have an epistemic agent then you also have a psychological agent (kind of like the psychological agent has to come first).

Psychology and Epistemology, which talks about what?

It was suggested to me by John Symons that there is a difference between psychological beliefs and epistemological beliefs. When considering my concerns about affirming that people can and do have contradictory beliefs there is something very appealling to the suggestion. If we want to hold onto the intuition that people can and do have contradictory beliefs but still recognize that there is something seriously wrong with creating a model that can handle contradictory beliefs in an epistemic context then it seems like such separation would be a possible way to account for this.

Questions continue to pop into my head. When psychology refers to belief and epistemology refers about belief are they talking about the same thing, “belief” just different aspects of it? or are these two distinct things?

I have been trying to think of the issue and realized there is very limited work done in the area. I have been able to come across an interesting paper by Alvin Goldman (“Relation between Epistemology and Psychology” Synthese 1985, Vol 64, p. 29-68) where he appears to give an interesting analysis of the topic. For the moment I am looking at his criticism of logic providing formal rules for epistemology. Goldman says “…so-called ‘rules of inference’ in axiomatic systems or natural deductive systems say nothing about beliefs, or other psychological states” (Goldman p. 42). I think it is important to notice that he has already defined beliefs as a psychological state. If we treat belief in a manner that has little or nothing to do with psychological states, which seems to be in line with someone like Timothy Williamson, “…the point of belief is knowledge” (Knowledge and its Limits p. 1), it would seem that if Williamson is right, beliefs are the kinds of things that point to knowledge then that doesn’t seem very relevant to psychology. The reason I say this is psychology (as far as I know) equates beliefs with behavior (John seemed to think this also). If beliefs are something other than behavior (which it seems like they are) then we cannot say that beliefs (in epistemic contexts) are a psychological state.