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<\/a><\/p>\nRules have exceptions: Which is faster \u2014 a mallard or a kiwi?<\/p>\n
Believing in things that don’t really make sense and without any apparent reason seems, in that respect, not specific to the religious and spiritual domain. But are beliefs in the fastness of lemons, and in bright violins, of the same kind as beliefs in the Holy Trinity or in the spirits of the trees?<\/p>\n
Believing is not a simple and unified thing. This anthropological fact is often minimized by philosophers, but fortunately not on this blog (see the debate between Maurice Bloch and Dan Sperber, here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Still, when invited to think about varieties of beliefs, most will agree that it comes from two things. The first and obvious one is the variety of contents. Believing that 2+2 equal 4 is different from believing that it will rain tomorrow, and believing that Cicero was a great orator may be different from believing that Tully was a great orator. The second kind of difference comes from our attitudes toward these contents – broadly speaking, the degree of confidence we have toward them. You are absolutely certain that 2+2 = 4, but only pretty confident that it will rain tomorrow.<\/p>\n Reflective vs. intuitive: Where should we look for the difference?<\/p>\n A further distinction illuminates the varieties of beliefs, stressing the difference between ways in which we come to hold these contents – e.g. in a intuitive or reflective way. You can have the intuition that it is wrong to push someone under a train to save five innocents, but come to reflectively believe that this is the right thing to do. This seems close to the previous difference in attitude toward the contents: we feel justified in holding the second belief, but not the first. The two distinctions should nonetheless be kept separate. One can be very confident in one\u2019s intuitions, or on the contrary be suspicious of them and refuse to act according to them. The same goes for reflective judgements. Saying that someone is \u201cvery intuitive\u201d is here misleading, and underscores something about attitudes: it doesn\u2019t mean that she has more intuitions than others, but that she trusts and follows her intuitions more easily or often.<\/p>\n The distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs often goes with dual-systems theories. It is drawn at the sub-personal level in terms of kinds of processes: intuitions result from processes (system 1) which are associative, unconscious, effortless, heuristic, whereas reflective beliefs come from rule-based, conscious, effortful, analytic, and rational processes (system 2).<\/p>\n Yet, as Dan suggests in his post<\/a>, there is a firmer manifest difference between intuitive and reflective beliefs – a difference that is consciously experienced and expressed in behaviour. Our beliefs come in different ways – intuitions are felt to be \u201cmere knowledge of plain facts\u201d, they come as obvious and somehow isolated, whereas reflective beliefs are felt to be held \u201cfor a good reason\u201d (be it an argument or trust in the source) and to make sense within a more general set of beliefs, which one feels are lying in the background, ready to become explicit. This difference is also (and perhaps more clearly) manifested in the ways these beliefs are expressed or discussed: intuitions are stated but can\u2019t lead to further elaboration, whereas reflective beliefs are discussed, argued for and criticized.<\/p>\n A first question here is whether the most important or basic difference between intuitive and reflective beliefs should be made at the manifest level. Perhaps this is a bit fragile (qua an introspective difference) or close to old-fashioned behaviorism (qua observed in practice). But arguably, this difference explains why and how we look for potential underlying differences in processing.<\/p>\n Looking for a distinction in contents: Are some contents specific to intuitions, or reflective judgments?<\/p>\n A more robust way to draw the difference resorts to something more akin to the difference in contents, than ways of being manifested. Following this line means finding contents that are specific to intuitions or to reflective judgments. In their discussion, Dan and Maurice argued about such a difference. Let\u2019s grant that beliefs contents vary in terms of being more or less determinate. As adults, our belief that 2 plus 2 equal four is fully determinate, in the way it wasn\u2019t when we were 5 years old, and in a way that the dogma of the Holy Trinity isn\u2019t. This is, I guess, the distinction that Sperber tries to capture in terms of propositional and semi-propositional content. Terminology doesn\u2019t matter here. What matters is that the distinction doesn\u2019t reduce to a difference in attitude or commitment (our readiness to doubt or wonder about semi-propositional beliefs, but not about propositional beliefs) but remains about contents. Accordingly, a believed content is fully determined (\u201cpropositional\u201d) if the believer knows its truth-values over the range of all epistemically relevant worlds, vague if she knows them for some or most epistemically relevant worlds, and indeterminate (only \u201csemi-propositional\u201d) if she doesn\u2019t know anything about its truth-value in any relevant epistemic world.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s go back to intuitive vs. reflective. One can think (like Dan Sperber) that indeterminate (semi-propositional) contents are specific to reflective judgments. Our reason for accepting these obscure contents can\u2019t come (by definition) from our evaluating their truth, and therefore only comes from us trusting the people whom we get them from. \u201cSemi-propositional\u201d contents are always social – they result from communication (linguistic or non-linguistic) and are held for reasons like trust, deference, etc. It is because a child is told that two plus two equal four or that there is something like the Holy trinity that he comes to believe it. He has no clue on what makes it true in the \u201crelevant epistemic worlds\u201d.<\/p>\n While I agree that indeterminate contents can\u2019t come from an evaluation of truth-value, i don\u2019t think that they necessarily come from others. There is much room for indeterminacy coming from our own cognitive activities. Let’s reconsider the previous intuitive judgments, about lemons being fast and violins bright. Or take better known cases of sound-shape correspondences. Watch for instance these two shapes:<\/p>\n