Belief as Emotion

Belief as Emotion argues that belief is a type of emotion, where emotions are understood as irreducibly blended states that transcend the cognitive/non-cognitive divide, containing representational, motivational and phenomenological elements. On this view to believe is to feel that the way one represents the world is accurate and this feeling is a kind of evaluation. This view helps explain a number of puzzling phenomena in epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and philosophy of religion. Further, thinking of beliefs as emotions helps us to understand the ethics of belief. It offers a better understanding of what are sometimes called “edge cases” of beliefs, ones that seem belief-like but that are hard to fit into most standard pictures of belief. These include delusions, religious and political attitudes, and belief in the context of trust.

Given their complicated relationship to evidence and action, many theorists claim that such attitudes should not be categorized as beliefs, but as a different mental state. Belief as Emotion does not force us to exclude states as real beliefs that we pre-reflectively think of as beliefs, and that does not require us to “outsource” the work belief seems to do to other mental states. The view also illuminates the phenomena of self-deception, implicit bias, and deep disagreement. Ideal emotional maintenance is complex; thinking of beliefs as emotions acknowledges and embraces this complexity of our doxastic lives.

Miriam Schleifer McCormick, Professor of Philosophy, University of Richmond

Miriam Schleifer McCormick is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Richmond. Her central research interests focus on the nature and norms of belief. This interest has also led her to think and write about reasons, agency, hope, imagination, and emotions. She has published articles on issues at the cross section of epistemology and ethics, and is the author of Believing Against the Evidence: Agency and the Ethics of Belief (Routledge, 2015) She is a researcher in the normativity and affectivity axis of GRIN and collaborating member of the ethical foundation axis at CRÉ, research centres based at the Université de Montréal.

Preface1. Introduction1.1 Is the view of belief as emotion problematically revisionary?1.2 The standard view of belief and the rise of non-doxasticism1.3 Is this a “merely verbal” dispute”?1.4 Chapter summaries2. Belief as a Blended State2.1 The belief emotion2.2 Questions and clarifications2.3 Different ways of characterizing the belief emotion2.4 Summary3. Defending Doxasticism about Delusions3.1 Motivations for non-doxasticism about delusions3.2 Countering non-doxasticism3.3 Delusions as recalcitrant emotions3.4 Summary4. Defending Doxasticism about Religious Conviction and Political Ideology4.1 Non- doxasticism in the religious and political domains4.2 Critique of religious and political non-doxasticism4.3 Addressing the normative question4.4 Summary5. Trusting is Believing5.1 Arguments that Trusting is not believing5.2 Arguments that there are no good non-evidential reasons for trust5.3 There can be good non-evidential reasons for emotions, including belief5.4 Other approaches5.5 Summary6. Implicit attitudes and Self-Deception: Examples of Emotional Conflict6.1 Self-Deception6.2 Implicit attitudes6.3 The “messiness” of belief6.4 Summary7. Deep Disagreement and Belief Alteration7.1 Why engage with fringe beliefs?7.2 Limits on when to engage7.3 Closed-minded engagement7.4 Belief alteration as emotion alteration7.5 SummaryConclusionBibliography