The Lycan–Stich Argument and the Plasticity of “Belief”

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to argue against the claim that the term "belief", as it functions in philosophical psychology, has natural-kind term semantics; this thesis is central to the famous Lycan-Stich argument against eliminative materialism. I will argue that the current debate concerning the discrepancy between the professed opinions and actions, especially the debate concerning the idea of aliefs, shows that the concept of belief is plastic and amenable to conceptual engineering. The plasticity and amenability to conceptual engineering of the concept of belief give us, in turn, a reason to doubt that "belief" functions in a way that is presupposed in the Lycan-Stich argument. Finally, I point to an alternative to both eliminativism and the natural kind view, namely the idea that we should treat belief as a human kind.

Morgan's Quaker gun and the species of belief

“…Fortunately, neither Morgan's strictly hierarchical cognitive architecture nor his introspectionism are live options in 21 st century psychology. Moreover, philosophers of psychology have recently offered persuasive arguments against both “anthropocentrism” (Andrews 2020: 3)—the thesis that there is a strict positive correlation between the mentalistic and the humanlike—and the conflation of the ontologies of cognitive science and folk psychology (Curry 2021a; Dewhurst 2017, 2021; Poslajko 2022).…”

“…Elsewhere, I've argued that dispositionalism and interpretivism ought to be understood as two sides of the same coin (Curry 2021b(Curry , 2023 Fodor (1987), as well as teleofunctionalists like Millikan (1984) and Dretske (2000). 3 Other proponents of reconciliation include Dewhurst (2021), Poslajko (2022), and (approaching the issue from a different angle) Van Leeuwen & Lombrozo (2023). 4 It's worth flagging that, unlike Fodorian psychofunctional representationalism, Mandelbaumian psychofunctional representationalism doesn't centrally rely on the assumption that attitudes of belief can be unproblematically conflated with cognitive states of belief.…”

“…33Other proponents of reconciliation include Dewhurst (2021), Poslajko (2022), and (approaching the issue from a different angle) Van Leeuwen & Lombrozo (2023). …”

“…1717For those arguments, see Curry 2018, 2020, 2021a; for sympathetic lines of argument, see also Dewhurst 2021; Hutto 2022; Poslajko 2022.…”

The united shades of eliminative materialism

“…Propositional belief, which is the most important version for this study, forms a part of the core of philosophical psychology. Philosophical psychology is, as Krzysztof Poslajko recently stated, "the folk-psychological discourse as it is being refined and used by philosophers in the broadly understood analytic tradition" (Poslajko, 2020). Beliefs are abstract, inner, information-carrying, mediating, enduring, and symbolic representations of the world.…”