An attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind." Attitudes include beliefs ( cognition ), emotional responses ( affect ) and behavioral tendencies ( intentions , motivations ). In the classical definition an attitude is persistent, while in more contemporary conceptualizations, attitudes may vary depending upon situations, context, or moods.
141-419: A belief is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance , take, or opinion about something. In epistemology , philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false . To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow
282-509: A belief in an ideal may involve the belief that this ideal is something good, but it additionally involves a positive evaluative attitude toward this ideal that goes beyond a mere propositional attitude. Applied to the belief in God, opponents of the reductive approach may hold that a belief that God exists may be a necessary pre-condition for belief in God, but that it is not sufficient. The difference between de dicto and de re beliefs or
423-707: A belief in marriage could be translated as a belief that marriage is good. Belief-in is used in a similar sense when expressing self-confidence or faith in one's self or one's abilities. Defenders of a reductive account of belief-in have used this line of thought to argue that belief in God can be analyzed in a similar way: e.g. that it amounts to a belief that God exists with his characteristic attributes, like omniscience and omnipotence . Opponents of this account often concede that belief-in may entail various forms of belief-that, but that there are additional aspects to belief-in that are not reducible to belief-that. For example,
564-660: A de re sense, Lois does believe that Clark Kent is strong, while in a de dicto sense she does not. The contexts corresponding to de dicto ascriptions are known as referentially opaque contexts while de re ascriptions are referentially transparent. A collective belief is referred to when people speak of what "we" believe when this is not simply elliptical for what "we all" believe. Sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote of collective beliefs and proposed that they, like all " social facts ", "inhered in" social groups as opposed to individual persons. Jonathan Dancy states that "Durkheim's discussion of collective belief, though suggestive,
705-400: A dispositive belief ( doxa ) from knowledge ( episteme ) when the opinion is regarded correct (n.b., orthé not alethia ), in terms of right, and juristically so (according to the premises of the dialogue), which was the task of the rhetors to prove. Plato dismisses this possibility of an affirmative relation between opinion and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on
846-523: A belief in a proposition or one does not. This conception is sufficient to understand many belief ascriptions found in everyday language: for example, Pedro's belief that the Earth is bigger than the Moon. But some cases involving comparisons between beliefs are not easily captured through full beliefs alone: for example, that Pedro's belief that the Earth is bigger than the Moon is more certain than his belief that
987-402: A belief or we don't have a belief") with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence ("there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief"). Beliefs are the subject of various important philosophical debates. Notable examples include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence?", "Is
1128-409: A belief system, and that tenanted belief systems are difficult for the tenants to completely revise or reject. He suggests that beliefs have to be considered holistically , and that no belief exists in isolation in the mind of the believer. Each belief always implicates and relates to other beliefs. Glover provides the example of a patient with an illness who returns to a doctor, but the doctor says that
1269-444: A central role in many religious traditions in which belief in God is one of the central virtues of their followers. The difference between belief-in and belief-that is sometimes blurry since various expressions using the term "belief in" seem to be translatable into corresponding expressions using the term "belief that" instead. For example, a belief in fairies may be said to be a belief that fairies exist. In this sense, belief-in
1410-458: A certain way is called a belief. This is not just true for humans but may include animals, hypothetical aliens or even computers. From this perspective, it would make sense to ascribe the belief that a traffic light is red to a self-driving car behaving just like a human driver. Dispositionalism is sometimes seen as a specific form of functionalism. It defines beliefs only concerning their role as causes of behavior or as dispositions to behave in
1551-441: A certain way. For example, a belief that there is a pie in the pantry is associated with the disposition to affirm this when asked and to go to the pantry when hungry. While it is uncontroversial that beliefs shape our behavior, the thesis that beliefs can be defined exclusively through their role in producing behavior has been contested. The problem arises because the mechanisms shaping our behavior seem to be too complex to single out
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#17327723250641692-442: A chess computer will behave. The entity has the belief in question if this belief can be used to predict its behavior. Having a belief is relative to an interpretation since there may be different equally good ways of ascribing beliefs to predict behavior. So there may be another interpretation that predicts the move of the queen to f7 that does not involve the belief that this move will win the game. Another version of interpretationism
1833-541: A controlled and deliberative process. The theory of reasoned action (TRA) is a model for the prediction of behavioral intention, spanning predictions of attitude and predictions of behavior. The theory of reasoned action was developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, derived from previous research that started out as the theory of attitude, which led to the study of attitude and behavior. The theory of planned behavior suggests that behaviors are primarily influenced by
1974-406: A few closely related beliefs while holists hold that they may obtain between any two beliefs, however unrelated they seem. For example, assume that Mei and Benjamin both affirm that Jupiter is a planet. The most straightforward explanation, given by the atomists, would be that they have the same belief, i.e. that they hold the same content to be true. But now assume that Mei also believes that Pluto
2115-432: A host of others that involve attitudes or intentions toward propositions are notorious for their recalcitrance to analysis. (Quine 1956). One of the fundamental principles governing identity is that of substitutivity , also known as fungibility — or, as it might well be called, that of indiscernibility of identicals . It provides that, given a true statement of identity, one of its two terms may be substituted for
2256-448: A language-like structure, sometimes referred to as "mentalese". Just like regular language, this involves simple elements that are combined in various ways according to syntactic rules to form more complex elements that act as bearers of meaning. On this conception, holding a belief would involve storing such a complex element in one's mind. Different beliefs are separated from each other in that they correspond to different elements stored in
2397-493: A less fortunate other increases a person's own subjective well-being. A person is more likely to use the ego-defensive function when they suffer a frustration or misfortune. Identity and social approval are established by central values that reveal who we are and what we stand for. Individuals define and interpret situations based on their central values. An example would be attitudes toward a controversial political issue. According to Doob in 1947, learning can account for most of
2538-401: A mental attitude towards the proposition "It will be sunny today" which affirms that this proposition is true. This is different from Sofía's desire that it will be sunny today, despite the fact that both Rahul and Sofía have attitudes toward the same proposition. The mind-to-world direction of fit of beliefs is sometimes expressed by saying that beliefs aim at truth. This aim is also reflected in
2679-657: A message are important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for different people. Thus, in terms of emotional appeals messages, one size does not fit all. Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily available is an attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement is the relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to change. Propositional attitudes A propositional attitude
2820-402: A more realistic sense: that entities really have the beliefs ascribed to them and that these beliefs participate in the causal network. But, for this to be possible, it may be necessary to define interpretationism as a methodology and not as an ontological outlook on beliefs. Biologist Lewis Wolpert discusses the importance of causal beliefs and associates the making and use of tools with
2961-661: A particular culture. People with syncretic views blend the views of a variety of different religions or traditional beliefs into a unique fusion which suits their particular experiences and contexts ( eclecticism ). Unitarian Universalism exemplifies a syncretic faith. Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following: Psychologist James Alcock also summarizes a number of apparent benefits which reinforce religious belief. These include prayer appearing to account for successful resolution of problems, "a bulwark against existential anxiety and fear of annihilation," an increased sense of control, companionship with one's deity,
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#17327723250643102-399: A particular function ( Hilary Putnam ). Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief ( Paul Churchland ) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief ("either we have
3243-425: A particular object that vary from positive to negative. The effects of attitudes on behaviors is a growing research enterprise within psychology. Icek Ajzen has led research and helped develop two prominent theoretical approaches within this field: the theory of reasoned action and, its theoretical descendant, the theory of planned behavior . Both theories help explain the link between attitude and behavior as
3384-463: A particular trait has a basis in genetics, twin studies are used. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger , which explains that when the components of an attitude (including belief and behavior) are at odds an individual may adjust one to match the other (for example, adjusting a belief to match a behavior). Other theories include balance theory , originally proposed by Heider in 1958, and
3525-635: A person forms his or her attitude. This concept was seen as the mere-exposure effect . Robert Zajonc showed that people were more likely to have a positive attitude on 'attitude objects' when they were exposed to it frequently than if they were not. Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it. Tesser in 1993 argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes - but believes that they do so indirectly. For example, consistency theories, which imply that beliefs and values must be consistent. As with any type of heritability, to determine if
3666-493: A person is relying on a single dimension of knowledge and that dimension is not directly related to their behavior goal, that person might conclude that the attitude is wrong. This function involves psychoanalytic principles where people use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from psychological harm. Mechanisms include denial , repression , projection , and rationalization . The ego -defensive notion correlates with Downward Comparison Theory, which argues that derogating
3807-454: A person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white"). There are various ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be ( Jerry Fodor ), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true ( Roderick Chisholm ), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone's actions ( Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson ), or as mental states that fill
3948-453: A person's ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global warming. Dillard in 1994 suggested that message features such as source non-verbal communication, message content, and receiver differences can impact the emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of
4089-460: A result of assigning negative or positive attributes to a person, place, or object, individuals may behave negatively or positively towards them. Beliefs are cognitive states about the world—subjective probabilities that an object has a particular attribute or that an action will lead to a particular outcome. Beliefs can be patently and unequivocally false. For example, surveys show that a third of U.S. adults think that vaccines cause autism, despite
4230-459: A selective perception or attitude polarization for turning against the opposite candidate through a repetitive process that they are in a noncommittal state and it is unacceptable and does not have any moral basis for it and for this they only require to chain the persuading message into a realm of plausibility. Despite debate about the particular structure of attitudes, there is considerable evidence that attitudes reflect more than evaluations of
4371-427: A sentence and in a map through its internal geometrical relations. Functionalism contrasts with representationalism in that it defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by them. This view is often combined with the idea that the same belief can be realized in various ways and that it does not matter how it is realized as long as it plays
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4512-400: A source of self-significance, and group identity. Typical reasons for rejection of religion include: Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation and therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought. Philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining
4653-448: A special class of mental representations since they do not involve sensory qualities in order to represent something, unlike perceptions or episodic memories. Because of this, it seems natural to construe beliefs as attitudes towards propositions, which also constitute non-sensory representations, i.e. as propositional attitudes . As mental attitudes , beliefs are characterized by both their content and their mode. The content of an attitude
4794-823: A specific element of proselytization . This is a strongly-held belief in the Christian tradition which follows the doctrine of the Great Commission , and is less emphasized by the Islamic faith where the Quranic edict "There shall be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) is often quoted as a justification for toleration of alternative beliefs. The Jewish tradition does not actively seek out converts. Exclusivism correlates with conservative, fundamentalist, and orthodox approaches of many religions, while pluralistic and syncretist approaches either explicitly downplay or reject
4935-483: A theoretical philosophical study of knowledge . The primary problem in epistemology is to understand what is needed to have knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato 's dialogue Theaetetus , where the epistemology of Socrates most clearly departs from that of the sophists , who appear to have defined knowledge as " justified true belief ". The tendency to base knowledge ( episteme ) on common opinion ( doxa ) Socrates dismisses, results from failing to distinguish
5076-498: A twin Earth in another part of the universe that is exactly like ours, except that their water has a different chemical composition despite behaving just like ours. According to Putnam, the reader's thought that water is wet is about our water while the reader's twin's thought on twin Earth that water is wet is about their water . This is the case despite the fact that the two readers have the same molecular composition. So it seems necessary to include external factors in order to explain
5217-456: Is a mental state held by an agent or organism toward a proposition . In philosophy , propositional attitudes can be considered to be neurally-realized causally efficacious content-bearing internal states (personal principles/values). Linguistically , propositional attitudes are denoted by a verb (e.g. believed ) governing an embedded "that" clause, for example, 'Sally believed that she had won'. Propositional attitudes are often assumed to be
5358-420: Is a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; the service or worship of God or the supernatural. Religious belief is distinct from religious practice and from religious behaviours —with some believers not practicing religion and some practitioners not believing religion. Belief is no less of a theoretical term than is religion . Religious beliefs often relate to
5499-705: Is a planet, which is denied by Benjamin. This indicates that they have different concepts of planet , which would mean that they were affirming different contents when they both agreed that Jupiter is a planet. This reasoning leads to molecularism or holism because the content of the Jupiter-belief depends on the Pluto-belief in this example. An important motivation for this position comes from W. V. Quine 's confirmational holism , which holds that, because of this interconnectedness, we cannot confirm or disconfirm individual hypotheses, that confirmation happens on
5640-438: Is absent, impact on behavior will be spontaneous. A person's attitude can be measured explicitly and implicitly. The model suggests whether attitude activation occurs and, therefore, whether selective perception occurs depends on attitude accessibility. More accessible attitudes are more likely to be activated in a behavioral situation and, therefore, are more likely to influence perceptions and behavior A counter-argument against
5781-410: Is an important component of decision making, in addition to the cognitive processes. How a person feels about an outcome may override purely cognitive rationales. In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include
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5922-487: Is automatically activated, the individual must be motivated to avoid making an invalid judgement as well as have the opportunity to reflect on their attitude and behavior. The MODE (motivation and opportunity as determinants of the attitude-behavior relation) model was developed by Fazio . The MODE model, in short is a theory of attitude evaluation that attempts to predict and explain behavioral outcomes of attitudes. When both are present, behavior will be deliberate. When one
6063-489: Is called the Lockean thesis . It states that partial beliefs are basic and that full beliefs are to be conceived as partial beliefs above a certain threshold: for example, every belief above 0.9 is a full belief. Defenders of a primitive notion of full belief, on the other hand, have tried to explain partial beliefs as full beliefs about probabilities. On this view, having a partial belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow
6204-841: Is due to Donald Davidson , who uses the thought experiment of radical interpretation , in which the goal is to make sense of the behavior and language of another person from scratch without any knowledge of this person's language. This process involves ascribing beliefs and desires to the speaker. The speaker really has these beliefs if this project can be successful in principle. Interpretationism can be combined with eliminativism and instrumentalism about beliefs. Eliminativists hold that, strictly speaking, there are no beliefs. Instrumentalists agree with eliminativists but add that belief-ascriptions are useful nonetheless. This usefulness can be explained in terms of interpretationism: belief-ascriptions help us in predicting how entities will behave. It has been argued that interpretationism can also be understood in
6345-461: Is inconclusive, there appears to be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with low political message involvement. Important factors that influence the impact of emotional appeals include self-efficacy , attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self efficacy is a person's perception of their agency or ability to deal with a situation. It is an important variable in emotional appeal messages because it dictates
6486-473: Is internal to that person and are determined entirely by things going on inside this person's head. Externalism, on the other hand, holds that the relations to one's environment also have a role to play in this. The disagreement between atomism, molecularism and holism concerns the question of how the content of one belief depends on the contents of other beliefs held by the same subject. Atomists deny such dependence relations, molecularists restrict them to only
6627-426: Is likely to cause someone to have a negative attitude towards spiders. The behavioral component of attitudes refers to the way an attitude influences how a person acts or behaves. The cognitive component of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that a person associates with an object. Many times a person's attitude might be based on the negative and positive attributes they associate with an object. As
6768-473: Is much more likely to be rejected. Daniel Katz classified attitudes into four different groups based on their functions. People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and that help them avoid punishment. In other words, any attitude that is adopted in a person's own self-interest is considered to serve a utilitarian function. For example, a person who has a condo would pay property taxes. If that leads to an attitude that "increases in property taxes are bad", then
6909-408: Is never any reason to suppose that sort of thing. (Russell 1918, 227). How one feels about or regards a proposition is different than what a proposition is – they can be accepted, asserted, believed, commanded, contested, declared, denied, doubted, enjoined, exclaimed, or expected, for example. Different attitudes toward propositions are called propositional attitudes ; they are also discussed under
7050-524: Is often used when the entity is not real, or its existence is in doubt. Typical examples would include: "he believes in witches and ghosts" or "many children believe in Santa Claus " or "I believe in a deity". Not all usages of belief-in concern the existence of something: some are commendatory in that they express a positive attitude towards their object. It has been suggested that these cases can also be accounted for in terms of belief-that. For example,
7191-504: Is one of the most studied emotional appeals in communication and social influence research. Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotional appeals include the possibility of reactance which may lead to either message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change. As the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating attitude change. If there is not enough motivation, an attitude will not change; if
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#17327723250647332-410: Is relatively obscure". Margaret Gilbert has offered a related account in terms of the joint commitment of a number of persons as a body to accept a certain belief. According to this account, individuals who together collectively believe something need not personally believe it individually. Gilbert's work on the topic has stimulated a developing literature among philosophers. One question that has arisen
7473-583: Is sometimes common to define an attitude as affect toward an object, affect (i.e., discrete emotions or overall arousal) is generally understood as an evaluative structure used to form an attitude object. Attitude may influence the attention to attitude objects, the use of categories for encoding information and the interpretation, judgement and recall of attitude-relevant information. These influences tend to be more powerful for strong attitudes which are accessible and based on elaborate supportive knowledge structure. The durability and impact of influence depend upon
7614-614: Is that it requires cognitive, affective, and behavioral associations of an attitude to be consistent, but this may be implausible. Thus some views of attitude structure see the cognitive and behavioral components as derivative of affect or affect and behavior as derivative of underlying beliefs. "The cognitive component refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes associated with an object". "The affective component refers to feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object". "The behavioral component refers to behaviors or experiences regarding an attitude object". An influential model of attitude
7755-480: Is that people can hold implicit prejudicial attitudes, but express explicit attitudes that report little prejudice. Implicit measures help account for these situations and look at attitudes that a person may not be aware of or want to show. Implicit measures therefore usually rely on an indirect measure of attitude. For example, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) examines the strength between
7896-485: Is the multi-component model, where attitudes are evaluations of an object that have affective (relating to moods and feelings), behavioral, and cognitive components (the ABC model). The affective component of attitudes refers to feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object. Affective responses influence attitudes in a number of ways. For example, many people are afraid or scared of spiders. So this negative affective response
8037-411: Is the relation between the modalities of assertion and belief, perhaps with intention thrown in for good measure. Discrepancies can occur as to whether or not a person's assertions conform to their beliefs. When the departure of assertion from belief is intentional, it is called a lie . Other comparisons of multiple modalities that frequently arise are the relationships between belief and knowledge and
8178-453: Is the same as having a full belief that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Another approach circumvents the notion of probability altogether and replaces degrees of belief with degrees of disposition to revise one's full belief. From this perspective, both a belief of degree 0.6 and a belief of degree 0.9 may be seen as full beliefs. The difference between them is that the former belief can readily be changed upon receiving new evidence while
8319-427: Is their relation to perceptions and to actions: perceptions usually cause beliefs and beliefs cause actions. For example, seeing that a traffic light has switched to red is usually associated with a belief that the light is red, which in turn causes the driver to bring the car to a halt. Functionalists use such characteristics to define beliefs: whatever is caused by perceptions in a certain way and also causes behavior in
8460-400: Is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition but also have justification for doing so. In more formal terms, an agent S {\displaystyle S} knows that a proposition P {\displaystyle P} is true if and only if : That theory of knowledge suffered a significant setback with the discovery of Gettier problems , situations in which
8601-497: Is what this attitude is directed at: its object. Propositional attitudes are directed at propositions. Beliefs are usually distinguished from other propositional attitudes, like desires, by their mode or the way in which they are directed at propositions. The mode of beliefs has a mind-to-world direction of fit : beliefs try to represent the world as it is; they do not, unlike desires, involve an intention to change it. For example, if Rahul believes that it will be sunny today, then he has
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#17327723250648742-453: Is whether and how philosophical accounts of belief in general need to be sensitive to the possibility of collective belief. Collective belief can play a role in social control and serve as a touchstone for identifying and purging heresies , deviancy or political deviationism . As mental representations , beliefs have contents, which is what the belief is about or what it represents. Within philosophy, there are various disputes about how
8883-405: Is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection . For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g.
9024-647: The Catholic Church each consider themselves to be the true heir to Early Christian belief and practice. The antonym of "orthodox" is " heterodox ", and those adhering to orthodoxy often accuse the heterodox of apostasy , schism , or heresy . The Renaissance and later the Enlightenment in Europe exhibited varying degrees of religious tolerance and intolerance towards new and old religious ideas. The philosophes took particular exception to many of
9165-516: The Grand Canyon is in Arizona involves entertaining the representation associated with this belief—for example, by actively thinking about it. But the great majority of our beliefs are not active most of the time: they are merely dispositional. They usually become activated or occurrent when needed or relevant in some way and then fall back into their dispositional state afterwards. For example,
9306-655: The Roman Catholic Church ) still hold to exclusivist dogma while participating in inter-religious organizations. Explicitly inclusivist religions include many that are associated with the New Age movement, as well as modern reinterpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism . The Baháʼí Faith considers it doctrine that there is truth in all faith-systems. Pluralism and syncretism are two closely related concepts. People with pluralist beliefs make no distinction between faith systems, viewing each one as valid within
9447-432: The form of relating an object to a proposition. As I have been explaining, that is not what they really do, but it is convenient to call them propositional verbs. Of course you might call them 'attitudes', but I should not like that because it is a psychological term, and although all the instances in our experience are psychological, there is no reason to suppose that all the verbs I am talking of are psychological. There
9588-450: The founders or leaders , and considers it a matter of faith that the "correct" religion has a monopoly on truth. All three major Abrahamic monotheistic religions have passages in their holy scriptures that attest to the primacy of the scriptural testimony, and indeed monotheism itself is often vouched as an innovation characterized specifically by its explicit rejection of earlier polytheistic faiths. Some exclusivist faiths incorporate
9729-433: The self-perception theory , originally proposed by Daryl Bem . Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and an important domain of research on attitude change focuses on responses to communication. Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include: Emotion is a common component in persuasion , social influence , and attitude change . Much of attitude research emphasized
9870-521: The "justified true belief" definition. Justified true belief is a definition of knowledge that gained approval during the Enlightenment , "justified" standing in contrast to "revealed". There have been attempts to trace it back to Plato and his dialogues, more specifically in the Theaetetus , and the Meno . The concept of justified true belief states that in order to know that a given proposition
10011-444: The "physical stance" and the "design stance". These stances are contrasted with the intentional stance , which is applied to entities with a more complex behavior by ascribing beliefs and desires to these entities. For example, we can predict that a chess player will move her queen to f7 if we ascribe to her the desire to win the game and the belief that this move will achieve that. The same procedure can also be applied to predicting how
10152-422: The 19th century. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines attitude as "a relatively enduring and general evaluation of an object, person, group, issue, or concept on a dimension ranging from negative to positive. Attitudes provide summary evaluations of target objects and are often assumed to be derived from specific beliefs, emotions, and past behaviors associated with those objects." For much of
10293-470: The 20th century, the empirical study of attitudes was at the core of social psychology . Attitudes can be derived from affective information (feelings), cognitive information (beliefs), and behavioral information (experiences), often predicting subsequent behavior. Alice H. Eagly and Shelly Chaiken , for example, define an attitude as "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor." Though it
10434-438: The Earth is bigger than Venus. Such cases are most naturally analyzed in terms of partial beliefs involving degrees of belief, so-called credences . The higher the degree of a belief, the more certain the believer is that the believed proposition is true. This is usually formalized by numbers between 0 and 1: a degree of 1 represents an absolutely certain belief, a belief of 0 corresponds to an absolutely certain disbelief and all
10575-412: The above conditions were seemingly met but where many philosophers deny that anything is known. Robert Nozick suggested a clarification of "justification" which he believed eliminates the problem: the justification has to be such that were the justification false, the knowledge would be false. Bernecker and Dretske (2000) argue that "no epistemologist since Gettier has seriously and successfully defended
10716-510: The attitude and other intentions. The theory of planned behavior was proposed by Icek Ajzen in 1985 through his article "From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior." The theory was developed from the theory of reasoned action, which was proposed by Martin Fishbein together with Icek Ajzen in 1975. The theory of reasoned action was in turn grounded in various theories of attitude such as learning theories, expectancy-value theories, consistency theories, and attribution theory. According to
10857-436: The attitude is serving a utilitarian function. Several studies have shown that knowledge increases are associated with heightened attitudes that influence behavior. The framework for knowledge is based on significant values and general principles. Attitudes achieve this goal by making things fit together and make sense. As a result, people can maintain a sense of stability and meaning within their worldview. For example: When
10998-533: The attitude. This view contrasts with functionalism , which defines beliefs not in terms of the internal constitution of the mind but in terms of the function or the causal role played by beliefs. According to dispositionalism , beliefs are identified with dispositions to behave in certain ways. This view can be seen as a form of functionalism, defining beliefs in terms of the behavior they tend to cause. Interpretationism constitutes another conception, which has gained popularity in contemporary philosophy. It holds that
11139-429: The attitudes a person holds. The study of attitude formation is the study of how people form evaluations of persons, places or things. Theories of classical conditioning , instrumental conditioning and social learning are mainly responsible for formation of attitude. Unlike personality , attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience . In addition, exposure to the 'attitude' objects may have an effect on how
11280-415: The belief that 57 is greater than 14 was probably dispositional to the reader before reading this sentence, has become occurrent while reading it and may soon become dispositional again as the mind focuses elsewhere. The distinction between occurrent and dispositional beliefs is sometimes identified with the distinction between conscious and unconscious beliefs. But it has been argued that, despite overlapping,
11421-542: The beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on or relative to someone's interpretation of this entity. Representationalism tends to be associated with mind-body-dualism. Naturalist considerations against this dualism are among the motivations for choosing one of the alternative conceptions. Representationalism characterizes beliefs in terms of mental representations . Representations are usually defined as objects with semantic properties —like having content, referring to something, or being true or false. Beliefs form
11562-419: The beliefs of an entity are in some sense dependent on, or relative to, someone's interpretation of this entity. Daniel Dennett is an important defender of such a position. He holds that we ascribe beliefs to entities in order to predict how they will behave. Entities with simple behavioral patterns can be described using physical laws or in terms of their function. Dennett refers to these forms of explanation as
11703-455: The brain's associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long-term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes. By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. One may be able to change their attitudes with attitude correctness, which varies with the level of confidence they have in their attitude validity and accuracy. In general,
11844-415: The causal role characteristic to it. As an analogy, a hard drive is defined in a functionalist manner: it performs the function of storing and retrieving digital data. This function can be realized in many different ways: being made of plastic or steel, or using magnetism or laser. Functionalists hold that something similar is true for beliefs (or mental states in general). Among the roles relevant to beliefs
11985-452: The content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.g. if I believe that I'm holding a glass of water, is the non-mental fact that water is H 2 O part of the content of that belief)?", "How fine-grained or coarse-grained are our beliefs?", and "Must it be possible for a belief to be expressible in language, or are there non-linguistic beliefs?" Various conceptions of
12126-411: The contents of beliefs are to be understood. Holists and molecularists hold that the content of one particular belief depends on or is determined by other beliefs belonging to the same subject, which is denied by atomists. The question of dependence or determination also plays a central role in the internalism-externalism- debate. Internalism states that the contents of someone's beliefs depend only on what
12267-543: The context of Early Christianity , the term "orthodoxy" relates to religious belief that closely follows the edicts, apologies , and hermeneutics of a prevailing religious authority. In the case of Early Christianity, this authority was the communion of bishops, and is often referred to by the term " Magisterium ". The term orthodox was applied almost as an epithet to a group of Jewish believers who held to pre-Enlightenment understanding of Judaism—now known as Orthodox Judaism . The Eastern Orthodox Church of Christianity and
12408-407: The corresponding ascriptions concerns the contributions singular terms like names and other referential devices make to the semantic properties of the belief or its ascription. In regular contexts, the truth-value of a sentence does not change upon substitution of co-referring terms. For example, since the names "Superman" and "Clark Kent" refer to the same person, we can replace one with the other in
12549-671: The demands are steep and an individual feels stressed or distracted. An attitude is a latent psychological construct, which consequently can only be measured indirectly. Commonly used measures include Likert scales which records agreement or disagreement with a series of belief statements. The semantic differential uses bipolar adjectives to measure the meaning associated with attitude objects. The Guttman scale focuses on items that vary in their degree of psychological difficulty. Supplementing these are several techniques that do not depend on deliberate responses such as unobtrusive, standard physiological, and neuroscientific measures. Following
12690-430: The difference. One problem with this position is that this difference in content does not bring any causal difference with it: the two readers act in exactly the same way. This casts doubt on the thesis that there is any genuine difference in need of explanation between the contents of the two beliefs. Epistemology is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion , and involved generally with
12831-416: The differing doctrines and practices espoused by other religions or by other religious denominations in a variety of ways. People with exclusivist beliefs typically explain other beliefs either as in error, or as corruptions or counterfeits of the true faith . This approach is a fairly consistent feature among smaller new religious movements that often rely on doctrine that claims a unique revelation by
12972-399: The discrepancies that occur among observations, expectations, and intentions. Deviations of observations from expectations are commonly perceived as surprises , phenomena that call for explanations to reduce the shock of amazement. In logic , the formal properties of verbs like assert , believe , command , consider , deny , doubt , imagine , judge , know , want , wish , and
13113-401: The ego-defensive function might be used to influence the racially prejudicial attitudes of an individual who sees themselves as open-minded and tolerant. By appealing to that individual's image of themselves as tolerant and open-minded, it may be possible to change their prejudicial attitudes to be more consistent with their self-concept . Similarly, a persuasive message that threatens self-image
13254-447: The emotional appeal is overdone, the motivation can be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change. Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more than perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating incongruities in the mind. Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the processing of political messages. While evidence
13395-415: The essential features of beliefs have been proposed, but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. Representationalism is the traditionally dominant position. Its most popular version maintains that attitudes toward representations, which are typically associated with propositions, are mental attitudes that constitute beliefs. These attitudes are part of the internal constitution of the mind holding
13536-490: The exclusivist tendencies within a religion. People with inclusivist beliefs recognize some truth in all faith systems , highlighting agreements and minimizing differences. This attitude is sometimes associated with Interfaith dialogue or with the Christian Ecumenical movement, though in principle such attempts at pluralism are not necessarily inclusivist and many actors in such interactions (for example,
13677-486: The existence and implications of possessing implicit ( unconscious ) and explicit ( conscious ) attitudes. A sociological approach relates attitudes to concepts of values and ideologies that conceptualize the relationship of thought to action at higher levels of analysis . Values represent the social goals which are used by individuals to orient their behaviors. Cross-cultural studies seek to understand cultural differences in terms of differences in values. For example,
13818-526: The existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, to the idea of divine intervention in the universe and in human life , or to the deontological explanations for the values and practices centered on the teachings of a spiritual leader or community . In contrast to other belief systems , religious beliefs are usually codified . A popular view holds that different religions each have identifiable and exclusive sets of beliefs or creeds , but surveys of religious belief have often found that
13959-681: The explicit-implicit dichotomy, attitudes can be examined different measures. Explicit measures tend to rely on self-reports or easily observed behaviors. These tend to involve bipolar scales (e.g., good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, support-oppose, etc.). Explicit measures can also be used by measuring the straightforward attribution of characteristics to nominate groups. Explicit attitudes that develop in response to recent information, automatic evaluation were thought to reflect mental associations through early socialization experiences. Once formed, these associations are highly robust and resistant to change, as well as stable across both context and time. Hence
14100-439: The fundamental units of thought and their contents, being propositions, are true or false from the perspective of the person. An agent can have different propositional attitudes toward the same proposition (e.g., "S believes that her ice-cream is cold," and "S fears that her ice-cream is cold"). Propositional attitudes have directions of fit : some are meant to reflect the world, others to influence it. One topic of central concern
14241-492: The general contribution of one particular belief for any possible situation. For example, one may decide not to affirm that there is a pie in the pantry when asked because one wants to keep it secret. Or one might not eat the pie despite being hungry, because one also believes that it is poisoned. Due to this complexity, we are unable to define even a belief as simple as this one in terms of the behavioral dispositions for which it could be responsible. According to interpretationism,
14382-442: The headings of intentionality and linguistic modality . Many problematic situations in real life arise from the circumstance that many different propositions in many different modalities are in the air at once. In order to compare propositions of different colours and flavours, as it were, there is no basis for comparison but to examine the underlying propositions themselves, returning to matters of language and logic. Despite
14523-400: The high relationship between behavioral intention and actual behavior has also been proposed, as the results of some studies show that, because of circumstantial limitations, behavioral intention does not always lead to actual behavior. Namely, since behavioral intention cannot be the exclusive determinant of behavior where an individual's control over the behavior is incomplete, Ajzen introduced
14664-455: The higher the confidence level, the more the person believes others around them should share the same attitude. As we learn other people share those attitudes and how socially acceptable, they are, the importance of attitude correctness becomes even more apparent. Our attitudes can greatly impact our behavior and the manner of how we treat those around us. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive counterarguments in
14805-515: The impact of contextual influences was assumed to be obfuscate assessment of a person's "true" and enduring evaluative disposition as well as limit the capacity to predict subsequent behavior. Implicit measures are not consciously directed and are assumed to be automatic, which may make implicit measures more valid and reliable than explicit measures (such as self-reports). For example, people can be motivated such that they find it socially desirable to appear to have certain attitudes. An example of this
14946-479: The importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive, or thought, process about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and cognitive components. Attitudes are part of
15087-493: The individualism-collectivism dimension suggests that Western and Eastern societies differ fundamentally in the priority given to individual vs. group goals. Ideologies represent more generalized orientations that seek to make sense of related attitudes and values, and are the basis for moral judgements. Most contemporary perspectives on attitudes permit that people can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object by holding both positive and negative beliefs or feelings toward
15228-413: The individuals who hold them. Daniel Katz , for example, writes that attitudes can serve "instrumental, adjustive or utilitarian," "ego-defensive," "value-expressive," or "knowledge" functions. This functional attitude theory suggests that in order for attitudes to change (e.g., via persuasion ), appeals must be made to the function(s) that a particular attitude serves for the individual. As an example,
15369-408: The latter is more stable. Traditionally, philosophers have mainly focused in their inquiries concerning belief on the notion of belief-that . Belief-that can be characterized as a propositional attitude to a claim which is either true or false. Belief-in , on the other hand, is more closely related to notions like trust or faith in that it refers usually to an attitude to persons. Belief-in plays
15510-406: The laws of probability. This includes both synchronic laws about what one should believe at any moment and diachronic laws about how one should revise one's beliefs upon receiving new evidence. The central question in the dispute between full and partial beliefs is whether these two types are really distinct types or whether one type can be explained in terms of the other. One answer to this question
15651-488: The level of the theory as a whole. Another motivation is due to considerations of the nature of learning: it is often not possible to understand one concept, like force in Newtonian physics , without understanding other concepts, like mass or kinetic energy . One problem for holism is that genuine disagreements seem to be impossible or very rare: disputants would usually talk past each other since they never share exactly
15792-468: The mind. A more holistic alternative to the "language of thought hypothesis" is the map-conception , which uses an analogy of maps to elucidate the nature of beliefs. According to this view, the belief system of a mind should be conceived of not as a set of many individual sentences but as a map encoding the information contained in these sentences. For example, the fact that Brussels is halfway between Paris and Amsterdam can be expressed both linguistically as
15933-554: The more fantastical claims of religions and directly challenged religious authority and the prevailing beliefs associated with the established churches. In response to the liberalizing political and social movements, some religious groups attempted to integrate Enlightenment ideals of rationality, equality, and individual liberty into their belief systems, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reform Judaism and Liberal Christianity offer two examples of such religious associations. Adherents of particular religions deal with
16074-454: The numbers in between correspond to intermediate degrees of certainty. In the Bayesian approach , these degrees are interpreted as subjective probabilities : e.g. a belief of degree 0.9 that it will rain tomorrow means that the agent thinks that the probability of rain tomorrow is 90%. Bayesianism uses this relation between beliefs and probability to define the norms of rationality in terms of
16215-656: The official doctrine and descriptions of the beliefs offered by religious authorities do not always agree with the privately held beliefs of those who identify as members of a particular religion. For a broad classification of the kinds of religious belief, see below. First self-applied as a term to the conservative doctrine outlined by anti-modernist Protestants in the United States, "fundamentalism" in religious terms denotes strict adherence to an interpretation of scriptures that are generally associated with theologically conservative positions or traditional understandings of
16356-572: The origin of human beliefs. In the context of Ancient Greek thought , three related concepts were identified regarding the concept of belief: pistis , doxa , and dogma . Simplified, Pistis refers to " trust " and "confidence," doxa refers to " opinion " and "acceptance," and dogma refers to the positions of a philosopher or of a philosophical school such as Stoicism . Beliefs can be categorized into various types depending on their ontological status, their degree, their object or their semantic properties. Having an occurrent belief that
16497-399: The other in any true statement and the result will be true . It is easy to find cases contrary to this principle. For example, the statements: are true; however, replacement of the name Giorgione by the name Barbarelli turns (2) into the falsehood: Quine's example here refers to Giorgio Barbarelli 's sobriquet "Giorgione", an Italian name roughly glossed as "Big George." The basis of
16638-453: The paradox here is that while the two names signify the same individual (the meaning of the first statement), the names are not themselves identical; the second statement refers to an attribute (origin) that they do not share. What sort of name shall we give to verbs like 'believe' and 'wish' and so forth? I should be inclined to call them 'propositional verbs'. This is merely a suggested name for convenience, because they are verbs which have
16779-595: The past few decades, scientists have developed several measures to avoid these unconscious biases. There is also considerable interest in intra-attitudinal and inter-attitudinal structure, which is how an attitude is made (expectancy and value) and how different attitudes relate to one another. Intra-attitudinal structures are how underlying attitudes are consistent with one another. This connects different attitudes to one another and to more underlying psychological structures, such as values or ideology . Unlike intra-attitudinal structures, inter-attitudinal structures involve
16920-436: The preponderance of scientific research to the contrary. It was found that beliefs like these are tenaciously held and are highly resistant to change. Another important factor that affects attitude is symbolic interactionism , these are rife with powerful symbols and charged with affect which can lead to a selective perception . Persuasion theories say that in politics, successful persuaders convince its message recipients into
17061-913: The prescribed medicine is not working. At that point, the patient has a great deal of flexibility in choosing what beliefs to keep or reject: the patient could believe that the doctor is incompetent, that the doctor's assistants made a mistake, that the patient's own body is unique in some unexpected way, that Western medicine is ineffective, or even that Western science is entirely unable to discover truths about ailments. This insight has relevance for inquisitors , missionaries , agitprop groups and thought-police . The British philosopher Stephen Law has described some belief systems (including belief in homeopathy , psychic powers , and alien abduction ) as "claptrap" and says that such belief-systems can "draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap ... if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again". Religion
17202-463: The resistance to persuasion and attitude change. The idea of attitude clarity refers to a feeling of security or uncertainty about a particular attitude, a feeling strengthened by the act of reporting one's particular attitude towards an issue or thing, which will make that attitude more crystallized. Affective forecasting , otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting emotions
17343-539: The right perceptions; for example, to believe that it is raining given a perception of rain. Without this perception, there is still a disposition to believe but no actual dispositional belief. On a dispositionalist conception of belief, there are no occurrent beliefs, since all beliefs are defined in terms of dispositions. An important dispute in formal epistemology concerns the question of whether beliefs should be conceptualized as full beliefs or as partial beliefs. Full beliefs are all-or-nothing attitudes: either one has
17484-521: The rule and is able to add justification ( logos : reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) to it. A belief can be based fully or partially on intuition . Plato has been credited for the justified true belief theory of knowledge, even though Plato in the Theaetetus elegantly dismisses it, and even posits this argument of Socrates as a cause for his death penalty. The epistemologists, Gettier and Goldman , have questioned
17625-457: The same component as the theory of reasoned action, but adds the component of perceived behavioral control to account for barriers outside one's own control. Russell H. Fazio proposed an alternative theory called "Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants" or MODE. Fazio believes that because there is deliberative process happening, individuals must be motivated to reflect on their attitudes and subsequent behaviors. Simply put, when an attitude
17766-640: The same concepts or the same term for different concepts, two essential attitude functions emerge from empirical research. For individuals, attitudes are cognitive schema that provide a structure to organize complex or ambiguous information, guiding particular evaluations or behaviors. More abstractly, attitudes serve higher psychological needs: expressive or symbolic functions (affirming values ), maintaining social identity, and regulating emotions. Attitudes influence behavior at individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. Attitudes are complex and are acquired through life experience and socialization . Key topics in
17907-477: The same object. Additionally, measures of attitude may include intentions , but are not always predictive of behaviors. Explicit measures are of attitudes at the conscious level that are deliberately formed and easy to self-report. Implicit measures are of attitudes at an unconscious level, that function out of awareness. Both explicit and implicit attitudes can shape an individual's behavior. Implicit attitudes, however, are most likely to affect behavior when
18048-501: The same web of beliefs needed to determine the content of the source of the disagreement. Internalism and externalism disagree about whether the contents of our beliefs are determined only by what's happening in our head or also by other factors. Internalists deny such a dependence on external factors. They hold that a person and a molecule-by-molecule copy would have exactly the same beliefs. Hilary Putnam objects to this position by way of his twin Earth thought experiment . He imagines
18189-469: The sentence "Superman is strong" without changing its truth-value; this issue is more complicated in case of belief ascriptions. For example, Lois believes that Superman is strong but she does not believe that Clark Kent is strong. This difficulty arises due to the fact that she does not know that the two names refer to the same entity. Beliefs or belief ascriptions for which this substitution does not generally work are de dicto , otherwise, they are de re . In
18330-743: The strength formed from the consistency of heuristics. Attitudes can guide encoding information, attention and behaviors, even if the individual is pursuing unrelated goals. Past research reflected the traditional notion that attitudes are simple tendencies to like or dislike attitude objects, while contemporary research has begun to adopt more complex perspectives. Recent advances on the mental structure of attitudes have suggested that attitudes (and their components) might not always be simply positive or negative, but may include both positivity and negativity. In addition, strong and weak attitudes are associated with many different outcomes. Methodological advances have allowed researchers to consider with greater precision
18471-430: The strength of relations of more than one attitude within a network. The classic, tripartite view offered by Rosenberg and Hovland in 1960 is that an attitude contains cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Empirical research, however, fails to support clear distinctions between thoughts, emotions, and behavioral intentions associated with a particular attitude. A criticism of the tripartite view of attitudes
18612-410: The study of attitudes include attitude strength, attitude change , and attitude-behavior relationships. The decades-long interest in attitude research is due to the interest in pursuing individual and social goals, an example being the public health campaigns to reduce cigarette smoking. The term attitude with the psychological meaning of an internal state of preparedness for action was not used until
18753-626: The target concept and an attribute element by considering the latency in which a person can examine two response keys when each has two meanings. With little time to carefully examine what the participant is doing they respond according to internal keys. This priming can show attitudes the person has about a particular object. People are often unwilling to provide responses perceived as socially undesirable and therefore tend to report what they think their attitudes should be rather than what they know them to be. More complicated still, people may not even be consciously aware that they hold biased attitudes. Over
18894-403: The tendency to revise one's belief upon receiving new evidence that an existing belief is false. Upon hearing a forecast of bad weather, Rahul is likely to change his mental attitude but Sofía is not. There are different ways of conceiving how mental representations are realized in the mind. One form of this is the language of thought hypothesis , which claims that mental representations have
19035-404: The text and are distrustful of innovative readings, new revelation, or alternative interpretations. Religious fundamentalism has been identified in the media as being associated with fanatical or zealous political movements around the world that have used a strict adherence to a particular religious doctrine as a means to establish political identity and to enforce societal norms. First used in
19176-491: The theory of planned behavior by adding a new component, "perceived behavioral control." By this, he extended the theory of reasoned action to cover non-volitional behaviors for predicting behavioral intention and actual behavior. Another classic view of attitudes is that attitudes serve particular functions for individuals. That is, researchers have tried to understand why individuals hold particular attitudes or why they hold attitudes in general by considering how attitudes affect
19317-459: The theory of reasoned action, if people evaluate the suggested behavior as positive (attitude), and if they think their significant others want them to perform the behavior (subjective norm), this results in a higher intention (motivation) and they are more likely to do so. A high correlation of attitudes and subjective norms to behavioral intention, and subsequently to behavior, has been confirmed in many studies. The theory of planned behavior contains
19458-464: The traditional view." On the other hand, Paul Boghossian argues that the justified true belief account is the "standard, widely accepted" definition of knowledge. A belief system comprises a set of mutually supportive beliefs. The beliefs of any such system can be religious , philosophical , political , ideological , or a combination of these. The British philosopher Jonathan Glover , following Meadows (2008), says that beliefs are always part of
19599-452: The two distinctions do not match. The reason for this is that beliefs can shape one's behaviour and be involved in one's reasoning even if the subject is not conscious of them. Such beliefs are cases of unconscious occurrent mental states. On this view, being occurrent corresponds to being active, either consciously or unconsciously. A dispositional belief is not the same as a disposition to believe. We have various dispositions to believe given
19740-453: The use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension. Other methods include concept or network mapping and using primes or word cues in the era. Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy, disgust, indignation, fear, blue, disturbed, haunted, and anger. Fear
19881-553: The viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis. The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition). Like other propositional attitudes , belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality , both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind , whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial. Attitude (psychology) While different researchers have defined attitudes in various ways, and may use different terms for
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