The Nature of Believing

Abstract This chapter challenges the traditional philosophical view that believing is a mental entity with representational and causal properties. It argues that this view rests on the mistaken ontological idea that beliefs are entities not states, and it argues that states are not the right sort of thing to have truth values or causal powers. The chapter offers a new argument that beliefs are not dispositional states, and it suggests instead that believing is being in a position to do, think, and feel things in light of a possibility. The chapter concludes by sketching how this picture of believing fits into a broader, radically externalist conception of our mental lives and of the roots of rational action.