Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subject’s assertion that p matches her nonverbalbehavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data fromover 5,000 people across 26samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not.Given the surprising cross-cultural robustnessof our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least insome circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and whenan agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this,we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folkpsychology.
Behavioral Circumscription and the Folk Psychology of Belief: A Study in Ethno-Mentalizing / Rose, D., Machery, E., Stich, S., Alai, M., Angelucci, A., Berniūnas, R., Buchtel, E.E., Chatterjee, A., Cheon, H., Cho, I., Cohnitz, D., Cova, F., Dranseika, V., Lagos, Á.E., Ghadakpour, L., Grinberg, M., Hannikainen, I., Hashimoto, T., Horowitz, A., Hristova, E., et al.. - In: THOUGHT. - ISSN 2161-2234. - 6:(2017), pp. 193-203. [doi:10.1002/tht3.248]
Behavioral Circumscription and the Folk Psychology of Belief: A Study in Ethno-Mentalizing
Songhorian S;
2017-01-01
Abstract
Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subject’s assertion that p matches her nonverbalbehavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data fromover 5,000 people across 26samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not.Given the surprising cross-cultural robustnessof our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least insome circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and whenan agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this,we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folkpsychology.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
