Behavioral Circumscription and the Folk Psychology of Belief: A Study in Ethno-Mentalizing

Rose, David; Machery, Edouard; Stich, Stephen; Alai, Mario; Angelucci, Adriano; Berniunas, Renatas; Buchtel, Emma E.; Chatterjee, Amita; Cheon, Hyundeuk; Cho, In-Rae; Cohnitz, Daniel; Cova, Florian; Dranseika, Vilius; Erana Lagos, Angeles; Ghadakpour, Laleh; Grinberg, Maurice; Hannikainen, Ivar; Hashimoto, Takaaki; Horowitz, Amir; Hristova, Evgeniya; Jraissati, Yasmina; Kadreva, Veselina; Karasawa, Kaori; Kim, Hackjin; Kim, Yeonjeong; Lee, Minwoo; Mauro, Carlos; Mizumoto, Masaharu; Moruzzi, Sebastiano; Olivola, Christopher Y.; Ornelas, Jörge; Osimani, Barbara; Romero, Carlos; Rosas, Alejandro; Sangoi, Massimo; Sereni, Andrea; Songhorian, Sarah; Sousa, Paulo; Struchiner, Noel; Tripodi, Vera; Usui, Naoki; Vazquez del Mercado, Alejandro; Volpe, Giorgio; Vosgerichian, Hrag A.; Zhang, Xueyi and Zhu, Jing (2017): Behavioral Circumscription and the Folk Psychology of Belief: A Study in Ethno-Mentalizing. In: Thought-A Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 3: pp. 193-203

Abstract

Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subject's assertion that p matches her nonverbal behavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from over 5,000 people across 26 samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an 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 folk psychology.

• Item Type: Journal article
• ISSN: 2161-2234
• Language: English