Abstract
Drawing inspiration from a well-attested historical tradition, I propose an account of cognition according to which knowledge is not only prior to belief; it is also, and crucially, not a kind of belief. In turn, believing is not some sort of botched knowing but a mental state fundamentally different from knowing, with its own distinctive and complementary role in our cognitive life. I conclude that the main battle-line in the history of epistemology is drawn between the affirmation of a natural mental state in which there is a contact between ‘mind’ and ‘reality’ (whatever the ontological nature of this ‘reality’), and the rejection of such a natural mental state. For the former position, there is a mental state which is different in kind from belief, and which is constituted by the presence of the object of cognition to the cognitive subject, with no gap between them. For the latter position, all our cognition is belief, and the question becomes how and when belief is permissible.
Original language | English |
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Article number | aoaa013 |
Number of pages | 32 |
Journal | Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society |
Volume | CXX |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 18 May 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 21 Oct 2020 |