Belief in Psychology

Belief in Psychology
Author: Jay L. Garfield
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1988
Genre: Psychology
ISBN:

Belief in Psychology tackles the knotty problem of how to treat the propositional attitudes states such as beliefs, desires, hopes and fears within cognitive science. Jay Garfield asserts that the propositional attitudes can and must play useful theoretical roles in the science of the mind and stresses the importance of their social context in this sophisticated and original argument. Garfield proposes his own alternative to the apparent dilemma of either scrapping the propositional attitudes or of making room for them within a dimly foreseen, futuristic cognitive science. He provides a characterization of the nature of propositional attitudes conceived as psychological states, and of their role in cognitive science. They must, he argues, be understood as relations between their bearers and their environments, including, in the case of persons, their social and linguistic environments. Understanding them in this way is consonant with current practice in empirical cognitive science and provides a philosophically useful analysis of mental representation. Along the way, Garfield discusses the relationship between the enterprise of science and our commonsense conception of ourselves and the world, and the ways in which this relation constrains our understanding of the propositional attitudes, and illuminates a realistic interpretation of a psychology of representational states and processes. Belief in Psychology is the only book that adopts such a view, and it is unique in providing a sustained critique of eliminativism, instrumentalism, and computational individualism - the main competing proposals within philosophy of cognitive science for eliminating or reconciling propositional attitudes. Jay Garfield is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of Communications and Cognitive Science at Hampshire College and a co-director of the University of Massachusetts Cognitive Science Institute. He is a co-author of Cognitive Science: An Introductionand editor of Modularity in Knowledge Representation and Natural Language Understanding, both Bradford books. A Bradford Book.

Belief

Belief
Author: James E. Alcock
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2018
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1633884031

An expert on the psychology of belief examines how our thoughts and feelings, actions and reactions, respond not to the world as it actually is but to the world as we believeit to be. This book explores the psychology of belief - how beliefs are formed, how they are influenced both by internal factors, such as perception, memory, reason, emotion, and prior beliefs, as well as external factors, such as experience, identification with a group, social pressure, and manipulation. It also reveals how vulnerable beliefs are to error, and how they can be held with great confidence even when factually false. The author, a social psychologist who specializes in the psychology of belief, elucidates how the brain and nervous system function to create the perceptions, memories, and emotions that shape belief. He explains how and why distorted perceptions, false memories, and inappropriate emotional reactions that sometimes lead us to embrace false beliefs are natural products of mental functioning. He also shows why it is so difficult to change our beliefs when they collide with contradictions. Covering a wide range -- from self-perception and the perceived validity of everyday experience to paranormal, religious, and even fatal beliefs--the book demonstrates how crucial beliefs are to molding our experience and why they have such a powerful hold on our behavior.

The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience

The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience
Author: Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317799046

Because society is increasingly secular, it may seem irrelevant to consider the psychology of religion. But the diversity of our multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society in fact makes religion more important to the social sciences than it has ever been before. What are the social consequences of religion? Every day the news is full of events that can be blamed on religion perpetrated by a range of groups from whole societies to individuals. Beit-Hallami and Argyle are renowned for their clear, analytical approach to topics and this new, state-of-the-art study of psychology and religion is no exception. It will be welcomed as an update to their previous work in the area by social psychologists, sociologists and theologians worldwide.

Finding Purpose in a Godless World

Finding Purpose in a Godless World
Author: Ralph Lewis, MD
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1633883868

A psychiatrist presents a compelling argument for how human purpose and caring emerged in a spontaneous and unguided universe. Can there be purpose without God? This book is about how human purpose and caring, like consciousness and absolutely everything else in existence, could plausibly have emerged and evolved unguided, bottom-up, in a spontaneous universe. A random world--which according to all the scientific evidence and despite our intuitions is the actual world we live in--is too often misconstrued as nihilistic, demotivating, or devoid of morality and meaning. Drawing on years of wide-ranging, intensive clinical experience as a psychiatrist, and his own family experience with cancer, Dr. Lewis helps readers understand how people cope with random adversity without relying on supernatural belief. In fact, as he explains, although coming to terms with randomness is often frightening, it can be liberating and empowering too. Written for those who desire a scientifically sound yet humanistic view of the world, Lewis's book examines science's inroads into the big questions that occupy religion and philosophy. He shows how our sense of purpose and meaning is entangled with mistaken intuitions that events in our lives happen for some intended cosmic reason and that the universe itself has inherent purpose. Dispelling this illusion, and integrating the findings of numerous scientific fields, he shows how not only the universe, life, and consciousness but also purpose, morality, and meaning could, in fact, have emerged and evolved spontaneously and unguided. There is persuasive evidence that these qualities evolved naturally and without mystery, biologically and culturally, in humans as conscious, goal-directed social animals. While acknowledging the social and psychological value of progressive forms of religion, the author respectfully critiques even the most sophisticated theistic arguments for a purposeful universe. Instead, he offers an evidence-based, realistic yet optimistic and empathetic perspective. This book will help people to see the scientific worldview of an unguided, spontaneous universe as awe-inspiring and foundational to building a more compassionate society.

The Psychology of Paranormal Belief

The Psychology of Paranormal Belief
Author: Harvey J. Irwin
Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2009-09
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1907396381

With a thorough and systematic review of investigations into the bases of belief in paranormal phenomena, this discussion explores the four main theoretical approaches relating to the nature of such beliefs. Objective and well-researched, this account addresses different points of view on the topic--while some commentators depict paranormal believers as foolish, others propose that paranormal beliefs must be understood as necessities that serve certain psychodynamic needs. The foundations and shortcomings of each approach are also documented, and a new comprehensive theory attempts to explain the development of scientifically unsubstantiated beliefs.

Resistance to Belief Change

Resistance to Belief Change
Author: Joseph R. Lao
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2019-09-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351378392

This book examines the human proclivity to resist changing our beliefs. Drawing on psychological, neurological, and philosophical research, and integrating topics as wide ranging as emotion, cognition, social (and physical) context, and learning theory, Lao and Young explore why this resistance to change impedes our learning and progression. They also suggest that failure to adapt our beliefs to available and informed evidence can incur costs that may be seen in personal growth, politics, science, law, medicine, education, and business. Resistance to Belief Change explores the various manifestations of resistance, including overt, discursive, and especially inertial forms of resistance. As well as the influential factors that can impact upon them, the book also examines how the self-directed learner, as well as teachers, may structure the learning experience to overcome resistance and facilitate progressive and adaptive learning. Lao and Young find that the impediments to learning and resistance to change are far more prevalent and costly than previously suggested in research, and so this book will be of interest to a range of people in cognitive development, social psychology, and clinical and educational psychology.

The Neural Basis of Human Belief Systems

The Neural Basis of Human Belief Systems
Author: Frank Krueger
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2012-08-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1136234977

Is the everyday understanding of belief susceptible to scientific investigation? Belief is one of the most commonly used, yet unexplained terms in neuroscience. Beliefs can be seen as forms of mental representations and one of the building blocks of our conscious thoughts. This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of what we currently know about the neural basis of human belief systems, and how different belief systems are implemented in the human brain. The chapters in this volume explain how the neural correlates of beliefs mediate a range of explicit and implicit behaviours ranging from moral decision making, to the practice of religion. Drawing inferences from philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, religion, and cognitive neuroscience, the book has important implications for understanding how different belief systems are implemented in the human brain, and outlines the directions which research on the cognitive neuroscience of beliefs should take in the future. The Neural Basis of Human Belief Systems will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience.

The Belief in a Just World

The Belief in a Just World
Author: Melvin Lerner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-06-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1489904484

The "belief in a just world" is an attempt to capmre in a phrase one of the ways, if not the way, that people come to terms with-make sense out of-find meaning in, their experiences. We do not believe that things just happen in our world; there is a pattern to events which conveys not only a sense of orderli ness or predictability, but also the compelling experience of appropriateness ex pressed in the typically implicit judgment, "Yes, that is the way it should be." There are probably many reasons why people discover or develop a view of their environment in which events occur for good, understandable reasons. One explanation is simply that this view of reality is a direct reflection of the way both the human mind and the environment are constructed. Constancies, patterns which actually do exist in the environment-out there-are perceived, represented symbolically, and retained in the mind. This approach cenainly has some validity, and would probably suffice, if it were not for that sense of "appropriateness," the pervasive affective com ponent in human experience. People have emotions and feelings, and these are especially apparent in their expectations about their world: their hopes, fears, disappointments, disillusionment, surprise, confidence, trust, despondency, anticipation-and certainly their sense of right, wrong, good, bad, ought, en titled, fair, deserving, just.

Parental Belief Systems

Parental Belief Systems
Author: Irving E. Sigel
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 531
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317783824

Research on the topic of parent beliefs, or parent cognition, has increased tremendously since the original publication of this volume in 1985. For this revised second edition, the editors sought to reflect some of the new directions that research on parent cognition has taken. By offering a greater variety of topics, it gives evidence of the intellectual concerns that now engage researchers in the field and testifies to the expanding scope of their interests. Although a unique collection because it reflects the diversity that exists among major researchers in the field, it evinces a common theme -- that the ideas parents have regarding their children and themselves as parents have an impact on their actions. This emphasis on parents' ideas shifts the focus on sources of family influence to ideas or beliefs as determinants of family interactions. The implication of this way of thinking for practitioners is that it suggests the shift to ideas and thoughts from behavior and attitudes.