The Concept of Belief in Egan 1986

5
The Concept of Belief in

Cognitive Theory
Owen Egan
Abstract. Belief is introduced as the cognitive act or state in which a proposition is

taken to be true, and the psychological theory of belief is reviewed under the headings:
belief as a propositional attitude, belief as subjective probability, belief as inference, and
belief as association. Apart from its importance as a separate area of cognitive theory, the
study of belief is of considerable metatheoretic importance for cognitive theory gener-
ally, since belief is an essential part of the definition of cognition. It is argued here that
cognitive theories must admit, at least in principle, of a distinction between forms of
arousal which imply that a proposition is believed and others which do not. Otherwise it
is impossible to model the element of rational judgment, which is a feature of belief and
hence of cognition also.
1. Introduction
Among the many definitions proposed by philosophers for cognitive

acts, the definition of knowledge (or cognition) as justified true belief
seems to have been particularly successful. According to the definition,
5 knows X if and only if (a) 5 believes X, (b) 5 has good reasons for
believing X, and (c) X is true. The definition sets down the usage of the
verb knows parsimoniously, and in addition it provides a convenient
partition of questions concerning the nature of cognition. The topic of
belief isolates the elementary mental act or state of accepting some
proposition as true; justification coincides with inference; and truth
covers semantics and the theory of reference.
The paper was written while the author was a Research Fellow at the Educational
Research Centre, St. Patrick's College, Dublin, Ireland.
Owen Egan. linguistics Institute of Ireland, 31 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2, Ireland.
315
L. P. Mos (ed.), Annals of Theoretical Psychology

© Plenum Press, New York 1986
316 Owen Egan
However, when cognitive psychology is looked at under the

headings of belief, justification, and truth (e.g. Rozeboom, 1972), a sur-
prising fact emerges. Although belief is the primary concept insofar as it
refers to cognition "in the raw," that is, prior to the imposition of logical
and epistemological constraints, it is the topic on which cognitive psy-
chology has least to say. The inferential and semantic structure of the
belief system has been extensively researched, but there are com-
paratively few studies that deal with the acceptance of propositions as
true, the nature of this acceptance, and the factors that determine its
strength.
This is easily enough explained. Cognitive psychology must deal
for the most part with beliefs that are justified and true, and accordingly
it poses problems for the cognitive subject that are as explicit as possible
on the matters of justification and truth. As a result, everything impor-
tant about the outcome can be said by reporting whether the subject
was right or wrong, and belief can be taken for granted, except for the
unusual case of insincere response.
Nonetheless, it is important to review the concept of belief in
cognitive theory not merely as a topic in its own right but also as one
with considerable metatheoretical importance. The question of what
exactly is modelled by cognitive theory has become central since the
rise of computer simulation. Ortony (1978) noted that the same model
is sometimes offered for cognitive processes, such as comprehension
and memory, which are quite different. More to the point of the present
review, Woods (1975) argued that we do not really know what directed
graphs and other network models refer to in the cognitive domain if we
cannot recover in them the distinction between a proposition that is
believed and one that is merely supposed. If it is not clear whether re-
trieval or activation refers to the acceptance of a proposition as true,
neither will it be clear that we are talking about cognition in any
ordinary sense. The problem has been taken up by Maida and Shapiro
(1982), who attempt to provide a general theory of propositions or
intensions which will bring computer models back into line with the
definition of cognition that prevails in logic, epistemology, philosophy
of mind, and commonsense mentalism. In any such undertaking the
concept of belief must playa central role.
This review will deal with existing theories of belief under four
general headings, (a) belief as a propositional attitude, (b) belief as a
subjective probability, (c) belief as inference, and (d) belief as associa-
tion. The theoretical importance of the concept of belief will be noted as
the need arises, and in particular in the concluding section.
First it is necessary to outline the terminology to be used.
5 • The Concept of Belief in Cognitive Theory 317
2. Terminology
2.1. Propositional Attitudes

Propositional structure is already implied in the notion of belief
and can be defined as the minimal conceptual structure necessary for an
act of belief. One may believe that it will rain tomorrow, but the sub-
parts of this proposition, the concepts corresponding to the words rain
and tomorrow cannot themselves be the contents of acts of belief.
Roughly speaking, propositions are the internal surrogates of declara-
tive sentences, and concepts are similarly related to the words and
expressions they contain. (Because whole tracts of twentieth-century
philosophy are deadlocked on the nature of propositions and concepts,
these definitions are intended only as a statement of the usage
adopted below.)
Instead of believing that it will rain tomorrow, I may merely sup-
pose that this might happen, or wish that it would, or fear that it might. It
is reasonable, therefore, to suggest that a single proposition can be
entertained in a variety of mental attitudes, "propositional attitudes" as
they have been called in philosophy since Bertrand Russell coined the
phrase. Belief may now be defined as a species of a genus (namely, the
propositional attitude in which propositions are accepted as true) and
criteria can be proposed, such as willingness to assent or to place a bet,
that would help to distinguish belief from neighboring attitudes such as
supposition or premonition. However, with one or two exceptions
(Fodor, 1979; Rozeboom, 1972) propositional attitudes have not been
adopted as psychological constructs, possibly because the term attitude
had already been reserved for a particular propositional attitude, one in
which contents are entertained as good or bad. Both uses will be accep-
ted in this paper, the term propositional serving to distinguish between
them.
Although belief refers primarily to the propositional attitude of
belief, it may also refer to the proposition that is believed, or to the
union of propositional attitude and its content, the believed proposi-
tion. It will always be clear from the context what is meant. For example,
the strength of a belief is a property of the propositional attitude as such,
but the consistency of a set of beliefs pertains primarily to the pro-
positions which are believed. The difference between classical and
Bayesian interpretations of probability might also be stated in terms of
this contrast. Whereas the classical approach expands the notion of
probability in terms of additional propositions about the content of the
probabilistic belief, the Bayesian is prepared, in certain circumstances,
318 Owen Egan
to identify the probability directly with the degree to which a proposi-

tion is accepted as true.
2.2. Belief and Mere Belief

The fact that there is often no meaningful way to introduce a belief
term into models of cognition has prompted some authors to look for
belief on the fringes of cognition, where the criteria of truth and jus-
tifiability are most difficult to meet. Thus Ableson (1979) suggests that
belief differs from cognition because it lacks consensus, deals with con-
troversial topics, entertains far-fetched hypotheses, comes under the
influence of emotion, relies on poor quality evidence, and is generally
tentative and incomplete with respect to any given topic. Belief is also a
continuous variable, he notes, whereas cognition is binary.
Although there is some justification in ordinary usage for identify-
ing belief with mere belief ("I don't believe it; I know itl), such a move
would have unfortunate implications for cognitive theory. It would
relegate belief to the domain of the subrational and at the same time
make it difficult to reintroduce dimensions of reflection and personal
judgment into cognition. As the philosophical definition makes clear,
belief is not something other than cognition but one of its essential
features. Cognitions are a subset of beliefs: those which prove to be jus-
tifiable and true. But they are not somehow rendered binary because
they are to be judged against a criterion of truth which is. Nor does
belief in general show its belieflike qualities more clearly when it fails to
meet the criteria of truth and justification. On the contrary, belief in
such circumstances must be regarded as degenerate, since survival
alone would require that beliefs must normally be cognitions also. In
this paper, therefore, belief will refer to an aspect of cognition, not to
something outside the domain of cognition, or on its fringes. In other
words the beliefs referred to can be assumed to be justifiable and
true.
2.3. Acts and States of Belief

Belief may be thought of as a momentary act ('1 believed you for a
minute'') or as a more enduring state which is activated from time to
time. This is an important distinction, since claims about the nature of
belief, about the consistency of beliefs with each other, for example,
may be plausible in relation to belief as a state but a lot less so about
belief as an episodic act. I will use the term belief to refer to the state of
belief rather than the act. This is the more natural usage, since we
associate belief with reflection to a degree that makes the notion of

purely impulsive believing anomalous. There is nothing anomalous
about an act of assent or affirmation, of course. But here, too, whether in
common usage or in the behavioral theory of belief, it is more natural to
think of affirmation as reaffirmation, thus identifying belief not with any
particular act with the more enduring disposition to act. One may speak
of occurrent expectations which account for the automatic correction of
errors when we decode written or spoken language. Or one may choose
to highlight the judgmental structure of perception, considering it as an
inference or even a bet. Psychophysics itself might be treated as a study
of belief acts, and many of its findings presented as a plot of belief
strength against stimulus properties. But in all these instances the belief
idiom is disposable. The less controversial notions of attention, stimula-
tion, and discrimination give an equally good account of the results, and
any theoretical notion of expectation that is felt to be necessary can be
introduced as an intervening variable with a sufficient contact with ob-
servable behavior to be more or less uncontroversial. In our usage,
therefore, belief is thought of primarily as a state rather than an act, with
a few exceptions which will be clearly indicated.
2.4. Belief and Metabelief

Although the acceptance of a proposition as true is the paradigm
case of belief, it will prove necessary to extend the analysis in two direc-
tions, upward to include metapropositions or propositions about pro-
positions, and downward to include subpropositional or conceptual
processes. Metabeliefs, or beliefs about propositions, in particular
beliefs about their epistemic qualities, such as the number of pro-
positions they would falsify if proven true, are of central importance to
the study of belief. Belief and meta belief, unlike similar couples derived
from other propositional attitudes, are so intimately related that it might"
well be argued that belief is not a meaningful concept without meta-
belief. Thus, in some borderline cases we appear to determine whether
we believe something or not by reference to more general beliefs about
what we ought to believe given the evidence and some minimal stan-
dards of reasonableness (Griffiths, 1967). (No doubt this explains part
of our difficulty with the concept of impulsive belief, and our tendency
to think of belief as a state rather than an act.) As it happens, the interac-
tion of belief and metabelief in strategies of cognition has been exten-
sively researched through concept-learning paradigms.
The extension of the topic of belief upward to include metabelief
must be accompanied by an extension downward to include conceptual
320 Owen Egan
change. In many situations what is believed and what is meant are so

closely related that we cannot discuss one without the other. It turns
out, too, that the same cognitive events which can be described on the
one hand as a revision of the belief strengths attaching to certain pro-
positions (regarded as invariant) may also be described as a revision of
concepts (with belief strength now regarded as relatively stable). I will
argue that the topic of belief inevitably embroils us in the interplay of
subpropositional, propositional, and metapropositionallevels of cogni-
tive analysis, confronting us with the indeterminacy of mentalistic psy-
chology in a particularly disturbing form. Yet, I will suggest, the
systematic avoidance of the term does not make cognitive theory any
less vulnerable to the difficulties of mentalism and may well make it
more vulnerable insofar as it conceals a problem.
3. Belief as a Propositional Attitude
3.1. Belief and Attitude

In Fishbein and Raven (1967) belief as a propositional attitude is
distinguished from attitude in the narrower sense by means of two sets
of bipolar ratings. Belief is recorded by ratings on the scales true-false,
probable-improbable, possible-impossible, likely-unlikely, and existent-
nonexistent. Attitude is recorded by ratings on the scales good-bad,
clean-dirty, and others loading on the evaluative dimension of the
semantic differential (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). The scales
were found by asking subjects to role-play different combinations of
attitude and belief concerning the likelihood of extrasensory percep-
tion: strong belief and positive attitude, strong belief and negative
attitude, and so on. When asked to record their roles by rating ESP on
various scales, those mentioned above were found to recover them
best.
Using scores on these scales as operational definitions of attitude
and belief, Fishbein (1967a) went on to speculate on the relationship
between the two constructs. An attitude toward a given attitude object,
he suggested, is composed of attitudes toward the things believed about
it, each weighted by the strength of the belief. Or formally,
(1)
where A is a general attitude toward the object in question, and the aj

are the specific attitudes toward various attributes which might be pred-
icated of it, each weighted by a factor p, the subjective probability of its

being true. Subsequently (Fishbein, 1967b), this relationship was
expressed in terms of Hullian learning theory.
Fishbein's hypothesis generated a considerable amount of research
and was generally supported by the data. In the present context,
however, it is important to note that it does not concern the relationship
of belief and attitude as two propositional attitudes. Rather, it deals with
a particular mechanism by which the propositional attitude of belief
controls the transfer of attitude between the terms of the proposition
which is believed. Thus an attitudinal mode of arousal is not envisaged
for propositions, and in particular it is not envisaged for the proposition
which, by virtue of being believed, causes a transfer of attitude between
its terms. (Fishbein's hypothesis is reminiscent of Mowrer's, 1954, view
that sentences act as conditioning structures within which word mean-
ings become associated.)
A serious methodological problem follows. When attitudinal data
are gathered by means of paper-and-pencil ratings, the concept of
attitude tends to become redundant, or at any rate disposable. A posi-
tive attitude to X may also be rendered as a belief that X is good. As
Wyer and Goldberg (1970, p. 102) note, there is no a priori reason why
the alleged attitudinal response, directed against objects or predicates,
should not be construed as a belief like any other, particularly if it is
elicited in a rating context with an implicit requirement of sincerity. On
this interpretation the theory relates generalized evaluative beliefs to
the more particular beliefs which they subsume, and there is no need to
introduce the concept of attitude. In fact, Wyer (1973) has produced a
generalized theory of attribution in which attitudes in Fishbein's sense
are subsumed as a special kind of belief, namely "subjective ex-
pected values."
A more general approach to the relationship of belief and attitude
would consider them initially as propositional attitudes toward the
same content, giving us a contrast between, for example, my belief that
it is raining and my annoyance that this is so. Wishful thinking, which
will be dealt with shortly, provides the classic paradigm, in which the
attractiveness of a proposition causes it to be believed more strongly
than it ought to be. The availability of a proposition (Tversky & Kahne-
man, 1973) namely, its vividness and the ease with which it comes to
mind, provides another example of some cognitive mode of pro-
positional arousal other than belief which exercises a positive influence
on belief. (This is the phenomenon that leads people to overestimate
the chances of being in a plane crash.) Elsewhere (Kahneman &
Tversky, 1982) the same authors speak of expectation and surprise as
322 Owen Egan
"precursors of subjective probability," although it may be more plaus-

ible to think of these particular states as by-products rather than precur-
sors of belief. A number of other cognitive states, best thought of as
propositional attitudes, have been mentioned in passing in various
research areas: interest, intention, affect, ego-involvement, arousal,
volume, and salience (Faught, Colby, & Parkinson, 1977; Lemon, 1973;
Rozeboom, 1972; Singer, 1968; Taylor & Fiske, 1978; Tesler, Enea, &
Colby, 1968).
Because speculations on these lines are usually prompted by some
unwanted intrusion into the normative functioning of the belief system,
it is unlikely that they will ever coalesce into a general model of pro-
positional arousal. In effect there is neither a practical nor a conceptual
problem about confining the subject matter of cognitive psychology to
genuine beliefs, to the exclusion of other modes of cognitive entertain-
ment Occasionally (e.g., Johnson-Laird & Steedman, 1978) there have
been complaints that the materials used in cognitive experiments are
not always natural and sensible enough to assure us that we are dealing
with cognition in the ordinary sense. But the problem is not great Con-
sequently, if there is any mention of propositional attitude other than
belief in cognition theory, it is merely to comment on some interesting
"noise" that was encountered with some particular materials. As a
result, variables such as availability are easier to illustrate than to define.
The same is true to a lesser or a greater extent for the other dimensions
mentioned above.
At the metatheoretical level, however, considerable importance
attaches to the concept of belief as one propositional attitude among
others. In particular, psychologists who wish to embed cognitive mod-
els in more generalized models of cognitive entertainment will need to
attend to the concept (Norman, 1981). Social psychology and the psy-
chology of language come to mind. In the work of Colby and his
associates, for example, one finds many useful distinctions between the
various modes of arousal that are possible for a given proposition, belief
being only one. This is preparatory to the simulation of belief and
utterance systems that are unduly influenced by attitudinal modes of
arousal (Colby, 1973).
Another area that has reqUired an explicit recognition of belief as a
mode of propOSitional arousal is the theory of speech acts, as originally
put forward by Searle (1970). In any comprehensive statement of the
conditions defining acts such as declaration, interrogation, or request,
the status of the linguistic content on the dimension of belief is of crucial
importance and must be modelled explicitly (as in Cohen & Perrault,
1979). Also, in the theory of linguistic reference, which attempts to
explain how words refer to things, the notion of belief may have a cen-
tral role to play. It has been argued by Rozeboom (1972) that the dis-
tinguishing feature of linguistic arousal is its ability to retrieve a
propositional content without necessarily determining the degree to
which the proposition is believed to be true. For example, the belief that
it is raining might be prompted by rain-like sounds or by the utterance
"Rain." The important difference, according to Rozeboom, is that the
sound of the raindrops cannot be decomposed into a part which preser-
ves propositional content and another part which determines belief
strength. The content it arouses must be a believed content. The word,
on the other hand, is a symbol in the sense that it can guarantee the
arousal of a content without at the same time committing it to a par-
ticular degree of belief strength. The utterance may be as convincing as
the raindrops, of course. Even so, it will still be possible to decompose it
into a part that determines content (the word rain) and other parts that
cause it to be believed (the contextual features of the utterance, the fact
that the speaker is believed to be making a genuine affirmation, and so
on). This distinction, which hinges on the concept of belief, has impor-
tant applications in those areas of language in which signification and
symbolic functions are confounded, in the study of prosodic and
paralinguistic features of language, for example (Egan, 1980).
3.2. Attitudes Inferred from Deviant Belief

It was noted above that belief can be construed broadly enough to
cover all forms of paper-and-pencil ratings, provided only that a condi-
tion of sincerity is imposed. As a result, an attitudinal construct based
on ratings need not refer to any propositional attitude other th~n belief.
An alternative approach to attitudes, which avoids the charge of reduc-
tionism, is to define them in terms of the deviant inference patterns
which they induce within the belief system. This was the strategy used
by McGuire (1960) in his study of wishful thinking. For example, if the
proposition C is implied by the conjunction of A and B, which are held
with the subjective probabilities p(A) and p(B), then under simplified
conditions the subjective probability of C ought to be
p(C) = p(A)p(B) (2)
The multiplication rule from probability calculus now becomes a model

for the transmission of belief strength in an inferential network. It is
possible, of course, to uncover attitudinal components in cognition by
simply comparing naive inference with its normative counterpart, as
324 Owen Egan
Kahneman and Tversky (1972) do in the case of naive statistical

inference. Not many beliefs, however, can be aligned with a corres-
ponding objective probability. Hence the importance of McGuire's
model, which is not restricted to cases wherein objective probabilities
are available for the propositions under study. Provided only that C
really does follow from A and B, a normative value for p(C) is deter-
mined once the subject assigns values to p(A) and p(B). Departure from
rationality can now be demonstrated as an internal inconsistency in the
beliefs of a particular individual. In this way McGuire was able to show
that the desirability of a proposition, the degree to which it was wished
true, caused subjects to believe it to be true to a degree which was
unwarranted given the degree of their belief in the premisses.
Abelson and Rosenberg (1967) demonstrated similar intrusions in
inferences about personal relations and argued that they are systematic
enough to constitute a logic of their own, "psycho-logic" or the logic of
"hot cognition." Thus heated inference might follow the rule: If A dis-
likes B, and B likes C, then A dislikes C. In another study Abelson (1967)
showed that political allegiance also induces distinctive evidential
pathways in sets of propositions. In one attitudinal set, pacifism is
evidence for communist leanings; in another it is not. Here again
attitude is not defined directly as a propositional attitude but only
implicitly, as the force responsible for distinctive inference patterns in
the belief system. A final example is provided by the work of Colby and
his associates on paranoia (summarized in Colby, 1973). Paranoia is
essentially a mode of arousal for propositions (the distrust mode) such
that inferences from them of threat to the listener are unduly facilitated.
4. Belief as Subjective Probability
A difficulty with ratings of belief strength that we did not mention

above is their validity. We cannot always say with much certainty how
strongly we believe things. Part of the problem is that we sometimes
prefer to establish belief strengths by deducing them from behavior or
anticipated behavior. Sometimes we question our beliefs by asking
whether we would act conSistently with them in certain critical situa-
tions. It follows that belief strength might actually be computed directly
from behavior if the cost of the behavior could be quantified and some
definition found for the notion of consistency between behavior and
belief.
4.1. Decision Theory and Subjective Probability

The essential insight which links belief strength, cost, and rational
behavior was available at least from the time of Bernoulli. In its modem
formulation it can be written
(3)
where EU(A), the expected utility of an action A, is given as a weighted

sum of the values (v) of its possible outcomes, the weights correspond-
ing to subjective probabilities attached to the outcomes. (Fishbein's
model may be taken as a special case.) Early in this century the
mathematician Ramsey (1928/1980) expressed the relationship as a
nonmentalistic definition of belief strength,
(4)
wherein the subjective probability p is given as the ratio of two subjec-

tive losses, the maximum loss that the believer is prepared to incur in
order to check the truth or falsity of some proposition (La) , and the loss
of finding out "the hard way" that the proposition is false (Lb)' This
follows from the intuition that a rational person will not invest more in
checking something than will be lost by being wrong. Such a definition
would allow belief strength to be determined without relying on subjec-
tive feelings of conviction.
However, it was not until von Neuman and Morgenstern for-
malized the theory of utility that subjective probability was studied
empirically by psychologists. In the idealized betting paradigm fre-
quently used in subjective probability studies the subjective probability
of X for a particular individual will have the same numerical value as the
proportion of $1.00 that he or she is prepared to risk in order to win
$1.00 should X prove to be the case. The program of psychological
research that followed has been reviewed many times. (Kyburg &
SmokIer, 1980, and Edwards & Tversky, 1967, Part 2, are useful
anthologies of earlier work. Slovic, 1982, provides a short summary of
more recent work.) In this tradition, sometimes referred to as the
judgmental tradition on account of its association with decision theory,
subjective probabilities are elicited directly or deduced from preferen-
ces between risks, and some normative model is fitted to see whether
we believe things as strongly and no more strongly than we ought
to.
326 Owen Egan
Many interesting sources of error in our everyday and even in our

professional inferences have been established. We do not pay enough
attention to prior probabilities; we believe too strongly in conclusions
based on small samples; we are too slow to revise initial estimates in the
light of new information; and, as noted above, we tend to add an unjus-
tified increment of probability to propositions that are vivid to the
imagination.
Although the origins of subjective probability research are outside
psychology (in mathematical decision theory), and its application also
tends to be in other areas (in the technology of decision making), since
it deals so explicitly with the formation of beliefs one might expect that
it would nonetheless interface readily with other areas of cognitive psy-
chology. This has not been the case. In fact, the judgmental tradition
remains quite isolated in modern cognitive theory. A number of
reasons may be suggested.
In the first place, the judgmental tradition has always favored nor-
mative models, based either in the axioms and theorems of decision
theory or in propositional logic. The models do not always fit, which
accounts for the many biases of human judgment which are discussed
in this literature. Nonetheless, the judgmental tradition tends to assume
normative functioning until evidence to the contrary is available. This
has not been the practice in other areas of psychology. In the social psy-
chology of cognition, for example, mechanisms such as dissonance
reduction are often taken to be more "primitive" or basic, even though
standard logic will sometimes provide a more parsimonious explana-
tion for the findings (e.g., Wyer & Goldberg, 1970). This conflict of
perspective is particularly acute in developmental psychology. In some
instances one has the impression that early childhood cognition is
defined to be nonstandard, even though it might also be understood as a
standard system working with limited resources. For example, it has
been said that the normative concept of probability is lacking in
children up to 10 years or so, on the grounds that wish fulfillment and
other egocentric operations are in evidence when children are asked to
make a probabilistic judgment (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Yet Brainerd
(1981) reports that children of 3 years are quite attentive to base-rate
frequencies when predicting the results of random draws from a finite
population, although limitations of memory and attention prevent them
from developing this idea in a systematic way. It may be argued (e.g.,
Shaklee, 1979) that the conflict between the judgmental and the
developmental traditions is more apparent than real. But the least that
may be said is that it amounts to a strong divergence of orientation that
still persists. The isolation of the judgmental tradition, we are suggest-

ing, is a consequence of this divergence.
Another reason for the isolation of the judgmental tradition is its
tendency to raise very general issues concerning probability, rational-
ity, and experimental method. This is partly due to its association with
Bayesian statistics, which commits it to a critical attitude toward the
orthodox hypothetico-deductive methods of psychological research.
Indeed, psychological research is often featured in the judgmental
literature as an illustration of nonrational inference (Gregg & Simon,
1967; Rozeboom, 1960; Slovic, 1982), a practice that will seem some-
what impertinent to many.
The main achievement of the study of subjective probability is its
demonstration of the essential rationality of the attitude of belief. This is
most evident in the fact that subjective probability is an indeterminate
quantity until some particular model of rationality is postulated. Thus in
deriving subjective probabilities from preferences among bets, different
assumptions about the rationality of the subject will lead to different
conclusions about the values of subjective probabilities. This point is
fully acknowledged in commonsense psychology and in the theory of
social cognition. There is great difficulty in ascribing beliefs to people
on the basis of their behavior when we are unsure either about their
motives or about the model of rationality that links them to behavior
(Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965). In philosophy, too, the notion of
belief now leads immediately to a discussion of rationality and criteria
of rationality (Ackermann, 1972; Dennett, 1969; Johnson, 1978).
4.2. Belief and Metabelief

Quite a different way of exploring the involvement of belief with
rationality is to consider the act of belief itself as a rational decision,
namely, the decision to assign one subjective probability rather than
another to some proposition. In the standardized form of the twenty-
questions task, used first by Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (1956) and
developed later by others (Hunt, 1962; Reitman, 1965; Simon & Lea,
1974), the entire array of answers may be visualized, cards with three
borders, cards with more circles than borders, and so on. The decision-
theoretical model may now be used to determine the cognitive utility
which subjects attach to propositions, and the higher-order strategies
which are implicit in their preferences. The topic here is the interaction
of belief (the assignment of subjective probabilities to propositions)
with metabelief (beliefs about potential beliefs, i.e., propositions). Of
328 Owen Egan
special interest are beliefs about the cognitive properties of pro-

positions, such as their simplicity or naturalness, the ease with which
they can be remembered, or the number of propositions they would
falSify if they turned out to be true.
The decision-theory model fits the data well. Subjects select for
verification the propositions with the highest expected (cognitive)
value. For example, in one experiment (Bruner et al., 1956, p. 119) it was
possible to manipulate the subjective probability that propositions
selected would be verified. For one group of subjects it was made as low
as possible and for another as high as possible. Naturally, selection
strategies diverged for the two groups. One factor remained constant,
however. Subjects tended to select the proposition with the highest
expected value in cognitive terms, defined as the number of possible
solutions it would falsify (if it turned out to be a positive instance) mul-
tiplied by the subjective probability that it would in fact be verified.
The utility of a proposition to the cognitive subject was opera-
tionalized by Bruner et al. (1956) in terms of its power to disconfirm
other hypotheses and its likelihood of being true. But propositions can
be valuable in other ways, too. Revlis and Hayes (1972) noted the reluc-
tance of subjects to abandon propositions which were "lawlike," that is,
generalities unrestricted in time and space. It may be that generalities
are easier to remember, that they specify a very clear domain, that they
create a hierarchical structure, or that they facilitate inference. Osherson
(1978) tries to say what the alleged advantages of "simple" or "natural"
conceptual structures might be in cognitive terms, using for this pur-
pose the hierarchical structure of the "predicability tree" proposed by
Somers (1963), the natural systems of deductive logic proposed by
Fitch (1952), and Goodman's (1966) account of conceptual simplicity. It
is interesting to note that this represents a revival of questions raised
earlier in the social psychology of cognition by authors such as Scott
(1963, 1969) and Zajonc (1960) who tried to quantify structural proper-
ties of belief systems such as cohesiveness, differentiation, and the cen-
trality of individual propositions within theories. This literature has
itself shown new signs of life in recent times (Scott, Osgood, & Peter-
son, 1979).
4.3. Indeterminacy of the Concept of Belief

A fundamental difficulty with the concept of belief has been
encountered briefly in the preceding pages. This is the problem of
indeterminacy. A phenomenon which may plausibly be described in
terms of belief, that is, the assignment of subjective probabilities to pro-

positions, can also be described with little or no reference to belief, for
example as concept attainment, or alternatively as a higher-order opera-
tion involving the interplay between beliefs and meta beliefs, as strategy
learning, for example. In Bruner et al. (1956) the subject is frequently
described as "attaining" or "learning" a concept, for example, cards with
three borders. Moreover, analogies are made with perceptual learning.
Just as the biology student learns to see things under a microscope,
having first encountered only a mass of confusing details, the subject in
the concept attainment task, we are told, gradually learns to see the
required concept "as a unit." Some possible mechanisms (e.g., percep-
tual "smearing") are even mentioned.
Some readers may find this interpretation of concept attainment
implausible, preferring the analysis given above in terms of metabelief.
One could also choose a middle course, mentioning neither concepts
nor metabeliefs but only beliefs. What is disturbing is that each point of
view has some truth in it. Here we encounter a second dimension to the
indeterminacy of mental deSCriptions. Critics of mentalism (e.g., Quine,
1960) have pointed out how difficult it is to say what the content of a
belief is. We cannot tie down meanings too tightly, for fear of equating
belief with sentence uttering; and yet the freedom to make different
paraphrases of what is allegedly the same belief introduces a disturbing
degree of subjectivity into the determination of the belief's content. We
discover now that indeterminacy of content is compounded with
indeterminacy in the mental units we select to describe a mental state,
whether they should be concepts, propositions, or propositions about
propositions. Is the subject in the Bruner et al. (1956) paradigm attaining
a concept, acquiring a belief, or learning a rule?
The matter is not just one of terminology. If one chooses to talk in
terms of concepts the notion of belief disappears. A concept (cards with
three borders) may be formed, attained, applied, and so on, but it can-
not be believed. Only a proposition can be believed. Conversely, if we
introduce the notion of belief we must talk not about concepts but about
propositions, the proposition that this card has three borders, that it is a
positive instance of the required concept, and so on, and there will be
no need to assume that any change takes place in the conceptual struc-
tures of the subject. Similarly, the naturalness or simplicity which
Osheron (1978) speaks about may be thought of as a property of con-
cepts, and it may even be presented as a property of visual arrays. But
the naturalness of a conceptual system might also be said to reside not
so much in the concepts themselves but in the ease with which they
330 Owen Egan
permit beliefs to be formed and transmitted between them. Hence the

introduction of predicability trees and deduction, which raises the des-
cription to the propositional level.
It is quite common for cognitive theories to oscillate between pro-
positional and subpropositional or conceptual levels of description, and
there are reasons to suppose that ambiguity in this regard is sometimes
cultivated in the belief that it gives models a greater versatility. This
matter will occupy us again below when we discuss the different inter-
pretations which are possible for the links in conceptual networks.
Accordingly we will postpone our discussion of this point, except to
note that there are two problems, one relating to the indeterminacy of
propositions as such (a problem that would remain even if only pro-
positional processes existed), and another relating to the kind of pro-
cessing to which propositions are subjected, whether it involves de-
composition into subpropositional units or not, whether it involves
metabelief or not.
5. Belief as Inference
The involvement of belief with rationality, or at any rate with some

minimal requirements of internal consistency, was developed above by
considering belief as a component in a behavior system operating adap-
tively and also by considering the act of belief as a decision that is
reasonable in the light of the demands made on the cognitive subject. In
one case the consistency of belief with values and observed behavior is
looked at, and in the other the consistency of belief formation with
higher-order beliefs about the functioning of the belief system itself.
The most obvious requirement of consistency in the belief system,
however, is the one obtaining between propositions. When one propo-
sition is believed, certain others follow, and there is no escaping this
necessity without undermining the propositional attitude of belief. If
someone were to claim to believe X while keeping an open mind on its
immediate logical consequences we would have to conclude that belief
was being confused with some other propositional attitude. Thus con-
sistency, at least to some minimal degree, is an essential feature of
belief. Traditionally it has been dealt with under two headings, deduc-
tion and induction.
5.1. Deductive Inference

Systems of deductive logic, of which Aristotle's syllogistic is the
first example, derive necessary inferences between propositions. (We
need not distinguish here between the logic of sentences, terms, or

relations.) They provide the clearest cases of what ought to be believed
in a given situation. Not surprisingly, the early psychological research
was concerned only to discover whether subjects were able to make
deductive inferences correctly, and if not, why not. (Wason & Johnson-
Laird, 1968, Part 2, contains examples of early studies.) This continues
to be the main function of deductive systems in cognitive psychology,
but two developments, one in social psychology and the other in com-
puter simulation, have broadened the range of issues about belief for-
mation which may be raised within the deductive paradigm.
McGuire's (1960) use of a deductive paradigm to study wishful
thinking was mentioned earlier. Other authors, most notably Wyer and
his collaborators, noted the possibility of using the deductive model not
merely to demonstrate the inadequacies of human cognition but to pro-
vide a formal description of an ideally consistent set of cognitions that
could be used to measure degrees of inconsistency, to uncover the
mechanisms by which new information is integrated into it, and the fac-
tors which lead to a reduction of inconsistency (Wyer & Carlston, 1979,
Wyer & Hartwick, 1980). Like McGuire, Wyer postulated that subjective
probabilities would approximate the values predicted for them from
objective probability calculus. By stating the probabilistic dependence
between two events (not necessarily independent) quite generally as
p(A) = p(AB) + p(AB) (5)
and then expanding the terms on the right
p(A) = p(B)p(AIB) + p(B)p(AIB) (6)
Wyer produced a deduction which has proved remarkably versatile not

merely as an empirical hypothesis in its own right but also as a theoreti-
cal model which is capable of integrating a considerable amount of
research in consistency theory. Among the effects studied are the so-
called Socratic effect, in which the mere activation of propositions
brings them into greater consistency with each other, and effects due to
the availability of propositions, the recency of their arousal, and their
loadings on other dimensions of propositional entertainment, such as
arousal, volume, or degree of attention. The manner in which new
information, inconsistent with existing beliefs, is assimilated is also a
major topic of research.
One unfortunate consequence of the term social cognition is that it
suggests, to outsiders at any rate, some form of nonstandard cognition.
332 Owen Egan
The suggestion is doubly wrong in the case of Wyer's work. Not only
does it deal for the most part with cognition in the strictest sense, with
beliefs which are both justified and true, but it has also been a major
theme of this research that normative models often provide the sim-
plest and most accurate description of human cognition.
The second development that widened the scope of deductive
models in cognitive psychology was computer simulation (for an over-
view, see Gilhooly, 1982, Chapter 4, or Johnson-Laird, 1975). Clearly
the implementation of powerful theorem-proving routines could not be
considered as a simulation of human deduction. Thus the initial task
facing the simulator was to model the limitations of human deduction,
limitations of memory and syntactic power, for example. The lOgical
component would have to be limited also, or else mistakes need never
be made.
As it happened, the modelling of deficient deduction led immedi-
ately to a far more interesting issue: the nature of deduction and its rela-
tion to general mechanisms of human information processing. In
Johnson-Laird and Steedman's (1978) model of syllogistic reasoning
subjects derive a conclusion from a set of premises by a combination of
guesswork and subsequent validation. The model gives a good predic-
tion of empirical latencies and most likely errors. A more general model
is provided by Rips (1983). Complete syllogisms are presented to the
subject for validation. The model assigns the premises to an assertive
mode of arousal, the conclusion to a goal state. Subassertions (or sup-
positions) and subgoals are then derived by a small number of rules,
and the program attempts to demonstrate that the goal can in fact be
asserted. The suppositional mode is a particularly powerful component
of the system precisely because it can operate on propositions which
are not yet known to be true. This model also predicts latency and
failure to validate quite accurately.
It is a feature of the Rips model, and also of the model proposed by
Braine (1978) that deductive laws are equated with meta belief. The sub-
jective validates the syllogism by verifying that it conforms to a rule of
inference, namely, a belief that all propositional sequences of a par-
ticular sort are valid. The distinctive feature of an inference rule is that it
operates on propositional units. This is not generally the case with
validational procedures in the logic of inference, many of which are
"graphical" methods (e.g., truth tables, bracketing) having no pro-
positional interpretation. It should be added, however, that not all psy-
chologists construe deduction as metabelief. Johnson-Laird and Steed-
man (1978) point to the possibility that deduction could be reduced to
a higher-order strategy of efficient list processing. Similarly, Braine
(1978) suggests that the behavior of the logical connectives and and or
might be explained eventually by relating them to the subpropositional
processes which they subsume, such as joint and alternative iteration
respectively. This is also the hope expressed by Isles (1978) when he
notes that the traditional axioms of logic and set theory beg some
important questions about deductive inference that would be left open
if one attempted a reconstruction of deduction from the formal features
of elementary computing procedures, such as list processing. It is even
possible, he feels, that new laws of logic, which would make no sense
within the traditional paradigms, could be discovered in this way.
5.2. Inductive Inference

When the evidential links between propositions are not capable of
being subsumed under some rule of deductive inference, we speak of
induction rather than deduction. The premises do not guarantee the
conclusion but merely provide evidence for it. In practice the evidence
may be overwhelming, as it will be in the case of statistical inferences
based on large samples, or beliefs about the opinions of people well
known to us. Nonetheless, no demonstrative logic can be provided for
such beliefs.
In the absence of any logical formalisms which might guide the
search for cognitive structure in such instances, the psychology of
induction has used a variety of models, drawn from perception,
memory, and language understanding. One particularly versatile
model, drawn principally from the domain of perception, is a simple
summation in the form
(7)
where p denotes the subjective probability of the inductive conclusion,

ei is
some quantification of i-type evidence for the conclusion, and Wi is a
weight indicating the relative importance of evidence of that type in
arriving at the conclusion. Usually the value of p is given and the Wi are
derived from the regression of p on standardized evidence categories.
Thus an expert psychologist might be asked to sort MMPI profiles into
two groups, adjusted and maladjusted, and the regression of decisions
on predictors, the various scales of the MMPI, is presented as a model of
the evidential links binding the conclusion to the evidence.
Here the problem about levels of analysis raises itself in a very
interesting way. In the early literature there was a tendency to treat
linear regression models (LRMs) of induction at a propositional level, as
334 Owen Egan
if the Wiei represented increments (or decrements) of credibility which

could be assigned to the inductive proposition for each category of
evidence. Moreover, the increments did not appear to be dependent on
the status of other evidence categories, since no interaction term was
needed in the model. Now it is obvious from introspection that in
diagnostic tasks of this sort, when evidence categories are highly cor-
related and there is time for reflection, a considerable amount of
interaction takes place, for better or for worse, with the result that the
final impact of a particular piece of evidence can depend on "the overall
picture." Consequently the LRM was rejected, in spite of its impressive
fit to the data. It was said that it had predictive power without having
explanatory power, that it was devoid of psychological content
(Green, 1968).
But the matter is not so simple. Einhorn, Kleinmuntz, and Klein-
muntz (1979) point out that the LRM is a very complex model, rich in
psychological theory, if it is interpreted at the metalevel. It says that we
recognize the problem of redundancy with correlated cues, that we use
compensation and substitution between cues, that we apply general
LRMs in the light of the specific configuration to which they are being
fitted, and that we do not expect a perfect fit. All of these are substantive,
cognitive hypotheses, and to each there corresponds a formal property
of the LRM. The hypotheses, however, pertain to metabelief rather than
belief. They are "metarules" in the authors' terms, and and therefore the
LRM should not be thought of as an alternative to "process-tracing"
models, that is, models which specify the sequence of propositional acts
by which the diagnosis proceeds (checking, attending, searching, test-
ing, storing the outcome, proceeding to the next test, and so on) but as a
description of the higher-order structures that we try to maximize in the
final solution. This is exactly the role we suggested above for the axioms
of decision theory, as features of metabelief, and for the idea of concep-
tual simplicity.
There is a great need for models that deal with the configural
effects operating at the level of metabelief. Rozeboom (1971) has
argued that the cognitive reality of hypothetico-deductivism is the fact
that bodies of propositions somehow cohere into units (theories) that
are affected, as wholes, by any increment or decrement of credibility
that comes to individual propositions, the effect being proportional to
the centrality of the proposition within the theory. A cognitive theory
that quantified the cohesiveness of bodies of propositions would
therefore have a lot more to say on the hypothetico-deductive method
than the usual logical formalism (if A implies Band B is false then A is
false) that ignores structural properties. One is reminded once again of
the earlier work of Scott and others on cognitive structure, in which

global properties of propositional networks, including cohesiveness,
were quantified (Scott et al., 1979). These constructs could readily be
adapted to study the impact of higher-order configural properties of the
belief system on the transmission of credibility between premises
and conclusions.
Under the general heading of configural effects in induction one
may also include sequential or temporal effects. There is a large litera-
ture on persuasion and the factors in the belief system which seem to
"innoculate" individual beliefs against it. (For a recent anthology, see
Roloff & Miller, 1982.) The research has some relevance in the present
context because "anchoring" effects, in which beliefs are made more
resistant to change by being attached to other beliefs, may be thought of
as a special case of the phenomenon mentioned just now, the addi-
tional credibility which propositions acquire by incorporation into a
coherent theory. Persuasion of a very different sort has been studied in
the literature on subjective probability, namely, the revision of beliefs in
the light of accumulating evidence (Edwards, Lindman, & Phillips,
1965). Normative, Bayesian formulae fit the data quite well except for a
tendency toward cautiousness. Finally, there are effects which are
purely temporal, primacy and recency effects due entirely to the
sequence in which evidence is presented. Such effects are of course
departures from rationality, and to this extent we may skip over them in
this review.
5.3. The Genesis of Belief in Theoretical Entities

As indicated in the introduction, the extension of the topic of belief
into metabelief often requires a corresponding extension in the oppo-
site direction, into conceptual or subpropositional structure. The point
just made by Rozeboom (1971) about the failure of epistemological
models of hypothetico-deductive reasoning to acknowledge the cogni-
tive structures which guide it in practice has been made by the same
author in connection with the genesis of individual concepts. He argues
(Rozeboom, 1961) that there is a tendency to overlook, if not to deny
outright, the structured inferential links that lead from discrete data
points to the first level of theoretical constructs they support. With
quantitative data this first level would include constructs such as group
means attributed to individuals, scales and factors which are unfolded
or extracted from data matrices, normalized distributions that are
imposed on nonnormal distributions of data points, and the many other
elementary data structures of the sort to which Tukey (1977) draws
336 Owen Egan
attention in his campaign for a more prolonged "exploratory" phase of

data analysis. These inferential structures tend to be overlooked be-
cause the inference involved is the "animal" variety which takes place
immediately and unconsciously, provided only that the data are suit-
ably arranged for inspection. We see the effect of the treatment, or the
tendency toward the mean, and no inference seems to be involved.
Indeed, one may agree with so-called evolutionary epistemologists who
hold that such inferences have probably been wired into the cognitive
system at a perceptual level because they proved to be adaptive
(Campbell, 1959; Feigl, 1956; Kaplan, 1971; Piaget, 1971; Quine, 1969,
Chapter 3).
Nonetheless, Rozeboom argues that the inferences have a discern-
ible structure, which can be brought to light by examining differences in
the logic of datum statements and theoretical statements and by attend-
ing to the conditions under which a transition from the former to the lat-
ter seems to be permissible. The group mean is not always interpretable
as a group effect, nor a factor as an underlying variable. We require cer-
tain configural properties in the data and in their links with the pro-
posed constructs. We require clustering of a certain strength before we
talk about a group effect; we require explanatory power and parsimony
in the factors which purport to account for patterns of intercorrelation.
It is possible, according to Rozeboom, to specify the data patterns, and
in particular structural covariation, which compel us to believe in the
existence of theoretical entities. He has looked at several examples from
psychological research, such as parameter conversion and factorial decom-
position. All are examples of ontological induction, in which a belief is
formed about the existence of some underlying reality. Rozeboom
argues that the epistemic structure of ontological induction is more
likely to be uncovered by cognitive psychology than by logic or
epistemology.
Piaget's work must be mentioned here since it, too, is concerned
with the inferential structure of theoretical concepts and the configural
properties of the belief system from which they derive support. Here,
too, it is necessary to distinguish levels of analysis, propOSitional,
metapropositional, subpropositional. Critics sometimes claim that
Piaget's ideas about assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium are
too vague to be useful. Part of the difficulty here, I suspect, is that these
are ideas that apply to metabelief more than belief or concept formation.
Much of Piaget's work concerns global properties of the belief system,
its reflexivity, its hierarchical structure, its adaptivity, its tendency
toward equilibrium, and, with development, its increasing self-regula-
tion. All of these are properties of the belief system that like those mod-
elled in the regression equation discussed earlier, or those derived from

decision theory, become vacuous, or mysterious, or even quite false if
they are attributed to the belief system at a propositional level, that is,
when propositions are formulated and assigned a subjective proba-
bility.
In Piaget, as in any comprehensive view of the belief system, it is
possible to switch levels of analysis quickly, talking alternately about
concepts, propositions, and global properties of the belief system as a
whole. From one point of view, the child who has just learned to con-
serve quantity has learned that certain cues should be ignored in arriv-
ing at conclusions about amounts. This is a propositional analysis in the
sense that the elements in the task can be described as propositions ("It
looks larger," "Nothing has been added to it," lilt contains the same
amount'') whereas conservation itself can be described as a revision of
the inferential links existing between them. But we can also say that the
child has acquired new concepts of quantity, involving a reorganization
of cognitive schemata. Thus we introduce the conceptual and meta-
levels of analysis. In effect, the notions of schema, assimilation, accom-
modation, and equilibrium help to describe very general metabeliefs
which seem to control the evolution of the belief system, helping it to
cope with increasing detail and complexity in its data base and leading it
to higher levels of self-regulation.
The most distinctive feature of Piaget's system is his conviction that
models of metabelief may be drawn more profitably from biology than
from logic or epistemology. He suggests that cognition be thought of as
a form of adaptation. At a propositional level of analysis this suggestion
is baffling and perhaps distasteful, implying that we believe only what
suits us, or that the biological value of staying alive has somehow deter-
mined the content of our philosophical and scientific theories (Ten-
nessen, 1972). The correct interpretation is at a meta propositional level.
Here the claim that belief is a form of adaptation is a claim that the belief
system as a whole is akin to an organ or an organism which is in the pro-
cess of moving toward higher levels of evolution. Essentially the same
point has been urged by the other evolutionary epistemologists just
mentioned, and indeed the burden of proof must surely rest with those
who would argue that cognition, as a naturalistic phenomenon, does
not share at least some very general structures with the rest of the
natural world. lilt is impossible," Piaget writes, "if one recognizes the
existence of more or less generalized schemata on the behavioral level
from reflexes and habit formtion up to the many constructions set up by
the sensori-motor intelligence, not to consider imagination and thought
schemata as adaptive in the biological sense of the word" (Piaget, 1971,
338 Owen Egan
p. 182). On these grounds one is justified in using developmental con-

figurations from biology to model metabelief, in the same way that the
more formal configurations of decision theory and the LRM were
used above.
6. Belief as an Association
In view of the difficulties faced by the mentalistic theory of belief, it

is not surprising that some nonmental theories have been proposed.
Nonmental theories of belief avoid the attribution of propositions and
propositional attitudes to the cognitive subject. Instead, they equate
belief, or at any rate those aspects of belief which are capable of scien-
tific study, with a theoretical disposition to respond differently to sen-
tences offered for assent, depending on the stimulation at the time. If
successful, such theories would be free of indeterminacy with respect to
propositional content and changing levels of analysis. They would also
be free of prior notions of rationality.
In this section we will examine some examples briefly. In our view
they make little or no contribution to our understanding of belief. Yet
they raise questions about the relation of mental and nonmental
theories of cognition which are still important since computer simula-
tions of cognition in the network and "connectionist" traditions often
claim a nonmental status. The notion of belief is central in an assess-
ment of this claim.
6.1. The Concept of Belief in Learning Theory

Two quite different approaches to the phenomenon of belief have
been adopted in learning theory. In the first, belief is identified with the
associations that exist between the components of believed pro-
positions. In this view the child comes to believe that grass is green by
having the concepts grass and green conditioned to each other in some
fashion. In the second approach belief is considered as a learned dis-
position to assent to a proposition, for example, a tendency to assent to
the proposition that grass is green but not to the proposition grass is red.
One can speculate on the ways in which such theories might be
integrated. But they are quite different as they stand. In the first belief
strength is modelled on the strength of an association between stimuli.
In the second it is modelled on the probability that a given stimulus, in a
given context, will elicit an assenting response. The models will be
examined in tum.
Fishbein (1967b) presents the adult belief system as a Hullian

"habit-family hierarchy" in which the stimuli are the subjective terms
of propositions and the responses are their predicates. Belief strength is
equated with response strength and can be quantified by means of the B
(belief) scales discussed earlier. Thus we can imagine our beliefs about
X as a network of associations radiating from X to the predicates we
believe to be true of it. The predicates can themselves be the subject
terms of still further beliefs, giving a hierarchical structure to the net-
work of associations. The strength of each association corresponds to
the strength with which a predicate is believed to be true of its
subject term.
Although no data are presented by Fishbein to support this model,
we can accept that it might describe real if somewhat global properties
of the belief system, in particular the relationship between strongly held
general beliefs and less strongly held specific beliefs deriving from
them. The habit-family hierarchy, originally intended as an explanation
of motor behavior, is now applied to a response system in which the
elements are concepts. At best, this is akin to the use of formalisms from
decision theory and regression analysis to model the belief system, and
on this interpretation the hierarchical structure postulated would be
primarily a speculation about metabelief, or at any rate about second-
order features of the belief system. However, the model cannot explain
belief in any usual sense of the term, nor is it a reduction of belief in
terms of classic learning theory, since belief is itself a primitive term
within it. The associations in the theory are not, as on might suppose at
first sight, the sort that can be strengthened by contiguous presentation,
or the sort elicited by "free" association. They are a very special kind of
association: the sort that is built up when one thing comes to be
believed about another. Consequently, the concept of belief is not being
explained by the concept of association. Rather, the concept of belief, as
intuitively defined on the B scales, is being used to define a new
kind of association.
The second approach to belief in learning theory is best exem-
plified in the work of Skinner (1957). Belief is looked on as a disposition
to assent, and it is hypothesized that some general principles of operant
conditioning will allow us to predict the strength of the disposition to
assent for a given sentence and stimulus. We would suggest that this
view of belief, too, should be taken, as it was presented originally by
Skinner, as a very general hypothesis that reaffirms the continuity of
cognition with other human behaviors that are acquired through
experience. It has been satirized at great length by Chomsky (1959) as a
model of sentence production. In our view, it would be equally as
340 Owen Egan
legitimate to satirize Piaget's notion of belief as a form of adaptation, or

notions of belief based in decision theory, on the grounds that they
equate belief with survival or convenience; or to satirize the linear
regression models of belief formation on the ground that we do not add
up evidence in the ponderous fashion they suggest when interpreted at
the propositional level. In each case the satire is based on the wrong
level of analysis.
It is not worth pursuing the point on Skinner's behalf, since his
theory of assent was never developed beyond the speculative form it
assumed in Verbal Behavior. It would be wrong, however, to assume that
the sudden demise of behavioral theories of cognition in the 1960s was
a sure sign that they were somehow "wrong in principle." W. V. O.
Quine, one of the outstanding logicians and philosophers of this cen-
tury, accepts Skinner's view fully and continues to use it as the basis for
extensive theorizing in semantics, epistemology, and the theory of
belief (Quine, 1960, 1969, 1974; Quine & Ullian, 1970). To be sure, even
in Quine's elegant formulation the behaviorist theory of belief faces
enormous difficulties (Dummett, 1973, Chapter 17). One would hope,
however, that the continuing interest of someone of Quine's stature in
Skinner's model would give second thoughts to those psychologists
who think that a behaviorist theory of cognition is impossible in princi-
ple and perhaps even a contradiction in terms.
Behavior theory may be particularly suited to investigate the mic-
rostructure of the proposition and the earliest developmental phases of
the belief system. The ability to produce sentences that are assertible in
the light of current stimulation is undoubtedly an important aspect of
belief formation in early childhood, and it is plaUSible to suppose that
elementary learning processes have a role to play here, even if more
powerful production systems quickly replace them. The suggestion of
Mowrer (1954) that sentences be considered as conditioning devices
which transfer word meanings within sentences is also plausible, since
something akin to word-blending occurs in the production and evalua-
tion of statements. It is possible, too, that well-established beliefs, par-
ticularly those which have affective loadings, cause something like a
fusion of meanings at the conceptual level, for example, sky-blue, or
home-happy. And one should remember that the paradigms of learning
theory have a right to be interpreted at the level of metabelief, as very
general patterns which span the belief system as a whole, in much the
same way that we earlier intepreted models of the belief system drawn
from decision theory, linear regression, and biology. Associative mod-
els can retain plaUSibility at this level even if we reject out of hand the
idea that they explain the production of an individual belief or assertion.
6.2. Associations in Modem Cognitive Theory

The search for a nonmental theory of cognition did not end with
Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. On the contrary,
transformational and graph-theoretical models of cognition share many
of the broad aspirations of the behavioral theories which they replaced.
In particular one notes the search for elementary operations (linking,
retrieving, marking) that might in principle be given a nonmentalistic
interpretation at some later date, in neurology, perhaps, or at least in a
computer program. This reductionist ideal can be detected in most net-
work models, and in their recent connectionist counterparts (Feldman
& Ballard, 1982), although some authors cherish it more openly than
others.
The features of network models that are salient in the present con-
text may be illustrated by reference to the "spreading activation" model
of Collins and Loftus (1975). The theory, which is an extension of the
earlier work of Quillian (1969), is described as "quasi-neurological" and
"Pavlovian" and uses many neurological terms: activation, pathway,
gradient, threshold, and firing. As in the case of Fishbein's reconstruction
of belief, we note immediately that the term association is not a primitive
term with a nonmental basis in physiology or learning theory but is
rather a catchall term covering a wide variety of cognitive relationships,
some of them highly complex. In activation theory an association be-
tween the concepts bird and chicken might record the trace of a reflexive
naming response, or an unreflective impression of sameness between
the corresponding images, or a commonsense belief that chickens are
birds, or the belief that they must be so, since a zoological definition has
been retrieved and applied. Again, the association might record only
the fact that the words for a pair of concepts sound similar, or look
similar when written down.
It is a distinctive feature of network models that they do not
encourage differentiation between link types, but rather hope to
account for intuitive type differences in terms of the strength or the
multiplicity of links. A link recording a strict definition should not be
treated differently from one recording phonetic similarity, except, of
course, that it may be stronger (Collins & Loftus, 1975, p. 426). (One
notes a similar "homogenization" of cognitive relationships in the
neologisms isa and hasa.) The idea is that the network will provide an
342 Owen Egan
explanation that is all the more powerful to the extent that it is undif-
ferentiated or "hybrid," the power deriving from the fact that some
basic mentalistic distinctions are not presupposed. The network of
Collins and Loftus is actually a theory of sentence verification. It pur-
ports to explain how subjects respond to questions like "Is a chicken a
bird?" The explanation is that the associations emanating from the con-
cepts chicken and bird are activated, some of them positively, some
negatively (such as the link between chicken and bird through can fly). If
the total activation, summated in a Bayesian decision process, reaches
the required threshold, the subject responds yes.
Admittedly any of the link-types mentioned could indeed in-
fluence belief or assertion. Even orthographic similarity might be a use-
ful clue on occasion. Nonetheless, a gross accumulation of undiffer-
entiated links, ranging in type from phonemic similarity to definitional
identity, cannot provide a very general model of assertion. The reason is
that assertion, like the state of belief to which it is closely related, has a
rational, judgmental structure. Two distinctions, at the very least, are
necessary to acknowledge this fact. The first is between assertion prop-
er and subassertive modes of arousal, the second between heuristic and
confirmatory phases of arousal.
Some of the associations mentioned in the model are subassertive
in the sense that their arousal does not necessarily imply assertion, for
example, robin-sparrow. Others, such as robin-bird, are nothing other
than beliefs in a truncated code, and in fact it is only the implied truth
condition which allows us to set a rational limit to such associations. It is
precisely the lack of differentiation between link types which makes the
model implausible. A general model of assertion requires a distinction
between the assertible and the merely conceivable, which in tum
requires that links aroused in a subassertive mode be confined to a
separate system of arousal. For the same reason, heuristic and confir-
matory phases of arousal must be distinguished. Assertion requires a
distinction between things that might be asserted and things that can be
asserted. Such a model of assertion would perhaps be as complex as
Rips's (1983) model of propositional reasoning, presented above. Yet a
less complex model can hardly be expected to account for assertion in
any general sense.
It must be conceded, however, that in practice it is not easy to
decide whether the arousal of pairs of concepts should be considered as
a belief or as some subassertive, and perhaps subpropositional form of
arousal. The problem is an old one. Even the paired associates of
traditional verbal learning paradigms may be interpreted as com-
ponents of a belief system rather than elements of an associative net-
work (Dulany, 1968, Rozeboom, 1969). Free associations pose similar

problems. Some seem to be truncated assertions (black-color, table-
furniture), but others have no obvious propositional interpretation
(black-white, table-chair). A wide range of interpretations is possible also
for the "associations" recorded by the Semantic Differential and other
attitudinal instruments. Ratings obtained through the Semantic Dif-
ferential, it is claimed (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957, p. 20), are
associations in the strictest sense and can therefore be incorporated into
a classic learning-theory paradigm to yield a subpropositional theory of
reference (Osgood, 1967). Yet at other times the same associations are
interpreted as generalized beliefs, or again as a form of semantic match-
ing, or even as propositional attitudes or "affective filters" through
which the same content can be contemplated in different ways (Os-
good, 1969).
Although the problem of indeterminacy here is very real, it has cer-
tainly been made worse by the tendency to model belief in a quasi-
neurological way, using undifferentiated networks that have little
chance of capturing the rational structure of belief. Such models, we
venture to suggest, do not bring cognitive psychology one inch closer to
neurology. In the meantime, they magnify the problem of multiple
interpretation to the point at which it casts doubt on the whole enter-
prise of cognitive modelling.
7. Summary and Conclusions
Belief, considered as the propositional attitude implicit in every

cognition, has been a prominent topic in quite different traditions of
psychological research. The social psychology of cognition has pro-
duced an extensive body of theory and research on the nature of belief,
partly because social psychologists found it necessary to describe in
detail the relationship of belief to attitudes in the more usual sense, and
partly because social psychology, for whatever reason, has always main-
tained a strong program of research on structural properties of cogni-
tion. Belief, as a subjective probability, has naturally been a central topic
in the judgmental or decision-theoretical tradition, since it is one of two
free variables in the definition of utility. There are long traditions of
research on the formation of belief through induction and deduction,
and modest paradigms such as the concept-learning paradigm have
given empirical access to the interaction of belief and metabelief.
Although belief is often singled out in cognitive science as a con-
cept requiring urgent attention (Abelson, 1979; Norman, 1981), there is
344 Owen Egan
usually no great awareness that an extensive psychology of belief

already exists. Moreover, misunderstandings about the nature of belief
are widespread, including the identification of belief with mere belief,
giving the impression that propositional attitudes, of which belief is the
classic case, are subject to grave problems of subjectivity and indeter-
minacy. The influential work of the philosopher Dennett (1969, 1981)
suggests that propositional attitudes are no more than a convenient
shorthand for describing complex systems and should not be treated as
psychological constructs. Similar views have come from within artificial
intelligence itself. Anderson (1976, p. 16) doubts that a psychological
theory of cognition can be found true or false. The most that can be
hoped for by way of an empirical test is some evidence that one theory
is more efficient than another, as the basis for a teaching strategy, for
example. In fact, it is likely that many people working in artificial
intelligence now consider psychological theories a waste of time
Oohnson-Laird, 1981). The theories seem both unverifiable, since they
cannot be translated in an unambiguous way into a particular program,
and unnecessary in any case, since the programs will prompt their own
questions in due course without requiring a psychological interpreta-
tion. Not surprisingly, the view has been expressed that artificial
intelligence contributes to cognitive psychology in somewhat the same
way that chess and symbolic logic were once thought to contribute to
philosophy, by sharpening the mind, and so on Oohnson-Laird, 1981, p.
185). This is also a way of conceding that the models themselves may
not refer to anything.
A broader perspective on cognitive theory, one broad enough to
encompass the approaches to the topic of belief reviewed above, does
not give grounds for such skepticism and suggests that the problems of
cognitive science are more specific to its unique methodology than
many of its proponents realize. In particular, the intense focus of cogni-
tive science on procedures, which in turn are likely to be content-
specific, has tended to elevate the notion of rationality into something of
a mystery. Stich (1982) notes that Dennett's agnosticism is grounded in
a pervasive notion of "ideal rationality," concerning which, however, no
details have ever been given. Within artificial intelligence, also, one
encounters quasi-mystical notions of rationality as researchers try to
embed particular procedures in a more general model of the cognitive
subject. An example is provided by Newell (1982), in which a notion of
rationality is introduced which would in effect make it impossible to
distinguish between belief, knowledge, and behavior.
In areas of cognitive psychology which were not procedure-bound
to the same degree, it has been possible to introduce models of
rationality that were in no danger of eroding basic distinctions. There is

no single model of rationality, of course, and that is perhaps the most
important lesson. The rationality of the belief system must be described
piecemeal: by fitting models from logic (deductive and inductive) and
decision theory, by describing the strategies apparent in the interaction
of belief and metabelief, and by finding suitable formalisms for the
many patterns which are emergent in the infralogical structure of beiief
systems, so that they, too, may be described eventually as effective
adaptations to the task at hand. From this broader and more eclectic
point of view, propOSitional attitudes have not in practice been trouble-
some, or even unusual, as constructs in an empirical psychology (Fodor,
1979).
On the other hand, there is another form of indeterminacy in the
theory of belief that is more real but has not attracted much attention. It
concerns shifting levels of analysis conceptual, propositional, and
metapropositional. Having reviewed the literature, one is tempted to
say that belief as a psychological phenomenon exists only in the inter-
play of different levels of processing. But this also is too sweeping a
statement. Many everyday beliefs, such as those about tomorrow's
weather, can be described as propositional attitudes pure and simple
and the less said about concepts and metabeliefs the better. Yet the fact
remains that almost all the important issues that can be raised concern-
ing belief will require shifts in levels of analysis. One is forced to dis-
tinguish between assertive and subassertive modes of arousal, between
processes that are confirmatory and others that are heuristic. One is for-
ced to look not only at the proposition that is taken to be true but also at
the conceptual structures from which propositions emerge and at the
metabeliefs that influence, from above, the transmission of credibility
between one proposition and another. In both cases one encounters
what Rozeboom (1961) calls the "infra-rational" components of belief.
Operating from the top down are certain ideas of simplicity, coherence,
and naturalness that are realized in bodies of propositions and in-
fluence the credibility of individual propositions within them. And
operating from the bottom up are data patterns compelling belief in
theoretical entities in ways which cannot be defended by any existing
logic. The study of these processes will no doubt be a major concern of
the psychology of belief in the years ahead.
With regard to methodology, the review suggests that the pro-
positional structure of belief should be declared at the outset and belief
introduced as a propositional attitude, thus leaving the way clear for a
more effective description of the infrarational structures that impinge
on it from both sides. This would bring cognitive theory back into align-
346 Owen Egan
ment not only with the definition of cognition but also with its own data
base, which consists in almost all cases of propositions taken to be true.
It would also lessen the chances of misunderstandings arising from
unacknowledged shifts from propositional to conceptual or to meta-
propositional levels of analysis. Such shifts, we noted, are common in
the study of belief.
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5

The Concept of Belief in

Abstract. Belief is introduced as the cognitive act or state in which a proposition is

Among the many definitions proposed by philosophers for cognitive

Owen Egan. linguistics Institute of Ireland, 31 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2, Ireland.

L. P. Mos (ed.), Annals of Theoretical Psychology

However, when cognitive psychology is looked at under the

2.1. Propositional Attitudes

to identify the probability directly with the degree to which a proposi-

2.2. Belief and Mere Belief

2.3. Acts and States of Belief

associate belief with reflection to a degree that makes the notion of

2.4. Belief and Metabelief

change. In many situations what is believed and what is meant are so

3. Belief as a Propositional Attitude

3.1. Belief and Attitude

where A is a general attitude toward the object in question, and the aj

icated of it, each weighted by a factor p, the subjective probability of its

"precursors of subjective probability," although it may be more plaus-

3.2. Attitudes Inferred from Deviant Belief

p(C) = p(A)p(B) (2)

The multiplication rule from probability calculus now becomes a model

Kahneman and Tversky (1972) do in the case of naive statistical

4. Belief as Subjective Probability

A difficulty with ratings of belief strength that we did not mention

4.1. Decision Theory and Subjective Probability

where EU(A), the expected utility of an action A, is given as a weighted

wherein the subjective probability p is given as the ratio of two subjec-

Many interesting sources of error in our everyday and even in our

still persists. The isolation of the judgmental tradition, we are suggest-

4.2. Belief and Metabelief

special interest are beliefs about the cognitive properties of pro-

4.3. Indeterminacy of the Concept of Belief

terms of belief, that is, the assignment of subjective probabilities to pro-

permit beliefs to be formed and transmitted between them. Hence the

The involvement of belief with rationality, or at any rate with some

5.1. Deductive Inference

need not distinguish here between the logic of sentences, terms, or

p(A) = p(AB) + p(AB) (5)

and then expanding the terms on the right

p(A) = p(B)p(AIB) + p(B)p(AIB) (6)

Wyer produced a deduction which has proved remarkably versatile not

5.2. Inductive Inference

where p denotes the subjective probability of the inductive conclusion,

if the Wiei represented increments (or decrements) of credibility which

the earlier work of Scott and others on cognitive structure, in which

5.3. The Genesis of Belief in Theoretical Entities

attention in his campaign for a more prolonged "exploratory" phase of

elled in the regression equation discussed earlier, or those derived from

p. 182). On these grounds one is justified in using developmental con-

In view of the difficulties faced by the mentalistic theory of belief, it

6.1. The Concept of Belief in Learning Theory

Fishbein (1967b) presents the adult belief system as a Hullian

legitimate to satirize Piaget's notion of belief as a form of adaptation, or

idea that they explain the production of an individual belief or assertion.

6.2. Associations in Modem Cognitive Theory

work (Dulany, 1968, Rozeboom, 1969). Free associations pose similar

7. Summary and Conclusions

Belief, considered as the propositional attitude implicit in every

usually no great awareness that an extensive psychology of belief

rationality that were in no danger of eroding basic distinctions. There is

Abelson, R. P. (1967). A technique and a model for multi-dimensional attitude scaling. In

Egan, O. (1980). Intonation and meaning. Journal of Psycholinguistics Research, 9, 23-