Do beliefs and other abstract things exist/What is in your mind?

Reading: real patterns

Do “abstract things” exist? Tables, rocks, and brains exist. But what about magnetic fields? What about forces, centres of gravity, or space time? We can’t see them or sense them directly, but we can see their effects. They are abstract objects conceived to explain/understand what we see. What is their causal role?

Going further, what about beliefs, mental visualization, computer programs, or mathematical patterns? Perhaps it depends on what you mean by “exist”.

One illustrative view is Dennett’s notion of “real patterns”. He gives several interesting examples of abstract patterns and considers whether they are “real”. He explores a few possible positions of “realism”: Fodor’s Industrial Strength Realism, Dennett’s soft instrumentalism, Rorty’s instrumentalism, Churchland’s eliminativism.

The main abstract entity he tackles in his paper is “beliefs”; are they real?

“Beliefs” in the tradition of philosophy of mind are defined as “propositional attitudes” e.g. "Snow is white", "Jason hopes Sally likes him" (recursive). They don’t inherently require any notion of certainty/uncertainty or any extended reflection about the matter in question. Much of epistemology revolves around questions about when and how our beliefs are justified or qualify as knowledge (though this will not be our primary discussion focus in this session).

Beliefs are common in everyday language and an intuitive way of assessing a person’s outlook. E.G. surveys will ask “do vaccines cause autism?”. They’re also an intuitive way of predicting a person’s behavior. Indeed, the ability to model another person’s beliefs is considered a crucial step in psychological development (Child empathy test), and is used more generally by social science (Conspiracy theory beliefs scale). It is common to suppose of beliefs as “in the mind”, and that they play a causal role in our behavior (e.g. Sally went to the market because she thinks there are apples on sale).

Could such a basic assumption be mistaken?

Take the following scenario:
Sam and Jane have known John their entire lives. They grew up together in the same neighbourhood, attended the same schools, had the same interests and hobbies. Further, they regularly hang out together and catch up on each others’ lives. In short, the three are exceedingly familiar with each other to the degree where each can predict reasonably well what the other will do in many circumstances.

Say, then, that we prod both Sam and Jane, asking them if they think John will move out from the neighbourhood. Sam thinks so, but Jane thinks otherwise. John moves out the next day.

Assuming both Sam and Jane both possess equivalent facts relevant to John, what should we make of the discrepancy between Sam and Jane’s verdict?

We could say that Jane is simply wrong about John, or that Jane had the wrong sorts of beliefs about John. But that is simply uninteresting, given that we have already established that Jane was reliably predicting John’s action as well as Sam.

If we grant that the scenario above is plausible, then we have our work cut out for us. What is it that we could point to, to settle the matter that the whole body of beliefs about John of either Sam or Jane is correct or incorrect? Should we say that there are specific physical structures or biological phenomena within John’s brain that determine the matter? Is this even the right question to pose?

Join us as we grapple with Dennett's exploration of beliefs in his paper—Real Patterns.