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| Contradictory Beliefs from the Perspective of Mental Action: A New Study of Kripke’s Puzzle about Belief |
| Luo Zixin |
| School of Marxism, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China |
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Abstract Against the background of debates over the meaning of names in the philosophy of language, Saul Kripke proposed a puzzle about names and beliefs in 1979. However, this puzzle, has in fact surpassed beliefs expressed using names. It extends even further to the broader concept of belief, which should be solved by any theory of belief attribution. In this paper, we propose a new solution to this puzzle.As a philosophical puzzle, Kripke’s puzzle about belief is derived from some premises. Kripke mentions the disquotational principle and the principle of translation. He further distinguishes between the simple disquotational principle and the strengthened disquotational principle. We argue that different conclusions can be derived from different versions of Kripke’s disquational principle, which in turn can distinguish between two different forms of contradictory beliefs: explicitly contradictory beliefs and implicitly contradictory beliefs. As humans, we are rational. Certainly, we should not have explicitly contradictory beliefs. Kripke’s Pierre shows that sometimes indeed we have implicit contradictory beliefs. This distinction needs to be drawn to show that holding implicitly contradictory beliefs is not in conflict with rationality.According to our distinction, normal rational people can reasonably have implicitly contradictory beliefs. If so, where do implicitly contradictory beliefs come from? We further argue that one’s intuition about the puzzle suggests that contradictory beliefs arise through the unfavorable emergence of empirical facts. Therefore, we think that Kripke’s puzzle about belief results from the occurrence of unfavorable empirical facts. If empirical facts favorably occur, i.e. if Pierre later moves to the downtown district of London, or if his impression of London when he was in France comes from some pictures of an unpleasant part of London, then there would be no puzzles. The generation mechanism of implicitly contradictory beliefs can be reasonably explained by introducing the concept of situation.Finally, this paper argues that by distinguishing between mental action and its products, a plausible explanation can be provided for how contradictory beliefs work, which is indicated by another intuition about the puzzle, i.e. direct language acquisition. In Kripke’s puzzle about belief, different language acquisition methods and experiences are essentially different mental actions that form beliefs. Pierre finally obtained contradictory beliefs through different mental actions in different situations. Because these two contradictory beliefs are in two independent sets of beliefs, Pierre cannot realize the contradictory nature of his beliefs. At this point, Pierre was in a cognitive dissonance situation. Until some other mental actions (such as learning English by indirect means) occur, the products of which (knowledge about translation between English and French) interact and integrate the original two independent sets of beliefs, Pierre finally realized that he himself had contradictory beliefs. This will prompt him to consciously eliminate the contradictory beliefs through some further mental actions.In summary, this article treats Kripke’s puzzle about belief purely as a puzzle about belief attribution. We distinguish between explicitly contradictory beliefs and implicitly contradictory beliefs. By introducing the concept of situation, a normal person can rationally possess implicitly contradictory beliefs due to the unfavorable appearance of empirical facts. The limits of reason should mean that there are no explicitly contradictory beliefs, and that does not conflict with having implicitly contradictory beliefs. A plausible explanation for conflicting beliefs can be given by introducing the concept of mental actions. Returning to the original context in which Kripke’s puzzle about belief was put forward, the analyses and conclusions presented in this paper have the following positive implications: the point of the introduction of mental actions is to take language users into the meaning of that language in a more natural way. Accordingly, a more reasonable theory of meaning should break down the binary relationship between language and the world, include the elements of language users, and fundamentally explore the relationships between language and the world, language and mind, language and social community, and mind and the world.
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Received: 08 April 2022
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2023, Vol. 53 
