scholarly journals Story stimuli for creating false beliefs about the world

2004 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 650-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth J. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
False Beliefs ◽  
The World

Truth and the Diversity of Religions

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Ward
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Human Destiny

I will be concerned with only one problem about truth which is raised by the diversity of religions which exist in the world. The problem is this: many religions claim to state truths about the nature of the universe and human destiny which are important or even necessary for human salvation and ultimate well-being. Many of these truths seem to he incompatible; yet there is no agreed method for deciding which are to he accepted; and equally intelligent, informed, virtuous and holy people belong to different faiths. It seems, therefore, that a believing member of any one tradition is compelled to regard all other traditions as holding false beliefs and therefore as not leading to salvation. Since each faith forms a minority of the world's population, all religious believers thus seem committed to saying that most intelligent, virtuous and spiritually devoted people cannot know the truth or attain salvation. This is a problem, because it is in tension with the belief, held by many traditions, that the supremely real being is concerned for the salvation of all rational creatures. How can this he so if, through no fault of their own, most creatures cannot come to know the truth and thereby attain salvation?

The Theology of Plato in Book X of the Laws: an Evolving Perspective

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
Anastasios Ladikos
Keyword(s):  
Moral Character ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Judgment ◽  
Small Parts ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Rational Direction

This paper deals with Plato’s theology based mainly on Book X of the Laws. According to Plato, there are three false beliefs which are fatal to moral character, namely atheism, denial of the moral government of the world, and the belief that divine judgment can be bought off by prayers and offerings. Furthermore, legislation is an embodiment of the divine laws that govern the universe, and therefore it is the task of the legislator to see that every aspect of the state is directed to the inculcation of virtue. Human beings are seen as small parts of the universe and that the gods’ care for human affairs is seen as part of their care for the whole. Plato reinforces the argument that since the universe is under rational direction, one can be certain that what happens to humans after death will be appropriate to the character they have acquired in this life. The message is thus conveyed that people will in some way be rewarded or punished after death, without relying on the kind of mythical detail which the young atheist would obviously reject.

Uncomfortable Truths

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. Nosek
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Research ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Good Story ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
And Control

Beliefs help humans make sense of the world, allowing us to understand our past and present and to predict and control our future. Our most elaborate beliefs are explanations of ourselves — who we are, what we are like and why we do the things we do. Forty years of psychological research reveal that humans are superb at generating explanations for their behavior but not accurate explanations. Self-explanations appear to say more about human capacity for telling a good story than the quality of self-insight. But identifying and giving up false beliefs is not so simple. Like possessions, we hold on to beliefs about ourselves long past their usefulness.

Myths, Lies and Historical Truth: A Defence of Nationalism

1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Archard
Keyword(s):  
False Beliefs ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
National Myths ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
The Way

This article examines the charge that nationalism is simply mistaken about the way the world is. It argues that it would be better to talk of national myths which are not myths proper, nor complete falsities, and which bear a complex relation to the truth. They may contain some truth, and give rise to true beliefs. National myths may also be justifiable for serving cognitive and affective purposes. They may be condemned for giving rise to unjustifiable false beliefs, for requiring the unjustified manipulation of the facts, or for sustaining unjustifiable states of affairs.

scholarly journals Preschoolers represent others’ false beliefs about emotions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Sierra Smith-Flores ◽  
Lisa Feigenson
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Developmental Progression ◽  
The World ◽  
Beliefs About Emotions

The ability to track and explicitly report another’s beliefs about the world, even when those beliefs conflict with reality, is a milestone that children typically attain between the ages of 3 and 5 years. The majority of work investigating the development of false belief representation has probed children’s ability to track beliefs about tangible entities, such as an object’s location. However, false beliefs are not content specific; they can be about anything that can be represented, including entities that are not directly observable, like others’ emotions. Across two experiments, we tested 3- to 5-year-old children’s ability to track someone else’s false beliefs about an object’s location, versus about an agent’s emotional state (N=160). Our findings reveal parallel developmental progression across the two content types Our findings suggest that young children likely represent false beliefs about any content that they themselves can represent—an ability that emerges over the preschool years.

“And He Ate Jim Crow”

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-58
Author(s):  
Vanessa Wills
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
False Consciousness ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
First Order ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Positive Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Racist Ideology

Why do racist oppression and capitalist exploitation often seem so inescapable and intractable? To describe and explain adequately the persistence of racist ideology, to specify its role in the maintenance of racial capitalism, and to imagine the conditions of its abolition, we must understand racist ideology as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness gets things “right” at the level of appearance, but it mistakes that appearance for a “deep” or essential truth. This chapter articulates a novel, positive account of first-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about the world that are sustained and superficially justified by objective social arrangements, and of second-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about how one has come to hold the beliefs that one does. To dismantle racist ideology requires political movements that craft theoretical interventions highlighting the inessentiality and contingency of despised racial groups’ oppressed status, as well as practical interventions aimed at directly undermining the oppressive conditions that are reflected in racist beliefs about the “naturalness” or “appropriateness” of these groups’ degraded status.

scholarly journals Schizophrenia and theory of mind

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. FRITH
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
The State ◽  
Actual State ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Seminal Paper ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

We suspect that people have an everyday theory of mind because they explain and frequently talk about the behaviour of others and themselves in terms of beliefs and desires. Having a theory of mind means that we believe that other people have minds like ours and that we understand the behaviour of these others in terms of the contents of their minds: their knowledge, beliefs and desires. But how can we demonstrate experimentally that people are using their theory of mind to predict the behaviour of others. This problem is particularly acute in the case of animals or young human children when they do not have language. Dennett (1978) discussing Premack & Woodruff's (1978) seminal paper ‘Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?’, suggested that the use of false beliefs to explain behaviour would provide convincing evidence. When their belief is true (i.e. corresponds to the actual state of the world) we can explain peoples' behaviour on the basis of the state of the world without needing to know about their beliefs. This ambiguity does not arise when the belief is false. The first experiment to use this approach was published by Wimmer & Perner (1983). They showed that at around 4 years of age a child knows that Maxi will look for his chocolates where Maxi believes them to be, even though the child knows that this belief is false because he has seen Maxi's mother moving the chocolates. In the English-speaking world the task involving Maxi and the chocolates has become the Sally-Anne task (see this issue, Lee et al. 2004).

scholarly journals RATIONALISM AND THE THEATRE IN LUCRETIUS

2016 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barnaby Taylor
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Direct Contribution ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethical Project

Lucretius' primary didactic aim in De Rerum Natura (DRN) is to teach his readers to interpret the world around them in such a way as to avoid the formation of false beliefs. The price of failure is extremely high. Someone who possesses false beliefs is liable to experience fear (of the gods, or of death, or both), and so will not be able to attain the state of tranquillity that, for Epicureans, constitutes the moral end. Equipping readers with sufficient knowledge always to form true beliefs about the phenomena they encounter thus serves no less a purpose than the enabling of their future happiness. This paper is concerned with how Lucretian intertextuality contributes to this primary didactic aim. For reasons to be explained below, I will focus on Lucretian engagement with the texts of Greek and Roman drama. I will show that allusions to drama in DRN, rather than functioning simply as ‘honey on the rim of the cup’, make a direct contribution to Lucretius' ethical project, teaching readers how to respond rationally to the full variety of their cultural experience.

scholarly journals Closed-Minded Cognition: Right-Wing Authoritarianism is Negatively Related to Belief Updating Following Prediction Error

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Hannah Sinclair ◽  
Matthew Stanley ◽  
Paul Seli
Keyword(s):  
Educational Psychology ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Prediction Error ◽  
Order Structure ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Belief Updating ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
New Information ◽  
The World

When confronted with information that challenges our beliefs, we must often learn from error in order to successfully navigate the world. Past studies in reinforcement learning and educational psychology have linked prediction error, a measure of surprise, to successful learning from feedback. However, there are substantial individual differences in belief-updating success, and the psychological factors that influence belief updating remain unclear. Here, we identify a novel factor that may predict belief updating: Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), which is characterized by a desire for order, structure, and preservation of social norms. We hypothesized that, because people who score high on RWA are motivated to preserve entrenched beliefs, they may often fail to successfully update their beliefs when confronted with new information. Using a novel paradigm, we challenged participants’ false beliefs and misconceptions to elicit prediction error. In two studies, we found consistent evidence that high-RWA individuals were less successful at correcting their false beliefs. Relative to low-RWA individuals, high-RWA individuals were less likely to revise beliefs in response to prediction error. We argue that RWA is associated with a relatively closed-minded cognitive style that negatively influences belief updating.

scholarly journals The Developmental Origins of False-Belief Understanding

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rose M. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Developmental Origins ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Older Children ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
The World

Understanding that individuals can be mistaken, or hold false beliefs, about the world is an important human ability that plays a vital role in social interactions. When and how does this ability develop? Traditional investigations using elicited-response tasks suggested that false-belief understanding did not emerge until at least age 4. However, more recent studies have shown that children demonstrate false-belief understanding much earlier when tested via other means. In the present article, I summarize recent evidence that a robust, flexible understanding of false belief emerges in infancy and discuss why older children fail elicited-response tasks despite their ability to represent beliefs.

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