Belief as Emotion

Belief as Emotion argues that belief is a type of emotion, where emotions are understood as irreducibly blended states that transcend the cognitive/non-cognitive divide, containing representational, motivational and phenomenological elements. On this view to believe is to feel that the way one represents the world is accurate and this feeling is a kind of evaluation. This view helps explain a number of puzzling phenomena in epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and philosophy of religion. Further, thinking of beliefs as emotions helps us to understand the ethics of belief. It offers a better understanding of what are sometimes called “edge cases” of beliefs, ones that seem belief-like but that are hard to fit into most standard pictures of belief. These include delusions, religious and political attitudes, and belief in the context of trust.

Given their complicated relationship to evidence and action, many theorists claim that such attitudes should not be categorized as beliefs, but as a different mental state. Belief as Emotion does not force us to exclude states as real beliefs that we pre-reflectively think of as beliefs, and that does not require us to “outsource” the work belief seems to do to other mental states. The view also illuminates the phenomena of self-deception, implicit bias, and deep disagreement. Ideal emotional maintenance is complex; thinking of beliefs as emotions acknowledges and embraces this complexity of our doxastic lives.