It’s a short and up to date description of what’s now a fully interdisciplinary research program on LoT. And it’s accessible to students (unlike…a lot of work on the topic, especially our own!)

Our entry (with @ericman.bsky.social ) for the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, “The Language of Thought Hypothesis”, is now out.

doi.org/10.21428/e27...

🎉Our paper "Three- and Four-Year-Old Children Represent Mutually Exclusive Possible Identities" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology!
You can read the preprint here: osf.io/rx4h9 (1/5)

This is a great point. We agree misinfo is generally pretty effective. It’s also part of the architecture we propose that people tend to *reject* claims that if accepted, would be crushing for their worldview.

Here’s the link, which didn’t come through: philarchive.org/rec/PORBDC

Unlearned behavioral responses? Concrete proposals could push the cognitive science of belief forward.

Our paper is forthcoming in What is Belief? an OUP volume edited by Eric Schwitzgebel and Jonathan Jong. Many thanks to Eric and Jonathan! (15/15)

We bet this is because the deer have beliefs about the predators, and maybe even about the predators’ thoughts. Mercier, presumably, disagrees. But what specifically explains the stotting on such views? Some process of reinforcement of stotting in the presence of predators? (14/15)

For example, Hugo Mercier, in his recent book length criticism of gullibility, discusses the case of white-tailed deer, which stot (jump up and down) when spotted by predators, offering an unfakeable signal of fitness, and sparing both deer and predators a fruitless chase. (13/15)

Focusing on beliefs that are remotest from communicative practices--e.g., in animal cognition and in immediately accepting perceptual info-- can help bring into focus differences between competing architectures here. (12/15)

domain.

An interesting way for this debate to move forward is to consider what alternative, anti-gullibillity architectures will look like. For those inclined toward an evo-psych-friendly massive modularity view, for example, where does belief figure in that framework? (11/15)

offer a positive account of the cognitive architecture of belief, which we have written about elsewhere (philpapers.org/rec/MANTSO-25). We argue that beliefs are: (1) formed automatically, (2) stored in causally isolated fragments, and (3) differentially scrutinized based on content (10/15)

for fifty years cognitive scientists have been studying the illusory truth effect, by which mere exposure to claims, even totally implausible ones, induces belief. Some of the most important recent work on this topic is from @lkfazio.bsky.social and her collaborators. (9/15)

More importantly, however, when one looks at core findings in the science of belief, there doesn’t seem to be a need for an intuitive/reflective divide.

E.g. (8/15)

in the Global South.

Perhaps people merely endorse certain claims (“reflectively” believing them, as some say), but wouldn’t act on them (“intuitively” believing them)? We think, instead, that someone claiming that p is often evidence for …they believe that p! (7/15)

Here, many proponents argue that we’ve been fed misinformation about misinfomation—they say its spread is limited and its influence is minimal. We argue that this optimistic perspective (1) doesn't do justice to the data, and (2) ignores non-US-centric cases of misinformation, especially (6/15)

Even in humans, our immediate perceptual beliefs ("There's a desk in front of me") are largely unrelated to our ability to communicate about them.

A more vivid example of human gullibility to those reading this might be the prevalence of fake news. (5/15)

communicative practices. And when one looks at research in comparative cognition, there is increasing evidence that many species have other belief-like abilities—like logical reasoning, or anticipating theft of hidden-away food. (4/15)

cheats. However, one obvious problem for this view is: animals have beliefs! It is extremely plausible that animals evolved the ability to "believe their eyes" (i.e., accept perceptual information as true and use it for cognition) prior to the evolution of potentially misleading (3/15)

just as gullible as they seem to be.

The "people-aren’t-gullible" camp say that belief is fundamentally about *communication *. Specifically, they argue that belief formation and rejection emerged in tandem during evolution to ensure that communication would not be hijacked by liars and (2/15)

How gullible are people? If you’ve been following Twitter recently (or um…The New Yorker?) you might have seen that lots of people think: not so much!

In a forthcoming paper (philarchive.org/rec/PORBDC), @ericman.bsky.social and I argue for the opposite view: people are (with some nuance) (1/15)

We are hiring a postdoc! We're looking for someone interested in perception, imagination & consciousness, and with experience in neuroimaging (the focus is fMRI but MEG/EEG is ok). Vision science, machine learning and philosophy nerds please apply! subjectivity.sites.northeastern.edu/research/hot...