Six Levels of Mentality

Abstract

Examination of recent debates about belief shows the need to distinguish: (a) non–linguistic informational states in animal perception; (b) the uncritical use of language, e.g. by children; (c) adult humans' reasoned judgments. If we also distinguish between mind-directed and object–directed mental states, we have:1. Perceptual ‘beliefs’ of animals and infants about their material environment.2. ‘Beliefs’ of animals and infants about the mental states of others.3. Linguistically-expressible beliefs about the world, resulting from e.g. the uncritical tendency to believe what we are told.4. Uncritically-formed beliefs about the mental states.5. Beliefs about the material world arrived at by the weighing of evidence.6. Beliefs about mental states formed by critical assessment.

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