Technology Department
An alief is an automatic response to how something seems. Aliefs often contradict our explicit beliefs and what we know.
Tamar Gendler developed the idea in two 2008 papers and since then the concept has been taken up by others, like philosopher Daniel Dennett and Yale psychologist Paul Bloom. Aliefs match patterns of responses to certain events or images. While we may be aware of the automatic response, we are not in control it. Gendler uses the example of the Grand Canyon Skywalk. Tourists have the belief they are safe but their alief makes them afraid to walk onto the glass walkway.
Gendler says we can’t think of aliefs as rational or irrational.
“[They’re] more primative than beliefs or desires,” she says.
Humans share their aliefs with animals. We might use the language of belief or desires to describe aliefs but it’s only an approximation.
Philosopher Paul Davies argues that given what we know about the evolution of the brain, we can speculate that “alief-like states” evolved before the faculties of belief and imagination. It’s also speculated that the imagination and belief might be byproducts of the alief.
Paul Bloom argues that an alief shows us how our minds are “partially indifferent” to whether events we believe are real versus events that we only imagine are real.
Gendler’s idea of the alief reminds us that people are in less control of their minds that we believe.
With files from Tamar Gendler and Paul Bloom
