Basic Affective Beliefs

ABSTRACT This paper develops an account of basic affective beliefs. These are basic beliefs that are dominated by an affective component. Basicness encompasses several dimensions: structural (non‐propositional), format (non‐conceptual and modality‐specific), evolutionary (shared across many taxa) and epistemic (basic affective beliefs prima facie self‐verifying). We also outline a theory of content for basic affective beliefs: we argue that they have imperatival content, representing the ‘to‐be‐doneness’ of an entity or situation. Together, elements of our account allow us to challenge the widely held view that affective beliefs are irrational and unreliable. This presumption stems from the observation that they seem to resist correction, as when a person fears small dogs, while also believing that they are harmless. On our analysis, the person who fears a small dog represents it as a to‐be‐escaped thing, and this representation lacks conventional truth‐conditions because it is not propositional. Instead, it has accuracy conditions, which are often satisfied (we argue) in cases such as this. After presenting this analysis, we distinguish basic affective beliefs from related constructs: percepts, aliefs and beliefs construed as emotions. Finally, we show that our account can be applied with novel implications to a range of cases, including phobias, outlaw emotions, basic ethical and aesthetic beliefs and animal minds.