Description
People have beliefs about the stars, but also about the ground beneath their feet. People have beliefs about gods and goddesses, but also about the whereabouts of their neighbor's cat. From abstract mathematics to concrete sidewalks, people represent ideas and aspects of the world by believing various things. This Handbook gathers together entries on some of the most important questions surrounding belief as a topic in cognitive science: how does belief relate to perception? Do we have control over what we believe? What does the placebo effect tell us about belief? How did the capacity for believing evolve? Can non-human animals have beliefs? Does believing come in degrees? Do we have ethical obligations to believe certain things and not others? All these questions and more are addressed in this handbook, which brings together state-of-the-art work in the cognitive sciences, including anthropology, cognitive psychology, computational modelling, philosophy, political science, and more. The result is a resource for both experts and those new to the field, detailing progress made and also charting a course for further developments in the cognitive science of belief.