being See HEIDEGGER, METAPHYSICS, TRANSCEN -. DENTAL. belief, a dispositional psychological state in virtue of which a person will assent to a proposition under certain conditions. Propositional knowledge, traditionally understood, entails belief. A behavioral view implies that beliefs are just dispositions to behave in certain ways. Your believing that the stove is hot is just your being disposed to act in a manner appropriate to its being hot. The problem is that our beliefs, including their propositional content indicated by a ‘that’-clause, typically explain why we do what we do. You avoid touching the stove because you believe that it’s dangerously hot. Explaining action via beliefs refers indispensably to propositional content, but the behavioral view does not accommodate this. A state-object view implies that belief consists of a special relation between a psychological state and an object of belief, what is believed. The objects of belief, traditionally understood, are abstract propositions existing independently of anyone’s thinking of them. The state of believing is a propositional attitude involving some degree of confidence toward a propositional object of belief. Such a view allows that two persons, even separated by a long period of time, can believe the same thing. A state-object view allows that beliefs be dispositional rather than episodic, since they can exist while no action is occurring. Such a view grants, however, that one can have a disposition to act owing to believing something. Regarding mental action, a belief typically generates a disposition to assent, at least under appropriate circumstances, to the proposition believed. Given the central role of propositional content, however, a state-object view denies that beliefs are just dispositions to act. In addition, such a view should distinguish between dispositional believing and a mere disposition to believe. One can be merely disposed to believe many things that one does not actually believe, owing to one’s lacking the appropriate psychological attitude to relevant propositional content. Beliefs are either occurrent or non-occurrent. Occurrent belief, unlike non-occurrent belief, requires current assent to the proposition believed. If the assent is self-conscious, the belief is an explicit occurrent belief; if the assent is not self-conscious, the belief is an implicit occurrent belief. Non-occurrent beliefs permit that we do not cease to believe that 2 ! 2 % 4, for instance, merely because we now happen to be thinking of something else or nothing at all. See also ACT-OBJECT PSYCHOLOGY, BEHAV- IORISM , DISPOSITION , PHILOSOPHY OF MIN. P.K.M.