Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Within AI and the cognitively related disciphnes, there exist a multiplicity of uses of 'belief. On the face of it, these differing uses reflect differing views about the nature of an objective phenomenon called belief. In this paper I distinguish six distinct ways in which 'belief is used in AI. I shall argue that no tall these uses reflect a difference of opinion about an objective feature of reality. Raiher, in some cases,the differing uses reflect differing concerns with special AI applications. In other cases, however, genuine differences exist about the nature of what we pre-theoretically call belief. To an extent, the multiplicity of opinions about, and uses of 'belief, echoes the discrepant motivations of AI researchers. The relevance of this discussion for cognitive science arises from the fact that (a) many regard theoretical research within AI as a branch of cognitive science, and (b) even if theoretical AI is not cognitive science, u-ends within AI influence theories developed within cognitive science. It should be beneficial, therefore, to unravel the distinct uses and motivations surrounding 'belief, in order to discover which usages merely rcflccl differing pragmatic concerns, and which usages genuinely reflect divergent views about reality.