Belief Change

Undergraduate

We say things in an attempt to change other people’s minds. In ordinary conversation, speakers and listeners begin with a set of beliefs they take to be shared. The things we say are designed to update that shared understanding by introducing new information, challenging existing beliefs, or guiding others toward certain conclusions. How this happens is surprisingly complex. Speakers rarely state everything they mean outright, and listeners routinely infer meanings that go beyond what is explicitly said. Successful belief-change depends on context, background knowledge, and the kinds of reasoning speakers and listeners perform about each other’s minds. In this seminar, we bring together work from psychology, philosophy of language, and linguistics to explore how speakers use language and other means to influence others’ beliefs and how listeners infer meaning from what is said and from what is left unsaid. SO Th 1:30pm-3:25pm