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Formal theories of knowledge, belief, and partial belief usually make the idealizing assumption that an agent's knowledge or beliefs are closed under logical consequence—that knowers or believers are logically omniscient. This paper aims to clarify the nature of and motivation for this idealization. It is argued that it is more difficult than is sometimes supposed to give an adequate representation of belief or knowledge that avoids this idealization. Different ways of distinguishing implicit from explicit belief are distinguished. It is argued that while one can avoid logical omniscience by building linguistic structure into the contents of belief and knowledge, this fails to address the underlying problem, which is a problem about the accessibility or availability of information to influence action.

This chapter begins with the explicit acknowledgment that the implicit belief of scientists, including psychologists, is that science is a good thing. It proceeds to ask whether this belief is actually fulfilled in the use of science in our world. The chapter is forced to conclude that, as a general proposition, it is not. Thus, this chapter asks whether science can use its capacities and understandings to address the disconnect between the often unexpressed implicit aspirations for science and its current pragmatic and manifest explicit exploitations. The chapter proposes that science can achieve such reconciliation, but, pragmatically, is much less sanguine about the enactment of such efforts. Failure of this nontraditional extension of the scientific enterprise would seem to harbinger our demise as a species.

This chapter proposes a framework for thinking about implicit bias and how we can control it. It argues that systematic implicit bias is best thought of as a form of belief, which can conflict with the subject’s explicit beliefs. Explicit belief itself is identified with a kind of active acceptance, yielding a dual-level view of the human mind, in which a passive implicit level supports an active explicit one—a view that has close links with dual-process theory. The chapter then turns to self-control. If we are systematically biased, how can we form unbiased explicit beliefs and make them effective in action? The dual-level view offers novel answers, assigning a crucial role to certain metacognitive attitudes, which constitute what we call strength of will. The chapter sets out the conditions for deliberate override of implicit bias and outlines some predictions of the proposed account.

This chapter describes the content and organization of the experiential system, one of the two modes of information processing invoked in the cognitive-experiential theory (CET) of personality, the other being the rational system. More specifically, it examines implicit basic needs and the implicit beliefs derived from them, along with the connection between emotions and implicit beliefs. It also considers the encoding of implicit beliefs and the organization of implicit theories of reality. Finally, it discusses two kinds of implicit beliefs, or schemas, in people's experiential systems according to CET: descriptive schemas and motivational schemas.

This chapter describes ARC’s third strategy of employing mental models. This strategy fosters reasoning and thinking that reinforces the use of ARC’s organizational components and that maintains alignment with ARC’s five principles of effective service organizations. Reasoning and thinking are reflected in the mental representations of work experiences service providers hold, and these mental models guide priorities followed when providing services. Case examples are provided to illustrate work with mental models to influence organizational members’ thinking, reasoning, and subsequent actions to improve service quality and outcomes. This chapter reviews the empirical evidence for mental models, including research from social cognition and neuroscience. The description of this strategy highlights several activities and techniques used to explore and alter mental models. These activities foster examination of implicit assumptions and beliefs that help drive reasoning and thinking toward or away from ARC’s key organizational principles, tools, and desired OSCs.

This chapter explores mid-level implicit needs and beliefs, lower-level implicit needs and beliefs, emotions, and other feeling states in relation to the cognitive-experiential theory (CET) of personality. It considers the action tendencies of primary emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, happiness and joy, love and affection, as well as the ancillary components of such emotions; primary emotions as nature's compromise between instinctive and learned behavior; secondary emotions; unresolved feeling states; and vibes. The chapter concludes by discussing the importance of feelings in CET.

This chapter begins the discussion of moral responsibility. First, it argues, in keeping with hard determinists, incompatibilism is intuitive. That is, people tend to think that if determinism were true, this would threaten the idea that people are morally responsible. One important alternative interpretation is that people mistake determinism for bypassing. This chapter argues against this and other compatibilist interpretations of people’s implicit beliefs about determinism and responsibility. However, incompatibilism is just one aspect of people’s views about responsibility. The chapter argues that the commitment to incompatibilism is isolated from the rest of our commonsense views about responsibility, including the view that manipulation undermines responsibility.