Belief and action

In the three previous chapters we argued that an agent's conviction concerning the reality of a particular patient is tied to the formation and justification of certain other beliefs, and that the transition from interacting outside to interacting inside cyberspace implies the loss of relevant and reliable evidence. Hence the conditions enabling the formation and justification of the belief in the reality of a particular patient are less favourable in cyberspace than outside cyberspace, and an agent may consequently come to be less convinced of the reality of a particular patient.

For this result to be relevant for our attempt to explain the assumed difference in interaction inside and outside cyberspace, it has to be shown that the belief in the reality of a particular patient is relevant for the way in which an agent may come to act. That is, it has to be shown that agent A's belief that p is a prerequisite of A's motivation to do q, and so of A doing q. In doing that, we will have covered the third stage of our attempt to explain the basic premise (see the first section of Chapter 5).

In the fourth stage the strings of the three preceding stages are pulled together in making it explicit that agent A may be less convinced of — or simply lack — the belief that p in interaction in cyberspace and therefore may fail to do q. In effect the fourth stage then simply provides an explanation of the relationship captured in basic premise.

In this chapter both the third and the fourth stage is covered. The chapter therefore marks the end of the attempt to explain the basic assumption taking into account the role of another person's face and our sense of reality.