section_path: Contents
section_name: Contents
paragraph_text: Contents
  
  As mental representations, beliefs have contents, which is what the belief is about or what it represents. Within philosophy, there are various disputes about how the contents of beliefs are to be understood. Holists and molecularists hold that the content of one particular belief depends on or is determined by other beliefs belonging to the same subject, which is denied by atomists. The question of dependence or determination also plays a central role in the internalism-externalism- debate. Internalism states that the contents of someone's beliefs depend only on what is internal to that person and are determined entirely by things going on inside this person's head. Externalism, on the other hand, holds that the relations to one's environment also have a role to play in this.