 A cognitive trait is taken to be a disposition or habit to form (or sustain) a doxastic attitude under certain circumstances. These may include, for example, taking an experience at face value, or reasoning in a pattern corresponding to modus ponens, etc. Consider Plantinga’s example of Sylvia: seeing Sylvia causes your belief that you are in pain. But the causal relation as a whole between the two events does not manifest any cognitive traits, such as some sort of cognitive inference. Individual links in the chain of events beginning with seeing Sylvia may manifest some cognitive traits, but not the causal relation as a whole.