 However, the chemist adopting a hypothesis to guide years of study is certainly only a special case of hypothesis adoption.A more general defense of (1) could also be constructed from James' behaviorist theory of belief.James takes believing a proposition to consist in acting as if it were true, so if James considers testing a proposition as acting as if it were true to see if it leads to successful action, then James would be committed to seeing an act of hypothesis adoption as necessarily an act of belief adoption as well.