Katz’s Revisability Paradox Dissolved

Quine's holistic empiricist account of scientific inquiry can be characterized by three constitutive principles: noncontradiction, universal revisability and pragmatic ordering. We show that these constitutive principles cannot be regarded as statements within a holistic empiricist's scientific theory of the world. This claim is a corollary of our refutation of Katz's [1998, 2002] argument that holistic empiricism suffers from what he calls the Revisability Paradox. According to Katz, Quine's empiricism is incoherent because its constitutive principles cannot themselves be rationally revised. Using Gärdenfors and Makinson's logic of belief revision based on epistemic entrenchment, we argue that Katz wrongly assumes that the constitutive principles are statements within a holistic empiricist's theory of the world. Instead, we show that constitutive principles are best seen as properties of a holistic empiricist's theory of scientific inquiry and we submit that, without Katz's mistaken assumption, the paradox cannot be formulated. We argue that our perspective on the status of constitutive principles is perfectly in line with Quinean orthodoxy. In conclusion, we compare our findings with van Fraassen's [2002] argument that we should think of empiricism as a stance, rather than as a doctrine.     

In Defense of Practical Reasons for Belief

Many meta-ethicists are alethists: they claim that practical considerations can constitute normative reasons for action, but not for belief. But the alethist owes us an account of the relevant difference between action and belief, which thereby explains this normative difference. Here, I argue that two salient strategies for discharging this burden fail. According to the first strategy, the relevant difference between action and belief is that truth is the constitutive standard of correctness for belief, but not for action, while according to the second strategy, it is that practical considerations can constitute motivating reasons for action, but not for belief. But the former claim only shifts the alethist's explanatory burden, and the latter claim is wrong—we can believe for practical reasons. Until the alethist can offer a better account, then, I argue that we should accept that there are practical reasons for belief.     

Hope as an irreducible concept

I argue for a novel answer to the question “What is hope?”. On my view, rather than aiming for a compound account, i.e. analysing hope in terms of desire and belief, we should understand hope as an irreducible concept. After criticizing influential compound accounts of hope, I discuss Segal and Textor's alternative of describing hope as a primitive mental state. While Segal and Textor argue that available developments of the standard definition do not offer sufficient conditions for hope, I question the deep‐seated idea that desire and belief are even necessary conditions for hope. My suggestion is that we should take seriously the fact that we hope in a great variety of ways and should question the search for elements that are common to all cases. A promising alternative follows the Wittgensteinian idea that cases of hope are related in terms of family resemblance, i.e. are multiply realizable on the ontological level while falling under the non‐definable concept of hope.     

A new puzzle about belief and credence

I present a puzzle about belief and credence, which takes the form of three independently supported views that are mutually inconsistent. The first is the view that S has a modal belief that p (e.g., S believes that probably-p) if and only if S has a corresponding credence that p. The second is the view that S believes that p only if S has some credence that p. The third is the view that, possibly, S believes that p without a modal belief that p. [Word Count: 85]     

Inference and the taking condition

It has recently been argued that inference essentially involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion and drawing his conclusion because of this fact. However, this Taking Condition has also been criticized: If taking is interpreted as believing, it seems to lead to a vicious regress and to overintellectualize the act of inferring. In this paper, I examine and reject various attempts to salvage the Taking Condition, either by interpreting inferring as a kind of rule‐following, or by finding an innocuous role for the taking‐belief. Finally, I propose an alternative account of taking, according to which it is not a separate belief, but rather an aspect of the attitude of believing: Believing that p implies not only taking p to be true and taking oneself to believe that p, but also taking one's reasons q to support p, when the belief in question is held on account of an inference.     

Does Doxastic Justification Have a Basing Requirement?

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is the distinction between having justification to believe that P (= propositional justification) versus having a justified belief in P (= doxastic justification). The focus of this paper is on doxastic justification and on what conditions are necessary for having it. In particular, I challenge the basing demand on doxastic justification, i.e. the idea that one can have a doxastically justified belief only if one's belief is based on an epistemically appropriate reason. This demand has been used to refute versions of coherentism and conservatism about perceptual justification, as well as to defend phenomenal ‘conservatism’ and other views besides. In what follows, I argue that there is virtually no reason to think there is a basing demand on doxastic justification. I also argue that, even if the basing demand were true, it would still fail to serve the dialectical purposes for which it has been employed in arguments concerning coherentism, conservatism, and phenomenal ‘conservatism’. I conclude by discussing the fact that knowledge has a basing demand and I show why this needn't raise the same sort of problems for coherentism and conservatism that doxastic justification's basing demand seemed to raise.     

Truth in Fiction,Impossible Worlds,and Belief Revision

We present a theory of truth in fiction that improves on Lewis's [1978] ‘Analysis 2’ in two ways. First, we expand Lewis's possible worlds apparatus by adding non-normal or impossible worlds. Second, we model truth in fiction as (make-believed) belief revision via ideas from dynamic epistemic logic. We explain the major objections raised against Lewis's original view and show that our theory overcomes them.     

Accuracy,Verisimilitude, and Scoring Rules

Suppose that beliefs come in degrees. How should we then measure the accuracy of these degrees of belief? Scoring rules are usually thought to be the mathematical tool appropriate for this job. But there are many scoring rules, which lead to different ordinal accuracy rankings. Recently, Fallis and Lewis [2016] have given an argument that, if sound, rules out many popular scoring rules, including the Brier score, as genuine measures of accuracy. I respond to this argument, in part by noting that the argument fails to account for verisimilitude—that certain false hypotheses might be closer to the truth than other false hypotheses are. Oddie [forthcoming], however, has argued that no member of a very wide class of scoring rules (the so-called proper scores) can appropriately handle verisimilitude. I explain how to respond to Oddie's argument, and I recommend a class of weighted scoring rules that, I argue, genuinely measure accuracy while escaping the arguments of Fallis and Lewis as well as Oddie.     

How Norms (Might) Guide Belief

Abstract

Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (G&W) suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called ‘truth-norms’, or by appeal to what might be called ‘norms of rationality’ or ‘epistemic norms’. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief normativism were true, the relevant norms would have to offer such guidance. I argue that G&W’s case against belief normativism is not successful. In section 1, I defend the idea that truth-norms can guide belief formation indirectly via epistemic norms. In section 2, I outline an account of how the epistemic norms might guide belief. Interestingly, this account may involve a commitment to a certain kind of expressivist view concerning judgments about epistemic norms.     

“God … has sent me to Germany”: Salomon Maimon,Friedrich Jacobi,and the Spinoza Quarrel

Salomon Maimon's Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie [Essay in Transcendental Philosophy] (1790) challenges and reworks Kant's arguments in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] (1785, 2nd ed. 1787) about the foundations of natural science and of Newtonian physics in particular. Kant himself was impressed both with Maimon's grasp of his critical project and also with the force of his challenge to it. While Maimon's significance on the later development of German Idealism is now widely acknowledged, another aspect of Maimon's Versuch has not been fully appreciated, namely, its engagement with the central questions of the Spinozastreit [Spinoza Quarrel] that erupted in 1785 with the publication of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn [Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn]. The Spinoza Quarrel centered on whether and to what extent philosophy's rational understanding of God needs to be grounded in an unmediated and suprarational revelatory experience. This paper is the first extended effort at placing Maimon's Versuch into the context of the Spinoza Quarrel. I argue that the Spinoza Quarrel and Maimon's self‐proclaimed philosophical mission in response to it—the replacement of revealed faith by reason—deeply inform the goals he pursues in his Versuch. I show how Maimon's Versuch can be read as not only a response to Kant, but also to Jacobi's defense of the revelatory nature of sense experience in David Hume über den Glauben (1787), the book in which Jacobi offers his own skeptical challenge to Kant's Kritik. Situating Maimon's Versuch as a response to Friedrich Jacobi's David Hume allows us to understand how one of Maimon's objectives in his Versuch is to keep Jacobian Glaube [faith] at bay by demonstrating, using a revised Kantian framework, the conditions of the impossibility of experiencing miracles.     

Reliabilism and the Suspension of Belief

What are the conditions under which suspension of belief—or suspension, for short—is justified? Process reliabilists hold that our beliefs are justified if and only if these are produced or sustained by reliable cognitive processes. But they have said relatively little about suspension. Perhaps they think that we may easily extend an account of justified belief to deal with justified suspension. But it's not immediately clear how we may do so; in which case, evidentialism has a distinct advantage over reliabilism. In this paper, I consider some proposals as to how process reliabilists might seek to account for justified suspension. Although several of these proposals do not work, two are promising. The first such proposal appeals to the notion of propositional justification; the second involves weaving evidentialist elements into reliabilism. I'll argue that the second proposal is better than the first.     

Platonic Knowledge and the Standard Analysis

Abstract

In this paper I explore Plato’s reasons for his rejection of the so‐called standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. I argue that Plato held that knowledge is an infallible mental state in which (a) the knowable is present in the knower and (b) the knower is aware of this presence. Accordingly, knowledge (epistēmē) is non‐propositional. Since there are no infallible belief states, the standard analysis, which assumes that knowledge is a type of belief, cannot be correct. In addition, I argue that Plato held that belief (doxa) is only possible for the sort of being capable of knowledge. This is because self‐reflexivity is necessary for infallible knowledge and self‐reflexivity is only possible if the intellect is immaterial. This capacity for self‐reflexivity is also essential for belief, since beliefs are, paradigmatically, not dispositions but self‐reflexive mental states.     

Secondary self‐deception

According to doxastic accounts of self‐deception, self‐deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self‐deceiver really believes what he, in self‐deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self‐deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self‐deceiver's defending his professed (deceit‐induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non‐doxastic account of how we should understand self‐deception in terms of the self‐deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P.     

Believing at Will is Possible

There are convincing counter-examples to the widely accepted thesis that we cannot believe at will. For it seems possible that the truth of a proposition depend on whether or not one believes it. I call such scenarios cases of Truth Depends on Belief (TDB) and I argue that they meet the main criteria for believing at will that we find in the literature. I reply to five objections that one might level against the thesis that TDB cases show that believing at will is possible, namely that (1) mind-reading is impossible, (2) in TDB cases, one's belief is caused by one's desire, (3) in TDB scenarios, one chooses not a belief but something else, (4) TDB cases are reducible to Feldman cases, and that (5) if truth depends on belief, we are on the road to a regress. Of course, TDB scenarios hardly, if ever, occur in real life. For three reasons, they are nonetheless important. First, they show that the thesis that it is conceptually impossible to believe at will is simply false. Second, they provide us with an important constraint on any version of the thesis that it is psychologically impossible to believe at will. Third, they show us that, contrary to what several philosophers claim or imply, believing at will should not be identified with believing irrespective of—what one considers to be—the truth, nor should believing irrespective of the truth be considered a necessary condition for believing at will.     

The Wretchedness of Belief

In Culture and Value Wittgenstein remarks that the truly “religious man” thinks himself to be, not merely “imperfect” or “ill,” but wholly “wretched.” While such sentiments are of obvious biographical interest, in this paper I show why they are also worthy of serious philosophical attention. Although the influence of Wittgenstein's thinking on the philosophy of religion is often judged negatively (as, for example, leading to quietist and/or fideist‐relativist conclusions) I argue that the distinctly ethical conception of religion (specifically Christianity) that Wittgenstein presents should lead us to a quite different assessment. In particular, his preoccupation with the categorical nature of religion suggests a conception of “genuine” religious belief which disrupts both the economics of eschatological‐salvationist hope, and the traditional ethical precept that “ought implies can.” In short, what Wittgenstein presents is a sketch of a religion without recompense.     

The virtues of belief: toward a non-evidentialist ethics of belief-formation

William Kingdon Clifford famously argued that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” His ethics of belief can be construed as involving two distinct theses—a moral claim (that it is wrong to hold beliefs to which one is not entitled) and an epistemological claim (that entitlement is always a function of evidential support). Although I reject the (universality of the) epistemological claim, I argue that something deserving of the name ethics of belief can nevertheless be preserved. However, in the second half of the paper I argue that Clifford’s response to the problem of unethical belief is insufficiently attentive to the role played by self-deception in the formation of unethical beliefs. By contrasting the first-person perspective of a doxastic agent with the third-person perspective of an outside observer, I argue that unethical belief is a symptom of deficiencies of character: fix these, and belief will fix itself. I suggest that the moral intuitions implicit in our response to examples of unethical belief (like Clifford’s famous example of the ship owner) can better be accounted for in terms of a non-evidentialist virtue ethics of belief-formation, and that such an account can survive the rejection of strong versions of doxastic voluntarism.

Joseph Butler, “Upon Self-Deceit” (1726)

     

“PURE” VERSUS “PRACTICAL” EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

Abstract: In this article I distinguish a type of justification that is “epistemic” in pertaining to the grounds of one's belief, and “practical” in its connection to what act(s) one may undertake, based on that belief. Such justification, on the proposed account, depends mainly on the proportioning of “inner epistemic virtue” to the “outer risks” implied by one's act. The resulting conception strikes a balance between the unduly moralistic conception of William Clifford and contemporary naturalist virtue theories.     

Schadenfreude and just world belief

The present study tested the hypothesis that a threat of a just world belief intensifies experience of schadenfreude (i.e., pleasure at another's misfortune). The participants read scenarios which were designed to threaten or maintain their just world belief. Subsequently, they were transferred to an online magazine presenting funny stories about other peoples' failures. As presumed, the participants exposed to the threat of just world belief spent more time on reading. These results confirmed the existence of a link between just world threat and schadenfreude.