Abstract

According to success semantics, a belief’s content is that which guarantees the success of the actions that the belief, in combination with the relevant desires, would cause. One worry with the view is that it seems to apply only to full beliefs and fares poorly in dealing with partial beliefs. For example, if Ida’s partial belief that p is of strength 0.5, she may act in a way that would fulfill her desires if p were in fact false—assuming that she desires money, she may well accept a bet that pays her $500 if not-p and costs her nothing otherwise. In response to the worry, defenders of success semantics hold that the content of a partial belief is simply that which guarantees the success of the actions it would cause were it a full belief. But, as I’ll argue in this paper, such a response is unsatisfactory