In recent years there has been a growing consensus that ordinary reasoning does not conform to the laws of classical logic, but is rather nonmonotonic in the sense that conclusions previously drawn may well be removed upon acquiring further information. Even so, rational belief formation has up to now been modelled as conforming to some fundamental principles that are classically valid. The counterexample described in this paper suggests that a number of the most cherished of these principles (...) should not be regarded as valid for commonsense reasoning. An explanation of this puzzling failure is given, arguing that a problem in the theory of rational choice transfers to the realm of belief formation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and analyze arguments provided for the Psychological Principle of Non-Contradiction which states that one cannot have, or cannot be described as having, contradictory beliefs. By differentiating two possible interpretations of PNC, descriptive and normative, and examining arguments provided for each of them separately I point out the flaws in reasoning in these arguments and difficulties with aligning PNC with the empirical data provided by research done in cognitive and clinical psychology. I claim (...) that PNC cannot be derived from any metaphysical stance regarding the mental phenomena and that having contradictory beliefs should be regarded as possible. Furthermore, I argue that interpreting a subject as having contradictory beliefs, and therefore abandoning PNC, can be more effective in explaining the phenomena of contradictory beliefs and irrational behaviour than solutions consistent with the PNC. (shrink)

This paper presents a new solution to the problem of peer disagreement that distinguishes two principles of rational belief, here called probability and autonomy. When we discover that we disagree with peers, there is one sense in which we rationally ought to suspend belief, and another in which we rationally ought to retain our original belief. In the first sense, we aim to believe what is most probably true according to our total evidence, including testimony from (...) peers and authorities. In the second, we aim to base our beliefs only on objective evidence and argumentation, even if that lowers the probability of their being true. The first principle of rational belief tends to serve the short-term epistemic interests of individuals, while the second tends to serve the long-term epistemic interests of both individuals and groups. The best way to reconcile these principles in cases of peer disagreement is to associate them with two corresponding species of belief, here called perception and opinion. (shrink)

George Berkeley's arguments have attracted a good deal of attention, but the account of abstraction has been often treated as if it were an entirely independent piece of writing. Berkeley links Locke's use of abstract general ideas to a belief in the possibility of an idea of existence abstracted from perception, that is, to the central issue of the Principles of Human Knowledge. The mistake Berkeley has been pointing to, the reliance on abstract general ideas, is a philosophical (...) mistake, but here it is clear Berkeley takes this mistake to have far‐reaching consequences, diverting the search for knowledge from what would be useful to know into trivial byways. Having identified the consequences of a mistaken belief in abstract ideas, Berkeley returns to his earlier claim, that it is language that leads us into this error. (shrink)

among philosophers and therefore a short reminder will do. Pierre was a normal speaker of French, before he moved to London and learnt English without ever using any dictionary or similar devices. During his time in France he had heard about London, and because of what he..

In this now-classic work, he clearly and systematically formulates what others thought impossible_a principle of fairness that specifies a set of conditions which grounds existing political obligations and bridges the gap between the abstract accounts of political principles and the actual beliefs of political actors. Brought up-to-date with a new introduction, this new edition will be of great interest to all interested in political thought.

In Propositional Attitudes, Mark Richard claims that some natural and formal language sentences of the form(∀ x)(∀ y)(x = y → α → α [y/x])are false. He suggests a substitution for α that is sensitive to certain ancillary features of the variable letter as well as the assignment, and then argues that this substitution generates a false instance of the above-mentioned schema. I reject Richard's argument and argue further that the sentence is not an instance of that schema. I then (...) argue that his putative natural language example fails as well. Finally, I suggest that although Richard's mistake here does not present any technical problem for his semantics for attitude ascriptions, it undermines his claim that his semantic theory is better able to respect the surface form of attitude ascriptions in natural languages than competing theories. (shrink)

In this now-classic work, he clearly and systematically formulates what others thought impossible_a principle of fairness that specifies a set of conditions which grounds existing political obligations and bridges the gap between the abstract accounts of political principles and the actual beliefs of political actors. Brought up-to-date with a new introduction, this new edition will be of great interest to all interested in political thought.

In Bayesian epistemology, the problem of the priors is this: How should we set our credences (or degrees of belief) in the absence of evidence? That is, how should we set our prior or initial credences, the credences with which we begin our credal life? David Lewis liked to call an agent at the beginning of her credal journey a superbaby. The problem of the priors asks for the norms that govern these superbabies. -/- The Principle of Indifference gives (...) a very restrictive answer. It demands that such an agent divide her credences equally over all possibilities. That is, according to the Principle of Indifference, only one initial credence function is permissible, namely, the uniform distribution. In this paper, we offer a novel argument for the Principle of Indifference. I call it the Argument from Accuracy. (shrink)

Common formulations of the principle of charity in translation seem to undermine attributions of irrationality in social scientific accounts that are otherwise unexceptionable. This I call the problem of irrationality. Here I resolve the problem of irrationality by developing two complementary views of the principle of charity. First, I develop the view (ill-developed in the literature at present) that the principle of charity is preparatory, being needed in the construction of provisional first-approximation translation manuals. These serve as the basis for (...) explanatory accounts and associated refinements in the translation manual. In developing such explanatory accounts, the principle of charity is no longer constraining. Thus, the principle of charity applies only in the early stages of constructing translation manuals, and there is no problem of irrationality in the later stages of constructing translation manuals. Second, I reduce the principle of charity, where it does apply, to a special case of what I call the principle of explicability: so translate as to attribute explicable beliefs and practices to the speakers of the source-language. I show that the appropriate formulation of the principle of charity counsels just what the principle of explicability requires in the early stages of social scientific investigation. (shrink)

We show that in Polyadic Pure Inductive Logic the Invariance Principle, based on consideration of symmetry with respect to automorphisms, has only a trivial solution, namely the polyadic equivalent of Carnap’s $$c_0$$ c 0. (This extends a result proved earlier in the unary case.) We then consider the Exchangeable Invariance Principle, a symmetry principle which is a weakening of the Invariance Principle and has been proven to be strictly stronger than the Permutation Invariance Principle. We show that the Exchangeable Invariance (...) Principle follows from Spectrum Exchangeability, a principle not obviously based on symmetry but based on irrelevance, that is treating certain features as irrelevant for the purpose of belief assignment, and that the converse does not hold. We conclude that Spectrum Exchangeability is the strongest currently known rational principle of belief assignment in Pure Inductive Logic that does not lead to the aforementioned trivial solution. (shrink)

The paper attacks the widely held view that belief revision theories, as they have been studied in the past two decades, are founded on the Principle of Informational Economy. The principle comes in two versions. According to the first, an agent should, when accepting a new piece of information, aim at a minimal change of his previously held beliefs. If there are different ways to effect the belief change, then the agent should, according to he second version, give (...) up those beliefs that are least entrenched. Although widely proclaimed by belief revision theorists, I argue that both versions of the principle are dogmas that are not (and perhaps should not be) adhered to. I substantiate this claim with two simple mathematical observations, and I defend it against four possible objections that involve contractions, reconstructions, dispositions, and truths. (shrink)

This paper argues that pragmatic considerations similar to the ones that Grice has shown pertain to assertability pertain to acceptability. It further shows how this should affect some widely held epistemic principles. The idea of a pragmatics of belief is defended against some seemingly obvious objections.

BackgroundThe Western-European concept of libertarian rights-based autonomy, which advocates respect for individual rights, may conflict with African cultural values and norms. African communitarian ethics focuses on the interests of the collective whole or community, rather than rugged individualism. Hence collective decision-making processes take precedence over individual autonomy or consent. This apparent conflict may impact informed consent practice during biomedical research in African communities and may hinder ethical principlism in African bioethics. This study explored African biomedical researchers' perspectives regarding informed consent (...) and potential limitations to the principle of respect for autonomy in African communities.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 12 biomedical researchers, five females and seven males aged 34 to 74 years, currently working at an African university. Interviews lasted 35–40 min each and involved semi-structured open-ended interviews, which allowed participants to offer information about their perceptions and feelings regarding respect for autonomy and informed consent as practised in Africa. Empirical data from the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using thematic content analysis, together with an interrogation of relevant scientific literature about African communitarian ethics, making evaluations and drawing inferences consistent with the empirical bioethics approach.ResultsBased on these interviews and analysis of relevant literature, we found that informed consent is difficult to apply in an African context because it derives from a Western conception of libertarian rights-based autonomy. Most respondents pointed out that it was challenging to implement informed consent in the African setting. Furthermore, communalism, customary beliefs, spirituality, and relational autonomy are predominant in most African communities, as exemplified by the African moral philosophies of Ubuntu/botho and Ukama, which emphasize communitarianism over individual rights. We also found that language, education, poverty, and cultural beliefs are barriers to obtaining proper informed consent in African communities.ConclusionsWe conclude that there are limitations to applying the principle of respect for autonomy and informed consent in African communities, especially in the context of human biomedical research. We recommend using a more relational approach, such as Ross’s prima facie duties, to implement informed consent in African communities. (shrink)

Reid's principle of credulity may be interpreted as equivalent to a principle of charity, due to the nature of three beliefs it implies concerning the interlocutors, which are held by the person who attempts to acquire their language: They are telling truth in the sense that they are saying what they really think, perceive, feel, believe; they are veracious in the sense that what they say is objectively true; they use language consistently. This interpretation relies on Reid's straightforward remarks on (...) his principle of credulity and on his view of two related correspondences: One correspondence is between the principle of credulity and the principle of veracity. The other is between these two principles and the principles that create the ‘language of nature’ and guide us in our efforts to unravel it. (shrink)

By examining particular cases of belief perseverance following the undermining of their original evidentiary grounds, this paper considers two theories of rational belief revision: foundation and coherence. Gilbert Harman has argued for coherence over foundationalism on the grounds that the foundations theory absurdly deems most of our beliefs to be not rationally held. A consequence of the unacceptability of foundationalism is that belief perseverance is rational. This paper defends the intuitive judgement that belief perseverance is irrational (...) by offering a competing explanation of what goes on in cases like the debriefing paradigm which does not rely upon foundationalist principles but instead shows that such cases are properly viewed as instances of positive undermining of the sort described by the coherence theory. (shrink)

In a recent article in Theoria , Hamid Vahid offered an explanation of the phenomenon of Moore-paradoxicality which employed Davidson's Principle of Charity regarding radical interpretation. I argue here that Vahid's explanation fails.

In this article we strive to provide a detailed and principled analysis of the role of beliefs in goal processing—that is, the cognitive transition that leads from a mere desire to a proper intention. The resulting model of belief-based goal processing has also relevant consequences for the analysis of intentions, and constitutes the necessary core of a constructive theory of intentions, i.e. a framework that not only analyzes what an intention is, but also explains how it becomes what it (...) is. We discuss similarities and differences between our approach and other standard accounts of intention, in particular Bratman’s planning theory. The aim here is to question and refine the conceptual foundations of many theories of intentional action: as a consequence, although our analysis is not formal in itself, it is ultimately meant to have deep consequences for formal models of intentional agency. (shrink)

Belief revision theory aims to describe how one should change one’s beliefs when they are contradicted by newly input information. The guiding principle of belief revision theory is to change one’s prior beliefs as little as possible in order to maintain consistency with the new information. Learning theory focuses, instead, on learning power: the ability to arrive at true beliefs in a wide range of possible environments. The goal of this paper is to bridge the two approaches by (...) providing a learning theoretic analysis of the learning power of belief revision methods proposed by Spohn, Boutilier, Darwiche and Pearl, and others. The results indicate that learning power depends sharply on details of the methods. Hence, learning power can provide a well-motivated constraint on the design and implementation of concrete belief revision methods. (shrink)

It is just over fifty years since the publication of Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’. That paper expresses a broad vision of the system of relations between meaning, experience, and the rational formation of belief. The deepest challenges the paper poses come not from the detailed argument of its first four sections – formidable though that is – but from the visionary material in its last two sections.1 It is this visionary material that is likely to force the reader (...) to revise, to deepen, or to rethink her position on fundamental issues about the relations between meaning, experience, rationality, and, above all, the a priori. Does what is right in Quine’s argument exclude any rationalist view of these relations? How should a rationalist view be formulated? Those are the questions I will be addressing. I start with the critical part of this task, a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of Quine’s vision. Drawing on the constraints emerging from that critical discussion, I will then turn to the positive task of articulating and defending a rival conception. The rival conception can be described as a Generalized Rationalism. (shrink)

The author uses a series of examples to illustrate two versions of a new, nonprobabilist principle of epistemic rationality, the special and general versions of the metacognitive, expected relative frequency principle. These are used to explain the rationality of revisions to an agent’s degrees of confidence in propositions based on evidence of the reliability or unreliability of the cognitive processes responsible for them—especially reductions in confidence assignments to propositions antecedently regarded as certain—including certainty-reductions to instances of the law of excluded (...) middle or the law of noncontradiction in logic or certainty-reductions to the certainties of probabilist epistemology. The author proposes special and general versions of the MERF principle and uses them to explain the examples, including the reasoning that would lead to thoroughgoing fallibilism—that is, to a state of being certain of nothing. The author responds to the main defenses of probabilism: Dutch Book arguments, Joyce’s potential accuracy defense, and the potential calibration defenses of Shimony and van Fraassen by showing that, even though they do not satisfy the probability axioms, degrees of belief that satisfy the MERF principle minimize expected inaccuracy in Joyce’s sense; they can be externally calibrated in Shimony and van Fraassen’s sense; and they can serve as a basis for rational betting, unlike probabilist degrees of belief, which, in many cases, human beings have no rational way of ascertaining. The author also uses the MERF principle to subsume the various epistemic akrasia principles in the literature. Finally, the author responds to Titelbaum’s argument that epistemic akrasia principles require that we be certain of some epistemological beliefs, if we are rational. (shrink)

The fundamental principle of practical reasoning (if there is such a thing) must be a rule which we ought to follow in all our practical reasoning, and which cannot lead to irrational decisions. It must be a rule that it is possible for us to follow directly - that is, without having to follow any other rule of practical reasoning in order to do so. And it must be a basic principle, in the sense that the explanation of why we (...) rationally ought to follow this rule lies purely in the structure of our rational capacities themselves (and not, for example, in empirical evidence that we merely happen to have). This fundamental principle, it is argued, requires that you decide to do something only if the basis of your decision is such that (i) it is rational for you to believe that you have given the matter enough thought, and (ii) your actual deliberation does not warrant the conclusion that the chosen option is definitely worse than some other option that you have considered. A decision formed through reasoning is rational if and only if the agent followed this rule in making the decision. The claim that this is the fundamental principle of practical reasoning conflicts with Hobbesian approaches because it implies that practical reasoning aims not only at satisfying desires, but at forming beliefs about which options are better than others. It conflicts with Kantian approaches because it implies that to think of something as a good thing to do is not just to think of it as a rational thing to choose. This account also shows how to solve some famous controversies surrounding practical reason: the key is to understand how the rationality of concluding that one option is better than another is affected by our desires, our estimates of probabilities, and our moral judgments. (shrink)

I have been supposing that for the theory of reasoning, explicit belief is an all-or-nothing matter, I have assumed that, as far as principles of reasoning are concerned, one either believes something explicitly or one does not; in other words an appropriate "representation" is either in one's "memory" or not. The principles of reasoning are principles for modifying such all-or-nothing representations. This is not to deny that in some ways belief is a matter of degree. (...) For one thing implicit belief is certainly a matter of degree, since it is a matter of how easily and automatically one can infer something from what one believes explicitly. Furthermore, explicit belief is a matter of degree in the sense that one believes some things more strongly than others. Sometimes one is only somewhat inclined to believe something, sometimes one is not sure what to believe, sometimes one is inclined to disbelieve something, sometimes one is quite confident something is not so, and so forth. (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over (...) other methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

The theme of the dissertation is that we should not be too cautious about engaging in metaphysics of modality; what may appear to be a refusal to engage in metaphysical speculation may instead involve a commitment to epistemic consequences that we should not accept. In Part I, I argue that David Lewis's modal realism implies that scepticism towards induction is rationally unavoidable. I conclude that his theory must be rejected. ;While not endorsing Lewis's account of the nature of possible worlds, (...) I argue that the recombination principle is what is causing the problems, and that this principle will cause problems when combined with any theory of modality according to which there are objective matters of fact as to what is possible or necessary. ;I conclude that we must reject the recombination principle, and that any principle we accept in its place must be one which will not lead to inductive scepticism. This suggests that we cannot countenance any objective possibilities that contravene actual natural laws. ;In Part II, I argue that one sort of explanation is closely connected with objective possibility: A fundamental explanation for some state of affairs involves saying something about its nature that has implications for what is objectively possible. I defend a weak form of the principle of sufficient reason, according to which every state of affairs has a fundamental explanation ;I go on to recast and defend a version of the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. This argument, on my view, is plausible only when taken as an inductive argument, and indeed, as an inference to the best explanation. I argue that the theistic hypothesis deserves to be taken seriously on its merits as an explanation; more generally, I claim that it is not sufficient grounds for rejecting any hypothesis simply to say that it involves commitments as to what is possible or necessary. A willingness to accept some such commitments is an unavoidable consequence of what we normally take to be rational ways of forming beliefs. (shrink)

The principle of total evidence says that one should conditionalize one’s degrees of belief on one’s total evidence. In the first part, I propose a justification of this principle in terms of its epistemic optimality. The justification is based on a proof of I. J. Good and embedded into a new account of epistemology based on optimality-justifications. In the second part, I discuss an apparent conflict between the principle of total evidence and the political demands of anti-discrimination. These demands (...) require, for example, that information about the sex of the applicant for a job should not be included in the relevant evidence. I argue that if one assesses the applicant’s qualification in terms of those properties that are directly causally relevant for the job performance, then properties that are merely indirectly relevant, such as sex, race, or age, are screened off, i.e., become irrelevant. So, the apparent conflict disappears. (shrink)

According to the unrestricted version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), every truth has an explanation. I argue that there is defeasible methodological justification for belief in an unrestricted PSR. The argument is based on considerations about our cognitive limitations. It is possible that our cognitive limitations prevent us from even recognizing the explanatorily open character of some propositions we can now represent: the fact that these propositions are explicable in the first place. If this is the case, (...) then a proper recognition of our limitations and a standing goal of reasoning to attain complete explanatory knowledge justify the adoption of an unrestricted PSR. (shrink)

Change in View offers an entirely original approach to the philosophical study of reasoning by identifying principles of reasoning with principles for revising one's beliefs and intentions and not with principles of logic. This crucial observation leads to a number of important and interesting consequences that impinge on psychology and artificial intelligence as well as on various branches of philosophy, from epistemology to ethics and action theory. Gilbert Harman is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. A Bradford (...) Book. (shrink)

The principle of belief persistence, or conservativity principle, states that ’\Nhen changing beliefs in response to new evidence, you should continue to believe as many of the old beliefs as possible' (Harman, 1986, p. 46). In particular, this means that if an individual gets new information, she has to accommodate it in her new belief set (the set of propositions she believes), and, if the new information is not inconsistent with the old belief set, then (1) the (...) individual has to maintain all the beliefs she previously had and (2) the change should be minimal in the sense that every proposition in the new belief set must be deducible from the union of the old belief set and the new information (see, e.g., Gardenfors, 1988; Stalnaker, 1984). We focus on this minimal notion of belief persistence and characterize it both semantically and syntactically. A ’possible world' semantic formalization of the principle easily comes to mind. The set of all the propositions that the individual believes corresponds to the set of states of the world that she considers possible and is a subset of the set of states that are not ruled out by the individual's information (or knowledge). It is required that, if the individual considers a state possible and her new information does not exclude this state, then she continue to consider it possible. Furthermore, if the individual regards a particular state as impossible, then she should continue to regard it as impossible unless her new information excludes all the states that she previously regarded as possible. This is closely related to the.. (shrink)

Logic arguably plays a role in the normativity of reasoning. In particular, there are plausible norms of belief/disbelief whose antecedents are constituted by claims about what follows from what. But is logic also relevant to the normativity of agnostic attitudes? The question here is whether logical entailment also puts constraints on what kinds of things one can suspend judgment about. In this paper I address that question and I give a positive answer to it. In particular, I advance two (...) logical norms of agnosticism, where the first one allows us to assess situations in which the subject is agnostic about the conclusion of a valid argument and the second one allows us to assess situations in which the subject is agnostic about one of the premises of a valid argument. (shrink)

Yli-Vakkuri argues that content externalism can be established without thought experiments, as the deductive consequence of a pair of uncontroversial principles about beliefs, contents and truth. I argue that the most dialectically plausible motivation for the first principle, that truth is a broad property or beliefs, undermines the second principle, that the truth-value of a belief goes hand-in-hand with that of its content, and that other motivations are likely to depend on externalist thought experiments the argument was meant (...) to avoid. As it stands, the argument for externalism therefore fails. (shrink)

There is a broad consensus on the legitimacy of states to control immigration. However, this belief has recently been questioned, among other reasons, due to the contradiction with current practices in emigration and internal mobility. The principle of symmetry states that any restriction on immigration should also apply to emigration; or that, to the contrary, if there is a right to emigrate, there should be a corresponding right to immigrate. The principle of coherence posits that every reason one might (...) have for moving within a country also counts for moving between countries. This article proposes to extend the coherence principle from external to internal migration, arguing that the same reasons that justify restrictions on mobility across borders justify restrictions on mobility within borders too. Therefore, either freedom of movement is a fundamental right or the right of the political community to control mobility prevails. The interests at stake are in both cases the same, so asymmetry is not warranted. This leads us to an apagogical argument for open borders. (shrink)

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features (...) suggest principles that tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

In a recent paper Robert J. Richman joins a host of doubters who question Gettier's claim that knowledge is not justified true belief. Richman's scepticism of Gettier's counterexamples to the traditional analysis of knowledge stems from what he says are two basic defects in the examples. One defect is that Gettier employs the Principle of Deducibility for Justification which Richman argues is false. The second defect is based on “the obvious consideration that a belief which is justified on (...) the basis of one set of facts or assumptions need not be justified on the basis of a different set.” I shall consider each of these alleged defects and argue that Richman has not shown that in fact they are defects and that Gettier's counterexamples do in fact show that knowledge is not justified true belief.The Principle of Deducibility for Justification states that for any proposition P, if P entails Q and S correctly deduces Q from P and accepts Q as a result of this deduction, then Sis justified in believing Q. (shrink)

Often, when we think about living an ethical life, we think about which of our actions are ethical or unethical. Philosopher and mathematician W. K. Clifford thought that ethics was about more than just actions. He also thought that ethical living required aligning one’s beliefs with one’s evidence. Specifically, he argued that it was always wrong to believe something based on insufficient evidence. This article provides an overview of the first section of Clifford’s essay “The Ethics of Belief,” in (...) which he argues for this claim. As part of his argument, Clifford offers examples of people harming others because they believed things based on insufficient evidence. He argues that such cases are examples of unethical beliefs. From there, he turns to arguing for his more general principle. He also emphasizes the importance of inquiring into one’s beliefs and the social importance of our epistemic lives. (shrink)

Locke’s principle of proportionality – among his most important contributions to philosophy – states that we ought to apportion our assent to a given proposition in accord with the probability of that proposition on an adequate body of evidence. I argue that treatments of Locke’s principle fail to avoid interpreting it as a fundamentally doxastic prescription – a precept concerning how we ought to voluntarily control our assent. These interpretations are problematic on account of their implications concerning the degree of (...) control that agents have over the doxastic process, and on account of how they cohere with numerous texts in the Essay. I suggest that the principle, instead, commends that we engage in certain activities, or practices, that tend to produce true beliefs. (shrink)

The principle of indifference (hereafter ‘Poi’) says that if one has no more reason to believe A than B (and vice versa ), then one ought not to believe A more than B (nor vice versa ). Many think it’s demonstrably false despite its intuitive plausibility, because of a particular style of thought experiment that generates counterexamples. Roger White ( 2008 ) defends Poi by arguing that its antecedent is false in these thought experiments. Like White I believe Poi, but (...) I find his defense unsatisfactory for two reasons: it appeals to false premises, and it saves Poi only at the expense of something that Poi’s believers likely find just as important. So in this essay I defend Poi by arguing that its antecedent does hold in the relevant thought experiments, and that the further propositions needed to reject Poi are false. I play only defense in this essay; I don’t argue that Poi is true (even though I think it is), but rather that one popular refutation is faulty. In showing this, I also note something that has to my knowledge gone unnoticed: given some innocuous-looking assumptions the denial of Poi is equivalent to a version of epistemic permissivism , and Poi itself is equivalent to a version of epistemic uniqueness. (shrink)

Why are conditional degrees of belief in an observation E, given a statistical hypothesis H, aligned with the objective probabilities expressed by H? After showing that standard replies are not satisfactory, I develop a suppositional analysis of conditional degree of belief, transferring Ramsey’s classical proposal to statistical inference. The analysis saves the alignment, explains the role of chance-credence coordination, and rebuts the charge of arbitrary assessment of evidence in Bayesian inference. Finally, I explore the implications of this analysis (...) for Bayesian reasoning with idealized models in science. (shrink)

In this highly original text, Christopher Steinsvold explores an alternative semantics for logics of rational belief. Topologies, as mathematical objects, are typically interpreted in terms of space; here topologies are re-interpreted in terms of an agent with rational beliefs. The topological semantics tells us that the agent can never, in principle, know everything; that the agent's beliefs can never be complete. -/- A number of completeness proofs are given for a variety of logics of rational belief. Beyond this, (...) the author explores the philosophical question of why our beliefs can never be complete, and considers the possibility that a totality of truths is a dialethia. -/- This work will be of interest to all philosophers interested in epistemology, and modal logicians as well. (shrink)

Some hold that W.K. Clifford's arguments are inconsistent, appealing to the disvalue of likely consequences of nonevidential belief-formation, while also insisting that the consequences are irrelevant to the wrongness of so believing. My thesis is that Clifford's arguments are consistent; one simply needs to be clear on the role consequences play in the "Ethics of Belief" (and, for that matter, in William James's "The Will to Believe"). The consequences of particular episodes of nonevidential belief-formation are, as Clifford (...) insists, irrelevant to the epistemic, and so moral, status of believing. The moral matter is that adopting a policy of nonevidential belief-formation constitutes commitment to antithetical principles, viz. (i) our antecedent moral obligation to minimize the risk of harming ourselves and others and (ii) the flagrant disregard for (i) entailed by employing a policy of risk, i.e. nonevidentialism. Clifford's arguments should be read as demonstrating that a nonevidentialist approach to belief-management constitutes the kind of risk that, in fact, is at odds with this antecedent moral obligation - hence the discussion of likely consequences, despite his claims that they are irrelevant to the moral status of the beliefs yielding them. They are irrelevant to the moral status of nonevidentialism but not irrelevant to the fact of risk. The moral impermissibility of nonevidentialism inheres in the inconsistency of it and our antecedent moral obligations, not in the value or disvalue of the particular consequences of that belief-management style. (shrink)

According to Principles of Sufficient Reason, every truth (in some relevant group) has an explanation. One of the most popular defenses of Principles of Sufficient Reason has been the presupposition of reason defense, which takes endorsement of the defended PSR to play a crucial role in our theory selection. According to recent presentations of this defense, our method of theory selection often depends on the assumption that, if a given proposition is true, then it has an explanation, and (...) this will only be justified if we think this holds for all propositions in the relevant group. I argue that this argument fails even when restricted to contingent propositions, and even if we grant that there is no non-arbitrary way to divide true propositions that have explanations from those that lack them. Further, we can give an alternate explanation of what justifies our selecting theories on the basis of explanatory features: the crucial role is not played by an endorsement of a PSR, but rather by our belief that, prima facie, we should prefer theories that exemplify explanatory power to greater degrees than their rivals. This guides our theory selection in a manner similar to ontological parsimony and theoretical simplicity. Unlike a PSR, our belief about explanatory power gives us a prima facie guiding principle, which provides justification in the cases where we think we have it, and not in the cases where we think we don't. (shrink)

The use of ‘placebos’ in clinical practice is a source of continued controversy for physicians and medical ethicists. There is rarely any extensive discussion on what ‘placebos’ are and how they work. In this paper, drawing on Louhiala and Puustinen's work, the author proposes that the term ‘placebo effect’ be replaced in clinical contexts with the term ‘positive care effect’. Medical treatment always takes place in a ‘context of care’ that encompasses all the phenomena associated with medical intervention: it includes (...) the particular method of treatment, the interpersonal relationships between medical staff and the patient and other factors, including physicians' and patients' beliefs in the power of the treatment. Together, these phenomena can result in a full spectrum of therapeutic effects to the patient—from no effects, to small effects, to large effects. In cases where there are significant therapeutic benefits to the patient, ‘positive care effects’ may be spoken of. Since the ethical codes of the General Medical Council and the American Medical Association demand transparency with respect to patient treatment and insist on complete openness in ‘placebo’ usage, the author argues that, as a matter of conceptual rigour and consistency, if the term ‘placebo effect’ is replaced by ‘positive care effect’, these ethical codes appear to insist on transparency about all such beneficial components of treatment. Given that this appears to be a counterintuitive obligation, the author concludes the paper with some comments on the clinical consequences of this conceptual revision, including a brief discussion of how this important debate might develop. (shrink)