Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: This paper investigates the tension between probabilistic cognition and non-probabilistic perception.The tension is real, and the solution-to adapt a phrase from Quine and Goodmanis to renounce credences altogether. 2: Belief and credenceStart with belief-also known as full belief or outright belief. 1 For the purposes of this paper, we can adopt the simple view that believing p is a relational state of people and other animals: to believe p is to stand in the believing relation to the proposition p (cf. Stalnaker 1988: 150).When one believes p one treats p as settled, and so is inclined to rely on p as a premise or assumption.One's inclination might be more or less strong (as a glass might be more or less fragile), which seems to correspond to the strength of belief: one believes p more strongly, the greater one's inclination to rely on p in reasoning (Williamson 2000: 99).Beliefs may be more or less strong or firm, but it would be a mistake to conclude from this that beliefs come in degrees, as Moon points out (2017: 767-68).(Mattresses may be more or less firm, but they do not come in degrees.) 2 More importantly, to believe p more or less strongly is to believe it.If I know that a coin biased .6 in favor of heads is about to be tossed, I do not believe that it will land heads; a fortiori I do not believe that it will land heads "less strongly" than I believe that it will land either heads or tails.3 1 For the reasons given in Hawthorne et al. 2016, 'belief' may have another weaker interpretation in certain context.The stronger "fully believe" interpretation is in force here (see Williamson forthcoming).2 Thus the terminology of 'degrees of belief' (an early occurrence of which is in Ramsey 1926) is not especially apt for belief; for credence, it is not apt at all. 3 'Strongly/firmly believe' is unexceptionable, unlike 'weakly believe'.Thomas Jefferson wrote to Samuel Kercheval Monticello that we should not "weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs"; Holton (2014: n. 13, 34-5) notes that Jefferson's 'weakly believe' is vanishingly rare.'Partly believe' is more familiar.(It appears in the King James Bible: "For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it", 1 Corinthians 11:18.)But 'partly' does not seem to indicate the strength of belief: the most straightforward interpretation of 'I partly believe the reports' is 'I believe (only) some parts of the reports'.
DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12768
Author: Alex Byrne
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3135712908