https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6234-4488
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
A question of recent interest in epistemology and philosophy of mind is that of how belief and credence relate to each other. A number of philosophers argue for a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On this view, what it is to have a credence just is to have a particular kind of belief—that is, a belief whose content involves probabilities or epistemic modals. Here, I argue against the belief-first view: specifically, I argue that it cannot account for agents who have credences in propositions that they barely comprehend. I conclude that, no matter how credences differ from beliefs, they do not differ in virtue of adding additional content to the believed proposition.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 For an overview of the relationship between belief and credence, see Jackson [Citation2020].
2 See Foley [Citation1993], Christensen [Citation2004], Wedgwood [Citation2012], and Pettigrew [Citation2015].
3 See Buchak [Citation2014], Ross and Schroeder [Citation2014], Staffel [Citation2017], Jackson [Citation2019], and Weisberg [Citation2020].
4 Authors who discuss the belief-first view sympathetically include Harman [Citation1986], Plantinga [Citation1993: ch. 1], Lance [Citation1995: sec. 4], Schiffer [Citation2003: 200], Holton [Citation2008, Citation2014], Weisberg [Citation2013: sec. 3.1], Easwaran [Citation2016], Horgan [Citation2017], Dogramaci [Citation2018: 10], Moon [Citation2018, Citation2019], Moon and Jackson [Citation2020], and Kauss [Citation2020]. Weisberg [Citation2013] suggests that Hawthorne and Stanley [Citation2008] ought to endorse the belief-first view. Authors who provide objections to belief-first include Kaplan [Citation1996], Christensen [Citation2004: 18–20], Frankish [Citation2009: 76–8], Eriksson and Hájek [Citation2007: 206–7], Staffel [Citation2013], Moss [Citation2018: 7–8], and Lee [Citation2017: 278–9].
5 See Christensen [Citation2004: 18–20].
6 See Moon [Citation2018, Citation2019], Sturgeon [Citation2020], and Moon and Jackson [Citation2020].
7 See Moon and Jackson [Citation2020].
8 See Easwaran [Citation2015], Sturgeon [Citation2020], and Moon and Jackson [Citation2020].
9 Sarah Moss [Citation2018] has a view of credences that she calls a ‘simple attitude, complex content’ view, and so my argument might be a problem for her view as well. However, Moss denies that beliefs and credences are propositional attitudes. So, it is less clear how the arguments in this paper apply; this partially depends on what is required of an agent mentally and phenomenally so as to have a belief whose content is a probability space, rather than a proposition.
10 Possible exceptions include Easwaran [Citation2016] and Kauss [Citation2020].
11 Infinitism about justification is the view that a belief is justified by a belief in an infinite proposition or by an infinite number of beliefs. In response, some argue that since we cannot grasp, and thus cannot form beliefs about, an infinite proposition (or have an infinite number of propositions), infinitism cannot be true. See Audi [Citation1993], Klein [Citation1999], Bergmann [Citation2005: 432, Citation2006: ch. 1], and Fales [Citation2014].
12 Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to expand on this point.
13 Thanks to Alan Hájek for helpful discussion about the defense of this premise.
14 Thanks to Georgi Gardiner.
15 Thanks to an anonymous referee.
16 Thanks to an anonymous referee.
17 See Audi [Citation1993: 209, Citation1994: 421], Klein [Citation1999], Bergmann [Citation2005: 432, Citation2006: ch. 1], and Fales [Citation2014: 349–50].
18 A related objection appeals to the following possibility: when propositions increase in complexity, this takes the form of a Zeno-like open interval. In this case, each increase in complexity takes you closer to a cut-off, but no finite increase in complexity takes you over the edge. Suppose that you cannot grasp a proposition with complexity level 100, and suppose that you have a set of propositions p1–pn, such that each proposition represents a more complex proposition. P1 is complexity level 99, p2 is complexity level 99.5, p3 is complexity level 99.75, p4 is complexity level 99.875, etc. If complexity takes this form, a belief-firster can posit a series of increasingly complex propositions but nonetheless maintain that there is a bound of graspability [that is never reached]. This sense of complexity, however, does not seem to describe the kind of complexity added by epistemic modals. Embedding a modal proposition in additional modals doesn’t seem to add less complexity with each iteration; it’s hard to see why the fifth epistemic modal would add significantly less complexity than the first. (Thanks to Jeremy Strasser and David Builes for raising this objection.)
19 Thanks to Josh Smart and Mousa Mohammadian.
20 See Holton [Citation2014]. Thanks to Marissa Wallin, Jeremy Strasser, and Josh Smart.
21 This seems possible even if, in most cases, it involves or rationally requires withholding belief or having a middling credence, as Bergmann [Citation2005: 432] suggests. He considers the case of an agent considering a proposition just on the cusp of his graspability:
by exerting himself mentally, [he can] barely grasp it, although he also finds himself withholding it because of its complexity. You might think that this is exactly what one should expect to happen to rational people in a reflective mood drawn to continue considering propositions at ever higher levels: before reaching a proposition they are unable to grasp, they will reach one which they can barely grasp and which they will be inclined to withhold because of its complexity.
22 Thanks to Peter Clutton.
23 Thanks to Zach Barnett and an anonymous referee.
24 See Roberts [Citation1998], Neu [Citation2000], and Nussbaum [Citation2001]. Many Stoics also held this view.
25 See Velleman [Citation2000], Setiya [Citation2007], and Marušić and Schwenkler [Citation2018]. Adam Wodeham, a medieval philosopher, also held this view: see Pickavé [Citation2012].
26 See Price [Citation1989], Hedden [Citation2015: 156–7, 173], and Gregory [Citation2017, Citationforthcoming].
27 Thanks to Paul Blaschko, Katie Steele, Tim L. Williamson, Jeremy Strasser, Joshua Thong, Michael Nielsen, Andrew Moon, and audiences at Australian Catholic University, the 2020 Central APA, and the ANU probability theory reading group for helpful discussion. Thanks to Marissa Wallin, Mousa Mohammadian, Joshua Smart, Alan Hájek, Melissa Fusco, Justin D’Ambrosio, Peter Finocchiaro, Shang Yeo, and two anonymous referees at Australasian Journal of Philosophy for comments on earlier drafts. Thanks especially to Peter Tan, as conversations with him sparked the idea for this paper.