Body dissatisfaction has long been considered an integral component of and driving force behind anorexia nervosa. In this paper, I characterise body dissatisfaction in terms of problematic beliefs about body size and the value of thinness. I suggest two methods for understanding these beliefs. Regarding body size beliefs, I suggest focusing on certain forms of misleading phenomenal evidence that sufferers of anorexia nervosa are exposed to. Regarding beliefs about the value of thinness, I suggest focusing (...) on the benefits of such beliefs. (shrink)

Belief polarization is widely seen to threaten havoc on our shared political lives. It is often assumed that BP is the product of epistemically irrational behaviors at the individual level. After distinguishing between BP as it occurs in intra-group and inter-group settings, this paper argues that neither process necessarily reflects individual epistemic irrationality. It is true that these processes can work in tandem to produce so-called “echo chambers.” But while echo chambers are often problematic from the point of view (...) of collective rationality, it doesn't follow that individuals are doing anything wrong, epistemically speaking, in seeking them out. In non-ideal socio-epistemic contexts, echo chamber construction might provide one's best defense against systematic misinformation and deception. (shrink)

Changes in conversationally salient error possibilities, and/or changes in stakes, appear to generate shifts in our judgments regarding the correct application of ‘know’. One prominent response to these shifts is to argue that they arise due to shifts in belief and do not pose a problem for traditional semantic or metaphysical accounts of knowledge. Such doxastic proposals face familiar difficulties with cases where knowledge is ascribed to subjects in different practical or conversational situations from the speaker. Jennifer Nagel has recently (...) offered an ingenious response to these problematic cases—appeal to egocentric bias. Appeal to this kind of bias also has the potential for interesting application in other philosophical arenas, including discussions of epistemic modals. In this paper, I draw on relevant empirical literature to clarify the nature of egocentric bias as it manifests in children and adults, and argue that appeal to egocentric bias is ill-suited to respond to the problem cases for doxastic accounts. Our discussion also has significant impact on the prospects for application of egocentric bias in other arenas. (shrink)

Philosophers are divided over whether implicit biases are beliefs. Critics of the belief model of implicit bias argue that empirical data show that implicit biases are habitual but unstable and not sensitive to evidence. They are not rational or consistently action-guiding like beliefs are supposed to be. In contrast, proponents of the belief model of implicit bias argue that they are stable enough, sensitive to some evidence, and do guide our actions, albeit haphazardly sometimes. With the help of (...) revisionary notions of belief, such as fragmented, Spinozan, and dispositional belief, these theorists argue that implicit biases are beliefs. I argue that both the critiques and defenses of belief models of implicit bias are problematic. This methodological critique suggests that debates about nature of the implicit bias ought to shift away from the belief question and toward more fundamental questions about stability and evidential sensitivity of implicit biases. I chart the path forward for this prescribed shift in the debate. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEric Funkhouser argues that beliefs can function as social signals. I argue that Funkhouser’s argument for this conclusion rests on a problematic definition of “signal,” and that on standard definitions, the imperceptibility of beliefs disqualifies them from counting as signals. However, I also argue that Funkhouser’s insights about the social functions of beliefs can be true even if his claim that beliefs are signals is false.

Requests belong to a family of forms of social influence on action that appear problematic when employed in the attempt to directly influence belief. Explaining why this is so is more difficult than it might at first appear. The fact that belief is not directly subject to the will can only be part of the explanation. It must also be the case that requests are incapable of providing epistemic reasons in a way that parallels that in which they provide (...) practical reasons. I propose an account of the nature of requests that is in a position to explain why requests are incapable of doing this. (shrink)

Large numbers of students from the Chinese‐speaking world are nowadays enrolled in Western universities, prompting the need for awareness of their educational beliefs and practices. Although an established literature seeks to characterize ‘the Chinese learner’, much of this research results in stereotypical representations of a ‘reduced Other’: passive, uncritical and over‐reliant on the instructor. This paper, which is based on ethnographic research conducted in universities in the People’s Republic of China, aims to illuminate some of the common misperceptions of (...) Chinese educational cultures. (shrink)

A strong case can be made that Peirce’s formal rhetoric is primarily a theory of inquiry. Peirce’s convergence theory of truth requires a community of inquiry enduring indefinitely over time. Such a community, then, must promote “solidarity” in Peirce’s terms, a consistent practice of cooperation among inquirers over generations. One of the tasks of his formal rhetoric, then, is to analyze the conditions for solidarity. Using Peirce’s framework of a belief-desire model for practical action, solidarity can be promoted if there (...) are commonly desired ends and a consensus of beliefs about the best means to attain those ends in inquiry. Peirce recognizes, however, that the community of inquiry is constituted with different types of inquirers who have different purposes for inquiry. He divides them among the “pure” theoretical scientists, applied scientists and practical inquirers – the general public – who are interested in the practical applications that can bring betterment to their lives. It is argued here that Peirce’s apparent inconsistencies concerning the role and purpose of science can be attributed to cautions addressed to each of these different audiences. The remainder of the paper explores the problematics of solidarity in a community of inquirers who have different ends for inquiry, and how Peirce attempts to address the puzzles and paradoxes that result. (shrink)

It is usually maintained that a subject with manifestly contradictory beliefs is irrational. How can we account, then, for the intuitive rationality of dialetheists, who believe that some manifest contradictions are true? My paper aims to answer this question. Its ultimate goal is to determine a characterization of (or rather a constraint for) rational belief approvable by both the theorists of Dialetheism and its opponents. In order to achieve this goal, a two-step strategy will be adopted. First, a characterization (...) of rational belief applicable to non-dialetheist believers will be determined; this characterization will involve the semantic apparatus of Nathan Salmon’s Millian Russellianism but will get rid of the problematic and obscure notion of mode of presentation (guise in his own terminology), replacing it with a couple of novel devices, belief subsystems and cognitive coordination. Second, using ideas from Graham Priest, the leading proponent of Dialetheism, such a characterization will be modified, so as to devise a new one able to account for the intuitive rationality of both dialetheist and non-dialetheist believers. (shrink)

It’s common to think that animals think. The cat thinks it is time to be fed, the monkey thinks the dominant is a threat. In order to make sense of what the other animals around us do, we ascribe mental states to them. The cat meows at the door because she wants to be let in. The monkey the monkey fails the test because he doesn’t remember the answer. -/- We explain animal actions in terms of their mental states, just (...) as we do with humans. One of us has argued that our science of animal minds requires that animal behavior be explained in such terms, and this doesn’t lead to a problematic use of folk psychology or anthropomorphism (Andrews 2016, 2020). By “anthropomorphism” we mean the attribution of human psychological, social, or normative properties to non-human animals “usually with the implication it is done without sound justification” (Shettleworth 2010, 477). And by “folk psychology” we mean the commonsense practice of seeing action as caused or accompanied by mental states like belief and desire, emotions, and seeing people in terms of their moods or personality traits, as well as categorizing complex behaviors as examples of grieving, communicating, or teaching (Andrews 2012). Psychologists routinely describe human behaviors in folk psychological terms, so it’s not that the categories are unscientific. The issue with using folk psychology to describe animal behavior is whether observable similarities between human and nonhuman behavior warrants thinking they involve the same psychological kind. The use of folk psychology when talking about animals need not be problematically anthropomorphic, though we need some evidentiary basis for filing animal behavior under some folk psychological category. -/- Despite it being commonplace for humans to attribute thoughts to animals, and there being arguments in favor of doing so in science, the nature of these mental states so many are happy to see in other animals remains unclear. To help bring some focus into the discussion, we will examine the attitude of belief. In this chapter we will examine the various possible statuses of animal beliefs, and the implications of those various views for our folk practice as well as our scientific investigations. (shrink)

Ethics is being asked to respond to the globalization of the economy, and among the various responses one can see the emergence of inter-religious approaches including lay groups. This article examines certain of these concrete attempts to integrate ethics, spirituality and economics, and problematizes some of the theoretical underpinnings of these activities, specifically the question of beliefs.In January, 1998, two inter-religious and interdisciplinary organizations — Avicenne and the World Conference on Religion and Peace — participated for the first time (...) in the European Commission's conference on the future of Europe's economic and social order. It was recognized at this meeting that inter-religious dialogue constituted a paradigmatic example for the construction of a European society that must integrate different cultures. But paradigmatic does not mean it actually exists, for the inter-religious dynamic is still hesitating between globalization and integrationism. Nevertheless, religious plurality is apparent in the economy. The IMF recently hosted representatives of different religions, surpassing the framework of Christianity. In France, the University of Paris IX has planned a series of lectures on “Morality, Spirituality and Business Life”. Before looking at the theoretical questions connected with the emergence of a planetary, inter-religious ethics, let us come back to the question of the Christian religions and the social and economic order. I will restrict myself to mentioning some problematic points in order to defend the necessity of an inter-religious, interdisciplinary approach.Among the positions adopted by the churches at the January, 1998 conference, three points bear some examination: the dignity of labour and the community as specifically Christian values, and Europe constructed on the base of Christian values. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a conditional parity thesis: if we are agents with respect to our intentions, we are agents with respect to our beliefs. In the final section, I motivate a categorical version of the parity thesis: we are agents with respect to belief and intention. My aim in this paper is to show that there is no unique challenge facing epistemic agency that is not also facing agency with respect to intention. My thesis is ambitious (...) on two fronts. First, the parity thesis is a substantive thesis about the nature of belief and intention. I argue that there is a structural parity of belief and intention; the status of whether they are agential stands and falls together. Second, the parity thesis illuminates the nature of agency. It constrains what counts as a satisfactory account of agency: either we must accept agency of both belief and intention, or we must reject both. In the final section, I argue that we have prima facie reason to accept agency of belief and intention. Finally, I diagnose why there has been such resistance to epistemic agency. Epistemic agency is problematic, but its problems are problems with agency, not problems with epistemic agency. (shrink)

This article examines the popular journalistic discourses on the terroristic actions and ideological beliefs of Brenton Tarrant as a way to illuminate the problematic ways in which the notions of radicalization and extremism of rightism are framed. I argue that the journalistic discourses implicitly frame radicalization and extremism as isolated standalone phenomena in terms of their ideas and ideological proponents. This framing is problematic because it stimulates a practical solution of suppression and a moral reaction of condemnation (...) that serve to inadvertently fuel the growth of radicalization towards extremist attitudes and violence. Therefore, through my elaboration, I aim to lead the discussion towards a reframing of radicalization and extremism as not only standalone phenomena but also inherently interactive social processes. Such reframing carries important educational implications. I conclude that the educational role in the face of problematic discourses on radical rightism is to ensure that the classroom understands radicalization as a shared and interactive social process rather than as only an individual outcome. It is through such understanding that the educational approaches can then optimally resist radicalization and extremism through the acknowledgement of the social importance of inclusive dialogues. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze epistemic blameworthiness. After presenting Michael Bergmann’s definition of epistemic blameworthiness, I argue that his definition is problematic because it does not have a control condition. I conclude by offering an improved definition of epistemic blameworthiness and defending this definition against potential counterexamples.

Moran conceives of conscious belief as a conscious activity, rather than awareness of a mental state. Once conscious belief is understood in this way, the notion of suppressed belief becomes problematic. In this paper, I draw on the work of Merleau-Ponty to sketch an account of suppressed belief. I suggest that suppressed beliefs should not be understood as attitudes towards propositions. Instead, they should be conceived as ways of perceiving and interacting with the world that are out of (...) keeping with how one repre-sents it as being. (shrink)

I argue that in many cases, there are good reasons to engage with people who hold fringe beliefs such as debunked conspiracy theories. I (1) discuss reasons for engaging with fringe beliefs; (2) discuss the conditions that need to be met for engagement to be worthwhile; (3) consider the question of how to engage with such beliefs, and defend what Jeremy Fantl has called “closed-minded engagement” and (4) address worries that such closed-minded engagement involves problematic deception (...) or manipulation. Thinking about how we engage with irrational emotions offers a way of responding to these concerns. Reflection on engagement with fringe beliefs has wider implications for two distinct philosophical discussions. First, it can help illuminate the nature of beliefs, lending support to the view that not all states which are deeply resistant to evidence thereby fail to be beliefs. Second, an implication of the view I put forth is that it need not constitute a lack of respect to adopt what Peter Strawson called “the objective stance” in relationships. (shrink)

This paper expands the definition of gray-marketing to include some ethically problematic marketing activities and techniques used in personal selling in China. Based on this, a conceptual model of gray-marketing for a particular type of selling in which both the sellers and the buyers exhibit problematic ethics in an exchange and the associated hypotheses are developed and tested. The findings show that, first, the respondents have different ethical evaluations of different marketing practices used in personal selling such as (...) giving and accepting gifts, buying and accepting meals, and offering and accepting kickbacks. Some of these practices may not be considered unethical. Second, in terms of ethical assessment, gray-marketing practiced by buying agents is more unacceptable than when practiced by sales agents. Third, a person's ethical evaluation of gray-marketing behavior, empathy for gray-marketing, and belief that gray-marketing has serious consequences, significantly affects his inclination to use gray-marketing. This paper concludes with a discussion of some possible applications of our research findings. (shrink)

When in the business of offering an account of the epistemic normativity of belief, one is faced with the following dilemma: strongly externalist norms fail to account for the intuition of justification in radical deception scenarios, while milder norms are incapable to explain what is epistemically wrong with false beliefs. This paper has two main aims; we first look at one way out of the dilemma, defended by Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn, and argue that it fails. Second, we (...) identify what we take to be the problematic assumption that underlies their account and offer an alternative way out. We put forth a knowledge-first friendly normative framework for belief which grants justification to radically deceived subjects while at the same time acknowledging that their false beliefs are not epistemically good beliefs. (shrink)

The etiology of a perceptual belief can seemingly affect its epistemic status. There are cases in which perceptual beliefs seem to be unjustified because the perceptual experiences on which they are based are caused, in part, by wishful thinking, or irrational prior beliefs. It has been argued that this is problematic for many internalist views in the epistemology of perception, especially those which postulate immediate perceptual justification. Such views are unable to account for the impact of an (...) experience’s etiology on its justificational status, McGrath, Siegel, and Vahid ). Our understanding of what we have been told can also be affected by, for example, wishful thinking or irrational background beliefs. I argue that testimonial beliefs based on such states of understanding can thus be rendered unjustified. This is problematic not only for internalist immediate justification views of testimony, but also for some externalist views, such as the form of proper functionalism endorsed by Burge, and Graham. The testimonial version of the argument from etiology, unlike the perceptual variant, does not rest on the controversial hypothesis that perception is cognitively penetrable. Furthermore, there is a stronger case for the claim that testimonial justification can be undermined by etiological effects since, I argue, testimonial beliefs can be based on the background mental states which affect our understanding of what is said, and our states of understanding are rationally assessable. (shrink)

What do we mean when we say that some group believes something? Do we simply mean that all the members of the group believe it, or are we acknowledging the existence of some kind of group agent? According to Margaret Gilbert, talk about group mental states refers to the specific kind of agreements she calls joint commitments — that is, to collectively believe something means to be committed with others to believe it. In my article, I will first present Gilbert’s (...) approach in more detail but will ultimately show that this approach is problematic and will refute it. I will briefly consider the most common solution to the problems Gilbert’s account faces, which lies in replacing collective beliefs with acceptances, but I will show that this solution will not do either. The solution I will then present will be based on Daniel Dennett’s intentional strategy, which is a method of interpreting the things around us and predicting their behaviour by treating them as rational agents with relevant intentions. I will try to show that all the problematic cases of collective belief can be explained by applying the intentional strategy to the groups in question. (shrink)

Questions of evidence—including the idea, still central to what could be called informal epistemology, that our beliefs and claims are duly corrected by our encounters with autonomously resistant objects —are inevitably caught up in views of how beliefs, generally, are produced, maintained, and transformed. In recent years, substantially new accounts of these cognitive dynamics—and, with them, more or less novel conceptions of what we might mean by “beliefs”—have been emerging from various nonphilosophical fields as well as from (...) within disciplinary epistemology. Because of the distinctly reflexive nature of these developments—that is, new conceptions of concepts, revised beliefs about belief, invocations of evidence said to challenge the operation of evidence, quasi-logical refutations of the authority of logic, and so on—the deployment of positions and arguments becomes extremely difficult here, as does even the description of the relevant events in intellectual history. Indeed, since we are dealing here not merely with shifts of, as it is sometimes put, “vocabulary,” but, often enough, with clashes of profoundly divergent conceptual idiom and syntax, every major term and discursive move is potentially implicated in the problematic itself, and, thereby, open to radical questioning and liable to charges of question-begging.The aim of the present essay is twofold: first, to suggest the more general interest and significance, beyond the fields in which they are being developed, of these emerging reconceptions of belief; and, second, to frame that suggestion in an account which, since it cannot escape the rhetorical difficulties just mentioned, foregrounds them. A number of related themes—notably, symmetry, circularity, reciprocality, and ambivalence—recur throughout and, at various points, are drawn together in accord with the account itself. Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University, and director of its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and Cultural Theory. Her current work examines contemporary models of cognition and communication. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs. Following Grice (1971), many philosophers hold that adopting a self-fulfilling belief would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. I argue that such objections gets their force from a popular but problematic model of theoretical deliberation which pictures deliberation as a function, treating the deliberation’s inputs as given, fixed prior to and independently from the deliberation. Though such a picture may seem plausible, attending to the case of self-fulfilling (...) class='Hi'>beliefs can help us see how such a function-model is inadequate for a general understanding of theoretical deliberation. Because it is unable to accommodate the possibility that the outcomes of our deliberation can sometimes be evidence for the proposition we are deliberating about, the function model is unable to account for cases where what we believe affects the truth of what is believed. (shrink)

One response to the problem of logical omniscience in standard possible worlds models of belief is to extend the space of worlds so as to include impossible worlds. It is natural to think that essentially the same strategy can be applied to probabilistic models of partial belief, for which parallel problems also arise. In this paper, I note a difficulty with the inclusion of impossible worlds into probabilistic models. Under weak assumptions about the space of worlds, most of the propositions (...) which can be constructed from possible and impossible worlds are in an important sense inexpressible; leaving the probabilistic model committed to saying that agents in general have at least as many attitudes towards inexpressible propositions as they do towards expressible propositions. If it is reasonable to think that our attitudes are generally expressible, then a model with such commitments looks problematic. (shrink)

This paper has two parts. In the first I give a brief historical account of the a priori and point out the central and problematic role of 'Erfahrung überhaupt' in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. In the second and main part I offer a criticism of Kripke’s arguments for the contingent a priori and I thereby question his radical separation of metaphysics and epistemology.

Religious fundamentalism remains a significant force in global politics and religion. Despite a range of problems arising from fundamentalism, the beliefs fundamentalists hold can seem quite reasonable. This paper considers whether, in fact, fundamentalist beliefs are rational by drawing on recent ideas in contemporary epistemology. The paper presents a general theory of fundamentalist beliefs in terms of their propositional content and the high credence levels attributed to them. It then explores the way these beliefs are both (...) acquired and retained by applying ideas from the social epistemology of echo chambers and group belief. The paper then considers three accounts of the rationality of belief: evidentialist, reliabilist, and virtue-theoretic. It is argued that fundamentalist beliefs can be reasonable on evidentialist standards, but are nevertheless still problematic on reliabilist and virtue standards, since they are formed in environments that are not truth-conducive and which cultivate intellectual vice. (shrink)

One might think that its seeming to you that p makes you justified in believing that p. After all, when you have no defeating beliefs, it would be irrational to have it seem to you that p but not believe it. That view is plausible for perceptual justification, problematic in the case of memory, and clearly wrong for inferential justification. I propose a view of rationality and justified belief that deals happily with inference and memory. Appearances are to (...) be evaluated as ‘sound’ or ‘unsound.’ Only a sound appearance can give rise to a justified belief, yet even an unsound appearance can ‘rationally require’ the subject to form the belief. Some of our intuitions mistake that rational requirement for the belief’s being justified. The resulting picture makes it plausible that there are also unsound perceptual appearances. I suggest that to have a sound perceptually basic appearance that p, one must see that p. (shrink)

Relations of transworld similarity play an essential role in Lewis's system. Analysis reveals that they involve the possibility of detailed transworld belief. Such belief is problematic within Lewis's framework. He has an answer to the problems raised, but it relies on a dubious distinction between natural and mere properties. Replacing that distinction with a respectable one undermines an essential part of his case against one of his chief opponents, the linguistic ersatzist.

Joint acceptance accounts of group belief hold that groups can form a belief in virtue of the group members jointly accepting a proposition. Recently, Jennifer Lackey (2020, 2021) proposed a challenge to these accounts. If group beliefs can be based on joint acceptance, then it seems difficult to account for all instances of a group telling a lie. Given that groups can and do lie, our accounts of group belief better not result in us misidentifying some group lies as (...) normal assertions. I argue that Lackey’s argument is not decisive. The cases she proposes as challenges for joint acceptance accounts can be dealt with in the joint acceptance framework. I present two different readings of Lackey’s central case, showing that in both readings Lackey’s example of a problematic group lie should not be identified as a lie, but rather as an epistemic mistake by the group. What kind of mistake the group makes depends on the exact reading of Lackey’s case, but either way the group is not telling a lie. (shrink)

Earl Conee and Richard Feldman have argued that epistemic support should be understood in terms of explanatory considerations. Very roughly, they hold that one’s evidence supports a given proposition when that proposition is part of the best explanation of one’s evidence. This proposal is attractive, but T. Ryan Byerly has recently argued that it is false. Byerly claims that such explanationist accounts of epistemic support cannot account for the fact that one’s evidence can support propositions about the future. Although Byerly (...) presents an interesting challenge, his argument is problematic and, ultimately, unconvincing. (shrink)

I develop a “two-systems” interpretation of Husserl’s theory of belief. On this interpretation, Husserl accounts for our sense of the world in terms of (1) a system of embodied horizon meanings and passive synthesis, which is involved in any experience of an object, and (2) a system of active synthesis and sedimentation, which comes on line when we attend to an object’s properties. I use this account to defend Husserl against several forms of Heideggerean critique. One line of critique, recently (...) elaborated by Taylor Carman, says that Husserl wrongly loads everyday perception with explicit beliefs about things. A second, earlier line of critique, due to Hubert Dreyfus, charges Husserl with thinking of belief on a problematic Artificial Intelligence (AI) model which involves explicit rules applied to discrete symbol structures. I argue that these criticisms are based on a conflation of Husserl’s two systems of belief. The conception of Husserlian phenomenology which emerges is compatible with Heideggerean phenomenology and associated approaches to cognitive science (in particular, dynamical systems theory). (shrink)

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This (...) paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog). (shrink)

De se beliefs typically pose a problem for propositional theories of content. The Property Theory of content tries to overcome the problem of de se beliefs by taking properties to be the objects of our beliefs. I argue that the concept of self-ascription plays a crucial role in the Property Theory while being virtually unexplained. I then offer different possibilities of illuminating that concept and argue that the most common ones are either circular, question-begging, or epistemically (...) class='Hi'>problematic. Finally, I argue that only a primitive understanding of self-ascription is viable. Self-ascription is the relation that subjects stand in with respect to the properties that they believe themselves to have. As such, self-ascription has to be primitive if it is supposed to do justice to the characteristic features of de se beliefs. (shrink)

One feature of the neo/liberal possessive self is the propertied character of certain beliefs: treated as belonging to those who hold them, recognized and supported in acting on the world, and protected. While an ownership paradigm predates anti-discrimination and human rights regimes, these regimes have consolidated and extended the propertied status of certain identity beliefs in ways that naturalize and siloize them. But if beliefs’ propertied character is politically problematic, can it be unsettled and reformed? This (...) paper considers one possible mode for doing so, namely play. Oftentimes, play works to secure and assert the propertied attachments people have to their beliefs; but some forms of play offer other possibilities. Focusing on the state as a complex site of play relations and encounters, this article explores how state play engages identity beliefs in a contemporary legal drama of colliding beliefs between conservative Christians and liberal gay equality advocates. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs—beliefs whose propositional contents will be true just in case—and because—an agent believes them. Following Grice, many philosophers hold that believing such propositions would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. This paper argues that such objections get their force from a popular but problematic function-model of theoretical deliberation, and that attending to the case of self-fulfilling belief can help us see why such a model is mistaken. The paper (...) shows that on a revised model of theoretical deliberation our evidence will problematically underdetermine any appropriate doxastic attitude: when belief in a proposition is self-fulfilling, our evidence is insufficient to support belief, disbelief, or even suspended judgment toward that proposition. (shrink)

To believe is to possess a wide variety of dispositions pertinent to the proposition believed. Among those dispositions are self-ascriptive dispositions. Consequently, being disposed to self-ascribe belief that P is partly constitutive of believing that P. Such self-ascriptive dispositions can be underwritten by any of a variety of mechanisms, acting co-operatively or competitively. But since self-ascriptive dispositions are only partly constitutive of belief, there can be cases in which the self-ascriptive dispositions splinter away from the remaining dispositions. It is then (...) an empirical question how often our self-ascriptive dispositions diverge from the remaining dispositions constitutive of belief. The dispositions will tend to align reliably when possession of the belief in question is normatively neutral, straightforwardly connected to behavior, and most centrally manifested in explicit assertions or judgments. When these three conditions are not met, self-ascription, self-conscious avowal, sincere utterance, and explicit judgment will often diverge from the various other dispositions constitutive of belief. Even self-knowledge of explicit judgment can be problematic when we are attracted to half-empty forms of words or when we are not entirely persuaded of what we are saying. (shrink)

In our dealings with our pets, and larger animals in general, at least most of us see them as conscious beings. We say “the cat feels pain” ascribing sensation. We notice “My cat wants to get in the kitchen because she thinks there is some cheese left” ascribing beliefs and desires. Explanations likes these can be employed on a variety of occasions, and usually we are content with what they say. We seem to understand why our cat is doing (...) what she does. On the other hand the employment of human categories to animals seems to be problematic. Reflecting on the details of human beliefs, for example, casts serious doubt on whether the cat is able to believe anything at all. Clever as they are none of my cats has the concept of kitchen , because a kitchen is – roughly – a functional part of an artificial dwelling (a house). Since cats do not built houses and do not prepare their food, the place the cat is walking into cannot be conceptualized by the cat as kitchen . Even the concept of cheese in its generality (made out of goat or cow milk, or camel milk …) is beyond the cat. So when we say what our cat believes and wishes we use our concept, in fact express a belief that a human being might have in a similar situation. What, then, does the cat have? Does a cat have beliefs? Or at least something like beliefs? (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Poston and Dougherty's attempt to undermine the problem of divine hiddenness by using the notion of belief de re is problematic at best. They hold that individuals who appear to be unbelievers (because they are de dicto unbelievers) may actually be de re believers. I construct a set of conditions on ascribing belief de re to show that it is prima facie implausible to claim that seemingly inculpable and apparent unbelievers are really de (...) re believers. Thus, while it is indeed possible that a de dicto unbeliever is a de re believer, it is unlikely that this has sufficiently general application to actual individuals to alleviate the problem of divine hiddenness. (shrink)

The distinction between a concept and its different conceptions plays a prominent role in debates about constitutional interpretation. Proponents of a dynamic reading of the Constitution-espousing interpretation of constitutional concepts according to their contemporary understandings typically rely on the idea that the Constitution entrenches only the general concepts it deploys, without authoritatively favoring any particular conception of them-specifically, without favoring the particular conception of the relevant concept that the framers of the Constitution may have had in mind. Originalists argue, to (...) the contrary, that fidelity to the Constitution requires an understanding of its provisions according to the particular conception of the abstract concepts prevalent at the time of enactment, and not those we may now favor. My main purpose in this essay is to put some pressure on the linguistic considerations that are presented in this debate, arguing that they are much more problematic than the proponents of both positions assume. I will try to show that the debate here is actually a moral-political one, mostly about the main rationale of a constitutional regime and the conditions of its legitimacy. It is, primarily, a debate about what constitutions are for, and what makes them legitimate. But I will only get to this moral issue at the end. The main part of the essay will strive to show that the semantic considerations employed in this debate are inconclusive; the way concepts are used in a given context depends on various pragmatic determinants, and those, in turn, depend on the nature of the conversation in question. The moral disagreement is, ultimately, about the kind of conversation that constitutional regimes are taken to establish. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between belief in predestination and trust in God in terms of the disciplines of kalām and mysticism. Tawakkul is regarded in Islamic ethics as one of the positive characteristics of faith. Considering that humans cannot be all-powerful, they need to depend on and trusting another. As to religion, the being described is God. Notably, in Sūfism, tawakkul is a significant indicator of worshipping with reference to the human-God relationship. Moreover, the (...) content of the concept is closely associated with the tenet of predestination in kalām. There is a fine line between being responsible and fulfilling the tasks given and the belief in destiny. In the Sūfī understanding of tawakkul, relinquishing the will described as the final state of the worshipping and the state of submission to and trust in God, which is a positive attitude, when combined with the kalām belief that everything happens by a divine decree, can turn into a problematic phenomenon. The impact of the problem in question on the underdevelopment of the Islamic societies in the last two centuries. However, it should be kept in mind that a sound interpretation of the traditional perception of the belief in destiny in both Sūfism and Sunnī kalām literature may lead to a tawakkul understanding encouraging and strengthening the human and the society. In the present study, the concept of tawakkul has been discussed with regard to the doctrines of will, power (qudrah), preordination-destiny (qāzā-qadar) within kalām discipline, and the positive relation of tawakkul with the belief in destiny has been investigated. (shrink)

According to Sosa’s virtue epistemological account, an instance of (animal) knowledge is a belief that instantiates the property of being apt. The purpose of this contribution is, first, to show why this claim is, without further clarification, problematic. Briefly, an instance of knowledge cannot be identified to an apt belief because beliefs are states and aptness is a property that only actions —and no states— can exemplify. Second, I present the metaphysical amendment that the tenants of virtue epistemology (...) can adopt in order to avoid this objection. This conducts me to suggest a new, metaphysically sounder version of the virtue epistemological account of knowledge in which knowledge is extrinsically apt belief. (shrink)

Researchers have argued that believing in conspiracy theories is dangerous and harmful, both for the individual and the community. In the philosophical debate, the divide is between the generalists, who argue that conspiracy theories are prima facie problematic, and the particularists, who argue that since conspiracies do occur, we ought to take conspiracy theories seriously, and consider them on merit. Much of the empirical research has focused on correlations between conspiracy belief and personality traits, such as narcissism, illusory pattern (...) perception, and paranoia, in the spirit of a generalist account. However, there is also ample empirical evidence that conspiracy belief is widespread in the population at large, which would be surprising and in need of explanation if the generalists were correct. In sociology and political science studies have demonstrated the role of group motivation and social aspects of belief in conspiracies. There is currently lacking a unified account of what motivates conspiracy belief that can capture the different intuitions, if possible, in one framework. This is the lacuna I wish to address, by introducing a framework that incorporate the many dimensions of conspiracy theories. The framework identifies three motivating factors for endorsing a conspiracy theory: group cohesion, cognitive needs, and truth seeking. A fourth dimension is the isolation value, or the level of ‘knowledge-anomie’ that the conspiracy theory takes. Thus, the framework is able to capture more normal cognitive functions that drive conspiracy beliefs, such as adopting to the in-group’s beliefs and the quest for truth, but also the plausibly more abnormal ones. Conspiracy theories can be positioned in a three-dimensional space depending on the degree to which they exemplify each motivating factor and the extent they deviate from the ‘knowledge-norm’. I suggest that the generalist and the particularist have focused on different parts of this common three-dimensional space. I also indicate a relatively small area where I believe pathological conspiracy belief is to be positioned. Ultimately, it is an empirical question what part of the space (pathological or otherwise) conspiracy theories occupy. (shrink)

Acts of civil disobedience are undertaken in defense of a variety of causes ranging from banning GMO crops and prohibiting abortion to fighting inequality and saving the environment. Recently, Brownlee has argued that the merit of a cause is not relevant to the establishment of a moral right to civil disobedience. Instead, it is the fact that a dissenter believes his cause for protest to be morally right that is salient. We may term her and similar such theories belief-relative theories (...) of civil disobedience. In this paper, I first argue that Brownlee’s important argument from conscientious conviction fails in its aim to establish a belief-relative moral right to civil disobedience. I then provide a more general argument that no purely belief-relative theory of civil disobedience grounded in a basic moral value will be tenable. Any moral warrant of civil disobedience that is derived from a value must be limited by the value from which it is derived, as well as by other similarly weighty values. If the moral warrant of civil disobedience is derived from the value of autonomy, then the warrant does not extend to acts of civil disobedience that violate the autonomy of others, or other similarly weighty values. Furthermore, granting a right to disobey in promotion of a grossly unjust view is problematic because civil disobedience ought to serve the role of promoting justice. (shrink)

It is astonishing that we humans are able to have, act on and express moral beliefs. This dissertation aims to provide a better philosophical understanding of why and how this is possible especially when we assume metaethical expressivism. Metaethical expressivism is the combination of expressivism and noncognitivism. Expressivism is the view that the meaning of a sentence is explained by the mental state it is conventionally used to express. Noncognitivism is the view that the mental state expressed by a (...) moral sentence is a noncognitive, desire-like state. The central question of this dissertation is this: "How can metaethical expressivists explain that we are able to express moral beliefs?" The shortest answer this dissertation will give is the following: "by becoming `dispositional expressivists´." Dispositional expressivists hold that moral beliefs are dispositions to be in certain mental states that resemble desires. More precisely, a central thesis of this study is that to hold a moral belief is to be disposed to be in a desire-like, noncognitive state where this state has some specific structure. This dissertation arrives at and justifies this thesis by making a number of steps. It starts with preparing the ground by developing a general theory of what it is for a sentence to express a mental state. Roughly, this theory states that for a sentence to express a mental state is for that sentence to be conventionally used to perform a speech act which counts as sincere only if the user or speaker is in that mental state. This theory of expressing satisfies all the constraints that must be satisfied for it to be compatible with the purposes of metaethical expressivism. The next step is to provide a solution to the most notorious semantic problem confronting metaethical expressivism, the problem of explaining how sentences containing moral words can have compositional meaning and stand in logical relations also known as the Frege-Geach or embedding problem. Building on the research of Mark Schroeder, a new expressivist semantics, called `Attitude Semantics´, will be developed for a first-order language. The motivating idea underlying attitude semantics is that expressivists can avoid the problematic feature of so-called `biforcation´ if they treat the structures of the mental states expressed by moral sentences as well as that expressed by non-moral sentences as being isomorphic. In order to give those structures a philosophically interesting interpretation, it will be suggested that we treat sentences as expressing dispositional states. As a toy example we will treat the sentence `murder is wrong´ as expressing the disposition to be for blaming for murder. After dealing with the Frege-Geach problem, I turn to the metaethical expressivists' project of quasi-realism. Two major goals of this project are to explain how moral sentence can be truth-apt and how the states expressed by them can be regarded as moral beliefs. In order to establish those goals I critically examine a number of theories of truth-aptness by providing counterexamples to them. I then present my own theory which says that a sentence is truth-apt iff and because there is a conventional way to use it to express a belief. What is new about this theory is that it treats expressing a belief as being explanatorily more basic than being truth-apt. Belief, according to this theory, explains truth-aptness, not vice versa. This has the important consequence that it shows that what I call the `orthodox strategy´ of quasi-realists is mistaken and needs to be inverted: expressivists must `earn the right´ to moral belief before they can establish that moral sentences are truth-apt, and not the other way round. The second part of this dissertation is then concerned with the question of what it is to hold a moral belief and how they can figure in rational reasoning. In short: it is concerned with earning the right to moral belief. After discussing the major problems confronting a noncognitivist theory of belief, most importantly what I call the `tightrope problem´, I argue for a dispositional form of noncognitivism about moral belief that combines elements from Eric Schwitzgebel's dispositionalism about belief and Sebastian Köhler's `conceptual role expressivism´. This dispositional noncognitivism perfectly matches and justifies the dispositionalist interpretation of the expressivist semantics developed before. In order to fully earn the right to moral belief, however, metaethical expressivists must also deal with several epistemological objections concerning the rationality of moral belief. The first objection I deal with comes from Derek Baker and is directed against Mark Schroeder's specific development of expressivism. I deal with this objection because my own theory bears close resemblance to Schroeder's theory and so it might be worried that it confronts the same issues. Fortunately, we will see that Baker's objection rest on a number of mistaken assumptions and so neither applies to Schroeder's expressivism nor to the version which I defend in this study. The other epistemological objection to metaethical expressivism I deal with is Cian Dorr's famous wishful-thinking objection. In contrast to previous replies to this objection I attack it by directly questioning the central assumption on which it rests, namely that reasoners can never be justified in basing a factual belief on a desire-like state. I argue that this is false, and that under certain conditions reasoning from desire-like mental states to factual beliefs is justified. My argument shows that even if holding a moral belief is being in a desire-like noncognitive state, basing factual belief on a moral belief can give one an epistemic reason for the factual belief. Hence, even if moral thoughts are wishes, moral thinking is not wishful thinking. I take my arguments to earn the dispositional expressivist the right to moral belief. By the previously defended theory of truth-aptness in terms of belief, this allows the dispositional expressivists to conclude that moral sentences are also truth-apt. This finishes the quasi-realist project of this dissertation. In the last part of this dissertation I switch gears and present two unnoted problems for metaethical expressivists having to do with explaining moral motivation. Both arguments are surprisingly simple. The first one is this: if motivation requires a belief as well as a desire (Humeanism), and moral judgments motivate by themselves (internalism), then moral judgments cannot be desires only. If this argument is sound, it shows that the famous `motivation argument´ not only entails the falsity of cognitivism, but also the falsity of noncognitivism. The second argument is the following: moral judgments when combined with suitable external desires motivate to act (externalism), but if motivation requires belief as well as desire (Humeanism), then moral judgments cannot be desires only. I discuss several ways in which noncognitivists might want to deal with those problems, but leave it as an open question whether those solutions will ultimately be viable. Overall, this dissertation makes serious contributions to the research program of metaethical expressivism. It makes proposals for how to solve a number of notorious problems, such as the Frege-Geach problem in semantics and the wishful-thinking problem in epistemology. Besides this, however, it also raises two new problems for metaethical expressivism in the philosophy of action. For those reasons this dissertation will be of interest for anyone who wants to defend or criticize expressivism in metaethics, and more generally, anyone who wants to better understand our astonishing ability to express moral beliefs. (shrink)

In his superb book, The Metaphysics of Representation, Williams sketches biconditional reductive definitions of representational states in non-representational terms. The central idea is an extremely innovative variety of interpretationism about belief and desire. Williams is inspired by David Lewis but departs significantly from him. I am sympathetic to interpretationism for some basic beliefs and desires. However, I will raise three worries for Williams’s version (§2–4). It neglects the role of conscious experience, it makes beliefs and desire too dependent (...) on "hidden facts", and it commits to the unmotivated and problematic claim that mental content is always explanatorily prior to linguistic content. Then, I will suggest a modified version of interpretationism that avoids these problems (§5). I will conclude with a general question (§6). -/- . (shrink)

Evidentialism as its leading proponents describe it has two distinct senses, these being evidentialism as a conceptual analysis of epistemic justification, and as a prescriptive ethics of belief—an account of what one ‘ought to believe’ under different epistemic circumstances. These two senses of evidentialism are related, but in the work of leading evidentialist philosophers, in ways that I think are deeply problematic. Although focusing on Richard Feldman’s ethics of belief, this chapter is critical of evidentialism in both senses. However, (...) I share with authors like Feldman and Earl Conee, that epistemology has important prescriptive functions, and that a sound, civic ethics of belief is of more than merely philosophic importance. One reason why an ethics of belief might be important to problems of practice is the need we have for tools to more effectively mediate the renewed round of ‘culture wars’ we are experiencing in Anglo-American cultures. I mean especially that grand cultural clash between science and religion, reason and faith, secularist atheism and religious fundamentalism, etc. Let us start with the genealogical question of why there is such a grand cultural debate in the first place, and why the debate especially as played out in public and popular forums and even in the courtrooms seems so volatile and so often to confusedly drag everything—beliefs, values, passions, etc., with it. These are questions that I think Sigmund Freud’s classic Civilization and its Discontents can help us understand. Freud was a major voice in criticism of the stern and often hypocritical Victorian morality, a voice pointing out the price of its sometimes high-handed, guiltinducing curtailments of the satisfactions sought by the individual. But for Freud while there are real differences in the moral demands that different societies or traditions place upon people, there is something inevitable about the conflict itself, for “replacement of the power of the individual by the power of a community constitutes the decisive step of civilization... (shrink)

This article is about self-knowledge on one's own mental states. Considering human as rational beings, this study aims to problematize the position of subject in process of self-knowledge, as well as to realize the state of knowledge about self-knowledge. In this way, Richard Moran constitutes the method of transparency about the knowledge of one's own mental states. Such a method receives some criticism from the philosopher Quassim Cassam and the philosopher Brie-Gertler. In the same extent, both authors problematize some characteristics (...) of self-knowledge, in which criticism reaches some points studied by Brazilian philosophers, namely Paulo Farias, Waldomiro Silva Filho and André Abath. The latter two authors are based on Moran's methodology and thus constitute his reflections on conditions of daily life as well as the incomplete understanding of human beings. (shrink)

Kant’s Refutation targets what he calls the problematic idealist. This is understood by the mainstream of Kantian scholarship as the global skeptic that Descartes briefly adumbrated in his first Meditation. The widespread view in the literature is that the fate of the Refutation is tied to its success as an argument against this Cartesian global skepticism. This consensus is what I want to question in this paper. I argue that Kant’s opponent – the problematic idealist – is not (...) the Cartesian global skeptic but rather what I prefer to call here the Cartesian problematic external-world idealist. According to Cartesian global skepticism, we cannot know whether our commonsensical beliefs are true until we rule out that the skeptical hypotheses are false. In contrast, the Cartesian external-world idealist sees as problematic the assumption that the underlying nature of outer things of which we have ideas is mind-independent rather than caused by our own thinking. My aim here is to disentangle Cartesian global skepticism from Cartesian problematic external-word idealism and show that, if measured against global skepticism, Kant’s Refutation is doomed to fail, while against problematic idealism, it is at least a promising argument. (shrink)

To solve the ancient Pyrrhonian problematic, it is not enough to show that knowledge and justified belief are possible. They must be shown to be actual. It is argued that the attempts by the main advocates of reliabilism, William Alston, Alvin Goldman, and Ernest Sosa, fail to solve the problematic because they fall under the Agrippan modes of circularity and hypothesis. There is also another sort of response implicit in their discussion. It is not to try to solve (...) the problematic, but to accept the Pyrrhonian moral and to settle for appearances. Finally, a version of Pyrrhonism is given, and it is suggested that reliabilism be understood as a case of this sort of Pyrrhonism. (shrink)