On Treating Oneself and Others as Thermometers

Episteme 6 (3):233-250 (2009)
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Abstract

I treat you as a thermometer when I use your belief states as more or less reliable indicators of the facts. Should I treat myself in a parallel way? Should I think of the outputs of my faculties and yours as like the readings of two thermometers the way a third party would? I explore some of the difficulties in answering these questions. If I am to treat myself as well as others as thermometers in this way, it would appear that I cannot reasonably trust my own convictions over yours unless I have antecedent reason to suppose that I am more likely than you to get things right. I appeal to some probabilistic considerations to suggest that our predicament as thermometers might not actually be as bad as it seems

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Roger White
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citations of this work

Epistemic Akrasia.Sophie Horowitz - 2013 - Noûs 48 (4):718-744.
Evidence: A Guide for the Uncertain.Kevin Dorst - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):586-632.
You just believe that because….Roger White - 2010 - Philosophical Perspectives 24 (1):573-615.
Respecting all the evidence.Paulina Sliwa & Sophie Horowitz - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (11):2835-2858.

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References found in this work

Epistemology of disagreement: The good news.David Christensen - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (2):187-217.
The skeptic and the dogmatist.James Pryor - 2000 - Noûs 34 (4):517–549.
Reflection and disagreement.Adam Elga - 2007 - Noûs 41 (3):478–502.
A subjectivist’s guide to objective chance.David K. Lewis - 1980 - In Richard C. Jeffrey (ed.), Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, Volume II. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 263-293.
Evidential Symmetry and Mushy Credence.Roger White - 2009 - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 3:161-186.

View all 11 references / Add more references