scholarly journals Disbelief is a distinct doxastic attitude

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Smart
Keyword(s):  
Doxastic Attitude

Desires without Guises

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine A. Döring ◽  
Bahadir Eker
Keyword(s):  
Large Class ◽  
Doxastic Attitude

Evaluativism about desire, the view that desires just are, or necessarily involve, positive evaluations of their objects, currently enjoys widespread popularity in many philosophical circles. This essay argues that evaluativism, in both its doxastic and its perceptual versions, overstates and mischaracterizes the connection between desires and evaluations. Whereas doxastic evaluativism implausibly rules out cases where someone has a desire, despite evaluating its object negatively, being uncertain about its value, or having no doxastic attitude whatsoever toward its evaluative status at all, perceptual evaluativism cannot even properly apply to the large class of standing desires. It is also argued that evaluativism about desire is not even well-motivated in the first place: the theory is supposed to solve a particular puzzle about the role desires play in the explanation of action, yet in fact it does not offer any help whatsoever in dealing with the relevant puzzle.

scholarly journals A Non-Doxastic Fear of Hell: On the Impact of Negative Factors for an Agnostic Religious Commitment

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 376
Author(s):  
Carl-Johan Palmqvist
Keyword(s):  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Standard View ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Negative Factors ◽  
To Receive

On the standard view, an agnostic might commit non-doxastically to religion because she wants to receive some goods, which might be either natural or supernatural in kind. I broaden the picture by showing how the agnostic must also take negative factors into account. Negative mundane factors should be avoided as far as possible by the agnostic, and in extreme cases, even at the price of giving up supernatural goods. Negative supernatural factors, like eternal torment, work differently. An agnostic who considers an eternity of suffering in hell a live possibility might rationally make a religious commitment in order to avoid it. Non-doxastic religion is commonly conceived as requiring a pro-attitude. If fear can have the impact I suggest, we must broaden the picture to allow for a negatively based commitment as well. To make explicit the kind of attitude relevant here, I offer an analysis of fear as a rational, non-doxastic attitude.

PERMISSIVISM AND THE ARBITRARINESS OBJECTION

Episteme ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mark simpson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
Epistemic Standards ◽  
Bodies Of Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTPermissivism says that for some propositions and bodies of evidence, there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude that can be taken towards that proposition given the evidence. Some critics of this view argue that it condones, as rationally acceptable, sets of attitudes that manifest an untenable kind of arbitrariness. I begin by providing a new and more detailed explication of what this alleged arbitrariness consists in. I then explain why Miriam Schoenfield's prima facie promising attempt to answer the Arbitrariness Objection, by appealing to the role of epistemic standards in rational belief formation, fails to resolve the problem. Schoenfield's strategy is, however, a useful one, and I go on to explain how an alternative form of the standards-based approach to Permissivism – one that emphasizes the significance of the relationship between people's cognitive abilities and the epistemic standards that they employ – can respond to the arbitrariness objection.

Reply to Professor Brinton

1985 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-92
Author(s):  
Clement Dore
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
Epistemic Principle ◽  
Suspension Of Judgement

In my paper, ‘Agnosticism’, I asked the reader to consider the following three propositions. (1) There is more evidence for theism than for atheism. (2) There is more evidence for atheism than for theism. (3) There is roughly the same amount of evidence for both. And I claimed that if it is not known which of (1) to (3) is true, then theism, atheism and agnosticism (suspension of judgement without the claim that this is the epistemically superior position) are all equally rational positions. As against that claim, Professor Brinton cites the following epistemic principle: When the state of the evidence on some question ‘p?’ is uncertain, suspension of belief is the most appropriate doxastic attitude. However, my paper contained the seeds of a refutation of this principle. I wrote there that the agnostic

INTRASPECIES IMPERMISSIVISM

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Stapleford
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Doxastic Attitude

AbstractThe Uniqueness thesis says that any body of evidence E uniquely determines which doxastic attitude is rationally permissible regarding some proposition P. Permissivists deny Uniqueness. They are charged with arbitrarily favouring one doxastic attitude out of the set of attitudes they regard as rationally permissible. Simpson (Episteme, 2017) claims that an appeal to differences in cognitive abilities can remove the arbitrariness. I argue that it can't. Impermissivists face a challenge of their own: The problem of fine distinctions. I suggest that meeting this challenge requires impermissivists to loosen up at higher levels – when comparing belief-forming systems that differ in the fineness of their doxastic outputs. This more relaxed take on Uniqueness is a kind of ‘intraspecies impermissivism’.

Evidential nihilism

Analysis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
P D Magnus
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Doxastic Attitude

Abstract A considerable literature has grown up around the claim of Uniqueness, according to which evidence rationally determines belief. It is opposed to Permissivism, according to which evidence underdetermines belief. This paper highlights an overlooked third possibility, according to which there is no rational doxastic attitude. I call this 'Nihilism'. I argue that adherents of the other two positions ought to reject it but that it might, nevertheless, obtain at least sometimes.

PEOPLE WITH COMMON PRIORS CAN AGREE TO DISAGREE

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARVEY LEDERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
Common Prior ◽  
The Common

AbstractRobert Aumann presents his Agreement Theorem as the key conditional: “if two people have the same priors and their posteriors for an event A are common knowledge, then these posteriors are equal” (Aumann, 1976, p. 1236). This paper focuses on four assumptions which are used in Aumann’s proof but are not explicit in the key conditional: (1) that agents commonly know, of some prior μ, that it is the common prior; (2) that agents commonly know that each of them updates on the prior by conditionalization; (3) that agents commonly know that if an agent knows a proposition, she knows that she knows that proposition (the “KK” principle); (4) that agents commonly know that they each update only on true propositions. It is shown that natural weakenings of any one of these strong assumptions can lead to countermodels to Aumann’s key conditional. Examples are given in which agents who have a common prior and commonly know what probability they each assign to a proposition nevertheless assign that proposition unequal probabilities. To alter Aumann’s famous slogan: people can “agree to disagree”, even if they share a common prior. The epistemological significance of these examples is presented in terms of their role in a defense of the Uniqueness Thesis: If an agent whose total evidence is E is fully rational in taking doxastic attitude D to P, then necessarily, any subject with total evidence E who takes a different attitude to P is less than fully rational.

scholarly journals : Attributes within a Knowledge transfer scenario

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fascia
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Unity Of Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Value

In this short paper, we discuss a dialectic methodology surrounding theinterpretation of knowledge transfer, and the conditional elements whichcan be seen to support the concept of a unity of knowledge. We discuss adiffering standpoint to knowledge and knowledge value, based on theknowledge transfer practitioner’s perspective, but still in a business context.We ask why, if knowledge is vital for business success and competitiveadvantage, the transfer of knowledge is rarely a simple unproblematic event.Further, that the creation of knowledge before transfer is recognised as asignificant factor in determining a starting point for analogous scrutiny, andoften under a premise of doxastic attitude. This discussion therefore aims tosynthesise current literature and research into an elemental epistemicprincipal of FIGURATION DYNAMICS, and in doing so, may help focuscongruent knowledge transfer theories.

scholarly journals Disagreement and epistemic improvement

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Broncano-Berrocal ◽  
Mona Simion
Keyword(s):  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
Epistemology Of Disagreement ◽  
Normative Framework

AbstractThis paper proposes a methodological turn for the epistemology of disagreement, away from focusing on highly idealized cases of peer disagreement and towards an increased focus on disagreement simpliciter. We propose and develop a normative framework for evaluating all cases of disagreement as to whether something is the case independently of their composition—i.e., independently of whether they are between peers or not. The upshot will be a norm of disagreement on which what one should do when faced with a disagreeing party is to improve the epistemic properties of one’s doxastic attitude or, alternatively, hold steadfast.

The Cognitive Aspect of Christian Faith and Non-doxastic Propositional Attitudes

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-405
Author(s):  
Dan-Johan Sebastian Eklund
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Doxastic Attitude ◽  
William Alston ◽  
Cognitive Aspect ◽  
Robert Audi

Summary In the recent discussion, several authors have argued for the claim that propositional faith need not be doxastic, but also can be “non-doxastic”. Notable proponents of this view are William Alston, Robert Audi, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and J. L. Schellenberg. In this paper, I focus on Christian faith and consider whether its cognitive aspect can be understood solely in terms of Alston’s and others’ non-doxastic accounts. I argue for a negative answer. In my view, the cognitive aspect of Christian faith calls for, as a minimum, “a sub-doxastic attitude”. As there is no shared terminology on this topic, a proportion of this paper deals with conceptual clarifications.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document