scholarly journals Context-sensitivity and the Preface Paradox for credence

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominik Kauss
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Contextualist Approach ◽  
The Preface Paradox

AbstractIt’s intuitively plausible to suppose that there are many things that we can be rationally certain of, at least in many contexts. The present paper argues that, given this principle of Abundancy, there is a Preface Paradox for (rational) credence. Section 1 gives a statement of the paradox, discusses its relation to its familiar counterpart for (rational) belief, and points out the congeniality between Abundancy and broadly contextualist trends in epistemology. This leads to the question whether considerations of context-sensitivity might lend themselves to solving the Preface for credence. Sections 2 and 3 scrutinize two approaches in this spirit—one mimicking Hawthorne’s (2002) Semantic Contextualist approach to an epistemic version of the Preface, the other one analogous to Clarke’s (2015) Sensitivist approach to the doxastic version—arguing that neither approach succeeds as it stands.

Attributing Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Azzouni
Keyword(s):  
Rational Belief ◽  
Cognitive Ethology ◽  
Lottery Paradox ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Correct Application ◽  
Mechanical Devices ◽  
The Preface Paradox ◽  
The Lottery Paradox ◽  
Knowledge Closure

The word “know” is revealed as vague, applicable to fallible agents, factive, and criterion-transcendent. It is invariant in its meaning across contexts and invariant relative to different agents. Only purely epistemic properties affect its correct application—not the interests of agents or those who attribute the word to agents. These properties enable “know” to be applied correctly—as it routinely is—to cognitive agents ranging from sophisticated human knowers, who engage in substantial metacognition, to various animals, who know much less and do much less, if any, metacognition, to nonconscious mechanical devices such as drones, robots, and the like. These properties of the word “know” suffice to explain the usage phenomena that contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists invoke to place pressure on an understanding of the word that treats its application as involving no interests of agents, or others. It is also shown that the factivity and the fallibilist-compatibility of the word “know” explain Moorean paradoxes, the preface paradox, and the lottery paradox. A fallibility-sensitive failure of knowledge closure is given along with a similar failure of rational-belief closure. The latter explains why rational agents can nevertheless believe A and B, where A and B contradict each other. A substantial discussion of various kinds of metacognition is given—as well as a discussion of the metacognition literature in cognitive ethology. An appendix offers a new resolution of the hangman paradox, one that turns neither on a failure of knowledge closure nor on a failure of KK.

Eliminations and Reductions I

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-94
Author(s):  
Alex Worsnip
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Positive Case ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Substantive Rationality ◽  
The Preface Paradox ◽  
Higher Order Evidence ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines and argues against attempts to eliminate the category of structural rationality or reduce it to substantive rationality. Together with the following chapter—which argues against eliminations and reductions of the converse kind—it thereby provides a positive case for dualism about rationality, according to which both kinds of rationality are genuine and neither is reducible to the other. On the way, it also argues that there are cases where being substantively rational does not suffice for being structurally rational, and examines the preface paradox and cases of misleading higher-order evidence.

scholarly journals How to Believe Long Conjunctions of Beliefs: Probability, Quasi-Dogmatism and Contextualism

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Bonzio ◽  
Gustavo Cevolani ◽  
Tommaso Flaminio
Keyword(s):  
High Probability ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Lockean Thesis ◽  
Fixed Threshold ◽  
The Preface Paradox

AbstractAccording to the so-called Lockean thesis, a rational agent believes a proposition just in case its probability is sufficiently high, i.e., greater than some suitably fixed threshold. The Preface paradox is usually taken to show that the Lockean thesis is untenable, if one also assumes that rational agents should believe the conjunction of their own beliefs: high probability and rational belief are in a sense incompatible. In this paper, we show that this is not the case in general. More precisely, we consider two methods of computing how probable must each of a series of propositions be in order to rationally believe their conjunction under the Lockean thesis. The price one has to pay for the proposed solutions to the paradox is what we call “quasi-dogmatism”: the view that a rational agent should believe only those propositions which are “nearly certain” in a suitably defined sense.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
True Proposition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Relevant Notion

It is explained how the conception of rationality proposed earlier in this book can set the agenda for the study of rational belief and rational choice. Part of the task will be to investigate the kind of ‘rational probability’ that was introduced in Chapter 9; the other part will be to study the conditions under which each kind of mental state counts as ‘correct’. There are reasons for thinking that the relevant notion of correctness must be such that in the case of belief, a correct belief is a belief in a true proposition, and in the case of choice, it is ‘akratic’ to choose something if one is fully confident that it is not correct to choose it. It is explained what light this approach could shed on the traditional issues about rational belief and rational choice.

scholarly journals Multi-Peer Disagreement and the Preface Paradox

Ratio ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Boyce ◽  
Allan Hazlett
Keyword(s):  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
The Preface Paradox

CONTEXT-SENSITIVITY OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL REGULAR ARRAY GRAMMARS

1989 ◽  
Vol 03 (03n04) ◽  
pp. 295-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
YASUNORI YAMAMOTO ◽  
KENICHI MORITA ◽  
KAZUHIRO SUGATA
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Regular Array ◽  
Nonterminal Symbol ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Context Free ◽  
Rewriting Rules

Regular array grammars (RAGs) are the lowest subclass in the Chomsky-like hierarchy of isometric array grammars. The left-hand side of each rewriting rule of RAGs has one nonterminal symbol and at most one "#" (a blank symbol). Therefore, the rewriting rules cannot sense contexts of non-# symbols. However, they can sense # as a kind of context. In this paper, we investigate this #-sensing ability. and study the language generating power of RAGs. Making good use of this ability, We show a method for RAGs to sense the contexts of local shapes of a host array in a derivation. Using this method, we give RAGs which generate the sets of all solid upright rectangles and all solid squares. On the other hand. it is proved that there is no context-free array grammar (and thus no RAG) which generates the set of all hollow upright rectangles.

Full Belief and Loose Speech

2019 ◽  
Vol 128 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Moss
Keyword(s):  
Rational Beliefs ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Full Belief ◽  
The Preface Paradox ◽  
Probabilistic Theories ◽  
The Way

This paper defends an account of full belief, including an account of its relationship to credence. Along the way, I address several familiar and difficult questions about belief. Does fully believing a proposition require having maximal confidence in it? Are rational beliefs closed under entailment, or does the preface paradox show that rational agents can believe inconsistent propositions? Does whether you believe a proposition depend partly on your practical interests? My account of belief resolves the tension between conflicting answers to these questions that have been defended in the literature. In addition, my account complements fruitful probabilistic theories of assertion and knowledge.

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