Belief and contextual acceptance
Synthese 177 (1):41-66 (2010)
| Abstract | I develop a strategy for representing epistemic states and epistemic changes that seeks to be sensitive to the difference between voluntary and involuntary aspects of our epistemic life, as well as to the role of pragmatic factors in epistemology. The model relies on a particular understanding of the distinction between full belief and acceptance , which makes room for the idea that our reasoning on both practical and theoretical matters typically proceeds in a contextual way. Within this framework, I discuss how agents can rationally shift their credal probability functions so as to consciously modify some of their contextual acceptances; the present account also allows us to represent how the very set of contexts evolves. Voluntary credal shifts, in turn, might provoke changes in the agent’s beliefs, but I show that this is actually a side effect of performing multiple adjustments in the total lot of the agent’s acceptance sets. In this way we obtain a model that preserves many pre-theoretical intuitions about what counts as adequate rationality constraints on our actual practices—and hence about what counts as an adequate, normative epistemological perspective. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,711 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJ. Mosterin (2002). Acceptance Without Belief. Manuscrito 25 (2):313-35.
Luc Bovens & Stephan Hartmann (2001). Belief Expansion, Contextual Fit and the Reliability of Information Sources. In V. Akman (ed.), Modeling and Using Context. Springer.
Patrick Maher (1990). Acceptance Without Belief. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990:381 - 392.
Pascal Engel (1998). Believing, Holding True, and Accepting. Philosophical Explorations 1 (2):140 – 151.
Craig Boutilier (1996). Iterated Revision and Minimal Change of Conditional Beliefs. Journal of Philosophical Logic 25 (3):263 - 305.
Eleonora Cresto (2008). A Model for Structural Changes of Belief. Studia Logica 88 (3):431 - 451.
Raul Hakli (2007). On the Possibility of Group Knowledge Without Belief. Social Epistemology 21 (3):249 – 266.
Raimo Tuomela (2000). Belief Versus Acceptance. Philosophical Explorations 3 (2):122 – 137.
Andrei A. Buckareff (2004). Acceptance and Deciding to Believe. Journal of Philosophical Research 29:173-190.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-08-17Total downloads36 ( #33,071 of 551,007 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,425 of 551,007 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
