1 Levi, I.The Fixation of Belief and Its Undoing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Chapter 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 In ibid., I require that the set of potential states of full belief be a Boolean algebra closed under meets and coins of arbitrary cardinality. I also suggested that it could be atomless, so that there would not be any maximally informative but consistent potential states of full belief. No potential belief state is a maximally consistent opinion about a possible world. To be sure, we may use the set of deductively closed theories or potential corpora in a suitably specified language L to represent a subset of the set of potential states of full belief. But when the set of potential states constitutes an atomless algebra, it is clear that the set of potential states (which is an atomic algebra) cannot represent all of the potential states. X's standard for serious possibility defines the space over which naturalconditional probability judgments are defined. In particular, if X judges that h is positively probable, X judges that h is seriously possible. Conversely, if X judges that h is seriously possible, X judges that h is either positively probable or carries an infinitesimal nonstandard probability. But X's judgments of positive probability (whether standard or infinitesimal) lack truth-values. Hence, so must X's judgments of serious possibility. The claim that it is possible for X to shift to a belief state according to which it is true that h does carry a truth-value. At least this is so as long as it is a claim about X's abilities and not his entitlements. X's judgment that it is seriously possible that his not such a claim.

3 Quine, W.V.Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Peirce, “Review of John Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory,” The Nation 19 (1904): 219-20.Google Scholar

5 As Peirce himself does in a letter of 1905 to Dewey. Peirce states his concession and complaint against Dewey, as follows: “What you [Dewey] had a right to say was that for certain logical problems the entire development of cognition and along with it that of its object become pertinent, and therefore should be taken into account. What you do say is that no inquiry for which this development is not pertinent should be permitted.” (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce [Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1966], 8.244.)Google Scholar As I understand Dewey's Logic, Dewey accepted Peirce's point.

6 Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt, 1938), 120.Google Scholar

7 Russell, BertrandInquiry into Meaning and Truth (London: Allen and Unwin, 1940), 322.Google Scholar

8 There is a sense in which the aim of an inquiry is to reach a justified conclusion, or a justified change of view. But in examining the conditions for successful justification, pragmatists insist that a justified conclusion is optimal among the available solutions with respect to the goals or aims of the deliberation. For both Peirce and James, a concern to avoid error is a desideratum in fixing beliefs. The respect in which it is a desideratum constituent in the goal of efforts to fix beliefs makes reference to a goal which justifications aim to show is optimally implemented by the conclusions they justify. Peirce could concede that the aim of inquiry is to obtain a justified belief; but, in his messianic realist mood, this means obtaining a belief that relieves doubt in a way that promotes convergence of the opinions of the community on the true, complete story. James could concede that inquiry aims at justified belief as well, arguing that justification concerns the best way to seek truth and shun error. And Dewey could also hold that inquiry aims at justified belief (or coming to believe) while denying that truth is a desideratum of the aims that determine what constitutes a justified belief. See Dewey, “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility and Truth,” Journal of Philosophy (1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an interesting elaboration of his view.

9 Peirce, Collected Papers 7.214.Google Scholar

10 Misak, Truth and the End of Inquiry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 36.Google Scholar

11 Dewey did endorse Peirce's early formula of truth as “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate” as the best definition of truth “from the logical standpoint” (Logic, 345, note 6). But there is no evidence that he thought the aim of inquiry was to find the truth so conceived.

12 Dewey, “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility and Truth,” 265.Google Scholar

13 See Peirce, Harvard Lectures of 1865, Lectures X and XI, W1: 272-302. Also in the Lowell Lectures of 1866, W1: 358-504 and “Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension,” W2: 70-86.

14 A distinction between degrees of certainty or probability and degrees of vulnerability to being given up is explicitly advanced in Levi, The Enterprise of Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980)Google Scholar, Chapters 1-3 and in earlier publications in the 1970s.

15 See my The Enterprise of Knowledge.

16 Wright, Crispin in Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, seems to have overlooked the difficulty of comparing judgments like “x is better than y” and “y is better than x” with respect to how probable it is that they are true or false. Suppose I judged each of these sentences equally likely to be true. Should I then judge x and y equally good? If so, I cannot be in suspense as to the truth of the first two evaluations. I am convinced concerning the third. Indeed, there is no way that I can coherently assign probabilities to the first two alternatives and remain in suspense between them. But in that case, how can I suspend judgment concerning the truth of these alternatives at all? Perhaps I can be in some sort of suspense between them, but not with respect to truth-value. If this is so, these alternatives cannot be alleged to carry truthvalues. Similar arguments apply to show that judgments of probability and judgments of serious possibility cannot be said to carry truth-values. See my The Enterprise of Knowledge and Decisions and Revisions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Chapter 11, for somewhat more elaborate arguments as to why judgments of serious possibility, probability, and judgments of value cannot be treated as truth-value-bearing judgments of truth or falsity. It seems to me that Wright has left out of account certain “platitudes” that impose serious constraints on the attitudes that can be truth-value bearing and the way linguistic expressions of them are to be understood.