Solving the Problem of Logical Omniscience

Philosophical Issues 28 (1):107-128 (2018)
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Abstract

This paper looks at three ways of addressing probabilism’s implausible requirement of logical omniscience. The first and most common strategy says it’s okay to require an ideally rational person to be logically omniscient. I argue that this view is indefensible on any interpretation of ‘ideally rational’. The second strategy says probabilism should be formulated not in terms of logically possible worlds but in terms of doxastically possible worlds, ways you think the world might be. I argue that, on the interpretation of this approach that lifts the requirement of certainty in all logical truths, the view becomes vacuous, issuing no requirements on rational believers at all. Finally, I develop and endorse a new solution to the problem. This view proposes dynamic norms for reasoning with credences. The solution is based on an old proposal of Ian Hacking’s that says you’re required to be sensitive to logical facts only when you know they are logical facts.

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Sinan Dogramaci
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

The Epistemic and the Zetetic.Jane Friedman - 2020 - Philosophical Review 129 (4):501-536.
Logical ignorance and logical learning.Richard Pettigrew - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9991-10020.
Structural Rationality and the Property of Coherence.Marc-Kevin Daoust - 2023 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (1):170-194.

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References found in this work

Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism.James M. Joyce - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (4):575-603.
Change in View: Principles of Reasoning.Gilbert Harman - 1986 - Studia Logica 48 (2):260-261.
Impermissive Bayesianism.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2013 - Erkenntnis 79 (Suppl 6):1185-1217.

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