Practical reasoning and degrees of outright belief

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

According to a suggestion by Williamson (Knowledge and its limits, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 99), outright belief comes in degrees: one has a high/low degree of belief iff one is willing to rely on the content of one’s belief in high/low-stakes practical reasoning. This paper develops an epistemic norm for degrees of outright belief so construed. Starting from the assumption that outright belief aims at knowledge, it is argued that degrees of belief aim at various levels of strong knowledge, that is, knowledge which satisfies particularly high epistemic standards. This account is contrasted with and shown to be superior to an alternative proposal according to which higher degrees of outright belief aim at higher-order knowledge. In an “Appendix”, it is indicated that the logic of degrees of outright belief is closely linked to ranking theory.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8069-8090
Number of pages22
Journal Synthese : an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science
Volume199
Issue number3-4
Publication statusPublished - 29 Apr 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85105509364
ORCID /0000-0002-9962-2074/work/142234588
Mendeley 542d9100-6131-3ba3-b7f4-c0f9dfca4345

Keywords