Abstract
Despite the prominence of doubt in philosophy since Descartes, the published philosophical literature includes no extended treatment of the nature of doubt. In this paper, I summarize the main contributions that have been made to the subject and then develop a commonsense functionalist account of doubt by specifying (a significant part of) the functional role of doubt that something is the case. After adding two further wrinkles, I show how the resulting account can be used to address the questions of how doubt is related to belief and whether suspension of judgment can be identified with (some appropriate level or levels of) doubt. Although the account is partisan, it should hold interest for those who favor other positions in the philosophy of mind, since (a) much of the account can be taken on board by those in other camps, and (b) the paper demonstrates how a sufficiently detailed account of doubt can be put to work addressing longstanding questions of interest across philosophical sub-disciplines.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Peels (2007) allows that there might instead be a pull toward belief.
I aim to address any residual concern by the way I specify the affective dimension of the functional role of doubt in §3.3 below.
See [removed] for a previous application to doubt of the occurrent/dispositional distinction.
The distinction is perhaps not as neat as it initially appears. Suppose that episodic memory is largely reconstructive; we retain minimal imagery from our experiences and, at the time of recollection, our brains generate new imagery that coheres with the minimal stored imagery in accordance with learned principles concerning the workings of the world. If the retrieval process is typically in part inferential or quasi-inferential, shall we say that we are merely disposed to believe the contents of our episodic memory? But if we do not dispositionally believe, but are merely disposed to believe, the contents of episodic memory, what becomes of our autobiographical knowledge? Shall we say that we do not, after all, know much about our own pasts? Or shall we say that knowledge does not, after all, require belief (but only dispositions to believe)? I don’t propose to try sorting these issues out here, worthy as they are of investigation.
See Lee (2014) for a previous application to doubt of the distinction between dispositional belief and dispositions to believe.
Pollock (1986) is the locus classicus for the distinction.
See Lee (2014) for a previous discussion of doubts as reasons.
See Lee (2014) for a previous discussion of the different doubt locutions.
See Schwitzgebel (2015) for discussion of these views and the connections between them.
The most significant difference, as I see it, between dispositionalism and functionalism is that functionalists take a state’s causes and effects both to be relevant to its identification, whereas dispositionalists take only the state’s effects to be relevant. Dispositionalism is forward-looking; functionalism is both forward- and backward-looking. This difference can underpin other important differences, such as the account of intentionality (of how mental states get their contents). But hybrid accounts are possible; one could be a functionalist about what gives a mental state its content but a dispositionalist about what determines which mental state it is (belief, desire, etc.).
Those familiar with Audi (1972) will notice that the wording of a few of the platitudes given in this section are adapted from Audi’s platitudes concerning belief.
It would not be plausible to suppose that we all take everyone to be able to formulate all these platitudes with anything like the precision used here. The relevant platitudes are common knowledge in the way that grammatical rules are: we rely on each other to be able to use them, without necessarily being able to state the rules with any precision.
q probabilifies p if and only if the probability of p, conditional on q, is high (greater than 0.5, at the least).
One might worry about circularity, since doubt appears in the consequent as well as the antecedent. But given the kind of theoretical definition being offered, the circularity we have here is no more problematic than that involved in defining a type of fundamental particle partly in terms of its effects on other particles of the same type and partly in terms of its effects on particles of other types. See Lewis (1970) for a full explanation.
This is the other main contention of Peirce’s about doubt. Peirce says doubt is an irritation that motivates engagement in some means of fixating belief. Even if Peirce’s claims about the phenomenology are not all correct (or not all platitudinous), he is right to highlight a motivational dimension to doubt.
To assert p “hedgingly” is to assert the result of modifying p with a “hedge.” Hedges are linguistic expressions that lessen the speaker’s commitment to the sentences that they modify. Consider: “It seems that John is happy.” Here “It seems that” is a hedge that attenuates the speaker’s commitment to the claim that John is happy. Other examples of hedges include “I feel that,” “I’m inclined to think that,” “It’s likely that,” “It’s not unlikely that,” “It wouldn’t be surprising if,” and “It may well be that.”
It will be evident from the inclusion of this platitude under the genus of “behavioral” platitudes that the behaviors in question need not be overt.
For further defense of these choices, see Lee (2014).
Cf. Lewis (1972: 256).
That is not (yet) to say there is no truth of the matter. It depends on your theory of vagueness. Epistemicists, for instance, hold that for any object that is a borderline case of Fness, it is either true or false that the object is F; we just cannot ever determine whether the object is F. See Williamson (1994).
As before, much of what is said here can be taken on board by those who prefer other views of belief than commonsense functionalism. What I say here will carry over readily to certain forms of dispositionalism, interpretationism, and representationalism. Again, I am partial to a form of dispositionalism. But I think I share quite a bit of common ground with lenient role functionalists, enough to be able to approach the questions addressed in the next two sections in the same way that lenient role functionalists can.
One can easily see here why the choice between a strict and a lenient theory is important. If there a single slight-doubt platitude and a single belief platitude that are not simultaneously satisfiable, then a strict theory will rule belief incompatible with even slight doubt. A lenient theory will not.
Or, if some cases of slight doubt are cases of belief and others are not, suspension of judgment will be incompatible with the former and (perhaps) compatible with the latter.
Content externalists like Davidson (1987) will say it isn’t possible.
See Howard-Snyder (2013) for an argument to this effect.
References
Audi, R. (1972). The concept of "believing". The Personalist, 53, 43–62.
Audi, R. (1994). Dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe. Noûs, 28, 419–443.
Audi, R. (2001). The architecture of reason: The structure and substance of rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Choi, S. (2008). Dispositional properties and counterfactual conditionals. Mind, 117(468), 795–841.
Contessa, G. (2013). Dispositions and interferences. Philosophical Studies, 165(2), 401–419.
Cross, T. (2005). What is a disposition? Synthese, 144(3), 321–341.
Davidson, D. (1987). Knowing one's own mind. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 61, 441–458.
Fara, M. (2005). Dispositions and habituals. Noûs, 39(1), 43–82.
Friedman, J. (2013). Suspended judgment. Philosophical Studies, 162(2), 165–181.
Gendler, T. S. (2008a). Alief and belief. The Journal of Philosophy, 105(10), 634–663.
Gendler, T. S. (2008b). Alief in action (and reaction). Mind & Language, 23(5), 552–585.
Gertler, B. (2011). Self-knowledge and the transparency of belief. In A. Hatzimoysis (Ed.), Self-knowledge (pp. 125–145). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howard-Snyder, D. (2013). Propositional faith: What it is and what it is not. American Philosophical Quarterly, 50(4), 357–372.
Howard-Snyder, D. (2016). Does faith entail belief? Faith and. Philosophy, 33(2), 142–162.
Kvanvig, J. L. (2013). Affective theism and people of faith. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 37(1), 109–128.
Lee, M. (2014). Belief, doubt, and confidence: A threshold account. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame.
Lewis, D. (1970). How to define theoretical terms. The Journal of Philosophy, 67(13), 427–446.
Lewis, D. (1972). Psychophysical and theoretical identifications. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 50(3), 249–258.
Manley, D., & Wasserman, R. (2007). A gradable approach to dispositions. The Philosophical Quarterly, 57(226), 68–75.
Martin, C. B., & Heil, J. (1998). Rules and powers. Philosophical Perspectives, 12, 283–312.
McKaughan, D. J. (2013). Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: Dissolving the problem of faith and reason. Religious Studies, 49(01), 101–124.
McKaughan, D. J. (2016). Action-centered faith, doubt, and rationality. Journal of Philosophical Research, 41(Supplement), 71–90.
Mumford, S. (1998). Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peels, R. (2007). Doxastic doubt, fiducial doubt, and Christian faith: A response to Gunter Zimmerman. Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 49(2), 183–198.
Peirce, C. S. (1992/1877). The fixation of belief. In N. Houser & C. Kloesel (Eds.), The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings (pp. 109–123). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pojman, L. (1986). Faith without belief? Faith and. Philosophy, 3(2), 157–176.
Pojman, L. (2003). Faith, doubt and belief, or does faith entail belief? In R. M. Gale & A. Pruss (Eds.), The existence of God (pp. 535–549). Aldershot & Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Pollock, J. L. (1986). Contemporary theories of knowledge (1st ed.). Towota: Rowman & Littlefield.
Salmon, N. (1995). Being of two minds: Belief with doubt. Noûs, 29(1), 1–20.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2002). A phenomenal, dispositional account of belief. Nous, 36(2), 249–275.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2010). Acting contrary to our professed beliefs, or the gulf between occurrent judgment and dispositional belief. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91(4), 531–553.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2012). Mad belief? Neuroethics, 5(1), 13–17.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2015). In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Belief. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 ed.) Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/belief/.
Thagard, P. (2004). What is doubt and when is it reasonable? In M. Ezcurdia, R. Stainton, & C. Viger (Eds.), New essays in the philosophy of language and mind (Canadian Journal of Philosophy) (pp. 391–406). Calgary: Calgary University Press.
Williamson, T. (1994). Vagueness. London: Routledge.
Zimmerman, A. (2007). The nature of belief. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14(11), 61–82.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Robert Audi, Michael DePaul, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Jeffrey Speaks, and Leopold Stubenberg for comments on earlier drafts of this material. This project was supported in part by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lee, M.B. On Doubt. Philosophia 46, 141–158 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9911-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9911-3