Abstract
How should we understand the relationship between binary belief and degree of belief? To answer this question, we should look to desire. Whatever relationship we think holds between desire and degree of desire should be used as our model for the relationship we think holds between belief and degree of belief. This parity pushes us towards an account that treats the binary attitudes as primary. But if we take binary beliefs as primary, we seem to face a serious problem. Binary beliefs are insufficiently discriminating. If we treat them as primary, we will lack the resources needed for fruitful theorizing. This problem can, I argue, be solved if we think of an agent’s degree of belief that p as reducible to her binary believing that p and the change in the apparent reasons that would be needed to get her to withhold.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Frankish endorses something close to this parity. He claims, “[A] successful account of [the relation between binary and degrees of belief…] should extend in a natural way to desire” (2009: 76).
I borrow this test from Schaffer (2007: 396).
I owe this way of putting it to an anonymous reviewer.
Moon (2017: 764) claims that, since ‘belief’ cannot, while ‘desire’ can, occur as a mass noun, we have strong evidence that beliefs do not fall in the same category as desires (or other propositional attitudes that come in degrees). I don’t agree. As I’ll explain, we can dismiss this difference by distinguishing affective desires from motivational desires.
This paragraph draws heavily on Davis (1984: 182–184).
For discussion, see Frankish (2009: §2).
For similar worries, see Levinstein (2013: chp. 1).
Frankish (2009: 78) wields a claim very close to this one against Harman.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for a number of helpful comments concerning the formulation of this problem.
We are thus ruling out conflicting doxastic states—e.g., contradictory binary beliefs. She can only occupy one position on the vertical line in Fig. 1 below. Either binary believe p, binary believe not-p, or withhold, depending on the probability assigned to p. This is fine for now. Recall, at this point, we are trying to solve the Insufficient Structure Problem. We’ll drop the assumption that the agent is rational once more of the details of the account are in place.
A similar idea—that the strength of the reasons there are to have a given desire is proportional to the amount of goodness of its object—is often incorporated into buck-passing analyses of the magnitudes of value. For discussion, see Heathwood (2008: 58).
This sort of worry is a recurring theme in Fodor’s work, see especially his (2008). As Rey (2007) rightly notes, if belief is normative, it had better be in a very thin sense since failure to believe in line with normative standards is all too common. For an overview of the debate concerning whether belief is essentially normative, see McHugh and Whiting (2014).
What about an agent who believes p and believes not-p? The Distance to Withholding View could capture believing a contradiction by claiming that the agent occupies two positions in Fig. 3. That is, we put one dot in the north and one in the south. Degrees for both could then be cashed out in the usual way, in terms of the distance to withholding. This gives the right result that an agent who believes a contradiction is, in some sense, pulled in opposite directions by the very same apparent reasons.
This formulation of the distinction follows Parfit (2011: chp. 2.5; Appendix A).
This principle is inspired by the Clutter Avoidance principle forwarded by Harman (1986: 12).
This paragraph draws heavily on Friedman (2018). Friedman’s focus is junk beliefs, which are determined by an agent’s interests at a world and time. The class of Totally Worthless Beliefs, as defined, will thus be much narrower than the class of junk beliefs.
I should note also that we need not be wedded to this exact shape of the withholding line. It maybe that, as we move east, the lines are asymptotic or plateaued. Thus, as should be clear, we are well positioned to model pragmatic encroachment. And perhaps we might go in for even wilder configurations. For instance, if we wanted to accommodate the idea that Pascal’s Wager-style considerations permit us to believe even when facing overwhelming counterevidence, then we could tilt the withholding line, making its slope move downward as we moved west to east.
References
Branddon-Mitchell, D., & Jackson, F. (2007). Philosophy of mind and cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Carnap, R. (1962). Logical foundations of probability (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Clarke, R. (2013). Bellief is credence one (in context). Philosopher’s Imprint, 13(11), 1–18.
Davis, W. A. (1984). The two senses of desire. Philosophical Studies, 45(2), 181–195.
Dorst, K. (2019). Lockeans maximize expected accuracy. Mind, 128(509), 175–211.
Eriksson, L., & Hájek, A. (2007). What are degrees of belief? Studia Logica, 86(2), 183–213.
Fodor, J. A. (2008). LOT 2: The language of thought revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foley, R. (1992). The epistemology of belief and the epistemology of degrees of belief. American Philosophical Quarterly, 29(2), 111–124.
Frankish, K. (2009). Partial belief and flat out belief. In F. Huber & C. Schmidt-Petri (Eds.), Degrees of belief (pp. 75–93). Berlin: Springer (Synthese Library).
Friedman, J. (2018). Junk beliefs and interest-driven epistemology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 97(3), 568–583.
Gosling, J. C. B. (1969). Pleasure and desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greco, D. (2015). How I learned to stop worrying and love probability. Philosophical Perspectives, 29, 179–201.
Harman, G. (1986). Change in view. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hawthorne, J. (2009). The Lockean thesis and the logic of belief. In F. Huber & C. Schmidt-Petri (Eds.), Degrees of belief (pp. 49–74). Berlin: Springer (Synthese Library).
Heathwood, C. (2008). Fitting attitudes and welfare. In R. Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaethics (pp. 47–73). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heathwood, C. (2019). Which desires are relevant to well-being? Noûs, 53(3), 664–688.
Holton, R. (2014). Intention as a model for belief. In M. Vargas & G. Yaffe (Eds.), Rational and social agency: The philosophy of Michael Bratman (pp. 12–33). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Huber, F. (2016). Formal representations of belief. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/formal-belief/.
Jeffrey, R. C. (1970). Dracula meets wolfman: Acceptance vs. partial belief. In M. Swain (Ed.), Induction, acceptance and rational belief (pp. 157–185). Dordrecht: Reidel.
Jeffrey, R. C. (1992). Probability and the art of judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leitgeb, H. (2017). The stability of belief: How rational belief coheres with probability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levinstein, B. A. (2013). Accuracy as epistemic utility. New Brunswick: Rutgers University, Graduate School.
Lewis, D. (1988). Desire as belief. Mind, 97(387), 323–332.
McHugh, C., & Whiting, D. (2014). The Normativity of belief. Analysis, 74(4), 698–713.
Moon, A. (2017). Beliefs do not come in degrees. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47(6), 760–778.
Nagel, T. (1970). The possibility of altruism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Parfit, D. (2011). On what matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pettigrew, R. (2016). Accuracy and the laws of credence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Portmore, D. W. (2019). Opting for the best: Oughts and options. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rey, G. (2007). Resisting normativism in psychology. In D. Cohen & B. McLaughlin (Eds.), Blackwell debates in philosophy of mind (pp. 69–84). Oxford: Blackwell.
Ross, J., & Schroeder, M. (2014). Belief, credence, and pragmatic encroachment. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(2), 259–288.
Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schaffer, J. (2007). Knowing the answer. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75(2), 383–403.
Schiffer, S. R. (1981). Truth and the theory of content. In H. Parret & J. Bouveresse (Eds.), Meaning and understanding (pp. 204–222). New York: de Gruyter.
Schroeder, M. (2012). Stakes, withholding, and pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. Philosophical Studies, 160(2), 265–285.
Schueler, G. F. (1995). Desire. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Smith, M. (2016). Between probability and certainty: What justifies belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sterelny, K. (1990). The representational theory of mind: An introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Sturgeon, S. (2008). Reason and the grain of belief. Noûs, 42(1), 139–165.
Vadas, M. (1984). Affective and non-affective desire. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 45(2), 273–279.
Weatherson, B. (2005). Can we do without pragmatic encroachment? Philosophical Perspectives, 19(1), 417–443.
Weisberg, J. (2020). Belief in psyontology. Philosopher’s. Imprint, 20(11), 1–27.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Luke Semrau, Winnie Sung, Olav Vassend and the reviewers and editors at Philosophical Studies for helpful comments on earlier drafts. This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (RG62/19 (NS)).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Forcehimes, A.T. Attitudinal strength as distance to withholding. Philos Stud 178, 963–981 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01467-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01467-2