Belief and cognitive limitations

Tang, Weng Hong

doi:10.1007/s11098-014-0292-1

Cited by 17 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…Ross and Schroeder (2014, p. 273ff) raise influential objections to the credence‐first view; they argue that belief plays important roles involving correctness, stability, sufficient evidence, and consistency that cannot be played by credences. Staffel (2019a) argues that beliefs play a crucial simplifying role, enabling agents with finite capacities to rule out small error possibilities in reasoning (see also Jackson, 2019b; Tang, 2015; Weisberg, Forthcoming). Buchak (2014) argues that belief, but not high credence, is crucial to our practices of praise and blame, and Friedman (2019) argues that belief and credence play different roles in inquiry (see also Staffel, 2019c).…”

Section: Belief and Credence: Descriptive Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between belief and credence

Jackson

2020

Philosophy Compass

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Sometimes epistemologists theorize about belief, a tripartite attitude on which one can believe, withhold belief, or disbelieve a proposition. In other cases, epistemologists theorize about credence, a fine‐grained attitude that represents one's subjective probability or confidence level toward a proposition. How do these two attitudes relate to each other? This article explores the relationship between belief and credence in two categories: descriptive and normative. It then explains the broader significance of the belief‐credence connection and concludes with general lessons from the debate thus far. Video Abstract link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eOSlPVYxI8&feature=youtu.be

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Section: Belief and Credence: Descriptive Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between belief and credence

Jackson

2020

Philosophy Compass

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“…An outright belief is identified with a practical credence of 1. Tang () also defends the view that outright beliefs can be identified with high probability estimates that get rounded up to 1. Hence, on this view, a credence of 1 in a claim p no longer exclusively represents a thinker's (stable) certainty that p is true, it can also represent the attitude of treating p as true in a context of reasoning.…”

Section: The Puzzlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A highly popular answer to the challenge is that human thinkers need outright beliefs in addition to credences in their inventory of doxastic attitudes, because outright beliefs help simplify reasoning (see e.g. Harsanyi , Lance , Leitgeb , Lin , Lin & Kelly , Ross & Schroeder , Tang ). Human reasoners’ cognitive limitations make it infeasible for them to use only credences in their reasoning, because it requires keeping track of many different possibilities, even if some of those possibilities are very improbable and could safely be ignored.…”

Section: The Puzzlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…E.g. Buchak , Clarke , Easwaran & Fitelson , Greco , Leitgeb , Lin , Lin & Kelly , Ross & Schroeder , Staffel , Sturgeon , Tang , Weatherson , Wedgwood , Weisberg , Weisberg forthcoming. For earlier discussions of this type of view, see e.g.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…E.g Buchak 2014, Clarke 2013, Easwaran & Fitelson 2015, Greco 2015, Leitgeb 2016, Lin 2013, Lin & Kelly 2012, Ross & Schroeder 2014, Staffel 2016, Sturgeon 2015, Tang 2015, Weatherson 2016, Wedgwood 2012, Weisberg 2013…”

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confidence: 99%

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How do Beliefs Simplify Reasoning?

Staffel

2018

Nous

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According to an increasingly popular epistemological view, people need outright beliefs in addition to credences to simplify their reasoning. Outright beliefs simplify reasoning by allowing thinkers to ignore small error probabilities. What is outright believed can change between contexts. It has been claimed that thinkers manage shifts in their outright beliefs and credences across contexts by an updating procedure resembling conditionalization, which I call pseudo‐conditionalization (PC). But conditionalization is notoriously complicated. The claim that thinkers manage their beliefs via PC is thus in tension with the view that the function of beliefs is to simplify our reasoning. I propose to resolve this puzzle by rejecting the view that thinkers employ PC. Based on this solution, I furthermore argue for a descriptive and a normative claim. The descriptive claim is that the available strategies for managing beliefs and credences across contexts that are compatible with the simplifying function of outright beliefs can generate synchronic and diachronic incoherence in a thinker's attitudes. Moreover, I argue that the view of outright belief as a simplifying heuristic is incompatible with the view that there are ideal norms of coherence or consistency governing outright beliefs that are too complicated for human thinkers to comply with.

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Belief, credence, and evidence

Jackson

2018

Synthese

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I explore how rational belief and rational credence relate to evidence. I begin by looking at three cases where rational belief and credence seem to respond differently to evidence: cases of naked statistical evidence, lotteries, and hedged assertions. I consider an explanation for these cases, namely, that one ought not form beliefs on the basis of statistical evidence alone, and raise worries for this view. Then, I suggest another view that explains how belief and credence relate to evidence. My view focuses on the possibilities that the evidence makes salient. I argue that this makes better sense of the difference between rational credence and rational belief than other accounts.

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Belief and cognitive limitations

Cited by 17 publications

References 5 publications

The relationship between belief and credence

The relationship between belief and credence

How do Beliefs Simplify Reasoning?

Belief, credence, and evidence

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