Epistemic Akrasia and Belief‐Credence Dualism

Abstract

Paradigmatically, epistemic akrasia occurs when a subject believes some proposition p and simultaneously believes that her belief that p is irrational (Horowitz 2014). This characterization is broad enough to admit of further precisification of a subject's possible mental states. For example, if a subject believes p despite taking p to be highly unlikely, she may take this low credence to suggest that her belief is irrational. Then she too counts as akratic. In this paper, we wish to call attention to cases like these. Let's consider a particular example.Taylor believes that her close friends and family think ill of her. She knows that this is an irrational thing for her to believe, especially since she knows her only apparent evidence is that she and they have been speaking less lately. This lack of communication, she admits to herself, is easily and plausibly explained by the fact that she has just moved to a new country to start a demanding job. Thus, she has a low credence that they think ill of her. Still, she believes it, despite her low confidence that it is true. Taylor's case is one of epistemic akrasia: she believes p, but knows she ought not believe p.

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