Unacknowledged Permissivism

Smith, Julia

doi:10.1111/papq.12299

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Finally, it's plausible that believing that doxastic involuntarism is true makes it more difficult to exercise control over one's beliefs-in the same way that genuinely believing you cannot, say, make a shot in a basketball game, perform well in a Q&A, or complete a difficult task on time, makes it more likely you cannot do those things (if you believe you cannot, you may not 20 Thanks to Marc-Kevin Daoust. While many permissivists think one can normally know when they are in a permissive case, see Smith (2020) for an exception. It's also worth noting that people may also have doxastic control if they merely believe that they are in a permissive case, even if their case is not permissive.…”

Section: The Powerful Permissive Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

A Permissivist Defense of Pascal’s Wager

Jackson

2021

Erkenn

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Epistemic permissivism is the thesis that the evidence can rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. Pascal's wager is the idea that one ought to believe in God for practical reasons, because of what one can gain if theism is true and what one has to lose if theism is false. In this paper, I argue that if epistemic permissivism is true, then the defender of Pascal's wager has powerful responses to two prominent objections. First, I argue that if permissivism is true, then permissivism is true about theistic belief. Second, I show how epistemic permissivism about theistic belief dispels two objections to Pascal's wager: the objection that wagering is impossible, and the objection that wagering is epistemically impermissible.

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Section: The Powerful Permissive Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

A Permissivist Defense of Pascal’s Wager

Jackson

2021

Erkenn

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“…But that credence will be rationally dominated by other credences nearer the middle of the range, because (a) you don't know the permissible range's exact boundaries, and (b) a credence nearer the edge seems at greater risk of falling outside the range. Therefore, one might argue, pace Permissivism, we aren't rationally permitted to hold any credence in a range of credences for a given proposition and body of evidence.5 Further to the above, see alsoSchoenfield (2014), andStapleford (2019).6 What we're calling abstemious Permissivism is similar to what Sharadin (2017: 65) calls lower-case permissivism Smith (2020). argues that Permissivists rationally ought to be abstemious, in something like our sense.…”

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confidence: 99%

Epistemic Permissivism and Reasonable Pluralism

Rowland¹,

Simpson²

2021

The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology

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There is an intuitive difference in how we think about pluralism and attitudinal diversity in epistemological contexts versus political contexts. In an epistemological context, it seems problematically arbitrary to hold a particular belief on some issue, while also thinking it perfectly reasonable to hold a totally different belief on the same issue given the same evidence. By contrast, though, it doesn't seem problematically arbitrary to have a particular set of political commitments, while at the same time thinking it perfectly reasonable for someone in a similar position have a totally different set of political commitments. This chapter examines three explanatory theses that might be used to make sense of this difference: (1) that practical commitments are desire dependent in a way that beliefs are not; (2) that there are reasons to be resolute in practical commitments, but not in beliefs; and (3) that compromise in the face of practical political disagreement doesn't mitigate controversy, whereas compromise in the face of disagreement about mere beliefs does mitigate controversy.

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“…For a recent attempt to do so, see Smith (2020). See also Li (2019 a : §4) for a critical discussion of different ways one might try to resist Acknowledged Permissivism.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…7 See, e.g., White (2005: 450), Schoenfield (2014: fn 31), and Ye (2021). For a recent attempt to do so, see Smith (2020). See also Li (2019a: §4) for a critical discussion of different ways one might try to resist Acknowledged Permissivism.…”

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confidence: 99%

Can Arbitrary Beliefs be Rational?

Skipper

2022

Episteme

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When a belief has been influenced, in part or whole, by factors that, by the believer's own lights, do not bear on the truth of the believed proposition, we can say that the belief has been, in a sense, arbitrarily formed. Can such beliefs ever be rational? It might seem obvious that they can't. After all, belief, supposedly, “aims at the truth.” But many epistemologists have come to think that certain kinds of arbitrary beliefs can, indeed, be rational. In this paper, I want to do two things. First, I want to show that the claim that arbitrary beliefs can be rational is inconsistent with the conjunction of two other attractive claims: one saying that rationality requires a certain kind of epistemic immodesty, and one saying that rationality forbids certain kinds of self-ascriptions of epistemic luck. Second, I want to evaluate different ways one might respond to this inconsistent triad. I won't defend any response in particular, but I'll draw out some notable costs and benefits of each response, which may help shed light on the question of whether arbitrary beliefs can be rational.

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Unacknowledged Permissivism

Cited by 6 publications

References 29 publications

A Permissivist Defense of Pascal’s Wager

A Permissivist Defense of Pascal’s Wager

Epistemic Permissivism and Reasonable Pluralism

Can Arbitrary Beliefs be Rational?

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