We cannot infer by accepting testimony

Hlobil, Ulf

doi:10.1007/s11098-018-1142-3

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…9 It may be objected that, to the extent that one takes a certain piece of evidence E to be misleading evidence that not-p, one will ipso facto regard E as relevant to the question whether p. My point, however, is that one will not regard E as relevant to one's inquiry about whether por (to formulate the point without assuming that rational agents have thoughts about themselves and their inquiries) that one will not appreciate the fact that E should bear on whether p. Plausibly, appreciating the fact that E should bear on whether p implies being disposed to rely on E (possibly, in conjunction with other evidence) in one's reasoning about whether p. The objection misfires because one can regard E as relevant to the question whether p and yet fail to be disposed to rely on E in one's reasoning about whether p. The proponent of the Paradox of Belief Revision will suggest that this is exactly what happens when one regards E as misleading evidence that not-p. 10 This would be in analogy with recent attempts to spell out the Taking Condition (see footnote 3 above) in terms of intuitions, intellectual seemings, states of consciousness and the like. See, for instance, Chudnoff (2014), Hlobil (2019) and Marcus (forthcoming).…”

Section: The Too Early or Too Late Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-knowledge and the Paradox of Belief Revision

Merlo

2021

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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To qualify as a fully rational agent, one must be able rationally to revise one’s beliefs in the light of new evidence. This requires, not only that one revise one’s beliefs in the right way, but also that one do so as a result of appreciating the evidence on the basis of which one is changing one’s mind. However, the very nature of belief seems to pose an obstacle to the possibility of satisfying this requirement – for, insofar as one believes that p, any evidence that not-p will strike one as misleading and, on the face of it, believing that a certain piece of evidence is misleading is incompatible with appreciating the fact that such evidence should bear on the question at hand. Call this the ‘Paradox of Belief Revision’. This paper introduces the Paradox of Belief Revision, compares it with Kripke’s Dogmatism Paradox, and suggests that we may be able to see a way out of the former if we assume that rational agents are systematically aware of their own beliefs as beliefs they have.

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Section: The Too Early or Too Late Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-knowledge and the Paradox of Belief Revision

Merlo

2021

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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“…The answer is no. For otherwise “we could all engage in all kinds of extraordinary reasoning—like remarkable pieces of reasoning of geniuses like Ramanujan or Gödel—simply by nodding along.” (Hlobil, 2018, p. 3) Such “geniuses' reasoning” is inaccessible to us—ordinary thinkers—precisely because we cannot “take” their premises to support their conclusion. Namely, the “taking” cannot be transmitted to us through their testimony.…”

Section: Tc and Its Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning and grasping objects

Golan

2020

European J of Philosophy

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There is a pervasive view that inference—as opposed, notably, to a grasp of objects—is an intralinguistic process that does not draw on extralinguistic resources. The present paper aims to show that this dichotomy between inferring and grasping objects can be resisted. Specifically, I offer an alternative view: a phenomenological account according to which our most basic inferences draw on our grasp of objects. I motivate this account on the grounds that, although it is restricted to such basic inferences, it has significant implications for the general question of whether inference involves taking one's premises to support one's conclusion. The proposed account implies that basic inferences need not involve corresponding “takings,” (even though such inferences involve conceptual content), but it leaves open the possibility that non‐basic inferences do involve corresponding “takings,” while relying on basic inferences. It will turn out that such a disjunctive view, according to which non‐basic reasoning is somewhat parasitic on basic reasoning, manages to avoid many of the problems with which the literature on the “taking condition” deals.

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“…The non-inferential view of information change is also relevant for human interaction. As Hlobil[40] argues, we can believe by accepting testimonies, but we cannot make inferences by merely accepting testimony. Two testimonies that contradict each other are to be, ceteris paribus, equally treated and the acceptance of new information is not the same process as inferentially extending the existing (incomplete) information.…”

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confidence: 99%

Structured argumentation dynamics

Pandzic

2021

Ann Math Artif Intell

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This paper develops a logical theory that unifies all three standard types of argumentative attack in AI, namely rebutting, undercutting and undermining attacks. We build on default justification logic that already represents undercutting and rebutting attacks, and we add undermining attacks. Intuitively, undermining does not target default inference, as undercutting, or default conclusion, as rebutting, but rather attacks an argument’s premise as a starting point for default reasoning. In default justification logic, reasoning starts from a set of premises, which is then extended by conclusions that hold by default. We argue that modeling undermining defeaters in the view of default theories requires changing the set of premises upon receiving new information. To model changes to premises, we give a dynamic aspect to default justification logic by using the techniques from the logic of belief revision. More specifically, undermining is modeled with belief revision operations that include contracting a set of premises, that is, removing some information from it. The novel combination of default reasoning and belief revision in justification logic enriches both approaches to reasoning under uncertainty. By the end of the paper, we show some important aspects of defeasible argumentation in which our logic compares favorably to structured argumentation frameworks.

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We cannot infer by accepting testimony

Cited by 7 publications

References 19 publications

Self-knowledge and the Paradox of Belief Revision

Self-knowledge and the Paradox of Belief Revision

Reasoning and grasping objects

Structured argumentation dynamics

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