'In Between Believing' and Degrees of Belief

Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 26 (1):131-137 (2007)
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Abstract

Schwitzgebel (2001) ā€” henceforth 'S' ā€” offers three examples in order to convince us that there are situations in which individuals are neither accurately describable as believing that p or failing to so believe, but are rather in 'in-between states of belief'. He then argues that there are no 'Bayesian' or representational strategies for explicating these, and proposes a dispositional account. I do not have any fundamental objection to the idea that there might be 'in-between states of belief'. What I shall argue, rather, is that: (I) S does not provide a convincing argument that there really are such states; (II) S does not show, as he claims, that 'in-between states of belief' could not be accounted for in terms of degrees of belief; (III) Sā€™s dispositional account of 'in-between states of belief' is more problematic than the 'degree of belief' alternative.

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Darrell P. Rowbottom
Lingnan University

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