In this paper, I propose a Husserlian account of perceptual confidence, and argue for perceptual confidence by appeal to the self-justification of perceptual experiences. Perceptual confidence is the intriguing view, recently developed by John Morrison, that there are not just doxastic confidences but also perceptual confidences, i.e., confidences as aspect of perceptual experience, enabling us to account, e.g., for the increasing confidence with which we experience an approaching human figure, while telling ourselves, as the viewing distance (...) diminishes, “It looks like this just could be Isaac”, “It looks like this is probably Isaac”, “It looks like this is almost certainly Isaac”. I first present my Husserlian account with a focus on the notion of fulfillment, and the idea that the contents of perceptual experience are fulfillment conditions. I then show that this account can be complemented by PC. Finally, I develop a focus on the idea of perceptual self-justification, diverting the perceptual confidence debate from its pre-eminent concern with the relations between perceptual and doxastic confidences, and present an argument to the effect that there are perceptual confidences. (shrink)

To study (un)conscious perception and test hypotheses about consciousness, researchers need procedures for determining whether subjects consciously perceive stimuli or not. This article is an introduction to a family of procedures called ‘confidence-based procedures’, which consist in interpreting metacognitive indicators as indicators of consciousness. I assess the validity and accuracy of these procedures, and answer a series of common objections to their use in consciousness research. I conclude that confidence-based procedures are valid for assessing consciousness, and, in most (...) cases, accurate enough for our practical and scientific purposes. (shrink)

The idea of a common currency underlying our choice behaviour has played an important role in sciences of behaviour, from neurobiology to psychology and economics. However, while it has been mainly investigated in terms of values, with a common scale on which goods would be evaluated and compared, the question of a common scale for subjective probabilities and confidence in particular has received only little empirical investigation so far. The present study extends previous work addressing this question, by showing (...) that confidence can be compared across visual and auditory decisions, with the same precision as for the comparison of two trials within the same task. We discuss the possibility that confidence could serve as a common currency when describing our choices to ourselves and to others. others. (shrink)

We advocate and develop a states-based semantics for both nominal and adjectival confidence reports, as in "Ann is confident/has confidence that it's raining", and their comparatives "Ann is more confident/has more confidence that it's raining than that it's snowing". Other examples of adjectives that can report confidence include "sure" and "certain". Our account adapts Wellwood's account of adjectival comparatives in which the adjectives denote properties of states, and measure functions are introduced compositionally. We further explore the (...) prospects of applying these tools to the semantics of probability operators. We emphasize three desirable and novel features of our semantics: (i) probability claims only exploit qualitative resources unless there is explicit compositional pressure for quantitative resources; (ii) the semantics applies to both probabilistic adjectives (e.g., "likely") and probabilistic nouns (e.g., "probability"); (iii) the semantics can be combined with an account of belief reports that allows thinkers to have incoherent probabilistic beliefs (e.g. thinking that A & B is more likely than A) even while validating the relevant purely probabilistic claims (e.g. validating the claim that A & B is never more likely than A). Finally, we explore the interaction between confidence-reporting discourse (e.g., "I am confident that...") and belief-reports about probabilistic discourse (e.g.,"I think it's likely that.."). (shrink)

Should learning we disagree about p lead you to reduce confidence in p? Some who think so want to except beliefs in which you are rationally highly confident. I argue that this is wrong; we should reject accounts that rely on this intuitive thought. I then show that quite the opposite holds: factors that justify low confidence in p also make disagreement about p less significant. I examine two such factors: your antecedent expectations about your peers’ opinions and (...) the difficulty of evaluating your evidence. I close by proposing a different way of thinking about disagreement. (shrink)

Perceptual Confidence is the view that perceptual experiences assign degrees of confidence. After introducing, clarifying, and motivating Perceptual Confidence, I catalogue some of its more interesting consequences, such as the way it blurs the distinction between veridical and illusory experiences, a distinction that is sometimes said to carry a lot of metaphysical weight. I also explain how Perceptual Confidence fills a hole in our best scientific theories of perception and why it implies that experiences don't have (...) objective accuracy conditions. (shrink)

In “Perceptual Confidence,” I argue that our perceptual experiences assign degrees of confidence. In “Precision, not Confidence, Describes the Uncertainty of Perceptual Experience,” Rachel Denison disagrees. In this reply I first clarify what i mean by ‘perceptual experiences’, ‘assign’ and ‘confidence’. I then argue, contra Denison, that perception involves automatic categorization, and that there is an intrinsic difference between a blurry perception of a sharp image and a sharp perception of a blurry image. -/- .

It’s intuitive to think that (a) the more sure you are of something, the harder it’ll be to change your mind about it, and (b) you can’t be open-minded about something if you’re very sure about it. If these thoughts are right, then, with minimal assumptions, it follows that you can’t be in a good position to both escape echo chambers and be rationally resistant to fake news: the former requires open-mindedness, but the latter is inimical to it. I argue (...) that neither thought is true and that believing them will get us all mixed up. I show that you can be open-minded and have confidently held beliefs, and that beliefs in which you are less sure are not, thereby, more fragile. I close with some reflections on the nature of rational belief change and open-mindedness and a brief sketch about what might actually help us in the fight against misinformation and belief polarization …. [please read below the rest of the article]. (shrink)

Consciousness and confidence seem intimately related. Accordingly, some researchers use confidence ratings as a measure of, or proxy for, consciousness. Rosenthal discusses the potential connections between the two, and rejects confidence as a valid measure of consciousness. He argues that there are better alternatives to get at conscious experiences such as direct subjective reports of awareness (i.e. subjects’ reports of perceiving something or of the degree of visibility of a stimulus). In this chapter, we offer a different (...) perspective. Confidence ratings in general, and metacognitive measures in particular, may offer important advantages over subjective ratings. The arguments we offer here are supported by empirical, practical and socio-strategic considerations. However, we do not suggest consciousness and confidence are interchangeable. We recognize the limitations of confidence ratings in some experimental designs and for some research questions. Nevertheless, we also address a potential conceptual link between consciousness and confidence that stems from Rosenthal’s very own work on mental quality space theory. (shrink)

The so-called “conciliatory” norm in epistemology and meta-ethics requires that an agent, upon encountering peer disagreement with her judgment, lower her confidence about that judgment. But whether agents actually abide by this norm is unclear. Although confidence is excessively researched in the empirical sciences, possible effects of disagreement on confidence have been understudied. Here, we target this lacuna, reporting a study that measured confidence about moral beliefs before and after exposure to moral discourse about a controversial (...) issue. Our findings indicate that participants do not abide by the conciliatory norm. Neither do they conform to a rival “steadfast” norm that demands their confidence to remain the same. Instead, moral discourse seems to boost confidence. Interestingly, we also find a confidence boost for factual beliefs, and a correlation between the extremity of moral views and confidence. One possible explanation of our findings is that when engaging in moral discourse participants become more extreme in their opinions, which leads them to become more confident about them, or vice versa: they become more confident and in turn more extreme. Although our work provides initial evidence for the former mechanism, further research is needed for a better understanding of confidence and moral discourse. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by explaining what epistemic injustice is and what ordinary language philosophy is. I then go on to ask why we might doubt the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in examining epistemic injustice. In the first place, we might wonder how ordinary language philosophy can be of use, given that many of the key terms used in discussing epistemic injustice, including ‘epistemic injustice’ itself, are not drawn from our ordinary language. We might also have doubts about (...) the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in this area, given ordinary language philosophers’ aversion to theory. Finally, we might have doubts about the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy due to the fact that the study of epistemic injustice is clearly a study of practical matters concerning the way the world is and has been historically. If ordinary language philosophy is just concerned with grammar, what use can it be to practical and social philosophy concerning current issues? In response to these worries, I demonstrate the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in practice by applying the insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan R. White to a problem that Miranda Fricker raises, but does not answer: about whether there is a confidence condition on knowledge. I also make use of Gilbert Ryle's distinction between ‘the use of ordinary language’ and ‘the ordinary use of an expression’ to show that the terminology used in examining epistemic injustice is ordinary in some sense. (shrink)

A mental state is luminous if, whenever an agent is in that state, they are in a position to know that they are. Following Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and Its Limits, a wave of recent work has explored whether there are any non-trivial luminous mental states. A version of Williamson’s anti-luminosity appeals to a safety- theoretic principle connecting knowledge and confidence: if an agent knows p, then p is true in any nearby scenario where she has a similar level of (...) confidence in p. However, the relevant notion of confidence is relatively underexplored. This paper develops a precise theory of confidence: an agent’s degree of confidence in p is the objective chance they will rely on p in practical reasoning. This theory of confidence is then used to critically evaluate the anti-luminosity argument, leading to the surprising conclusion that although there are strong reasons for thinking that luminosity does not obtain, they are quite different from those the existing literature has considered. In particular, we show that once the notion of confidence is properly understood, the failure of luminosity follows from the assumption that knowledge requires high confidence, and does not require any kind of safety principle as a premise. (shrink)

Does having an initially high level of justified confidence in a belief vindicate remaining steadfast in the face of disagreement? According to one prominent view in the literature, namely Jennifer Lackey's justificationist position, the answer is yes so long as one also has personal information that provides a symmetry-breaker. In this article, I raise a problem for the justificationist view. On the most straightforward reading of the justificationist position, personal information always provides a symmetry-breaker in a peer dispute over (...) a belief in which one has high justified confidence. However, this position is implausibly strong because it renders epistemically permissible a dogmatic attitude in a relevant set of peer disagreements. Alternatively, weaker readings of the view fail to provide a perspicuous account of when high justified confidence matters in a disagreement. (shrink)

We argue that social deliberation may increase an agent’s confidence and credence under certain circumstances. An agent considers a proposition H and assigns a probability to it. However, she is not fully confident that she herself is reliable in this assignment. She then endorses H during deliberation with another person, expecting him to raise serious objections. To her surprise, however, the other person does not raise any objections to H. How should her attitudes toward H change? It seems plausible (...) that she should increase the credence she assigns to H and, at the same time, increase the reliability she assigns to herself concerning H. A Bayesian model helps us to investigate under what conditions, if any, this is rational. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and defend a novel account of doubt. In Part 1, I make some preliminary observations about the nature of doubt. In Part 2, I introduce a new puzzle about the relationship between three psychological states: doubt, belief, and confidence. I present this puzzle because my account of doubt emerges as a possible solution to it. Lastly, in Part 3, I elaborate on and defend my account of doubt. Roughly, one has doubt if and only (...) if one believes one might be wrong; I argue that this is superior to the account that says that one has doubt if and only if one has less than the highest degree of confidence. (shrink)

Perceptual Confidence is the view that our conscious perceptual experiences assign confidence. In previous papers, I motivated it using first-personal evidence (Morrison, 2016), and Jessie Munton motivated it using normative evidence (Munton, 2016). In this paper, I will consider the extent to which it is motivated by third-personal evidence. I will argue that the current evidence is supportive but not decisive. I will then describe experiments that might provide stronger evidence. I hope to thereby provide a roadmap for (...) future research. (shrink)

Mathematical confidence and critical thinking are essential in preparing preservice teachers. Thus, this study explored the perceived confidence and critical thinking levels in mathematics of elementary and secondary preservice teachers. A descriptive-correlational-comparative research design was employed, with a sample of 107 randomly selected preservice teachers enrolled in the Bachelor in Elementary and Secondary Education programs of a state university in West Philippines. The study used arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Spearman’s rank-order correlation, and independent samples t-test to analyze and (...) draw conclusions from the data. The findings revealed that the preservice teachers have high confidence and critical thinking skills. Their program significantly correlates with their perceived critical thinking and confidence level. Besides, the preservice teachers’ confidence levels and perceived critical thinking skills significantly correlate. Further analysis found significant confidence and critical thinking differences favoring the secondary over the elementary preservice teachers. These findings provide insights that would benefit mathematics educators in providing priority programs to enhance the preparation of future math teachers. (shrink)

I applaud recent improvements upon previous guidelines for the assessment of pain in non-human species and the application of their framework towards decapod crustaceans. Rather than constituting a mere intermediate solution between the scientific difficulty of settling questions of animal consciousness and the need for a framework for the purposes of animal welfare legislation, I will argue that the longer lists of criteria for animal sentience should make us realize that animal sentience is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that must be studied (...) with a plethora of methods in order to assess its diversity across the tree of life. (shrink)

Rationale, Aims, and Objectives: Confidence (or belief) that a therapy is effective is essential to practicing clinical medicine. GRADE, a popular framework for developing clinical recommendations, provides a means for assigning how much confidence one should have in a therapy's effect estimate. One's level of confidence (or “degree of belief”) can also be modelled using Bayes theorem. In this paper, we look through both a GRADE and Bayesian lens to examine how one determines confidence in the (...) effect estimate. Methods: Philosophical examination. Results: The GRADE framework uses a criteria‐based method to assign a quality of evidence level. The criteria pertain mostly to considerations of methodological rigour, derived from a modified evidence‐based medicine evidence hierarchy. The four levels of quality relate to the level of confidence one should have in the effect estimate. The Bayesian framework is not bound by a predetermined set of criteria. Bayes theorem shows how a rational agent adjusts confidence (ie, degree of belief) in the effect estimate on the basis of the available evidence. Such adjustments relate to the principles of incremental confirmation and evidence proportionism. Use of the Bayesian framework reveals some potential pitfalls in GRADE's criteria‐based thinking on confidence that are out of step with our intuitions on evidence. Conclusions: A rational thinker uses all available evidence to formulate beliefs. The GRADE criteria seem to suggest that we discard some of that information when other, more favoured information (eg, derived from clinical trials) is available. The GRADE framework should strive to ensure that the whole evidence base is considered when determining confidence in the effect estimate. The incremental value of such evidence on determining confidence in the effect estimate should be assigned in a manner that is theoretically or empirically justified, such that confidence is proportional to the evidence, both for and against it. (shrink)

In this chapter, I focus on the experience of torture and, more specifically, on Jean Améry's account of it in his book *At the Mind's Limits*. There he claims that the loss of confidence in the world is the most devastating effect he experienced as a victim of torture. I thus explore what cosmopolitan aspiration may be revealed by this loss and also discuss whether it is to be discredited as an irrational reaction on the victim's side or instead (...) as proportional to the facts and, consequently, as relevant to the conditions under which a certain cosmopolitan aspiration could be achieved or, at least, favored. (shrink)

Confidence is vital to athletic performance. But can a basketball player 'choose to believe' that his/her next shot is going in? Doxastic involuntarism is defended in this article; so the answer to this question is 'no'. However, by charting the reasons why a player may lose confidence, we find that there are corresponding strategies that offer hope for rebuilding a player's confidence--even though there can be no guarantee of these strategies' success.

In this paper I will draw attention to an important route to external world skepticism, which I will call confidence skepticism. I will argue that we can defang confidence skepticism (though not a meeker ‘argument from might’ which has got some attention in the 20th century literature on external world skepticism) by adopting a partially psychologistic answer to the problem of priors. And I will argue that certain recent work in the epistemology of mathematics and logic provides independent (...) support for such psychologism. (shrink)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed a novel framework for assessing and communicating uncertainty in the findings published in their periodic assessment reports. But how should these uncertainty assessments inform decisions? We take a formal decision-making perspective to investigate how scientific input formulated in the IPCC’s novel framework might inform decisions in a principled way through a normative decision model.

Overconfidence is typically damaging to one’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their “confidence-accuracy calibration”). The present study experimentally examines the interplay between confidence, (...) accuracy and a third factor, namely evidence, in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. Experiment 1 probes the hypothesis that overconfidence does not backfire when a confident but inaccurate claim is justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be wrong is restored if the confidence expressed is based on strong evidence (good confidence-evidence calibration). Experiment 2 investigates the hypothesis that confidence can backfire if a confident and accurate claim is not justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be right is damaged if the confidence expressed is based on weak evidence (bad confidence-evidence calibration). Our results support both hypotheses and thus suggest that “confidence-evidence calibration” plays a crucial role in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. (shrink)

Metacognitive mental states are mental states about mental states. For example, I may be uncertain whether my belief is correct. In social discourse, an interlocutor’s metacognitive certainty may constitute evidence about the reliability of their testimony. For example, if a speaker is certain that their belief is correct, then we may take this as evidence in favour of their belief, or its content. This paper argues that, if metacognitive certainty is genuine evidence, then it is disproportionate evidence for extreme beliefs. (...) In support of the argument, we report findings from five studies with different participant samples, designs, and measures. These studies show that, the more extreme an agent’s belief (positive or negative), the more certain they are about it, and vice versa. This relationship might contribute to moralism, virtue signalling, and polarisation, which in turn may be epistemically and morally problematic. Therefore, we caution against taking metacognitive certainty as genuine evidence. (shrink)

Here I explore a new line of evidence for belief–credence dualism, the thesis that beliefs and credences are distinct and equally fundamental types of mental states. Despite considerable recent disagreement over this thesis, little attention has been paid in philosophy to differences in how our mindreading systems represent the beliefs and credences of others. Fascinatingly, the systems we rely on to accurately and efficiently track others’ mental states appear to function like belief–credence dualists: Credence is tracked like an emotional state, (...) composed of both representational and affective content, whereas belief is tracked like a bare representational state with no affective component. I argue on a preliminary basis that, in this particular case, the mechanics of mentalizing likely pick out a genuine affective dimension to credence that is absent for belief, further strengthening the converging case for belief–credence dualism. (shrink)

Two intuitions lie at the heart of our conception of free will. One intuition locates free will in our ability to deliberate effectively and control our actions accordingly: the ‘Deliberation and Control’ (DC) condition. The other intuition is that free will requires the existence of alternative possibilities for choice: the AP condition. These intuitions seem to conflict when, for instance, we deliberate well to decide what to do, and we do not want it to be possible to act in some (...) other way. I suggest that intuitions about the AP condition arise when we face ‘close calls,’ situations in which, after deliberating, we still do not know what we really want to do. Indeed, several incompatibilists suggest such close calls are necessary for free will. I challenge this suggestion by describing a ‘confident agent’ who, after deliberating, always feels confident about what to do (and can then control her actions accordingly). Because she maximally satisfies the DC condition, she does not face close calls, and the intuition that the AP condition is essential for free will does not seem to apply to her. I conclude that intuitions about the importance of the AP condition rest on our experiences of close calls and arise precisely to the extent that our deliberations fail to arrive at a clear decision. I then raise and respond to several objections to this thought experiment and its relevance to the free will debate. (shrink)

What does it mean to have “strong beliefs”? My thesis is that it can mean two very different things. That is, there are two distinct psychological features to which “strong belief” can refer, and these often come apart. I call the first feature epistemic confidence and the second identity centrality. They are conceptually distinct and, if we take ethnographies of religion seriously, distinct in fact as well. If that’s true, it’s methodologically important for the psychological sciences to have measures (...) that tease them apart. In this paper, I critique some measures that are currently in use and propose some strategies for developing measurement tools that track the distinction in question. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to comparativism, comparative confidence is more fundamental than absolute confidence. In two recent AJP papers, Stefánsson has argued that comparativism is capable of explaining interpersonal confidence comparisons. In this paper, I will argue that Stefansson’s proposed explanation is inadequate; that we have good reasons to think that comparativism cannot handle interpersonal comparisons; and that the best explanation of interpersonal comparisons requires thinking about confidence in a fundamentally different way than that which comparativists propose: specifically, (...) we should think of confidence as a dimensionless quantity. (shrink)

The study’s goal was to provide an educational intervention in Algebra through GeoGebra that would boost students’ confidence, improve their learning, and correct their most minor mastered skills, allowing them to improve their Algebra performance. The research design was quasi-experimental, with 40 nonrandomly chosen participants comprising the GeoGebra and control groups. Mean and standard deviation was employed to describe the algebra performance and confidence of the respondents. At the same time, independent and dependent t-tests were used to determine (...) the students’ significant difference in algebra performance and confidence in the pre-and post-test between the control and GeoGebra groups. GeoGebra effectively improved algebra confidence, enhanced learning, and remedied the students’ least mastered skills. GeoGebra is recommended as an instructional material in teaching and learning Algebra and can be extended to other mathematics content areas. (shrink)

Most historians explains changes in conceptions of the epistemic virtues and vices in terms of social and historical developments. I argue that such approaches, valuable as they are, neglect the fact that certain changes also reflect changes in metaphysical sensibilities. Certain epistemic virtues and vices are defined relative to an estimate of our epistemic situation that is, in turn, defined by a broader vision or picture of the nature of reality. I defend this claim by charting changing conceptions of the (...) virtue of epistemic humility in 19th century intellectual culture - specifically the scientific naturalists. (shrink)

An increasing number of financial services (FS) companies are adopting solutions driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to gain operational efficiencies, derive strategic insights, and improve customer engagement. However, the rate of adoption has been low, in part due to the apprehension around its complexity and self-learning capability, which makes auditability a challenge in a highly regulated industry. There is limited literature on how FS companies can implement the governance and controls specific to AI-driven solutions. AI auditing cannot be performed in (...) a vacuum; the risks are not confined to the algorithm itself, but rather permeates the entire organization. Using the risk of unfairness as an example, this paper will introduce the overarching governance strategy and control framework to address the practical challenges in mitigating risks AI introduces. With regulatory implications and industry use cases, this framework will enable leaders to innovate with confidence. (shrink)

There is an important sense in which one can be sure without being certain, i.e., without assigning unit probability. I will offer an explication of this sense of sureness, connecting it with the level of credence that a rational agent would need to have to be confident that she won’t ever lose her confidence. A simple formal result then gives us an explicit formula connecting the threshold α for credence needed for confidence with the threshold needed for being (...) sure: one needs 1−(1−α) to be sure. I then suggest that stepping between α and 1−(1−α) gives a procedure that generates an interesting hierarchy of credential thresholds. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that pharmacists have an interest in conducting research. However, barriers such as lack of confidence prevent pharmacists from participating in ruling research. This study evaluated pharmacists’ self-perceived competence and confidence scores for health-related research. A validated self-designed questionnaire was distributed to randomly recruited Libyan pharmacists in hospitals and community pharmacies. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were applied to the data. The analysis included 191 responses. Most respondents had prior research experience (67.0%). Over two-thirds (...) (72.3%) rated their ability to conduct health-related research as good to excellent. The majority had not published articles in peer-reviewed journals in the past five years (71.2%) and had no abstracts or posters published at local/regional (65.4%) or international conferences (79.1%). Lack of support (55.5%) was the most common barrier to participating in health-related research, followed by lack of funds (42.9%), time (29.3%), and knowledge (26.2%). At least two-thirds of pharmacists felt somewhat competent or confident in conceptualizing research ideas, collecting data, managing and storing data, and preparing presentations. Less than 60% felt competent /confident in outlining statistical plans and using statistical software. Overall, pharmacists displayed moderate competence (median score=38.0/65) and confidence (median score=40/65) in planning and conducting health-related research. Those with prior research experience (median score=42.0 vs. 29.0) and training (median score=41.0 vs. 28.0) had significantly higher scores. Higher scores were also noted among those who had published in peer-reviewed journals (median score=46.0 vs. 37.0) and presented at regional/local conferences (median score=46.5 vs. 34.0). Most pharmacists in Libya were interested in conducting research, and the majority of them had previous research experience and previous research-related training. The pharmacists had moderate competence and confidence to plan and conduct research. Research training was recommended for practicing pharmacists and pharmacy students to improve pharmacists’ research involvement and promote the advancement of pharmacy practice in Libya. (shrink)

When does opinion formation within an interacting group lead to consensus, polarization or fragmentation? The article investigates various models for the dynamics of continuous opinions by analytical methods as well as by computer simulations. Section 2 develops within a unified framework the classical model of consensus formation, the variant of this model due to Friedkin and Johnsen, a time-dependent version and a nonlinear version with bounded confidence of the agents. Section 3 presents for all these models major analytical results. (...) Section 4 gives an extensive exploration of the nonlinear model with bounded confidence by a series of computer simulations. An appendix supplies needed mathematical definitions, tools, and theorems. (shrink)

لا تأخذ الأمر على محملٍ شخصي؛ فحين يتعلق الأمر بالمرض والموت، يتلاشى الاهتمام بما إذا كنت صديقي أو قريبي أو جاري أو شخصًا غريبًا عني؛ لا تعنيني الآن هويتك أو علمك أو سياستك، ولا يشغلني أين أو ماذا تعمل، أو ما إذا كنت تعمل أصلاً، ولا يختلف الأمر عندي سواء أكنت ترتدي قناعًا أو تحمل مسدسًا أو تُمسك قلمًا! في الوقت الحالي، أنا لا أثق بك؛ فأنت بالنسبة لي حاملٌ محتملٌ لفيروس قاتل!

I examine the relationship between belief and credences and distinguish between a dogmatic, a Lockean, an agentic, and an abductive notion of belief. I conclude with some thoughts on voluntarism and evidentialism.

Background: Health care practitioners are recognized to have a large influence in shaping uptake of vaccine in new borns, children, adolescents, as well as adults. Parents remain more secure in their decisions when health care practitioners communicate successfully with them about vaccine dangers and benefits, the value as well as necessity for vaccinations, as well as vaccine safety. Thus, immunization remain the foundation of the primary health care system, an indisputable human right as well as a global health and development (...) success story, saving millions of lives yearly. Recently, we have vaccines to prevent more than 20 life threatening diseases, helping people of all ages live longer, healthier lives. Yet despite tremendous progress, far too many people around the world, including nearly 20 million infants yearly have insufficient access to vaccines. In some countries, progress has stalled or even reversed, and there is a real risk that complacency will undermine past achievements. Purpose: The current study aimed to explores vaccine hesitancy, its barriers and impact studies regarding COVID-19 decision impacts. Also, to provides policy and decision makers and operational staff with evidence to inform decisions to promote vaccine uptake across Bayelsa State. Methods: A literature review tried to do a deep dive by using a variety of search engines such as Scopus, Research Gate, Mendeley, Summon, PubMed, Google Scholar, Hinari, Dimension, Academia, CAB Abstract, OARE Abstract, SSRN search strategy to retrieve research publications, “grey literature” and expert working group reports, including author’s field experience. Findings: Absence of uniform methods of organization in the various health care facilities upon which we were obliged to rely. Thus affecting the overall immunization programme and health system. Hence policy must urgently address these challenges with emphasis on policy clarity while continuously improving infrastructure. Conclusions: Bayelsa State is categorized as low/poor performing as the findings suggest that the involvement of community-based leaders can improve community participation and acceptance while enhancing and strengthening integrated disease surveillance and Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) monitoring and reporting systems; and conducting integrated advocacy and communications activities to promote demand for vaccination as part of increasing overall demand and acceptability of all essential Primary Health Centers (PHC) services, thus, breaking barriers of vaccine hesitancy. (shrink)

Aiming at the problems of college students’ lack of in-depth understanding of the connotation of Chinese excellent traditional culture and the urgent need for improvement, this paper takes the construction of the Chinese Excellent Cultural Inheritance and Development Project of Faculty of Chinese Language and Culture of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies as an example, proposes the construction path of the cultural education project in universities, and summarizes the actual effect and experience.

The study aimed to determine if differentiated instruction effectively addresses learning gaps in mathematics. In particular, it explored how it can improve the student’s learning gaps concerning mathematical performance and confidence. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with 30 purposively-selected Grade 10 participants divided into differentiated (n = 15) and control groups (n = 15), ensuring the utmost ethical measures. The mean and standard deviation were used to describe the participants’ performance and confidence. Independent samples t-tests were used (...) to determine the significant differences in the performance and confidence between the two groups. In contrast, dependent samples t-tests were used to determine the significant differences in each group’s pre and posttest performance and confidence. Findings bared that the differentiated instruction successfully addressed students’ performance in mathematics even in a short period. It also increased the participants’ confidence when answering fundamental problems. Continuing differentiated instruction activities are recommended since it benefits students who struggle in mathematics, particularly in answering fundamental operations. Differentiated teaching activities in mathematics can boost academic achievement and engagement and prepare students for future success while fostering a positive and inclusive classroom culture that values individual learning needs and preferences. (shrink)

Philosophers commonly say that beliefs come in degrees. Drawing from the literature, I make precise three arguments for this claim: an argument from degrees of confidence, an argument from degrees of firmness, and an argument from natural language. I show that they all fail. I also advance three arguments that beliefs do not come in degrees: an argument from natural language, an argument from intuition, and an argument from the metaphysics of degrees. On the basis of these arguments, I (...) conclude that beliefs do not come in degrees. (shrink)

Metacognition is the capacity to evaluate the success of one's own cognitive processes in various domains; for example, memory and perception. It remains controversial whether metacognition relies on a domain-general resource that is applied to different tasks or if self-evaluative processes are domain specific. Here, we investigated this issue directly by examining the neural substrates engaged when metacognitive judgments were made by human participants of both sexes during perceptual and memory tasks matched for stimulus and performance characteristics. By comparing patterns (...) of fMRI activity while subjects evaluated their performance, we revealed both domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive representations. Multivoxel activity patterns in anterior prefrontal cortex predicted levels of confidence in a domain-specific fashion, whereas domain-general signals predicting confidence and accuracy were found in a widespread network in the frontal and posterior midline. The demonstration of domain-specific metacognitive representations suggests the presence of a content-rich mechanism available to introspection and cognitive control. (shrink)

Social and political concepts are indispensable yet historically and culturally variable in a way that poses a challenge: how can we reconcile confident commitment to them with awareness of their contingency? In this article, we argue that available responses to this problem—Foundationalism, Ironism, and Right Wittgensteinianism—are unsatisfactory. Instead, we draw on the work of Bernard Williams to tease out and develop a Left Wittgensteinian response. In present-day pluralistic and historically self-conscious societies, mere confidence in our concepts is not enough. (...) For modern individuals who are ineluctably aware of conceptual change, engaged concept-use requires reasonable confidence, and in the absence of rational foundations, the possibility of reasonable confidence is tied to the possibility of critically discriminating between conceptual practices worth endorsing and those worth rejecting. We show that Left Wittgensteinianism offers such a basis for critical discrimination through point-based explanations of conceptual practices which relate them to the needs of concept-users. We end by considering how Left Wittgensteinianism guides our understanding of how conceptual practices can be revised in the face of new needs. (shrink)

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to (...) the empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

This study aimed to construct structural equation model of students’ competence in mathematics through selected students profile variables. The structural model revealed interesting influence of the profile variables to the competency in mathematics. It can be conveyed that better mother’s work status, higher educational level expected to complete, more confident and did not repeat kinder, have better competency in mathematics. The four variables that directly influenced the competence variables were also influenced with other profile variables such as family background. The (...) family background and confidence level consistently had the highest total effect and indirect effect to the competence in mathematics. Hence, this model can serve as a guide in making programs in the classroom or curriculum in mathematics. (shrink)

By integrating Bernard Williams’s internalism about reasons with his later thought, this article casts fresh light on internalism and reveals what wider concerns it speaks to. To be consistent with Williams’s later work, I argue, internalism must align with his deference to the phenomenology of moral deliberation and with his critique of ‘moral self-indulgence’. Key to this alignment is the idea that deliberation can express the agent’s motivations without referring to them; and that internalism is not a normative claim, but (...) an example of sense-making from ‘the ethnographic stance’. This leaves a worry over whether moral conviction can coexist with an internalist understanding of reasons. Here too, however, Williams’s later thought provides an answer. Differentiating corrosive from corroborative sense-making, it elucidates how internalism, though not normative, can nonetheless affect our confidence in reason statements, thereby informing how we deliberate and how we address those whose motivations differ from our own. (shrink)

This essay presents an argument, which it calls the Bias Argument, with the dismaying conclusion that (almost) everyone should significantly reduce her confidence in (too many) philosophical beliefs. More precisely, the argument attempts to show that the most precious philosophical beliefs are biased, as the pervasive and permanent disagreement among the leading experts in philosophy cannot be explained by the differences between their evidence bases and competences. After a short introduction, the premises of the Bias Argument are spelled out (...) in the first part. The second part explains why the objections to the Bias Argument are not compelling. Even though the essay does not adopt the conclusion of the Bias Argument, partly because it seems to be self-defeating, the authors know no plausible way to refute its premises. Thus, the primary aim of the essay is to clarify why the aporetic situation of the Bias Argument arises. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about visual appearance. There are certain necessary constraints on how things can visually appear. The puzzle is about how to explain them. I have no satisfying solution. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is a puzzle. I will develop the puzzle as it arises for representationalism about experience because it is currently the most popular theory of experience and I think it is along the right lines. However, everyone faces a (...) form of the puzzle, including the naïve realist. In §1 I explain representationalism about experience. In §§2-3 I develop the puzzle and criticize a response due to Ned Block and Jeff Speaks and another response based on a novel form of representationalism (“sensa representationalism”). In §4 I argue that defenders of “perceptual confidence” (Morrison, Munton, my earlier self) face an instance of the puzzle. In §5 I suggest that everyone faces a form of the puzzle. (shrink)

This paper defends and develops the capacity view against insightful critiques from Matt McGrath, Adam Pautz, and Ram Neta. In response to Matt McGrath, I show why capacities are essential and cannot simply be replaced with representational content. I argue moreover, that the asymmetry between the employment of perceptual capacities in the good and the bad case is sufficient to account for the epistemic force of perceptual states yielded by the employment of such capacities. In response to Adam Pautz, I (...) show why a perceiver’s belief is better justified than the belief of someone who suffers a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination. I show, moreover, why the capacity view is compatible with standard Bayesian principles and how it accounts for degrees of justification. In response to Ram Neta, I discuss the relationship between evidence and rational confidence, as well as the notion of evidence in light of an externalism about perceptual content. (shrink)

It is a consequence of the theory of imprecise credences that there exist situations in which rational agents inevitably become less opinionated toward some propositions as they gather more evidence. The fact that an agent's imprecise credal state can dilate in this way is often treated as a strike against the imprecise approach to inductive inference. Here, we show that dilation is not a mere artifact of this approach by demonstrating that opinion loss is countenanced as rational by a substantially (...) broader class of normative theories than has been previously recognised. Specifically, we show that dilation-like phenomena arise even when one abandons the basic assumption that agents have (precise or imprecise) credences of any kind, and follows directly from bedrock norms for rational comparative confidence judgements of the form `I am at least as confident in p as I am in q'. We then use the comparative confidence framework to develop a novel understanding of what exactly gives rise to dilation-like phenomena. By considering opinion loss in this more general setting, we are able to provide a novel assessment of the prospects for an account of inductive inference that is not saddled with the inevitability of rational opinion loss. (shrink)