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Defending Evidence‐Resistant Beliefs
Author(s) -
Viedge Nikolai
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12174
Subject(s) - feature (linguistics) , mental state , psychology , epistemology , resistance (ecology) , state (computer science) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , philosophy , computer science , ecology , linguistics , algorithm , biology
There is a view in the literature around beliefs that evidence responsiveness is a necessary feature of beliefs. The reasoning is that because beliefs are governed by truth they must be evidence responsive. A mental state that fails to be evidence responsive, therefore, could not be a belief as it could not be governed by truth. The implication is that even those evidence‐resistant mental states that appear to be beliefs are in fact something else. I argue that evidence resistance is a feature of at least some beliefs, so evidence responsiveness cannot be a necessary feature of belief.