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Credences and suspended judgments as transitional attitudes
Author(s) -
Staffel Julia
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
philosophical issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.638
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1758-2237
pISSN - 1533-6077
DOI - 10.1111/phis.12154
Subject(s) - citation , computer science , art history , sociology , library science , history
In this paper, I want to highlight an interesting difference between belief on the one hand, and suspended judgment and credence on the other hand. This difference is the following: credences and suspended judgments are suitable to serve as transitional as well as terminal attitudes in our reasoning, whereas beliefs are only appropriate as terminal attitudes. The notion of a transitional attitude is not an established one in the literature, but I argue that introducing it helps us better understand the different roles suspended judgments and credences can play in our reasoning. Transitional and terminal attitudes have interestingly different descriptive and normative properties. I also compare my account of transitional attitudes to other inquiry-guiding attitudes that have recently been characterized in the literature and explain why they are different. I will begin by describing a variety of cases that illustrate and motivate the distinction between transitional and terminal attitudes in reasoning, and then move on to discussing its significance.