Credences are Beliefs about Probabilities: A Defense from Triviality

Erkenntnis 89 (3):1235-1255 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It is often claimed that credences are not reducible to ordinary beliefs about probabilities. Such a reduction appears to be decisively ruled out by certain sorts of triviality results–analogous to those often discussed in the literature on conditionals. I show why these results do not, in fact, rule out the view. They merely give us a constraint on what such a reduction could look like. In particular they show that there is no single proposition belief in which suffices for having a particular credence, regardless of one’s evidence. But if we allow such propositions to vary with evidence–as we should–then the results do not rule out a reduction. So, at least on this count, credences might very well just be beliefs about probabilities.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Why Credences Are Not Beliefs.Elizabeth Jackson - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2):360-370.
Belief about Probability.Ray Buchanan & Sinan Dogramaci - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
Belief and Credence: A Defense of Dualism.Elizabeth Jackson - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Notre Dame
Triviality Results For Probabilistic Modals.Goldstein Simon - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1):188-222.
The case for probabilistic contents.Sarah Moss - 2016 - In Probabilistic Knowledge. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-19.
The Cognitive Science of Credence.Elizabeth Jackson - forthcoming - In Neil Van Leeuwen & Tania Lombrozo, The Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science of Belief. Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-03-07

Downloads
1,016 (#53,757)

6 months
230 (#43,721)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Benjamin Lennertz
Colgate University

Citations of this work

Belief about Probability.Ray Buchanan & Sinan Dogramaci - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
The Cognitive Science of Credence.Elizabeth Jackson - forthcoming - In Neil Van Leeuwen & Tania Lombrozo, The Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science of Belief. Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press.
Moral encroachment and group-to-individual inferences.Martin Smith - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (11):3247-3267.
Are Credences Thoughts about Probability? A Reply to the Inscrutable Evidence Argument.Benjamin Lennertz - 2025 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12 (48):1259-1279.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Probabilistic Knowledge.Sarah Moss - 2016 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge and Action.John Hawthorne & Jason Stanley - 2008 - Journal of Philosophy 105 (10):571-590.
Epistemic Modals.Seth Yalcin - 2007 - Mind 116 (464):983-1026.
On conditionals.Dorothy Edgington - 1995 - Mind 104 (414):235-329.

View all 46 references / Add more references