Abstract

There seems to be something gradual about our doxastic attitudes: our believing seems to come in different strengths and our confidence in different degrees. This datum, which I call doxastic gradualism, is usually explained by the existence of credences – i.e. doxastic attitudes that come in degrees and with which confidence is to be identified. To overcome some of the issues with explaining the relation between credence and belief, in this paper I analyse doxastic gradualism without appealing to the notion of credence. Namely, I propose to define confidence not as a doxastic attitude but as a metacognitive epistemic feeling. The existence of such a graded affective state, together with the existence of beliefs with probabilistic content, is sufficient for explaining doxastic gradualism. There is no need for credence in our mental ontology.