Andrew del Rio

Traditionally epistemologists have taken doxastic states to come in three varieties—belief, disbelief, and suspension. Recently many epistemologists have taken our doxastic condition to be usefully represented by credences—quantified degrees of belief. Moreover, some have thought that this new credal picture is sufficient to account for everything we want to explain with the old traditional picture. Therefore, belief, disbelief, and suspension must map onto the new picture somehow. In this paper I challenge that possibility. Approaching the question from the angle of suspension, I argue that all possible credal accounts face serious challenges. They either (i) falsify central claims that uphold the credal picture itself or (ii) do not permit suspension in cases where it is permissible or (iii) rule out the possibility of plainly possible confidence comparisons.

On one view of the traditional doxastic attitudes, belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1. In ‘Rational agnosticism and degrees of belief’ (2013) Jane Friedman argues, against this view, that there are cases where a credence of 0 is required but where suspension is permitted. If this were so, belief, disbelief and suspension could not be identified or reduced to the aforementioned credences. I argue that Friedman relies on two different notions of epistemic rationality and two different kinds of evidential absence. I clarify these distinctions and show that her argument is either not valid or includes implausible premisses, twice over. If this is so, the view that belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1 cannot be rejected on the grounds that Friedman proposes.

This dissertation is a collection of three papers, “Why undermining evolutionary debunkers is not enough,” “Absence of evidence against belief as credence one,” and “Suspending belief in credal accounts.” The role of suspension—the agnostic’s attitude that sits between belief and disbelief—is central in each paper. The first paper demonstrates that though mere undermining of the evolutionary debunker is a tempting response to their argument, it requires suspension on a premise. That is incoherent with belief in the other premise and disbelief in the conclusion. Therefore, mere undermining does not make believing we have moral knowledge epistemically permissible. The second paper demonstrates that Jane Friedman’s objection to an account of suspension as credence between 0 and 1 relies on equivocation or a false premise. Friedman’s objection entails that suspension on p is rationally permissible while one is maximally confident that not-p. I argue that these two attitudes are incoherent and so her objection fails. The third paper demonstrates that suspension should not be thought of as a credence of any kind whether precise or imprecise. Unique problems are associated with every possible credal account of suspension. This means that a traditional picture of belief, suspension, and disbelief cannot be reduced to a credal picture. Suspension is either fundamental or should be eliminated.

Denying the conclusion of a valid argument is not generally permissible if one suspends on one premise of the argument and believes the other premise. This can happen when one’s only critique of an argument is to undermine one premise. There is incoherence there. Here I examine how this is relevant to the debate on evolutionary debunking of our moral knowledge. I argue that one significant line of response to the debunker is unsuccessful: merely undermining the debunker’s empirical claim. It is not rational to respond this way and believe one has moral knowledge. First I present evidence that prominent critics of the debunking argument merely undermine the debunker’s empirical claim. Then I argue for two premises: merely undermining a premise can only justify a middling amount of doubt towards the premise and we should have no more doubt about the conclusion of a valid argument than we do about the premises. Implications of the argument are explored.