Benoit Guilielmo

The doxastic zoo contains many animals: belief, acceptance, belief in, belief that, certainty, conjecture, guess, conviction, denial, disbelief in, disbelief that, judgment, commitment, etc. It also contains belief’s “strange bedfellows”: credences, partial beliefs, tacit beliefs, subdoxastic states, creedal feelings, feelings of knowing, in-between believings, pathological beliefs, phobias, aliefs, delusions, biases, besires. How to order the zoo? I propose to distinguish doxastic attitudes from non-doxastic epistemic attitudes. The criterion is the existence of correctness conditions. Most bedfellows do not have such normative conditions. So they should not be allowed in the Doxastic Club.

It is hard to imagine our life without questions. They facilitate orientation in our environment, enable interpersonal communication and make the acquisition of knowledge possible. Questions direct scientific research, are used as research tools and are an important medium of transferring knowledge in teaching. The book is intended as a par excellence philosophical monograph of the theory of questions, presenting the most important erotetic problems, their general background and selected practical applications. It is prepared in all fairness to results acquired in the framework of the logical theories of questions but goes beyond this framework.

Moods are sometimes claimed to constitute an exception to the rule that mental phenomena are intentional (in the sense of representing something). In reaction, some philosophers have argued that moods are in fact intentional, but exhibit a special and unusual kind of intentionality: they represent the world as a whole, or everything indiscriminately, rather than some more specific object(s). In this paper, I present a problem for extant versions of this idea, then propose a revision that solves the problem but also entrains an important change in our understanding of the nature of moods – and indeed of the nature of mind. What emerges is an intentionalist account that emphasizes the role of attitude rather than content in determining the character of moods.

Moods, orthodoxy holds, exist outside the space of reasons. A depressed subject may change their thoughts and behaviors as a result of their depression. But, according to this view, their mood gives them no genuine reason to do so. Instead, moods are mere causal influences on cognition. The issue is that moods, with their diffuse phenomenology, appear to lack intentionality (Directionlessness). But intentionality appears to be a necessary condition on rationality (The Content Constraint). Together, these principles conflict with the idea that moods are rational states of mind (Mood Rationality). The inconsistency of these three principles is the Puzzle of Mood Rationality. Now to many, this puzzle is hardly vexing: we should reject Mood Rationality. But, I argue, Mood Rationality is true despite its unpopularity. Thus, we need another way of resolving the puzzle. To do so, I distinguish intentionality as a first‐personal, phenomenological notion from representation as a third‐personal, cognitive scientific notion. I then argue that moods satisfy a revised version of the Content Constraint and sketch an account of moods as representational but non‐intentional mental states, drawing on the Valuationist paradigm in affective neuroscience. I end by showing how this account enables us to explain moods’ rationality.

This paper offers a new psychological reading of the Pyrrhonian Skeptic and their way of life (the so-called Skeptic Way). The Pyrrhonist, I suggest, has three peculiar psychological hallmarks: (1) she is psychologically compelled to inquire after the truth, (2) she is persistently and repeatedly disturbed by anomaly in the facts, and (3) she is able to achieve tranquility (_ataraxia_) as a result of suspension of judgment (_epochē_). This new psychological interpretation has two payoffs. First, it helps us resolve the “inquiry problem”—how can the Pyrrhonist possibly engage in genuine inquiry into the truth, when it also seems to the Pyrrhonist that holding beliefs of any kind, but particularly evaluative beliefs, causes psychological disturbance? Second, it allows us to appreciate a new kind of value for Pyrrhonism, what I term _psychological value_. We can discern two distinct types of _ataraxia_, both a moderate type resulting from the simple, temporary cessation of inquiry and a more significant, enduring type achieved by failing to hold any evaluative beliefs. On the whole, the Pyrrhonist fares better than the non-Pyrrhonist by acquiring both forms of _ataraxia_ more regularly.

This paper examines the nature of the specific grasp involved in moral understanding. After discussing Hills's ability account of that central component of moral understanding in light of problematic cases, I argue that moral grasp is best conceived of as a type of knowledge that is grounded in a subject's moral appreciation. I then show how and why the relevant notion of moral appreciation is connected to moral virtues and to one's affective and motivational engagement with moral reasons. Finally, I discuss the connection between moral appreciation and a subject's ability to offer moral explanations in relation to the debate between pessimists and optimists about moral understanding's testimonial transmission.

Higher-order evidence appears to have the ability to defeat rational belief. It is not obvious, however, why exactly the defeat happens. In this paper, I consider two competing explanations of higher-order defeat: the “Objective Higher-Order Defeat Explanation” and the “Subjective Higher-Order Defat Explanation.” According to the former explanation, possessing sufficiently strong higher-order evidence to indicate that one’s belief about p fails to be rational is necessary and sufficient for defeating one’s belief about p. I argue that this type of explanation is defective or at best collapses into the other type of explanation. According to the latter explanation, Believing that one’s belief about p fails to be rational (in response to higher-order evidence about p) is necessary and sufficient for defeating one’s belief about p. I argue that this type of explanation is better suited to explain higher-order defeat given that what one is rational to believe partly depends on the relations among one’s doxastic attitudes. Finally, I address an peculiar feature of the Subjective Higher-Order Defeat Explanation: higher-order defeat becomes contingent on one’s response to the higher-order evidence.

Several philosophers have recently challenged cognitivism, i.e., the view that moral judgments are beliefs, by arguing that moral judgments are evidence non-responsive in a way that beliefs are not. If you believe that P, but acquire (sufficiently strong) evidence against P, you will give up your belief that P. This does not seem true for moral judgments. Some subjects maintain their moral judgments despite believing that there is (sufficiently strong) evidence against the moral judgments. This suggests that there is a mismatch between moral judgments and beliefs. This is an interesting argument. In particular, it forces the cognitivist to be more explicit about the nature of belief and the sense in which moral judgments are responsive to evidence. This paper has two aims. First, it aims to systematically examine different versions of the argument from evidence non-responsiveness. Second, it aims to outline a more nuanced understanding of the sense in which beliefs are evidence responsive that explains why the extant versions of the argument do not constitute a challenge to cognitivism.