My dissertation systematically investigates a special kind of defeating evidence. While some kinds of defeat straightforwardly indicate that your belief is false, and others undermine your belief by challenging your reasons for believing, there’s a special kind of defeat which epistemologists have, thus far, overlooked: what I call truth-aptness defeat.
Truth-aptness defeat is evidence that your belief (credence, etc.) not only fails to have a true content, but fails to have a propositional content with truth-conditions. For example: evidence that your moral and aesthetic beliefs lack truth-apt contents counts as truth-aptness defeat against…
My dissertation systematically investigates a special kind of defeating evidence. While some kinds of defeat straightforwardly indicate that your belief is false, and others undermine your belief by challenging your reasons for believing, there’s a special kind of defeat which epistemologists have, thus far, overlooked: what I call truth-aptness defeat.
Truth-aptness defeat is evidence that your belief (credence, etc.) not only fails to have a true content, but fails to have a propositional content with truth-conditions. For example: evidence that your moral and aesthetic beliefs lack truth-apt contents counts as truth-aptness defeat against those beliefs. Truth-aptness defeat is especially interesting when it is misleading: when it incorrectly suggests that your attitude fails to have a propositional content. How should you respond to such evidence?
In my dissertation, I argue that truth-aptness defeat does not rationalize lowering credence, even though it makes your credence less likely to have a true content. Instead, I argue, truth-aptness defeat shows that there must be a second dimension along which we can adjust our attitudes, even credence 1, which I call how firmly they are held. Holding an attitude less firmly weakens the behavioral dispositions typically associated with it. Doing so is the proper response to truth-aptness defeat.
