Joshua Edward Pearson

I outline a novel counterexample to the principle of belief revision, Anticipation: if both learning and learning not‐ would render belief in unjustified, you cannot now be justified in believing. If I am right, not only is the leading theory of belief revision false, so are various recently proposed weakenings. I develop and defend a new theory that correctly predicts the failures of Anticipation I argue for, predicated on the simple idea that one is justified in ruling out possibility just in case that possibility is sufficiently improbable.

I present an intractable puzzle for the currently popular view that belief is weak—the view that expressions like ‘S believes p’ ascribe to S a doxastic attitude towards p that is rationally compatible with low credence that p. The puzzle concerns issues that arise on considering beliefs in conditionals. I show that proponents of weak belief either cannot consistently apply their preferred methodology when accommodating beliefs in conditionals, or they must deny that beliefs in conditionals can be used in reasoning.