Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Belief Here, Doubt There--What do you Really Think?
Brad Armendt, School of Life Sciences
Arizona State University
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract:  We sometimes make different judgments about whether p is so, or whether A is the thing to do, when those judgments arise on different occasions and in different contexts. One common reason, of course, is that the judgments are based on different information.  But sometimes the strength of a doxastic commitment, the strength of a belief that p, appears to be influenced by the practical significance of p, which can vary from one occasion to another.  What should we make of such apparent influences?  Do they arise from the character of beliefs, or from other sources?  If the former, are they indications of belief change, or of a kind of complexity that stable belief-states possess?  I’ll explore the idea that beliefs may have stake-sensitive complexity, and how it relates to some work on imprecise probabilities, and on second-order confidence.