(DVP): Jennifer refuses to beleive in doxastic voluntarism.
Remarks and assumptions:
1. S can refuse to believe that P only if doxastic voluntarism is true
(seems prima facie reasonable).
2. Jennifer believes 1 (I hereby stipulate that).
(DVP): Jennifer refuses to beleive in doxastic voluntarism.
Remarks and assumptions:
1. S can refuse to believe that P only if doxastic voluntarism is true
(seems prima facie reasonable).
2. Jennifer believes 1 (I hereby stipulate that).
WHY does she refuse to believe in doxastic voluntarism? What caused this refusal?
ReplyDeletejennifer's DV is refusion.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me as similar to: "Paul Churchland believes there are no beliefs". The way out of that one is a deflationary interpretation of locutions like 'S believes that P'. E.g., 'believes that' is proxy for something like 'claims that', and one can give a neurophilosophical account of claiming that doesn't appeal to propositional attitudes. Perhaps some such move is available to Jennifer. "Refuses to believe" is just an expression meaning something like won't believe because the balance of the evidence is against it, though it's a close call.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of that, but it sounds right. Thanks Tad!
ReplyDeleteI don't get the paradoxical nature of this at all. If your (1) is true (as I think it is), and DV is false, then Jennifer just can't 'refuse' to believe in the sense that you're using that word. She can still certainly disbelieve it. I don't see why that requires dismissing all talk of propositional attitudes; the only attitude that is out of the running is that of refusing-to-believe, which those who reject DV have already ruled out, so it's no skin off their backs.
ReplyDeleteHi Rosey,
ReplyDeleteI think that sentences 2 & 3 of your comment are correct. If 2&3 don't suffice to make DVP strike you as at least a little paradox-ish, then I don't know what else to say.
I don't think anyone around here is saying that there's a requirement of dismissing all talk of PA's. I take Tad's suggestion as recommending a strategy to anti-DV-ers that is *analogous* to a strategy available to eliminativsts faced with the one-sentence "refutation". But that analogy doesn't require anti-DV-ers to embrace eliminativism.
Pete-
ReplyDeleteYes, your second paragraph is correct. I just came back to this page specifically to note that in hindsight I misunderstood how far Tad's analogy was supposed to go. As for not seeing a paradox, I think we are at an impasse (though in passing I should note that I in fact discussed this with a person named Jennifer, and she doesn't get the paradox either.).
It might help me to see that you think the paradox is with DVP, not with the relation between DVP and your assumptions. Paradoxes have to lead to contradictions, and all I would say is that it is not possible for DVP to be true if DV is false. Something's being impossible does not a contradiction make (that is, unless it must simultaneously BE possible, which is not the case in this scenario).
Rosey,
ReplyDeleteMaybe the problem here just boils down to the following: I disagree that paradox requires contradiction. Famous paradoxes that aren't contradiction-entailing include the paradoxes of material implication, the raven paradox (paradox of confirmation), and (arguably) Moore's paradox.