Fallibility and dogmatism

Journal article

Abstract:: The strongest version of the dogmatism puzzle argues that, when we know something, we should resolve to ignore or avoid evidence against it. The best existing responses are fallibilist, and hold that decisions should be governed by underlying probabilities rather than our knowledge. I argue that this is an overreaction: by paying close attention to the principles governing belief-revision, and to subtly different ways in which knowledge can govern decision-making, we can dissolve the puzzle without the need for controversial theoretical commitments. The resulting solution demonstrates fruitful and underexplored points of interaction between ‘traditional’ epistemology and ‘formal’ theories of belief-revision, and clears the ground for more systematic theorizing about how and when we should be open to changing our minds.

Files:: Salow_2024_Fallibility_and_dogmatism.pdf

(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 802.7KB, Terms of use)

Language:: English
Keywords:: belief revision

knowledge-action principles

dogmatism paradox

fallibilism
Pubs id:: 1540574
Local pid:: pubs:1540574
Deposit date:: 2023-10-03

Copyright holder:: Bernhard Salow
Rights statement:: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original workis properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repositoryby the author(s) or with their consent.

If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record