Disbelief is a distinct doxastic attitude

While epistemologists routinely employ disbelief talk, it is not clear that they really mean it, given that they often equate disbelieving  p  with believing  ¬p . I argue that this is a mistake—disbelief is a doxastic attitude of rejection and is distinct from belief (and withholding). I first clar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSynthese (Dordrecht) Vol. 198; no. 12; pp. 11797 - 11813
Main Author Smart, J. A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2021
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Attitudes
Belief & doubt
Education
Epistemology
Logic
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Science
Belief
Withholding
Disbelief
Epistemic rationality
Doxastic attitudes
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Summary:While epistemologists routinely employ disbelief talk, it is not clear that they really mean it, given that they often equate disbelieving  p  with believing  ¬p . I argue that this is a mistake—disbelief is a doxastic attitude of rejection and is distinct from belief (and withholding). I first clarify this claim and its opposition, then show that we must distinguish disbelieving p  from believing ¬p  in order to account for the fact that we continue to hold doxastic attitudes toward propositions that we reject. After defending this argument against some possible objections, I examine several cases that reveal disbelieving p to be not only non-identical to believing ¬p , but independent of that attitude as well. Finally, I sketch some immediate and potential consequences of recognizing disbelief as a distinct doxastic attitude, particularly for work on epistemic rationality.
ISSN:0039-7857
1573-0964
DOI:10.1007/s11229-020-02830-w