{"id":755,"date":"2019-04-17T19:09:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T19:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=755"},"modified":"2019-04-26T17:02:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T17:02:01","slug":"rationality-nihilism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2019\/04\/17\/rationality-nihilism\/","title":{"rendered":"Rationality nihilism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been teaching epistemology this semester, and we’ve recently been talking about permissivism. The setup is this: Let E be the total evidence, and let P be some claim. One might believe P, believe not-P, or suspend judgement; call these doxastic attitudes<\/em> towards P.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that formalism in place, we can define Uniqueness<\/strong>: Given E, there is exactly one doxastic attitude that one may rationally adopt toward P.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the article I’d assigned for class, Permissivism<\/strong> is defined as the negation of Uniqueness. The idea is that there are at least some situations in which, given E, one might rationally adopt different doxastic attitudes.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> For example, it might be rational to find the evidence convincing (and believe P) but also rational to be unconvinced (and suspend judgement).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students found the readings less than clear, and I was trying to concisely formulate the opposition on the whiteboard. I stopped mid-sentence when I realized that I couldn’t just define Permissivism as the negation of Uniqueness. There’s a third possibility!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call this Nihilism<\/strong>: Given E, there is no rationally permitted doxastic attitude that one may adopt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know of an epistemologist who explicitly formulates Nihilism, nonetheless one who advocates it. I have a perverse impulse to write something arguing for it, just because it is a logically possible position, but that way lies madness.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Picture: Some logic books<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been teaching epistemology this semester, and we’ve recently been talking about permissivism. The setup is this: Let E be the total evidence, and let P be some claim. One might believe P, believe not-P, or suspend judgement; call these doxastic attitudes towards P. With that formalism in place, we can define Uniqueness: Given E, … Continue reading “Rationality nihilism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[54,13],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-epistemology","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-cb","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}