Disbelief is a distinct doxastic attitude

Abstract

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.

Agnosticism as settled indecision

“…2 I will treat 'disbelieving that p' as equivalent to 'believing that not-p', but nothing that I aim to do here hinges on this treatment. The equivalence can be doubted; see Smart (2020) ''Disbelief is a Distinct Doxastic Attitude''. 3 Among others, see Hájek (1998), Wedgwood (2002), Bergmann (2005) and Friedman (2013b).…”

Uniqueness and Logical Disagreement (Revisited)

“… See Feldman (2006) for a motivation of this view.5 This assumption is common in the contemporary literature, see for exampleKelly (2010),Matheson (2011),Rosa (2012),Titelbaum (2015Titelbaum ( , 2019. Note that some have argued that the doxastic attitude of disbelief that p is non-equivalent to that of believing the negation of p. SeeSmart (2021) for a recent argument. Unless otherwise stated we'll simply take disbelief that p and believing the negation of p as equivalent attitudes in what follows.6 Note that while Matheson's statement of UT doesn't make reference to individuals (i.e., cognizers or human agents) at all, some authors have presented versions of uniqueness that do.…”