How to (Blind)Spot the Truth: An Investigation on Actual Epistemic Value

Abstract

This paper is about the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. The most common approaches to this aspect are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where the evaluative approaches are usually comparative (one reasoner is assessed compared to another). These approaches often present problems with blindspots. For example, ought a reasoner to believe a currently true blindspot? Is she permitted to? Consequently, these approaches often fail in describing a situation of alethic maximality, where a reasoner fulfills all the alethic norms and could be used as a standard of rationality (as they are, in fact, used in some of these approaches). I propose a function α, which accepts a set of beliefs as input and returns a numeric alethic value. Then I use this function to define a notion of alethic maximality that is satisfiable by finite reasoners (reasoners with cognitive limitations) and does not present problems with blindspots. Function α may also be used in alethic norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that may be applied to finite reasoners and do not present problems with blindspots. A result of this investigation is that the project of providing purely alethic norms is defective. The use of function α also sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the lottery and the preface paradoxes, and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection.

Epistemic Sanity or Why You Shouldn't be Opinionated or Skeptical

“…For example, how much reasoning should we allow between the measures of α 0 and α 1 ? I think we should let the agent reason until her beliefs become stable (i.e., they would not change if she continued reasoning, see Dantas (2021)). Another issue is that this measurement can hardly be carried out analytically.…”

“…My favorite measure of alethic value is not Rt − Wf but ( t − f )/( t + f + c ), where c > 0 is a ‘sensitivity’ constant: the smaller the c , the greater the benefit for believing truths and the penalty for believing falsehoods (see Dantas 2021, for a discussion). I prefer this function, among other things, because (i) it deals more naturally with the problem of contradictory pairs 12 and (ii) it considers the cognitive limitations of finite reasoners 13 .…”

“…I prefer this function, among other things, because (i) it deals more naturally with the problem of contradictory pairs 12 and (ii) it considers the cognitive limitations of finite reasoners 13 . For simplicity, I will refer the functions t − f and Rt − Wf as α , and postpone the defense of ( t − f )/( t + f + c ) to another paper (see Dantas 2021). The function α attributes to the absence of beliefs a value (0) that is in between those of holding a false full belief (negative) and a true full belief (positive).…”

“…This trade-off is even more apparent if we do not assume that agendas are fixed and finite. If the number of true-believable truths is infinite, then there is no sense in which a finite reasoner can maximize epistemic value at a moment (or even get closer to maximizing it, see Dantas 2021). In this case, her capacity to keep increasing her epistemic situation is as important as the epistemic value that she currently possesses.…”

“…Once we abandon this presupposition, new difficulties arise." Dantas (2021) discusses the difficulties related to the assessment of infinite agendas.…”