TY - JOUR
T1 - A New puzzle about believed fallibility
AU - Benbaji, Yitzhak
PY - 2006
Y1 - 2006
N2 - I shall consider the phenomenon of believing ourselves to have at least one false belief: a phenomenon I call believed fallibility. I shall first present a paradoxical argument which appears to show that believed fallibility is incoherent; second, note that this argument assumes that we are committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs; third, sketch a more intuitive notion of commitment in which we are not committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs and argue that the original paradoxical argument is now defused; fourth, construct a new paradoxical argument showing that if we believe that we have at least one false belief we are committed to a contradiction, employing the preferable notion of commitment; and, fifth, suggest that perhaps we might avoid the new paradox by denying that closing our beliefs under conjunction is required by rationality.
AB - I shall consider the phenomenon of believing ourselves to have at least one false belief: a phenomenon I call believed fallibility. I shall first present a paradoxical argument which appears to show that believed fallibility is incoherent; second, note that this argument assumes that we are committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs; third, sketch a more intuitive notion of commitment in which we are not committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs and argue that the original paradoxical argument is now defused; fourth, construct a new paradoxical argument showing that if we believe that we have at least one false belief we are committed to a contradiction, employing the preferable notion of commitment; and, fifth, suggest that perhaps we might avoid the new paradox by denying that closing our beliefs under conjunction is required by rationality.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=60949345674&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/s0012217300001232
DO - 10.1017/s0012217300001232
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AN - SCOPUS:60949345674
SN - 0012-2173
VL - 45
SP - 679
EP - 696
JO - Dialogue-Canadian Philosophical Review
JF - Dialogue-Canadian Philosophical Review
IS - 4
ER -