Past Event: ELLMM City: Daniel Greco (Yale)

Title: "Belief and Credence"

Abstract: I'll present material from chapter 5--and perhaps some of chapter 4 as well--of my forthcoming manuscript, Idealization in Epistemology: A Modest Modeling Approach. In chapter five I apply some lessons from chapter four to questions about the relationship between folk psychological categories like belief, and decision theoretic categories like credence. I argue that the idea that folk psychology has a distinct and ineliminable role to play in explaining certain aspects of our cognitive lives—one that cannot be coopted by decision theory—looks a good deal less plausible once these lessons are appreciated. This is because decision theory can make liberal use of certainties, and these certainties can do the theoretical work often claimed to be the distinctive purview of folk psychological belief.