short note on dancy

I’ve written up a short note on the Dancy stuff I was talking about the other day. You can find it here. As always, comments are encouraged.

Update July 2nd: I’ve uploaded a new draft located in the same place. It’s not too much different. I just clarified the problem and fixed some typos.

~ by Errol Lord on June 12, 2008.

Posted in Metaethics, Posts by Errol Lord, dancy

4 Responses to “short note on dancy”

  1. belief: Necessarily, if A bases her belief in q on p, then A believes p.

    I’m not sure that’s right. Suppose experiences have contents and that the scope of non-inferential perceptual knowledge is not limited to the contents of those experiences. You could have a belief that, say, that’s a tomato that is not based on inference but based directly on experience without first forming the belief that, say, that’s an object that instantiates the distinctive profile of a tomato.

    Anyway, see Alan Millar’s “The Scope of Perceptual Knowledge”.

    Clayton said this on June 14, 2008 at 5:59 pm | Reply

  2. Clayton,

    I don’t see how that is a counterexample because it’s not clear what the p is that A is basing her belief that q on. The content of the experience?

    In any case, wouldn’t Belief* get around this problem all together:

    belief*: Necessarily, if A bases her belief in q on p, then A either believes p or is disposed to believe p.

    Certainly one is disposed in believing that that’s an object that instantiates the distinctive profile of a tomato.

    Errol Lord said this on June 17, 2008 at 1:29 pm | Reply

  3. Hey Errol,
    Yes, it would be the content of the experience. It’s part of Millar’s view that we can learn more (non-inferentially) than what is strictly present in experience. Now, you might be able to say that there’s some disposition or other to believe the thing that the subject does not believe (e.g., that something has the look of the orange, which serves as the basis of the belief that it is an orange).

    Clayton said this on June 24, 2008 at 10:32 pm | Reply

  4. [...] Good news. The note on Dancy I posted a link to here, entitled ‘Dancy on Acting for the Right Reason,’  has been accepted by the Journal of [...]

    good news « The Excluded Middle said this on August 18, 2008 at 2:52 pm | Reply

Leave a Reply