Committed Neutrality in the Rational Mind

Abstract

Scott Sturgeon’s new book, The Rational Mind (TRM) brings together and expands on ideas he’s been writing about for the past decade or so.1 At its core this book is about the attitudes that are central to epistemology — what are often called the ‘doxastic attitudes’, and what Sturgeon calls ‘epistemic attitudes’. Part I of TRM offers in-depth critical discussions of two central formal models of the doxastic attitudes: one ‘fine grained’ (Bayesianism), and one ‘coarse grained’ (AGM). For Sturgeon, each of these formal models models something psychologically real: Bayesianism is a formal model of our states of confidence — doxastic attitudes that come in degrees or can be ranked or ordered in terms of strength, and AGM is a formal model of our non-degreed doxastic attitudes, viz. belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment. This first part of the book fleshes out both models in detail and raises concerns about each. Part II of TRM is focused on the relationship between fineand coarse-grained doxastic attitudes. Sturgeon ultimately argues that coarse-grained doxastic attitudes are reducible to fine-grained ones. But, crucially, these more fundamental fine-grained confidences cannot be understood (just) as Bayesian point-valued subjective probabilities. Instead, Sturgeon proposes a new, ‘force-based’ model of confidence according to which we can understand degrees of confidence as built up from mixtures of what Sturgeon calls ‘cognitive force’. At the start of TRM Sturgeon claims that the book does not ‘aim to establish a single major hypothesis or perspective’ (TRM: 1). While this may capture something true about Sturgeon’s intentions, it is hard not to see the final few chapters and Sturgeon’s force-based theory of the doxastic attitudes as the centrepiece of the book. That said, it is certainly true that the chapters that come before those final few — the ones that make up the bulk of the book — cannot be read as merely setting the stage for what’s