Hysteresis Hypotheses

This chapter assimilates the Sorites Paradox and the Preface Paradox, drawing parallels between reasoning with uncertainty and reasoning with vague concepts (a theme that Dorothy Edgington has explored). It discusses experiments in which subjects are taken along soritical series of coloured patches, displaying so-called reverse hysteresis in their responses. The chapter offers an explanation of why reverse hysteresis is rational there. It presents a variant of the Preface Paradox—the Progressive Preface Paradox—that is analogous to the Sorites Paradox and its associated experiments, and it offers an analogous explanation of why reverse hysteresis is again rational. The explanation’s central idea is that ‘belief’ is context-dependent.