Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-fsdjw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-27T12:30:38.293Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Treating Oneself and Others as Thermometers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Roger White
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I treat you as a thermometer when I use your belief states as more or less reliable indicators of the facts. Should I treat myself in a parallel way? Should I think of the outputs of my faculties and yours as like the readings of two thermometers the way a third party would? I explore some of the difficulties in answering these questions. If I am to treat myself as well as others as thermometers in this way, it would appear that I cannot reasonably trust my own convictions over yours unless I have antecedent reason to suppose that I am more likely than you to get things right. I appeal to some probabilistic considerations to suggest that our predicament as thermometers might not actually be as bad as it seems.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , October 2009 , pp. 233 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Christensen, David. 2007. “Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News.’ Philosophical Review 116: 187–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, David. Forthcoming. “Higher-Order Evidence.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Google Scholar
Christensen, David. Manuscript. “Disagreement, Question-begging, and Epistemic Selfcriticism.’Google Scholar
Cohen, Stewart. 2002. “Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65: 309–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elga, Adam. 2007. “Reflection and Disagreement.’ Nous 41: 487–502.Google Scholar
Kelly, Thomas. 2005. “The Epistemic Signi.cance of Disagreement.’ In Gendler, T. and Hawthorne, J. (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 1, pp. 167–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, Thomas. Forthcoming. “Peer Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence.’ In Feldman, R. and Warfield, T. (eds.), Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lackey, Jennifer. Forthcoming. “A Justificationist View of Disagreement's Evidential Significance.’ In Haddock, A., Millar, A., and Pritchard, D. (eds.), Social Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 1980. “A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance.” In Jeffrey, R. C. (ed.), Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pryor, James. 2000. “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist.” Nous 34: 517–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Roger. 2006. “Problems for Dogmatism.” Philosophical Studies 131: 525–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Roger. Forthcoming. “Evidential Symmetry and Mushy Credence.” In Gendler, T. and Hawthorne, J. (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar