Referentialism and the Objects of Credence: A Reply to Braun

Abstract

In ‘Frege’s Puzzle and the Objects of Credence’ (2011), I argued for three conclusions. First (in Sects 2–7), I argued against referentialism about credence: roughly, the view that the objects of credence (that is, the entities that credence functions assign credences to) are constituted by the objects and properties that the credence is about. Second (in Sect. 8), I used this conclusion to argue against referentialism about belief: roughly, the view that the objects of belief are constituted by the objects and properties that the belief is about. Third (in Sects 9–13), I went on to defend a positive nonreferentialist view of the objects of credence in terms of sets of epistemically possible scenarios. In ‘The Objects of Credence and Belief’, David Braun appears to disagree vigorously with all three of these conclusions. At least on the first two points, however, there is less disagreement than meets the eye. Much depends on how referentialism is defined, which depends in turn on how the objects of credence and the objects of belief are defined. With these defined as I define them, Braun agrees with me that referentialism about credence is false. Furthermore, his view of belief (‘guise Russellianism’) is one that counts as a nonreferentialist view of belief by my lights. It is only on the third issue concerning the specific nonreferentialist view of the objects of credence that we have a clear substantive disagreement.