The Things We (Sorta Kinda) Believe

Abstract

On Schiffer's new view, propositions are easy to come by. Any that-clause can be counted on to express one. Thus, trivially, there are vague propositions, conditional propositions, moral and aesthetic propositions. And where propositions go, truth and falsity follow: barring paradoxical cases, Schiffer accepts instances of schemata the proposition that is true iff p and the proposition that is false iff not-p. What isn't easy to find, Schiffer thinks, is determinate truth. By end of book, we have heard that a huge number of things we say or think are indeterminate in truth value: not just whether Schiffer's book is long, but whether property of being in pain is identical with any physical property, whether torturing children for fun is morally permissible, whether modus ponens is a valid inference rule, and whether someone else would have shot Kennedy if Oswald hadn't. Indeed, on Schiffer's view, there are no determinately true moral propositions (238) and virtually no determinately true conditionals that are likely to interest us (295). Due to space limitations, I won't say anything here about these radicalsounding claims. My primary aim will be to come to terms with Schiffer's interesting and original view about what it means to say that a proposition is indeterminate. There are three distinctive components to this view, which I will take up in turn. First, Schiffer insists that indeterminacy must not be understood as a third status on par with truth and falsity. This, he argues, rules out degree-theoretic and supervaluational approaches. Second, Schiffer takes what might be called a phenomenalist approach to indeterminacy: we understand what it is for a proposition to be indeterminate in terms of attitude of taking a proposition to be indeterminate. Finally, Schiffer holds that attitude of taking a proposition to be indeterminate can be understood as a new kind of partial belief, vagueness-related partial belief (VPB), which is distinguished from standard partial belief (SPB) by epistemic norms to which it is subject.