THE PARADOX OF BELIEVABILITY

Author(s): MICHAEL FARA
Journal: Review of Contemporary Philosophy
ISSN: 1841-5261
Year: 2007
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Full text: http://denbridgepress.com/rcp_abstract.php?a=48
Publisher: Denbridge Press - New York
Abstract: ABSTRACT. A superagent is a being who satisfies the following two principles: (I) If p entails q, and if S believes p, then S believes q. (II) If S believes that she doesn't believe p, then S doesn't believe p. There could be a superagent, in the sense that it's not conceptually impossible for a superagent to exist. Our concept of belief should not be such as to rule out the possibility of a being of this kind. Although our concept of belief shouldn't rule out the possibility of a being of this kind, it apparently does. The key to solving this paradox lies in the recognition that the question of whether an agent could believe so-and-so can sometimes diverge from the question of whether it is possible that she believes so-and-so.