Is Belief Weak?

Some philosophers argue that belief is weak. With this they mean that a warranted belief requires a low level of evidential support, much lower than knowledge and assertion. They argue that sometimes it is appropriate to believe things that are merely likely, or more likely true than false. If they were right, this would lead to a radical revision or rejection of traditional and widely accepted views concerning belief, knowledge, assertion and their relations. This workshop features the contributions of some of the most important philosophers engaged in this debate. They will introduce their original research on this topic and will try to convince us that belief is weak, or that it is not. Some of the talks will focus in particular on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural approaches to the problem, highlighting differences and similarities between the ways in which we express doxastic attitudes in different languages.

Program 

September 6, 2022 (Beijing Time, GMT+8)

16.00 – 16.05  Opening
16.05 – 16.45  Daniel Rothchild (University College of London), Reflections on Weak Belief
16.45 – 17.00  Xinyuan Liu (Zhejiang University), Is Belief Weak in Chinese?

17.00 – 17.05 Short break

17.05 – 17.40 Roger Clarke (Queen’s University, Belfast), Strong Belief Is Ordinary
17.40 – 18:15 Masashi Kasaki (Hiroshima University), Moore’s Paradox and Norms of Belief and Assertion in Japanese  

18.15 – 18.20 Short break

18:20 – 18:55 Changsheng Lai (Shanghai Jiaotong University), Memory Belief Is Weak
18:55 – 19:05 Roundtable discussion

Zoom Link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87544162981?pwd=TndWRFFPZkRKQ3RDTzhsSzdOVkllUT09

Meeting ID: 875 4416 2981

Passcode: 781327