A Russellian account of suspended judgment

Philip Atkins

pp. 3021-3046

in: Andrea Kruse, Heinrich Wansing (eds), Doxastic agency and epistemic responsibility, Synthese 194 (8), 2017.

Abstract

Suspended judgment poses a serious problem for Russellianism. In this paper I examine several possible solutions to this problem and argue that none of them is satisfactory. Then I sketch a new solution. According to this solution, suspended judgment should be understood as a sui generis propositional attitude. By this I mean that it cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, other propositional attitudes, such as belief. Since suspended judgment is sui generis in this sense, sentences that ascribe this attitude to someone should not be analyzed in terms of other attitude ascriptions, such as belief ascriptions. Instead they should be understood as involving a semantically primitive predicate, corresponding to the state of suspended judgment.

Cited authors

Russell Bertrand