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Finite Minds and Open Minds

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Themes from Klein

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 404))

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Abstract

One of the most persistent complaints about Peter Klein’s infinitism involves the finite mind objection: given that we are finite, how can we ever handle an infinite series of reasons? Klein’s answer has been that we need not actually produce an infinite series; it is enough that such a series be available to us. In this chapter, a different reply is presented through the reconstruction of epistemic justification as a trade-off. In acting as responsible agents, we are striking a balance between the number of reasons that we can handle and the level of precision that we want our beliefs to have. If we are unable or unwilling to manage a large number of reasons, then we have to pay the price in terms of justificatory inexactitude and thereby of accepting relatively untrustworthy beliefs. As well as being intuitively attractive, this idea of a trade-off is warranted by the mathematics of epistemic justification, understood as involving probabilistic relations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the distinction between objective and subjective availability, see Klein (1999, 299–300); Klein (2003, 722); Klein (2005, 136). For the difference between propositional and doxastic justification, see Klein (2007, 6–11).

  2. 2.

    Laurence BonJour, for example, raises this objection when he remarks that in an infinite chain “justification could never get started and hence no belief would be genuinely justified” (BonJour 1976, 282). Carl Ginet makes similar remarks, but uses the term “structural objection” (Ginet 2005).

  3. 3.

    In this chapter, we are talking about subjective probability, since we are dealing with beliefs, but in fact our formalism applies also to objective probability. It can, for example, be used in the analysis of causal chains, on condition that causality is interpreted probabilistically.

  4. 4.

    Peijnenburg (2007); Atkinson and Peijnenburg (2010); Peijnenburg and Atkinson (2014a, b). Atkinson and Peijnenburg (2017, Chapter 5, especially §5.3).

  5. 5.

    Michael Rescorla in this connection even uses the scare term “hyper-intellectualism” (Rescorla 2014).

  6. 6.

    For details see Atkinson and Peijnenburg (2017).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Jeanne Peijnenburg & David Atkinson

Authors
  1. Jeanne Peijnenburg
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  2. David Atkinson
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Correspondence to Jeanne Peijnenburg .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy & Religion, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Branden Fitelson

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Rodrigo Borges

  3. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Cherie Braden

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Peijnenburg, J., Atkinson, D. (2019). Finite Minds and Open Minds. In: Fitelson, B., Borges, R., Braden, C. (eds) Themes from Klein. Synthese Library, vol 404. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04522-7_12

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