Extending the Practical Integration Problem

The doxastic integration problem has not been discussed in the literature, but that it exists becomes clear if we look at a variant of Police, which was inspired by Miners:

Police-Disagreeing. Detective Lester Freamon is pondering about whether Omar or Marlo killed Bob, one of whom must have done it. His evidence is even-handed, it is equally likely on it that it was either

of them. He concludes:

(4) I should suspend judgement about who killed Bob.

His colleague Kima Greggs has solid evidence that it was Omar: her reliable informant Bubbles told her that Marlo was at the other end of town at the time of the murder. She hears Lester uttering (4) and says:

(5) No, you should believe that it was Omar.

On a contextualist semantics, the question Lester is answering by (4) is ‘Which doxastic attitude should I adopt to the proposition<It was Omar> in light of the information-state ic4?’, where ic4 is the information-state provided by the

context in which he utters (4). (5), on the other hand, means ‘You should believe that it was Omar in light ofic5’, whereic5 is the information-state provided by

the context in which Kima utters (5). Thedoxastic integration problem is that Kima seems to be giving advice to Lester, but that it is hard for contextualism to explain how Kima is addressing the question Lester is deliberating about.

One might think that a doxastic equivalent to News-Sensitive Contextualism is motivated by the following variant of Police:

Police-Unexpected. Everything is as it is in Police-Disagreeing, except that Kima is not present when Lester utters (4) at t4. He also

does not expect her to later contribute anything to the case. At t5,

Kima shows up unexpectedly, having collected the same evidence as in Police. She utters (5).

The idea would be that if we want Kima to address the question Lester was thinking about, we need him to speak about the information-state that will be available to him at or after t5. Doxastic News-Sensitive Contextualism would

try to make this idea plausible by suggesting that when we are deliberating doxastically, we are deliberating about which doxastic attitude we should adopt to the relevant propositionP in light of the evidence that will be available to us by the time we need to form a doxastic attitude toP. I reject Doxastic News-Sensitive Contextualism for three reasons.

First, such a view needs to determine what the time is by which one has to form a doxastic attitude. For certain propositions, there is no such time. These include propositions that are of purely theoretical interest, which have no relevance for practical purposes, and irrelevant propositions, e.g., the proposition that the number of stars in the universe is even.

Second, there is a crucial asymmetry between the doxastic and the practical ‘should’, which makes Doxastic News-Sensitive Contextualism implausible. When we are deliberating about what we practically should do, we’re often concerned with the question of which of a set of possible actions we should perform in the future (rather than right now). These are the kind of cases that motivate

Practical News-Sensitive Contextualism: where the time of deliberation and the time of action are not identical. However, when we are deliberating about what we doxastically should do, we never really seem to be concerned with which doxastic attitude we should adopt in the future. Rather, we try to figure out which doxastic attitude to adopt right now, at the time of deliberation. That is, it looks like the time of deliberation and the time of ‘action’, i.e., of forming the relevant doxastic attitude, are identical.

This asymmetry is crucial since it might be plausible to deliberate about what one should do at a future time in light of the information one will have at that time; it is absurd, however, to deliberate about which doxastic attitude we should form now in light of the information we will have at some point in the future. One reason why this is absurd is that it is never too late to change your mind. The doxastic attitude toP you form now, you can easily revise at the timetwhen you have to act on it, in light of the evidence you have then. Why would you then deliberate about which doxastic attitude you should adopt now in light of this future information-state?

Third, Doxastic News-Sensitive Contextualism fails a test that its practical counterpart passes. If Practical News-Sensitive Contextualism is correct, then Sean should react as follows if he is told that he will receive evidence about where the miners are before the time he has to act:

(6) OK, I should not block either shaft then, but I don’t know yet which of the two I should block. I will need to wait for the information about where the miners are.

This sounds like the correct response. It supports Practical News-Sensitive Contextualism since Sean obviously speaks about what he should do in light of the evidence that will be accessible to him in the future, not the one that is accessible to him now.

On the other hand, if we tell Lester that in an hour, Kima will tell him who killed Bob, it would sound infelicitous if he replied:

(7) # OK, I shouldn’t suspend judgement now then, because in light of Kima’s evidence I should either believe or disbelieve that it was Omar.

The appropriate response seems rather to be:

(8) I should suspend judgement on whether it was Omar for now then.

If Doxastic News-Sensitive Contextualism was correct, (7) would be true and reasonable, but (8) false and unreasonable. However, it seems to be exactly the other way around.

I conclude that Doxastic News-Sensitive Contextualism is not a solution to the doxastic integration problem.