Title: Indeterminacy and Rational Belief

Abstract:

There are a variety of norms that purport to govern what attitude an agent ought to adopt. It is unclear, however, what attitude a rational agent ought to have towards an indeterminate proposition or whether there is a norm that prescribes an attitude. In this talk I address the normative question of what attitude a rational agent ought to adopt towards cases of indeterminacy.

To do so I defend the view that indeterminacy should be understood as an umbrella term that encompasses a range of related phenomena. In light of this I argue we should adopt a position I call modest pluralism to the normative question. Modest pluralism holds that there is no unique attitude an agent ought to adopt to cases of indeterminacy, but rather a range of permissible attitudes to adopt. However, I also argue that logical norms do underlie what attitudes it is rational for an agent to have in general and this provides a general constraint on the types of attitudes it is permissible for a rational agent to adopt towards cases of indeterminacy.