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1 results

  • Chapter 8 - Do Attitudes Come in Degrees?

  • Peter Carruthers, University of Maryland, College Park
  • Book:
    Explaining our Actions
    Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    08 May 2025, pp 158-178

  • Summary

    This chapter takes up an idea that is arguably a central component of common-sense thinking, as well as one that is widely accepted among philosophers. This is that all kinds of attitude–desires, beliefs, and goals and intentions–come in degrees. They can admit of differing strengths or causal efficacy. Although rarely fully articulated, some versions of the view go along with a distinctive picture of the nature of decision-making (called here “the push-push theory”). The chapter argues that neither beliefs nor desires admit of degrees, while also critiquing the philosophical theory of credences. Instead, beliefs embed analog-magnitude representations of likelihood and desires embed analog-magnitude representations of value. There is, however, an element of truth in the idea that intentions can differ in strength, at least as a trait-like property of individuals.