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Rational belief and Dialetheism

  • Paolo Bonardi

    Paolo Bonardi received his PhD in philosophy from the Université de Genève. He visited the philosophy departments of the University of Sheffield, NYU, Columbia, UCSB, UCLA, USC and the University of Tokyo. He was an instructor at Rowan University, CUNY, Rutgers, Université de Genève and Université de Fribourg. He was a fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is currently a visiting researcher at Tokyo Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

It is usually maintained that a subject with manifestly contradictory beliefs is irrational. How can we account, then, for the intuitive rationality of dialetheists, who believe that some manifest contradictions are true? My paper aims to answer this question. Its ultimate goal is to determine a characterization of (or rather a constraint for) rational belief approvable by both the theorists of Dialetheism and its opponents. In order to achieve this goal, a two-step strategy will be adopted. First, a characterization of rational belief applicable to non-dialetheist believers will be determined; this characterization will involve the semantic apparatus of Nathan Salmon’s Millian Russellianism but will get rid of the problematic and obscure notion of mode of presentation (guise in his own terminology), replacing it with a couple of novel devices, belief subsystems and cognitive coordination. Second, using ideas from Graham Priest, the leading proponent of Dialetheism, such a characterization will be modified, so as to devise a new one able to account for the intuitive rationality of both dialetheist and non-dialetheist believers.


Corresponding author: Paolo Bonardi, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan; and eidos, the Centre for Metaphysics, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, E-mail:

About the author

Paolo Bonardi

Paolo Bonardi received his PhD in philosophy from the Université de Genève. He visited the philosophy departments of the University of Sheffield, NYU, Columbia, UCSB, UCLA, USC and the University of Tokyo. He was an instructor at Rowan University, CUNY, Rutgers, Université de Genève and Université de Fribourg. He was a fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is currently a visiting researcher at Tokyo Metropolitan University.

Acknowledgments

This paper was presented at the Priestfest 2018, a workshop in honor of Graham Priest’s 70th birthday, which took place at Kyoto University. I wish to thank the audience of my Priestfest talk for their remarks. I am also very grateful to Naoya Fujikawa, Graham Priest and two referees for commenting a previous draft of the paper.

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Published Online: 2021-06-24
Published in Print: 2021-06-25

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