Belief, Degrees of Belief, and Representing the World
Beliefs represent the world—or so goes received wisdom. I believe that Canberra is the capital of Australia iff I represent the world as being such. I don’t believe that Singapore lies north of the equator iff I don’t represent the world as being such.
If belief is all-or-nothing, then either we represent the world as being such-and-such, or we don’t. But Frank Ramsey, according to Richard Jeffrey, has “sucked the marrow” out of such a notion of belief. The correct way to think about belief, according to Jeffrey, is to think of it as coming in degrees. Assuming that this is right, how should we (re-)read the claim that beliefs represent the world?
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