Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one?

315 eISSN 0495-4548 – eISSN 2171-679X T H E O R I A Theoria, 2024, 39(3), 315-331 https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419 * Correspondence to: Benoit Guilielmo. UZH, Philosophisches Seminar, Zürichbergstrasse 43, CH-8044 Zürich (Switzerland)– [email protected] – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4224-1406 How to cite: Guilielmo, Benoit (2024). «Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one?»; Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science,39(3), 315-331. (https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419). Received: 04 June, 2024; Final version: 12 November, 2024. ISSN0495-4548 - eISSN2171-679X / © 2024 UPV/EHU Press This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one? (Duda y suspension: ¿Dos actitudes o una?) Benoit Guilielmo* University of Zürich ABSTRACT: Are doubt and suspension of judgment similar attitudes? In the burgeoning literature on suspension of judgment, the notion of doubt is curiously absent. This paper aims to argue for the plausibility of an identity claim, which I term the “No-Difference View.” This view suggests that there is no substantial difference between being in doubt and suspending judgment. The argument will draw on historical and systematic considerations that support the No-Difference View as a plausible view within the logical space of positions. KEYWORDS: doubt, suspension of judgement, belief, epistemology, mental states. RESUMEN: ¿Son la duda y la suspensión del juicio actitudes similares? En la creciente literatura sobre la suspensión del juicio, la noción de duda está curiosamente ausente. Este artículo trata de argumentar a favor de la plausibilidad de una tesis de identidad, que denomino la “Tesis de la No Diferencia”. Esta tesis sugiere que no hay diferencia sustancial entre dudar y suspender el juicio. El argumento se apoya en consideraciones históricas y sistemáticas que respaldan la Tesis de la No Diferencia como una postura plausible dentro del espacio lógico de opciones. PALABRAS CLAVE: duda, suspensión del juicio, creencia, epistemología, estados mentales. Benoit Guilielmo 316 Theoria, 2024, 39/3, 315-331 1. Introduction Are doubt and suspension of judgement the same attitude? According to Jane Friedman, “suspension of judgment is not a familiar folk-psychological attitude, but it is a doxastic attitude often discussed by epistemologists” (Friedman, forthcoming). In contrast, doubt takes a back seat in contemporary epistemological discussions, despite being a familiar folk-psychological attitude and holding a central role in epistemology, particularly since Descartes’s Meditations. While several contemporary philosophers recognize shared properties between doubt and suspension, none of them seems to be ready to endorse the stronger claim that these attitudes are identical. For instance, according to Friedman: [S]uspension shares [with doubt] this push towards its own demise: in suspending we ask a question and (at least in some minimal sense) seek an answer. Although I don’t think that doubt and suspension are identical, [..] it wouldn’t be surprising if doubt and suspension shared this property [viz. it prompts us to inquire until it is extinguished]. It is widely thought that we find uncertainty and ambiguity and the like aversive. (Friedman, 2017, p.316, my emphasis) Similarly, in her seminal paper on suspended judgement (Friedman, 2013a) where she raises the “Reduction Question” of whether having a suspensive attitude just is “a matter of having some familiar indecision-representing attitudes”, Friedman carefully excludes belief and credence, but doubt is mentioned without being really examined. It is thus generally admitted, more or less explicitly, that doubt and suspension are two different attitudes. Their relationship remains underexplored.1 Relatedly, the received triadic taxonomy of our main doxastic stances, according to which there are three and only three doxastic attitudes —namely, belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment— fails to make room for doubt.2 This triadic representation of our doxastic life implicitly supports the idea that doubt and suspension are separate beasts, where doubt is out of the picture (within the taxonomy of categorical attitudes). Consider for instance two recent statements of this representation: 1 Lee (2018) and Moon (2018) are notable exceptions in contemporary philosophy concerning the relationship between suspension and doubt. In their respective papers on doubt, they both discuss distinctions between different kinds of doubt and attempt to relate them to suspension. However, this question is not the central issue of the mentioned papers. According to Moon (2018, p.1830), verb forms of doubt, like “Fred doubts that Sally will arrive on time,” indicate “at least a strong inclination to disbelieve,” while sentences like “Fred is in doubt about whether Sally will arrive on time” suggest a more “on-the-fence suspension of judgment.” This idea is further explored in Rosa (forthcoming b.); see below § 5.4. Lee (2018, p.55), contrary to Moon (2018), identifies suspension with intermediate levels of doubt (between slight and strong doubt). See also Hookway (2002) for interesting remarks on Peircian ‘real doubt’ and suspension, and Machuca (2021) concerning Sextus Empiricus’ notion of suspension and its compatibility with doubt. 2 The triadic picture is largely assumed in contemporary epistemology. See for instance, Comesaña & Klein (2019), Friedman (2017, p.322, note 3), Rosa (forthcoming b), Sosa (2017, p.38), and Wedgwood (2002, p.272). Doubt is very rarely designated as the third stance in the triadic picture, thus taking the place of suspension; see Ducasse (1940, p.701), Johnson (1921, p.4-5 ), and Stebbing (1930, p.33). https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419 317 Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one? [I]t is orthodox to think that there are (at least) three coarse-grained doxastic reactions that are governed by epistemic rationality: belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment. (Lord 2024, p.419) Whenever a person considers any proposition, that person must believe the proposition, or disbelieve the proposition, or suspend judgment about the proposition. A person cannot at any time have more than one of these attitudes toward one proposition. (Feldman 2014, p.46) It is quite incontrovertible that suspending on whether something is the case radically differs from doubting that something is the case: if you doubt that ghosts are haunting your house, you are not in a state of suspended judgement about the issue; if you doubt that p, you are taking a non-neutral stance towards p —you disbelieve, or are strongly inclined towards disbelieving, that p.3 So if you doubt that some ghosts are haunting your house, and I ask you whether it is indeed the case that ghosts are haunting your house, you will likely respond with a direct “No” or be inclined to provide such a negative answer. But things are much less clear when it comes to the attitude of being in doubt as to whether p. Suppose you often hear weird and unexplained noises at night. Suppose you start being in doubt about whether ghosts are haunting your house, and cannot tell whether this is the case or not, which you would like to be able to decide. It would be natural here to say two things: (i) that you are in a state of suspended judgement about whether ghosts are haunting your house, and (ii) that you are in doubt on this issue. In such case, in answering the question whether ghosts are haunting your house, you will certainly utter that you cannot say “Yes”, and that you cannot say “No”. In our little scenario, you have a neutral attitude towards p: you neither believe nor disbelieve that ghosts are haunting your house —which is sufficient to show that being in doubt as to whether p differs from doubting that p and having doubts about p, which both do not imply such a neutral attitude towards p.4 If we want to clarify the central roles these notions play, both in our mental economy and in our doxastic lives, it is crucial to capture their relations and similarities to each other. My goal in this paper is to argue that there is no substantial difference between the two attitudes of being in doubt (to which I shall simply refer in the rest of this paper by the term “doubt”) and being in a state of suspended judgement. I will thus examine considerations favoring the plausible thesis, the NO-DIFFERENCE View (henceforth “ND”), as I shall call it. I shall first clarify what suspension involves, at least in its minimal form (§2), before showing that the NO-DIFFERENCE View finds strong support in unfortunately neglected discussions in the history of philosophy, whether about the descriptive or the nor3 Rosa (forthcoming a) refers to such doubt as a “negative attitude”: the doubt-that expression corresponds here to an “attitude of outright disbelief,” or at least “an attitude that leans toward disbelief.” Gaultier (forthcoming) observes that “one could argue that this alleged form of doubt [doubt that] is not in fact a form of doubt at all, but just a belief or judgement: the belief or judgement that, given the available evidence, it is unlikely that A is the right answer to Q.” 4 See Howard-Snyder (2013, p.359) on this distinction. In drawing this distinction between different kinds of doubt, Rosa (forthcoming a.) acknowledges that “to have doubts about p is neither to doubt that p nor to be in doubt as to whether p (not necessarily).” See Lee (2018, p.142), Moon (2018), and Rosa (forthcoming a.) on the differences between (a) the verbal form of doubt, (b) the prepositional mass-locution “in doubt”, and (c) the count-noun usage of doubt. For the fine-grained semantic distinction between doubt-that and doubt-whether, see Asher (1987) and Uegaki (2023). Benoit Guilielmo 318 Theoria, 2024, 39/3, 315-331 mative aspects of doubt and suspension (§3). I shall then advance additional arguments in favor of ND, based on the similarity of the rational profiles of doubt and suspension (§4). In the final section, I will briefly examine whether ND is in fact compatible with certain of the views of suspension defended in the contemporary literature (§5). Rather than offering knockdown arguments, I will advance a variety of reasons in favor of ND, my primary aim being to argue for the overlooked plausibility of this view. 2. A minimalist characterization of suspension of judgement In advocating for the plausibility of ND, I need to characterize the nature of suspension without endorsing a specific analysis. My aim is to establish common ground between the differing conceptions in the debate on suspension. As mentioned in the introduction, this paper examines the relationship between being in doubt and being in a state of suspended judgment. I assume that episodic “suspending” marks the beginning of what is known in the literature as a “state of suspended judgment,” similar to how a judging episode initiates a belief state. Two ambiguities in the literature are worth noting: (1) the difference between an active notion of suspension (as seen in agential views; see McGrath, 2024) and a stative view, which has been the focus since Friedman’s (2013a) seminal paper; and (2) the challenge of interpreting “suspension of judgment”, given some strong assumptions in the debate (e.g., that suspension is a doxastic attitude (Friedman, 2017), and in understanding what exactly characterizing suspension as an attitude of “committed neutrality” amounts to; see, on this last point, Friedman, 2022). Therefore, I follow the majority of contemporary epistemologists in assuming that suspension is a mental state (Friedman, 2013a). Even though, as Errol Lord (2023) aptly notes, the current debate about suspension of judgment “is in some ways the Wild West because there is large and largely implicit disagreement about the basic features of suspension,” I find amidst the ongoing discussions at least one discernible common ground: suspension is a sort of neutral attitude. One of the main points of contention between the different accounts concerns how to cash out this neutral stance: NEUTRALITY When a subject S suspends judgment on p, S is in a neutral state of mind about whether p is true or false. There is nothing mysterious about this neutrality condition. We can understand it, referring to its etymology (ne+uter), as meaning “neither this nor that”. The required neutrality present across all cases of suspension implies neither believing p nor disbelieving p, or neither affirming nor denying that p. If ND holds, this essential feature of neutrality must also be present in all instances of doubt. For most contemporary epistemologists, the lack of belief/disbelief involved by NEUTRALITY is necessary, but not sufficient for suspension; further conditions need to be added to adequately capture suspension (see McGrath, 2024, for a recent overview of the debate).5 5 Conceptions according to which suspension is not a proper doxastic stance, but rather an agentive intentional omission, a bracketing, a refraining from judging, or a postponing of belief-formation (see McGrath, 2024 for an overview of different candidates) are compatible with NEUTRALITY. See https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419 319 Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one? In the following sections, we will see that some of these further conditions recently discussed in the literature on suspension —in terms of preconditions for judging (e.g., “consideration condition” or “cognitive contact”; see Wagner, 2022), and in terms of epistemic reasons— are constitutive of historical accounts of doubt. 3. Historical evidence for NO-DIFFERENCE In this section, I will provide historical data from various philosophical traditions and periods. They converge in supporting the NO-DIFFERENCE view: ND There is no substantial difference between being in doubt about whether p and being in a state of suspended judgement about whether p. More precisely, the support ND receives from the history of philosophy takes three (partly overlapping) forms: (i) the Simple view, according to which the state of doubt is nothing more than a state of suspension; (ii) the Scholastic view, according to which two different species of rational doubt must be distinguished, and which characterizes doubt as an evidence-sensitive suspended state of mind; and (iii) the Belief view, according to which the state of doubt is a state of suspended judgment that consists of having a belief about one’s (defective) epistemic situation. 3.1. The Simple View The Simple View is the idea that doubt is to be characterized in terms of suspension of judgment. We can read in Blackburn (2005, p.104-105) that doubt is “[t]he state of neither believing nor disbelieving a proposition; a suspension of judgement.” According to this minimal definition, doubt is a privative or negative state: that of neither believing nor disbelieving something. This echoes Ralph Wedgwood’s account of suspension, according to which “one ‘suspends judgment’ about p when one consciously considers p but neither believes nor disbelieves p” (2002, p.272). It’s worth noting that Wedgwood introduces a crucial consideration condition for suspension, which is absent from Blackburn’s lexical definition (see Wagner, 2022, p.673 on this “cognitive contact” requirement). Applied to doubt, this condition means that a subject cannot be in doubt about a proposition she has not considered. As G.F. Stout writes (1896, p.102), “[i]n doubting we must at least propose a question to ourselves.” I cannot be in doubt about whether Ruby acted alone when killing Oswald if I have never considered the question, and the same goes for suspension. Another minimal characterization of doubt is provided by Berkeley (1713): Philonous: Does doubting consist in accepting the affirmative or the negative side of a question? Hylas: Neither. Anyone who understands English must know that doubting signifies a suspense between the two sides. Archer (2024) on the act/attitude relation in the suspension literature, and particularly McGrath’s (2021) account. Wagner (2022) also argues that suspension is a mental act of endorsing or committing to one’s indecision. Note that none of these authors reject NEUTRALITY. Benoit Guilielmo 320 Theoria, 2024, 39/3, 315-331 In this passage, Berkeley defines doubt (roughly) as suspension of belief (Hart 1980, p.3233). According to the Simple view, NEUTRALITY is the specific and central common feature of doubt and suspense: when you are in doubt, you are in suspense. Another characterization of being in doubt is found in Bolzano’s work (1973, p.65): If one proposition seems just as probable to us as its opposite, then we can neither judge it is true nor judge that it is false, but we are in doubt. Bolzano does not use the term “suspension,” but his characterization of being in doubt is very close to it. Moreover, we can assume here that not making a judgement and falling into a state of doubt is the same as neither believing nor disbelieving that p. The upshot is that, according to the Simple view, doubt is characterized in terms of suspension. This explicitly offer a descriptive condition essential to being in doubt and suspense: neither belief nor disbelief that p (or neither accepting nor negating that p) after considering a question. The two attitudes are characterized as both epistemically neutral towards their content. Being in doubt is thus identical to a suspended/suspensive state of mind. These definitions remain minimal but it seems legitimate, at this point, to consider ND as a plausible position. 3.2. The Scholastic View The Scholastic view builds on the Simple view, which defines doubt as “a state in which the mind is suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them” (Sharpe 1909, p.141). However, the Scholastic view adds a crucial normative condition: a subject doubts a proposition p based on epistemic reasons. This emphasis on reason-responsiveness explains how doubt can vary in epistemic rationality depending on the available evidence. Unlike the Simple view, the Scholastic view highlights that reason-responsiveness is constitutive of doubt, and introduces a significant distinction in the types of reasons for doubt. Rational doubt is thereby divided into two species, negative doubt and positive doubt.6 To illustrate these two species of doubt, here are two toy examples: The Crowd Estimation Kate is asked whether some large assembly forms an odd or an even number based on a photographic picture of some event. She leans to neither side, for lack of the means of deciding, even with probability, one way rather than another. 6 Sharpe (1909, p.141) provides a concise and useful explanation of the distinction: “Doubt is either positive or negative. In the former case, the evidence for and against is so equally balanced as to render decision impossible; in the latter, the doubt arises from the absence of sufficient evidence on either side.” This distinction has been recognized and endorsed by a long tradition taking its origins in St. Thomas Aquinas (Super Sent., lib. 3 d. 23 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 1 co.; Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 14 (“On faith”), art. 1) and Suárez (De triplici virtute theologica, in Suárez 2015, p.950, p.953-954) before becoming a locus classicus in Neo-scholastic textbooks. According to this tradition, doubt is one attitude that one can have towards some content, and it differs in kind from opinion, suspicion, or certainty (see for instance Coppens, 1891, and Rickaby, 1888). https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419 321 Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one? What is Kate’s state of mind? A question is presented to her for consideration. She has no valid reason to believe that the number of people in the picture is even or odd. She remains neutral, in a perfectly balanced state, unable to judge. She is in doubt about which is the correct answer, not having the slightest ground for mentally affirming any of these conflicting answers. It is the lack of conclusive evidence one way or another that bring about this state. This is a case of what the scholastics called negative doubt (dubium negativum): “It may be defined as the equipoise of the mind, due to the absence of any valid reasons on either side” (Rickaby, 1888, p.45). The second example is the following: Edmund in Paris One autumn evening, Edmund is strolling on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. He sees a figure standing in a store window, which he initially takes to be a real man, perhaps an employee working there. Then, however, Edmund becomes hesitant and asks himself whether it is not just a mere dummy. Similar to Kate’s state of mind, Edmund also finds himself suspended between two alternatives. His hesitation stems from an equal balance of pros and cons regarding the two alternatives, making the decision impossible —at least until he settles the question by, for instance, moving closer or handwaving the supposed man in the window store, waiting for a reaction. As G.F. Stout puts it, “there is a positive tendency both to affirm and deny the mutually exclusive alternatives” (Stout 1896, p.102). Edmund’s dubitative attitude consists of a fluctuation between conflicting beliefs: <There is a man standing there> and <No, there is no man there, it is a mere dummy>. Using the scholastic terminology, we can classify his doubt as positive. Positive doubt (dubium positivum), corresponds to “the equipoise of the mind, due to the fact that the reasons on either side are equal and opposite” (Rickaby, 1888, p.45). This idea of equally balanced reasons should be put in parallel with the definition of suspension in Book I of the Pyrrhonian Hypothesis (§ 96), where Sextus remarks that Suspension of judgement gets its name from the fact that the intellect is suspended so as neither to accept nor to reject anything because of the equipollence of the matters investigated. (Annas & Barnes 2000, p.49)7 To summarize, according to the Scholastic View, doubt manifests in two species, both fundamentally reflecting a suspensive state of mind. As articulated by Rickaby (1888, p.45), “in one case, the balance is due to the absence of producible reasons [negative doubt], in the other case to the presence of exactly countervailing reasons [positive doubt].” As we will see below (§4), this distinction is mirroring evidential norms for suspension discussed in contemporary epistemology.8 7 To press this point, let me note that Machuca (2021) has recently examined the question of whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension is incompatible with doubt, and thus concludes his paper: “I think we can safely say that doubt per se is not at variance with the Pyrrhonian stance.” Machuca also accepts (as I do in this paper) the distinction between doubt-that and being in doubt, and explicitly characterizes doubt as “the mental state of indecision and puzzlement described by such sentences as ‘S is in doubt about whether p’ or ‘S doubts whether (or not) p’” (Machuca, 2021, p.51). 8 Interestingly, Archer (2024:110 sq.) and Zinke’s (2021) respective accounts of negative/positive justification and privative/positive justification for suspension align closely with the Scholastic view of the negative/positive characteristics of rational doubt. Benoit Guilielmo 322 Theoria, 2024, 39/3, 315-331 3.3. The Belief View Similarly to the two previous views of doubt, according to the Belief View, doubt is a suspension of judgment. However, there is an important component integrated into the analysis of doubt. Doubt involves NEUTRALITY and having a belief about one’s (defective) epistemic situation. To illustrate this conception, let’s turn to Robert Flint, an underrated representative of the Belief view (I divide the quotation into three parts for clarity): [a] So far from implying an entire absence of judgment, doubt is a suspension of judgment based on the judgment that neither an affirmative nor a negative judgment would be warranted in the circumstances. […] [b] Doubt is an actual or positive condition of mind, and often a most legitimate and valuable one, but it requires justification equally with belief and disbelief, and it can only be justified by showing that, for affirmation and negation, the reasons both for belief and disbelief are insufficient —that they counterbalance and counteract one another. […] [c] To doubt is to believe that there is no warrant for a firm decision —that there is insufficient evidence for a resolved and settled belief. (Flint 1903, p.256-257) In part [a] we encounter a first formulation of the Belief view. Flint indicates that the doubt is based on a judgement, but not specifically on a first-order judgment regarding whether p is true or not. Instead, the content of the judgement concerns our capacity to make a rational judgment about whether p (“neither an affirmative nor a negative judgment would be warranted in the circumstances”). In part [b], and in contrast to the Scholastic view, Flint combines, in his description, the two traditional types of reasons for doubt (insufficient reasons, and counterbalanced reasons for and against belief/disbelief). Finally, in part [c], there is a complete formulation of the Belief view, which can be rephrased more contemporarily: to doubt whether p is to believe something about one’s (deficient) epistemic situation regarding p, specifically that one is not in a position to be justified in believing/disbelieving p.Both the Scholastic and the Belief views claim that doubt is a suspension of judgment grounded in epistemic reasons, but they differ in how doubt is analyzed. The Belief view conceives doubt as a conjunction of a first-order doxastic stance concerning whether p (corresponding to NEUTRALITY) and a higher-order belief about one’s epistemic situation. In this picture, to doubt is not merely to have an absence of belief or disbelief about the targeted issue, but also to have, as a necessary condition, a belief about one’s perspective concerning the targeted issue, e.g., that one lacks rational grounds to form a rational belief. In summary, in contrast to the Simple and Scholastic views of doubt, a further specific condition is necessary: being in doubt requires having a belief about one’s epistemic (defective) situation concerning p.For instance, according to Stout, doubt “presupposes belief in a disjunctive judgment. It consists in acknowledging the reality of one or other of two or more alternatives without deciding between them” (Stout 1896, p.101). The Belief view of doubt finds a parallel in the recent literature on suspension. For example, Sean Crawford argues that: “Suspension of judgement necessarily involves thoughts about one’s own epistemic perspective on whether or not p, namely, that one’s epistemic perspective falls short of establishing whether p and thus that one does not know whether p” (Crawford, 2004, p.226). The belief-based view of suspension is further articulated by Raleigh (2021), and Masny (2020, p.5024): “S suspends judgment about p iff (i) S believes that she neither believes nor disbelieves that p, (ii) S neither believes nor disbelieves that p, (iii) S intends to https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419 323 Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one? judge that p or not-p.” Without delving into the details of these accounts, it’s noteworthy that recent explanations of suspension closely resemble older accounts of doubt, providing additional support for the plausibility of the NO-DIFFERENCE view.9 4. The Rational Profiles of Suspension and Doubt At this juncture, the focus is on the shared characteristics between doubt and suspension, particularly their rationality and convergence in terms of epistemic justification/rationality. It is widely acknowledged that a crucial requirement for a theory of suspension is to elucidate what makes holding this attitude epistemically justified or rational (see Archer 2022; Atkinson, 2021; Raleigh, 2021; Zinke 2021). If one embraces the NO-DIFFERENCE view, it follows that being in doubt and being suspended are necessarily governed by the same epistemic norms. What are these norms? The following two (the Absence of Evidence and the Counterbalanced Evidence norms) are the less controversial ones in the literature on suspension: Absence of Evidence Norm In the absence of [relevant]evidence for or against an ordinary contingent proposition p, it is epistemically permissible to suspend judgment about p. This norm should bring to mind the concept of negative doubt articulated by the Scholastic view (cf. § 3.2). To expound on this norm, Friedman (2013b) claims that “if you are going to have some attitude towards an ordinary contingent proposition that you understand but about which you have absolutely no evidence either for or against, you cannot be going wrong by suspending judgment” (Friedman, 2013b, p.60). In other words, it is a permissibility norm, i.e., in such evidential situation, suspending judgement is permissible from an epistemological point of view. For instance, suppose that you have no information about the distribution of 100balls in one urn. It could be 99 white balls and 1 red, it could be 50/50, 49/51, or 75/25. You simply do not possess the information. Will the next ball be red or white? According to the Absence of Evidence Norm, suspending judgement about whether it will be a red ball or a white one is epistemically permissible.10 The other evidential norm is as follows: Counter-balanced Evidence Norm In case evidence is counterbalanced for or against an ordinary contingent proposition p —it equally supports believingpand disbelievingp —it is epistemically rational to suspend judgment about p. 9 See Archer (2024) for a critical discussion of the variety of belief-based accounts of suspension, and Wagner (2022, p.679) on the different contents of the relevant higher-order belief. See also Hookway’s (2002) discussion of belief views of doubt, according to which “to doubt a proposition is to take an evaluative stance towards it” (Hookway, 2002, p.247). However, in Hookway’s Peirce-inspired account of “real doubt,” an affective component is essential: being in a state of real doubt involves anxiously evaluating one’s epistemic situation as epistemically dangerous or unsafe, which in turn shapes our actions to eliminate the doubt through inquiry (see Gaultier, forthcoming). 10 I intentionally articulate the norm in terms of epistemic permissibility (see Engels, 2010; Friedman 2019b; Pollock, 1987), rather than requirements, or fittingness. This distinction does not affect the argument. Benoit Guilielmo 330 Theoria, 2024, 39/3, 315-331 Howard-Snyder, D. (2013). Propositional faith: What it is and what it is not.American Philosophical Quarterly, 50(4), 357-372. Johnson, W. E. (1921). Logic, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, M. B. (2018). On doubt. Philosophia, 46, 141-158. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9911-3 Lord, E. (2020). Suspension of judgment, rationality’s competition, and the reach of the epistemic. In S. Schmidt & G. Ernst (Eds.), The ethics of belief and beyond: Understanding mental normativity (pp.126145). Abingdon: Routledge. Lord, E. (2023). Book review: Epistemic explanations: A theory of telic normativity, and what it explains, by Ernest Sosa. Mind. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzad012 Lord, E. (2024). Evidence and epistemic reasons. In M. Lasonen-Aarnio & C. Littlejohn (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of the philosophy of evidence. New York: Routledge. Machuca, D. E. (2021). Is Pyrrhonian suspension incompatible with doubt? Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 45, 27-55. Masny, M. (2020). Friedman on suspended judgment. Synthese, 197(11), 5009-5026. doi: https://doi. org/10.1007/s11229-018-01957-1 McCain, K. (2023). Evidentialism, judgment, and suspension: Meeting Sosa’s challenges. Episteme, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2023.48 McGrath, M. (2021). Being neutral: Agnosticism, inquiry and the suspension of judgment. Noûs, 55(2), 463484. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12323 McGrath, M. (2024). Is suspension of judgment a question-directed attitude? No, not really. In M. Steup & J. Turri (Eds.), Contemporary debates in epistemology (3rd ed.). Chichester: Blackwell. Moon, A. (2018). The nature of doubt and a new puzzle about belief, doubt, and confidence.Synthese, 195, 1827-1848.doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1310-y Newman, J. H. (1870). An essay in aid of a grammar of assent (C. F. Harrold, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perin, C. (2018). Pyrrhonian scepticism and the agnostic state of mind. In G. Bruno & A. Rutherford (Eds.), Skepticism, historical and contemporary inquiries (pp.114-128). London: Routledge. Pollock, J. L. (1987). Epistemic norms. Synthese, 71(1), 61-95. Price, H. H. (1969). Belief. London: Routledge. Raleigh, T. (2021). Suspending is believing. Synthese, 198, 2449-2474. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229019-02223-8 Rickaby, J. (1888). The first principles of knowledge. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Rosa, L. (forthcoming a). Doubt. In K. Sylvan (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to epistemology (3rd ed.). London: Blackwell. Rosa, L. (forthcoming b). How should we ascribe the third stance? In A. Zinke & V. Wagner (Eds.), Suspension in epistemology and beyond. London: Routledge. Salmon, N. (1995). Being of two minds: Belief with doubt. Noûs, 29(1), 1-20. doi:https://doi. org/10.2307/2215724 Sienkiewicz, S. (2019). Five modes of scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan modes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharpe, A. (1909). Doubt. In The Catholic Encyclopedia (Volume 5). New York: Robert Appleton Company. Schroeder, M. (2012). The ubiquity of state-given reasons.Ethics, 122(3), 457-488. Schroeder, M. (2021). Reasons first. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sosa, E. (2017). Epistemology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stebbing, S. (1930). A Modern Introduction to Logic, London: Methuen. Stout, G. F. (1896). Analytic psychology. London: Allen & Unwin. Suárez, F. (2015). Selections from three works. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Uegaki, W. (2023). The doubt-whether puzzle. In Ł. Jedrzejowski & C. Umbach (Eds.), Non-interrogative subordinate wh-clauses (pp.157-179). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780192844620.003.0015 https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.26419 331 Doubt and suspension: Two attitudes or one? Vazard, J. (2019). (Un)reasonable doubt as affective experience: Obsessive-compulsive disorder, epistemic anxiety and the feeling of uncertainty. Synthese, 198(7), 6917-6934. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11229-019-02497-y Wagner, V. (2022). Agnosticism as settled indecision. Philosophical Studies, 179(2), 671-697. doi: https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01676-3 Wedgwood, R. (2002). The aim of belief. Philosophical Perspectives, 16, 267-297. Zinke, A. (2021). Rational suspension. Theoria, 87(5), 1050-1066. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12320 beNoit guilielmo is currently working on the nature of various cognitive and affective states, as well as the epistemology of inquiry. He is a member of the Zurich Epistemology Group on Rationality (ZEGRa) and the Groupe de Recherche en Epistémologie du Collège de France (Paris). ADDress: UZH, Philosophisches Seminar, Zürichbergstrasse 43, CH-8044 Zürich (Switzerland) – benoit. [email protected] – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4224-1406