Credence-First Epistemology

Chapter 10 discusses the credence-first approach to coarse-grained attitudes. It is explained how the view underwrites a robust realism about the attitudes and why it bolsters the view that belief, disbelief, and suspended judgement are self-standing states. It is explained how credence-first epistemology dovetails with how we ordinarily describe coarse- and fine-grained attitudes and how it makes good sense of ways in which coarse- and fine-grained attitudes march-in-step in their production and rationalization of action. Further, it is explained how credence-first epistemology fits with our use of reductio-based arguments. So it’s argued that there is something deeply right in the credence-first approach. But the chapter closes with a pair of problems for the approach: credence is very often absent in the presence of coarse-grained attitudes—as a matter of descriptive fact—and credence is very often misplaced in the presence of everyday evidence—as a matter of normative fact.