Michał Piekarski

In my talk I will argue in favor of the thesis that between Bayesian beliefs and folk psychological beliefs and desires there is an epistemic basing relation that is explanatory and determines the dependence of beliefs on their justifications (Carter & Bondy, 2019; Sylvan, 2016). It means that folk psychological beliefs may or may not be justified in light of their inferential and/or causal links to the Bayesian beliefs on which they are based.

I will claim that conscious access is not a necessary condition for the occurrence of the basing relation: it is not always necessary to be aware of a reason for it to be the basis of a belief (Korcz, 2021). Because of this, I will defend the Bayesian beliefs transparency thesis according to which Bayesian beliefs are transparent to the agent because the agent is not able to detect them directly, and in fact “makes use of them” (Carter & Rupert, 2021; Jenkin, 2021). The transparency thesis, allows defending the view that Bayesian beliefs can be epistemic reasons and as such define basing relations with folk psychological beliefs and desires.

Michał Piekarski, PhD (Institute of Philosophy – Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw)

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