Having offered arguments against the Evidence-Cost’s views competitors, I will now offer some considerations in favor of the Evidence-Cost view.
First, the Evidence-Cost view seems to avoid the major pitfalls of both the Fact-Cost view and the Belief-Cost view. On the Fact-Cost view, the facts of S’s cost context do not, on their own, make any comments about what are the kind of stakes S is faced with in any given case. Facts about S’s cost context might specify exactly what amount of impact getting it right or wrong about believing P has on S’s practical situation. For instance, going back to the Takeshi-Date example, Takeshi’s practical situation might be effected in ABC way, whatever ABC way might actually be in the given case, by his getting it right or wrong about MOSS. This would be a fact of Takeshi’s cost context in this example. However, it is not the case that this fact about Takeshi’s cost context says anything about whether or not Takeshi is in a high-stakes context or a low-stakes context. Thus, what kind of cost context S is in depends on – not only what is objective the case about S’s cost context – but, as mentioned earlier, factors such as how it compares to other cases and third-party interpretation. Even though I take for granted, in the examples used throughout this paper, that there is some objective fact about what kind of cost context S is in, I do believe that facts about S’s cost context are always neutral. Pay another way, facts about S’s cost context do not specifically say either, it is the case that S is in a high-stakes context or, it is the case that S is in a low-stakes context. With that said, it seems difficult for the Fact-Cost view to make any recommendations about when it is reasonable or not reasonable for S to believe P. The Evidence-Cost view, however, does not seem to suffer from this pitfall. Whereas facts about S’s cost context might be neutral, what evidence S has about his cost context can speak either in favor of his being in a high-stakes cost context or a low-stakes cost context. The Evidence-Cost view, then, can readily make recommendations about when it is reasonable for S to believe P.
In fact, as I mentioned in the previous section, facts about S’s cost context, as they are neutral with regard to what kind of cost context S is in, can constitute a form of evidence that S can have about his cost context. These neutral facts about S’s cost context can serve as evidence which speaks in favor of S’s being in a high-stakes context or as evidence which speaks in favor of S’s being in a low-stakes context. For example, in the Takeshi-Date example, suppose the facts of Takeshi’s cost context are the following: If Takeshi gets it wrong about believing that he wrote down “Moss” on the napkin (call this belief MOSS), he will stand Mary up and Mary will be angry with him for doing this and so on. Should Takeshi be aware of these facts about his cost context, these facts can then serve as evidence which speaks in favor of his being in a high-stakes context in the Takeshi-Date example.
The Evidence-Cost view also avoid the pitfalls of the Belief-Cost view. My main objection against the Belief-Cost is that, on this view, even if S has unjustified or poorly justified beliefs about what kind of cost context he is in, it is reasonable for him to believe P as long as he holds certain beliefs about his cost context. So, in the Takeshi-Job example, if Takeshi believes, in his mind, that he is in a low-stakes context, then the Belief-Cost view holds that it is reasonable for Takeshi to believe MOSS regardless of what his evidence about P says, regardless of what the facts of his cost context are. The Belief-Cost view, then, seems to lead to intuitively erroneous conclusion in cases like the Takeshi-Job example. On the Evidence-Cost view, however, S’s evidence about his cost context do not seem as arbitrary as S’s beliefs about his cost context.
Also, I believe that Evidence-Cost view has the advantage of being able to combine the Fact-Cost view, the Belief-Cost view, and itself together into more cohesive and satisfactory intermediate Evidence-Cost view. As mentioned in section 6, aside from the three basic intermediate Evidence-Cost views I have been talking about so far, there are other ways that we might treat S’s cost context. There could be a view which says that S’s reasonableness to believe P depends on facts about S’s evidence in favor of P, and some general attitude about S’s cost context. This “general attitude” about S’s cost context refers to some combination of facts, beliefs, and evidence about S’s cost context which might be used to determine what kind of cost context S is in, in a given case. While I try to articulate or address the “General Attitude”-Cost view in this paper, it is easy to see how the Evidence-Cost view acts as a natural starting point for trying articulate such a view. Under the Evidence-Cost view, facts about S’s cost context – which are neutral on their own – can serve as evidence about S’s cost context. And, S’s evidence about his cost context can speak in favor or against S’s beliefs about his cost context.
Second, I believe that the Evidence-Cost view is the most plausible of the three intermediate Evidence-Cost views I address in this paper because it allows for the possibility that S may neither be reasonable nor unreasonable in holding a belief. In other words, on the Evidence-Cost view, “reasonable” and “unreasonable” are not the only two ways S might be with regard to belief P. A third possibilities exists for how S might be with regards to belief P: S maintain no relationship to belief P on the Evidence-Cost view. For example, let’s look back at the Takeshi-Date example. Recall that Takeshi had some fishy evidence about where is supposed to meet Mary. After running through the rain, the name of the fast food chain he had written down on a piece of napkin becomes smudged. He can only make out the letters “Mc—”. Given the letter fragment on the napkin, Takeshi could have originally written down “McDonald’s” but he has a gut feeling of remembering that he actually wrote down “Moss” for Moss Burger. Neither piece of Takeshi’s evidence in favor of P is extremely convincing. Now, also suppose that Takeshi’s evidence about his cost context is not extremely convincing as well. Perhaps this is Takeshi does not know Mary, whom he found through an online dating site, very well. He has little evidence, aside from her dating website profile and the one or two dates that have gone on, about how she might respond to being stood up by him. One can imagine a version of Takeshi-Date where Takeshi has only a little evidence in favor of his being in a high-stakes context. It seems plausible, then, to say that, in this version of the Takeshi-Date example, it could be the case that it is neither reasonable nor unreasonable for Takeshi to believe MOSS. According to the Evidence-Cost view which takes into account only Takeshi’s evidence about his cost context in the Takeshi-Date example, perhaps Takeshi needs to withhold judgment about MOSS until he has more evidence about his cost context.
This possibility of withholding judgment from MOSS does not seem available to Takeshi under the Fact-Cost view. Again, the Fact-Cost view holds that what is objectively the case about Takeshi’s cost context is relevant in determining if it is reasonable or not reasonable for him to believe MOSS. As I state in an early section, in the first place, I do not believe that facts about Takeshi’s cost context can make any recommendations about what kind of stakes are present in his cost context. But, even if we grant that facts about Takeshi’s cost context do in fact tell us if he is in a high-stakes context or a low-stakes context, I do not believe it is possible for Takeshi to withhold judgment from believing MOSS under the Fact-Cost view. Suppose we grant that, in the Takeshi-Date example on the Fact-Cost view, that the facts of Takeshi’s cost context is such that he is in a high-stakes context. Given what little evidence Takeshi has in favor of MOSS, it is unreasonable for him to believe MOSS in this example. Or, suppose that we grant that Takeshi is actually in a low-stakes context such that, even if he has a small amount of unconvincing evidence in favor of MOSS, it is reasonable for Takeshi to believe MOSS. Because there are always facts about Takeshi’s cost context which specifies which kind of cost context he is in for any given case, there are also always facts about whether or not it is reasonable or not reasonable for Takeshi to hold a belief in any given case. Thus, there does not appear to be any room for Takeshi to be neither unreasonable nor reasonable in believing MOSS on the Fact-Cost view. There is no way for Takeshi to withhold judgment about MOSS.
Moreover, for Takeshi, the possibility of withholding judgment about MOSS also seems closed under the Belief-Cost view. According to the Belief-Cost view, Takeshi’s beliefs, in his mind, about what kind of cost context he is in is relevant to determining if it reasonable or not reasonable for him to believe MOSS. One might raise the point that it is possible for Takeshi to withhold judgment from MOSS – he can simply not have any beliefs whatsoever about his cost context. But, Takeshi’s not holding any beliefs at all about his cost context, on the Belief-Cost view, leads to a strange conclusion. For example, in the Takeshi-Date example, on the Evidence-Cost view, it seems plausible for Takeshi to withhold judgment from MOSS. It seems plausible for Takeshi to wait until he acquire more evidence about his cost context before passing judgment on MOSS. However, in the same example, now under the Belief-Cost view, it seems to make very little sense for Takeshi to not hold any beliefs about his cost context and to wait until he acquires more beliefs about his cost context to pass judgment on MOSS. One might object further that, on the Belief-Cost view, it is not a matter of how many beliefs Takeshi has about his cost context but rather if Takeshi’s beliefs are justified. Whereas on the Evidence-Cost view, Takeshi withholds judgment from MOSS to wait to acquire more pieces of evidence about his cost context, on the Belief-Cost view, Takeshi waits to acquire justified beliefs about his cost context. However, as seen in the preceding section, even if we modify the Belief-Cost view to talk about only justified beliefs about Takeshi’s cost context, the view still leads to intuitively erroneous conclusions.
Thus, for these reasons, I believe Evidence-Cost is the most plausible intermediate Evidence-Cost view of the three I examine in this paper.
Some days you write a lot because you want the words to sing. You want them to fly off the page like birds, fluttering wings and feathers lifting to the sky in a gust of wind, taking each and every single letter, the f’s black curls, the bend corners on the N’s and the crosses on the t’s, the b’s pot bellied bottom lifting, lifting, lifting to a place you wanted them to be, arranged in the shape you wanted them to be in. All of these things you wanted to say to someone somewhere, someone that would understand, or at least try, because what else is there really in this world besides you, you, you and you alone, here, alone. Trying, trying to be heard, to express the small things, not even the big ideas or anything, just the small things that grip your heart and twist and twist the muscles until the blood stops flowing and you stop thinking about anything else. Is there more to this? Where all you want to do is weep because you feel like you’ve lost the time you once had to do the things you loved. Because you’re not fourteen or fifteen or eighteen anymore and you want those days back even though you have so many more ahead of you and yet you already want those days back because you used to be freer even when you didn’t know back it then, you used to be freer. You were untethered and open and possible. You, the you that you are today, was only possible back in the dim hallways with the pale yellow lockers and the broken escalators and everything else that you once hated. What you would give to tramp up and down those halls in that jacket you still wear but do not feel the same in anymore. Some days you want back you cannot have back and all you have are the days yet to come and that is exactly what terrifies you. They do not know the meaning of stop or how to stop or want to stop and they roll forward, on and on, without you but taking you. Do you want to see those days again? When everyone was still together, in that big group, you had a group, and nothing was done except for the sake of doing. You paid attention in classes you cared about when the teachers got your attention and taught and held on to your attention somehow. Not because you are terrified of failing, terrified of not being able to make, but it was just something that had to be done and you did what you did. To live in the bliss of ignorance is something you want back so badly, so undeniably that you end up writing in the second person. Maybe, to avoid knowing that you don’t want the future and you just want the past because at least hindsight is settled and certain and there is no guesswork involved no frightening possibilities unresolved because the you back then, the you in the past is definite, delineated in memories and murmurs and resentment that has long vanished and feelings that don’t ring out anymore but you still want to make the words sing because maybe words can take you back to that place, those hallways, those people, the September sky from the ninth floor bathroom, the way the seventh floor smelled like science and chemicals and how you used to do physics experiments in the hallways and linger in the staircases until way after dark trying to compete and do things with your life while people went off to the ivy league and you chose to stay here and never leave and you are still here So in some ways maybe nothing has changed at all but that might just a cognitive defect. There are things you want back. Time to just sit with a book or a show or a manga and read and watch and enjoy and be with it for a while and live away from here, disappear into the night of this world and out in the brilliance of another, distant, somewhere else where you are not you the agent the actor the free will illusion taken from you by another mind dictating the characters and words and actions and you are free to just enjoy. Is there such disdain for those who simply watch, voyeurs trying to escape choice. Choice, choice, choice. All I want is the lack of choice. To be, mindlessly, be. If that is at all possible. To misplace my commas, to split my infinitives, leave the periods, forget subjects and clauses and everything. I want my words to sing but really just to sing to me because some days I have no one else to say these things to, no one who would listen because it is hard to listen, even for me, to words you do not understand but that is all there is in this world, the sound of keys struck over and over again, my attempts to say something to someone that no one would hear. It has always been this way and back then I used to want to say things to other people but the older I get, the farther I move forward into, onto, towards other possibilities, the more I realize I’ve always wanted to just say things to myself. And even I don’t have time anymore to listen to that.
Some days you just sit at home and be not really okay with yourself. And just freak out about nothing. Nothing at all. Just freaking out about stuff. Like law school. Like Japanese. LIKE YOUR THESIS WHICH YOU ARE NOT WRITING AND YOU DON”T KNOW WHY YOU CAN”T BRING YOURSELF TO WRITE THE GODDAMN THING BUT YOU JUST ARE NOT WRITING ANYTHING WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH RICHARDSON TO TALK ABOUT ADVISING AND REGISTRATION AND GRDUATIOANDASDS.
I AM SERIOUSLY NOT VERY OKAY. I AM NOT OKAY. OMG.
Some days you just sit at home and be not really okay with yourself. And just freak out about nothing. Nothing at all. Just freaking out about stuff. Like law school. Like Japanese. LIKE YOUR THESIS WHICH YOU ARE NOT WRITING AND YOU DON”T KNOW WHY YOU CAN”T BRING YOURSELF TO WRITE THE GODDAMN THING BUT YOU JUST ARE NOT WRITING ANYTHING WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH RICHARDSON TO TALK ABOUT ADVISING AND REGISTRATION AND GRDUATIOANDASDS.
I AM SERIOUSLY NOT VERY OKAY. I AM NOT OKAY. OMG.
What am I doing with my life. I have so much work to do and all I’m doing now is watching this movie while waiting to watch another movie. While not really doing the important work that I have to do while not doing anything that I have to do. I have to understand and finish reading these papers so I can write something moderately cohesive to give to Jim next week. I have to write this cript. I gotta get my ceramics projects together, literlaly and start working on the wheel throwing thing. I am so screwed right now. So screwed. I don’t even know. I feel really bad because well shit. I don’t know how I did on that Japanese test. How could Ihave spelled Jeans wrong. Jeans man. Of all the things I had to get wrong. And maybe that’s the tip of the ice berg. I would have caught that last time. I totally would have caught that last time. I didn’t have nearly enough time as I did last time to sit and think about things. I feel like I also got something on the listening wrong. My listening isn’t strong at all. I just don’t know. I don’t want to think about it but I also keep thinking about it. My stanrads. I just want to be okay at this so I don’t fail and be upset with myself but I’m flailing anyways. Just some sad fish without fins even worse than a magikarp. I am so sasd. So sad.
I feel like crap somedays. I’ve been feeling like crap for a long time. Confused. Sad. Something like that. I wish I knew what I was doing. I wish I knew what I was doing. I wish I knew I what I was doing. I wish I knew. But I do not. I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I am so sad. So sad. What am doing. What am I doing. What am I doing. Everything is falling apart around me like a cookie that was baked too long. That’s a horrible metaphor. Like, snow crumbling, or sand, or salt, like something dying slowly, like brow sugar I tried to pack but it didn’t work or something. I wish I knew. I wish I knew. What am I doing next semester. I want to write again. I wish I had ideas and was creative or something to that effect. I wish I knew.
My GPA, my thesis. Everything. What am I doing. The semester is almost over. I don’t want to know at all. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I wish they would tell me and I still don’t want to know. I wish I knew.
It’s a Friday night, Saturday morning and all I’m doing is watching these movies. I wish I knew.
I wish the world made more sense to me. I wish things worked out better. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. Well at least I don’t have it as bad as she has it. I wouldn’t know what to do. But then my problems would be a totally different set of problems if I were in his shoes. I wish I had different problems just to try them on for size. Myabe I’d be able to handle different problems better.
I wish I could trade away my problems for a day, like slippoing out of some old clothes, into some fresh ones. A new suit, or something. Like a snake, a shapeshifter. Just to see. What is that like. Just to see. And then maybe I’ll come right back to my old problems, maybe. And they’d be familiar, like home. Maybe I’d know how to deal with it better. Maybe I’d never come back. I don’t want to come back. I just want to let go/ Forever. Of here. I don’t want to stay here.