Chapter 6 - The Act-Attitude Account of Doxastic Neutrality

Summary

In this chapter, I advocate for a bipartite act-attitude account of doxastic neutrality, according to which the mental act of withholding judgement stands to the attitude of agnosticism as the mental act of judging stands to the attitude of belief. My proposed account stands in contrast with that of Matthew McGrath, who argues that there are at least three distinct ways of being neutral – namely agnosticism, refraining from judgement, and suspension of judgement. I argue that suspension of judgement, as conceived of by McGrath, is not a distinct way of being neutral. This leaves only the mental act of refraining from judgement (or what I call ‘withholding judgement’) and the mental state of agnosticism as the two genuine ways of being doxastically neutral.