Helena Fang

Here you go

The official version is available online! It's open access.

(And yes, it's in double column.)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Your context set and my context set are like this Picture of perfect circle

A grad student put up a bunch of these MIT philosophy themed valentines. I thought this one was fantastic and told them so.

Turns out I came up with it a couple years ago and they had just parroted me. Perry’ed again

better ones (imo):

this is the weirdest valentine thing I've seen (it's MILDLY SWEET tho)

But yeah: this paper started out as my writing sample for graduate school applications, and I have received *so much* help and support along the way. Thank you to everyone for making this happen!

Finally, the problem generalizes to any account of propositional attitude and modal that’s formally parallel to Guessing, and I showcase one such application. 4/4

I argue that the puzzle is intractable and significant: it poses a unique challenge for the account, unlike any posed by other inter-question principles so far in the literature. Existing accounts of guessing / weak belief, as formulated, fail to have the resources to account for this problem. 3/

I present a problem for Guessing by considering belief reports in multi-question scenarios. I introduce a plausible inter-question principle and show that it's incompatible with Guessing. The result generalizes to all existing versions of Guessing and many of its variants. 2/

Many have recently proposed an account of guessing / “weak belief" I call Guessing. Roughly: you may believe something iff it’s among the most probable answers to a salient question. The view is motivated by patterns of belief reports when agents face a question they aren't certain how to answer. 1/

Helena Fang, Guessing and its Limits - PhilPapers Guessing is the thesis that, roughly put, you may believe something iff it is among the most probable answers to a salient question. The thesis is motivated by observed features of ...

I'm excited to share that my first paper "Guessing and its Limits" is forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research!

Thread below. TLDR: I present a novel puzzle for a recent "question-sensitive" theory of guessing/belief in multi-question scenarios.

philpapers.org/rec/FANGAI-2

Reviewers reading my technical appendix:

Since my original paper is titled "Guessing and its Limits," I thereby announce that the alt title for the session will be "Guessing and its Limits and its Limits." (Our comments then add the third iteration.)

Come to our session at the Eastern APA next week! @chenhao345.bsky.social will present an excellent solution to my puzzle about inter-question guessing (so-called "weak belief"); then @benholguin.bsky.social and I will respond. (AFAIK this is the first response in the literature!) Should be fun.

I’ve been harassing every single person I know over the past couple of months about this paper nonstop and now here’s an even better promotion

I know of some work vaguely in this direction (e.g., studies on how non-human primates don't learn language) but wanted to ask: does anyone know studies/literature on whether non-human animals ask questions?

(My understanding is they don't but want to read the lit before I form a strong view.)

Two-boxers, you know what to do

There’s more. She reviews “Steffan Yabble” here.

Happy to report that this paper is now out (Open Access!)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

writing my paper for my history course at harvard in the most mit way possible:

Marking our successful transformation from the epistemic-modals-department to the questions-department

isn’t (necessarily) partitional*

v quick & probably unrelated clarification but i thought the hamblin semantics isn't partition? (a question still denotes a set though, on the view.) but i guess the current argument doesn't depend on partitionality

Everything I know about legal formalism I learned from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

or as Helena calls it "simple-modelogy"

*good case bad case every single min*

Or you just didn't wanna do a ten mins "have you ever heard of this guy called Bob Stalnaker" speech

Wait so it's not Hume

And yet they say "have a non-philosophy life"

As a formal epistemologist AND rhythm game nerd I just came to the realization that the two fields ARE THE SAME---both are about MAXIMIZING ACCURACY