When in doubt, withhold: A defense of two grounds of rational withholding

Recent work has argued that there may be cases where no doxastic attitude-including withholding-is rationally permissible. In this chapter, I consider two such epistemic dilemmas, John Turri’s Dilemma from Testimony and David Alexander’s Dilemma from Doubt. I argue that withholding cannot be irrational in either case. But the apparent force of the dilemmas gives us two important-and overlooked-insights into the nature of rational withholding. First, rational withholding is a function of evidence failing to sufficiently support belief or disbelief. Thus, withholding is not symmetrical to belief and disbelief. Second, the asymmetry to belief/disbelief reveals two distinct grounds for rational withholding: propositional withholding, which arises when our evidence does not support belief or disbelief in p; and doxastic withholding, which arises when we cannot determine whether our evidence supports belief or disbelief in p. Accepting two grounds of rational withholding licenses a kind of Weak Permissivism. But this Weak Permissivism should not be troubling to anyone.