attitude of indifference essay

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Indifference is a power

As legions of warriors and prisoners can attest, stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest happiness from adversity.

by Lary Wallace   + BIO

We do this to our philosophies. We redraft their contours based on projected shadows, or give them a cartoonish shape like a caricaturist emphasising all the wrong features. This is how Buddhism becomes, in the popular imagination, a doctrine of passivity and even laziness, while Existentialism becomes synonymous with apathy and futile despair. Something similar has happened to Stoicism, which is considered – when considered at all – a philosophy of grim endurance, of carrying on rather than getting over, of tolerating rather than transcending life’s agonies and adversities.

No wonder it’s not more popular. No wonder the Stoic sage, in Western culture, has never obtained the popularity of the Zen master. Even though Stoicism is far more accessible, not only does it lack the exotic mystique of Eastern practice; it’s also regarded as a philosophy of merely breaking even while remaining determinedly impassive. What this attitude ignores is the promise proffered by Stoicism of lasting transcendence and imperturbable tranquility.

It ignores gratitude, too. This is part of the tranquility, because it’s what makes the tranquility possible. Stoicism is, as much as anything, a philosophy of gratitude – and a gratitude, moreover, rugged enough to endure anything. Philosophers who pine for supreme psychological liberation have often failed to realise that they belong to a confederacy that includes the Stoics. ‘According to nature you want to live ?’ Friedrich Nietzsche taunts the Stoics in Beyond Good and Evil (1886):

O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power – how could you live according to this indifference? Living – is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living – estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative ‘live according to nature’ meant at bottom as much as ‘live according to life’ – how could you not do that? Why make a principle of what you yourself are and must be?

This is pretty good, as denunciations of Stoicism go, seductive in its articulateness and energy, and therefore effective, however uninformed.

Which is why it’s so disheartening to see Nietzsche fly off the rails of sanity in the next two paragraphs, accusing the Stoics of trying to ‘impose’ their ‘morality… on nature’, of being ‘no longer able to see [nature] differently’ because of an ‘arrogant’ determination to ‘tyrannise’ nature as the Stoic has tyrannised himself. Then (in some of the least subtle psychological projection you’re ever likely to see, given what we know of Nietzsche’s mad drive for psychological supremacy), he accuses all of philosophy as being a ‘tyrannical drive’, ‘the most spiritual will to power’, to the ‘creation of the world’.

The truth is, indifference really is a power, selectively applied, and living in such a way is not only eminently possible, with a conscious adoption of certain attitudes, but facilitates a freer, more expansive, more adventurous mode of living. Joy and grief are still there, along with all the other emotions, but they are tempered – and, in their temperance, they are less tyrannical.

I f we can’t always go to our philosophers for an understanding of Stoicism, then where can we go? One place to start is the Urban Dictionary . Check out what this crowdsourced online reference to slang gives as the definition of a ‘stoic’:

stoic Someone who does not give a shit about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the things in this world that really matter. They are the most real people alive. Group of kids are sitting on a porch. Stoic walks by. Kid – ‘Hey man, yur a fuckin faggot an you suck cock!’ Stoic – ‘Good for you.’ Keeps going.

You’ve gotta love the way the author manages to make mention of a porch in there, because Stoicism has its root in the word stoa , which is the Greek name for what today we would call a porch. Actually, we’re more likely to call it a portico, but the ancient Stoics used it as a kind of porch, where they would hang out and talk about enlightenment and stuff. The Greek scholar Zeno is the founder, and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius the most famous practitioner, while the Roman statesman Seneca is probably the most eloquent and entertaining. But the real hero of Stoicism, most Stoics agree, is the Greek philosopher Epictetus.

He’d been a slave, which gives his words a credibility that the other Stoics, for all the hardships they endured, can’t quite match. He spoke to his pupils, who later wrote down his words. These are the only words we know today as Epictetus’, consisting of two short works, the Enchiridion and the Discourses , along with some fragments. Among those whom Epictetus taught directly is Marcus Aurelius (another Stoic philosopher who did not necessarily expect to be read; his Meditations were written expressly for private benefit, as a kind of self-instruction).

Among those Epictetus has taught indirectly is a whole cast of the distinguished, in all fields of endeavour. One of these is the late US Navy Admiral James Stockdale. A prisoner of war in Vietnam for seven years during that conflict, he endured broken bones, starvation, solitary confinement, and all other manner of torture. His psychological companion through it all were the teachings of Epictetus, with which he had familiarised himself after graduating from college and joining the Navy, studying philosophy at Stanford University on the side. He kept those teachings close by in Vietnam, never letting them leave his mind even when things were at their most dire. Especially then. He knew what they were about, those lessons, and he came to know their application much better than anyone should have to.

Stockdale wrote a lot about Epictetus, in speeches and memoirs and essays, but if you want to travel light (and, really, what Stoic doesn’t?), the best thing you could take with you is a speech he gave at King’s College London in 1993, published as Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (1993). That subtitle is important. Epictetus once compared the philosopher’s lecture room to a hospital, from which the student should walk out in a little bit of pain. ‘If Epictetus’s lecture room was a hospital,’ Stockdale writes, ‘my prison was a laboratory – a laboratory of human behaviour. I chose to test his postulates against the demanding real-life challenges of my laboratory. And as you can tell, I think he passed with flying colours.’

‘You are unfortunate in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate’

Stockdale rejected the false optimism proffered by Christianity, because he knew, from direct observation, that false hope is how you went insane in that prison. The Stoics themselves believed in gods, but ultimately those resistant to religious belief can take their Stoicism the way they take their Buddhism, even if they can’t buy into such concepts as karma or reincarnation. What the whole thing comes down to, distilled to its briefest essence, is making the choice that choice is really all we have, and that all else is not worth considering. ‘Who […] is the invincible human being?’ Epictetus once asked, before answering the question himself: ‘One who can be disconcerted by nothing that lies outside the sphere of choice.’

Any misfortune ‘that lies outside the sphere of choice’ should be considered an opportunity to strengthen our resolve, not an excuse to weaken it. This is one of the truly great mind-hacks ever devised, this willingness to convert adversity to opportunity, and it’s part of what Seneca was extolling when he wrote what he would say to one whose spirit has never been tempered or tested by hardship: ‘You are unfortunate in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate. You have passed through life with no antagonist to face you; no one will know what you were capable of, not even you yourself.’ We do ourselves an immense favour when we consider adversity an opportunity to make this discovery – and, in the discovery, to enhance what we find there.

Another shrewdly resourceful Stoic mind-hack is what William B Irvine – in his book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy­ (2009)– has given the name ‘negative visualisation’. By keeping the very worst that can happen in our heads constantly, the Stoics tell us, we immunise ourselves from the dangers of too much so-called ‘positive thinking’, a product of the mind that believes a realistic accounting of the world can lead only to despair. Only by envisioning the bad can we truly appreciate the good; gratitude does not arrive when we take things for granted. It’s precisely this gratitude that leaves us content to cede control of what the world has already removed from our control anyway.

How did we let something so eminently understandable become so grotesquely misunderstood? How did we forget that that dark passage is really the portal to transcendence?

M any will recognise in these principles the general shape and texture of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Indeed, Stoicism has been identified as a kind of proto-CBT. Albert Ellis, the US psychologist who founded an early form of CBT known as Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) in 1955, had read the Stoics in his youth and used to prescribe to his patients Epictetus’s maxim that ‘People are disturbed not by things but by their view of things.’ ‘That’s actually the “cognitive model of emotion” in a nutshell,’ Donald Robertson tells me, and he should certainly know, as a therapist who in 2010 wrote a book on CBT with the subtitle ‘Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy’.

This simplicity and accessibility ensure that Stoicism will never be properly embraced by those who prefer the abstracted and esoteric in their philosophies. In the novel A Man in Full (1998), Tom Wolfe gives Stoicism, with perfect plausibility, to a semi-literate prison inmate. This monologue of Conrad Hensley’s may be stilted, but there’s nothing at all suspect about the sentiment behind it. When asked if he is a Stoic, Conrad replies: ‘I’m just reading about it, but I wish there was somebody around today, somebody you could go to, the way students went to Epictetus. Today people think of Stoics – like, you know, like they’re people who grit their teeth and tolerate pain and suffering. What they are is, they’re serene and confident in the face of anything you can throw at them.’

Marcus Aurelius started each day telling himself: ‘I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people’

Which leads us naturally to ask just what it was that was thrown at them. We’ve already noted that Epictetus had the whole slavery thing going on, so he checks out. So does Seneca, in spite of what many have asserted – most recently the UK classicist Mary Beard in an essay for the New York Review of Books that asks: ‘How Stoical Was Seneca?’ before providing a none-too-approving answer. What Beard’s well-informed and otherwise cogent essay fails to allow for is just how tough it must have been for Seneca – tubercular, exiled, and under the control of a sadistically murderous dictator – no matter what access he sometimes had to life’s luxuries. It was Seneca himself who said that ‘no one has condemned wisdom to poverty’, and only an Ancient Greek Cynic would try to deny this. Besides, Seneca would have been the first to tell you, as he told a correspondent in one of his letters: ‘I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.’

Marcus Aurelius lay ill in that hospital, too. As beneficiary of the privileges of emperor, he also endured the struggles and stresses of that very same position, plus a few more besides. I know better than to try to improve on the following accounting, provided in Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life :

He was sick, possibly with an ulcer. His family life was a source of distress: his wife appears to have been unfaithful to him, and of the at least 14 children she bore him, only six survived. Added to this were the stresses that came with ruling an empire. During his reign, there were numerous frontier uprisings, and Marcus often went personally to oversee campaigns against upstart tribes. His own officials – most notably, Avidius Cassius, the governor of Syria – rebelled against him. His subordinates were insolent to him, which insolence he bore with ‘an unruffled temper’. Citizens told jokes at his expense and were not punished for doing so. During his reign, the empire also experienced plague, famine, and natural disasters such as the earthquake at Smyrna.

Ever the strategist, Marcus employed a trusty technique in confronting the days that comprised such a life, making a point to tell himself at the start of each one of them: ‘I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people.’ He could have been different about it – he could have pretended things were just hunky-dory, especially on those days when they really were, or seemed to be. But how, then, would he have been prepared to angle both into the wind and away from it – adapting, always, to fate’s violently vexing vicissitudes? Where would that have left him when the weather changed?

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Rhetorical Analysis: The Perils Of Indifference Essay

Wiesel uses rhetorical questions to point out the definition of indifference very clearly. “What is indifference? “. Wiesel is using a rhetorical question so that the audience thinks about the answer for themselves. He later goes on and says the answer to the audience himselves so they don’t misunderstand his point of view . Using a rhetorical question is a strong device to use because it has a greater effect on the audience than telling them right away because they can form their own opinions and insight.

When Wiesel does this, he evokes emotional response from the audience because his encounter with indifference Many may misunderstand indifference, and the benefit of Wiesel giving his own experience helps him and his goal of letting people know what it really means. Elie Wiesel calls attention to the fact that indifference is more prevalent than acknowledged in order to prove to the audience that it is a bigger problem than what people are making it. Wiesel does this by using antithesis. Wiesel talks about extreme situations that people notice, and then states indifference is is a case of blurry lines.

He lists many short phrases in one sentence, “… light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil”. The value of Wiesel explaining indifference using antithesis exposes that most people don’t pay attention to the things in between two extreme cases. Using antithesis is a superb way to shed light on the fact that people usually know of obvious situations. Indifference isn’t obvious, so antithesis is the perfect device to highlight that. For example, in war, people are either going to ask stories about the heroes, or stories about the injured.

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How to Be an Upstander: Acting against Indifference

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In my senior year at Magnificat High School in Cleveland, I signed up to take a class on the Holocaust called “Dangers of Indifference.”

The class was unique in that three teachers taught it: a history teacher, an art teacher, and a religion teacher. Having these three perspectives helped me understand something I had not realized before—that hatred is not the largest problem we face, indifference is.

Indifference to other humans and lack of compassion toward those who suffer injustice is the real issue our global community must confront. We looked at the historical implications of instances of mass violence in human history, particularly the Holocaust. We read speeches Hitler gave, did an in-depth study of the book Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, and examined the actions and historical moments that lead to the murder of millions. We created illustrations and wrote down quotations in books we made from second-hand texts and plaster of Paris. We also looked at our own lives. Did we see any of the same political and cultural conditions that lead to the Holocaust in our own time? 

The class helped me to see that history is more than something that happened in the past. It is also a grim reminder of our potential future.

I began to ask myself, What can I do? How can I help?

The answer my teachers helped me to understand was clear and concise: Act. 

My school is grounded in Catholic principles, and the religious implications of the class were clear: We have a duty, as Catholics, not only to learn our religion, but to enact it. I remember reading a poem from Father Pedro Arrupe, a 20th-century Jesuit priest. In the poem “Fall in Love,” Arrupe writes, "Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything." 

Throughout my education, my teachers have shown me that to love in an absolute, final way is to help, to dedicate yourself to fellow human beings so thoroughly that you cannot imagine a world in which injustices towards them should go unserved. 

The best way to stay in love is to let this calling help you find your path in life. 

“Dangers of Indifference” taught me that actions are not choices—they are our obligation. Choice, instead, is found in our understanding of the dangers that go hand-in-hand with indifference, and that indifference comes in many forms. We can be indifferent to the plight of men, but we can also be indifferent to knowledge. Distancing and desensitizing oneself from the lessons of the past is also indifference.

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Rhetorical Analysis of Elie Wiesel's Speech

• Categories: Ethos Personal Growth and Development The Perils of Indifference

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Establishing ethos, eliciting pathos, employing logos.

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OUR PROVINCES:

Free Yourself from an Attitude of Indifference

By Stephanie Ugwu, SHCJ

Indifference is the absence of interest, attention or enthusiasm, having no inclination towards someone or something. When you feel indifferent towards something, you neither like it nor dislike it. Pope Francis reflecting on global suffering especially the plight of the immigrants and refugees stated: “We have become used to the suffering of others. It doesn’t affect us. It  doesn’t interest us. It’s not our business.” Indifference: how much damage human indifference causes to those in need! And the indifference of Christians is worse. (Pope Francis)

This brings to mind that strong caution in Revelation 3:16: “I will spit you out of my mouth because you are neither hot nor cold.” We find solace in Cornelia Connelly , who never had any reserves with God but lived her entire life belonging all to Him. For her it is: “Yes Lord, always yes!”

The call to guard against indifference is one that is coming at the start of the New Year 2016; a year specially dedicated to the theme of Mercy . We are a people who have received mercy upon mercy; and more than ever before, we are charged not only to be recipients but dispensers of God’s mercy.

Mary shows us the way. At the wedding of Cana, she refuses to stay indifferent, unconcerned or uninvolved since she was but a guest. Rather, the shame, confusion and plight of the newly married couple because they ran out of wine became hers. She refused to be a neutral guest. Her compassion, mercy and love moved her to intervene. Mary’s request on behalf of the newly married pair: “ they have no wine” is rebuffed by Jesus on the grounds that his hour had not yet come. She persisted: “Do whatever he tells you, and this led Him to grant her original request.” John 2:1-11.

We have been called in the  SHCJ Epiphany Retreat series to begin anew with God, with others and with self : to be concerned about the life of others is, to get ever more involved with them, to empathise and encourage them. We see a perfect example of that in Mary. For she (Mary) sets a path for us to follow. She mediated on behalf of the couple. As Christians, we are called to do likewise. Her presence at that wedding undoubtedly made all the difference. “Her life was truly a great ‘yes’ to the Lord, a ‘yes’ full of joy and trust”. (Pope John Paul II)

Cornelia Connelly lived her entire life in total openness to God, even in the most difficult moments. She never looked back. Hers, too, was a love full of action. Mary’s invitation teaches us that in order to follow Jesus, we must take decisions, assume an active attitude, respond positively, pass from theory to practice. In her attitude, Mary shows us that in this following we cannot be easy-going or comfort-loving, but good and available servants of God through others.

May Christ grant us the graces we need to see areas where he is calling us to be more involved in serving our neighbour in this New Year 2016.

 QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. What difference does my presence make whenever I have an encounter with others?

2. How much have I been involved with the plight of another in need?

3. Is there any area in which I am being called to be more involved at this present time?

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Elie Wiesel's Speech for Holocaust Units

Informational Text to Pair with a Study of the Holocaust

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At the end of the 20th-century, author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel delivered a speech titled  The Perils of Indifference  to a joint session of the United States Congress. 

Wiesel was the Nobel-Peace Prize-winning author of the haunting memoir "​​Night " , a slim memoir that traces his struggle for survival at the  Auschwitz/ Buchenwald  work complex when he was a teenager. The book is often assigned to students in grades 7-12, and it is sometimes a cross-over between English and social studies or humanities classes.

Secondary school educators who plan units on World War II and who want to include primary source materials on the Holocaust will appreciate the length of his speech. It is 1818 words long and it can be read at the 8th-grade reading level. A  video  of Wiesel delivering the speechcan be found on the  American Rhetoric website . The video runs 21 minutes.

When he delivered this speech, Wiesel had come before the U.S. Congress to thank the American soldiers and the American people for liberating the camps at the end of World War II. Wiesel had spent nine months in the Buchenwald/Aushwitcz complex. In a terrifying retell, he explains how his mother and sisters had been separated from him when they first arrived.

 “Eight short, simple words… Men to the left! Women to the right!"(27).

Shortly after this separation, Wiesel concludes, these family members were killed in the gas chambers at the concentration camp. Yet Wiesel and his father survived starvation, disease, and the deprivation of spirit until shortly before liberation when his father eventually succumbed. At the conclusion of the memoir, Wiesel admits with guilt that at time of his father's death, he felt relieved.

Eventually, Wiesel felt compelled to testify against the Nazi regime, and he wrote the memoir to bear witness against the genocide which killed his family along with six million Jews. 

"The Perils of Indifference" Speech

In the speech, Wiesel focuses on one word in order to connect the concentration camp at Auschwitz with the genocides of the late 20th Century. That one word is indifference .  which is defined at  CollinsDictionary.com  as  "a lack of interest or concern." 

Wiesel, however, defines indifference in more spiritual terms:

"Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil."

This speech was delivered 54 years after he had been liberated by American forces. His gratitude to the American forces who liberated him is what opens the speech, but after the opening paragraph, Wiesel seriously admonishes Americans to do more to halt genocides all over the world. By not intervening on behalf of those victims of genocide, he states clearly, we are collectively indifferent to their suffering:

"Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative."

In continuing to define his interpretation of indifference, Wiesel asks the audience to think beyond themselves:

"Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten." 

Wiesel then includes those populations of people who are victims, victims of political change, economic hardship, or natural disasters:

"The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own."

Students are often asked what does the author mean, and in this paragraph, Wiesel spells out quite clearly how indifference to the suffering of others causes a betrayal of being human, of having the human qualities of kindness or benevolence. Indifference means a rejection of an ability to take action and accept responsibility in the light of injustice. To be indifferent is to be inhuman.

Literary Qualities

Throughout the speech, Wiesel uses a variety of literary elements. There is the personification of indifference as a "friend of the enemy" or the metaphor about the Muselmanner  who he describes as being those who were "... dead and did not know it."

One of the most common literary devices Wiesel uses is the rhetorical question . In  The Perils of Indifference , Wiesel asks a total of 26 questions, not to receive an answer form his audience, but to emphasize a point or focus the audience’s attention on his argument. He asks the listeners:

"Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far?"

Speaking at the conclusion of the 20th Century, Wiesel poses these rhetorical questions for students to consider in their century.

Meets Academic Standards in English and Social Studies

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) demand that students read informational texts, but the framework does not require specific texts. Wiesel’s "The Perils of Indifference" contains the information and rhetorical devices that meet the text complexity criteria of the CCSS. 

This speech also connects to the C3 Frameworks for Social Studies. While there are many different disciplinary lenses in these frameworks, the historical lens is particularly appropriate:

D2.His.6.9-12. Analyze the ways in which the perspectives of those writing history shaped the history that they produced.

Wiesel's memoir "Night" centers on his experience in the concentration camp as both a record for history and a reflection on that experience. More specifically, Wiesel’s message is necessary if we want our students to confront the conflicts in this new 21st-century. Our students must be prepared to question as Wiesel does why “deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents be allowed anywhere in the world?" 

Wiesel has made many literary contributions to helping others all over the world understand the Holocaust. He has written extensively in a wide variety of genres, but it is through his memoir "Night" and the words of this speech " The Perils of Indifference " that students can best understand the critical importance of learning from the past. Wiesel has written about the Holocaust and delivered this speech so that we all, students, teachers, and citizens of the world, may "never forget."

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Theorising Indifference

• First Online: 14 December 2021

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• Hugo Rojas 4  

Part of the book series: St Antony's Series ((STANTS))

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Building on previous theoretical contributions by Aurelio Arteta, Zygmunt Bauman, Claude Giraud, Michael Herzfeld, and Béatrice Hibou, this chapter offers a theory of social indifference. It then conceptualises the phenomenon of indifference to past human rights violations. Since the indifferent do not correspond to a homogeneous social group, four types of indifferent people are explained and characterised: disillusioned, submissive, depoliticised, and resigned indifference. Finally, regarding the impact and consequences of indifference to past human rights violations, it is argued that this social phenomenon facilitates the preservation of the culture of impunity in the present, being an obstacle to the process and mechanisms of transitional justice in a society going through a political transition towards democracy.

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Rojas, H. (2022). Theorising Indifference. In: Past Human Rights Violations and the Question of Indifference: The Case of Chile. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88170-2_2

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Fighting Indifference: Looking at World Response to the Holocaust with Elie Wiesel

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“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” —Elie Wiesel

There exists a common misconception that the terms “World War II” and “The Holocaust” refer to the same period in history. Though historical analysis might reveal that the Second World War had its roots in what were the early stages of the Holocaust, that which made the war worthy of its worldly status did not truly begin until a number of years later. By the time the United States and its allies finally launched a full scale attack against the Fascist powers in 1944, most of the genocide that the Nazis ultimately committed had already taken place, and many of the death camps had long since closed down because there was simply no more killing to be done. What exactly was it, then, that took the world so long to respond? And if the international community was truly unaware of what was taking place (a theory which has long since been abandoned), why did the Europeans who were aware of but not subject to Nazi persecution sit back and watch?

In his speech “The Perils of Indifference,” Elie Wiesel addresses the question that underlies any discussion of the world’s response to the atrocities of the Holocaust: “What is indifference?” (2). Essentially, his question raises two separate but equally important issues: What motivates indifference, and what are its consequences? Martha C. Nussbaum and Bruce Robbins, in their respective essays “Compassion and Terror” and “The Sweatshop Sublime,” present the typical contemporary answers to these questions. It seems worthwhile, however, to take heed of the words of wisdom that Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, might have to offer given his experience. Analyzing the prevailing approaches to these questions, from the perspective of two significantly different generations, ought to give deeper insight into the concept of indifference, how it might explain the global response to the Holocaust, and, perhaps more importantly, how it relates to the world today.

Nussbaum expresses, in part, the more modern view on the causes of indifference in her essay “Compassion and Terror.” Though she directly discusses the concept of compassion in the context of the events surrounding September 11th , her particular thoughts on the causes of this emotion are of equal relevance with regard to indifference. Commenting on why Americans did not respond emotionally to the plight of Rwandans with the same intensity as they did following September 11th , she writes, “suffering Rwandans could not be seen as part of the larger ‘us’ for whose fate we trembled” (17). Nussbaum is of the belief that, among other causal factors, a sense of connectivity and commonality is required between the victim and the onlooker for compassion to be aroused within the onlooker. If this sense is lacking, the result will be a relative lack of compassion, which is one important element of indifference.

Bruce Robbins, author of the essay “The Sweatshop Sublime,” would argue against Nussbaum’s point that a degree of closeness is required for any feeling of compassion to develop. Compassion, Robbins claims, can be aroused regardless of differences between the victim and the onlooker; it is simply the ability of compassion to affect action that is affected by the degree of closeness. One might experience a “moment of consciousness,” as Robbins describes it, in which one grasps the complexity of the division of labor and the inequality it engenders, but “this moment of consciousness will not be converted into action” (84). While compassion or pity can be felt for people no matter their nationality and social status, the crux of the issue is a different “tyranny of the close over the distant” (86). The problem, ultimately, as Robbins explains, is “that global commitments can emerge more or less organically and continuously only from local, personal, familial commitments” (91). Though we may sympathize with the plight of others, our willingness to assist them will only be an outgrowth of more personal, tangible issues that we have committed ourselves to resolving. Thus, in Robbins’s terms it would seem indifference is not a lack of compassion, but rather a lack of action.

Though these are two very distinct aspects of the definition of indifference, it is important to note that either of these elements could produce the same effect. A lack of compassion will never lead to action, and compassion without action is of no help to the sufferer. Despite their differences, Robbins and Nussbaum can at least agree on what causes indifference: a certain rift between the onlooker and the victim. A sense that the victim is different or distant ultimately leads to a lack of compassion (in Nussbaum’s definition) or a lack of action (in Robbins’ definition), both of which leave the victim helpless.

Wiesel, representing the approach to indifference of generations past that have learned from history and experience, could respond to this idea with several pieces of contradictory evidence. Most notably, how would the citizens of Poland and Germany who claimed to bear no hatred for the victims of Nazi persecution fit into this definition? Were these not their fellow citizens? Yet so many of them did not speak up or act and went on living their lives showing no signs of sympathy for the suffering of others in their midst. In the city of Lublin, Poland, people literally lived with a death camp in their backyard; if indifference can exist under such circumstances, then how can we define it as a product of distance? Of course Nussbaum might retort that perhaps these people did feel compassion, though they did not show it, and Robbins would say that the lack of action in this situation stemmed from a fear for their own lives. If this is true, then Wiesel would want to know what there is to say for the response of the United States, which presumably was not afraid of the Nazis. While the argument of distance and difference might apply, does it still hold in the case of the St. Louis , for instance? As Wiesel explains, the St. Louis was a ship that requested refuge in the U.S., among other countries, and “its human cargo—maybe 1,000 Jews—was turned back to Nazi Germany” (4). Given a blatant opportunity to prevent the suffering of one thousand people that were figuratively knocking at the country’s door, the U.S. government sent them back with full knowledge of where it was sending them. Distance was most definitely not an issue, and one might argue that difference is not a factor when one is in direct contact with the victim. Then, according to Robbins and Nussbaum, why was the U.S. government so obviously indifferent?

One might be inclined to say that this question is irrelevant to Robbins’s and Nussbaum’s definitions of indifference altogether. It seems they are explaining the causes of indifference on the individual level, while Wiesel seeks to understand its causes on the national level. Yet even Robbins and Nussbaum equate these two realms. Though they are both clearly analyzing personal responses to certain issues, they frame their analyses in the context of discussions that can only be understood on a national level. Nussbaum wants to know what factors caused the response, or lack thereof, of Americans to the genocide in Rwanda. This question, while relevant on the individual level, only bears significance in the context of the national; no one could realistically expect the individual to affect the situation in Rwanda, whereas the collection of every individual response into what becomes the national one may have an impact. The same holds true with regards to Robbins’s discussion of sweatshop labor. While it may be necessary to examine the causes of indifference on the individual level in order to fully understand the logic behind it, such an analysis is only important in that it leads to an understanding of the concept on a larger scale. Thus, the question that Wiesel poses about the U.S. government’s response to the pleas of the St. Louis passengers is unequivocally relevant to Robbins’s and Nussbaum’s understandings of indifference on the individual level as well.

Wiesel, in attempting to decipher the causes of indifference, asks, “Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one’s sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?” (2). Robbins, explaining the aftermath of the moment of consciousness of the division of labor, answers this question as directly as possible: “You have a cup of tea or coffee. You get dressed. Just as suddenly, just as shockingly, you are returned to yourself in all your everyday smallness” (85). The reason, according to Robbins, that compassion will not necessarily lead to action is because to worry about the division of labor that produced your shirt or cup of coffee means you will not be able to fully enjoy those things. Nussbaum agrees with this idea as well, commenting on our relative lack of compassion for things that do not affect us: “There are so many things closer to home to distract us, and these things are likely to be so much more thoroughly woven into our scheme of goals” (16). Essentially, Nussbaum is of the opinion that the capacities for concern we have for our own happiness and the happiness of others are mutually exclusive, and ultimately we have to choose one over the other. The fact that our personal goals are a more immediate distraction and a more integral aspect of our daily lives prevents us from feeling concern for the suffering of others to the degree that we can or should. The consensus here seems to be that, if nothing else, indifference is the result of a very natural desire to maintain one’s own happiness. This approach might help explain the response of the U.S. to the request of the St. Louis passengers: granting one group refuge might have inspired others to make a similar journey, thereby sparking an influx in immigration that would be easier for the government not to have to worry about or deal with. Indifference is a product of values that prioritize personal happiness over the greater good.

Having established the root cause of indifference, it seems appropriate to analyze its effects. Implicit within both Nussbaum’s and Robbins’s essays, in that they only discuss the causes of compassion and action, or lack thereof, is the widespread idea that lack of compassion and lack of action effectively leave the situation static and unchanged. According to Nussbaum, if we are not concerned for the fate of suffering Rwandans, then they will simply continue to suffer; according to Robbins, if we do not respond to the plight of sweatshop laborers, then their plight will remain. Wiesel, however, emphatically disputes this notion that indifference is merely neutral. He argues, “Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten” (3). The effect of indifference, in Wiesel’s view, is twofold: it aids the oppressor by giving him the necessary means and the confidence to continue what he is doing, and it worsens the victim’s suffering by diminishing his hope. The former effect is highlighted by the St. Louis incident in that the U.S. literally sent the Nazis one thousand more people to persecute and murder as a direct result of their indifference. This sheds light upon a very relevant distinction between the notion of lack of compassion and the notion of indifference: lack of compassion seems to imply neutrality as Robbins and Nussbaum would like to have it; something is missing, therefore no effect will be produced. Indifference, however, is an emotion in its own right; it is an inactively active response with real consequences that are rarely positive.

This important distinction captures within it a true understanding of the problem of indifference. It is not, as Nussbaum and Robbins seem to imply, a simple lack of compassion or action to complement compassion, both of which lead to the same result; rather, it is a helping hand to the oppressor. It is a truly active response. This being the case, it seems all the more necessary to directly deal with the issue by stopping it at the source. The driving force behind indifference is the one idea that Wiesel, Nussbaum, and Robbins all seem to be able to agree on: the need to ignore the plight of others in order to maintain one’s own happiness. But given the already proven results of indifference, is it feasible to say that the gain in happiness one receives from being indifferent outweighs the consequences? Is our ability to enjoy trivial pleasures to a slightly greater degree more important than the suffering and lives of so many? History has taught its lesson and offered its testimony; the only question that remains is whether we will take heed.

WORKS CITED

Nussbaum, Martha C. “Compassion and Terror.” Kristeller Memorial Lecture . Columbia University, New York, New York. April 2002.

Robbins, Bruce. “The Sweatshop Sublime.” PMLA . 117 (2002): 84-97.

Wiesel, Elie “The Perils of Indifference.” Millennium Lecture Series . White House, Washington D.C. 12 April 1999.

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The novel opens with Meursault 's indifference at his mother's funeral and the consternation it provokes among the people around him. This dynamic recurs much more starkly at the trial, where the account of Meursault's "insensitivity" towards his mother 's death proves to be what ultimately turns the jury against him. People's surprise and dismay at novel's start implied they were judging Meursault based on his indifferent attitude. The court scene in the second half of the novel makes those judgments explicit.

Meursault is equally indifferent towards Marie , who, of all the characters, shows him the most warmth. Although he is fond of her and enjoys her company, he is indifferent towards her essential being and is not in love with her as a unique individual. When Marie asks Meursault whether he wants to marry her: "I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't love her…She just wanted to know if I would have accepted the same proposal from another woman, with whom I was involved in the same way. I said, 'Sure.'" In prison later on, he fantasizes about women without imagining Marie specifically. Conversely, when Marie stops writing, he is not at all disturbed to imagine she may have taken up with a new man or be dead.

Meursault's emotional indifference contributes to his general passivity. Lacking goals and desires of his own, Meursault rarely seems to care how events turn out and acts simply to satisfy his immediate physical needs, allowing his life to flow by as it will. His passive people-watching from the balcony in Chapter 2 provides a possible model for his life philosophy. He stands by and observes others without acting. Even the crucial act of his murder is described in passive terms: "the trigger gave." As the prosecutor elaborates, Meursault's passive indifference threatens society because it can't be assimilated into social life (a life premised on care for relationships, careers, friendships, family, etc.). Thus, Meursault himself is the primary "stranger" of the title – he is a stranger to the social fabric of his world.

Meursault begins and ends the novel in a state of indifference, yet his indifference at novel's end is achieved after enduring the grueling frustration he experiences in prison trying to outsmart "the machinery of justice." Where his indifference at novel's start seemed like numb apathy, his indifference at the end seems to be a kind of enlightenment. He embraces indifference as an active choice, opening himself to the indifference of the world itself. The English translations of the novel differ critically in their characterization of this larger indifference. The first translation by Stuart Gilbert translates, "I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe," while the second by Joseph Laredo translates, "I laid my heart open to the gentle indifference of the universe." Matthew Ward's most recent translation reads, "I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world." Still, despite their differences, each of these translations conveys the world's indifference as harmless, as something to embrace and be "happy" amidst, rather than something to despise and fear.

Indifference and Passivity ThemeTracker

Indifference and Passivity Quotes in The Stranger

For the first few days [Maman] was at the home she cried a lot. But that was because she wasn't used to it. A few months later and she would have cried if she'd been taken out. She was used to it. That's partly why I didn't go there much this past year. And also because it took up my Sunday – not to mention the trouble of getting to the bus, buying tickets, and spending two hours traveling.

Once we were dressed, she seemed very surprised to see I was wearing a black tie and asked me if I was in mourning. I told her Maman had died. She wanted to know how long ago, so I said, "Yesterday." She gave a little start but didn't say anything. I felt like telling her it wasn't my fault, but I stopped myself because I remembered that I'd already said that to my boss. It didn't mean anything. Besides, you always feel a little guilty.

…[Marie] asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad.

Then [my boss] asked me if I wasn't interested in a change of life. I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn't dissatisfied with mine here at all. He looked upset and told me that I never gave him a straight answer, that I had no ambition, and that that was disastrous in business. So I went back to work. I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.

That evening, Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't love her. "So why marry me, then?" she said. I explained to her that it didn't really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married. Besides, she was the one who was doing the asking and all I was saying was yes. Then she pointed out that marriage was a serious thing. I said, "No"...She just wanted to know if I would have accepted the same proposal from another woman, with whom I was involved in the same way. I said, "Sure."

The sun was the same as it had been the day I'd buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin. It was this burning, which I couldn't stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn't get the sun off me by stepping forward. But I took a step, one step, forward.

It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

The investigators had learned that I had "shown insensitivity" the day of Maman's funeral. "You understand," my lawyer said, "it's a little embarrassing for me to have to ask you this. But it's very important. And it will be a strong argument for the prosecution if I can't come up with some answers." He wanted me to help him. He asked if I had felt any sadness that day. The question caught me by surprise and it seemed to me that I would have been very embarrassed if I'd had to ask it. Nevertheless I answered that I had pretty much lost the habit of analyzing myself and that it was hard for me to tell him what he wanted to know. I probably did love Maman, but that didn't mean anything…I explained to him…that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.

He asked me if I could say that that day I had held back my natural feelings. I said, "No, because it's not true." He gave me a strange look, as if he found me slightly disgusting…I pointed out to him that none of this had anything to do with my case, but all he said was that it was obvious I had never had any dealings with the law.

But he cut me off and urged me one last time, drawing himself up to his full height and asking me if I believed in God. I said no. He sat down indignantly. He said it was impossible; all men believed in God, even those who turn their backs on him. That was his belief, and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless. "Do you want my life to be meaningless?" he shouted. As far as I could see, it didn't have anything to do with me, and I told him so. But from across the table he had already thrust the crucifix in my face and was screaming irrationally…

There were others worse off than me. Anyway, it was one of Maman's ideas…that after a while you could get used to anything.

Of course I had read that eventually you wind up losing track of time in prison. But it hadn't meant much to me when I'd read it. I hadn't understood how days could be both long and short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. Only the words "yesterday" and "tomorrow" still had any meaning for me. One day when the guard told me that I'd been in for five months, I believed it, but I didn't understand it. For me it was one and the same unending day that was unfolding in my cell and the same thing I was trying to do.

Come now, is my client on trial for burying his mother or for killing a man?

But were their two speeches so different after all? My lawyer raised his arms and pleaded guilty, but with an explanation. The prosecutor waved his hands and proclaimed my guilt, but without an explanation…In a way, they seemed to be arguing the case as if it had nothing to do with me…There were times when I felt like breaking in on all of them and saying, "Wait a minute! Who's the accused here? Being the accused counts for something. And I have something to say!" But on second thought, I didn't have anything to say.

But everybody knows life isn't worth living. Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn't much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living – and for thousands of years …At that point, what would disturb my train of thought was the terrifying leap I would feel my heart take at the idea of having twenty more years of life ahead of me. But I simply had to stifle it by imagining what I'd be thinking in twenty years when it would all come down to the same thing anyway… Therefore (and the difficult thing was not to lose sight of all the reasoning that went into this "therefore"), I had to accept the rejection of my appeal. Then and only then would I have the right…to consider the alternative hypothesis: I was pardoned…It would take all my strength to quiet my heart, to be rational. In order to make my resignation to the first hypothesis more plausible, I had to be level-headed about this one as well.

Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brother?...Everybody was privileged…The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself – so like a brother, really – I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.

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Justifying the principle of indifference

Jon williamson.

Philosophy Department, SECL, University of Kent, Kent, CT2 7NF UK

This paper presents a new argument for the Principle of Indifference. This argument can be thought of in two ways: as a pragmatic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, or as an epistemic argument, justifying the principle as needing to hold in order to minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy. The question arises as to which interpretation is preferable. I show that the epistemic argument contradicts Evidentialism and suggest that the relative plausibility of Evidentialism provides grounds to prefer the pragmatic interpretation. If this is right, it extends to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for the Principle of Indifference, and also to a general preference for pragmatic arguments for other norms of Bayesian epistemology.

Many Bayesians are committed to some version or other of the Principle of Indifference, which holds that in certain situations one’s degrees of belief should be equivocal. Section  1 introduces three such versions in order of increasing strength. In Section  2 , I develop a consequentialist argument for the strongest version. This can be thought of as motivating the principle in terms of its pragmatic consequences: if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss, then one should satisfy the Principle of Indifference. As I explain in Section  3 , an analogous argument can be constructed to motivate the strongest version of the principle in terms of its epistemic consequences: if one is to minimise worst-case expected epistemic inaccuracy, then one should satisfy the Principle of Indifference. In Section  4 , we shall see that this sort of epistemic consequentialist argument conflicts with Evidentialism, which holds that one’s beliefs are epistemically rational if and only if they are compatible with one’s evidence. In Section  5 I argue that this is a worry not only for the epistemic justification presented in Section  3 , but also for any epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference: one should not be able to provide an argument for a Principle of Indifference purely in terms of its epistemic consequences, because the Principle of Indifference goes well beyond the evidence, and epistemic considerations should at most motivate conforming to the evidence. I argue that this concern also calls into question epistemic arguments for other Bayesian norms, such as Probabilism (the view that the strengths of one’s beliefs should be probabilities). For this reason, Bayesians are on safer ground motivating norms in terms of their pragmatic consequences, rather than their epistemic consequences.

Three versions of the principle of indifference

Whilst radical subjectivist Bayesians would want to maintain that there are very few constraints on rational belief and would reject the Principle of Indifference (e.g., de Finetti 1937 ), many Bayesians are committed to some version or other of the Principle of Indifference. Objective Bayesians often explicitly endorse norms on belief which imply the Principle of Indifference, such as the Maximum Entropy Principle (Jaynes 1957 ; Williamson 2010 ). Moreover, as Hawthorne et al. ( 2017 ) argue, Bayesians who endorse any principle which requires calibration of degrees of belief to some probabilities of which one has evidence—e.g., the Principal Principle, the Reflection Principle, or any testimony principle which posits deference to expert authorities—are also committed to a version of the Principle of Indifference.

The Principle of Indifference has been formulated in many ways. In this paper we shall consider three versions, which will be introduced in this section in order of increasing strength.

We shall assume the following context in this section. First, we shall focus on a particular agent and suppose that there is a most fine-grained set Ω of mutually exclusive and exhaustive propositions that this agent can entertain or express: these are the agent’s basic possibilities . Any other expressible proposition can be thought of as a subset of Ω, the subset of possibilities in which that proposition is true. For example, a simple artificial agent may be speculating about the results of an experiment with three possible outcomes, ω 1 , ω 2 , ω 3 respectively, in which case we might have Ω = { ω 1 , ω 2 , ω 3 }; if ω 1 is a positive outcome then the proposition that outcome is not positive can be thought of as the subset { ω 2 , ω 3 }⊆Ω. Expressible propositions can thus be represented by members of the power set Ω of Ω. The Principle of Indifference is well known to lead to complications or inconsistencies on infinite domains, and its application there is very controversial (see, e.g., Keynes 1921 , Chapter 4). For this reason, we restrict our attention here to the case in which Ω is finite. Having said that, it is worth pointing out that the principles of indifference which we discuss here can be extended in a consistent way to the case in which an agent’s language can be modelled as a first-order predicate language and the (infinitely many) basic possibilities represent truth assignments to the atomic propositions of the language—see Williamson ( 2017 ). To keep things simple, we shall suppose that the agent in question cannot express higher-order probability propositions—propositions about chances or about degrees of belief—if she could, we would have to consider a variety of further norms on degree of belief and specify how they interact with the Principle of Indifference.

Suppose that available evidence E constrains the agent’s belief function P , which represents her degrees of belief in the various propositions that she can express, to lie in some convex set 𝔼 of probability functions. 1 For instance, evidence E might consist of a set of expressible propositions; in this case, E constrains belief function P to lie in the convex subset E of probability functions which give probability 1 to each proposition in E . To return to our simple example, if E contains only the proposition that the experiment did not yield a positive outcome, { ω 2 , ω 3 }, then 𝔼 = { P : P ( ω 2 ) + P ( ω 3 ) = 1} and 𝔼 is convex. In general, however, we shall not assume that the available evidence E consists entirely of propositions that the agent can express, i.e., propositions in the domain Ω of the belief function P . For example, evidence E might alternatively consist of evidence of chances, which, we have assumed, is not expressible in the sense outlined above. If E determines just that the chance function P ∗ lies in convex 𝔼, a Bayesian who endorses some form of calibration to chances will want to say that the agent’s belief function P should also lie in E . Thus if E says that P ∗ ({ ω 2 , ω 3 }) = 0.9, so P ∗ ∈ 𝔼 = { P : P ( ω 2 ) + P ( ω 3 ) = 0.9}, then arguably also P ∈ 𝔼, which is a convex set of probability functions. If E is inconsistent, we shall take 𝔼 = ℙ , the whole space of probability functions on Ω.

Let us now turn to the first of the three versions of the Principle of Indifference that we shall consider in this paper. This first version says that if there is no evidence at all then one should believe each basic possibility to the same extent:

We shall call the probability function that gives the same probability to each basic possibility the equivocator function and denote it by P = :

PI1 is visualised in Fig.  1 . Here there are three basic possibilities, Ω = { ω 1 , ω 2 , ω 3 }. The triangle and its interior represent the set of probability functions: each vertex represents the function that gives probability 1 to the corresponding basic possibility and probability 0 to each of the other two; an edge represents the set of probability functions that give probability 0 to the basic possibility at the opposite vertex; all other probability functions are in the interior. If there is no evidence, E = ∅ , then 𝔼 is the entire set of probability functions on Ω, and PI1 says that P should be set to the equivocator function, the mid-point of the triangle, which gives probability 13 to each basic possibility.

Visualisation of PI1

The second version of the Principle of Indifference that we shall consider says that if the evidence treats each basic possibility symmetrically, then one should believe each such possibility to the same extent:

• PI2 : If E is invariant under permutations of the ω ∈Ω, then P = P = . 2

This implies PI1, since if E is empty then it is invariant under permutations of the basic possibilities. PI2 is depicted in Fig.  2 . Here 𝔼 is a strict subset of the set of probability functions, invariant under 120 ∘ rotations.

Visualisation of PI2

The third version of the Principle of Indifference says that if it is compatible with the evidence to believe each basic possibility to the same extent, then one should do so:

• PI3 : If P = ∈ 𝔼 then P = P = .

This principle, depicted in Fig.  3 is stronger still, implying PI2 and thereby also PI1. 3

Visualisation of PI3

Pragmatic justification: controlling loss

Having introduced some principles of indifference, in this section I shall develop a consequentialist argument for PI3 which appeals to some technical results of Landes and Williamson ( 2013 ). In this section, PI3 will be explicitly motivated in terms of its pragmatic consequences: it turns out that satisfying PI3 is advantageous in that it minimises worst-case expected loss. Later, in Section  3 , we shall see that an argument with the same formal structure can be recast in epistemic consequentialist terms.

The argument presented here does more than justify the Principle of Indifference; it also justifies other Bayesian norms. In particular, it justifies Probabilism—the claim that P should be a probability function—and a calibration norm, which says that P should be calibrated to chances. Thus in this section, we shall not presume Probabilism, nor shall we assume that P should be calibrated to chances, as we did in Section  1 . Instead, we shall derive these norms. Let E be the set of evidentially-compatible chance functions : evidence determines that the chance function P ∗ lies within set 𝔼 ⊆ ℙ , and 𝔼 is the smallest such set (there is no strict subset 𝔼 ′ ⊂ 𝔼 such that the evidence determines that P ∗ ∈ 𝔼 ′ ). 4 I shall argue that the agent’s degrees of belief should be representable by a function P within the set E . P is thus a probability function and is also calibrated to chances insofar as there is evidence of chances. In addition, we shall also see that P should satisfy PI3.

In this section we assume, purely for ease of exposition, that E is closed (i.e., contains its limit points) as well as convex. As before, we presuppose a finite set Ω of basic possibilities, e.g., Ω = { ω 1 , ω 2 , ω 3 }, and we construe expressible propositions as subsets of Ω, e.g., F = { ω 2 , ω 3 }. A partition π of propositions is a set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive subsets of Ω. For example, {{ ω 1 },{ ω 2 , ω 3 }} is a partition of propositions. π will denote the set of all partitions of propositions.

We shall suppose that an agent’s degrees of belief can be represented by a function b e l : Ω→ ℝ ≥ 0 which attaches a non-negative real number to each expressible proposition. For example, one such belief function might set b e l ({ ω 1 }) = 6, b e l ({ ω 2 , ω 3 }) = 9,…. The set of belief functions is a much wider class of functions than the set of probability functions. I shall argue that, in order to minimise worst-case expected loss, the agent’s belief function should be a probability function, in E , which satisfies the Principle of Indifference PI3.

Normalisation

First, as a technical convenience, we shall normalise the belief functions. Roughly speaking, we divide all degrees of belief by the maximum amount of belief distributed amongst a partition of propositions. More precisely, for M = max π ∈π∑ F ∈ π b e l ( F ) we normalise belief function b e l by considering instead belief function B : Ω→[0,1] defined by:

For example, if b e l ({ ω 1 }) = 6, b e l ({ ω 2 , ω 3 }) = 9, b e l ({ ω 2 }) = 12, b e l ({ ω 3 }) = 12,… and the partition of propositions {{ ω 1 },{ ω 2 },{ ω 3 }} is given maximum belief, M = 30, then b e l would be normalised to give B ({ ω 1 }) = 0.2, B ({ ω 2 , ω 3 }) = 0.3, B ({ ω 2 }) = 0.4, B ({ ω 3 }) = 0.4,…. The symbol B will denote the set of all normalised belief functions. For each such function B ,

in virtue of the procedure used to normalise B . Note that the set ℙ of all probability functions P : Ω→[0,1] is a subset of B , since,

Thus if B ({ ω 1 }) = 0.2, B ({ ω 2 , ω 3 }) = 0.3 then B is not a probability function. The task is to show that whilst in general a belief function B may lie outside the space of probability functions (Fig.  4 ), in order to minimise worst-case expected loss the agent’s belief function should lie inside 𝔼 ⊆ ℙ and should be the equivocator function P = , if the equivocator function is in E . This will establish PI3.

Belief function B outside the space ℙ of probability functions

Next, we need to be more specific about the notion of loss under consideration. Suppose the agent is not aware of the choices she will need to make, and is thus not aware of the actual losses (or gains) which will be incurred by her degrees of belief. What should she expect of her losses? Let L ( F , B ) denote the loss (aka disutility) one should anticipate will be incurred by adopting belief function B when F turns out to be true. 5 We shall interpret this as the loss specific to F , i.e., the loss in isolation from losses incurred by B on other propositions which may be implied by F or which may imply F . We shall suppose:

• L1 : One should not anticipate any loss when one fully believes a proposition that turns out to be true: L ( F , B ) = 0 if B ( F ) = 1. (Fully believing the truth leads to the best outcome.)
• L2 : One should anticipate that the loss L ( F , B ) will strictly increase as B ( F ) decreases from 1 towards 0. (The less credence one gives to the truth, the worse the outcome.)
• L3 : L ( F , B ) should depend only on B ( F ), not on B ( F ′ ) for F ′ ≠ F . (This represents the interpretation of L ( F , B ) as the loss incurred on F in isolation from that incurred on other propositions.)
• L4 : Losses should be presumed to be additive when the space Ω of basic possibilities is generated by independent subspaces: whenever ω ∈Ω takes the form ω 1 ∧ ω 2 where ω 1 ∈Ω 1 and ω 2 ∈Ω 2 , B (Ω) = 1, and Ω 1 and Ω 2 are independent in the sense that B ( F 1 × F 2 ) = B ( F 1 ) B ( F 2 ) for all F 1 × F 2 = { ω 1 ∧ ω 2 : ω 1 ∈ F 1 , ω 2 ∈ F 2 } , then L ( F 1 × F 2 , B ) = L 1 ( F 1 , B ⇂ Ω 1 ) + L 2 ( F 2 , B ⇂ Ω 2 ) , where L 1 and L 2 are the loss functions on Ω 1 and Ω 2 respectively.

It turns out that these conditions force the loss function to be logarithmic:

for some positive constant k (Landes and Williamson 2013 , Theorem 1).

Expected loss

Next, let us consider expected loss. If the chance function is P ∗ , what is the expected loss incurred by B over all the expressible propositions? A function which measures expected loss is called a scoring rule . 6 In fact, there are a range of plausible scoring rules. For example, both the following measures seem equally reasonable:

Since there is no single scoring rule that stands out as being most appropriate, we shall consider a whole class of scoring rules, indexed by a function g : π→ ℝ ≥ 0 which attaches a non-negative weight to each partition:

S π corresponds to the case in which each partition receives weight 1; S Ω corresponds to the case in which each partition of size 2 receives weight 1 and all other partitions get weight 0. 7

We shall impose two conditions on g . First, g is inclusive : every proposition F is in some partition that is given positive weight (otherwise, that proposition will not contribute to the score). Second, g is unbiased : it is invariant under permutations of the basic possibilities ω ∈Ω (otherwise, some possibilities are singled out a priori as more important than others). The weighting functions for S π and S Ω satisfy these two conditions.

Given the anticipated loss function set out above, we have that

Worst-case expected loss

Now, the precise chance function P ∗ will usually not be known, so the expected loss is not fully accessible to the agent. The evidence only determines that P ∗ lies in the set E of evidentially-compatible chance functions. The evidence does, however, permit us to calculate the worst-case expected loss,

We can thus ask, which belief function B would incur minimum worst-case expected loss? I.e., which B achieves

It turns out (see Landes and Williamson 2013 , Theorem 2) that the belief function B ∈ B that incurs minimum worst-case expected loss is the probability function in E which has maximum generalised entropy :

This is depicted in Fig.  5 . Since B ∈ 𝔼 ⊆ ℙ , this establishes that the optimal belief function B is a probability function (i.e., Probabilism) and that the optimal belief function B is in the set E of evidentially-compatible chance functions (Calibration).

The optimum belief function B is the calibrated probability function with maximum generalised entropy

Moreover, the equivocator function is the probability function in ℙ that has maximum generalised entropy (Landes and Williamson 2013 , Corollary 6). Hence, if the equivocator function is in E then it is bound to be the belief function that minimises worst-case expected loss. This establishes that if P = ∈ 𝔼 then the optimal belief function B is the equivocator function P = . This is PI3, the strongest of the three principles of indifference. Note that PI3 still holds even if we drop the assumptions of closure and convexity of the set E of evidentially-compatible chance functions (Landes and Williamson 2013 , Theorem 3).

Epistemic justification: reducing inaccuracy

The above argument for the Principle of Indifference sought to justify it in terms of its pragmatic consequences: PI3 needs to hold if one is to minimise worst-case expected loss. Interestingly, exactly the same formal argument can be cast in terms of epistemic consequences. The only change involves interpreting the function L as a measure of epistemic inaccuracy, instead of a loss function. Thus our four desiderata become:

• E1 : L ( F , B ) = 0 if B ( F ) = 1. (Fully believing the truth yields no inaccuracy.)
• E2 : Inaccuracy L ( F , B ) strictly increases as B ( F ) decreases from 1 towards 0. (The less credence one gives to the truth, the greater the inaccuracy.)
• E3 : Inaccuracy L ( F , B ) depends only on B ( F ), not on B ( F ′ ) for F ′ ≠ F . (This represents the interpretation of L ( F , B ) as the inaccuracy of one’s degree of belief in F , in isolation from inaccuracy on other propositions.)
• E4 : Inaccuracy is additive when the space Ω of basic possibilities is generated by independent subspaces: whenever ω ∈Ω takes the form ω 1 ∧ ω 2 where ω 1 ∈Ω 1 and ω 2 ∈Ω 2 , B (Ω) = 1, and Ω 1 and Ω 2 are independent in the sense that P ∗ ( F 1 × F 2 ) = P ∗ ( F 1 ) P ∗ ( F 2 ) for all F 1 × F 2 = { ω 1 ∧ ω 2 : ω 1 ∈ F 1 , ω 2 ∈ F 2 }, then L ( F 1 × F 2 , B ) = L 1 ( F 1 , B ⇂ Ω 1 ) + L 2 ( F 2 , B ⇂ Ω 2 ) , where L 1 and L 2 are the inaccuracy functions on Ω 1 and Ω 2 respectively.

The only formal difference here is that E4 appeals to objective independence, i.e., independence with respect to the chance function P ∗ , rather than subjective independence with respect to the belief function B .

Everything else follows through as before, but under an epistemic interpretation rather than a pragmatic interpretation. The four conditions set out above force the inaccuracy measure to be logarithmic:

A scoring rule now measures expected inaccuracy, rather than expected loss. As before, we consider consider a whole class of scoring rules generated by the inclusive and unbiased weighting functions. For any such weighting function, the (normalised) belief function which minimises worst-case expected inaccuracy is a probability function, in the set E of functions that are calibrated to chances, that has maximum generalised entropy. In particular, this optimal belief function satisfies PI3. The Principle of Indifference can thus be motivated in terms of epistemic rationality: supposing that epistemic rationality requires minimising worst-case expected inaccuracy, degrees of belief must then satisfy principle of indifference PI3.

We thus appear to be spoilt for choice when justifying the Principle of Indifference. The formal argument for the Principle of Indifference can be given either a pragmatic reading, which appeals to the notion of anticipated loss, or an epistemic reading, which appeals to the notion of inaccuracy. The question arises, should one prefer an epistemic justification over a pragmatic justification or vice versa?

Rather than evaluate the details of the particular argument presented above, I will suggest a general answer to this question, in the hope that a general answer will remain pertinent should new pragmatic or epistemic arguments for the Principle of Indifference be put forward in the future. The answer that I will present is that the pragmatic line of argument should be preferred, because of an inconsistency between the epistemic line of argument and Evidentialism.

Evidentialism

In this section we shall explore the Evidentialism thesis and we shall see that this thesis is inconsistent with the epistemic line of argument presented above.

Consider the following principle: one’s beliefs are rational if and only if they are compatible with one’s evidence. There are compelling reasons to think that the ‘if’ is too strong here: rationality seems to demand more than compatibility with evidence. For example, suppose that a patient has evidence that the chance that she will survive her cancer ( s ) given a certain genetic profile ( g ) is 0.8, i.e., P ∗ ( s | g ) = 0.8, and that the chance she has genetic profile g is 0.7, i.e., P ∗ ( g ) = 0.7. Regarding survival, these two facts imply that P ∗ ( s ) ∈ [0.56,0.86]. 8 Assuming that one should calibrate degrees of belief to chances, insofar as one has evidence of them, the patient should believe s to some degree within the same interval, P ( s ) ∈ [0.56,0.86]. Now, it is known that a high degree of belief in survival after cancer influences the chance of survival itself (e.g., Soler-Vila et al. 2005 ). It is thus in the patient’s interest that she adopts a degree of belief in s that is at the higher end of the range. So there is a sense in which the patient’s degree of belief would be irrational were it not sufficiently close to 0.86: rationality requires more than mere compatibility with the evidence, because a degree of belief of 0.56 is compatible with the evidence yet apparently irrational. This sense of rationality is pragmatic however—it is motivated by the need to survive, rather than the quest for truth. There is nothing to say that a higher degree of belief is epistemically more appropriate than a lower degree of belief. After all, just as higher degrees of belief lead to higher chances of survival, so do lower degrees of belief lead to lower chances of survival—we may suppose here that all degrees of belief within the interval [0.56,0.86] are equally well calibrated to the chances. 9

This sort of example, which shows that there can be pragmatic grounds for going beyond the evidence, suggests a reformulation of the above principle:

Having stated the Evidentialism principle, let us consider some points of clarification.

When formulating evidentialism, ‘epistemically justified’ is sometimes used instead of ‘epistemically rational’. Thus Conee and Feldman ( 2004 , p. 83) provide the following formulation of evidentialism: ‘Doxastic attitude D towards proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if having D towards p fits the evidence S has at t .’ The two terms are often used interchangeably, although ‘epistemically rational’ could be interpreted as a slightly more permissive classification than ‘epistemically justified’: that beliefs are justified suggests that there exists some justification that rules them in as appropriate beliefs, whereas beliefs might be classified as rational just in case there are no grounds for ruling them out as irrational. Here we shall stick with ‘epistemically rational’, which is more familiar in the Bayesian context. I use ‘one’s beliefs’ to denote a belief state—perhaps a set of propositions in the case of qualitative beliefs or a belief function in the case of Bayesian degrees of belief.

DeRose ( 2000 , §1) notes that there is a sense in which one ought not believe a proposition unless one believes it on the basis of one’s evidence—i.e., one ought not believe it for mistaken reasons, even if that belief is, in fact, compatible with one’s evidence. As DeRose ( 2000 ) suggests, this consideration points to a distinction between different kinds of ‘oughts’: a strong notion which presumes correct ‘basing’ and the weaker notion of the Evidentialism thesis as stated above. The distinction can be put thus: one rationally believes if and only if one’s beliefs are rational (i.e., one’s belief state is compatible with one’s evidence) and that belief state is properly believed on the basis of one’s evidence. The stronger sense of rationality is clearly a different sense than that employed in the standard Bayesian notion of rational degree of belief. The Bayesian notion is oblivious to the actual genesis of beliefs, caring only whether the values in question are appropriate in the circumstances.

There is a further ambiguity that needs to be addressed. Baehr ( 2009 ) suggests that, whilst there is a sense of epistemic rationality in which Evidentialism is true, there is another sense in which the epistemic rationality of one’s beliefs depends on whether the gathering of evidence was defective. According to this stronger ‘ought’, one ought to gather enough evidence and gather it correctly, as well as ensure that beliefs are appropriate given that evidence. This is a rather complex ‘ought’: the individual who deliberately or negligently sees no evil and hears no evil may be both epistemically defective (as is someone who sees and hears evil but fails to believe it) and morally defective (as is someone who sees, hears and believes evil but fails to speak out against it). Again, there is no need for the Bayesian to deny this stronger ‘ought’—it suffices to observe that the Bayesian is primarily interested in the weaker sense of epistemic rationality. As in the case of believing on the basis of the evidence, it is plausible that an adequate account of the stronger ‘ought’ will need to invoke an adequate account of the weaker notion as a component, so Evidentialism will be at least part of the story.

It is important to note that Evidentialism as stated above is simply a biconditional claim, a characterisation of rational belief rather than an analysis of it. It is therefore important to distinguish Evidentialism from an evidentialist epistemology, i.e., a detailed epistemological theory under which Evidentialism turns out to be true. Such an epistemological theory would have as a minimum to give detailed accounts of: rationality; the distinction between epistemic and pragmatic rationality; doxastic deliberation; compatibility; the nature of evidence; and what it is to possess evidence. Work towards an evidentialist epistemology from an internalist point of view can be found in Conee and Feldman ( 2004 ), Dougherty ( 2011 ) and McCain ( 2014 ), for example, and Williamson ( 2000 ) develops an evidentialist epistemology from the externalist perspective (see Williamson 2000 , §9.8). Clearly, one does not need to provide a detailed evidentialist epistemology in order to advocate Evidentialism.

Bayesian Evidentialism

Whilst advocates of Evidentialism are not bound to provide a detailed theory of each of the terms that occur in the Evidentialism claim, it is incumbent upon proponents of the claim to clarify when it applies. In particular, it is important to be clear about what a belief state is and when a belief state is compatible with evidence. Given our concern with norms of Bayesian rational degree of belief in this paper, we shall explicate Evidentialism by appealing to the concepts set out in Sections  1 and  2 . Thus a belief state is construed as a (normalised) belief function B and a belief function B is compatible with evidence just in case B ∈ E, the set of evidentially-compatible chance functions.

The motivation behind this explication of compatibility with the evidence appeals to the idea that degrees of belief should be calibrated to chances (a principle common to both the pragmatic approach and the epistemic approach under consideration here). Recall that 𝔼 is defined in Section  2 as the smallest set of probability functions that contains the chance function P ∗ , as far as can be determined by the evidence E . If beliefs should be calibrated to chances then a belief function is compatible with evidence just when it is calibrated to a chance function that is compatible with evidence. This yields the claim that B is compatible with the evidence if and only if B ∈ E. This claim can be motivated more precisely as follows.

First we shall see that if B ∉E then B is incompatible with evidence. Suppose first that E is a set of expressible propositions—propositions that are not statements about chances. Then 𝔼 is the set of all probability functions that give maximal probability to propositions in E , 𝔼 = { P ∈ ℙ : P ( 𝜃 ) = 1 for all 𝜃 ∈ E }. Now if B ∉E then there is some 𝜃 ∈ E such that B ( 𝜃 ) < 1. Such a belief function would be problematic. It would be Moore-paradoxical to recognise that 𝜃 is evidence yet not to fully believe 𝜃 . In general, one ought to calibrate one’s beliefs to truths, insofar as one has evidence of them, yet this belief function is not calibrated. Hence, this belief function B is incompatible with evidence. This argument can be extended to the case in which E provides evidence of non-trivial chances. If B ∉E then there is some 𝜃 such that B ( 𝜃 )≠ P ∗ ( 𝜃 ) for any P ∗ ∈ E. This is also problematic: one ought to calibrate one’s degrees of belief to chances, insofar as one has evidence of them, yet this belief function is not calibrated. Hence, this belief function is incompatible with the evidence.

On the other hand, if B ∈ 𝔼 then B is compatible with the evidence, for the following reason. That B ∈ 𝔼 means that as far as can be determined from E , B may well be the true chance function. Suppose new evidence is subsequently obtained that determines that B is indeed the true chance function P ∗ . This new evidence is clearly compatible with the old evidence E . Call the new evidence base E ′ and the new set of evidentially-compatible chance functions E ′ . Now, B is compatible with E ′ : E ′ , we may assume, is consistent, so there must be some belief function compatible with E ′ ; however, as we have just seen, any belief function outside E ′ is incompatible with E ′ ; hence, B , the only function in E ′ , is compatible with E ′ . Since B is compatible with E ′ as a whole, it must be compatible with each item of evidence in E ′ . Hence it is compatible with each item of evidence in E ⊆ E ′ , and therefore with E as a whole.

This provides some motivation for the view that belief function B is compatible with evidence just when B ∈ E. Below, we will revisit the question whether this characterisation is appropriate. In the meantime, we are now in a position to state a Bayesian explication of Evidentialism:

• BE Belief function B is epistemically rational if and only if B ∈ E.

We shall call this specialisation of Evidentialism to degree of belief Bayesian Evidentialism .

Note that BE circumvents one immediate concern with Evidentialism in the Bayesian framework. This is the concern that Probabilism appears to conflict with Evidentialism. For example, according to Probabilism, one ought to fully believe all logical truths, even those for which one has no evidence that they are logical truths. Thus one ought to fully believe that the millionth digit of π is 5, even if one has no evidence that this is so. Probabilism, then, seems to be a constraint on rational degree of belief that operates independently of the evidence, contrary to Evidentialism. In response to this concern, it suffices to point out that Probabilism is treated as an idealisation by the Bayesian: Probabilism is usually advocated on the grounds that it is a simple and powerful approximation to a more nuanced, correct norm. In some cases, such as the application of Bayesianism to mathematics (Corfield 2001 ), one may need to invoke a more nuanced norm, but Probabilism suffices for most practical applications of Bayesianism. BE circumvents these issues by building Probabilism into compatibility with the evidence: since 𝔼 is construed as the set of chance functions compatible with the evidence, it is a subset of ℙ , the set of all probability functions. Thus there is no conflict between Probabilism and BE. This means that BE should also be treated as an idealisation—an approximation to a more nuanced claim that would incorporate the more nuanced, correct norm which Probabilism approximates.

Another point of clarification. In the cancer example at the start of this section, we supposed that all degrees of belief within the interval [0.56,0.86] were equally well calibrated to the chances. Consider a modification to the example where this is not the case: suppose that individuals with degree of belief P ( s ) ≥ 0.86 have chance 0.86 of survival, those with degree of belief P ( s ) ≤ 0.56 have chance 0.56 of survival and those with degree of belief strictly between 0.56 and 0.86 have some chance of survival other than that degree of belief, and that these facts are part of the patient’s evidence. In this case, only the endpoints of the interval, 0.86 and 0.56, are possible values of degrees of belief that are calibrated to the chances. This modified example shows that, in general, some chance functions that are compatible with evidence may not also be interpretable as belief functions compatible with evidence. The set E was construed in Section  2 as the set of chance functions that are compatible with the evidence. In its role in BE, E also needs to be construed as a set of belief functions compatible with the evidence. Thus we must take E to be the set of those chance functions compatible with evidence to which belief functions can be calibrated . This qualification avoids a worry about Evidentialism of Reisner ( 2015 ).

Note finally that the evidence may be inconsistent, or it may be the case that there is no chance function compatible with the evidence which can also be interpreted as a belief function. Which belief functions are compatible with the evidence in such situations? Whilst this question needs answering, it involves some subtleties that are somewhat tangential to the concerns of this paper. For the purposes of this paper, we may simply stipulate that 𝔼 = ℙ , the set of all probability functions, in both these cases. See e.g., Williamson ( 2010 , §3.3.1) for a fuller discussion.

Evidentialism and the Principle of Indifference

Having explicated Evidentialism in terms of BE, we can now move on to its connection to the Principle of Indifference. The important point for our purposes is that BE is inconsistent with the claim that if a belief function is epistemically rational then it satisfies Principle of Indifference PI3. According to BE, any belief function that is compatible with evidence is epistemically rational; there is no further requirement that one’s degrees of belief should equivocate between the basic possibilities. For example, if there is no evidence at all, then any belief function satisfies the evidence, in particular, a belief function B 0 that gives ω , one of the basic possibilities, degree of belief 0. BE would deem such a belief function to be epistemically rational. On the other hand, if the claim that epistemic rationality requires PI3 is true then this belief function B 0 is not epistemically rational: one would need to give ω degree of belief 1/|Ω| rather than 0. Hence, the claim that epistemic rationality requires PI3 contradicts BE. This claim was the conclusion of the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference presented in Section  3 . Consequently, the epistemic justification is in tension with Evidentialism.

On the other hand, BE is not inconsistent with the claim that if a belief function is rational simpliciter then it satisfies the Principle of Indifference PI3. BE is a claim about epistemic rationality, whilst this claim invokes rationality simpliciter . This claim is the upshot of the pragmatic justification of the Principle of Indifference of Section  2 . Therefore, the pragmatic justification is not in tension with Evidentialism. The advocate of the pragmatic justification can say one of two things about the relation between BE and the claim that rationality requires the Principle of Indifference: either she can point out that there is more to rationality than epistemic rationality, as demonstrated by the cancer example at the start of this section, or she can deny that there is such a thing as ‘epistemic rationality’, perhaps motivated by scepticism about the tenability of a sharp distinction between pragmatic and epistemic rationality or justification. Either way, the proponent of the pragmatic justification of the Principle of Indifference can deny that indifference is a requirement of epistemic rationality. Hence, there is no tension with Evidentialism, under this view. 10

Before exploring some of the consequences of the conflict between Evidentialism and the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference, let us consider a possible response to the claim that there is such a conflict. One might suggest that ‘compatible with the evidence’ should be reinterpreted as follows. Instead of saying that B is compatible with the evidence just when B ∈ E, one might say that B is compatible with the evidence just when B = P E‡, the probability function in E with maximum generalised entropy. With this stricter interpretation of ‘compatible with the evidence’, the conflict between Evidentialism and the epistemic justification of Section  3 dissolves, because the epistemic justification implies compatibility with the evidence in the new sense.

The problem with this strategy is that the suggested reinterpretation is not a viable interpretation of ‘compatible with the evidence’. This should already be clear, given the motivation for BE provided above. To highlight how wrong the reinterpretation is, suppose that E is correct but is incomplete, i.e., every proposition in E is true but E does not determine the truth of every proposition. Let ω ∗ be the truth function that represents the true state of the world. Since E is correct, ω ∗ ∈ E. Since E is incomplete, there is some proposition 𝜃 such that ω ∗ ( 𝜃 ) = 1 (i.e., 𝜃 is true) but P E‡( 𝜃 ) < 1. 11 Under the proposed reinterpretation, P E‡ is the only belief function compatible with the evidence. Therefore the belief function that coincides with the truth function ω ∗ is deemed to be incompatible with the evidence. This is perverse: despite the fact that the truth is consistent with the evidence, believing the truth is deemed incompatible with the evidence. The original interpretation of ‘compatible with the evidence’ does not suffer from this problem.

Thus, the proposed reinterpretation is not viable—it strays too far from our usual understanding of ‘compatible’. The conflict between Evidentialism and the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference stands.

This epistemic justification is, however, consistent with a significant weakening of the Evidentialism thesis:

This Supervenience thesis is consistent with the view that compatibility with the evidence is neither sufficient nor necessary for epistemic rationality. Particular implementations of the Supervenience thesis might reinstate necessity, however. One might, for instance, hold that degrees of belief should be compatible with evidence, i.e., B ∈ E, and, in addition, B should have maximum generalised entropy. In any case, according to Supervenience, the evidence is only a part of the story.

In the literature, it is not always clear whether an author is endorsing the Evidentialism thesis or the Supervenience thesis. Thus it is not always clear whether the inconsistency identified above arises. For example, Mittag ( 2015 , §1) cites Bertrand Russell as an early evidentialist. Russell did indeed say some things which accord with this. For example,

the reason for believing no matter what must be found, after sufficient analysis, in data, and in data alone. Russell ( 1948 , p. 401.)

Despite this, Russell ( 1948 , p. 404) explicitly advocates PI1 and PI2. Since the Principle of Indifference apparently goes well beyond the data, the inconsistency between the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference and Evidentialism might seem to pose a problem for Russell. However, it is not entirely clear that Russell was a genuine evidentialist, i.e., an advocate of Evidentialism rather than Supervenience. Without further textual evidence, we cannot conclude that Russell falls foul of this inconsistency.

On the other hand, we have seen that it is indeed clear that a proponent of the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference cannot consistently also advocate Evidentialism. We shall suggest next that this inconsistency reflects negatively on the epistemic justification.

Consequences for consequentialism

Thus far we have seen that the Principle of Indifference can be given a pragmatic justification in terms of avoiding avoidable loss; it can also be given an epistemic justification in terms of reducing inaccuracy; however, this latter form of justification conflicts with Evidentialism. We shall now explore some of the consequences of this tension.

The pragmatic vs the epistemic interpretation

Let us first turn to the main question of the paper: should the new formal justification of the Principle of Indifference be given a pragmatic reading in terms of loss or an epistemic reading in terms of inaccuracy? I shall argue as follows. Evidentialism is prima facie plausible, and, moreover, extant objections to Evidentialism miss the mark. Therefore, the conflict between the epistemic argument and Evidentialism should be taken to reflect negatively on the epistemic argument. On the other hand, the pragmatic version of the justification coheres well with Bayesianism, and as we have seen, is not in tension with Evidentialism. On balance, then, Evidentialism favours the pragmatic interpretation of Section  2 over the epistemic interpretation of Section  3 .

First, Evidentialism is, at least prima facie , rather plausible. Beliefs can be useful in various ways, as we saw in the cancer example. However, their epistemic value lies in the extent to which they latch on to the truth. In that sense, the epistemic aim of belief is truth. Now, evidence and inference appear to provide our only route to truth. Unless one can infer something about a proposition from one’s evidence, there is no reason to suspect that the proposition is true. 12 Beliefs are epistemically rational, then, just when they are compatible with (what can be inferred from) evidence.

In order to provide a full defence of Evidentialism, one would need to develop a detailed evidentialist epistemology which validates the principle. This will not be attempted here, for two reasons. First, this is a major enterprise, and not one that can be adequately carried out in the remaining pages of this paper. Second, any detailed epistemological theory is likely to involve so many controversial components as to render the whole less plausible than the Evidentialism principle itself. Hence, such a theory will not be very confirmatory.

Instead, I shall aim to explain why key objections related to Evidentialism miss the mark in the sense that they do not help the proponent of the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference. Whilst this will not go far enough to establish the truth of Evidentialism, when taken together with the prima facie plausibility of Evidentialism it will arguably render Evidentialism in a strong position.

Objections to Evidentialism offer no succour to proponent of the epistemic justification for six main reasons. (i) Some are objections to evidentialist principles other than the Evidentialism thesis as explicated by BE. For example, Sharadin ( 2016 ) observes that non-evidential considerations can play a role as motivating reasons for beliefs (a self-fulfilling prophesy, such as belief in survival after cancer, can be such a consideration). However, as Sharadin acknowledges, this fact would not undermine the normative version of Evidentialism set out above (Sharadin 2016 , §3). (ii) Some are objections to features of evidentialist epistemologies, rather than to the Evidentialism thesis itself. For example, there are many objections to features and details of Conee and Feldman’s epistemological theory, such as to its internalism (see, e.g., Dougherty 2011 , Part V). There are also many objections to Timothy Williamson’s externalist epistemology, such as to its identification of evidence and knowledge (see, e.g., Williamson 2015 ). These features are not implied by Evidentialism, so problems with these features do not falsify Evidentialism. (iii) Some objections arise from showing that Evidentialism turns out false under one or other non-evidentialist epistemology (see, e.g., Stich 1990 ; Axtell 2011 ). As noted above, any detailed epistemological theory will be so controversial as to offer little scope for confirming or undermining Evidentialism. (iv) Some are objections to arguments in favour of Evidentialism, rather than to Evidentialism itself. For example, Steglich-Petersen ( 2008 ), Yamada ( 2010 ), Sharadin ( 2016 ) and Rinard ( 2017 , §8) provide objections to an argument for Evidentialism put forward by Shah ( 2006 ). (v) Some are objections which, if successful, would not only undermine Evidentialism but would also undermine Bayesianism, so cannot be used to favour the epistemic argument over Evidentialism for the purposes of justifying the Principle of Indifference. For example, as discussed in Section  4 , DeRose ( 2000 , §1) and Baehr ( 2009 ) are concerned that Evidentialism handles too weak a sense of epistemic rationality. However, the weak sense is precisely the sense of epistemic rationality that Bayesianism tackles. (vi) Some objections, if successful, would not only undermine Evidentialism but would also undermine the epistemic argument so do not help proponents of such a justification of the Principle of Indifference. For example, Marušić ( 2012 ) argues that decisions and promises require believing propositions which may be contrary to the evidence. If so, these are beliefs which are also more inaccurate than those in accord with the evidence. To take another example, Littlejohn ( 2012 , §7.3) argues against Evidentialism by claiming that belief is factive. As we shall see below (c.f. principle I5), this claim is as unattractive to the proponent of an inaccuracy argument as it is to the evidentialist.

We have seen that objections to Evidentialism fail to help the proponent of the epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference. Since Evidentialism is prima facie plausible, the fact that Evidentialism is in tension with the epistemic justification casts some doubt on that justification.

On the other hand, no such doubt is cast on the pragmatic version of the justification of PI3. This is because, as we saw above, there is no tension between Evidentialism and the pragmatic justification. Furthermore, the pragmatic justification is relatively unproblematic because it rests on the idea that one should avoid avoidable loss, and this goal is central to Bayesianism. The main existing argument for Probabilism—the Dutch book argument (de Finetti 1937 )—is based on exactly this premiss, since it shows that degrees of belief must be probabilities if one is avoid avoidable sure loss in a particular betting set-up. Moreover, Bayesianism is intended as a practical theory which can guide decision making, and the supposition behind Bayesian decision theory is that one should avoid avoidable loss by maximising expected utility. The pragmatic reading of the justification of the Principle of Indifference is clearly also of the form avoid avoidable loss : in this case, avoid avoidable worst-case expected loss . Hence, the pragmatic reading coheres well with Bayesianism.

In sum, then, the epistemic justification of Section  3 comes out worse than the pragmatic justification of Section  2 from its clash with Evidentialism.

Other epistemic justifications of the Principle of Indifference

It is worth noting that the epistemic argument of Section  3 is not the only epistemic argument for the Principle of Indifference. Pettigrew ( 2016b ), for example, gives another argument in terms of epistemic inaccuracy. This argument is for PI1; recall that this says that when there is no evidence one should believe each basic possibility to the same extent. Suppose, then, that there is no evidence, E = ∅ . Pettigrew supposes that a measure I ( ω , B ) of inaccuracy measure should satisfy the following two requirements. First, there is no other belief function B that has as low inaccuracy as the equivocator function for all basic possibilities: if B ≠ P = then there is some ω such that I ( ω , B ) > I ( ω , P = ). Second, Pettigrew requires that I is invariant under isomorphisms acting on the set of propositions. (As with the earlier requirement that a weighting function be unbiased, this second requirement ensures that inaccuracy measures are invariant under permutations of the basic possibilities.) The first requirement forces the equivocator function to be less inaccurate than B for some basic possibility, and the second forces the inaccuracy of the equivocator function to be the same for every basic possibility. Hence the equivocator function is the belief function with minimum worst-case inaccuracy, where the worst case is taken over all ω . Thus, Pettigrew argues, PI1 must hold if one is to minimise worst-case inaccuracy.

It is important to observe that the grounds for preferring the pragmatic justification of Section  2 over the epistemic version of Section  3 also apply to other epistemic justifications of the Principle of Indifference, such as Pettigrew’s justification. This is because it is the claim that epistemic rationality requires the Principle of Indifference that is inconsistent with Evidentialism, and any epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference will yield that claim. Thus, if this inconsistency favours the pragmatic justification of Section  2 over the epistemic justification of Section  3 , it also favours the pragmatic justification of Section  2 over any other epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference.

A further worry is relevant here. Any other epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference that appeals to inaccuracy will need to provide an account of inaccuracy that is somewhat different to that given in Section  3 . Such an account of inaccuracy will hinge on a complex package of claims which can be hard to justify. This complexity, when contrasted with the simplicity and prima facie plausibility of Evidentialism, may cast further doubt on the inaccuracy account.

To get a sense of this complexity, consider that any account of epistemic inaccuracy which underpins a purely epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference will depend upon the following claims I1–5, which I shall collectively call the Inaccuracy Package :

In the case of our epistemic justification of Section  3 , a logarithmic function was singled out as most appropriate. Pettigrew ( 2016b ) favours the quadratic Brier score, though his justification of PI1 considered a class of inaccuracy measures. Different classes of inaccuracy measures have appeared in the literature, often delineated by technical fruitfulness rather than philosophical considerations—e.g., ‘strictly proper’ inaccuracy measures are particularly conducive to proving the required theorems (Landes 2015 ). As yet, we are far from a consensus as to which functions are appropriate as inaccuracy measures. Worse, it is controversial whether inaccuracy is the sort of thing which can be measured by a single number, and which depends only on the belief function in question and the true state of the world. It is still an open question whether the quest for an inaccuracy measure will turn out to be as quixotic as the closely related quest for a measure of verisimilitude. This stands in contrast to loss (negative utility), which is so well entrenched within the Bayesian framework that Bayesians find it uncontroversial that one can measure loss by a single number that depends on the belief function and the state of the world.

In the epistemic justification of Section  3 , the norm is to minimise worst-case expected f . In Pettigrew’s justification, it is to minimise worst-case f . Another norm often invoked by proponents of inaccuracy arguments is to avoid dominated f . Note that these norms conflict; we saw that the first norm warrants PI3 but the second norm does not. Apparently, the third norm, which can be used to motivate Probabilism, cannot be used to justify even PI1 (Pettigrew 2016a , Chapter 12). Therefore, the proponent of inaccuracy arguments needs to provide grounds for singling out which norm, or which combination of norms, should be applied. This has not been done as yet.

Inaccuracy needs to be a purely epistemic standard if it is to provide a purely epistemic justification of the Principle of Indifference. Now, the word ‘inaccuracy’ has epistemic connotations, but in the light of the epistemic justification of Section  3 , which characterises the inaccuracy measure in just the same way that the measure of loss was characterised in Section  2 , one might worry whether inaccuracy is just loss in disguise. This casts some doubt on whether inaccuracy is a purely epistemic consideration. Is minimisation of inaccuracy an appropriate standard ? Truth is uncontroversially an epistemic standard, but a small improvement in the accuracy of a belief is less obviously so—in many circumstances, a miss is as good as a mile, and one might hold that truth is the only epistemic standard to which beliefs should conform.

Truth is an epistemic standard but it is not normally thought of as necessary for rationality of belief. Even if minimisation of inaccuracy is an epistemic standard, some further consideration—currently lacking—needs to be provided before we can be convinced of its necessity for rationality. Furthermore this consideration needs to be clearly epistemic. Suppose our beliefs fit our evidence; should we follow norm N ( f ) in addition? f doesn’t tell us any more about what is true than the evidence does. Of course, we might worry that we’ll lose out in proportion to our inaccuracy—but then avoiding inaccuracy is a pragmatic desideratum, rather than an epistemic one.

Now, N ( f ) can only be sufficient for epistemic rationality if no other norm is necessary. One concern for sufficiency is a slippery slope: if accuracy is necessary for rationality, then why isn’t truth also necessary? The proponent of inaccuracy arguments needs to say why such a move is not warranted. The proponent will want to resist such a move, not only because requiring truth over and above controlling inaccuracy contradicts the sufficiency of N ( f ), but also because if rational belief is factive then very implausible principles of indifference will follow. For example, suppose that truth were also necessary for rationality of belief in the sense that a degree of belief in basic possibility ω which surpasses some threshold τ , P ( ω ) > τ , is epistemically rational only when ω is true. Unless the evidence forces the truth of some possibility ω , it is impossible to determine for sure whether ω is true, and hence whether it is epistemically rational to set P ( ω ) > τ . Hence, the Bayesian can normally only be sure of following this truth norm by setting P ( ω ) ≤ τ for every ω , i.e., by being sufficiently indifferent between the basic possibilities. In cases where, for some ω , evidence fails to force the truth of ω but implies that the chance of ω exceeds the threshold, P ∗ ( ω ) ≥ τ , this truth norm violates the requirement that P ∈ E. Advocating degrees of belief which are incompatible with the evidence clearly goes much further than most Bayesians would like.

There is another, more well known, worry about I4–5, presented by Greaves ( 2013 , p. 918):

Emily is taking awalk through the Garden of Epistemic Imps. Achild plays on the grass in front of her. In anearby summerhouse are n further children, each of whom may or may not come out to play in aminute. They are able to read Emily’s mind, and their algorithm for deciding whether to play outdoors is as follows. If she forms degree of belief 0that there is now achild before her, they will come out to play. If she forms degree of belief 1that there is achild before her, they will roll afair die, and come out to play iff the outcome is an even number. More generally, the summerhouse children will play with chance (1 − 12 q ( C 0 )), where q ( C 0 ) is the degree of belief Emily adopts in the proposition ( C 0 ) that there is now achild before her. Emily’s epistemic decision is the choice of credences in the proposition C 0 that there is now achild before her, and, for each j = 1,…, n , the proposition C j that the j th summerhouse child will be outdoors in afew minutes’ time.

The problem is as follows. Assume Emily knows all the facts set out above. Emily’s evidence determines that C 0 is true. The Bayesian will want to say that she should fully believe C 0 . Then, for j = 1,…, n , the chance of each C j will be 12 and the Bayesian will prescribe degree of belief 12 in each C j . These latter degrees of belief will be deemed inaccurate by some typical inaccuracy measures f , leading to low overall accuracy. Much greater total accuracy would be achieved if Emily were to fully disbelieve C 0 , contrary to her evidence, and fully believe C 1 ,…, C 10 , which would then all be true. Now, if following N ( f ) were necessary and sufficient for rationality of belief then Emily should adopt the latter beliefs. Such a norm, which requires violating the evidence, would be very unpalatable to the Bayesian. 13

Such examples strengthen the conflict between Evidentialism and inaccuracy arguments. Evidentialism states that compatibility with the evidence is necessary and sufficient for rationality of beliefs. Inaccuracy arguments can conflict both the necessity and sufficiency of this claim: whilst the fact that inaccuracy arguments are used to justify the Principle of Indifference contradicts sufficiency, the Epistemic Imps example tells against necessity.

The Inaccuracy Package, then, is not only complex, it is also riddled with lacunae and challenges. This is not to say that all these challenges are insuperable, rather that, currently, the Inaccuracy Package is merely a promissory note. On the other hand, I have argued that Evidentialism is prima facie plausible and objections to Evidentialism miss the mark. Consequently, Evidentialism is more credible than the Inaccuracy Package, and, because of the inconsistency between inaccuracy arguments and Evidentialism, a pragmatic justification of the Principle of Indifference will be on firmer ground than any epistemic justification which appeals to inaccuracy.

Let us consider a response to this line of argument, to be found in some comments of Pettigrew ( 2016b , §3.1). Pettigrew expresses the worry that evidentialists need to invoke multiple cognitive goals. For example, it is not enough to fit our beliefs to the evidence we have—we ought to gather new evidence too. On the other hand, proponents of inaccuracy arguments need only invoke a single cognitive virtue, namely accuracy. According to Pettigrew, the single goal of accuracy explains both the need to fit evidence and the need to gather new evidence because they both help to reduce inaccuracy. Thus the Inaccuracy Package should be preferred over Evidentialism on the grounds that the former is more explanatory than the latter.

There are various compelling rejoinders open to the evidentialist, however. First, avoiding inaccuracy fails to explain the need to fit evidence. As Pettigrew acknowledges, examples like the Epistemic Imps example set out above show that one should not always fit the evidence if one is to minimise inaccuracy. Second, avoiding inaccuracy also fails to explain the need to gather new evidence. If accuracy were the only goal, one should not gather new evidence wherever that evidence is likely to lead to less accurate degrees of belief—i.e., one should not gather evidence that is likely to reveal that the chances are such as to lead to higher values of the chosen inaccuracy measure f when degrees of belief are calibrated to those chances. Third, although the proponent of inaccuracy arguments might claim that the inaccuracy approach is more explanatory, that plays into the hands of the evidentialist, whose objection is precisely that inaccuracy arguments explain too much : they explain pragmatic norms such as the Principle of Indifference when they should only be explaining epistemic norms. Fourth, it is far from clear that the evidentialist fails to explain both the need to gather evidence and the need to fit beliefs to evidence. BE cashes out Evidentialism in terms of calibration of degrees of belief to chances. Better calibration to chances can explain the need to gather more evidence of chances as well as to fit degrees of belief to current evidence of chances.

Consequently, Pettigrew’s response does not succeed. The inconsistency between Evidentialism and inaccuracy arguments for the Principle of Indifference does indeed favour the former over the latter. A Bayesian seeking a justification for the Principle of Indifference should prefer a pragmatic justification over the epistemic justification of Section  3 .

Inaccuracy arguments in general.

We have seen that inaccuracy arguments for the Principle of Indifference are problematic, and that pragmatic arguments arguably fare better in motivating the Principle of Indifference. But these worries extend beyond the Principle of Indifference. This is because inaccuracy arguments for the Principle of Indifference are of exactly the same kind as inaccuracy arguments for other norms of Bayesianism—not only Probabilism but also norms, such as the Principal Principle, which require calibration of degrees of belief to chances (see, e.g., Joyce 1998 ; Leitgeb and Pettigrew 2010a , b ). If these arguments fail with respect to the Principle of Indifference, then that is a problem for the Inaccuracy Package in general. The whole project of using inaccuracy arguments to provide an epistemic consequentialist justification of Bayesianism is brought into question.

One possible response to this problem is to somehow differentiate inaccuracy arguments for the Principle of Indifference from those for other Bayesian norms, in order to prevent objections to the former from affecting the latter. Perhaps the most promising point of differentiation is in the choice of norm—I2 of the Inaccuracy Package. If one restricts inaccuracy arguments by appealing solely to avoiding dominance of inaccuracy, not worst-case inaccuracy nor worst-case expected inaccuracy, one may hope to firewall Probabilism and the Principal Principle from the inconsistency with Evidentialism. As noted above, avoiding dominance of inaccuracy can be used to justify Probabilism and the Principal Principle, but not the Principle of Indifference. The proponent of inaccuracy might then accept that the Principle of Indifference is a pragmatic norm, but maintain that Probabilism and the Principal Principle are epistemic norms, to be justified in terms of avoiding inaccuracy. But what are the grounds for dismissing the suggestion that one should minimise worst-case inaccuracy or minimise worst-case expected inaccuracy? As yet, we are lacking a principled answer to this question.

Even if a principled response can be given to this question, proponents of inaccuracy arguments are left with a further question: why should some norms of Bayesianism—e.g., Probabilism—be given a non-pragmatic justification and others—such as the Principle of Indifference—a pragmatic justification? Having two forms of justification seems otiose, especially when one can get away with a single, unified, pragmatic justification of all the norms of Bayesianism, such as that provided in Section  2 .

Epistemic Consequentialism

The conflict between Evidentialism and inaccuracy arguments for Bayesianism renders the latter implausible, if the above reasoning is sound. But inaccuracy arguments for Bayesianism are the best available epistemic consequentialist arguments for Bayesianism. So epistemic consequentialism in general is on thin ice. If Bayesianism can’t be justified in terms of its epistemic consequences, the pragmatic approach remains the most promising.

Of course epistemic consequentialism isn’t a one-horse race. Reliabilism is an alternative option to inaccuracy arguments for Bayesian norms. In the context of degrees of belief, the reliabilist approach has been much less thoroughly investigated than the inaccuracy approach, but Dunn ( 2015 ) has suggested that the reliabilist approach is preferable to the inaccuracy approach. Besides taking issue with the inaccuracy approach, Dunn argues for an alternative that measures the reliability of a belief-formation process by how well calibrated the resulting degrees of belief are to chances. There are three main worries about this sort of approach, as we shall now see.

First, a Bayesian calibration norm is one of the things that we would like to justify—a justification which itself appeals to calibration is hardly likely to be very convincing there.

Second, it appears that this reliability account might conflict with Probabilism, which would be a serious concern for the Bayesian. 14 Suppose that a visual process is correct 95% of the time and an auditory process is correct 80% of the time. Someone who sees no evil and hears no evil would be perfectly rational, under this sort of reliabilist approach, to believe that there is no evil to degree 0.95 and to degree 0.8—i.e., to believe the same proposition to two different degrees, contradicting Probabilism. One might try to save Probabilism by modifying the account to characterise rationality in terms of the reliability of the process determining the belief function as a whole, rather than individual degrees of belief. In our example, if the prior probability that there is no evil present is 0.5, then its posterior probability, given that evil is neither seen nor heard, is about 0.99, so this latter (unique) degree of belief would be rational. 15 But then Probabilism follows too easily—it follows directly from the stipulation that the one should focus on the reliability of the belief function as a whole, together with the stipulation that rationality is assessed in terms of calibration to chances and the assumption that chances are probabilistic. For such a move to be convincing, the two stipulations would need to be given some independent motivation. This is currently lacking.

The third worry about this reliabilist approach is that, although it is unclear whether or not such a line of argument will extend to justifying the Principle of Indifference, difficulties arise either way. On the one hand, so-called ‘concentration theorems’ suggest that probability functions that are indifferent (i.e., have maximum entropy) are overwhelmingly likely (see, e.g., Jaynes 2003 , §11.4), so perhaps a case can be made for an indifferent belief function being better calibrated to chances. But then there would be a conflict between reliabilism, which would deem the Principle of Indifference to be an epistemic norm, and Evidentialism, which would class it as non-epistemic. This takes the epistemic consequentialist back to square one, a conflict with Evidentialism. On the other hand, if the Principle of Indifference does not admit a reliabilist justification, the epistemic consequentialist is left with the problem of motivating a mixture of pragmatic and epistemic justifications for different Bayesian norms, instead of simply adopting a unified pragmatic justification, such as that of Section  2 .

Given the current state of play, then, Bayesianism is best motivated pragmatically. Epistemic consequentialism remains an interesting project, but there is a lot more to do before either an approach based on the Inaccuracy Package or a reliabilist approach can offer a viable alternative to pragmatic justifications of Bayesian norms in terms of avoiding avoidable losses.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and to the Leverhulme Trust for supporting this research, to Teddy Groves for commenting on a previous version of this paper, and to Jeff Dunn, Michael Wilde and the anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions.

1 A set of probability functions is convex if, for any two probability functions P and Q that are in the set, any convex combination R of P and Q , defined by R ( ω ) = λ P ( ω ) + (1 − λ ) Q ( ω ) for some λ ∈ [0, 1] and each ω ∈Ω, is also in the set. Non-convex sets introduce complexities which would obscure the main points of this paper, and as we shall see later, they do not affect the key results.

2 E is invariant under permutations of the ω ∈Ω if for any permutation π on Ω, permuting each ω to π ( ω ) in each statement in E yields the same set E of probability functions. This corresponds to rotational symmetry of 𝔼 in the simplex ℙ : symmetry under rotation by 120 ∘ in Fig.  2 .

Note that PI3 only implies PI2 under the convexity assumption. Without convexity, PI2 is implausible, because in that case PI2 may require that P ∉E, i.e., that P should lie outside the set 𝔼 of probability functions that are compatible with the evidence.

4 We thus presume that the chance function P ∗ is a probability function. The definition above presupposes that the chance function is defined on the same domain Ω as the agent’s belief function P . However, this presupposition is not essential. Suppose instead that the chance function is defined on some other domain, which may include certain propositions not expressible in Ω and which may not include certain propositions expressible in Ω. In that case, we take the set evidentially-compatible chance functions to be the set 𝔼 of probability functions on domain Ω that are consistent with evidence of chances in E : any Q ∈ 𝔼 is consistent with evidence of chances in E and any probability function Q defined on Ω that is consistent with evidence of chances in E is in the set E. As noted in the previous section, we do not assume that the evidence E consists of propositions expressible in Ω.

5 The quantity L ( F , B ) is not interpreted as a formal expectation, for two reasons. First, since one of our goals is to motivate Probabilism, we are not in a position to presuppose that any such belief distribution is a probability function, which it would need to be in order to define a formal expectation. To get round this problem, one might suggest that one could generalise the notion of formal expectation to weight the loss by normalised degree of belief, rather than probability. However, a second problem would then arise, as follows. The expectation would need to be an average, taken over all possible decision scenarios, of the loss incurred in each scenario, weighted by the degree to which one believes that scenario will obtain. It is unrealistic to think that one could enumerate all possible decision scenarios (i.e., all possible losses as well as all possible sets of options) and specify a degree of belief in each scenario obtaining. Certainly, we shall not assume here that the domain of the agent’s belief function is large enough to include every possible decision scenario.

6 Here we take the expectation with respect to chance, P ∗ , rather than normalised degree of belief, B . Partly, this is because chance is assumed to be probabilistic but B is not. This is in line with the standard view of scoring rules in the statistical literature (e.g., Grünwald and Dawid 2004 ), though some works in the philosophical literature do weight by non-probabilistic belief (e.g., Leitgeb and Pettigrew 2010a ). More fundamentally, we focus on the concept of objective expectation rather than subjective expectation on the grounds that: (i) objectively expected loss gives a better estimate of actual loss than subjectively expected loss where the two disagree; and (ii) evidence tells us something about the chances (namely that P ∗ ∈ E) so objectively expected loss is sufficiently accessible for our purposes. One might counter that—just as objectively expected loss is preferable to subjectively expected loss—it would equally be better to focus on the actual loss function rather than anticipated loss L ( F , B ) = − k log B ( F ). However, the actual loss function is not normally known, even to within some well circumscribed subset of possible loss functions. The fact is that whilst evidence usually tells us quite a lot about chances, it rarely tells us much about the losses we will be incurred in all future decision scenarios.

7 Each F ⊆Ω is in precisely one two-membered partition, namely { F , F ̄ }, so S P Ω ( P ∗ , B ) = ∑ F ⊆ Ω P ∗ ( F ) L ( F , B ) = ∑ π = { F , F ¯ } 1 ∑ G ∈ π P ∗ ( G ) L ( G , B ) .

8 This follows because P ∗ ( s ) = P ∗ ( s | g ) P ∗ ( g ) + P ∗ ( s |¬ g ) P ∗ (¬ g ) = 0.8 × 0.7 + P ∗ ( s |¬ g ) × 0.3 and P ∗ ( s |¬ g ) ∈ [0, 1].

9 Other pragmatic considerations may apply to the doctor who is treating the patient. If the arguments of Section  2 are sound then one might argue that the doctor ought to believe s to some degree sufficiently close to 0.71, the maximum entropy value. Again, this is for pragmatic reasons—other values incur an avoidable increase in worst-case expected loss.

10 On the second view—denying epistemic rationality—the proponent of a pragmatic justification of the Principle of Indifference will deny the force of Evidentialism as well as the force of the epistemic justification.

11 The probability function with maximum generalised entropy will give a proposition that is not constrained to have probability 1 a probability lower than 1—see Landes and Williamson ( 2013 , Proposition 18).

12 Perhaps certain logical or mathematical truths can be inferred without evidence. But then they can trivially also be inferred from evidence. Perhaps certain other propositions are self-evident. But then they too can be inferred from evidence.

13 Easwaran and Fitelson ( 2012 ) present some other situations in which avoiding inaccuracy requires violating the evidence.

14 I am very grateful to Jeff Dunn for pointing this out.

15 Let e , s and h denote respectively that there is no evil present, no evil has been seen, no evil has been heard. Suppose that seeing and hearing evil are probabilistically independent conditional on the presence or absence of evil. We have that P ( e ) = 0.5, P ( s | e ) = P (¬ s |¬ e ) = 0.95, P ( h | e ) = P (¬ h |¬ e ) = 0.8. Hence, P ( e | sh ) = P ( s | e ) P ( h | e ) P ( e ) P ( s | e ) P ( h | e ) P ( e ) + P ( s | ¬ e ) P ( h | ¬ e ) P ( ¬ e ) = 0.95 × 0.8 × 0.5 0.95 × 0.8 × 0.5 + 0.05 × 0.2 × 0.5 ≈ 0.987.

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Sentence examples for attitude of indifference from inspiring English sources

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In the BBC interview, Archbishop Williams appeared to strike an attitude of indifference toward the visit.

We can no longer live here on the river with an attitude of indifference " .

In 1854, for example, he said he hated the Douglas attitude of indifference toward the possible spread of slavery to new areas.

Andre Ford, Elizabeth's kids concur, is not fake, and when they are with him they drop their protective attitude of indifference .

Constanze Stelzenmuller, the director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin, said earlier government attitudes of " indifference masquerading as tolerance" had now been shunted aside.

Hearing that, Mayor Orlando wrote Mr. Callen an encouraging note that "Palermo, too, was like 'Groundhog Day' " but now had lessons to offer in "reversing those deep-rooted attitudes of indifference , skepticism and cynicism which are fertile fields for illegality".

Lakoff proposes that becoming aware of how we metaphorically conceptualize or "frame" problems, including environmental crises (Lakoff 2009), is crucial to our ability to find appropriate solutions, particularly if the "frames" promote attitudes of indifference to or autonomy from nature.

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The Art of Indifference: Apathy and Politics in Nigeria

Table of contents, indifference, rationale behind electoral indifference carefree attitude on the part of the electorate, tribalism, favoritism and nepotism:, unhealthy competition termination of political opponent by all means:, electoral malpractice:, the harm of indifference, the way forward, evaluation conclusion, bad government:.

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Cats Show Signs of Grief When Fellow Pets Die… Even Dogs

Wherever a cat wanders, it seems to carry an attitude of indifference along with it. Our feline pets are famous for their detached , stand-offish ways, but despite their unfazed , grumpy expressions, they are not always as cold-hearted as their reputation suggests.

A new study has found that when a fellow household pet dies, surviving cats show grief-like signs that are similar to those of dogs.

"Our results are consistent with the idea that cats may experience the loss of companion animals in ways similar to what dogs experience despite having evolved from a less social ancestor," write psychologists Brittany Greene and Jennifer Vonk from Oakland University in the US.

The researchers suggest this could change how we think of cats as asocial and aloof.

Their findings come from an online survey of 412 pet owners, who were the current caregivers for a living cat but who had also had a dog or a cat in the household that had recently died.

In the weeks and months following the loss of their pet, caregivers reported altered behavior in their surviving cats. These included increased vocalizations, time spent looking or sniffing for the deceased pet, and a decreased willingness to eat, sleep, or play.

The more time the surviving cat spent with the deceased pet, the more likely they were to show immediate and long-term behavioral changes "in the direction that would be expected if cats were capable of grief-like responses," write Greene and Vonk.

Even when the deceased pet was a dog, the cats seemed to care that they were gone.

Pet owners in the survey claimed their cats showed temporary signs of confusion or fearfulness after the death of a dog, such as time spent hiding, or sniffing out the deceased pet's favorite spots.

"Cats did not respond significantly differently to the loss of a companion dog or another cat," write Greene and Vonk.

This changed behavior could, therefore, be a possible sign of a lost friend, or as the researchers put it in an ever-so-cat-like way, "an interspecific 'preferred associate'."

The findings align with a similar study , conducted in 2016, which found that in the six months or so after the death of a fellow pet, both cats and dogs increased their attention-seeking behaviors, such as the frequency and volume of their vocalizations. They also ate less.

Grief is a tricky emotion to objectively measure in non-human animals, but these behavioral changes suggest the loss of a pet has an impact on remaining pets in the household.

Either that or pet owners are projecting their own grief onto their cats and dogs.

After all, the findings of the current survey are only based on the perceptions of cat owners.

Caregivers who themselves reported greater grief after losing a pet, were more likely to report their surviving cats as spending more time alone, sleeping, or hiding.

Maybe that's because those who are closer to their pets are better at 'reading' their emotions. Or it could be a sign that a pet owner is only seeing the emotions they want to see in their pet.

Further research, with more objective methods of emotional analysis, is needed to figure out what is driving these observed behavioral changes.

Scientists are still trying to figure out how cats communicate with us, and the nuances of their many vocalizations , gestures , and expressions can be easily misinterpreted.

"Despite some limitations, the current study adds to the very limited data on social cognition of cats," conclude Greene and Vonk.

The study was published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science .

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Abortion Experiences, Knowledge, and Attitudes Among Women in the U.S.: Findings from the 2024 KFF Women’s Health Survey

Ivette Gomez , Karen Diep , Brittni Frederiksen , Usha Ranji , and Alina Salganicoff Published: Aug 14, 2024

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Key Takeaways

• Among women of reproductive age, one in seven (14%) have had an abortion at some point in their life. Larger shares of Black (21%) and Hispanic (19%) women report having had an abortion compared to 11% of White women. Across partisanship, similar shares of Republican women, Democratic women, and independents report having had an abortion.
• Nearly one in ten (8%) women of reproductive age personally know someone who has had difficulty getting an abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned, including 11% of Hispanic women and 13% of women living in states with abortion bans.
• Among women of reproductive age who report knowing someone personally who has had difficulty getting an abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many say they had to travel out of state for care (68%), did not know where to go (40%), and/or did not have the money to cover the cost (35%).
• More than six in ten women of reproductive age are concerned that they, or someone close to them, would not be able to get an abortion if it was needed to preserve their life or health (63%) and that abortion bans may affect the safety of a potential future pregnancy for themselves or someone close to them (64%).
• Less than half of reproductive age women in the United States are aware of the current status of abortion policy in their state (45%). Nearly a quarter describe the status incorrectly (23%) and a third are unsure about the status of abortion in their state (32%).
• One in four (26%) reproductive age women say if they needed or wanted an abortion they would not know where to go nor where to find information.
• Nearly one in five women (17%) of reproductive age report they have changed their contraceptive practices as a result of Roe being overturned. Actions taken include starting birth control, getting a sterilization procedure, switching to a more effective method, or purchasing emergency contraceptive pills to have on hand.
• While two-thirds of women have heard about medication abortion pills, only 19% of women say people in their state can get medication abortion pills online.
• Three in four reproductive age women in the United States think abortion should be legal in most or all cases (74%). The majority support a nationwide right to abortion (70%), oppose a nationwide abortion ban at 15 weeks (64%), and oppose leaving it up to the states to determine the legality of abortion (74%). This is the case for the majority of women who are Democrats and independents as well as smaller but still substantial shares of Republicans.

Introduction

In the two years since the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe and eliminated the federal standards that had protected the right to abortion for almost 50 years, the abortion landscape in the United States has drastically changed. Abortion is banned in 14 states and an additional six states have implemented early gestational limits between 6 and 15 weeks.

Abortion will likely be a key issue in the upcoming 2024 election . The Democratic and Republican parties have starkly different visions of what access to abortion in the U.S. should look like. Vice President and Democratic Nominee Kamala Harris has been an outspoken advocate of abortion rights and has thrown her support behind efforts to restore Roe v. Wade’ s abortion standards in all states. Former President Donald Trump endorses leaving abortion policy up to states, allowing full bans to stay in effect, although he has also previously said he would consider a 15 or 16-week national ban on abortion. At the state level, voters in up to 11 states will vote on abortion-related ballot initiatives that will shape access to abortion in their states.

This brief provides new information about women’s experiences with abortion, the fallout of overturning Roe v. Wade , women’s knowledge about abortion laws in their states including medication abortion, as well as their opinions on the legality of abortion. The 2024 KFF Women’s Health Survey was fielded from May 15 to June 18, 2024, before President Biden withdrew from the 2024 Presidential race, and was developed and analyzed by KFF staff. It is a nationally representative survey of 5,055 women and 1,191 men ages 18 to 64, and the findings in this brief are based on a sample of 3,901 women ages 18 to 49. See the methodology section for detailed definitions, sampling design, and margins of sampling error.

Women’s Experiences With Abortion

Among women of reproductive age, one in seven (14%) report having had an abortion at some point in their life. Larger shares of Black (21%) and Hispanic (19%) women report having had an abortion compared to 11% of White women ( Figure 1 ). A higher share of women with lower incomes had an abortion (17%) compared to women with higher incomes (13%).

Smaller shares of women living in rural areas report having had an abortion compared to those living in urban/suburban areas (7% vs. 15%, respectively). Many rural women face long travel distances to access abortion services.

Similar shares of Republican women (12%), independent women (15%), and Democratic women (14%) say they have had an abortion. Throughout this brief, partisans include independents who lean to either party, while independents are individuals who say they do not lean toward either political party. Nearly one in 10 women (8%) who currently identify as pro-life say they have had an abortion compared to almost one in five (17%) who currently identify as pro-choice.

Smaller shares of women living in states with abortion bans or gestational limits between 15 and 22 weeks have had an abortion compared to women living in states with gestational limits at or after 24 weeks or without any gestational limits. Even before the Dobbs decision, abortion access was very limited in many of the states that currently ban abortion or have gestational limits before viability. Most of these states had laws restricting access to abortion, including waiting periods, counseling and ultrasound requirements, and insurance coverage restrictions which resulted in the closure of many abortion clinics in the years preceding the Dobbs decision.

Among women who say they have ever wanted or needed an abortion, 15% (2% of all reproductive age women) report that at some point in their lives, they have wanted or needed an abortion that they did not get ( Figure 2 ). A larger share of Black women (24%) (5% of all Black women of reproductive age) who have ever been pregnant and have wanted or needed an abortion report that they have wanted or needed an abortion they did not get compared to White women (12%) (1% of all White women of reproductive age). When asked why they did not get a wanted or needed abortion, a third (33%) report access and affordability issues, with affordability issues making up the majority of the category. One in five women also identify religious, moral, or societal pressures as the reason why they did not get the abortion, and another 16% say they changed their mind or couldn’t go through with the abortion. One in 10 women say they were too far along to end the pregnancy. Among the women who report ever wanting or needing an abortion they did not get, 31% say they had an abortion at some other time (data not shown).

In their own words: There are many reasons why someone may not get an abortion. What was the reason you did not get the abortion(s)?

“Unable to afford the procedure and would be reaching [the] point where it would be too late to complete if able.”

“Was a day over the amount of days in order to have an abortion. I waited too long to get it.”

“Changed my mind. Decided to keep the baby but was initially scared and unsure of what to do.”

“I decided I wanted to keep and raise my child despite societal pressures that would advise against it (I was a minor).”

“My family made me feel like I couldn’t and I was scared so I followed through with my pregnancy.”

“I was intimidated by the child’s father showing up at the clinic.”

“I could not afford to go out of state and had no way out of [the] state.”

“Ended up miscarrying before proceeding with appointment.”

“I was too far along in the pregnancy when I found out I was pregnant”

“Religious reasons. We are Catholic and it’s not an option for us.”

“The service wasn’t easily accessible to me, and my partner’s family pressured me into having the child.”

“Guilt, moral compass”

“Nurse convinced me not to get it.”

“I could not afford it at the time and unsure if I really wanted to do it.”

“Family pressure, difficulty finding a place to perform an abortion.”

“I lived an hour and a half from the location and my ride didn’t show up.”

The Impact of Overturning Roe

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, 14 states have banned abortion, and 11 states have implemented gestational restrictions between 6 and 22 weeks LMP (last menstrual period). Nationally, 8% of reproductive age women say they personally know someone, including themselves, who has had difficulty getting abortion care since Roe was overturned due to the restrictions in their state ( Figure 3 ). Larger shares of Hispanic women (11%) than White women (8%) report knowing someone who has experienced difficulty getting an abortion. Similarly, larger shares of women living in states with abortion bans (13%) and women living in states with gestational limits between 6 and 12 weeks (11%) report knowing someone who has experienced difficulty compared to women living in states with gestational limits at or after 24 weeks or without gestational limits (6%). Even in states with few abortion restrictions, access to abortion services can be limited by lack of providers, poor coverage, and other factors.

Among those who say they know someone (including themselves) who had difficulty getting abortion care since Roe was overturned, the majority report they (or the person they knew) had to travel out of state (68%) ( Figure 4 ). Women with higher incomes who say they or someone they know had difficulty accessing abortion care are more likely to report that they or the person they know had to travel out of state compared to women with lower incomes (75% vs. 62%). Many abortion patients living in states with abortion bans or restrictions have to travel to neighboring states to get abortion care, while others may need to travel farther .

Among women who say they or someone they know had difficulty accessing abortion, four in ten women say they or a person they know did not know where to go when trying to get an abortion (40%), three in ten women say they could not afford the cost (35%), and nearly three in ten say they had to take time off work (28%).

When asked about women’s ability to get abortion services in their state, more than half of women residing in states with abortion bans (57%) and over four in ten women in states with gestational limits say it is difficult to access abortion care in their state (Figure 5). Notably, one in five (21%) women residing in states with gestational limits at or after 24 weeks or without gestational limits say it is difficult to get abortion services in their state. While abortion may not be restricted, limitations on Medicaid and insurance coverage of abortion, the scarcity of abortion providers in rural communities, stigma, and other factors (such as the need to take time off from work and childcare costs) are still barriers to abortion.

O ver six in ten reproductive age women in the U.S. (63%) are concerned that they or someone close to them would not be able to get an abortion if it was needed to preserve their life or health (Figure 6). While all states with abortion bans and abortion restrictions have an exception in their law to “prevent the death” or “preserve the life” of the pregnant person, six states with abortion bans or early gestational restrictions do not have health exceptions. In general, health exceptions have often proven to be unworkable except in the most extreme circumstances. The abortion policies in these states are generally unclear about how ill or close to death a pregnant person would have to be to qualify for the exception.

With the exception of Republican women, a majority of reproductive age women in all subgroups report that they are very or somewhat concerned about access to abortion if it was needed to preserve their life or health. Larger shares of Asian or Pacific Islander women (75%) than White women (61%) are concerned, and smaller shares of women residing in rural areas (52%) are concerned compared to those residing in urban/suburban areas (65%). Compared to Democratic women (78%), smaller shares of women who identify as independent (61%) are concerned that they or someone close to them would not be able to get an abortion if it was needed to preserve their life or health; however, less than half of Republican women report being somewhat or very concerned (41%).

Similarly, over 6 in 10 (64%) reproductive age women say they are concerned that abortion bans may affect the safety of a potential future pregnancy for themselves or someone close to them ( Figure 7 ). Across most subgroups—except across party affiliation— majorities of women say that they are somewhat or very concerned. Four in ten (39%) Republican women say they are concerned about the impact of abortion bans on the safety of potential pregnancies for themselves or someone close to them, compared to almost eight in 10 Democratic women and six in 10 independent women.

Nearly one in five women (17%) of reproductive age report they have changed their contraceptive practices as a result of Roe being overturned. Larger shares of Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic women report they started to use birth control (9%, 10%, and 7%, respectively) compared to White women (3%) ( Table 1 ). A higher share of Asian or Pacific Islander women report that they have switched to a more effective method of birth control compared to White women (6% vs. 3%), and 7% of Hispanic women report that they have gotten emergency contraception to have on hand compared to 4% of White women.

Awareness of Abortion Availability and Policy

Nationally, most women of reproductive age are unaware of the status of abortion legality in the state they live in. While 45% can correctly describe the status of abortion in their state, 23% of reproductive age women could not answer correctly and another third (33%) say they are not sure ( Figure 8 ). Awareness is highest among women who live in states where abortion is fully banned (51%) or in states with gestational limits at or after 24 weeks or without bans (47%). Smaller shares of women living in states with gestational limits at 15 to 22 weeks (33%) and limits at 6 to 12 weeks (38%) are aware of the status of abortion in their state. Consistently across state abortion groupings, about a third of women say they are not sure on the status of abortion in their state.

One in four (26%) women of reproductive age in the U.S. report that if they needed or wanted an abortion in the near future they would not know where to go or where to find the information (Figure 9). A quarter of women say they would know where to go for an abortion and half (49%) say they would not know where to go, but would know where to find that information. Since the Dobbs decision, websites like abortionfinder.org and ineedana.com provide individuals seeking abortion services with directories of abortion clinics and services that provide medication abortion via telehealth.

Over a third of Hispanic women (37%) and a third of Black women (33%) report that if they wanted or needed an abortion in the near future, they wouldn’t know where to find information compared to 23% of White women. More women with lower incomes (37%) and women living in rural areas (35%) report they wouldn’t know where to go or find that information compared to women with higher incomes (19%) and women living in urban/suburban areas (25%). Over four in 10 (43%) women living in states where abortion is banned say they wouldn’t know where to find information compared to 17% of women in states with gestational limits at or after 24 weeks or without gestational limits. Women living in banned states seeking abortion services must either travel out of state or obtain medication abortion drugs from companies that will ship pills without requiring a clinician visit or from clinicians practicing in states with shield-laws, which offer clinicians a measure of legal protection from attempts by law authorities in abortion ban states to enforce bans in states that support abortion access.

In the United States, medication abortion is the most common abortion method. It involves taking two different medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, and it has been approved by the FDA to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks gestation. Two-thirds (67%) of women of reproductive age report that they have heard about medication abortion ( Figure 10 ). While still majorities, relatively smaller shares of Asian or Pacific Islander (62%), Black (64%), and Hispanic (59%) women report having heard about medication abortion compared to White women (72%). Similarly, smaller shares of women with lower incomes (60%) have heard about medication abortion compared to women with higher incomes (74%). Compared to women who identify as pro-choice (72%) and women who are Democrats (77%), smaller shares of women who identify as pro-life (56%) or are Republican/Republican leaning (62%) or independents (60%) report hearing of medication abortion.

The majority of women are unsure of the legal status of abortion in their state. While neither mifepristone nor misoprostol are explicitly banned in any state and the drugs can still be used for miscarriage management treatment, their use for abortion is banned in the 14 states with abortion bans. Medication abortion, for the purposes of abortion, is legal in all states with gestational restrictions as well as states without any limits, but is not legal to use for abortion after the state’s gestational limit (for example, after 6 weeks LMP in Iowa, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina).

The majority of women of reproductive age are unclear about the legal status of medication abortion in their state, regardless of the legal status of abortion in their state ( Figure 11 ). A larger share of women living in states with gestational limits at 24 weeks or without gestational limits (43%) report that medication abortion is legal in their state compared to women living in states with gestational limits between 6 to 12 weeks (19%) and gestational limits between 15 to 22 weeks (18%). Among women living in states where abortion is banned, 6% say medication abortion is legal in their state and 27% say it is illegal. Regardless of the status of abortion in their state of residence, majorities of women of reproductive age are not aware of the legal status of medication abortion in their state or have never heard of medication abortion.

Overall, only one in five (19%) women of reproductive age are aware that medication abortion pills are available online. Since state abortion bans and restrictions have gone into effect, new online services have been created that sell medication abortion pills through online organizations. Among women of reproductive age, 10% say individuals in their state cannot get medication abortion pills online and about three-quarter (71%) were unsure or had never heard of medication abortion ( Figure 12 ). Small shares of women living in states where abortion is banned or states with gestational limits know that people in their states can get medication abortion pills online compared to women living in states without any gestational limits or limits after 24 weeks.

Opinions on Abortion Policy

Three in four (75%) women of reproductive age in the United States, the age group that is most directly impacted by state abortion policies, think that abortion should be legal in most or all cases—38% say legal in all cases and 37% legal in most cases. Only 8% of women say that abortion should be illegal in all cases. This trend is consistent with prior polls which have found that the majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal.

Across various subgroups, except those who identify as Republican or pro-life, majorities of reproductive age women think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Among those ages 18 to 49, over eight in 10 Black women (83%) and Asian or Pacific Islander women (83%), and almost three-quarters of Hispanic women (73%) and White women (72%) think abortion should be legal ( Figure 13 ). In contrast, slightly less than half (48%) of Republican women of reproductive age think abortion should be legal, 36% say abortion should be illegal in most cases and 17% say abortion should be illegal in all cases. Not surprisingly, among women who identify as pro-life, 74% say that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, but one in four (25%) believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Seven in ten reproductive age women (70%) support a law guaranteeing a federal right to abortion, with half (50%) saying they strongly support this (Figure 17) . While similar shares of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White reproductive age women support a nationwide right to abortion, support varies widely by income, urbanicity, and party affiliation ( Figure 14 ). Though still a majority, smaller shares of reproductive age women with lower incomes (64%) and women who live in rural communities (62%) support a nationwide right to abortion compared to their urban/suburban (71%) and higher income counterparts (74%). Support is strongest among Democratic (84%) women, but two thirds (64%) of women who identify as independents and nearly half of Republican women (48%) strongly or somewhat support establishing a federal right to abortion. More than three times as many Democrats (71%) than Republicans (22%) strongly support a law that would guarantee this right.

More than half of all women of reproductive age support a law establishing a nationwide right to abortion, regardless of the abortion status in their state of residence. While there are smaller shares of support among women who reside in states with bans and gestational limits before viability, over four in 10 women in these states strongly support a law guaranteeing a federal right to abortion.

On the issue of abortion, former President Trump has previously said he would consider a national ban at 15 or 16 weeks, a position also proposed by other Republican elected officials. Overall, six in ten women of reproductive age (63%) oppose a law that would establish a nationwide ban on abortion at 15 weeks ( Figure 15 ). While still a majority, smaller shares of those with lower incomes (58%) and those who reside in rural areas (55%) oppose a national abortion ban at 15 weeks. Six in ten women in states with abortion bans and gestational limits before viability oppose a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks.

Most recently, former President Trump announced he supports leaving abortion policy up to the individual states, allowing the current bans and restrictions to stay in effect across half the country. Overall, nearly three in four women of reproductive age (74%) oppose this approach ( Figure 16 ). Similar shares of Asian (72%), Black (75%), Hispanic (75%), and White (72%) reproductive age women oppose leaving abortion policy up to the states. Compared to their counterparts, larger shares of women with higher incomes (76%) and those who live in urban/suburban communities (74%) oppose having states decide whether abortion should be legal or illegal in their states.

At least half of all women oppose this approach regardless of party affiliation, but opposition is highest among Democratic women (88%). While there is slight variation in support/opposition by abortion status in a woman’s state of residence, over two thirds of those in states with abortion bans and gestational limits oppose leaving the legality of abortion up to individual states.

• Women's Health Policy
• Women's Health Survey
• Women and Girls/Gender
• Reproductive Health
• TOPLINE & METHODOLOGY

Also of Interest

• Women and Abortion in Florida: Findings from the 2024 KFF Women’s Health Survey
• Women and Abortion in Arizona: Findings from the 2024 KFF Women’s Health Survey
• Abortion in the United States Dashboard
• 2024 Women’s Health Survey

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What the Polls Say About Harris Erasing Trump’s Lead on the Economy

By Kristen Soltis Anderson

Ms. Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer, is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion’s series of focus groups.

One thing has been true about the presidential election polling for many months now , regardless of who was up or down in the horse race: Donald Trump has been favored on the issue of the economy, and the economy has ranked as voters’ most important issue . Whatever other obstacles Mr. Trump and his campaign have faced, more voters have tended to trust him with the economy than the Biden-Harris ticket.

According to at least one poll, though, voters’ attitudes may have changed. In a new survey conducted for The Financial Times, by a single point, Vice President Kamala Harris edges out Mr. Trump on the question of who voters trust more to handle the economy.

This result is a perfect example of when the trend line, not the data point itself, tells the most interesting story. In isolation, voters being essentially evenly split on anything isn’t particularly surprising. The race for the White House is, at this point, very likely to be a close one, and seeing voters divide into their respective camps is what you’d expect.

But Ms. Harris’s slight edge on the economy in that Financial Times poll exists in the context of the numbers that came before it. To see the shift from Mr. Trump winning on the top issue to it being a jump ball will be an eye-opening finding if it is replicated in other polls.

To be clear, this isn’t necessarily because voters have started feeling a whole lot better about the state of things economically. The FT poll shows a fairly consistent majority of Americans reporting that when it comes to their own financial situation, they’re “surviving” rather than “thriving.” Almost three-quarters of respondents say they have a negative view of the overall condition of the economy, and half say they are worse off than they were before President Biden took office.

Rather, the poll suggests that Mr. Trump and Republicans don’t seem to have succeeded yet in connecting Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden’s economic policies. If they’re able to do so, it will be a significant challenge for Ms. Harris; more than six in 10 voters in the same poll say that if she’s elected, Ms. Harris should either “make major changes” or “take a completely different approach” from Mr. Biden.

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Paris’s stunning vision for the Olympics wins a gold medal

It marks a shift away from sporting gigantism.

T HE PARIS games are drawing to a close on a note of ferveur olympique in the French capital. Once sceptical, the French have been won over, both by the performance of their athletes, who won more medals than at any previous Olympics, and the sheer beauty of the capital’s backdrops. The sight of BMX freestyle riders in the air above the Place de la Concorde, or triathletes finishing before the golden-domed Invalides, wowed spectators at home and abroad. So when Paris hands over the Olympic flame to Los Angeles, the host in 2028, at the closing ceremony on August 11th the city will transfer both a sporting symbol and a challenge.

Unlike aloof Parisians, sports-mad Californians will need no nudge to get behind their own games. As recently as April, according to a poll, the single most-frequent word used by the French to describe their attitude to the Olympics was “indifference”; only 19% declared themselves “proud”. But once the games got under way, and the medals flowed in, the French went wild. They found new heroes, notably Léon Marchand, the 22-year-old swimming champion and five-time medallist. Crowds have broken out into spontaneous renditions of La Marseillaise at any excuse, including the nightly rise into the sky of the Olympic cauldron beneath a golden helium balloon. Parisians who had fled their city, like Londoners in 2012, began to regret it.

What Paris and Los Angeles share, by contrast, is the principle of hosting the games with minimal new build. Fully 95% of the venues used for the Paris Olympics were already in place or temporary. The only new permanent sports facility was the stylish aquatics centre. It was built in the scruffy neighbourhood of Seine-Saint-Denis , and designed for local use afterwards. This has helped keep the overall cost of the Paris Olympics to an estimated €9bn ($9.8bn), €2.3bn of which has come from the public purse; the rest has come from ticket sales, TV rights and sponsorship. This is less than the cost of Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, London, Beijing or Athens, the five previous Olympic hosts. As Marie Barsacq, director of legacy at the Paris organising committee, put it: “the era of gigantism is over.” In line with this new mood, Los Angeles plans to stage the games without building a single new permanent sports facility.

If the Paris Olympics have shown that the games need not be Pharaonic, they have also demonstrated that it helps to be Napoleonic. The French have used the games to complete ambitious public-transport projects. The extension of the driverless Metro line 14 was finished just weeks before the games. So was that of a fast underground link to La Défense, another venue. “The games have enabled us to get there on time,” says Valérie Pécresse, president of the greater Paris region.

Even in centralised France, as Ms Pécresse points out, this has not always been easy, mainly because of blockages in what she calls the country’s “colossal administrative machinery”. What made a difference is that the Paris region (run by the centre-right) and city hall (run by the left) were fully backed by the centrist government and President Emmanuel Macron, who put pressure at all levels to get everything in place. Even so, a new fast Paris airport link, challenged in the courts by a local authority, will not be finished until 2027. Los Angeles is scarcely trying. Deterred by cost, the city has already shelved a plan for massive investment in new rail systems.

In another respect, too, France has done what less imperious countries would not dare: closed down the capital’s centre for weeks and transformed it into a giant pedestrian sports arena. A vast stretch of Paris, from the Eiffel Tower to the Place de la Concorde, has been turned over to events in pop-up stands, from fencing and archery to skateboarding and beach volleyball. At the price of grumbling by residents and restaurant-owners, this has delivered spectacular scenery. In 2028 Los Angeles may have showbiz and glitz; in 2024 Paris has done historic elegance.

As ever, there have been criticisms: of the lack of air-conditioning (Paris wanted a “green” games); of the food in the athletes’ village (not enough meat, oddly for the French); of the cleanliness of the Seine (which only just passed the health test); of the cost of steak-frites in local brasseries (prices up by as much as 36%, according to an investigation by Le Parisien ).  Barring last-minute incidents, however, when the closing ceremony takes place in the Stade de France, featuring stunts by Tom Cruise in a nod to Hollywood, it will be a moment for the French to feel rightly chuffed. They have managed to pull off un feel-good games, which has lifted the mood at home, and impressed spectators far beyond. ■

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