Ramsey’s Epistemology

This chapter presents some key concepts of Ramsey’s epistemology. The fundamental notions needed to understand Ramsey’s account of conditionals are here introduced. The chapter focuses on those concepts that appear in Ramsey’s renowned footnote, which served as the source of the Ramsey test(s), and tries to give them a precise characterisation and systematisation in a coherent epistemological framework. Such concepts are ‘degree of belief’, ‘knowledge’, and ‘laws’, and in order to recover and understand them, other notions will be needed, like ‘full belief’ and ‘habits’. The texts here considered were written in different years of Ramsey’s life, and they might sometimes present different positions or be underdeveloped and ambiguous. The main aim is thus to see if it is possible to obtain a coherent picture. The result is, I believe, a convincing epistemological framework that offers a better understanding of Ramsey’s footnote and provides a philosophical background for Ramsey’s account of conditional sentences.