Michael Caie
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Michael Caie and his article “Belief and Indeterminacy” were selected for publication in Volume 32 of “The Philosopher’s Annual.” Each year the annual’s team of nominating editors selects 10 of the best essays contributed to the study of philosophy.
“It’s very nice to have one’s work recognized by one’s peers,” says Caie, who wrote “Belief and Indeterminacy” as a part of his dissertation while a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.
Before arriving at Syracuse, Caie was an assistant professor at the University of Rochester. His article “Vagueness and Semantic Indiscriminability” was included in “Philosophical Studies” in 2012. His next piece, “Rational Probabilistic Incoherence,” can be found in the forthcoming installment of “The Philosophical Review.”
“Belief and Indeterminacy,” which was originally published in the pages of “The Philosophical Review,” deals with the challenges to basic reasoning raised by the liar paradox, a statement that leads to a contradiction given plausible principles about truth and plausible logical principles.
“I thought this was a pretty interesting puzzle. It shows that some very basic principles about truth are incompatible with some very basic principles of reasoning, and it isn’t at all obvious which principles we should give up,” says Caie.
