Confidence is a subject’s relationship to a particular judgment, expressing the degree of their certainty regarding that judgment.
At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish:
- Internal confidence: how certain the subject themselves is about the judgment.
- Expressed confidence: how certain the subject presents the judgment as being in communication.
These relationships are not identical. A subject can express confidence without actually feeling it.
A Criterion for Analyzing Modality
When analyzing a statement, it is necessary to establish independently:
- What is being asserted? The possibility of a scenario, a preference for one scenario over another, the occurrence of an event, and so on.
- How is the relationship to what is asserted expressed? With confidence, doubt, an admission of possibility, or without any explicitly expressed attitude.
- On what grounds? Are circumstances specified that justify the assertion?
Confidence is not a criterion for the justification of an assertion. It is a separate characteristic of the subject’s relationship to what is asserted.
Moreover, the absence of expressed doubt does not yet prove the presence of confidence. An ordinary categorical assertion and an expression of confidence must not automatically be equated.
Why This Distinction Is Needed
For example:
“This scenario is more probable than the other.”
Here, a comparative relationship between two scenarios is asserted. But the statement itself does not tell us on what grounds that relationship has been established or how confident the subject is about it.
“I am absolutely confident that this scenario is more probable than the other.”
Now the subject’s confidence is additionally expressed. But the criterion that would establish why one scenario should be preferred is still not provided.
And most importantly: expressed confidence does not establish the subject’s actual confidence, and actual confidence does not establish that the judgment is justified.
This distinction is sufficient for using confidence as an independent parameter when analyzing modality, without turning it into a separate article.
Understood. I led you into writing an article, although what you needed was to introduce the concept of confidence as a working criterion for analyzing the modality of statements, without conducting a separate investigation of confidence.
In that case, I would record the following.
Confidence
Confidence is a subject’s relationship to a particular judgment, expressing the degree of their certainty regarding that judgment.
At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish:
- Internal confidence: how certain the subject themselves is about the judgment.
- Expressed confidence: how certain the subject presents the judgment as being in communication.
These relationships are not identical. A subject can express confidence without actually feeling it.
A Criterion for Analyzing Modality
When analyzing a statement, it is necessary to establish independently:
- What is being asserted? The possibility of a scenario, a preference for one scenario over another, the occurrence of an event, and so on.
- How is the relationship to what is asserted expressed? With confidence, doubt, an admission of possibility, or without any explicitly expressed attitude.
- On what grounds? Are circumstances specified that justify the assertion?
Confidence is not a criterion for the justification of an assertion. It is a separate characteristic of the subject’s relationship to what is asserted.
Moreover, the absence of expressed doubt does not yet prove the presence of confidence. An ordinary categorical assertion and an expression of confidence must not automatically be equated.
Why This Distinction Is Needed
For example:
“This scenario is more probable than the other.”
Here, a comparative relationship between two scenarios is asserted. But the statement itself does not tell us on what grounds that relationship has been established or how confident the subject is about it.
“I am absolutely confident that this scenario is more probable than the other.”
Now the subject’s confidence is additionally expressed. But the criterion that would establish why one scenario should be preferred is still not provided.
And most importantly: expressed confidence does not establish the subject’s actual confidence, and actual confidence does not establish that the judgment is justified.
This distinction is sufficient for using confidence as an independent parameter when analyzing modality, without turning it into a separate article.
