Believe It or Not, Disbelief Remains Mysterious

ABSTRACT As a basic doxastic attitude ranking with belief and withholding, disbelief remains a comparatively underexplored concept. According to the standard account of disbelief, to disbelieve that p is to believe that not‐ p . A recently proposed rejection account of disbelief argues that disbelief is a sui generis doxastic attitude, viz., an attitude of rejection. This paper argues against both the standard account and the rejection account. I first illustrate that the standard account would entail implausible corollaries. Subsequently, an argument is given that the rejection account would collapse into the standard account and thus be plagued by similar difficulties. Therefore, disbelief remains a puzzling concept that warrants further investigation.