This talk offers an account of the propositional attitude of suspicion. It critically discusses views which characterize suspecting p as either a doxastic commitment to p (cf. Carter et al., 2015, 2016; Cohen, 1974), as a belief in p’s possibility or likelihood (cf. Sarch 2019), or as an inclination to believe p (cf. White, 1993/2014). Although much of the talk is devoted to showing that these views are extensionally inadequate, I also introduce a pluralistic account that unifies their strengths while avoiding their problems. On the view proposed, to suspect p is to evaluate one’s evidence as favoring p while holding p as an open question. The account suggests conceptual differences between suspicion, belief, doubt, and interrogative attitudes.
