Reasons and Rationality

David Miller argues that there are no good reasons, either sufficient or insufficient. I show that most of his arguments are invalid or unsound. Several of his arguments depend upon the false claim that every deductively valid argument is circular. I accept one of Miller's arguments for the conclusion that there are no good reasons which are less-than-sufficient. I accept one of his arguments to the conclusion that there are no probative sufficient reasons. But I explain how there are epistemic (...) sufficient reasons which are relative to the game of science and how their existence is consistent with Miller's main contentions while avoiding Miller's apparently anarchic account of our knowledge. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall’s The Second Person Standpoint is built around an analysis of the “second-person standpoint,” which he argues builds in a series of presuppositions which help shape (and perhaps even give content to) morality. This paper argues that there is a kind of paradox tied up in the two central claims at the heart of this project – that second-personal address directs one practically rather than epistemically by giving reasons for action one otherwise would not have had, and that all (...) moral obligation is second-personal in precisely this way – that I will argue forces us onto the horns of a dilemma. Two possible solutions to this dilemma are analyzed, one drawing on the Kantian notion of a “regulative ideal,” the other on Michael Thompson’s concept of “bipolar normativity.” Ultimately, I argue, neither is successful. (shrink)

In recent years, the economics of emotions (EoE) field, which aims to create models of the human mind, has grown quickly. EoE models work well with simulation theory (ST), which is one of the main theories of mind. EoE models show how people's behavior and emotions change based on their knowledge and perception of others. It is hoped that by developing this model, it will be possible to quantitatively analyze not only the mental states of real others, but also the (...) subtleties of the minds of characters in novels in the future. Until now, the decision-making or the factual-reasoning mechanisms have been a black box in ST. This study analyzes how EoE models add to the understanding of ST. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a puzzle that arises from three initially plausible assumptions that form an inconsistent triad: (1) Epistemic reasons are normative reasons (normativism); (2) reasons are normative only if conformity with them is good (the reasons/value-link); (3) conformity with epistemic reasons need not be good (the nihilist assumption). I start by defending the reasons/value-link, arguing that normativists need to reject the nihilist assumption. I then argue that the most familiar view that denies the nihilist assumption – epistemic (...) teleology – is untenable. Finally, I consider two alternative ways of accounting for the goodness of conformity with epistemic reasons: it may be good because it accords with the virtue of reasons-responsiveness, and it may be good because it is good to conform with normative reasons as such. I argue that both of these conceptions avoid the problems of epistemic teleology and merit serious consideration as potential solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

Superceded by Being more realistic about reasons, a paper on reasons perspectivism published by PPR. See above.

This paper is an early draft of something that we've polished up and posted above: n-1 Guilty Men. Check that one out, if interested.

Is the Kantian basis of valuing in humanity sufficient or sound enough to account for all valuing? At least two other such bases have been proposed across the ages, that of the sentiments and the valuing of life itself. This article focuses on the Kantian view, the first of these three possible bases of valuing. The concern is: by which criteria can we assess whether a given theory of or approach to basing a value is in fact usable and optimal, (...) that is can in fact explain why a value can be assuredly based on a theory of value. That is, can a possible theory of value indeed explain all other values? That is, it seems a “meta” analysis of the situation is due. The article looks to five perspectives on the Kantian concept of humanity to determine if that humanity, as a theory of all valuing’s bases, is at least supportable / sustainable, if not yet sufficiently fleshed out. The article concludes that these five perspective may each and severally leave some cogent doubt of humanity as the basis of all other value, while leaving unsettled the possibility the perspective is flawed or is not thorough enough for due criticism of humanity as basis. (shrink)

فلسفة التكنولوجيا - فال دوسيك (المقدمة والفصلين الثالث والرابع) - ترجمة وتعليق، في إطار مشروع لترجمة الكتاب بالكامل بالاشتراك مع آخرين.

We ought to perform our best option—that is, the option that we have most reason, all things considered, to perform. This is perhaps the most fundamental and least controversial of all normative principles concerning action. Yet, it is not, I believe, well understood. For even setting aside questions about what our reasons are and about how best to formulate the principle, there is a question about how we should construe our options. This question is of the upmost importance, for which (...) option will count as being best depends on how broadly or narrowly we are to construe our options. In this paper, I argue that we ought to construe an agent’s options at a time, t, as being those actions (or sets of actions) that are scrupulously securable by her at t. (shrink)

This paper concerns Warren Quinn’s famous “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.” I argue that even if we accept his assumption that practical rationality is purely instrumental such that what he ought to do is simply a function of how the relevant options compare to each other in terms of satisfying his actual preferences that doesn’t mean that every explanation as to why he shouldn’t advance to the next level must appeal to the idea that so advancing would be suboptimal in (...) terms of the satisfaction of his actual preferences. Rather, we can admit that his advancing would always be optimal, but argue that advancing isn’t always what he ought to do given that advancing sometimes fails to meet some necessary condition for being what he ought to do. For instance, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s an option for him. What’s more, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s something that he can do without responding inappropriately to his reasons—or, so, I argue. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, I argue, to realize that, in certain circumstances, advancing is not what the self-torturer ought to do given that he can do so only by responding inappropriately to his reasons. (shrink)

This is Chapter 3 of my Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality. In this chapter, I defend the teleological conception of practical reasons, which holds that the reasons there are for and against performing a given act are wholly determined by the reasons there are for and against preferring its outcome to those of its available alternatives, such that, if S has most reason to perform x, all things considered, then, of all the outcomes that S could bring about, S (...) has most reason to desire that Ox (i.e., x’s outcome) obtains, all things considered. (shrink)

We analyse Peirce's original idea concerning abduction from the perspective of a critical philosophy, the same philosophy in Peirce's background. Peirce's realism is directly related to reason and experience and has ties with the idea of abstraction. We show how the philosophical environment of science abruptly changed, specially for physics, in the last period of the XIX century and the initial period of the XX century, when science was divided in disciplines and set free from the control of philosophy. The (...) phenotype of the physicist changed from abstract into imaginative thinker. Further, abstraction was linked to metaphysics and attacked as such. Elements of phantasy and dogmatism entered the scene in place of abstraction alongside ideas taken from the observable world. We provide evidence that the scientists of the newer kind had problems understanding those of the older school. As a consequence of the problems arisen in conciliating the idea of science grounded in experience and reason with the science actually practised, the former conceptualisation was abandoned. Abduction was then expelled from science. In the late part of the XX century and the early part of our century abduction re-emerged but without its scientific attributes. -/- Influenced by a constructivist, Piagetian, perspective of science, we propose and discuss a small number of conditions that we identify as characteristics of rational abduction: rules for the rational construction of theories. We show how a classical example of belief that satisfies today's most common definition of abduction does not match the standards of scientific retroduction. We further show how the same rules indicate the detachment of Special Relativity from the observable world, a fact actually known to Einstein. Finally, the same rules indicate the initial point in the path to re-conciliate Electromagnetism with the classical view of spatial relations, a matter not possible for the imaginative scientist but not extremely difficult for the abstract scientist. We close arguing that there is an urgent need to develop a critical epistemology, and to give room in science for the abstract scientist. (shrink)

How should you decide what to do when you're uncertain about basic normative principles (e.g., Kantianism vs. utilitarianism)? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order" norm: e.g., "comply with the first-order norm you regard as most probable" or "maximize expected choiceworthiness". But what if you're uncertain about second-order norms too -- must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, it seems that any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty is doomed to a vicious regress. In this paper, I aim (...) to rescue second-order norms from this threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the suggestion some philosophers have entertained that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on agents regardless of their beliefs or evidence concerning that norm. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order (e.g., moral) norms, thus closing off any question of what an agent should do in light of her normative beliefs. Rather, it is more plausible to ascribe external force to a single, second-order rational norm: the enkratic principle, correctly formulated. This modest form of externalism, I argue, is both intrinsically well-motivated and sufficient to head off the threat of regress. (shrink)

Abstract. Richard Feldman’s Uniqueness Thesis holds that “a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of proposi- tions”. The opposing position, permissivism, allows distinct rational agents to adopt differing attitudes towards a proposition given the same body of evidence. We assess various motivations that have been offered for Uniqueness, including: concerns about achieving consensus, a strong form of evidentialism, worries about epistemically arbitrary influences on belief, a focus on truth-conduciveness, and consequences for peer disagreement. (...) We argue that each of these motivations either misunderstands the commitments of permissivism or is question-begging. Better understanding permissivism makes it a much more plausible position. (shrink)

Some of our reasons for action are grounded in the fact that the action in question is a means to something else we have reason to do. This raises the question as to which principles govern the transmission of reasons from ends to means. In this paper, we discuss the merits and demerits of a liberal transmission principle, which plays a prominent role in the current literature. The principle states that an agent has an instrumental reason to whenever -ing is (...) a means for him to do what he has intrinsic reason to do. We start by discussing the objection that this principle implies counterintuitive reason statements. We argue that attempts to solve this “too many reasons problem” by appealing to pragmatic strategies for debunking intuitions about so-called negative reason existentials are questionable. Subsequently, we discuss three important arguments in favor of Liberal Transmission, and argue that they fail to make a convincing case for this principle. In the course of the discussion, we also provide alternative, less liberal transmission principles. We argue that these alternative principles allow us to accommodate those phenomena that seem to support Liberal Transmission while avoiding its problems. (shrink)

Although in everyday life and thought we take for granted that there are norms of rationality, their existence presents severe philosophical problems. Kolodny (2005) is thus moved to deny that rationality is normative. But this denial is not itself unproblematic, and I argue that Kolodny’s defense of it—especially his Transparency Account, which aims to explain why rationality appears to be normative even though it isn’t—is unsuccessful. I close with a sketch of an alternative proposal, one that provides for a genuine (...) normative role for rationality while defusing the attendant problems. (shrink)

One of Bratman’s aims in Planning, Time, and Self-Governance is to develop his insights regarding planning to shed light on temptation. I focus on the main case of temptation Bratman appeals to in supporting his conclusion that it can be rational for an agent facing temptation to stick to her prior plan even if she finds herself with an evaluative judgment that favors deviating. Bratman’s reasoning is meant to be consistent with the priority of present evaluation, and to be sensitive (...) to Smart’s insight that, as Bratman puts it, ‘inference from the advantages of the general habit [of non-reconsideration] directly to a specific conclusion about what to do on the present occasion, once the question of what to do on the present occasion is raised, is fraught.’ My reasoning suggests that, interpreted in one way, the case Bratman uses to make his argument is not clearly a case of giving in to temptation (or else not a case that requires the sort of novel contribution Bratman thinks is needed); and interpreted otherwise, the case does not raise exactly the challenges Bratman suggests it does, and the challenges it does raise are not directly addressed by the solution Bratman provides. (shrink)

Why engage in inquiry? According to many philosophers, the goal of inquiring into some question is to come to know its answer. While this view holds considerable appeal, this paper argues that it stands in tension with another highly attractive thesis: knowledge does not require absolute certainty. Forced to choose between these two theses, I argue that we should reject the idea that inquiry aims at knowledge. I go on to develop an alternative view, according to which inquiry aims at (...) maximizing the epistemic value of our credences. This alternative view makes room for knowledge that falls shy of certainty, and it coheres nicely with a rich body of work in epistemic decision theory. I proceed to highlight the implications of this replacement for some important topics in epistemology, including the dogmatism paradox, the nature of interrogative attitudes, and the norm of practical reasoning. (shrink)

The main objection to pragmatism about knowledge is that it entails that truth-irrelevant factors can make a difference to knowledge. Blake Roeber (2018) has recently argued that this objection fails. I agree with Roeber. But in this paper, I present another way of thinking about the dispute between purists and pragmatists about knowledge. I do so by formulating a new objection to pragmatism about knowledge. This is that pragmatism about knowledge entails that factors irrelevant to both truth and “cognitive agency” (...) can make a difference to knowledge. An interesting additional upshot of my argument is the connection revealed between the debate between pragmatists and purists about knowledge, and the debate between “alethists” and pragmatists about reasons for belief. (shrink)

There is currently a lively debate about whether there are practical reasons for belief, epistemic reasons for belief, or both. I will argue that the intuitions on all sides can be fully accounted for by applying an independently motivated contextualist semantics for normative terms. Specifically, normative terms must be relativized to a goal. One possible goal is epistemic, such as believing truly and not believing falsely, while another possible goal is practical, such as satisfying desires, or maximizing value. I will (...) argue that we have practical reasons given the practical goal and epistemic reasons given the epistemic goal. Disagreement disappears when we make the context explicit. The result is an independently motivated version ofpluralism. (shrink)

In Rational Powers in Action, Sergio Tenenbaum sets out a new theory of instrumental rationality that departs from standard discussions of means-ends coherence in the literature on structural rationality in at least two interesting ways: it takes intentional action (as opposed to intention) to be what puts in place the relevant instrumental requirements, and it applies to both necessary and non-necessary means. I consider these two developments in more detail. On the first, I argue that Tenenbaum’s theory is too narrow (...) since there could be instrumental irrationality with respect to an intention to X even if one is not yet engaged in any relevant intentional action. On the second, I argue against Tenenbaum’s claim that “an agent is instrumentally irrational if she knowingly fails to pursue some sufficient means to an end she is pursuing.”. (shrink)

In this paper I give a novel argument for the view that epistemic normative reasons (or evidence) need not be facts. I first argue that the nature of normative reasons is uniform, such that our positions about the factivity of reasons should agree across normative realms –– whether epistemic, moral, practical, or otherwise. With that in mind, I proceed in a somewhat indirect way. I argue that if practical motivating reasons are not factive, then practical normative reasons are not factive. (...) If it is possible to act rationally in the light of a falsehood, as I will say, then some good reasons must be falsehoods. The implication of this argument is perhaps surprising: for one to firmly establish the view that epistemic normative reasons are factive, one must discredit the view that practical motivating reasons are not factive. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument against the view that structural (or attitude-based) irrationality consists in failing to respond correctly to normative reasons. According to this view, a pattern of attitudes is structurally irrational if and only if that pattern guarantees that one has at least one attitude one ought not to have. I argue that this ought-violation view comes with three indispensable theoretical commitments. These commitments concern various relationships between normative permissions and oughts that govern beliefs and intentions, and (...) they may appear plausible when viewed in isolation. However, once they are collectively conjoined, they imply oughts that are incompatible with the ought-violation view of structural irrationality. In particular, on the ought-violation view, these oughts entail that you are necessarily structurally irrational whenever [you intend to p] and [you believe that it is not the case that you ought to p]. However, since you can rationally intend things that you believe to be normatively optional (e.g. merely permitted or supererogatory), the ought-violation view faces the following dilemma: it must either deny one of its essential commitments or accept as irrational a set of attitudes that are clearly not. Either way suffices to show that the ought-violation view cannot serve as a correct analysis of structural irrationality. (shrink)

Critical Notice of Alex Worsnip's 'Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality' (OUP 2021).

According to many philosophers, rationality is, at least in part, a matter of one’s attitudes cohering with one another. Theorists who endorse this idea have devoted much attention to formulating various coherence requirements. Surprisingly, they have said very little about what it takes for a set of attitudes to be coherent in general. We articulate and defend a general account on which a set of attitudes is coherent just in case and because it is logically possible for the attitudes to (...) be jointly satisfied in the sense of jointly fitting the world. In addition, we show how the account can help adjudicate debates about how to formulate various rational requirements. (shrink)

Several philosophers have proposed Knowledge-Based Decision Theories (KDTs)—theories that require agents to maximize expected utility as yielded by utility and probability functions that depend on the agent’s knowledge. Proponents of KDTs argue that such theories are motivated by Knowledge-Reasons norms that require agents to act only on reasons that they know. However, no formal derivation of KDTs from Knowledge-Reasons norms has been suggested, and it is not clear how such norms justify the particular ways in which KDTs relate knowledge and (...) rational action. In this paper, I suggest a new axiomatic method for justifying KDTs and providing them with stronger normative foundations. I argue that such theories may be derived from constraints on the relation between knowledge and preference, and that these constraints may be evaluated relative to intuitions regarding practical reasoning. To demonstrate this, I offer a representation theorem for a KDT proposed by Hawthorne and Stanley (2008) and briefly evaluate it through its underlying axioms. -/- In section 1, I present knowledge-based decision theories generally and the versions of such theories suggested in the literature. In section 2, I argue that KDTs and theories of practical reasoning conjoined with Knowledge-Reasons norms generate constraints on the same relation—the relation between knowledge and preference. In section 3, I present a formal framework in which constraints on this relation may be expressed and from which KDTs may be derived. In section 4, I present a representation theorem for a specific KDT. In section 5, I briefly evaluate the axioms of the theory, and in section 6, I conclude. (shrink)

Perception can provide us with a privileged source of evidence about the external world – evidence that makes it rational to believe things about the world. In Reasons First, Mark Schroeder offers a new view on how perception does so. The central motivation behind Schroeder’s account is to offer an answer to what evidence perception equips us with according to which it is what he calls world-implicating but non-factive, and thereby to glean some of the key advantages of both externalism (...) and internalism, respectively. He answers this motivation by developing a more specific view that he calls the Apparent Factive Attitude view, which pairs an answer to what evidence is provided by a perceptual experience with an answer to why having that perceptual experience provides you with that evidence. In this paper we advance two interconnected problems for Schroeder’s Apparent Factive Attitude view. A traditional intuitive judgment that often motivates internalists is the idea that internal duplicates must necessarily be equally rational in whatever beliefs they have. Schroeder’s arguments rely on a weaker claim - that people who are both internal and historical external duplicates but differ only in the veridicality of a single perceptual experience must be equally rational in whatever beliefs they have. In this way he preserves what he argues to be a more compelling internalist intuition. But our arguments will show that Schroeder’s view is committed to denying an even more compelling internalist intuition yet - that internal duplicates must have the same phenomenology. (shrink)

A longstanding question is the extent to which "reasonable doubt" may be expressed simply in terms of a threshold degree of belief. In this context, we examine the extent to which learning about possible alternatives may alter one's beliefs about a target hypothesis, even when no new "evidence" linking them to the hypothesis is acquired. Imagine the following scenario: a crime has been committed and Alice, the police's main suspect has been brought to trial. There are several pieces of evidence (...) that raise the probability that Alice committed the crime. Her attorney's defense strategy is not to challenge this evidence, but instead to provide personal details about Alice's neighbour, Jane. While Jane is one of many people the police spoke to, they saw no reason to investigate her further. You now learn that Jane, too, had access to the shed where the murder weapon was stored, just like Alice. To what extent should this alter your beliefs about Alice's guilt? In this paper, we provide a formal description of the problem and a solution indicating circumstances under which learning about Jane will more or less impact beliefs about Alice. (shrink)

Many think of reasons as facts, propositions, or considerations that stand in some relation (or relations) to attitudes, actions, states of affairs. The relation may be an explanatory one or a “normative” one—though some are uncomfortable with irreducibly “normative” relations. I will suggest that we should, instead, see reasons as items in pieces of reasoning. They relate, in the first instance, not to psychological states or events or states of affairs, but to questions. That relation is neither explanatory nor “normative.” (...) If we must give it a label, we could call it “rational”—but that will mean, I think, only that the consideration bears on the question. By thus putting reasoning first, we not only avoid a handful of difficulties that have plagued thinking about reasons, but we also bring back to center-stage the importance of rational agency. (shrink)

Recent studies on mind‐wandering reveal its potential role in goal exploration and planning future actions. How to understand these explorative functions and their impact on planning remains unclear. Given certain conceptions of intentions and beliefs, the explorative functions of mind‐wandering could lead to regular reconsideration of one's intentions. However, this would be in tension with the stability of intentions central to rational planning agency. We analyze the potential issue of excessive reconsideration caused by mind‐wandering. Our response resolves this tension, presenting (...) a model that aligns the roles of mind‐wandering in planning with empirical evidence and the sustained stability of intentions. (shrink)

This a review of Alex Worsnip's book 'Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality'.

Classical theories of epistemic rationality take an agent\\textquoteright{}s individual beliefs to be the only things that are rational or irrational. For them, rationality is wholly static. Recent work in epistemology take sets of individual beliefs and also changes of belief over time to be rational or irrational. For these theories, rationality is both static and dynamic. However, for both groups, static rationality is fundamental. In my dissertation, I argue to the contrary that, in fact, all rationality is dynamic rationality. Epistemic (...) reasons, rationality, and justi{}cation as applying only to changes of belief. This wholly dynamic view of rationality, which I call \\textquotedblleft{}Dynamicism\\textquotedblright has wide-ranging epistemological consequences. A small set of simple, elegant, and independently motivated principles of dynamic rationality can illuminate and solve otherwise interminable epistemological disputes. (shrink)

A lineage of prominent philosophers who have discussed the second-person relation can be regarded as advancing structural accounts. They posit that the second-person relation effects one transformative change to the structure of practical reasoning. In this paper, I criticise this orthodoxy and offer an alternative, substantive account. That is, I argue that entering into second-personal relations with others does indeed affect one's practical reasoning, but it does this not by altering the structure of one's agential thought, but by changing what (...) reasons can become available. The importance of second-personal thought for action is heterogenous. Second-person relations make possible the emergence of a wide variety of different kinds of practical reasons: creating some, revealing others. Recognising this diminishes the appeal of the traditional, structural accounts of the practical significance of such second-personal relations. Moving away from structural accounts facilitates a more thorough understanding of the intersubjective form of action. (shrink)

The typical epistemology course begins with a discussion of the distinction between justification and knowledge and ends without any discussion of the distinction between justification and excuse. This is unfortunate. If we had a better understanding of the justification-excuse distinction, we would have a better understanding of the intuitions that shape the internalism-externalism debate. My aims in this paper are these. First, I will explain how the kinds of excuses that should interest epistemologists exculpate. Second, I will explain why the (...) intuitions that underwrite the new evil demon argument don't provide support for the internalist claim that justification is just in the head. The positive response that Cohen's example elicits is an indication that the subject should be excused if she violates an epistemic norm, not an indication that no norm has been violated. For just about any conceivable norm we can think of we can imagine situations in which someone violates that norm because they're moved by evidence that misleadingly suggests that they'd conform to it. When that happens, we'll respond positively in just the way we do when we consider Cohen's deceived subjects. When that happens, we cannot say that the subjects' responses were justified because we've stipulated that the subjects' responses contravene the relevant norms. Regardless of whether you think of norms along internalist or externalist lines, you should see that the intuitions that underwrite the new evil demon objection tell us nothing at all about whether a subject conforms to a norm. They tell us nothing about justification. (shrink)

Must rational thinkers have consistent sets of beliefs? I shall argue that it can be rational for a thinker to believe a set of propositions known to be inconsistent. If this is right, an important test for a theory of rational belief is that it allows for the right kinds of inconsistency. One problem we face in trying to resolve disagreements about putative rational requirements is that parties to the disagreement might be working with different conceptions of the relevant attitudes. (...) My aim is modest. I hope to show that there is at least one important notion of belief such that a thinker might rationally hold a collection of beliefs (so understood) even when the thinker knows their contents entail a contradiction. (shrink)

A theory of rational belief should get the cases right. It should also reach its verdicts using the right theoretical assumptions. Leading theories seem to predict the wrong things. With only one exception, they don't accommodate principles that we should use to explain these verdicts. We offer a theory of rational belief that combines an attractive picture of epistemic desirability with plausible principles connecting desirability to rationality. On our view, it's rational to believe when it's sufficiently likely that you'd know (...) because believing when it's sufficiently likely that you'd know minimises expected objective epistemic undesirability. (shrink)

We argue that there is nothing that can do the work that normative reasons are expected to do. A currently popular view is that in any given situation, a set of normative reasons (understood as a set of facts, typically about the agent’s situation) always determines the ways we prospectively should or should not respond. We discuss an example that we think shows no such collection of facts could have this normative significance. A radical response might be to dispense with (...) reasons and explain the facts about the ways we should respond using something else entirely (e.g., expected value). We think a more fruitful approach is to explore the possibility of using decision-theoretic tools in a reasons-centred framework. (shrink)

That bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning fail to instantiate persuasive argumentation is an often informally presented but not systematically developed view. In this paper, I will argue that this unpersuasiveness is not determined by principles of justification transmission but by two straightforward principles of rationality, understood as a concept of internal coherence. First, it is rational for S to believe the conclusion of an argument because of the argument, only if S believes sufficiently many premises of the argument. Second, if S (...) doubts that a source O is reliable and believes that information i is delivered by O, then S rationally suspends judgment about the truth of i. This paper aims to accomplish two tasks. First, it provides a thorough analysis of why bootstrapping argumentation is not an instance of rational persuasion. Second, it contains a more general theory about preconditions and limits of persuasive argumentation. (shrink)

That we have practical reasons to believe certain propositions even if sceptical arguments are cogent is nothing new. As Hume puts it, if sceptical principles were steadily accepted, “men would remain in a total lethargy until their miserable lives came to an end through lack of food, drink and shelter.” (Enquiry, 12, 2). This heart-breaking projection fails to move contemporary epistemologists who, for the most part, brush off pragmatist stances on scepticism. In this paper, I argue that the pragmatist stance (...) on scepticism is not necessarily as easily brushed off as some philosophers think. (shrink)

The article analyzes the legislative issues on equal marriage in P. R. China. It adopts a path dependency analysis on the liberal institutional order’s effects to the regime’s structural discrimination on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population. The research adopted a duo-lingual paradigm on Christianity with intercultural and transnational interpretations, and the research found the mis-adaption of language in the Chinese text of the United Nations charter is the key source to the suppression of the LGBT population in (...) mainland China. Furthermore, theological development for sexually diverse interpretations of the Bible is essential to mitigate the stigmatization of the LGBT population on a comparative constitutional review. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present a problem for reductive accounts of knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. By “reductive” I mean accounts that try to analyze epistemic luck in non-epistemic terms. I will begin by briefly considering Jennifer Lackey's (2006) criticism of Duncan Pritchard's (2005) safety-based account of epistemic luck. I will further develop her objection to Pritchard by drawing on the defeasible-reasoning tradition. I will then show that her objection to safety-based accounts is an instance of a more general problem with (...) reductive accounts of epistemic luck. In short, they face a dilemma: they can either fail to vindicate the intuitive verdicts about cases or they can illicitly appeal to the epistemic vocabulary they are trying to reduce. The upshot is that we can only understand epistemic luck in terms of the assessment of the subject's reasons and we can't give a reductive account of that. (shrink)

Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems currently used for decision-making are opaque, i.e., the internal factors that determine their decisions are not fully known to people due to the systems’ computational complexity. In response to this problem, several researchers have argued that human decision-making is equally opaque and since simplifying, reason-giving explanations (rather than exhaustive causal accounts) of a decision are typically viewed as sufficient in the human case, the same should hold for algorithmic decision-making. Here, I contend that this argument (...) overlooks that human decision-making is sometimes significantly more transparent and trustworthy than algorithmic decision-making. This is because when people explain their decisions by giving reasons for them, this frequently prompts those giving the reasons to govern or regulate themselves so as to think and act in ways that confirm their reason reports. AI explanation systems lack this self-regulative feature. Overlooking it when comparing algorithmic and human decision-making can result in underestimations of the transparency of human decision-making and in the development of explainable AI that may mislead people by activating generally warranted beliefs about the regulative dimension of reason-giving. (shrink)

The idea of believing for a good reason has both normative and psychological content. How are these related? Recently, a number of authors have defended a ‘disjunctivist’ view of rationalisation, on which a good reason can make a subject’s responses to it intelligible in a way that mere ‘apparent reasons’ cannot. However, little has been said about the possible epistemological significance of this view or its relationship to more familiar forms of disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception. This paper examines (...) the relationship between epistemological disjunctivism and disjunctivism about rationalisation, arguing that the latter provides an attractive articulation of certain elements of the former. The specific claim is that disjunctivism about rationalisation enables the proponent of epistemological disjunctivism to explain why beliefs that are based on conclusive normative reasons provided by perception are susceptible to a certain kind of undercutting defeat. On the way to motivating this claim, the paper considers possible ways of articulating epistemological disjunctivism in terms of reasons, distinguishes different forms of disjunctivism about reasons for belief and clarifies the relationships between them. (shrink)

This article argues that we should be prudentially and morally biased toward earlier events: other things equal, we should prefer for good events to occur earlier and disprefer for bad events to occur earlier. The argument contends that we should accord at least some credence—if only a small one—to a theoretical package featuring the growing block theory of time and that that package generates a presumptive bias toward earlier events. Rival theoretical packages are considered. Under reasonable allocations of credence to (...) them, the presumptive bias escapes defeat. The argument has several corollaries: other things equal, we should be biased toward the past over the future, the further past over the nearer past, and the nearer future over the further future. (shrink)

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)