Abstract

Kearns and Star have previously recommended that we measure the degree to which a reason supports a conclusion, either about how to act or what to believe, as the conditional probability of the conclusion given the reason. I show how to properly formulate this recommendation to allow for dependencies and conditional dependencies among the considerations being aggregated. This formulation allows us to account for how considerations, which do not themselves favour a specific conclusion, can modify the strength of a reason for that conclusion, and thus to explain the intensifiers and attenuators described by Dancy. The formulation also accounts for the workings of partial undercutters in epistemology. I then show how my account avoids the counterexamples that Brunero levied against probability-based theories of the strengths of reasons. My account supports the theory, suggested by Kearns and Star, that the strengths of reasons are measured by conditional probabilities. If my account is successful, then it will count in favour of the idea that the strengths of reasons are measured on the same scale as are conditional probabilities.