A moral-pragmatic argument for a proposition is an argument intended to establish that believing the proposition would be morally beneficial. Since such arguments do not adduce epistemic reasons, i.e., reasons that support the truth of a proposition, they can seem at best to be irrelevant epistemically. At worst, believing on the basis of such reasoning can seem to involve wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty of a sort that that precludes such beliefs from being epistemically unjustified. Inspired by an argument from (...) William James’ classic, “The Will to Believe”, I argue that there is a way of making sense of moral-pragmatic arguments such that they are epistemically relevant. I develop and argue for a theory of epistemic justification that I dub the “moral encroachment theory” (emphasizing its connection to recent pragmatic encroachment views). According to the theory, moral considerations can raise or lower epistemic standards from where they would be in morally neutral settings. The moral encroachment theory, I contend, denotes a normative property that is at once distinctively epistemic and valuable. The theory also allows a legitimate role for moral-pragmatic reasoning under certain conditions. The upshot is that moral-pragmatic reasoning can be epistemically as well as morally appropriate. (shrink)

In his Epistula , Saint Augustine seems to suggest an epistemic position that is antithetical to an evidentialist position on epistemic justification. However, I think it can be shown that even if evidentialism is taken to be the preferred method of epistemic justification, an epistemic position that incorporates a faith which is grounded in the truth and produces knowledge is epistemologically justified. Evidentialist objections to such a faith-grounded position founder on principles that even the staunchest defenders of an evidentialist theory (...) of justification, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, deem to be epistemically justified. Hence, if I am right, there is no compelling argument from an evidentialist perspective that a “faith in things not yet understood” is inconsistent with a fundamentally evidentialist theory of justification. (shrink)

A common strategy in philosophical debate is to limit the alternative positions available in order to increase the appeal of one's own position. Unfortunately, this has too often been true in debates regarding the justification of religious faith. Both defenders and critics of religious faith have tried to rule out agnosticism as a viable alternative in order to support their own arguments for or against religious faith. Unfortunately, this strategy only encourages what is already the problematic polarization of religious discourse. (...) My goal in writing this paper is to lessen this polarization by making space for agnosticism between atheism and religious faith. I do this by critiquing two arguments against .. (shrink)

Deontological evidentialism is the claim that S ought to form or maintain S’s beliefs in accordance with S’s evidence. A promising argument for this view turns on the premise that consideration c is a normative reason for S to form or maintain a belief that p only if c is evidence that p is true. In this paper, I discuss the surprising relation between a recently influential argument for this key premise and the principle that ought implies can. I argue (...) that anyone who antecedently accepts or rejects this principle already has a reason to resist either this argument’s premises or its role in support of deontological evidentialism. (shrink)

In matters of governance, is believing subject to ethical standards? If so, what are the criteria how relevant are they in our personal and political culture today? The really important matters in politics and governance necessitate a confidence that our beliefs will lead dependably to predictable and verifiable outcomes. Accordingly, it is unethical to hold a belief that is founded on insufficient evidence or based on hearsay or blind acceptance. In this paper, we demonstrate that the pragmatist concept of truth (...) best meets this standard for ethically held belief in matters of politics and governance. Currently, these standards are abused by the gaslighting and distortion characteristics of the often social media driven ‘misinformation society’. The legitimacy and trust in our institutions and leadership that is requisite for good governance is challenged thereby, threatening the viability of our republic. (shrink)

How compelling is radical normative pluralism, i.e. the view that contrary moral positions (deontological, consequentialist and so on) are all morally acceptable even in one given case? In ‘A Hostage Situation’ (2019), Saul Smilansky presents a thought experiment about moral decisions in life-and-death situations. According to Smilansky, the Hostage Situation (HS) reveals a rather puzzling and radical normative pluralistic picture, according to which even in life-and-death decisions, many moral choices that sometimes contradict each other are more or less equitable or (...) at least morally acceptable simultaneously. He argues that there is a paradigmatic difference between HS and Trolley-Problem-type cases (TP); according to him, the decision in TP is always single-valued, so one cannot be pluralistic in a plausible way—that is, one cannot rationally accept both options at the same time. TP, he claims, has been a misleading paradigmatic example; the radically pluralistic result of HS may be a better paradigm for much of morality. I argue that Smilansky should have gone further, and that a proper understanding of HS and TP reveals that, far from being in conflict, both thought experiments support a radical normative pluralism. Thus, building upon Smilansky’s work but offering a very different position, I present in this paper a radical, novel interpretation of Trolley-Problem-type cases, which, if convincing, should significantly affect the way we think about normative moral theory. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs—beliefs whose propositional contents will be true just in case—and because—an agent believes them. Following Grice, many philosophers hold that believing such propositions would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. This paper argues that such objections get their force from a popular but problematic function-model of theoretical deliberation, and that attending to the case of self-fulfilling belief can help us see why such a model is mistaken. The paper shows that on (...) a revised model of theoretical deliberation our evidence will problematically underdetermine any appropriate doxastic attitude: when belief in a proposition is self-fulfilling, our evidence is insufficient to support belief, disbelief, or even suspended judgment toward that proposition. (shrink)

Some philosophers have become atheists because of “intellectual probity.” Martin Buber relates two occasions during which he advocated his view of the term “God” and rejected alternative perspectives. He never justified the basis for either his advocacy or his rejection, yet both play an important role in all his writing, especially his specific type of Zionism. Using what has been called the mere theism of William James’ “The Will to Believe” and the criteria for faith that James advances in that (...) essay illuminates both Buber’s general view of the divine and more particularly his Zionism. Once Buber, no less than James, is understood as a mere theist the basis of what he accepts and what he rejects as true religion becomes clearer. Buber’s theism meets James’ requirement of being a live, forced, momentous option and his Zionism also strives to meet those standards. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the objections to both doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism fail. Objections to doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism assume a generic notion of belief, a notion which covers both beliefs about things which we know or think we know or are evident to us, as well as beliefs which have some degree of credence but are not clearly evident to the subject. The generic notion of belief includes both sorts of beliefs, but the position against (...) doxastic volitionism is supported only by appeal to beliefs about things which are evident or that we think we know. However, by showing that beliefs which we think we know to be true are not voluntary, the objections leaves open the question whether belief as such is voluntary. Contrary to the opponents of doxastic volitionism, I will show that if what we are after is a generic notion of belief, it ought to be construed as holding true; and if this is what constitutes belief as such, the arguments against doxastic volitionism for faith beliefs fail. The strongest argument against doxastic voluntarism is an evidentialist argument concerning the ethics of belief. That argument is basically that even if choosing belief is psychologically possible, evidentialism rules it out as epistemically irresponsible. In the last section of this article, I will argue that if religious belief is constituted by true propositions of the faith, the evidentialist objection to doxastic voluntarism fails. (shrink)