This paper investigates a novel question about the relationship between belief and deliberation: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe an answer to a question Q prior to concluding one’s deliberation about Q? This question differs from a more commonly discussed one, insofar as it asks about the rationality of believing that p before settling on p as the answer to some question Q. By contrast, recent literature in this area has focused on whether it can ever be rational to (...) keep inquiring into a question after one has adopted a belief that answers it. I argue that it is possible for rational agents to hold beliefs of a certain kind, namely transitional beliefs, prior to settling on an answer to a question. Developing the argument for this view can help us better understand the nature of belief and its relation to inquiry and deliberation. In particular, it follows that many common claims about what beliefs are don’t identify important features of belief itself, but of attitudes that are held as conclusions of deliberations more generally. Further, the view has the surprising consequence that it is typically beneficial to have transitional beliefs that are epistemically akratic. (shrink)

We argue that knowledge is not the norm of belief given that ‘I believe’ is used to hedge. We explore the consequences of this argument for the normative relationship between belief and assertion.

This paper offers a normative account of the speech act of explanation with understanding as its norm. The previous accounts of the speech act of explanation rely on the factive notion of understanding and maintain that proper explanations require knowledge. I argue, however, that such accounts are too demanding and do not reflect the everyday practice of explanation and the attribution of understanding. Instead, I argue that the non-factive, objectual attitude of understanding is sufficient for a proper explanation. On the (...) normative level, explanations are governed by an audience-centred norm, i.e., they are sensitive to the epistemic position of the audience. According to the proposed account, an explanation is a communicative act in which one puts the audience in a position to understand the explained phenomenon. This proposal fits into the recent wave of applications of the normative account and makes space for the pluralism of illocutionary acts. (shrink)