Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. For one thing, (...) there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article, while sections §§4–6 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

Let T be any logical truth. Does the subject know that T (any random subject)? It is not rational for any subject to believe that they don’t, whoever they are. Similarly, it is not rational for them to believe that their evidence doesn’t support T, and it is not even rational for them to believe that they don’t believe that T. It is not rational for anyone anywhere at any time to believe that they don’t know that T. Such are (...) the conclusions arrived at in this paper. (shrink)

Subjectivists about practical normativity hold that an agent’s favoring and disfavoring attitudes give rise to practical reasons. On this view, an agent’s normative reason to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream ultimately turns on facts about what appeals to her rather than facts about what her options are like attitude-independently. Objectivists—who ground reasons in the attitude-independent features of the things we aim at—owe us an explanation of why it is rational to choose what we favor, if not because favoring is (...) a source of reasons. My aim in this paper is to supply such a story. The proposal is roughly that when an agent cannot base her choices on her judgments about what she has most reason to do, structural rationality extends to her a license to choose something just because she favors it, without imbuing favoring with the authority of a normative reason. (shrink)

How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified belief and rational belief come to the same thing. Others take it that justification is a matter of how well a particular belief is supported by the evidence, while rational belief is a matter of how well a belief coheres with a person’s other beliefs. In this paper, I defend the view that justification is a dimension of rationality, a view that can make sense of both of (...) these conflicting accounts. When it modifies belief, ‘rational’ is a multidimensional adjective, as there are multiple dimensions along which a belief can be rational. I will argue that one of these dimensions is justification, an account that can not only explain why philosophers give diverging theories of the relationship between justified belief and rational belief, but can also reveal why rational belief and justified belief are closely related despite being distinct. (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)

This paper presents a unifying diagnosis of a number of important problems facing existing models of rational choice under moral uncertainty and proposes a remedy. I argue that the problems of (i) severely limited scope, (ii) intertheoretic comparisons, and (iii) 'swamping’ all stem from the way in which values are assigned to options in decision rules such as Maximisation of Expected Choiceworthiness. By assigning values to options under a given moral theory by asking something like ‘how much do I desire (...) this option, supposing this theory is true?’ rather than ‘how much value does this theory assign to this option?’ these problems can be avoided, while the appealing features of these accounts can be preserved. This amendment provides a role for the preferences, desires, or goals of rational agents that is curiously absent from the existing discussion of what individuals rationally ought to do when they are uncertain about what they morally ought to do. (shrink)

One recurrent objection to the idea that the right kind of reasons for or against an attitude are object-given reasons for or against that attitude is that object-given reasons for or against belief and disbelief are incapable of explaining certain features of epistemic normativity. Prohibitive balancing, the behaviour of bare statistical evidence, information about future or easily available evidence, pragmatic and moral encroachment, as well as higher-order defeaters, are all said to be inexplicable in terms of those object-given reasons. In (...) this paper, I provide a rebuttal to all these challenges by drawing attention to the object-given reasons for and against the third doxastic state, namely the suspension of judgement. First, I introduce an original picture of how suspension relates to belief and disbelief – as ways of being decided – which yields a novel weighing model of the corresponding reasons. Second, I demonstrate that this new take on doxastic deliberation can accommodate all five features of epistemic normativity. Finally, I extend the weighing model to cover practical deliberation and the suspension of intentions. The resulting theory provides an explanation of why epistemic and practical normativity differ in certain respects in terms of a significant difference between doxastic and conative suspension. (shrink)

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

The paper is concerned with the rational requirements for suspended judgment, or what suspending judgment about a question rationally commits one to. It shows that two purported rational requirements for suspended judgment cannot both be true at the same time, at least when the entailment relation between questions is understood a certain way. The first one says that one is rationally required to suspend judgment about those questions that are entailed by the questions that one already suspends judgment about. The (...) second one says that one is rationally required to believe the presuppositions of the questions one suspends judgment about. Two plausible solutions to the problem are discussed. One of them explicates the relation of entailment between questions in an alternative manner, and the other one rejects the presupposition requirement. Either way, a closure requirement for suspended judgment can be maintained which is analogous to the closure requirement for belief. Whereas belief is ideally closed under entailment between propositions, suspended judgment is ideally closed under entailment between questions. (shrink)

This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

A new wave of evidentialist theorizing concedes that evidentialism may be extensionally incorrect as an account of all-things-considered rational belief. Nevertheless, these _newer evidentialists_ maintain that there is an importantly distinct type of epistemic rationality about which evidentialism may be the correct account. I argue that natural ways of developing the newer evidentialist position face opposite problems. One version, due to Christensen (Philos Phenomenol Res 103:501–517, 2021), may correctly describe what rationality requires, but does not entail the existence of a (...) distinctively epistemic type of rationality. Another version, due to Maguire and Woods (Philos Rev 129:211–249, 2020), characterizes a normative concept that is both distinct and epistemic, but struggles to explain why this concept should be classified as a type of rationality. I conclude that the newer evidentialist strategy of extensional compromise may be less favorable to evidentialism than previously supposed. (shrink)

How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. This book develops the foundations of an ethics of mind by investigating the responsibility that is presupposed by the requirements of rationality that govern our attitudes. It has five main goals. First, it (...) reinterprets the problem of responsibility for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality. Second, it connects substantive and structural rationality by drawing on debates about responsibility. Third, it supports recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by explicitly defending the view that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons. Fourth, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by proposing a hybrid view. Finally, it argues that irrationality can warrant moral blame, thus revealing an unnoticed normative force of rational requirements. Length of manuscript: 85,000 words. (shrink)

Eva Schmidt argues that facts about incoherent beliefs can be non-evidential epistemic reasons to suspend judgment. In this commentary, I argue that incoherence-based reasons to suspend are epistemically superfluous: if the subjects in Schmidt’s cases ought to suspend judgment, then they should do so merely on the basis of their evidential reasons. This suggests a more general strategy to reduce the apparent normativity of coherence to the normativity of evidence. I conclude with some remarks on the independent interest that reasons-first (...) epistemology might have within an evidentialist framework. (shrink)

This entry is composed of three sections. In §1, we survey debates about what structural rationality is, including the emergence of the concept in the contemporary literature, its key characteristics, its relationship to substantive rationality, its paradigm instances, and the questions of whether these instances are unified and, if so, how. In §2, we turn to the debate about structural requirements of rationality – including controversies about whether they are “wide-scope” or “narrow-scope”, synchronic or diachronic, and whether they govern processes (...) or states; as well as examining various forms of skepticism about structural requirements of rationality. In §3, we turn to the debate about the normative significance of structural rationality, surveying central challenges for the view that structural rationality is normatively significant and the theoretical options that arise in light of these challenges. (shrink)

The normativity of so-called “coherence” or “structural” requirements of rationality has been hotly debated in recent years. However, relatively little has been said about the nature of structural rationality, or what makes a set of attitudes structurally irrational, if structural rationality is not ultimately a matter of responding correctly to reasons. This paper develops a novel account of incoherence (or structural irrationality), critically examining Alex Worsnip’s recent account. It first argues that Worsnip’s account both over-generates and under-generates incoherent patterns of (...) attitudes, and then proposes an alternative that both avoids these problems and captures a crucial insight behind Worsnip’s account. According to this account, a set of attitudes is incoherent just in case having all of the attitudes in that set is incompatible with reacting to a question in a way that one is, in virtue of having the attitudes, committed to. (shrink)

This paper defends three theses on the normativity of the suspension of judgment. First, even if beliefs have to fit the truth and disbelief the false, suspension can still have satisfiable fittingness conditions. Second, combining this view with specific theses on the link between fittingness and normative reasons in favour of attitudes commits one to the existence of reasons to suspend judgement, which are neither reasons to believe nor reasons to disbelieve. These independent reasons, in turn, generate a form of (...) epistemic permissivism. Finally, I argue that there are different routes to derive this commitment to independent reasons for suspending judgement. Not only fittingness-centred approaches to epistemic normativity but also many analyses in terms of reasons are committed to this form of epistemic permissivism. (shrink)

Despite myriad controversies about reasons, two theses are frequently taken for granted: (i) reasons are sources of normative support for actions, attitudes, etc; and (ii) reasons, at least in simple, paradigmatic cases, consist in atomic facts. Call this conjunction “the atomic view.” Against this, we advocate what we call “the cluster view,” on which even in the simplest cases, the normative support for an action or attitude is typically provided by a whole cluster of facts. Moreover, many of these facts (...) are on an explanatory par—they each play the same kind of role in explaining why there is normative support for the action or attitude in question. We show that presupposition of the atomic view generates unnecessary (psuedo-)puzzles⁠—about topics such as rationality, moral worth, and doxastic justification⁠—that can be largely (dis)solved with the cluster view in place. The cluster view’s ability to do this constitutes an argument in its favor, beyond intuitive considerations that we also adduce. (shrink)

A fascinating recent turn in epistemology focuses on inquiring attitudes like wondering and being curious. Many have argued that these attitudes are governed by norms similar to those that govern our doxastic attitudes. Yet, to date, this work has only considered norms that might *prohibit* having certain inquiring attitudes (``norms of restriction''), while ignoring those that might *require* having them (``norms of expansion''). We aim to address that omission by offering a framework that generates norms of expansion for inquiring attitudes. (...) The framework draws on inferential erotetic logic, which we explain and augment with some theorems. We explore several of the norms that it yields - some sympathetically, others unsympathetically. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

To explain why we should be structurally rational – or mentally coherent – is notoriously difficult. Some philosophers argue that the normativity of structural rationality can be explained in terms of substantive rationality, which is a matter of correct response to reason. I argue that the psychological phenomena – positive illusions – are counterexamples to the substantivist approach. Substantivists dismiss the relevance of positive illusions because they accept evidentialism that reason for belief must be evidence. I argue that their evidentialist (...) stance would imply that we are caught in unsolvable dilemmas arising from positive illusions. (shrink)

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)

There are at least two different aspects of our rational evaluation of agents’ doxastic attitudes. First, we evaluate these attitudes according to whether they are supported by one’s evidence (substantive rationality). Second, we evaluate these attitudes according to how well they cohere with one another (structural rationality). In previous work, I’ve argued that substantive and structural rationality really are distinct, sui generis, kinds of rationality – call this view ‘dualism’, as opposed to ‘monism’, about rationality – by arguing that the (...) requirements of substantive and structural rationality can come into conflict. In this paper, I push the dialectic on this issue forward in two main ways. First, I argue that the most promising ways of resisting the diagnosis of my cases as conflicts still end up undermining monism in different ways. Second, supposing for the sake of argument that we should understand the cases as conflicts, I address the question of what we should do when such conflicts arise. I argue that, at least in a prominent kind of conflict case, the coherence requirements take precedence over the evidential requirements. (shrink)

The slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons has a turbulent history: once taken for granted; then widely rejected; now enjoying a resurgence. The slogan is made harder to assess by an ever-increasing plethora of distinctions pertaining to reasons and rationality. Here we are occupied with two such distinctions: that between subjective and objective reasons, and that between structural rationality (a.k.a. coherence) and substantive rationality (a.k.a. reasonableness). Our paper has two main aims. The first is to defend dualism about (...) rationality – the view that affirms a deep distinction between structural and substantive rationality – against its monistic competitors. The second aim is to answer the question: with the two distinctions drawn, what becomes of the slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons? We’ll argue that structural rationality cannot be identified with responsiveness to any kind of reasons. As for substantive rationality, we join others in thinking that the most promising reasons-responsiveness account of substantive rationality will involve an “evidence-relative” understanding of reasons. But we also pose a challenge for making this idea precise – a challenge that ultimately calls into question the fundamentality of the notion of a reason even with respect to the analysis of substantive rationality. (shrink)

This paper presents a counterexample to the principle that all epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes towards p are provided by evidence concerning p. I begin by motivating and clarifying the principle and the associated picture of epistemic reasons, including the notion of evidence concerning a proposition, which comprises both first- and second-order evidence. I then introduce the counterexample from incoherent doxastic attitudes by presenting three example cases. In each case, the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an (...) epistemic reason to suspend, which is not provided by evidence. I argue that this incoherence fact is a reason for the subject to take a step back and reassess her evidence for her conflicting attitudes, and thus a reason to suspend all of them. Suspending judgment enables the subject to revise attitudes where appropriate and thus (typically) to arrive at a set of coherent and well-supported attitudes. I then address a dilemma for my proposal and, in conclusion, briefly suggest a picture of epistemic reasons on which they are to be understood against the background of the subject’s virtuous intellectual conduct. (shrink)

This book concerns the nature and the norms of inquiry. It tackles not only philosophical issues regarding what inquiry is, but also issues regarding how it should and should not be executed. Roughly put, inquiry is the activity of searching for the true answers to questions of our interest. But what is the difference between empirical and armchair inquiry? And what are the right and the wrong ways to inquire? Under what conditions should one start inquiring? Which questions are such (...) that one should not inquire into them? The book offers answers to these questions. It argues that competent armchair inquiry only makes explicit what was already implicit--the inquirer already had the answer to her question before inquiring into it, though this was not explicit to her. It also argues that we should avoid inquiring into questions whose answers are unknowable to us, in the instrumental sense of 'should', and that different modes of inquiry are called for, depending on which type of information is available to the subject. These answers are rigorously argued for, and they stem from a unified framework for modeling the activity of inquiry. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 747-763, May 2022.