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  1. Two for the Knowledge Goal of Inquiry.Christoph Kelp - 2014 - American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (3):227-32.
    Suppose you ask yourself whether your father's record collection includes a certain recording of The Trout and venture to find out. At that time, you embark on an inquiry into whether your father owns the relevant recording. Your inquiry is a project with a specific goal: finding out whether your father owns the recording. This fact about your inquiry generalizes: inquiry is a goal-directed enterprise. A specific inquiry can be individuated by the question it aims to answer and by who (...)
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  • How reasons are sensitive to available evidence.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2018 - In Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 90-114.
    In this paper, I develop a theory of how claims about an agent’s normative reasons are sensitive to the epistemic circumstances of this agent, which preserves the plausible ideas that reasons are facts and that reasons can be discovered in deliberation and disclosed in advice. I argue that a plausible theory of this kind must take into account the difference between synchronic and diachronic reasons, i.e. reasons for acting immediately and reasons for acting at some later point in time. I (...)
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  • Epistemic Instrumentalism and the Too Few Reasons Objection.Charles Côté-Bouchard - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (3):337-355.
    According to epistemic instrumentalism, epistemic normativity arises from and depends on facts about our ends. On that view, a consideration C is an epistemic reason for a subject S to Φ only if Φ-ing would promote an end that S has. However, according to the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, this cannot be correct since there are cases in which, intuitively, C is an epistemic reason for S to Φ even though Φ-ing would not promote any of S’s ends. After (...)
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  • In defence of instrumentalism about epistemic normativity.Christopher Cowie - 2014 - Synthese 191 (16):4003-4017.
    According to epistemic instrumentalists the normativity of evidence for belief is best explained in terms of the practical utility of forming evidentially supported beliefs. Traditional arguments for instrumentalism—arguments based on naturalism and motivation—lack suasive force against opponents. A new argument for the view—the Argument from Coincidence—is presented. The argument shows that only instrumentalists can avoid positing an embarrassing coincidence between the practical value of believing in accordance with one’s evidence, and the existence of reasons so to believe. Responses are considered (...)
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  • Questions in montague english.Charles L. Hamblin - 1973 - Foundations of Language 10 (1):41-53.
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  • Being Realistic About Reasons.Thomas Scanlon - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    It is often claimed that irreducibly normative truths would have unacceptable metaphysical implications, and are incompatible with a scientific view of the world. The book argues, on the basis of a general account of the relevance of ontological questions, that this claim is mistaken. It is also a mistake to think that interpreting normative judgments as beliefs would make it impossible to explain their connection with action. An agent’s acceptance of a normative judgment can explain that agent’s subsequent action because (...)
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  • Knowing the Answer to a Loaded Question.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2015 - Theoria 81 (2):97-125.
    Many epistemologists have been attracted to the view that knowledge-wh can be reduced to knowledge-that. An important challenge to this, presented by Jonathan Schaffer, is the problem of “convergent knowledge”: reductive accounts imply that any two knowledge-wh ascriptions with identical true answers to the questions embedded in their wh-clauses are materially equivalent, but according to Schaffer, there are counterexamples to this equivalence. Parallel to this, Schaffer has presented a very similar argument against binary accounts of knowledge, and thereby in favour (...)
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  • Instrumental mythology.Mark Schroeder - 2005 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2):1-13.
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  • Truth as the aim of epistemic justification.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2013 - In Timothy Hoo Wai Chan (ed.), The Aim of Belief. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    A popular account of epistemic justification holds that justification, in essence, aims at truth. An influential objection against this account points out that it is committed to holding that only true beliefs could be justified, which most epistemologists regard as sufficient reason to reject the account. In this paper I defend the view that epistemic justification aims at truth, not by denying that it is committed to epistemic justification being factive, but by showing that, when we focus on the relevant (...)
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  • Transmission and the Wrong Kind of Reason.Jonathan Way - 2012 - Ethics 122 (3):489-515.
    According to fitting-attitudes accounts of value, the valuable is what there is sufficient reason to value. Such accounts face the famous wrong kind of reason problem. For example, if an evil demon threatens to kill you unless you value him, it may appear that you have sufficient reason to value the demon, although he is not valuable. One solution to this problem is to deny that the demon’s threat is a reason to value him. It is instead a reason to (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Epistemology Naturalized.W. V. Quine - 1969 - In Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.), Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press.
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  • Intention, practical rationality, and self‐governance.Michael Bratman - 2009 - Ethics 119 (3):411-443.
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  • The Myth of Instrumental Rationality.Joseph Raz - 2005 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (1):28.
    The paper distinguishes between instrumental reasons and instrumental rationality. It argues that instrumental reasons are not reasons to take the means to our ends. It further argues that there is no distinct form of instrumental reasoning or of instrumental rationality. In part the argument proceeds through a sympathetic examination of suggestions made by M. Bratman, J. Broome, and J. Wallace, though the accounts of instrumental rationality offered by the last two are criticised.
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  • Epistemic Normativity.Stephen Grimm - 2009 - In Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Epistemic value. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 243-264.
    In this article, from the 2009 Oxford University Press collection Epistemic Value, I criticize existing accounts of epistemic normativity by Alston, Goldman, and Sosa, and then offer a new view.
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  • Knowing the Answer.Jonathan Schaffer - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2):383-403.
    How should one understand knowledge-wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as ‘‘I know where the car is parked,’’ which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge-wh reduces to knowledge that p, where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh-clause. I will argue that knowledge-wh includes the question—to know-wh is to know that p, as the answer to Q. I will then argue that knowledge-that includes a contextually (...)
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  • Slaves of the passions.Mark Schroeder - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Long claimed to be the dominant conception of practical reason, the Humean theory that reasons for action are instrumental, or explained by desires, is the basis for a range of worries about the objective prescriptivity of morality. As a result, it has come under intense attack in recent decades. A wide variety of arguments have been advanced which purport to show that it is false, or surprisingly, even that it is incoherent. Slaves of the Passions aims to set the record (...)
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  • The architecture of reason: the structure and substance of rationality.Robert Audi - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The literature on theoretical reason has been dominated by epistemological concerns, treatments of practical reason by ethical concerns. This book overcomes the limitations of dealing with each separately. It sets out a comprehensive theory of rationality applicable to both practical and theoretical reason. In both domains, Audi explains how experience grounds rationality, delineates the structure of central elements, and attacks the egocentric conception of rationality. He establishes the rationality of altruism and thereby supports major moral principles. The concluding part describes (...)
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  • Impartial reason.Stephen L. Darwall - 1983 - Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
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  • Defending the wide-scope approach to instrumental reason.Jonathan Way - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 147 (2):213 - 233.
    The Wide-Scope approach to instrumental reason holds that the requirement to intend the necessary means to your ends should be understood as a requirement to either intend the means, or else not intend the end. In this paper I explain and defend a neglected version of this approach. I argue that three serious objections to Wide-Scope accounts turn on a certain assumption about the nature of the reasons that ground the Wide-Scope requirement. The version of the Wide-Scope approach defended here (...)
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  • Epistemic rationality as instrumental rationality: A critique.Thomas Kelly - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (3):612–640.
    In this paper, I explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, and I attempt to delineate their respective roles in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. My primary concern is with the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality: the view that epistemic rationality is simply a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. After sketching the relevance of the instrumentalist conception to debates over naturalism and 'the ethics of belief', I argue (...)
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  • Normative requirements.John Broome - 1999 - Ratio 12 (4):398–419.
    Normative requirements are often overlooked, but they are central features of the normative world. Rationality is often thought to consist in acting for reasons, but following normative requirements is also a major part of rationality. In particular, correct reasoning – both theoretical and practical – is governed by normative requirements rather than by reasons. This article explains the nature of normative requirements, and gives examples of their importance. It also describes mistakes that philosophers have made as a result of confusing (...)
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  • Means-end coherence, stringency, and subjective reasons.Mark Schroeder - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 143 (2):223 - 248.
    Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is (...)
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  • Weighing pragmatic and evidential reasons for belief.Andrew Reisner - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (1):17 - 27.
    In this paper I argue that we can give a plausible account of how to compare pragmatic and evidential normative reasons for belief. The account I offer is given in the form of a ‘defeasing function’. This function allows for a sophisticated comparison of the two types of reasons without assigning complex features to the logical structures of either type of reason.
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  • Cognitivism about Instrumental Reason.Kieran Setiya - 2007 - Ethics 117 (4):649-673.
    Argues for a "cognitivist" account of the instrumental principle, on which it is the application of theoretical reason to the beliefs that figure in our intentions. This doctrine is put to work in solving a puzzle about instrumental reason that plagues alternative views.
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  • Normative naturalism.Larry Laudan - 1990 - Philosophy of Science 57 (1):44-59.
    Normative naturalism is a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a meta-epistemology. It maintains that epistemology can both discharge its traditional normative role and nonetheless claim a sensitivity to empirical evidence. The first sections of this essay set out the central tenets of normative naturalism, both in its epistemic and its axiological dimensions; later sections respond to criticisms of that species of naturalism from Gerald Doppelt, Jarrett Leplin and Alex Rosenberg.
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  • How to be a teleologist about epistemic reasons.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2011 - In Andrew Reisner & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Reasons for Belief. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13--33.
    In this paper I propose a teleological account of epistemic reasons. In recent years, the main challenge for any such account has been to explicate a sense in which epistemic reasons depend on the value of epistemic properties. I argue that while epistemic reasons do not directly depend on the value of epistemic properties, they depend on a different class of reasons which are value based in a direct sense, namely reasons to form beliefs about certain propositions or subject matters. (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Nature of Rationality.Robert Nozick - 1993 - Princeton University Press.
    Throughout, the book combines daring speculations with detailed investigations to portray the nature and status of rationality and the essential role that...
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  • The Theory of Epistemic Rationality.Richard Foley - 1987 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
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  • Inquiry, Knowledge, and Understanding.Christoph Kelp - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This study takes inquiry as the starting point for epistemological theorising. It uses this idea to develop new and systematic answers to some of the most fundamental questions in epistemology, including about the nature of core epistemic phenomena as well as their value and the extent to which we possess them.
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  • Inquiry, knowledge and understanding.Christoph Kelp - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 7):1583-1593.
    This paper connects two important debates in epistemology—to wit, on the goal of inquiry and on the nature of understanding—and offers a unified knowledge-based account of both.
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  • The Epistemic and the Zetetic.Jane Friedman - 2020 - Philosophical Review 129 (4):501-536.
    Call the norms of inquiry zetetic norms. How are zetetic norms related to epistemic norms? At first glance, they seem quite closely connected. Aren't epistemic norms norms that bind inquirers qua inquirers? And isn't epistemology the place to look for a normative theory of inquiry? While much of this thought seems right, this paper argues that the relationship between the epistemic and the zetetic is not as harmonious as one might have thought and liked. In particular, this paper argues that (...)
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  • A Combinatorial Argument against Practical Reasons for Belief.Selim Berker - 2018 - Analytic Philosophy 59 (4):427-470.
    Are there practical reasons for and against belief? For example, do the practical benefits to oneself or others of holding a certain belief count in favor of that belief? I argue "No." My argument involves considering how practical reasons for belief, if there were such things, would combine with other reasons for belief in order to determine all-things-considered verdicts, especially in cases involving equally balanced reasons of either a practical or an epistemic sort.
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  • Equal treatment for belief.Susanna Rinard - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (7):1923-1950.
    This paper proposes that the question “What should I believe?” is to be answered in the same way as the question “What should I do?,” a view I call Equal Treatment. After clarifying the relevant sense of “should,” I point out advantages that Equal Treatment has over both simple and subtle evidentialist alternatives, including versions that distinguish what one should believe from what one should get oneself to believe. I then discuss views on which there is a distinctively epistemic sense (...)
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  • Inquiry and Belief.Jane Friedman - 2017 - Noûs 53 (2):296-315.
    In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Normativity of Rationality.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Kiesewetter defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. He provides a defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, an evidence-relative account of reason, and an explanation of structural irrationality in relation to these accounts.
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  • (1 other version)The Importance of Being Rational.Errol Lord - 2018 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.
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  • Have we reason to do as rationality requires? - a comment on Raz.John Broome - 2005 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (Symposium):1-10.
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  • Instrumental reasons.Niko Kolodny - 2018 - In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    Often our reason for doing something is an "instrumental reason": that doing that is a means to doing something else that we have reason to do. What principles govern this "instrumental transmission" of reasons from ends to means? Negatively, I argue against principles often invoked in the literature, which focus on necessary or sufficient means. Positively, I propose a principle, "General Transmission," which answers to two intuitive desiderata: that reason transmits to means that are "probabilizing" and "nonsuperfluous" with respect to (...)
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  • Epistemology and inquiry: The primacy of practice.Christopher Hookway - 2006 - In Stephen Cade Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology futures. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 95--110.
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  • Audi on substantive vs instrumental rationality. [REVIEW]Ausonio Marras - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (1):194–201.
    The Architecture of Reason aims to develop a unified theory of theoretical and practical rationality along foundationalist lines. The structure of practical reason, Audi argues, is closely parallel to that of theoretical reason: just as the rationality of inferential beliefs ultimately rests on the rationality of basic beliefs, so too the rationality of instrumental desires and of the corresponding actions ultimately rests on the rationality of intrinsic desires. Intrinsic desires are rational if they are well-grounded in certain “objectively valuable” features (...)
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  • Epistemic normativity.Hilary Kornblith - 1993 - Synthese 94 (3):357 - 376.
    This paper examines the source and content of epistemic norms. In virtue of what is it that epistemic norms have their normative force? A semantic approach to this question, due to Alvin Goldman, is examined and found unacceptable. Instead, accounts seeking to ground epistemic norms in our desires are argued to be most promising. All of these accounts make epistemic norms a variety of hypothetical imperative. It is argued that such an account may be offered, grounding our epistemic norms in (...)
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  • Normativity, commitment and instrumental reason.R. Jay Wallace - 2001 - Philosophers' Imprint 1:1-26.
    This paper addresses some connections between conceptions of the will and the theory of practical reason. The first two sections argue against the idea that volitional commitments should be understood along the lines of endorsement of normative principles. A normative account of volition cannot make sense of akrasia, and it obscures an important difference between belief and intention. Sections three and four draw on the non-normative conception of the will in an account of instrumental rationality. The central problem is to (...)
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  • No Norm needed: On the aim of belief.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (225):499–516.
    Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency is available: transparency can be explained by the aim one necessarily adopts in deliberating about whether to (...)
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  • Syntax and semantics of questions.Lauri Karttunen - 1977 - Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1):3--44.
    W. Labov's & T. Labov's findings concerning their child grammar acquisition ("Learning the Syntax of Questions" in Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, Campbell, R. & Smith, P. Eds, New York: Plenum Press, 1978) are interpreted in terms of different semantics of why & other wh-questions. Z. Dubiel.
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  • Intention and means-end reasoning.Michael Bratman - 1981 - Philosophical Review 90 (2):252-265.
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  • Junk Beliefs and Interest‐Driven Epistemology.Jane Friedman - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3):568-583.
    In this paper I revisit Gilbert Harman's arguments for a "clutter avoidance" norm. The norm -- which says that we ought to avoid cluttering our minds with trivialities -- is widely endorsed. I argue that it has some fairly dramatic consequences for normative epistemology.
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  • (1 other version)The normativity of rationality.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2013 - Dissertation, Humboldt University of Berlin
    Sometimes our intentions and beliefs exhibit a structure that proves us to be irrational. This dissertation is concerned with the question of whether we ought (or have at least good reason) to avoid such irrationality. The thesis defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. The argument touches upon many other topics in the theory of normativity, such as the form and the content (...)
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  • A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief.Allan Hazlett - 2013 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Allan Hazlett challenges the philosophical assumption of the value of true belief. He critiques the view that true belief is better for us than false belief, and the view that truth is "the aim of belief". An alternative picture is provided, on which the fact that some people love truth is all there is to "the value of true belief".
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  • (1 other version)The Semantics of Questions.James Higginbotham - 1996 - In The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  • The Nature of Rationality.Robert Nozick - 1993 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 186 (1):187-189.
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