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)

In this paper I articulate a view of doxastic control that helps defend the legitimacy of our practice of blaming people for their beliefs. I distinguish between three types of doxastic control: intention-based, reason-based, and influence-based. First I argue that, although we lack direct intention-based control over our beliefs, such control is not necessary for legitimate doxastic blame. Second, I suggest that we distinguish two types of reason-responsiveness: sensitivity to reasons and appreciation of reasons. I argue (...) that while both capacities are necessary for satisfying the control condition, neither is sufficient. Finally, I defend an influence-based view of doxastic control according to which we have the capacity to execute intentions to engage in reflection that causally influences our beliefs in positive epistemic ways. This capacity is both necessary and sufficient for satisfying the control condition for legitimate doxastic blame. I end by defending the view from two objections: that reflection is not necessary for meeting the control condition, and that it is not sufficient. (shrink)

I investigate the implication of the truth-relativist’s alleged ‘ faultless disagreements’ for issues in the epistemology of disagreement. A conclusion I draw is that the type of disagreement the truth-relativist claims to preserve fails in principle to be epistemically significant in the way we should expect disagreements to be in social-epistemic practice. In particular, the fact of faultless disagreement fails to ever play the epistemically significant role of making doxastic revision rationally required for either party in a disagreement. (...) That the truth-relativists’ disagreements over centred content fail to play this epistemically significant role that disagreements characteristically play in social epistemology should leave us sceptical that disagreement is what the truth-relativist has actually preserved. (shrink)

This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, (...) relationships, and the well-being of our social groups. These interests generate obligations against others to “do their homework” before closing inquiry. This alternate account makes better sense of puzzles that accounts of doxastic wronging fall prey to. (shrink)

My starting point is what I call the Normative Authority Conception of justification, where S is justified in their belief that p at t (to some degree n) if and only if their believing that p at t is not ruled out by epistemic norms that have normative authority over S at t. With this in mind, this paper develops an account of doxastic justification by first developing an account of the normative authority of epistemic norms. Drawing from work (...) in political philosophy, I argue that (a) the cognitive and evaluative commitments and concerns behind our actual practices of holding each other and ourselves accountable for our beliefs reveal which epistemic norms we have consented to be under, and that (b) it is because we have consented to be under the authority of these norms – by actually holding ourselves and others accountable to them – that they in turn have normative authority over us. By connecting the authority of epistemic norms to the authority we have over ourselves in this way, the resulting account of doxastic justification (i) explains why it can be appropriate to criticize, resent, or sanction someone for having unjustified beliefs, (ii) avoids the phenomena of normative alienation and normative parochialism, and (iii) respects the social and collective nature of epistemic justification. (shrink)

According to the relational egalitarian theory of justice, justice requires that people relate as equals. To relate as equals, many relational egalitarians argue, people must (i) regard each other as equals, and (ii) treat each other as equals. In this paper, we argue that, under conditions of background injustice, such relational egalitarians should endorse affirmative action in the ways in which (dis)esteem is attributed to people as part of the regard-requirement for relating as equals.

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable (...) for our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

I argue that unless belief is voluntary in a very strict sense – that is, unless credence is simply under our direct control – there can be no practical reasons to believe. I defend this view against recent work by Susanna Rinard. I then argue that for very similar reasons, barring the truth of strict doxastic voluntarism, there cannot be epistemic reasons to act, only purely practical reasons possessed by those whose goal is attaining knowledge or justified belief.

This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage in a doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how this premise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise in (...) question. Without this premise, Alston’s main argument fails. (shrink)

It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...) to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states ; or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons. I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. (shrink)

On the dominant contemporary accounts of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, practical considerations either encroach on epistemic rationality by affecting whether a belief is epistemically justified, or constitute distinctively practical reasons for belief which can only affect what we ought to believe by conflicting with epistemic rationality. This paper shows that a promising alternative view can be found in a surprising source: the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. I argue that in light of two of his central (...) epistemological commitments—belief-credence dualism and epistemic permissivism about outright belief—Kierkegaard holds that practical considerations can affect what we ought to believe without either encroaching on or (necessarily) conflicting with epistemic rationality. The central idea is that practical considerations can determine which among the epistemically permitted outright doxastic attitudes one should all-things-considered adopt. In addition to constituting a novel, systematic interpretation of Kierkegaard’s account of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, this suggests that Kierkegaard holds a distinctive and underexplored view that constitutes a serious philosophical rival to dominant contemporary views. (shrink)

The knowledge and attendant justification norms of belief and assertion serve to regulate our doxastic attitudes towards, and practices of asserting, various propositions. I argue that conforming to these norms under conditions of religious ignorance promotes responsible acts of assertion, epistemic humility, and non–dogmatic doxastic attitudes towards the content of one’s own faith. Such conformity also facilitates the formation of the religious personality in a healthy direction in other ways. I explore these ideas in relation to the Christian (...) faith tradition, but my reflections generalize. (shrink)

Regarding the appropriateness of deception in clinical practice, two (apparently conflicting) claims are often emphasised. First, that ‘clinicians should not deceive their patients.’ Second, that deception is sometimes ‘in a patient’s best interest.’ Recently, Hardman has worked towards resolving this conflict by exploring ways in which deceptive and non-deceptive practices extend beyond consideration of patients’ beliefs. In short, some practices only seem deceptive because of the (common) assumption that non-deceptive care is solely aimed at fostering true beliefs. Non-deceptive care, (...) however, relates to patients’ non-doxastic attitudes in important ways as well. As such, Hardman suggests that by focusing on belief alone, we sometimes misidentify non-deceptive care as ‘deceptive’. Further, once we consider patients’ beliefs and non-doxastic attitudes, identifying cases of deception becomes more difficult than it may seem. In this essay, I argue that Hardman’s reasoning contains at least three serious flaws. First, his account of deception is underdeveloped, as it does not state whether deception must be intentional. The problem is that if intention is not required, absurd results follow. Alternatively, if intention is required, then identifying cases of deception will be much easier (in principle) than Hardman suggests. Second, Hardman mischaracterises the ‘inverse’ of deceptive care. Doing so leads to the mistaken conclusion that common conceptions of non-deceptive care are unjustifiably narrow. Third, Hardman fails to adequately separate questions about deception from questions about normativity. By addressing these issues, however, we can preserve some of Hardman’s most important insights, although in a much simpler, more principled way. (shrink)

Regarding the appropriateness of deception in clinical practice, two (apparently conflicting) claims are often emphasised. First, that ‘clinicians should not deceive their patients.’ Second, that deception is sometimes ‘in a patient’s best interest.’ Recently, Hardman has worked towards resolving this conflict by exploring ways in which deceptive and non-deceptive practices extend beyond consideration of patients’ beliefs. In short, some practices only seem deceptive because of the (common) assumption that non-deceptive care is solely aimed at fostering true beliefs. Non-deceptive care, (...) however, relates to patients’ non-doxastic attitudes in important ways as well. As such, Hardman suggests that by focusing on belief alone, we sometimes misidentify non-deceptive care as ‘deceptive’. Further, once we consider patients’ beliefs and non-doxastic attitudes, identifying cases of deception becomes more difficult than it may seem. In this essay, I argue that Hardman’s reasoning contains at least three serious flaws. First, his account of deception is underdeveloped, as it does not state whether deception must be intentional. The problem is that if intention is not required, absurd results follow. Alternatively, if intention is required, then identifying cases of deception will be much easier (in principle) than Hardman suggests. Second, Hardman mischaracterises the ‘inverse’ of deceptive care. Doing so leads to the mistaken conclusion that common conceptions of non-deceptive care are unjustifiably narrow. Third, Hardman fails to adequately separate questions about deception from questions about normativity. By addressing these issues, however, we can preserve some of Hardman’s most important insights, although in a much simpler, more principled way. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Kant would have endorsed Clifford’s principle. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I review Kant’s argument for the practical postulates. In the second, I discuss a traditional objection to the style of argument Kant employs. In the third, I explain how Kant would respond to this objection and how this renders the practical postulates consistent with Clifford’s principle. In the fourth, I introduce positive grounds for thinking that Kant would have (...) endorsed this principle. (shrink)

Whenever A judges that x-ing is morally wrong and B judges that x-ing is not morally wrong, we think that they disagree. The two standard types of accounts of such moral disagreements both presuppose that the class of moral wrong-judgments is uniform, though in different ways. According to the belief account, the disagreement is doxastic: A and B have beliefs with conflicting cognitive contents. This presupposes “belief-uniformity”: that the content of moral concepts is invariant in such a way that, (...) whenever A believes that x-ing is morally wrong and B believes that x-ing is not morally wrong, their beliefs have mutually inconsistent contents. According to the attitude account, moral disagreements are non-doxastic: A and B have clashing practical attitudes. This presupposes “attitude-uniformity”: that moral judgments are always accompanied by, or consist of, desire-like attitudes. Consequently, neither account is available if both uniformity-claims are rejected – as e.g., various forms of content-relativism do. This paper presents a new non-doxastic account of deontic moral disagreement, consistent with the rejection of both uniformity-claims. I argue first, that even if deontic moral judgments are not desires, and are not always accompanied by desires, they have practical direction in the same sense as desires: they are attitudes that one can act in accordance or discordance with. Second: deontic moral disagreement can be understood as clashes in practical direction: roughly, A and B morally disagree if, and only if, some way of acting is in accordance with A’s judgment but in discordance with B’s. (shrink)

I aim to offer a practical response to skepticism. I begin by surveying a family of responses to skepticism that I term “dogmatic” and argue that they are problematically evasive; they do not address what I take to be a question that is central to many skeptics: Why am I justified in maintaining some beliefs that fail to meet ordinary standards of doxastic evaluation? I then turn to a discussion of these standards of evaluation and to the different kinds (...) of doxastic value to which they appeal. While there is something good about having a true belief and something bad about having a false one, I argue the value of true beliefs is not intrinsic or final. Truth and knowledge are valuable because they contribute to both individual and collective flourishing. But if contributing to flourishing is what ultimately provides truth with its value, then we have discovered another doxastic value. I call this kind of doxastic value “practical.” The practical response addresses the skeptic’s question by claiming that some beliefs can be justified by appealing to their practical, rather than alethic, value. In fleshing out this practical response I contrast it both with dogmatic responses as well as some seemingly similar “practical” alternatives, namely Crispin Wright’s appeals to entitlements and Susanna Rinard’s “pragmatic skepticism.” I end by addressing some objections. (shrink)

Most literature on religious beliefs and disagreements among traditions focuses on a bit of mainstream assumptions: religions should be construed in substantive terms; religions are to be individuated by their core belief systems; adherents to a single tradition assent to the same belief system; religious beliefs have factual content; incompatible religious beliefs cannot be both true; and so on. In my work I question all these claims in order to defend a non kantian approach to deep pluralism. In the first (...) part I develop a narrative theory of doxastic practices. My fundamental intuition is that ambiguity, vagueness, and indeterminacy of meaning are non amendable features of any ordinary belief. Consequently, no proposition has a definite meaning, and there is no a priori reason to assume that if two believers assume the same belief, they both hold the same content. What I'm trying to do is to argue in support of a realist epistemology, without assuming a normative and rationalist stance. My evidential body is mainly drawn from psychology and psychoanalysis. In the second part I apply such a narrative theory to the study of the doxastic character of religions. I reject both functionalist and substantive approaches to religion, and I defend my own viewpoint which I label experentialism. After providing a characterization of religious beliefs, I refute how Alston, Ward and Hick account for the the doxastic features of religions. I then propose a definition of religious diversity which turns out to be alternative to the mainstream one. I work by empirical evidence from semiotics, sociology of religion and history of religions. In the third and conclusive part of my book, I give reasons against the mainstream approach to religious diversity, and I explain how my definition can be more appropriate to the sociological study of religious beliefs than the mainstream one. Finally, I provide an account of deep pluralism, I show that my approach to religious epistemology and religions is compatible with (and recommended by) deep pluralism, I differentiate kantian from non kantian pluralism, and I explain why non kantian deep pluralism resists the traditional objections to pluralism. Throughout the book I discuss relevant materials from Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (shrink)

My paper argues for the claim that religious experience may provide evidential reasons in support of religious beliefs. I name such a claim epistemic view of mystical experience (EM). In the first section, I sketch two approaches to EM. Swinburne, Alston and Plantinga (among others) develop a notable defense of EM. On the contrary, seminal works by Feuerbach and Bultmann offer the opposite account. I briefly show how to resist to the criticism of EM. In light of such line of (...) reasoning, I move to Alston's Theory of Doxastic Practices (TDP) in the second section. After giving a skeletal account of TDP, I construe an argument in Alstonian terms against the naturalist refutations of EM. In the third section, I highlight the main problem with TDP, that is, the claim that perceptions and religious experiences have an analogical relation. Examples from sacred texts of different traditions show that such a claim fails to grasp what a religious experience is. In the final section I give a preliminary account of the notion of presentational experience, and show that it is possible to defend EM more plausibly than TDP does by the use of this notion. (shrink)

I discuss Alston's theory of religious experience and maintain that his argument to the effect that it is rational to suppose that the 'mystical doxastic practice' is epistemically reliable does not stand up to scrutiny. While Alston's transitions from practical to epistemic rationality don't work here, his arguments may be taken to show that, under certain conditions, it is not epistemically irresponsible to trust one's religious experiences.

In this essay I want to offer an analysis of the structure of the fictional emotions that we have reading novels. I shall start with a presentation of the structure of emotions in general and their relation to aesthetic fiction. Afterwards, I shall offer a critical review of the current positions on fictional emotions. The aim of this section is to question the presuppositions that dominate the current debate on fictional emotions in particular and on emotions in general. Finally, I (...) shall develop my own account on this issue. The thesis that I am going to defend is that fictional emotions possess doxastic and practical rationality and that they are full fledged emotional experiences the reality of which we should not doubt, even though they show some peculiarities. Key Words: Fictional emotion, quasi-emotion, doxastic rationality, practical rationality, assumption. (shrink)

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation. I will especially focus on disruptions in emotion regulation by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, with (...) very little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiralling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members' affect control and eventually the group's with whom the members identify. (shrink)

In Indian philosophy, a pramāṇa is an epistemic instrument or doxastic practice that results in a veridical cognition (in an event of knowing). For just about all Indian thinkers, perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna) are the foundational pramāṇas, although they debated energetically over how to characterize the content of the resultant cognitions and how to explain the basis for the authority of these pramāṇas. Debate also includes the relationship of knowledge to religious liberation, the role of scripture in (...) knowing, and the possibility of omniscience. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is normally applied to belief. The goal of this paper is to apply the distinction to faith and hope. Before doing so, I discuss the nature of faith and hope, and how they contrast with belief—belief has no essential conative component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the conative. I discuss implications this has for evaluating faith and hope, and apply this to the propositional/doxastic distinction. There are two key upshots. One, (...) bringing in faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Two, a paradigm example of propositional without doxastic justification is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking. Surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both propositional and doxastic justification. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. (shrink)

A disagreement between two philosophers, William Alston and J. L. Schellenberg, on the matter of religious commitment serves to exemplify an important difference between religious believers and religious sceptics. The disagreement occurs in the context of a discussion over the plausibility of Alston’s doxastic practice approach as applied to religious belief. I argue that a close reading of Alston and Schellenberg shows that they do not, despite what they may think, differ greatly from each other. I conclude by (...) drawing some lessons for interreligious dialogue, particularly that the focus of engagement should not necessarily be to convince but rather to uncover differences in attitude. (shrink)

According to doxastic pragmatism, certain perceived practical factors, such as high stakes and urgency, have systematic effects on normal subjects’ outright beliefs. Upholders of doxastic pragmatism have so far endorsed a particular version of this view, which we may call threshold pragmatism. This view holds that the sensitivity of belief to the relevant practical factors is due to a corresponding sensitivity of the threshold on the degree of credence necessary for outright belief. According to an alternative but yet (...) unrecognised version of doxastic pragmatism, practical factors affect credence rather than the threshold on credence. Let’s call this alternative view credal pragmatism. In this paper, I argue that credal pragmatism is more plausible than threshold pragmatism. I show that the former view better accommodates a cluster of intuitive and empirical data. I conclude by considering the issue of whether our doxastic attitudes’ sensitivity to practical factors can be considered rational, and if yes, in what sense. (shrink)

The idea that our epistemic practices can be wrongful has been the core observation driving the growing literature on epistemic injustice, doxastic wronging, and moral encroachment. But, one element of our epistemic practice has been starkly absent from this discussion of epistemic morality: attention. The goal of this article is to show that attention is a worthwhile focus for epistemology, especially for the field of epistemic morality. After presenting a new dilemma for proponents of doxastic wronging, I (...) show how focusing on attention not only allows us to defuse that dilemma, but also helps to substantiate accounts of what goes wrong in cases of doxastic wronging. (shrink)

Many theists who identify themselves with the Abrahamic religions maintain that it is perfectly acceptable to have faith that God exists. In this paper, I argue that, when believing that God exists will affect others, it is prima facie wrong to forgo attempting to believe that God exists on the basis of sufficient evidence. Lest there be any confusion : I do not argue that it is always wrong to have faith that God exists, only that, under certain conditions, it (...) can be. (shrink)

My paper challenges the externalist mainstream assumptions towards the understanding of religious beliefs (i.e., reliabilism by W.Alston, the warrant belief approach by A.Plantinga, the neowittgensteinian analysis of doxastic systems). According to such assumptions, religious beliefs should be evaluated rational in terms of the same doxastic standard giving justification for ordinary factual beliefs. Moving from the empiricist intuition that the kind of content of belief matters to the form of belief and the justification practices for it, I argue for (...) the claim that religious beliefs do not concern facts or experiences but assiological interpretations of facts or experiences. After some brief introductory considerations, in the second section of my paper I provide criteria for distinguishing between factual and non factual beliefs, and I offer a general account for the doxastic spectrum. In the subsequent section I characterize the assumption of religious beliefs as qualitative, mostly implicit and in the de dicto modality. In order to prove my characterization I draw a phenomenology of religious belief from individual testimonies concerning religious conversion. I finally conclude answering some objections in the fourth section of the paper. (shrink)

Question (d) how do we form beliefs?, implies descriptive answers. On the other hand, the question (n) how should we form beliefs?, implies normative answers. Can we provide answers to (n) questions without answering (d) questions? This (n) - (d) relation can be characterized as epistemic normativity. Hume and Kant provide answers to both questions. Hume is more inclined to psychologize these answers through an empirical approach to questions related to beliefs. While Kant is more inclined to consider a priori (...) conditions of our reasoning. Through general rules and epistemic maxims, Hume and Kant provide normative guidelines in accordance which we should form beliefs. However, in order to be able to talk about normativity, at all, we need to answer questions related to doxastic voluntarism. For Kant, the question of freedom is, to some extent, an obvious precondition for his critiques (especially of the practical mind). While with Hume, precisely because of his empirical approach to beliefs and desires, the matter is more obscure, and it seems as if Hume advocates doxastic involuntarism. In this paper, I will try to present the similarities between Hume and Kant in terms of epistemic normativity. Where it seems as if their views are incompatible, I will try to examine why this is the case. I will focus on Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature and Kant’s Second Analogy. In the end, I will present a couple of thought experiments and try to “test” Hume and Kant. If I manage to confirm the initial hypotheses, then this paper will be a successful epistemic endeavor. However, if I fail to find the expected similarities between Hume’s and Kant’s understanding of epistemic normativity, then this work can be characterized as a historical approach to the normative framework of “dogmatic slumber”. (shrink)

Religious people are expected to believe in their religious creeds faithfully and firmly. How can one acquire such belief? In order to answer that question, I propose a model for all belief-like propositional attitudes. The model differentiates, firstly, between voluntary and involuntary, and, secondly, between categorical and quantitative belief-like attitudes. The whole variety of belief-like attitudes is then reduced into two main groups. The first group combines all voluntary and categorical attitudes, and the second group combines all involuntary and quantitative (...) attitudes. The resultant first-group attitude is called “judgment,” and the second-group attitude—“confidence.” Thus, judgment is the generic voluntary categorical propositional attitude, which can have only two values: “true” or “false.” Confidence is the generic involuntary quantitative attitude, which can have any value between “certainly false” and “certainly true.” A religious person can form the creedal judgment simply by her act of will, while her confidence depends upon the actual content of her doxastic system. However, a person can indirectly increase her confidence in the creedal statement via relevant factors that control her doxastic system. Such factors include corroboration, desirability, and ethicality of the proposition, and also its centrality and entrenchment in the doxastic system. I suggest several practical guidelines for increasing the relevant factors. I claim that the suggested model and the practical guidelines for acquiring the “faithful and firm belief” can be used not only within the religious context, but can also be applied to any propositional beliefs. (shrink)

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can (...) be responsive to reasons, and it is compatible with a subjective awareness of the available options. (shrink)

This chapter is guided by the hypothesis that the point and purpose of using the concept of justification in epistemic evaluation is tied to its role in the practice of critical reflection. In section one, I propose an analysis of justification as the epistemic property in virtue of which a belief has the potential to survive ideal critical reflection. In section two, I use this analysis in arguing for a form of access internalism on which one has justification to (...) believe a proposition if and only if one has higher-order justification to believe that one has justification to believe that proposition. In section three, I distinguish between propositional and doxastic versions of access internalism and argue that the propositional version avoids familiar objections to the doxastic version. In section four, I argue that the propositional version of access internalism also explains and vindicates internalist intuitions about cases. In section five, I conclude with some reflections on the relationship between critical reflection, responsibility and personhood. (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency (...) among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

Thomas Kroedel argues that the lottery paradox can be solved by identifying epistemic justification with epistemic permissibility rather than epistemic obligation. According to his permissibility solution, we are permitted to believe of each lottery ticket that it will lose, but since permissions do not agglomerate, it does not follow that we are permitted to have all of these beliefs together, and therefore it also does not follow that we are permitted to believe that all tickets will lose. I present two (...) objections to this solution. First, even if justification itself amounts to no more than epistemic permissibility, the lottery paradox recurs at the level of doxastic obligations unless one adopts an extremely permissive view about suspension of belief that is in tension with our practice of doxastic criticism. Second, even if there are no obligations to believe lottery propositions, the permissibility solution fails because epistemic permissions typically agglomerate, and the lottery case provides no exception to this rule. (shrink)

I argue that believing at will – i.e. believing for practical reasons – is in some sense possible and in some sense impossible. It is impossible insofar as we think of belief formation as a re-sult of our exercise of certain capacities (perception, memory, agency). But insofar as we think of belief formation as an action that might lead to such a result (i.e. a deliberation or an in-quiry), believing at will is possible. First I present and clarify the problem (...) and its philosophical relevance (section 1). I then argue that a belief formation as an immediate reaction to practical reasons is not necessarily equivalent to believing at will because the causal mechanism that leads to the formation might be deviant (section 2). Finally, I explain the difference between the two above mentioned meanings of “belief formation” in order to clarify the possibility and impossibility of believing at will (section 3). (shrink)

Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the (...) existing literature and sketching avenues for future investigation. It also argues for a reorientation of epistemology itself. This argument is the focus of Section 1. Section 2 briefly reviews philosophical accounts of attention, Section 3 focuses on issues in traditional, individualistic epistemology, and Section 4 turns to social epistemology. (shrink)

As a slew of recent work in epistemology has brought out, there is a range of cases where there's a strong temptation to say that prudential and (especially) moral considerations affect what we ought to believe. There are two distinct models of how this can happen. On the first, “reasons pragmatist” model, the relevant prudential and moral considerations constitute distinctively practical reasons for (or against) belief. On the second, “pragmatic encroachment” model, the relevant prudential and moral considerations affect what one (...) is epistemically justified in believing. The pragmatic encroachment model appears to have several advantages over reasons pragmatism, and this has led many recent philosophers to endorse the former. However, in this paper we argue that a version of reasons pragmatism can be (at least largely) saved from these purported disadvantages once paired with an independently plausible permissivism about epistemically justified outright belief. This hybrid view—“permissivist pragmatism”—holds that when there is more than one epistemically permitted doxastic attitude, practical (including moral) considerations can determine which epistemically permitted doxastic attitude one all-things-considered ought to have. This view avoids both the problems faced by simple versions of reasons pragmatism, and those that distinctively attend pragmatic encroachment, while preserving the advantages of each view. (shrink)

It is not uncommon in the history of science and philosophy to encounter crucial experiments or crucial objections the truth-value of which we are ignorant, that is, about which we suspend judgment. Should we ignore such objections? Contrary to widespread practice, I show that in and only in some circumstances they should not be ignored, for the epistemically rational doxastic attitude is to suspend judgment also about the hypothesis that the objection targets. In other words, suspension of judgment (...) “propagates” from the crucial objection to the hypothesis. In this paper I study under which conditions this phenomenon occurs, and discuss its significance for the topics of skepticism, scientific realism, and peer disagreement. (shrink)

There are currently two robust traditions in philosophy dealing with doxastic attitudes: the tradition that is concerned primarily with all-or-nothing belief, and the tradition that is concerned primarily with degree of belief or credence. This paper concerns the relationship between belief and credence for a rational agent, and is directed at those who may have hoped that the notion of belief can either be reduced to credence or eliminated altogether when characterizing the norms governing ideally rational agents. It presents (...) a puzzle which lends support to two theses. First, that there is no formal reduction of a rational agent’s beliefs to her credences, because belief and credence are each responsive to different features of a body of evidence. Second, that if our traditional understanding of our practices of holding each other responsible is correct, then belief has a distinctive role to play, even for ideally rational agents, that cannot be played by credence. The question of which avenues remain for the credence-only theorist is considered. (shrink)

I discuss the difference and the connections between Kant’s notions of cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen). Unlike knowledge, cognition is a representational state which need not have the propositional structure of a judgments. Even cognitions that have such a structure need not coincide with knowledge, because they might rather have the doxastic status of opinion or faith, or they might be false (whereas knowledge is a certain recognition of truth). I argue that while Kant distinguishes between many different species (...) of cognition, he uses the term ‘knowledge’ univocally across his theoretical and practical philosophy. All knowledge is based upon some kind of cognition that provides the sufficient objective, certain ground for a knowing assent to a proposition. However, not all knowledge must be based upon the demanding type of cognition that is central to Kant’s overall argument in the first Critique, which requires a synthesis of concepts and sensible intuition. We have a lot of determinate knowledge, including knowledge that we possess transcendental freedom of will, that is based upon purely conceptual practical cognition. We can also have some indeterminate philosophical knowledge (e.g. knowledge that there are non-sensible, noumenal beings) that is based upon purely conceptual theoretical cognition. (shrink)

We defend Uniqueness, the claim that given a body of total evidence, there is a uniquely rational doxastic state that it is rational for one to be in. Epistemic rationality doesn't give you any leeway in forming your beliefs. To this end, we bring in two metaepistemological pictures about the roles played by rational evaluations. Rational evaluative terms serve to guide our practices of deference to the opinions of others, and also to help us formulate contingency plans about what (...) to believe in various situations. We argue that Uniqueness vindicates these two roles for rational evaluations, while Permissivism clashes with them. (shrink)

We care not only about how people treat us, but also what they believe of us. If I believe that you’re a bad tipper given your race, I’ve wronged you. But, what if you are a bad tipper? It is commonly argued that the way racist beliefs wrong is that the racist believer either misrepresents reality, organizes facts in a misleading way that distorts the truth, or engages in fallacious reasoning. In this paper, I present a case that challenges this (...) orthodoxy: the case of the supposedly rational racist. We live in a world that has been, and continues to be, structured by racist attitudes and institutions. As a result, the evidence might be stacked in favour of racist beliefs. But, if there are racist beliefs that reflect reality and are rationally justified, what could be wrong with them? Moreover, how do I wrong you by believing what I epistemically ought believe given the evidence? To address this challenge, we must recognize that there are not only epistemic norms governing belief, but moral ones as well. This view, however, is at odds with the assumption that moral obligation requires a kind of voluntary control that we lack with regard to our beliefs. This background assumption motivates many philosophers to try to explain away the appearance that beliefs can wrong by locating the wrong elsewhere, e.g., in an agent’s actions. Further, even accounts that accept the thesis that racist beliefs can wrong restrict the class of beliefs that wrong to beliefs that are either false or the result of hot irrationality, e.g., the racist belief is a result of ill-will. In this paper I argue that although the these accounts will capture many of the wrongs associated with racist beliefs, they will be only partial explanations because they cannot explain the wrong committed by the supposedly rational racist. The challenge posed by the supposedly rational racist concerns our epistemic practices in a non-ideal world. The world is an unjust place, and there may be many morally objectionable beliefs it justifies. To address this challenge, we must seriously consider the thesis people wrong others in virtue of what they believe about them, and not just in virtue of what they do. (shrink)

This paper explains and defends the idea that metaphysical necessity is the strongest kind of objective necessity. Plausible closure conditions on the family of objective modalities are shown to entail that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5. Evidence is provided that some objective modalities are studied in the natural sciences. In particular, the modal assumptions implicit in physical applications of dynamical systems theory are made explicit by using such systems to define models of a modal temporal logic. Those assumptions (...) arguably include some necessitist principles. -/- Too often, philosophers have discussed ‘metaphysical’ modality — possibility, contingency, necessity — in isolation. Yet metaphysical modality is just a special case of a broad range of modalities, which we may call ‘objective’ by contrast with epistemic and doxastic modalities, and indeed deontic and teleological ones (compare the distinction between objective probabilities and epistemic or subjective probabilities). Thus metaphysical possibility, physical possibility and immediate practical possibility are all types of objective possibility. We should study the metaphysics and epistemology of metaphysical modality as part of a broader study of the metaphysics and epistemology of the objective modalities, on pain of radical misunderstanding. Since objective modalities are in general open to, and receive, natural scientific investigation, we should not treat the metaphysics and epistemology of metaphysical modality in isolation from the metaphysics and epistemology of the natural sciences. -/- In what follows, Section 1 gives a preliminary sketch of metaphysical modality and its place in the general category of objective modality. Section 2 reviews some familiar forms of scepticism about metaphysical modality in that light. Later sections explore a few of the many ways in which natural science deals with questions of objective modality, including questions of quantified modal logic. (shrink)

This paper focuses on extant approaches to counteract the consumption of fake news online. Proponents of structural approaches suggest that our proneness to consuming fake news could only be reduced by reshaping the architecture of online environments. Proponents of educational approaches suggest that fake news consumers should be empowered to improve their epistemic agency. In this paper, we address a question that is relevant to this debate: namely, whether fake news consumers commit mistakes for which they can be criticized and (...) that they could easily avoid by reforming their doxastic conduct. Proponents of structural approaches, like R. Rini and B. Millar, have defended in different ways a negative answer to this question. In this paper, we criticize their views and suggest that individual users could improve on their epistemic practice by widening their information diet. (shrink)

How do you know what you want? Philosophers have lately developed sophisticated accounts of the practical and doxastic knowledge that are rooted in the point of view of the subject. Our ability to just say what we are doing or what we believe—that is, to say so authoritatively, but not on the basis of observation or evidence—is an aspect of our ability to reason about the good and the true. However, no analogous route to orectic self-knowledge is feasible. Knowledge (...) of desire is distinctive in being a matter of our affective response to imagined prospects. An examination of this idea yields the following thesis: I know what I want just in case the object pursued in anticipation of a certain pleasure actually yields the anticipated pleasure. (shrink)

I investigate when we can (rationally) have attitudes, and when we cannot. I argue that a comprehensive theory must explain three phenomena. First, being related by descriptions or names to a proposition one has strong reason to believe is true does not guarantee that one can rationally believe that proposition. Second, such descriptions, etc. do enable individuals to rationally have various non-doxastic attitudes, such as hope and admiration. And third, even for non-doxastic attitudes like that, not just any (...) description will allow it. I argue that we should think of attitude formation like we do (practical) choices among options. I motivate this view linguistically, extending "relevant alternatives'' theories of the attitudes to both belief and to the other, non-doxastic attitudes. Given a natural principle governing choice, and some important differences between doxastic and non-doxastic "choices'', we can explain these puzzling phenomena. (shrink)

Why should we avoid incoherence? An influential view tells us that incoherent combinations of attitudes are such that it is impossible for all of those attitudes to be simultaneously vindicated by the evidence. But it is not clear whether this view successfully explains what is wrong with certain akratic doxastic states. In this paper I flesh out an alternative response to that question, one according to which the problem with incoherent combinations of attitudes is that it is impossible for (...) all of those attitudes to be simultaneously knowledgeable. This alternative response explains what is wrong with akratic combinations of attitudes using commonly accepted epistemological theses. The paper still shows how this proposal is able to explain the badness of incoherent combinations involving the absence of attitudes, suspended judgment and credence. These explanations deploy the notions of knowledge and being in a position to know, instead of the notion of responding properly to the evidence. Finally, I suggest that this picture can be generalized to the realm of practical rationality as well. (shrink)

It is tempting to think (though many deny) that epistemic agents exercise a distinctive kind of control over their belief‐like attitudes. My aim here is to sketch a “bottom‐up” model of epistemic agency, one that draws on an analogous model of practical agency, according to which an agent's conditional beliefs are reasons‐responsive planning states that initiate and sustain mental behavior so as to render controlled.