Rational Requirements

I offer a critique of the dominant representationalist understanding of the moral 'must' and argue for an alternative understanding that is second-personal and performative. The representationalist understanding, I argue, faces serious theoretical difficulties, having to do with the nature of the necessity that is supposedly referred to by the moral 'must'; and it is also morally problematic, in that it encourages us to suppose that utterances of the form 'N (morally) must φ' may be understood, and their truth assessed, altogether apart from such morally significant matters as the nature and history of the relationship between the speaker and her addressee(s) or the illocutionary force of the utterance. The alternative understanding dissolves the theoretical difficulties faced by those who have tried to vindicate a representational understanding of the moral 'must'. It is also morally superior, in that it underscores the dependence of the sense of sentences of the form 'N must φ'-as uttered in moral contexts, and first and foremost in the second person-on morally significant contextual features such as who addresses whom, and with what illocutionary force, and what puts the first person in a position to address the other with these words and in that way.

In this paper, J. Gibbons attempts to articulate his version of subjectivism. The central hypothesis is the conception of belief as commitment, in contrast to the view of rationality as a means promoted by objectivism. He further clarifies his view by arguing that belief not only commits you to p being true, but also to knowledge. Critique of the teleological picture G. starts by presenting the general objectivist thesis, i.e. a belief aims at knowledge or truth. Thus, he asserts, in accordance with this idea, justification can be understood as the appearance of knowledge or truth. To better elucidate this relationship, he draws an analogy from the realm of ethics, where motivating reasons are to be understood as the appearance of/or belief about objective reasons. Moving forward with his examination of objectivism's claims, he asserts that as regards with a rule or set of standards the following can be said:

The paper responds to two recent versions of the argument against ex contradictione quodlibet (the principle that says that a contradiction entails any proposition, also known as “explosion”) based on the normative role of logic for reasoning. Both versions of the argument I am concerned with assume that a subject has defeasible reasons to believe any logical consequence of her beliefs. After showing this assumption to be more controversial than it might seem, I argue that even it is true, and assuming ex contradictione quodlibet, no absurdity follows about what reasons the subject with inconsistent beliefs has. There is an independent explanation of the fact that a subject with inconsistent beliefs is not in a position to rationally infer anything. The reasons that derive from the inconsistency, if there are any, are a of peculiar kind, which I call inert reasons.

This critical appraisal of Juan Comesaña’s Being Rational and Being Right is divided into three sections: Section I describes the fundamental features of “Experientialism,” the theory of basic rationality developed and defended in the book; Section II briefly indicates how the chapters of the book unfold; and Section III describes and examines one problematic issue concerning how Experientialism interacts with the liberalism/conservatism debate in the theory of justification.

The rationality of a belief often depends on whether it is rightly connected to other beliefs, or more generally to other mental states-the states capable of providing a reason to holding the belief in question. For instance, some rational beliefs are connected to other beliefs by being inferred from them. It is often accepted that the connection implies that the subject in some sense 'takes the mental states in question to be reason-providing'. But views on how exactly this is to be understood differ widely. They range from interpretations according to which 'taking a mental state to be reason-providing' imposes a mere causal sustaining relation between belief and reason-providing state to interpretations according to which one 'takes a mental state to be reason-providing' only if one believes that the state is reason-providing. The most common worry about the latter view is that it faces a vicious regress. In this paper a different but in some respects similar interpretation of 'taking something as reason-providing' is given. It is argued to consist of a disposition to react in certain ways to information that challenges the reason-providing capacity of the allegedly reason-providing state. For instance, that one has inferred A from B partly consists in being disposed to suspend judgment about A if one obtains a reason to believe that B does not render A probable. The account is defended against regress-objections and the suspicion of explanatory circularity.

The relation between logic and rationality has recently re-emerged as an important topic of discussion. Following the ideas of Broome [1999] and MacFarlane [2004], the debate focused on providing rational requirements, which work as bridges between logic and epistemic norms. However, as Broome [2014] and Way [2011] observed, the usual requirements cannot capture some important aspects of rationality, such as how one can rationally believe something on the basis of believing something else. Broome [2014] proposed a few additional principles (“basing permissions”) for this purpose. In this paper I develop a more systematic family of basing permissions using the recent notion of grounding (Fine [2012], Correia [2014]). In particular, I claim that if Γ (logically) grounds A, and you believe Γ, then rationality permits you to believe A on the basis of believing Γ.

In this paper, I discuss the relation between logic and rationality. I develop (formally and conceptually) a rational requirement which can respond to the classic objections by Harman (1986). On the one hand, the requirement pays attention to the relevance of the premises and the conclusion, which is formally expressed by the notion of weak relative closure. The requirement also takes care of the complexity of the inferences. This notion of complexity is formally represented by a partially ordered scale of the difficulty of inferences, which is weaker than the notion of complexity as number of steps.

Arguments against epistemic akrasia have been met with counterexamples from the higher-order evidence literature. Here, I present two counterarguments to address these challenges. Firstly, the attitude reclassification argument disentangles reason-responsiveness from the constraints of evidentialism and allows for the adoption of conflicting propositions by coherent doxastic attitudes. Secondly, the failure reclassification argument demystifies the loss of doxastic control in purported cases of epistemic akrasia by appealing to the more comprehensive and distinct phenomenon of self-deception.

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing.

In this new kind of entrée to contemporary epistemology, Kevin McCain presents fifty of the field's most important puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Assuming no familiarity with epistemology from the reader, McCain titles each case with a memorable name, describes the details of the case, explains the issue(s) to which the case is relevant, and assesses its significance. McCain also briefly reviews the key responses to the case that have been put forward, and provides a helpful list of suggested readings on the topic. Each entry is accessible, succinct, and self-contained. Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a fantastic learning tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in epistemological issues. Key Features: • Though concise overall, offers broad coverage of the key areas of epistemology. • Describes each imaginative case directly and in a memorable way, making the cases accessible and easy to remember. • Provides a list of Suggested Readings for each case, divided into General Overviews, Seminal Presentations, and Other Important Discussions.

Are there practical reasons for belief? The answer to this question has become a site of contention in analytic philosophy. On one side, there are the so-called “evidentialists” who hold that there are no practical reasons for belief. On the other, stand the “pragmatists” who hold that there are practical reasons for belief. A practical reason is defined as a reason for taking a course of action to accomplish an end. A practical reason for belief, therefore, is one in which a desire to accomplish an end provides a reason to hold a belief that something is the case. Typically, beliefs are thought of as supported by epistemic reasons. There is much debate about how exactly epistemic reasons should be defined. For the purposes of this paper, I will take an epistemic reason to be one that is determined by evidence  and uninfluenced by any desire to achieve an end. In this paper, I will offer an abductive argument in favor of a version of interactionist pragmatism by looking at several concrete cases. I will argue that an interactionist pragmatist position gives us the most intuitive reading of these cases. Along the way, I will contrast my position with those of Thomas Kelly and Stewart Cohen (who I take to be paradigmatic evidentialists) and that of Susanna Rinard (who I take to be a paradigmatic austere pragmatist). I will conclude by addressing an argument against pragmatism advanced by Selim Berker.

Tomás wants a candy, and so grabs the candy-looking thing Lucas is offering him and puts it in his mouth. Tomás has no reason to think that there is anything amiss with Lucas's offer, he thinks that Lucas is genuinely being generous and sharing his Halloween bounty with him. However, what Lucas gave Tomás was no candy, but a marble. Lucas himself is unaware of the fact that there is a candy-looking marble among the candy. Understandably, Tomás is disappointed-but was he irrational in acting as he did? Juan Comesaña's answer is: Obviously not. According to Comesaña, Tomás's action was rational because based on the rational belief that the candy-looking object Lucas was offering him was a candy. Tomás's belief was rational because based on evidence, which, in Comesaña's view, is constituted by those propositions that Tomás is basically justified in believing by his experiences. The declared aim of Comesaña's book is to vindicate Tomás's rationality. In order to do that, he does two main things: first, he argues against some of the main theories of evidence on the market, which, he claims, entail that Tomás's action was irrational. Second, he develops a novel account of the nature of evidence. Being Rational and Being Right is a fantastic book, very well argued, and extremely rich; it is hard to do it justice within the word limit restrictions of this article. What I would do next, then, is to focus on what I take to be the main two contributions of the book: (1) the critical contribution-arguing that competing accounts of evidence fail to account for the rationality of Tomas's action, and (2) the positive contribution-putting forth the novel view of evidence. Comesaña takes the main competing views on evidence on the market to be two fairly extreme internalist and, respectively, externalist accounts. According to the internalist view-what he dubs

Sometimes I not only judge that P, but I also have some further “higher¬-order” evidence about my reliability when it comes to this sort of judgment. Perhaps I make an arithmetical judgment, but at the same time I have evidence that I am drunk and so arithmetically unreliable. I argue that the rational response in such a situation is to calibrate one’s confidence in P to the level suggested by one’s higher-¬order evidence—in this particular case, however confident I would be in P just given the description “I judged that P, drunkenly.” As a special case, this “calibrationist” doctrine entails a conciliatory view of peer disagreement. Some have found conciliatory views to be disturbing, taking them to collapse into psychologism and, at the limit, skepticism. I develop a conciliatory view which need be neither of these things, which is fortunate, since I also argue it is correct.

With the current paper we will intend i) to elaborate a critical examination of the alleged use of transparency as independent of any epistemological view in favor of evidentialism, ii) to remark the inadequacies of the Absjorn Steglich-Petersen’s attempt to replace the concept of belief with that of truth in reflective contexts in response to the claim of some evidentialist who want to use transparency to support their own dialectical purposes, and iii) to suggest a new approach to transparency which allows us to expand the theoretical horizons in which philosophical research on the subject has so far moved.

In this new kind of entrée to contemporary epistemology, Kevin McCain presents fifty of the field's most important puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Assuming no familiarity with epistemology from the reader, McCain titles each case with a memorable name, describes the details of the case, explains the issue(s) to which the case is relevant, and assesses its significance. McCain also briefly reviews the key responses to the case that have been put forward, and provides a helpful list of suggested readings on the topic. Each entry is accessible, succinct, and self-contained. Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a fantastic learning tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in epistemological issues. Key Features: • Though concise overall, offers broad coverage of the key areas of epistemology. • Describes each imaginative case directly and in a memorable way, making the cases accessible and easy to remember. • Provides a list of Suggested Readings for each case, divided into General Overviews, Seminal Presentations, and Other Important Discussions.

A common assumption in contemporary debates about normative reasons is that 'subjective' and 'possessed' are two names for the same sort of reason. This paper challenges that assumption. Given our cognitive limitations, it is unsurprising that normative reasons that derive from what we know and reasons that we are in a position to use in our deliberation are not always one and the same.

In some cases there is a reason for one to do or believe something, but because one has no inkling of this reason, it doesn't matter to the rationality of one's actions or beliefs. 1 If you are sitting in a building which has just caught fire, there is a very good reason for you to leave as quickly as possible; but if you have no idea that anything is unusual, you might be quite rational to stay put where you are. In this case there exists a reason for you to do something, but, because you do not "have" or "possess" that reason, it does not affect what you are rational to do. This example thus shows that there can be reasons for one to do something which don't affect rationality because they are not "had." The distinction between the reasons there are and the reasons one has for doing something raises the question of what is needed to convert a reason there is for someone to do something into a reason the person has to do it. This is an epistemological project insofar as it seems that the gap-fillers are the sorts of factors that have traditionally been taken to matter to knowledge, e.g., belief, justification, warrant. One might think that if one can answer this question one has explained what it is to have reasons. Yet this thought depends on assuming a certain connection between there being reasons and one's having reasons, viz., that a consideration, p, cannot be a reason one has to do something unless p is a reason there is to do that thing. 2 This assumption guarantees that the reasons one has are facts, because reasons there are are facts: if there is a reason for you to leave the building, then there is a fact which is that reason (e.g., the fact that the building is on fire). Our target here is what we will call factualism about reasons-had, the claim that the

The rationality of a belief often depends on whether it is rightly connected to other beliefs, or more generally to other mental states-the states capable of providing a reason to holding the belief in question. For instance, some rational beliefs are connected to other beliefs by being inferred from them. It is often accepted that the connection implies that the subject in some sense 'takes the mental states in question to be reason-providing'. But views on how exactly this is to be understood differ widely. They range from interpretations according to which 'taking a mental state to be reason-providing' imposes a mere causal sustaining relation between belief and reason-providing state to interpretations according to which one 'takes a mental state to be reason-providing' only if one believes that the state is reason-providing. The most common worry about the latter view is that it faces a vicious regress. In this paper a different but in some respects similar interpretation of 'taking something as reason-providing' is given. It is argued to consist of a disposition to react in certain ways to information that challenges the reason-providing capacity of the allegedly reason-providing state. For instance, that one has inferred A from B partly consists in being disposed to suspend judgment about A if one obtains a reason to believe that B does not render A probable. The account is defended against regress-objections and the suspicion of explanatory circularity.

This paper will argue that the assessment of an agent’s rationality is primarily concerned with processes rather than states. To understand this view and the question it tries to answer, it will be helpful to consider it in relation to a more familiar question about whether norms or requirements (I use these terms interchangeably) of rationality are synchronic or diachronic. Most recent discussion of rational requirements on mental behavior concerns, explicitly or implicitly, norms that are synchronic, taking agents to be rational or irrational in virtue of the states they are in at individual times.1 Some so-called “time-slice” theorists have gone so far as to propose that all rational norms are of this kind.2 Other philosophers insist that we supplement such synchronic norms with those of a diachronic sort, governing agents’ temporally extended behavior in a way not reducible to demands on individual time-slices. At least one has suggested that all norms are of this latter kind.3 ...

The rationality of a belief often depends on whether it is rightly connected to other beliefs, or more generally to other mental states —the states capable of providing a reason to holding the belief in question. For instance, some rational beliefs are connected to other beliefs by being inferred from them. It is often accepted that the connection implies that the subject in some sense ‘takes the mental states in question to be reason-providing’. But views on how exactly this is to be understood differ widely. They range from interpretations according to which ‘taking a mental state to be reason-providing’ imposes a mere causal sustaining relation between belief and reason-providing state to interpretations according to which one ‘takes a mental state to be reason-providing’ only if one believes that the state is reason-providing. The most common worry about the latter view is that it faces a vicious regress. In this paper a dierent but in some respects similar interpretation of ‘ta...

In this paper, we present a new semantic challenge to the moral error theory. Its first component calls upon moral error theorists to deliver a deontic semantics that is consistent with the error-theoretic denial of moral truths by returning the truth-value false to all moral deontic sentences. We call this the 'consistency challenge' to the moral error theory. Its second component demands that error theorists explain in which way moral deontic assertions can be seen to differ in meaning despite necessarily sharing the same intension. We call this the 'triviality challenge' to the moral error theory. Error theorists can either meet the consistency challenge or the triviality challenge, we argue, but are hard pressed to meet both.

According to normative judgment internalism (NJI), normative judgmentsthat is, mental states of the sort that are typically expressed by normative statements (statements of the form 'A ought to ' and the like)-are ''essentially practical'', in the sense that they are in some way essentially connected to practical reasoning, or to motivation for action. According to a robustly realist (RR) conception of the normative, there are objective normative truths or facts. Many metaethicists believe that NJI and RR are incompatible, or at least extremely hard to reconcile with each other. These metaethicists are mistaken. This mistake about the relations between NJI and RR seems to be due to hasty and undefended assumptions about the nature of belief. According to most philosophical conceptions of belief, there is no special difficulty in reconciling NJI with RR with respect to normative judgments.

I argue for the unexceptionality of evidence about what rationality requires. Specifically, I argue that, as for other topics, one’s total evidence can sometimes support false beliefs about this. Despite being prima facie innocuous, a number of philosophers have recently denied this. Some have argued that the facts about what rationality requires are highly dependent on the agent’s situation and change depending on what that situation is like (Bradley, Philosophers’ Imprint, 19(3). 2019). Others have argued that a particular subset of normative truths, those concerning what epistemic rationality requires, have the special property of being ‘fixed points’—it is impossible to have total evidence that supports false belief about them (Smithies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85(2). 2012; Titelbaum 2015). Each of these kinds of exceptionality permits a solution to downstream theoretical problems that arise from the possibility of evidence supporting false belief about require...

Can we make mistakes about what rationality requires? A natural answer is that we can, since it is a platitude that rational belief does not require truth; it is possible for a belief to be rational and mistaken, and this holds for any subject matter at all. However, the platitude causes trouble when applied to rationality itself. The possibility of rational mistakes about what rationality requires generates a puzzle. When combined with two further plausible claims – the enkratic principle, and the claim that rational requirements apply universally – we get the result that rationality generates inconsistent requirements. One popular and attractive solution to the puzzle denies that it is possible to make rational mistakes about what rationality requires. I show why (contra Titelbaum (2015b), and Littlejohn (2015)) this solution is doomed to fail.

There are two well-known formulations of the diachronic rational requirement of intention persistence, due to Michael Bratman and John Broome. I argue in this paper that both formulations face serious difficulties. Bratman's formulation is unable to accommodate two different kinds of examples in which it is permissible to drop an intention even though one's assessment of the adequacy of its reasons remains constant. Broome's formulation is both too weak and too strong, unable to rule out the unlicensed reconsideration of intentions, while at the same time disallowing valuable spontaneous shifts in intentions. I propose a new formulation, Intention Persistence, that avoids these difficulties and has other advantages.

My aim will be to identify an evaluative lacuna, and to discuss different approaches for filling it. To identify the lacuna, let me begin with well-known type of case, Miners. It has often been used in discussions of the semantics of ought-statements. As will become clear, my project here is not semantic. Rather, I want to use the case to highlight the need for making a certain kind of evaluation. The well-known case is as follows: Miners. 10 miners are trapped in one of two shafts (shaft 1 or shaft 2), and floodwaters are rising. You must decide which shaft to block before finding out where the miners are. They are no more likely, given your evidence, to be in 1 or 2. You are able to block the water from reaching one of the shafts, but you don't have enough sandbags to block both. If you manage to completely block the shaft where the miners are, they are all saved; if you block the other shaft completely, they all drown. If you do nothing, letting both of the shafts will halfway with water, one miner will drown in any case. 1

It seems like experience plays a positive—even essential—role in generating some knowledge. The problem is, it’s not clear what that role is. To see this, suppose that when my visual system takes in information about the world it skips the experience step and just immediately generates beliefs in me about my surroundings. A lot of philosophers think that I would still know, via perception, about the world around me. But then that raises the question: How does experience contribute to my having knowledge of my surroundings? Philosophers have given many different answers to this question. In this paper I offer and defend a different answer that avoids the pitfalls of other answers. I argue that experience is, all by itself, a kind of knowledge—what Russell (1912) calls “knowledge of things”. So I argue that experience helps generate knowledge simply by being knowledge.

Outlaw emotions are emotions that stand in tension with one's wider belief system, often allowing epistemic insight one may have otherwise lacked. Outlaw emotions are thought to play crucial epistemic roles under conditions of oppression. Although the crucial epistemic value of these emotions is widely acknowledged, specific accounts of their epistemic role(s) remain largely programmatic. There are two dominant accounts of the epistemic role of emotions: The Motivational View and the Justificatory View. Philosophers of emotion assume that these dominant ways of accounting for the epistemic role(s) of emotions in general are equipped to account for the epistemic role(s) of outlaw emotions. I argue that this is not the case. I consider and dismiss two responses that could be made on behalf of the most promising account, the Justificatory View, in light of my argument, before sketching an alternative account that should be favoured.

Abstract Potential perspectivism is the view that what an agent ought to do (believe, like, fear…) depends primarily on facts that are potentially available to her. I consider a challenge to this view. The problem stems from the fact that potentially accessible facts do not always agglomerate over conjunction. This implies that one can fail to have relevant access to a set of facts as a whole, but have access to proper subsets of it each of which can support different incompatible responses (actions, attitudes or omissions). I argue that potential perspectivism has no unproblematic answer to the question what the agent ought to do (believe, like, fear…) in such circumstances. I consider several possible responses and argue that they are all unsatisfactory, either because incompatible with central perspectivist assumptions or because independently implausible. Potential perspectivists can avoid this polylemma only at the cost of giving up fundamental tenets of their views. The challenge may also lend indirect support to alternative views unaffected by the problem, such as objectivism and some versions of actual perspectivism.

Broome takes the debate on rationality to be concerned with the ordinary use of 'rational'. I argue that this is at best misleading. For the object of current theories of rationality is determined by a specific use of 'rational' that is intimately connected to blame and praise. I call the property it refers to 'rationalityRESP'. This focus on rationalityRESP, I argue, has two significant implications for Broome's critique of theories of rationality as reasons-responsiveness. First, rationalityRESP is plausibly conceived of as a kind of reasons-responsiveness. Secondly, Broome's dispute with internalists about normativity as well as his dispute with externalists about rationality both hinge on questions regarding the concept of responsibility. I conclude that philosophers should integrate discussions about responsibility in their debates about rationality.

Value theorists routinely distinguish structural rationality-a matter of attitudinal coherence-from substantive rationality-a matter of reasons-responsiveness. Epistemologists do not likewise distinguish structural epistemic rationality (SER) from justification, but they should. I first argue that SER demands self-coherence , not classical consistency, and show that this means its epistemic work is not superfluous to justification's. I then provide a vindication (in BonJour's (1985) sense) of SER by showing that it promotes a fundamental cognitive goal. In doing so, I argue that fundamental cognitive goals ought to be understood not in terms of truth, but of a broader notion of accuracy.

A common assumption in contemporary debates about normative reasons is that ‘subjective’ and ‘possessed’ are two names for the same sort of reason. This paper challenges that assumption. Given our cognitive limitations, it is unsurprising that normative reasons that derive from what we know and reasons that we are in a position to use in our deliberation are not always one and the same.

It is plausible that there are epistemic reasons bearing on a distinctively epistemic standard of correctness for belief. It is also plausible that there are a range of practical reasons bearing on what to believe. These theses are often thought to be in tension with each other. Most significantly for our purposes, it is obscure how epistemic reasons and practical reasons might interact in the explanation of what
one ought to believe. We draw an analogy with a similar distinction between types of reasons for actions in the context of activities. The analogy motivates a two-level
account of the structure of normativity that explains the interaction of correctness-based and other reasons.

This account relies upon a distinction between normative reasons and authoritatively normative reasons. Only the latter play the reasons role in explaining what state one ought to be in. All and only practical reasons are authoritative reasons. Hence, in one important sense, all reasons for belief are practical reasons. But this account also preserves the autonomy and importance of
epistemic reasons. Given the importance of having true beliefs about the world, our epistemic standard typically plays a key role in many cases in explaining what
we ought to believe. In addition to reconciling (versions of) evidentialism and pragmatism, this two-level account has implications for a range of important debates in normative theory, including the interaction of right and wrong reasons
for actions and other attitudes, the significance of reasons in understanding normativity and authoritative normativity, the distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘substantive’ normativity, and whether there is a unified source of authoritative normativity.

According to a popular view in contemporary epistemology, a belief is justified if, and only if, it amounts to knowledge. Upholders of this view also hold that knowledge is the fundamental norm governing belief and that conforming to this norm is both necessary and sufficient for justification. These related claims constitute the core of a broadly externalist model of epistemic normativity. The main rationale for this model relies on parallels with the use of central normative notions in other normative disciplines, in particular in the practical and legal domains, where the notion of justification is most often employed and discussed. In this paper, assuming the same general framework and methodology, I argue against the claim that mere norm conformity is sufficient for justification. Following Gardner (2007), I argue that justification requires conformity to a norm for sufficient undefeated reasons. An important consequence of this result is the rejection of the claim that conformity to the norm of belief is necessary and sufficient for epistemic justification. Furthermore, assuming that only knowledge justifies belief, if justification can require more than norm conformity, the norm of belief can be some property falling short of knowledge, such as truth. In the concluding part of the paper, I sketch how a model of epistemic normativity can be developed within this externalist normative framework assuming that truth is the norm of belief.

This paper explores what happens if we construe evidentialism as a thesis about the metaphysical grounds of justification. According to grounding evidentialism, facts about what a subject is justified in believing are grounded in facts about that subject's evidence. At first blush, grounding evidentialism appears to enjoy advantages over a more traditional construal of evidentialism as a piece of conceptual analysis. However, appearances are deceiving. I argue that grounding evidentialists are unable to provide a satisfactory story about what grounds the evidential facts, and that this provides good reason to reject grounding evidentialism.

This paper focuses on the relation between epistemic reasons and the subject's epistemic perspective. It tackles the questions of whether epistemic reasons are dependent on the perspective of the subject they are reasons for, and if so, whether they are dependent on the actual or the potential perspective. It is argued that epistemic reasons are either independent or minimally dependent on the subject's epistemic perspective. In particular, I provide three arguments supporting the conclusion that epistemic reasons are not dependent on the subject's actual perspective. Furthermore, I show that variants of these arguments apply against popular views holding that epistemic reasons depend on the subject's potential perspective, such as the view that epistemic reasons are facts that one is in a position to know.

Ascriptions of rationality are related to our practices of praising and criticizing. This seems to provide motivation for normative accounts of rationality, more specifically for the view that rationality is a matter of responding to normative reasons. However, rational agents are sometimes guided by false beliefs. This is problematic for those reasons-based accounts of rationality that are also committed to the widespread thesis that normative reasons are facts. The critical aim of the paper is to present objections to recent proposed solutions to this problem, according to which the responses of deceived agents would be rationalized by facts about how things appear to them. My positive aim is to argue that accounts of reasons in terms of apparent reasons manage to capture the intuitions that seem to favor a normative account of rationality (more specifically, they capture the connection between attributions of rationality and praise and criticism).

An increasingly popular view in contemporary epistemology holds that the most fundamental norm governing belief is knowledge. According to this norm one shouldn’t believe what one doesn’t know. A prominent argument for the knowledge norm appeals to the claim that knowledge is the most general condition of epistemic assessment of belief, one entailing all other conditions under which we epistemically assess beliefs (truth, evidence, reliability…). This norm would provide an easy and straightforward explanation of why we assess beliefs along all these various epistemic dimensions. This article argues that this line of argument is ultimately unsuccessful. I show that the main premise of the argument actually supports the opposite conclusion: the norm of belief requires a condition weaker than knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that if we hold on to the assumption that knowledge is the most general condition of belief’s epistemic assessment, the fundamental norm of belief is factive: one is not permitted to believe a proposition p if it is not true that p.

Some prominent evidentialists argue that practical considerations cannot be normative reasons for belief because they can't be motivating reasons for belief. Existing pragmatist responses turn out to depend on the assumption that it's possible to believe in the absence of evidence. The evidentialist may deny this, at which point the debate ends in an impasse. I propose a new strategy for the pragmatist. This involves conceding that belief in the absence of evidence is impossible. We then argue that evidence can play a role in bringing about belief without being a motivating reason for belief, thereby leaving room for practical considerations to serve as motivating reasons. I present two ways in which this can happen. First, agents can use evidence as a mere means by which to believe, with practical considerations serving as motivating reasons for belief, just as we use tools (e.g. a brake pedal) as mere means by which to do something (e.g. slow down) which we are motivated to do for practical reasons. Second, evidence can make it possible for one to choose whether or not to believe – a choice one can then make for practical reasons. These arguments push the debate between the evidentialist and the pragmatist into new territory. It is no longer enough for an evidentialist to insist that belief is impossible without evidence. Even if this is right, the outcome of the debate remains unsettled. It will hang on the ability of the evidentialist to respond to the new pragmatist strategy presented here.

What are reasons made of? And, whatever reasons are made of, how is reason-stuff carved up into various different kinds? Those are my questions here. I want to know about the ontology of reasons: what kinds of things, or properties, or relations (or whatever) are reasons? And I want to know about the typology of reasons: how are reasons themselves divided up into various kinds? I am particularly interested in the category of epistemic reasons: I want to know what constitutes epistemic reasons, and how they are distinguished from other sorts of reasons. I am sympathetic towards a kind of evidentialist theory about epistemically justified beliefs, according to which epistemic reasons always consist of evidence, and evidence always constitutes epistemic reasons. But even if evidentialism is correct, that doesn't yet tell us what epistemic reasons are; it just links the question of the ontology of epistemic reasons to the question of the ontology of evidence. If we can settle on an answer to either of those questions, then we will also have our answer to the other. 1 Why do I think the category of epistemic reasons is so interesting? For one thing, it seems to me that epistemic reasons are fundamental, in the sense that for any subject S and action φ, if S does not possess epistemic reasons bearing on the appropriateness of φ-ing, then S cannot possess normative reasons for or against φ-ing. Epistemic reasons are enablers of all other reasons. For another thing, epistemic reasons are a kind of reasons, and so if we can settle the question of the ontology of epistemic reasons, that will also point the way to an answer to the question of the ontology of reasons in general. If epistemic reasons always consist of evidence, as I believe, or even if they are only sometimes evidential, and if we can answer the question of the ontology of evidence, then that will point us to an answer to the question of the ontology of reasons in general. And of course, the reverse will also be true: if we can answer the question of the ontology of reasons in general, then that will also point us to an answer to the question of the ontology of epistemic reasons, and of evidence. So some of the arguments I consider below address the ontology of reasons in general, while others address the ontology of evidential reasons.

Suppose that you intend to go to the theater. Are you therein intending the unconditional proposition that you go to the theater? That would seem to be deeply irrational; after all, you surely do not intend to go if, for instance, in the next instant an earthquake is going to devastate the city. What we intend we do not intend 'no matter what', it is often said. But if so—how can anyone ever rationally intend simply to perform an action of a certain kind? In response to the puzzle, a 'conditionality' view of intention has emerged: The contents of everyday intentions are claimed to be fraught with hidden conditional clauses. The paper argues that such claims are radically unmotivated: Even unconditional intentions have only limited inferential import and hence contrast sharply with a 'no matter what' stance. The point is established by examining relevant patterns of reasoning from unconditional to conditional intentions.

According to a view I'll call Epistemic Normativism (EN), knowledge is normative in the same sense in which paradigmatically normative properties like justification are normative.  This paper argues against EN in two stages and defends a positive non-normativist alternative.  After clarifying the target in §1, I consider in §2 some arguments for EN from the premise that knowledge entails justification (the “Entailment Thesis”).  I first raise some worries about inferring constitution from entailment.  I then rehearse the reasons why some epistemologists reject the Entailment Thesis and argue that a non-normativist picture provides the best explanation of all the intuitions surrounding this thesis, favorable and unfavorable.  On this picture, human knowledge is a structured non-normative complex that has as one of its parts a justification-making property, analogous in role to good-making properties like pleasurableness.  After giving three arguments against EN in §3 and answering an objection in §4, I turn in §5 to further develop the positive view sketched in §2. In §6, I take stock and conclude.