12 research outputs found
Being More Realistic About Reasons: On Rationality and Reasons Perspectivism
This paper looks at whether it is possible to unify the
requirements of rationality with the demands of normative
reasons. It might seem impossible to do because one depends
upon the agentās perspective and the other upon features of
the situation. Enter Reasons Perspectivism. Reasons
perspectivists think they can show that rationality does consist
in responding correctly to reasons by placing epistemic
constraints on these reasons. They think that if normative
reasons are subject to the right epistemic constraints, rational
requirements will correspond to the demands generated by
normative reasons. While this proposal is prima facie plausible,
it cannot ultimately unify reasons and rationality. There is no
epistemic constraint that can do what reasons perspectivists
would need it to do. Some constraints are too strict. The rest
are too slack. This points to a general problem with the
reasons-first program. Once we recognize that the agentās
epistemic position helps determine what she should do, we
have to reject the idea that the features of the agentās situation
can help determine what we should do. Either rationality
crowds out reasons and their demands or the reasons will make
unreasonable demands
Reasons, rationality, reasoning: how much pulling-apart?
At the heart of John Broomeās research program in the philosophy of normativity is a distinction between reasons, on one hand, and requirements of rationality, on the other. I am a friend of Broomeās view that this distinction is deep and important, and that neither notion can be analyzed in terms of the other. However, I also think there are major challenges that this view is yet to meet. In the first part of the paper, Iāll raise four such challenges, and programmatically indicate how I think such challenges might be headed off. In the second part of the paper, Iāll discuss a third normative notion that Broome is interested in: that of (rules of) correct reasoning. On Broomeās view, correct reasoning is closely tied to requirements of rationality. More particularly, every rule of correct reasoning corresponds to a ābasing permissionā, which states that itās rationally permissible to base one attitude on one or more other attitudes. Iāll argue that this proposal canāt be made to work. If Iām right, this suggests that the same kind of pulling-apart that Broome has effected so persuasively with respect to reasons and requirements of rationality needs to be effected again to separate rules of correct reasoning from both of those other categories
Rational Requirements and the Primacy of Pressure
There are at least two threads in our thought and talk about rationality, both practical and theoretical. In one sense, to be rational is to respond correctly to the reasons one has. Call this substantive rationality. In another sense, to be rational is to be coherent, or to have the right structural relations hold between oneās mental states, independently of whether those attitudes are justified. Call this structural rationality. According to the standard view, structural rationality is associated with a distinctive set of requirements that mandate or prohibit certain combinations of attitudes, and itās in virtue of violating these requirements that incoherent agents are irrational. I think the standard view is mistaken. The goal of this paper is to explain why, and to motivate an alternative account: rather than corresponding to a set of law-like requirements, structural rationality should be seen as corresponding to a distinctive kind of pro tanto rational pressureāi.e. something that comes in degrees, having both magnitude and direction. Something similar is standardly assumed to be true of substantive rationality. On the resulting picture, each dimension of rational evaluation is associated with a distinct kind of rational pressureāsubstantive rationality with (what I call) justificatory pressure and structural rationality with attitudinal pressure. The former is generated by oneās reasons while the latter is generated by oneās attitudes. Requirements turn out to be at best a footnote in the theory of rationality
Deriving Positive Duties from Kant's Formula of Universal Law
According to the objection from positive duties, Kantās Formula of Universal Law is flawed because it cannot be used to derive any affirmative moral requirements. I argue that this objection fails and propose a novel way to derive positive duties from Kantās formula. The Formula of Universal Law yields positive duties to adopt our own perfection and othersā happiness as ends because we could not rationally fail to will those ends as universal ends
Perceptual Justification and the Cartesian Theater
According to a traditional Cartesian epistemology of perception, perception does not provide one with direct knowledge of the external world. Instead, your immediate perceptual evidence is limited to facts about your own visual experience, from which conclusions about the external world must be inferred. Cartesianism faces well-known skeptical challenges. But this chapter argues that any anti-Cartesian view strong enough to avoid these challenges must license a way of updating oneās beliefs in response to anticipated experiences that seems diachronically irrational. To avoid this result, the anti-Cartesian must either license an unacceptable epistemic chauvinism, or else claim that merely reflecting on oneās experiences defeats perceptual justification. This leaves us with a puzzle: Although Cartesianism faces problems, avoiding them brings a new set of problems
Rational Delay
Finite agents such as human beings have reasoning and updating processes that are extended in time; consequently, there is always some lag between the point at which we gain new reasons and the point at which our attitudes have fully responded to those reasons. This phenomenon, which I call rational delay, poses a threat to the most common ways of formulating rational requirements on our attitudes, which do not allow rational beings to exhibit such delay. In this paper, I show first how this problem undermines synchronic formulations of rational norms. Then I show how it likewise undermines the most natural diachronic modifications of these norms. Ultimately, I argue that a successful account of rational delay will reject norms that directly govern attitudes or states of mind like belief and intention altogether, in favor of norms that fundamentally concern temporally extended rational processes like deliberation
Polarization is epistemically innocuous
People are manifestly polarized. On many topics, extreme perspectives are much easier to find than āreasonableā, āmoderateā perspectives. A natural reaction to this situation is that something epistemically irrational is afoot. Here, I question this natural reaction. I argue that often polarization is epistemically innocuous. In particular, I argue that certain mechanisms that underlie polarization are rational, and polarized beliefs are often fully justified. Additionally, even reflective subjects, who recognize themselves as in a polarized or polarizing situation shouldnāt necessarily reduce confidence in the relevant beliefs. Finally, I draw attention to some often overlooked epistemic _benefits_ associated with polarization. A fuller understanding of the epistemology of polarization requires incorporating both the potential costs and the potential benefits, and being more precise about exactly what isāand is notāepistemically objectionable in these situations
Degrees of Assertability
In considering what we ought to say, we can evaluate a proposition both for whether it is assertable and for how assertable it is. The latter notion, that of comparative assertability, has an important role to play, both in our epistemic evaluations of speech and in our pragmatic reasoning. Yet, despite this, it has received little prior discussion.
This paper takes up the investigation of comparative assertability. Ā§Ā§1ā2 provide a preliminary, informal overview of the topic and an operationalization of the target notion. Ā§3 introduces Probabilism, the thesis that a proposition's degree of assertability is determined by its probability. Probabilism has been assumed in much of what prior discussion on comparative assertability there is. In Ā§4 I present two kinds of problem for Probabilismāproblems which, I suggest, when taken in combination, should lead us to look for alternatives. In Ā§5, I formulate and defend one such alternative. Under this proposal, comparative assertability is a matter, not of comparative probability, but of comparative normality. I conclude by demonstrating how adopting this approach allows us to avoid both kinds of problem which beset Probabilism