Online research in philosophy

Theorists have consistently maintained that the most plausible forms of objective consequentialism must be probabilistic if and only if indeterminism is true.2 They claim: If indeterminism is true, then objective probabilities used to map such indeterminacies must be utilized by objective consequentialist moral theories; however, if determinism is true, probabilities play no role in objective consequentialist theorizing. I beg to differ. Assume determinism is true and I will show you that attractive forms of objective consequentialism must be probabilistic—and not for reasons related to our epistemic limitations either. In this way, I hope to shed some light upon the nature of objective consequentialism. Here’s my case. Consequentialist normative theories can be classified into two groups: subjective and objective. Subjective consequentialist theories might be characterized as those in which an agent’s beliefs concerning the possible consequences of an alternative (including perhaps: their likeliness to obtain should the alternative be performed, their intrinsic value, etc.) play a prominent role in determining that alternative’s normative..

This paper poses a puzzle concerning a broadly held view about normative reasons for belief: evidentialism. Evidentialism is the highly intuitive view that the only normative reasons for belief are evidential reasons. I shall argue that in certain circumstances, evidentialism is unable to generate the correct reasons for belief; these reasons can only be provided by other kinds of epistemic reasons apart from evidential ones. I am not arguing that reasons in ordinary cases for belief are non-evidential, but that evidentialism is too narrow an account of normative reasons for belief to serve as a complete theory of epistemic reasons.

I argue that the claim that epistemic ought is incommensurable is self-defeating. My argument, however, depends on the truth of the premise that there can be not only epistemic reasons for belief, but also non-epistemic (e.g., moral) reasons for belief. So I also provide some support for that claim.

This paper is an examination of modest foundationalism in relation to some important criteria of epistemic dependence. The paper distinguishes between causal and epistemic dependence and indicates how each might be related to reasons. Four kinds of reasons are also distinguished: reasons to believe, reasons one has for believing, reasons for which one believes, and reasons why one believes. In the light of all these distinctions, epistemic dependence is contrasted with defeasibility, and it is argued that modest foundationalism is not committed to criteria of epistemic dependence on which foundational beliefs are indefeasible. Modest foundationalism is contrasted with coherentism and is shown to be hospitable to a causal criterion of epistemic dependence, compatible with reliabilism, and neutral with respect to skepticism.

What is knowledge? -- Plato's problem -- Why knowledge requires true belief -- Clearing the ground -- Knowledge and causality -- Knowledge defined -- Skeptical worries -- Fallible knowers -- Epistemic reasons : foundationalism -- Epistemic reasons : coherentism -- A contextual theory of epistemic reasons.

In this paper I propose a teleological account of epistemic reasons. In recent years, the main challenge for any such account has been to explicate a sense in which epistemic reasons depend on the value of epistemic properties. I argue that while epistemic reasons do not directly depend on the value of epistemic properties, they depend on a different class of reasons which are value based in a direct sense, namely reasons to form beliefs about certain propositions or subject matters. In short, S has an epistemic reason to believe that p if and only if S is such that if S has reason to form a belief about p, then S ought to believe that p. I then propose a teleological explanation of this relationship. It is also shown how the proposal can avoid various subsidiary objections commonly thought to riddle the teleological account.

In this paper I consider whether there can be such things as epistemic reasons for action. I consider three arguments to the contrary and argue that none are successful, being either somewhat question-begging or too strong by ruling out what most epistemologists think is a necessary feature of epistemic justification, namely the epistemic basing relation. I end by suggesting a "non-cognitivist" model of epistemic reasons that makes room for there being epistemic reasons for action and suggest that this model may support moral realism.

Reasons of intimacy, i.e. reasons to care for friends and other intimates, resist categorization as either subjective Humean reasons or as objective consequentialist reasons. Reasons of intimacy are grounded in the friendship relation itself, not in the psychological attitudes of the agent or in the objective intrinsic value of the friend or the friendship. So reasons of intimacy are objective and agent-relative and can be understood by analogy with reasons of fidelity and reasons of prudence. Such an analogy can help us to understand which objective agent-relative reasons we have and which, such as deontological constraints, we do not have.

Abstract: The point of this paper is to undermine the support that particularism in the domain of epistemic reasons might seem to give to particularism in the domain of practical reasons. In the epistemic domain, there are two related notions: truth and the rationality of belief. Epistemic reasons are related to the rationality of belief, and not directly to truth. In the domain of practical reasons, however, the role of truth is taken by the notion of objective rationality. Practical reasons are directly relevant to this objective notion, and therefore the reasons to expect holism and particularism in the epistemic domain do not transfer to the domain of practical rationality.