Explaining Enkratic Asymmetries: Knowledge-First Style Paul Silva Jr. psilvajr@gmail.com November 16, 2017 Key Words: rationality, enkrasia, evidentialism, justification, knowledge-first Acknowledgement: Special thanks are owed to Daniel Fogal, Ram Neta, and audiences at the 2016 meeting of the Australasian Association of Philosophy and La Trobe University. There are two different kinds of enkratic principles for belief: evidential enkratic principles and normative enkratic principles. It's frequently taken for granted that there's not an important difference between them. But evidential enkratic principles are undermined by considerations that gain no traction at all against their normative counterparts.1 The idea that such an asymmetry exists between evidential and normative enkratic principles is surprising all on its own. It is also something that calls out for explanation. Similarly, the considerations that undermine evidential enkratic principles also undermine certain narrow-scope evidential principles. This too generates explanatory questions. I show how a knowledge-first view of rationality can easily address these (and further) explanatory questions. Thus we have one more reason to put knowledge first in epistemology. 1In contrasting normative enkratic principles with evidential enkratic principles I do not intend to imply that the concept of evidential support isn't in any way normative. I only mean to imply that the concept of having evidential support is distinct from the concept of rationality. This is a very common assumption among epistemologists who think that having strong evidential support for P can (at least proximately) explain the rationality of believing P. For if these were identical concepts this explanatory relation would not obtain. 1 1 Enkratic Principles and Enkratic Symmetry Here's an odd dialogue: Clayton: So, Allen, you don't believe P? Allen: Nope. Clayton: [surprised] But your evidence for P rationally requires you to believe it. Allen: [reflective pause] Now that you mention it...that seems right. [another reflective pause] Yeah, that's definitely right! I really am rationally required to believe P. Thanks for pointing that out. Clayton: Now do you believe P? Allen: Oh, no. I don't believe that. Clayton: [with puzzlement] Maybe we're talking past each other. When I say that a belief is rationally required I mean it's not rationally permissible to either disbelieve or suspend judgement in P. Allen: That's exactly what I mean when I say a belief is rationally required too. If I'm rationally required to believe P it's not rationally permissible for me to suspend belief in P nor is it rationally permissible for me to believe not-P; such responses are forbidden. Rather, I'm only rationally permitted to believe P. Clayton: [with confusion] ...so you do believe P? Allen: No, I don't. But I do believe I'm rationally required to believe P. I know it sounds strange. But don't worry, it's a rational combination of attitudes to hold in my case. For my evidence strongly supports not-P, so I refrain from believing P. And yet my evidence also strongly supports the claim that my evidence strongly supports P, so I believe I'm rationally required to believe P. Clayton: [incredulous stare] In this dialogue Allen exhibits two kinds of conflicting, non-enkratic (=akratic) combinations of attitudes: (a) believing one's total evidence strongly supports P, while not believing P. 2 (b) believing one's rationally required to believe P, while not believing P. What holding each of these combinations of attitudes has in common is that one indicts oneself in an epistemic respect in holding both attitudes simultaneously. Virtually every commentator on epistemic enkrasia has observed that (a) and (b) are as intuitively problematic as standard Moore-paradoxical beliefs and assertions, like: 'it's raining, but I don't believe it,' or 'it's raining, but I don't know it.' So it's not surprising that just as Moore-paradoxical beliefs and assertions have been widely held to be irrational, these non-enkratic combinations of attitudes are widely held to be irrational. Hence: Evidential Enkrasia It is irrational for S to (believe her total evidence strongly supports P, and not believe P).2 Normative Enkrasia It is irrational for S to (believe she is rationally required to believe P, and not believe P).3 What Evidential Enkrasia and Normative Enkrasia are intended to articulate is the idea that there are no situations where one can rationally hold both of the attitudes specified in (a) or (b). Put differently, if it is rational for someone to hold one of the attitudes in (a) or (b), then the other attitude is guaranteed to be irrational to hold. There are further important clarifications regarding these enkratic principles that I'll return to in the next section.4 Should we think that Evidential Enkrasia and Normative Enkrasia stand and fall together? Many who write on epistemic enkrasia seem to think so. For they tend to either positively suggest that there is no important difference between (a) and (b), or they tend to refrain from claiming that there is an important difference between them. For example, Greco (2014: 201-2 fn 1) writes that so long as we are using terms like 'ought', 'rational', and 'evidence supports' as one would in ordinary language 2For formulations of evidential enkratic principles in the ball park of these see Adler (2002), Kolodny (2005), Christensen (2007), Feldman (2005), and Worsnip (forthcoming). 3For formulations of normative enkratic principles in the ball park of these see Smithies (2012), Coates (2012), Broome (2013, 136), Titelbaum (2015), Lasonen-Aarnio (2015), and Littlejohn (forthcoming). 4As a referee pointed out to me, this dialogue suggests that the possibility of being in a rational akratic condition entails the possibility of rationally believing that one is in such a condition. The dialogue between Clayton and Allen is not meant to be an argument for the former position, and nothing in this paper turns on this particular issue. The purpose of the dialogue is just to add a bit of drama in the introduction of the distinction between evidential and normative enkratic principles. 3 '[n]ot much turns on the wording' of one's target enkratic principle. Likewise Coates (2012: 123 fn 2) in his discussion of enkratic principles treats 'rational' as meaning 'adequately supported by reasons or evidence.' Vahid (2015: 297) implies that (a) and (b) are "equivalent". Borgoni and Luthra (forthcoming, section 2) likewise imply that the differences between (a) and (b) are "mostly minor". Worsnip (forthcoming, section 3) says that while his focus is on enkratic principles that explicitly rule out (a), alternative formulations of enkratic principles that explicitly forbid (b) are "close enough" to ensure the validity of his arguments.5 Lasonen-Aarnio (2015: fn 44) draws attention to the fact that some pro-enkrasia authors have preferred to explicitly discuss and defend evidential enkratic principles rather than normative enkratic principles, but she is silent about whether or not this affects any of her arguments. A tempting implicature to draw from such silence is that she too thinks these principles are "close enough" to preserve her arguments. So there is an argument to be made for the idea that the following symmetry thesis is either widely (if implicitly) believed by many epistemologists or it is at least not disbelieved by them: Enkratic Symmetry Thesis Evidential Enkrasia is true iff Normative Enkrasia is true. In what follows I hope to demonstrate that the Enkratic Symmetry Thesis is mistaken in the following way: Evidential Enkrasia falls to certain decisive counterexamples while Normative Enkrasia survives all of them. This undermines the Enkratic Symmetry Thesis and allows us to begin to forge a middle path between proand anti-enkrasia positions illustrated in the dialogue above between Clayton and Allen. An interesting consequence of the arguments against Evidential Enkrasia are objections to the following narrow-scope evidentialist principles: Required Evidentialism If S's total evidence strongly supports P, then S is rationally required to believe P. Permissive Evidentialism 5Worsnip interprets Evidential Enkrasia as a coherence-requirement. So he's not committed to it under my interpretation of the term 'rationality' as propositional justification (see next section). Still his comment here commits him to a distinct Enkratic Symmetry Thesis concerning normative and evidential enkratic principles construed as coherence requirements. As I will point out in the next section, if my arguments against Evidential Enkrasia go through, they will have implications for a symmetry thesis understood in a way that Worsnip prefers. 4 If S's total evidence strongly supports P, then it is rationally permissible for S to believe P. Knowledge Evidentialism If S knows that her total evidence strongly supports Q in virtue of S knowing (P and that P entails Q), then it is rational for S to believe Q. While others have opposed Required Evidentialism and Permissive Evidentialism on various grounds, I offer some new considerations that undermine them. These considerations also generate a problem for Knowledge Evidentialism and further evidential principles to be noted below.6 An immediate consequence of the failure of Evidential Enkrasia and these evidentialist principles is that epistemic normativity cannot simply be thought of as evidence-responsiveness.7 In the end I argue that a knowledge-first view of rationality is poised to explain a range of facts that surface in the course of this paper, thus providing us with new evidence that the only rational beliefs are those that constitute knowledge. 2 Clarifications What is rationality? The target notion of rationality here has been referred to by others as propositional justification. What is distinctive of this notion of rationality is it's relationship to both actual beliefs and knowledge. For it can be (ir)rational for S to believe P even if one does not actually believe P. Thus when it comes to non-enkratic attitudes, I mean to be addressing the question of whether or not one can ever be in a position where it is rational to hold such attitudes even if one never actually does hold them. Additionally, I take rationality to be the stuff knowledge 6Littlejohn (forthcoming), Worsnip (forthcoming), and Christensen (2013) all offer objections to Permissive and Required Evidentialism stemming from concerns with higher-order evidence. My objections are distinct and also undermine the revised principles suggested by some of these authors. I discuss this further below. Interestingly, none of their objections doubles as an objection to Knowledge Evidentialism (since there one's evidence is constituted by one's knowledge of what one's knowledge entails). There are two further kinds of objection to Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism that would, I think, also generate problems for Evidential Enkrasia that I do not have space to discuss. One stems from lottery propositions and mere statistical evidence (Nelkin 2000; Hawthorne 2004; Wedgwood 2012; Buchak 2013), and the second stems from concerns about pragmatic encroachment (Fantl and McGrath 2002). Again, such objections to Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism don't double as problems for Knowledge Evidentialism (since, there, one's evidence is constituted by one's knowledge of what one's knowledge entails). 7Littlejohn (forthcoming) argues for this same conclusion from Normative Enkrasia. This reliance on Normative Enkrasia imposes certain limits, dialectical and logical, on the force of his argument. I discuss this further in footnote 16. 5 is made of (or the stuff that knowledge somehow makes, if a knowledge-first view is right). Thus understood, rationality is the property that epistemologists have been traditionally concerned with when, for instance, engaged in debates over internalism and externalism, debates about transmission principles and inferential justification, debates about coherentism and foundationalism, etc. This is not the way 'rationality' is always understood in discussions of enkratic principles. Sometimes rationality is taken to be a property of a set of attitudes that conform to some specified wide-scope coherence requirements. Even so, the present discussion is not meant to be irrelevant to the question of enkratic principles construed as wide-scope coherence requirements.8 For the first step in motivating the idea that some supposed coherence requirement is not a genuine coherence requirement is showing that a thinker can be fully "rational" (coherent) in self-consciously violating a putative coherence requirement. The cases I give below in refutation of Evidential Enkrasia are all cases where a thinker can fully rationally and self-consciously believe their evidence supports P while not believing P. So if the arguments to follow hold, there is trouble not only for Evidential Enkrasia construed as a constraint on rationality (propositional justification), but also for a version of Evidential Enkrasia interpreted as a mere wide-scope coherence requirement. Now (b) contains a couple normative terms: 'rationally required' and 'irrational'. How is 'rational' semantically related to these normative terms? I'll follow common usage in treating 'irrational' as short for 'not rational', 'rational' as short for 'rationally permissible', and 'rationally required' to be the dual of 'rationally permissible'. That is, S is rationally required to   iff S is not rationally permitted to not- . There are a few caveats concerning the enkratic principles. First, I'm only concerned with enkratic principles for outright belief. This is primarily due to considerations of space. For there is significant reason to think outright belief and credences, while related, are distinct and that their rational statuses may not systematically vary (Wedgwood 2012; Buchak 2013; Staffel 2016; cf. Weisberg forthcoming). So any welldeveloped extension of the present issues to credences would demand more attention that I can feasibly devote to it here. Second, all the enkratic principles are intended to be silent about the rational standing of non-enkratic attitudes in cases of semantic opacity, i.e. cases where two sentences express the same proposition but a thinker is not in a position to be aware of that (cf. Titelbaum 2015; Borgoni and Luthra forth8Worsnip (2015), for instance, only endorses Evidential Enkrasia understood as a coherence requirement. 6 coming). Third, I intend to be reasonably neutral on the nature of evidence and the evidential support relation. The counterexamples to Evidential Enkrasia and to the evidential principles below will not turn on this, or if they do they can be easily massaged to fit one's cherished theory of evidence and evidential support. I will assume only that if one somehow has access to (e.g. knows, is acquainted with, has strong evidence for) propositions that entail that P is true or make it exceptionally likely that P is true and one is in a position to know that, then one has evidence that strongly supports P. Any theory of evidence worth its name should be able to make sense of this sufficient condition, or at least it should be able to make sense of the instances of this sufficient condition that I rely on below.9 3 Moore-Paradoxical Statements and Evidential Enkrasia The counterexamples of this section, section 4, and section 7 are not intended to show that there is no coherent Evidential Enkratic principle nor that there is no plausible narrow-scope evidentialist principle along the lines of Permissive Evidentialism. Rather, the point is to show that common ways of formulating these principles suffer from unnoticed counterexamples and that these counterexamples (surprisingly) don't intuitively affect Normative Enkrasia. This asymmetry between the two enkratic principles in turn generates a range of explanatory desiderata that a knowledge-first view of rationality can easily deliver. 3.1 Moore-Paradoxical Counterexamples Omissive Moore-paradoxical statements have the form 'P, and I do not believe P'. All such sentences can be used to pose a problem for Evidential Enkrasia, as I will explain. But here's a special case: The Case of Bob and (B) Bob considers the following self-referential sentence: (B) I do not believe (B). 9Horowitz (2014, 738) argues that we normally take it for granted that our evidence is truthguiding, and that we should include such a constraint in enkratic principles. I agree. For convenience I will leave this implicit. The counterexamples I offer against Evidential Enkrasia apply even with this added restriction. 7 Having never considered (B) before, Bob realizes that he doesn't believe it, and even as he continues to reflect on it he still doesn't come to believe it for the following reason. Bob realizes that if he believes (B), then (B) is false and so he'll have a false belief; and if he believes not-(B), then (B) is true and so he'll again have a false belief. So Bob realizes that he is unable to take an attitude towards (B) that accurately represents (B)'s truth-value. In light of this, Bob ends up suspending belief in (B). Notice that (B) is logically equivalent to '(B), and I do not believe (B)'. Accordingly, (B) draws our attention to a special instance of the omissive Moore-paradoxical schema 'P, and I do not believe P' where both conjuncts are identical.10 Importantly, Bob's inability to truly believe (B) is not a special feature of (B) introduced by its selfreferential character; one cannot truly believe any present tense, first person omissive Moore-paradoxical statement of the form 'P, and I do not believe P'. For believing the first conjunct (i.e. believing P) is incompatible with the truth of the second conjunct (i.e. I do not believe P). Omissive Moore-paradoxical propositions are not unusual nor are they infrequently true of us; indeed, we are in a position to recognize that our evidence often supports them. For anytime we gain evidence for some true claim, P, that we know we don't yet believe, we also gain evidence to think 'P, but I don't believe it'. For example, I know that I have no beliefs about the chance of rain in six days time. So at the moment I acquire great evidence to think that the chance of rain is n I also gain great evidence for the claim that 'the chance of rain is n, but I don't believe it'. Of course, if I properly update my beliefs in response to my evidence my situation changes: for I then believe that the chance of rain is n, and I believe that I believe it. But updating one's beliefs is a temporally extended causal process; so updates that occur in response to newly acquired evidence must happen after the acquisition of that evidence. So in such cases there will be a temporal gap where one's evidence supports 'P, and I do not believe P'. And in that gap it's strictly possible to have recognizably great evidence for the Moore-paradoxical claim 'P, but I do not believe it.' What's distinctive about Bob's case–and what makes it useful for present purposes–is that we can make perfect sense of Bob's refusal to update his beliefs so that he comes to believe (B), despite having excellent evidence that (B) is true. For Bob can tell that if he believes (B), then (B) is false. 10Williams (2015) briefly mention (B) as a Moore-paradoxical claim. 8 Some might be tempted to think that while having excellent evidence for propositions of the form 'P, but I don't believe it' is indeed common, it is not all that interesting because of its short-lived existence. After all, I do tend to update my beliefs quite quickly, and so when my evidence supports 'P, but I don't believe it' my evidence changes quite quickly. For upon believing P my new body of evidence no longer supports the claim 'I do not believe P'. But to dismiss Moore-paradoxical cases for this reason is unjustified. First, this objection is puzzling. Even if Moore-paradoxical counterexamples to these principles are short-lived, why should phenomena we think of as "short lived" not be theoretically relevant? Second, the short-lived character of the cases is irrelevant because we're evaluating synchronic principles. Third, it's false that all Moore-paradoxical cases will be "short-lived". For the conjunction of (B) and any ordinary true proposition is a proposition one cannot truly believe: I clearly cannot truly believe (B) and this is a philosophical essay. For if I cannot truly believe (B), then I obviously cannot truly believe that conjunction. So there is an indefinite number of cases where one could rationally continue to withhold belief in such conjunctions involving (B) despite having great evidence of their truth.11 3.2 Against Evidential Enkrasia & Evidentialism Here are three conclusions I think we should draw from Bob's case: (Conclusion 1) It is irrational for Bob to believe (B) and irrational for Bob to disbelieve (B). So not believing and not disbelieving (B) are rationally required, and hence rational. (Conclusion 2) Bob's total evidence strongly supports (B). (Conclusion 3) It is rational for Bob to believe that his total evidence strongly supports (B). 11Some may still be uncomfortable with (B) due to its similarity to the Liar sentence. A few points about this. (B) is unlike the Liar sentence in that it does not itself generate problems for classical logic: you cannot derive a contradiction from (B) and the principles of classical logic. Additionally, unlike the Liar sentence, (B) is not solely about itself; it's about a thinker's attitude towards (B). And there is some objective fact about which doxastic attitude, if any, Bob's has towards (B) upon considering it. Either the list of Bob's attitudes includes a belief towards (B) or it doesn't. Some–but by no means all–will be skeptical about whether (B) expresses a genuine proposition. Note that the issues we are dealing with concern the rational evaluation of doxastic attitudes. And what attitudes we have and which attitudes it is rational for us to have is not obviously constrained by what propositions there are. Even if, say, the Liar sentence expresses no proposition we can still assess whether or not the dialethists' arguments are strong enough to make their belief that the Liar is true and false rational. 9 I'll defend these conclusions momentarily. For now note that if these conclusions are correct, then Evidential Enkrasia, Permissive Evidentialism, and Required Evidentialism are false. For Evidential Enkrasia implies: It is irrational for Bob to (believe his total evidence strongly supports (B), and not believe (B)). But (Conclusion 3) indicates that it is rational for Bob to believe that his evidence strongly supports (B), and (Conclusion 1) indicates that it is rational for Bob to not believe (B). So Evidential Enkrasia can't be right if (Conclusion 3) and (Conclusion 1) are correct. In addition to Evidential Enkrasia, there are problems for Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism as well. For Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism individually imply: If Bob's total evidence strongly supports (B), then it is rational for Bob to believe (B). But (Conclusion 1) and (Conclusion 2) imply that it is irrational for Bob to believe (B) even though his evidence strongly supports (B). So Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism can't be right. So if (Conclusion 1)-(Conclusion 3) are true, we have a refutation of Evidential Enkrasia, Permissive Evidentialism, and Required Evidentialism. 3.3 Defense of (Conclusion 1)-(Conclusion 3) What of (Conclusion 1)? Specifically, why is it that Bob cannot rationally believe (B)? First off, I hope it is just intuitively obvious to you that Bob cannot rationally believe or disbelieve (B), even if it's unclear why this is the case. Second, recall that (B) is obviously logically equivalent to a special instance of the schema 'P, and I do not believe P'. There is no commentator on Moorean-absurdities who thinks that a subject can rationally believe instances of this schema–at least once they recognize the fact that believing the first conjunct falsifies the second. Rather, what commentators on Moorean-absurdities take to be one of their primary tasks is to explain why one cannot rationally believe instances of this schema.12 Third, allowing Bob to rationally believe or disbelieve (B) offends most consequentialist characterizations of what's of fundamental importance to epistemic normativity. 12Green and Williams (2007). 10 For example, each of the following conditions have been held up as fundamental epistemic goods relevant to assessing the epistemic rationality of a belief that P: knowledge that P or the likelihood of knowledge that P or the likelihood of true belief that P and avoidance of false belief that P or the seeming likelihood of knowledge or the seeming likelihood of true belief that P and avoidance of false belief that P or having one's belief that P cohere with one's other beliefs. Now consider Bob. Bob is not in a position, and he knows that he is not in a position, to believe (B) in a way that could satisfy any of those conditions. Indeed, Bob's in a position to know that if he were to believe (B), that attitude would fail every condition. Not even the meagre coherence condition is in the offing. For Bob knows the truth-conditions for (B), and so he knows that: were he to believe (B) he would falsely believe (B). But that counterfactual and belief in (B) clearly entail that (B) is false. Bob cannot coherently believe (B) if doing so is obviously logically inconsistent with his other beliefs. Even if one is not an epistemic consequentialist, it's plausible that one's preferred epistemic principles for rational belief will involve some kind of defeat clause such that one is not rational in believing P if one's in a position to know that one cannot truly believe P. In any case, however you prefer to explain the fact that he cannot rationally believe (or disbelieve) (B), it will widely be taken to be correct. (Conclusion 1) has one further aspect. It says that not believing (B) and not disbelieving (B) are rationally required, and hence rational. This just follows from the meaning of 'irrational' and the previously argued point that it's irrational to believe (B) and irrational to disbelieve it. This raises a question as to which attitude Bob can hold towards (B) if he neither believes nor disbelieves it. If suspension is the only such attitude, then we have an argument that suspension is a rational attitude for Bob to take. But it has been pointed out to me that this is strictly stronger than what I need. For suspension of belief may have features that mere non-belief and non-disbelief lack (cf. Friedman, forthcoming). In which case, it's possible for Bob to rationally not (dis)believe (B) while also not suspending belief in (B). For convenience I will treat suspension as a rational way for Bob to not believe (B), but nothing will turn on this. So one is free to hold that suspension is more than the mere withholding of (dis)belief in a considered proposition, and that only the latter is a rational stance to take towards (B). (Conclusion 2) makes an assertion about Bob's evidence and what it supports. I think there is a plausible case to be made that Bob–being an ordinary human with ordinary introspective abilities–can be introspectively aware that he doesn't believe 11 (B), and that in virtue of this he can have evidence that strongly supports (B).13 But views on introspective awareness and its relation to evidence bring up too many collateral issues. Fortunately we can side-step these issues. For any plausible theory of evidence will imply that it is possible for Bob's evidence to strongly support (B) because his evidence can include propositions that entail (B). For example, Bob could be in a position to know other propositions that he knows to entail (B), thereby ensuring that he has evidence that conclusively supports (B). For example, Bob could be in a position to know the following: (E1) There are other people who know (B). (E2) Bob's mental life includes no representational mental state whose content is (B). Take (E1). Suppose you and Bob work in a lab with an infallible brain scanner. The scanner says that (B) is true. You thereby come to know that Bob doesn't believe (B). Bob witnesses this, and thereby comes to know (E1): that there is someone else (namely you) who knows that Bob doesn't believe (B). So now Bob knows that you know (B). Since Bob's a smart guy he knows that knowledge is factive, so he knows that if you know (B), then (B) is true. So Bob has recognizably conclusive evidence for (B). Now take (E2). Suppose that same brain scanner also says that (E2) is true. Bob can in the same way come to know (E2), which also provides strong evidential support for (B) because (E2) entails (B).14 Now belief is not closed under known entailment. So even though (E1) and (E2) entail (B) and Bob recognizes this entailment, that doesn't entail that Bob believes (B). And in this particular case Bob withholds belief because he recognizes that he cannot truly believe (B). Obviously, the failure to have one's beliefs closed under known entailment is often irrational. But recall that we are dealing with an exceptional case where withholding belief from (B) is the most rational option available to Bob.15 So whatever one's theory of evidence happens to be, it should be able to accommodate the fact it's possible for Bob to know (E1) and (E2) and that this would, jointly 13Of course the manner of awareness must not involve belief. For discussion of awareness without belief see [author reference]. 14Is believing (E2) consistent with not believing (B)? The concept of a representational mental state is a broader concept than the concept of belief, so it's possible to have beliefs about representational mental states without having beliefs about beliefs, just as it's possible to have beliefs about colors without having beliefs about some particular shade. 15See Schechter's (2013) long deduction case for further potential cases where one should believe (P and P entails Q) but refrain from believing Q. 12 and individually, ensure that Bob has evidence that provides conclusive evidential support for (B). The fact that Bob's evidence can include knowledge that entails (B) is significant. For it shows us that not only does (B) pose a problem for Permissive Evidentialism, but (B) also poses problems for a related principle that is restricted to knowledge of knowledge: Knowledge Evidentialism If S knows that her total evidence strongly supports Q in virtue of her knowing (P and that P entails Q), then it is rational for S to believe Q. For recall that it's easy to see how Bob could know (E1), and being a smart guy he knows that this entails (B). Bob could also know that he knows these things. But (Conclusion 1) still holds: it is irrational for Bob to believe (B). So Knowledge Evidentialism is in the same boat as Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism. The failure of Knowledge Evidentialism is not only surprising but it's significant. For it shows that Permissive Evidentialism cannot be saved by retreating to some kind of externalist theory of evidence. For even a wildly demanding externalist conception of what it takes to have evidence (e.g. knowledge of the entailments of one's knowledge) is insufficient to preserve Permissive Evidentialism.16 16Littlejohn (forthcoming) argues that Normative Enkrasia is true and supports a thesis he calls Objectivism: higher-order facts about rationality are fixed by the first-order facts about rationality in such a way that one can never have rational but misleading beliefs about what rationality requires. He then uses Objectivism to refute Permissive Evidentialism (and hence Required Evidentialism). From this Littlejohn claims that we should not think that epistemic rationality is just a matter of having attitudes that respond to our evidence. While the arguments of sections 3, 4, and 7 also support this conclusion, they differ from Littlejohn's argument in a few respects. First, Littlejohn's argument against Permissive Evidentialism doesn't easily extend to Knowledge Evidentialism which involves factive evidential support. Second, his argument depends on Normative Enkrasia which not everyone accepts. But the arguments against Permissive Evidentialism from sections 3 and 4 do not depend on Normative Enkrasia or any other enkratic principle; so my arguments challenge even those evidentialists who reject enkratic principles, e.g. Coates (2012) and Lasonen-Aarnio (forthcoming). Third, Littlejohn's argument against Permissive Evidentialism depends on the impossibility of having rational false higher-order beliefs, i.e. beliefs about the requirements of rationality. So while Littlejohn (forthcoming) is right to suggest that "strong evidential support isn't the stuff that [higher-order] rationality is made of", he's given us no reason to further conclude that strong evidential support isn't the stuff that first-order rationality is made of. But, as we'll see, the arguments of sections 3, 4, and 7 give us reason to reject versions of Evidential Enkrasia and Permissive Evidentialism that are limited to first-order propositions. So strong evidential support really isn't the stuff even first-order rationality is made of. 13 4 Inquiry and Evidential Enkrasia Moore-paradoxical cases are not the only cases that cause trouble for Evidential Enkrasia. Another problem for Evidential Enkrasia arises in connection with investigative activities. For example, Jane Friedman (forthcoming) has argued that the very nature of inquiry involves suspension of belief. That is: (*) Necessarily, S is inquiring into whether P only if S has suspended judgement in P and not-P. Part of her case for this has to do with the fact that assertions like 'I'm still trying figure out who killed Jones, but Smith killed Jones' sound terrible. (*) offers us an explanation for this: one cannot be trying to figure out who killed Jones while at the same time having committed themselves to the view that Smith did it. Suppose (*) is right, and suppose it is sometimes rational to continue to inquire into whether P is true even after one has gathered evidence that strongly supports an answer to the question as to whether P is true–I'll argue for this shortly. If both suppositions hold, then it follows that it's rational to suspend belief in P despite having strong evidence that supports P. That's not only inconsistent with Evidential Enkrasia, but also with Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism. So Friedman's thesis issues an interesting challenge to these principles. But it's worth noting that even if one were to reject (*) it is still possible to use cases involving inquiry to challenge Evidential Enkrasia and other evidential principles. For it is sometimes rationally permissible to continue to inquire even after one has gathered evidence that strongly supports a view as to whether or not P is true. Consider an example: Investigation Sherlock has just begun his investigation into whether Smith killed Jones. After only fifteen minutes of investigation Sherlock observes that all his evidence provides a very strong inductive argument for the claim that Smith killed Jones–the kind of inductive argument he'd usually have after days of inquiry. For he knows that Smith's prints are on the murder weapon, that Smith had motive, that Smith was in the area at the time of the murder, that there is a video recording of Smith entering the apartment where Jones was murdered not long before the murder took place, and that Smith threatened to kill Jones on multiple occasions. 14 Sherlock has no particular reason to think his evidence is likely to be misleading. And while it's surprising to Sherlock that he was able to gather all this evidence so quickly, on some occasions all the relevant evidence is very easily and quickly acquired. Now, Sherlock knows that in the strong majority of cases when he has an inductive argument of this calibre he is right. But he also knows that further investigation often reveals additional relevant information: sometimes it confirms one's original findings, sometimes it disconfirms them. Moreover, there's always the outside chance that some kind of conspiracy theory is true, e.g. that Smith has a twin, that Jones lured Smith into his apartment and committed suicide, etc. Sherlock knows these scenarios are extremely unlikely, and he knows that his evidence is very probably not misleading. But even so he withholds judgement on whether Smith killed Jones given that he only just begun his investigation fifteen minutes ago. So Sherlock believes his total evidence strongly supports the claim that Smith killed Jones, while he withholds belief in it. This is a violation of Evidential Enkrasia. Is Sherlock irrational in holding this combination of attitudes? Intuitively, it is rationally permissible for Sherlock to suspend belief until after he's engaged in at least some amount of further investigation. Why? Well, I've gestured at the reason in the case above. Sherlock observes that, roughly, a policy of "believing P on the basis of one's evidence after an adequate amount of investigation" is not as risky of a beliefforming policy as the simpler policy of "believing P on the basis of one's evidence."17 Sherlock recognizes that the later policy is less reliable and one will be more easily led into error by following it. Indeed, he knows that on the far-off chance that his evidence is misleading, it will take him additional time investigating to figure that out. So even if Sherlock is permitted to use the riskier belief-forming policy (which is far from obvious), he's surely not rationally required to do so. And if he's not rationally required to do so, then he can rationally withhold belief until he completes further investigation. But if Sherlock rationally refrains from believing Smith is guilty while rationally believing that his total evidence strongly supports Smith's guilt, then Evidential Enkrasia is false. This also generates problems for Required Evidentialism since Sherlock's evidence strongly supports Smith's guilt at the beginning of his investigation, but it's rational for him not to believe Smith is guilty at the beginning of his investigation. If we draw 17Obviously not all inquiries are alike, and what constitutes an "adequate" amount of investigation will vary from case to case. And there may well be some investigations where one is rationally required to believe what their evidence supports upon gaining the evidence and recognizing it's probative force. The point here is just that not all investigations are like that. 15 the further lesson from this that Sherlock is required to suspend belief, then we also have a counterexample to Permissive Evidentialism.1819 5 Does (B) or Investigation Pose a Problem for Normative Enkrasia? The above challenges to Evidential Enkrasia work because they are cases where the following combination of attitudes are simultaneously rational: S believes that all her evidence strongly supports P, but S does not believe P. But Normative Enkrasia doesn't oppose combinations involving higher-order evidential beliefs. Recall Normative Enkrasia says the following combination of attitudes cannot be rationally held: S believes she is rationally required to believe P, but does not believe P. So for the problems above that affect Evidential Enkrasia to double as problems for Normative Enkrasia we need a bridge principle, like: (Bridge) If it is rational for S to believe her total evidence strongly supports P then it is also rational for S to believe she is rationally required to believe P. For if (Bridge) is true, then any case where it is rational for: S to believe that her total evidence strongly supports P, and for S to not believe P. is, a fortiori, a case where it would also be rational for: S to believe that she's rationally required to believe P, and for S to not believe P. 18Assuming that credence and outright belief are distinct, this claim that Sherlock is rationally withholding belief is consistent with allowing Sherlock's evidence to have a rational credence-raising effect so long as the outcome of the credence raising isn't rational outright belief. See Wedgwood (2012) and Buchak (2013) for further cases where evidence raises one's rational degree of belief in P though one can rationally refrain from outright believing P. But if one binds outright belief too closely to high credence (as simple threshold views do), then to accommodate the intuitions concerning outright belief in this case one will have to hold that one's evidence cannot raise one's rational credence so high that one counts as outright believing P. 19The case of Investigation is interesting in part because much of the resistance to enkratic principles concerns the impact of higher-order evidence that (falsely) indicates that one's first-order evidence is misleading. Sherlock's case is unlike this. For his higher-order evidence suggests that his evidence is very probably not misleading and that further investigation will not reverse or diminish the probative force of his current evidence. 16 And if that combination of attitudes is rational, then Normative Enkrasia is false. But the prospects of (Bridge) are dim. For each of the above arguments against Evidential Enkrasia double as an argument against (Bridge). Take Bob to start. It is rational for Bob to believe all his evidence strongly supports (B). But is it also rational for him to believe he's rationally required to believe (B) given all he knows about his situation? Surely not. Recall, Bob knows that if he were to believe (B), then he would have a false belief. So to claim that it's rational for Bob to believe he's rationally required to believe (B) is to claim that it's rational for Bob to believe that he's rationally required to have a belief he knows would be false. This is counterintuitive and poses a non-trivial challenge to the cogency of (Bridge). Similar problems arise in the case of Sherlock. For Sherlock's withholding belief in Smith's guilt is grounded in his knowledge that at the very beginning of investigations committing to the conclusion one's evidence supports is riskier than committing to the conclusion one's evidence supports at the end of a adequate amount of investigation. Given that he knows this, it's hard to see just how Sherlock could rationally believe he's rationally required (as opposed to merely permitted) to believe Smith's guilty–especially given the fact that he (correctly) thinks it's rational for him to not believe Smith's guilty in light of the fact that he's only very recently begun his investigation. Thus, the implications of (Bridge) in the case of Investigation are implausible. So the troubles above for Evidential Enkrasia don't seem to easily transfer to Normative Enkrasia via a principle like (Bridge). 6 Does Misleading Higher-Order Evidence Pose a Problem for Normative Enkrasia? Coates (2012), Lasonen-Aarnio (forthcoming), and Weatherson (ms) and others have observed that the following inference pattern seems to challenge Normative Enkrasia. Suppose it's possible that: (I) S's total evidence strongly supports the following two claims: S is rationally required to believe P, and not-P. From this it seems to follow that: (II) It is rational for S to believe she is rationally required to believe P, and also rational for S to believe not-P. 17 Assuming that S is typically rationally required to refrain from believing contradictions, it will follow that there are cases where: (III) It is rational for S to believe she is rationally required to believe P, and rational for S to not believe P. which obviously conflicts with Normative Enkrasia. The potential hitch in this argument against Normative Enkrasia is that the transition from (I) to (II) implicitly relies on Permissive Evidentialism. For Permissive Evidentialism is needed for us to seamlessly move from "my evidence strongly supports that..." to "it is rational for me to believe that...". Indeed, in their defense of this sort of argument against enkratic principles Coates (2012) and Lasonen-Aarnio (ms) explicitly rely on Permissive Evidentialism. But we've already seen one objection to Permissive Evidentialism stemming from (B). We'll see another objection to Permissive Evidentialism in the next section. So in order for a version of the (I)-(II)-(III) argument to gain traction against Normative Enkrasia, two things have to happen. First, Permissive Evidentialism needs to be reformulated in a non-ad hoc way that avoids each of these problems; second, the revised version of Permissive Evidentialism has to enable the transition from (I) to (II). But not every way of revising Permissive Evidentialism will enable the transition from (I) to (II). For example, take the following revision of Permissive Evidentialism: No Defeater Permissive Evidentialism If one's total evidence strongly supports P and one lacks sufficient reason to believe it's irrational to believe P, it's rational for S to believe that P. An evidentialist principle like this implies that it's not rational to take an attitude towards P if one has adequate reason to think holding that doxastic attitude is irrational. So this principle will not enable one to transition from (I) to (II). This is of note because many epistemologists are attracted to evidentialist principles like the one above that have this sort of no-defeat clause,20 and those epistemologists that are so inclined will not be able to endorse the (I)-(II)-(III) argument against Normative Enkrasia. To be clear, my point is not that it's impossible for every epistemologist to exploit (I) to undermine Normative Enkrasia; rather, my point is that using to (I) to undermine Normative Enkrasia seems to already presuppose either that Normative Enkrasia is false (which is question begging) or that Permissive Evidentialism is 20Goldman (1986), Bergmann (2006), Smithies (2012), Titelbaum (2015), Littlejohn (forthcoming). 18 true (which it's not). So what is needed if one is to endorse the (I)-(II)-(III) argument is a well-motivated alternative to Permissive Evidentialism that avoids Permissive Evidentialism's problems (stemming from (B), Investigation, and the next section) while still enabling us to transition from (I) to (II). I'm unsure what non-ad hoc revision there is to Permissive Evidentialism that is capable of doing this work. 7 Is Normative Enkrasia Refuted by Its Own MooreParadoxical Proposition? Given the uncertain character of the (I)-(II)-(III) argument, we might try to find another route to undermine Normative Enkrasia. We've already seen how the Mooreparadoxical sentence (B) generated trouble for Evidential Enkrasia. We failed to see how that sentence could cause further problems for Normative Enkrasia due to difficulties with (Bridge) in section 5. But perhaps there's another Moore-paradoxical sentence that does cause trouble for Normative Enkrasia. Here's the strategy of this section. Following Priest (2002: 11) I will show how we can derive: (R) It is not rational for me to believe (R).21 from the following commissive enkratic principle: Normative Enkrasia: Commissive (NEC) It is irrational for S to (believe she is rationally required to not believe P, and believe P). With (R) we can potentially show that (NEC) is self-contradictory. So we have a potential problem with (NEC). The next step would be to see if we can use the fact that (NEC) is self-contradictory to generate a problem for Normative Enkrasia. However, as I'll demonstrate, (R) leaves (NEC) and Normative Enkrasia untouched and only generates problems for Evidential Enkrasia, Permissive Evidentialism, Required Evidentialism, and Knowledge Evidentialism. So again we will fail to find reason to reject Normative Enkrasia while finding further reason to resist Evidential Enkrasia and it's cousin narrow-scope principles. 21Again, (R) is unlike the Liar sentence in that (R) does not, all by itself, generate problems for classical logic. For without assumptions foreign to classical logic, (R)'s truth would not lead to a contradiction nor would its falsity. 19 To begin: is (R) true? A line of reasoning left implicit in Priest (2002: 11-12) suggests (NEC) gives us conclusive reason to think (R) is true. For given the meaning of (R), we have the following obvious implication: (1) [It is not rational for me to believe (R), and (R)] is logically equivalent to (R). This is just an instance of the logical equivalence between (P and P) and P. Now, other things being equal, if it's not rational for me to believe P, and I know that P is logically equivalent to Q, then it's not rational for me to believe Q either. This kind of negative closure claim is quite plausible. Suppose it is not rational for me to think Todd is a bachelor because I have no reason to think he is one, and I know that being a bachelor is logically equivalent to being an unmarried adult male. Then, from this negative closure principle, it correctly follows that it is not rational for me to think Todd is an unmarried adult male. The following is just an instance of that negative closure principle: (2) If (a) it is not rational for me to believe [it is not rational for me to believe (R), and (R)] and (b) I know that [it is not rational for me to believe (R), and (R)] is logically equivalent to (R), then it is not rational for me to believe (R). It's easy to see that (2)(a) is satisfied if (NEC) is true. For (NEC) is equivalent to: it is not rational for S to (believe it is not rational for her to believe P, and believe P). And (2)(a) is just an instance of this.22 And it's also easy to see that (2)(b) is true since: (3) I know that (1) is true. Thus from (2), (3), and (NEC) it follows that: (4) It is not rational for me to believe (R). But (4) = (R). So we have proved that (R) follows deductively from (2), (3), and (NEC). 22Well...it's close enough. Strictly speaking, (NEC) says a certain pair of beliefs cannot be simultaneously rational, i.e. it is irrational to: believe that it is irrational for me to believe P, while believing P. But (2)(a) says a single belief in a conjunction is irrational. But moving between the two is innocent enough in the present case where the single belief is in a conjunction of the form (P and P). 20 Is it rational for me to believe what was just proved, i.e. (R)? You might be inclined to think: "Yes, provided some kind of closure principle for rationality is true,23 and provided it is rational for me to believe (2), (3), and (NEC)." And if this thought were correct, then the rationality of believing (R) would threaten (NEC) with a reductio. For if it's rational for me to believe (R), then it plausibly follows that: (5) It is rational for me to believe [it is not rational for me to believe (R), and (R)]. After all, [it is not rational for me to believe (R), and (R)] is obviously logically equivalent to (R). And assuming rational belief may distribute over that conjunction it follows that: (6) It's rational for me to believe it is not rational for me to believe (R), and rational for me to believe (R). This contradicts (NEC).24 We could plausibly turn (6) into a reason to reject Normative Enkrasia as well. For surely if it can be rational to hold a commissive non-enkratic combination of attitudes ruled out by (NEC) it should also be possible to rationally hold an omissive non-enkratic combination ruled out by Normative Enkrasia via a pattern of reasoning like the (I)-(II)-(III) argument. However, the reasoning in the previous paragraph is all moving too quick. For we've just deduced (R) from (2), (3), and (NEC). So if (2), (3), and (NEC) are all true, then (R) really is true. But if (R) is true, then it is not rational for me to believe (R)–that's just what it means for (R) to be true. And if it's not rational for me to believe (R), then it's also not rational for me to believe the obviously logically equivalent [it is not rational for me to believe (R), and (R)].25 So (5) is false. So (R) doesn't pose any problems for (NEC) or Normative Enkrasia even though (R) is provable from (NEC) and some other plausible propositions. What is interesting is that the proof above poses further problems for Evidential Enkrasia. For we've just proved (R) from (2), (3), and (NEC). So if (2), (3), and 23That is, a principle that says, roughly, if you've proved Q from premises it's rational to believe, then it's rational to believe Q. 24...under the assumption I made earlier that it's not rational for me to believe P iff I'm rationally required to not believe P. 25This raises complications for closure principles for rationality. But here is not the place to explore those or how they should be tidied up in light of (R). Notice that it's not only the present case that challenges closure principles. Bob and (B) do to. For recall that Bob knew (E1) and that (E1) entails (B). But it is not rational for Bob to believe (B). So any closure principle that entails it is rational for Bob to believe (B) is false and in need of revision. 21 (NEC) are part of our evidence, then our evidence strongly supports (R). But it is not rational for us to believe (R). So it is possible to rationally believe one's evidence strongly supports (R) while not believing (R). Thus (R) offers us one more nail to drive into Evidential Enkrasia's coffin. Additionally, (R) spells trouble for Permissive Evidentialism, Required Evidentialism, and Knowledge Evidentialism in the same sort of way (B) did. For if my evidence includes (NEC), (2), and (3) then my evidence strongly supports (R). Since it is not rational for me to believe (R), it follows that Permissive Evidentialism and Required Evidentialism must be false; and provided I can know that I know that my evidence entails (R), my inability to rationally believe (R) entails that Knowledge Evidentialism is false. All of this, of course, assumes that (NEC) is true and well-motivated. But I assume that anyone moved to endorse Normative Enkrasia will likely be attracted to something like (NEC). 8 Against Enkratic Symmetry One conclusion to draw from what's preceded is that there are significant reasons to reject Evidential Enkrasia and look for some kind of revision–the upshot of sections 3, 4, and 7. Yet we saw that not one of those reasons easily apply to Normative Enkrasia–the upshot of sections 5, 6, and 7. Thus, to the extent that Normative Enkrasia is wellgrounded, we have reason to endorse Normative Enkrasia despite having reason to reject Evidential Enkrasia. So we have reason to reject the Enkratic Symmetry Thesis that says Evidential Enkrasia is true iff Normative Enkrasia is true. Is Normative Enkrasia well-grounded? Well, as noted in the introductory dialogue involving Clayton and Allen, the idea that one can rationally believe they are rationally required to believe P while not believing P is deeply counterintuitive and verges on incoherence–which is the primary reason people tend to cite in favor of Normative Enkrasia. But as we've seen it is perfectly coherent and rational to sometimes believe that one's total evidence strongly supports P and to refrain from believing P. I cannot here embark on a full-fledged defense and discussion of Normative Enkrasia.26 My point is not that Normative Enkrasia is true, it is that its truth is not bound up with the truth of Evidential Enkrasia in the way that many have seemed to think. Thus, 26See Feldman (2005), Smithies (2012), Horowitz (2014), Titelbaum (2015), and Littlejohn (forthcoming). 22 pace the Enkratic Symmetry Thesis, one can coherently accept Normative Enkrasia and at the same time reject Evidential Enkrasia. This is an unappreciated middle ground in disputes over enkratic principles. 9 Explaining the Enkratic Asymmetry Here I'd like to address an explanatory question and my main point will be modest: a knowledge-first view of rational belief can directly explain the major lessons of this paper. In so far as such explanatory considerations are evidence we have new reason to think a knowledge-first view is correct. As indicated above, Normative Enkrasia is intuitive and many think it correct. Supposing that Normative Enkrasia is true,27 we'd like an answer to the following: Desideratum#1. What could explain the truth of Normative Enkrasia? But Normative Enkrasia is not all we want explained. For while Evidential Enkrasia fell to counterexamples, it remains a gesture in the direction of something that seems correct: in many cases it really is irrational to believe one's total evidence strongly supports P while refraining from believing P. So our second desideratum is this: Desideratum#2. Evidential Enkrasia, while false, has many true instances. So what illuminating revision is there to Evidential Enkrasia that (a) avoids the counterexamples above, and (b) can help explain why Evidential Enkrasia was attractive in the first place? But there is more to explain. For even though Permissive Evidentialism turned out to be false, facts about what our evidence supports frequently explain what beliefs it is rational for us to have. Ordinarily, when you've got great evidence to think that there is at least one car parked in your drive way, it is rational for you to believe it and it is rational to believe it because of your evidence. So any theory of epistemic rationality that is silent about the role of evidence in explaining rational belief is incomplete. However, we've seen that one's evidence can strongly support a hypothesis and it not be rational for one to believe it. So what could explain both of these facts? That is: Desideratum#3. Evidence can ground rational belief in what it supports. But it's possible for one's evidence to strongly support P and it not be 27Again, for protracted discussion and defense see those already cited. 23 rational for one to believe P (as in the cases seen above). So what explains the difference between cases where one's evidence can ground rational belief in what one's evidence supports and those cases where one's evidence cannot do this? Is there any theory of rationality that can give us our desiderata? Take the surprising thesis that: (R=K) S rationally believes P iff S knows that P.28 The most notable feature of this thesis, for present purposes, is that it entails that rational belief is factive, i.e. it's impossible to have rational false beliefs. But given that (R=K) is about doxastic rationality (=rationally believing) and that our concern has been with propositional rationality (=what's rational to believe), what's needed is (R=K)'s counterpart for propositional rationality, which I take to be something like this: Propositional Rationality is being in a Position to Know (PR=PK) It is rational for S to believe P iff S is in a position to know that P. While the phrase 'in a position to know' needs some fleshing out, little will hang on how exactly one prefers to precisify the notion so long as being in a position to know is taken to be factive, i.e. one can only be in a position to know truths.29 What of Desideratum#1? (PR=PK) delivers. For it can explain the truth of Normative Enkrasia because (PR=PK) entails it. This is easy to see. Since one cannot be in a position to know falsehoods, S can be in a position to know P only if P is true. Thus, (PR=PK) entails that propositional rationality is factive just as (R=K) entails that doxastic rationality is factive. Accordingly, it follows that if it is rational to believe that <S is rationally required to believe P> then it's true <that S is rationally required to believe P>. And if S is rationally required to believe P, then it's not rational for S not to believe P. So if (PR=PK) is true, there cannot be cases where it 28Defended by Sutton (2007), Littlejohn (2012), and Williamson (2000; 2014; forthcoming). 29As it happens, it is possible to derive (PR=PK) from (R=K) with a collateral assumption: it's rational for one to believe P iff one's in a position to rationally believe P. Space doesn't permit discussion. For arguments in favor of conditions like this see Wedgwood (2014) and Turri (2010). But it's not necessary that one be able to derive (PR=PK) from (R=K) in order for (PR=PK) to be part of one's knowledge-first epistemology. For many of the usual reasons given for endorsing (R=K) likewise accrue to (PR=PK). Moreover, it would be quite odd for someone to endorse (R=K) and reject (PR=PK) under every plausible interpretation of the phrase 'in a position to know'. 24 is simultaneously rational for S to believe she's rationally required to believe P, while it is also rational for S not to believe P. That's just what Normative Enkrasia says. So (PR=PK) entails, and thus can explain, Normative Enkrasia. So (PR=PK) hands us Desideratum#1. (PR=PK) is also able to answer Desideratum#3. For the right-to-left direction of (PR=PK) straightforwardly entails the following evidentialist principle: Knowledge-First Evidentialism If S's total evidence puts her in a position to know P, then it is rational for S to believe P. This narrow-scope evidentialist principle is not susceptible to any of the objections above. For in the cases of (B), (R), and Investigation one does not have evidence that is capable of grounding knowledge.30 In this way, (PR=PK) provides a principled distinction between evidence that can ground rational belief and evidence cannot do this: evidence that has the power to ground rational belief just is the evidence that puts one in a position to know. So (PR=PK) also delivers Desideratum#3. Before turning to Desideratum#2, recall that one worry with narrow-scope evidentialist principles is that they might enable the (I)-(II)-(III) argument against Normative Enkrasia (section 6). But (PR=PK) entails that it is impossible for Knowledge-First Evidentialism to enable that argument. This is because (PR=PK) entails that an essential premise in that argument is false, i.e. (II) It is rational for S to believe (a) she is rationally required to believe P, and also rational for S to believe (b) not-P. (PR=PK) entails that (II) is false because of (PR=PK)'s factive character. For (PR=PK)'s factivity guarantees that if it's rational to believe that it's rational to 30For sake of clarity: Bob could not know (B) since (B) cannot be truly believed. Similarly, while one's evidence might entail (R), it cannot ground knowledge of (R). For the truth of (R) entails that it is not rational to believe (R), which is incompatible with knowing (R). Finally, Sherlock intuitively has a knowledge-defeater for thinking Smith is guilty. There are at least a couple (compatible) ways of explaining this knowledge-defeater. First, one might think that at the very beginning of his investigation Sherlock's in something like a gettier situation; for believing P on the basis of his evidence at the very beginning of his inquiry is risky in a way that believing on the basis of his evidence after an adequate amount of investigation is not. For were Sherlock to believe Smith guilty after only fifteen minutes, his belief could easily have been false. For Sherlock will still believe Smith guilty on the basis of the information gained after only fifteen minutes in the nearby worlds where Smith is innocent but finding that out takes a bit longer than fifteen minutes. Alternatively, one might take a kind of responsibilist view on which rationality (and hence knowledge) depends on virtuous belief forming practices, and that part of what makes one's holding of a belief virtuous has to do with engaging in a (contextually determined) "adequate" amount of investigation (cf. Zagzebski 1996). 25 believe P, then P is true. Thus, it follows that the rationality of believing (a) entails that P is true, and the rationality of believing (b) entails that P is false. So even if one's evidence supports (a) and (b), one cannot be in a position to know (a) and (b). So the antecedent of Knowledge-First Evidentialism will never be satisfied when it comes to (a) and (b). So if (PR=PK) is true, Knowledge-First Evidentialism can never be used to facilitate a (I)-(II)-(III) argument against Normative Enkrasia. What of Desideratum#2? Well, as we've just seen, on a knowledge-first view of rational belief there is a principled distinction to be drawn between evidence that puts us in a position to know P and evidence that does not, where only the former can ground rational belief. Accordingly, this suggests the following revision to Evidential Enkrasia: Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia It is irrational for S to (believe her total evidence puts her in a position to know P, and not believe P). This avoids the problems with Evidential Enkrasia given above because one is not in a position to have knowledge in the cases (B), (R), or Investigation. Thus, again by (PR=PK)'s factive character, it follows that one cannot rationally believe one's total evidence puts them in a position to know in those cases. So Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia doesn't fall to those counterexamples. Does (PR=PK) entail Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia? Well, given (PR=PK), it follows that if it's rational to believe one's in a position to know P, then it's true that one is in a position to know P. In which case, P is true and there is nothing around to prevent one from acquiring knowledge (e.g. no gettier stuff, no relevant counterevidence, or other sorts of defeaters one is overlooking). And if that's the case, it's hard to see how one could have adequate epistemic reason to withhold belief in P. And if one lacks adequate epistemic reason to withhold belief in P, then it's not rational to withhold belief in P.31 Thus (PR=PK) seems to imply: (**) If it's rational for one to believe that one is in a position to know P, then it is not rational for one not to believe P. So (PR=PK) gives us (**), and this entails Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia. For (**) entails that there are no cases where it's rational for one (a) to believe one's total 31This is very plausible on the present view of rationality as propositional justification and related to knowledge. See also Lord and Maguire (2016). 26 evidence puts them in a position to know P, while it is also rational for one (b) not to believe P. This is just what Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia says. Independently of this argument for Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia and the fact that it avoids the problems above, there seems to be good reason to accept this enkratic principle. For it doesn't seem irrational, or incoherent, or inexcusable, or stupid for a thinker to claim that they don't believe P because they're not in a position to know P–even if they also claim to believe their evidence strongly supports P. For example, suppose Allen had the following remark for Clayton: Allen: I don't believe P. But I do believe my evidence strongly supports P. I know it sounds strange. But I'm in a strange situation: my evidence doesn't actually put me in a position to know P. It's not only fully understandable that a thinker would refrain from believing P in such a case, but it seems far from understandable that they wouldn't refrain from believing P in such a case. For not being in a position to know P entails that one doesn't know P. So believing P in such a case invites the Moorean-absurdity of believing 'P, but I don't know P.' Self-consciously avoiding such states seems fully rational. So Clayton should not be much troubled by Allen's resistance to believing P unless he's got grounds for thinking that Allen's wrong about his evidence, i.e. that Allen's evidence does put him in a position to know P. So the fact that (PR=PK) entails the independently plausible knowledge-first evidential enkratic principle above is a further virtue of (PR=PK). So here's where we're at. (PR=PK) offers us a simple and natural explanation for the following facts: it explains why Normative Enkrasia is true and it explains when and why evidence matters for rational belief in a way motivates (and entails) revised wideand narrow-scope evidential principles (i.e. Knowledge-First Evidential Enkrasia and Knowledge-First Evidentialism). Moreover, these revised principles neatly avoid all the counterexamples of this paper. Some will doubtless object that while (PR=PK) can explain some things, it suffers from other problems. For example, some will object that it prevents one from having rational false beliefs. Admittedly, (R=K) and (PR=PK) are radical theories of rational belief that run contrary to traditional epistemology. So there is much more to be said about them, including addressing a number of objections. I cannot do justice to that task here–but others have done an admirable job in this regard (Sutton (2007), Littlejohn (2012), and Williamson (2000; 2014)). My primary point is that (PR=PK) is a theory of rational belief that can very naturally explain the primary lessons of this paper without the introduction of any ad hoc caveats. This gives us a previously 27 unappreciated reason to think (PR=PK) is true. Should no other theory of rational belief explain the same lessons32–or explain them in the organic way that (PR=PK) does–then we have a very strong reason to think (PR=PK) is true. References Adler, J. 2002. "Akratic Believing?" Philosophical Studies 110: 1 27. Borgoni, C. and Y. 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