Reasons and Rationality

David Miller argues that there are no good reasons, either sufficient or insufficient. I show that most of his arguments are invalid or unsound. Several of his arguments depend upon the false claim that every deductively valid argument is circular. I accept one of Miller's arguments for the conclusion that there are no good reasons which are less-than-sufficient. I accept one of his arguments to the conclusion that there are no probative sufficient reasons. But I explain how there are epistemic (...) sufficient reasons which are relative to the game of science and how their existence is consistent with Miller's main contentions while avoiding Miller's apparently anarchic account of our knowledge. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall’s The Second Person Standpoint is built around an analysis of the “second-person standpoint,” which he argues builds in a series of presuppositions which help shape (and perhaps even give content to) morality. This paper argues that there is a kind of paradox tied up in the two central claims at the heart of this project – that second-personal address directs one practically rather than epistemically by giving reasons for action one otherwise would not have had, and that all (...) moral obligation is second-personal in precisely this way – that I will argue forces us onto the horns of a dilemma. Two possible solutions to this dilemma are analyzed, one drawing on the Kantian notion of a “regulative ideal,” the other on Michael Thompson’s concept of “bipolar normativity.” Ultimately, I argue, neither is successful. (shrink)

In recent years, the economics of emotions (EoE) field, which aims to create models of the human mind, has grown quickly. EoE models work well with simulation theory (ST), which is one of the main theories of mind. EoE models show how people's behavior and emotions change based on their knowledge and perception of others. It is hoped that by developing this model, it will be possible to quantitatively analyze not only the mental states of real others, but also the (...) subtleties of the minds of characters in novels in the future. Until now, the decision-making or the factual-reasoning mechanisms have been a black box in ST. This study analyzes how EoE models add to the understanding of ST. (shrink)

Superceded by Being more realistic about reasons, a paper on reasons perspectivism published by PPR. See above.

This paper is an early draft of something that we've polished up and posted above: n-1 Guilty Men. Check that one out, if interested.

Is the Kantian basis of valuing in humanity sufficient or sound enough to account for all valuing? At least two other such bases have been proposed across the ages, that of the sentiments and the valuing of life itself. This article focuses on the Kantian view, the first of these three possible bases of valuing. The concern is: by which criteria can we assess whether a given theory of or approach to basing a value is in fact usable and optimal, (...) that is can in fact explain why a value can be assuredly based on a theory of value. That is, can a possible theory of value indeed explain all other values? That is, it seems a “meta” analysis of the situation is due. The article looks to five perspectives on the Kantian concept of humanity to determine if that humanity, as a theory of all valuing’s bases, is at least supportable / sustainable, if not yet sufficiently fleshed out. The article concludes that these five perspective may each and severally leave some cogent doubt of humanity as the basis of all other value, while leaving unsettled the possibility the perspective is flawed or is not thorough enough for due criticism of humanity as basis. (shrink)

فلسفة التكنولوجيا - فال دوسيك (المقدمة والفصلين الثالث والرابع) - ترجمة وتعليق، في إطار مشروع لترجمة الكتاب بالكامل بالاشتراك مع آخرين.

This is Chapter 3 of my Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality. In this chapter, I defend the teleological conception of practical reasons, which holds that the reasons there are for and against performing a given act are wholly determined by the reasons there are for and against preferring its outcome to those of its available alternatives, such that, if S has most reason to perform x, all things considered, then, of all the outcomes that S could bring about, S (...) has most reason to desire that Ox (i.e., x’s outcome) obtains, all things considered. (shrink)

We ought to perform our best option—that is, the option that we have most reason, all things considered, to perform. This is perhaps the most fundamental and least controversial of all normative principles concerning action. Yet, it is not, I believe, well understood. For even setting aside questions about what our reasons are and about how best to formulate the principle, there is a question about how we should construe our options. This question is of the upmost importance, for which (...) option will count as being best depends on how broadly or narrowly we are to construe our options. In this paper, I argue that we ought to construe an agent’s options at a time, t, as being those actions (or sets of actions) that are scrupulously securable by her at t. (shrink)

This paper concerns Warren Quinn’s famous “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.” I argue that even if we accept his assumption that practical rationality is purely instrumental such that what he ought to do is simply a function of how the relevant options compare to each other in terms of satisfying his actual preferences that doesn’t mean that every explanation as to why he shouldn’t advance to the next level must appeal to the idea that so advancing would be suboptimal in (...) terms of the satisfaction of his actual preferences. Rather, we can admit that his advancing would always be optimal, but argue that advancing isn’t always what he ought to do given that advancing sometimes fails to meet some necessary condition for being what he ought to do. For instance, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s an option for him. What’s more, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s something that he can do without responding inappropriately to his reasons—or, so, I argue. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, I argue, to realize that, in certain circumstances, advancing is not what the self-torturer ought to do given that he can do so only by responding inappropriately to his reasons. (shrink)

Enkrasia and the Fixed Point Thesis are equivalent.

We analyse Peirce's original idea concerning abduction from the perspective of a critical philosophy, the same philosophy in Peirce's background. Peirce's realism is directly related to reason and experience and has ties with the idea of abstraction. We show how the philosophical environment of science abruptly changed, specially for physics, in the last period of the XIX century and the initial period of the XX century, when science was divided in disciplines and set free from the control of philosophy. The (...) phenotype of the physicist changed from abstract into imaginative thinker. Further, abstraction was linked to metaphysics and attacked as such. Elements of phantasy and dogmatism entered the scene in place of abstraction alongside ideas taken from the observable world. We provide evidence that the scientists of the newer kind had problems understanding those of the older school. As a consequence of the problems arisen in conciliating the idea of science grounded in experience and reason with the science actually practised, the former conceptualisation was abandoned. Abduction was then expelled from science. In the late part of the XX century and the early part of our century abduction re-emerged but without its scientific attributes. -/- Influenced by a constructivist, Piagetian, perspective of science, we propose and discuss a small number of conditions that we identify as characteristics of rational abduction: rules for the rational construction of theories. We show how a classical example of belief that satisfies today's most common definition of abduction does not match the standards of scientific retroduction. We further show how the same rules indicate the detachment of Special Relativity from the observable world, a fact actually known to Einstein. Finally, the same rules indicate the initial point in the path to re-conciliate Electromagnetism with the classical view of spatial relations, a matter not possible for the imaginative scientist but not extremely difficult for the abstract scientist. We close arguing that there is an urgent need to develop a critical epistemology, and to give room in science for the abstract scientist. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick has famously stated that the conflict between self-interest (prudence) and morality cannot be resolved: a dualism of practical reason is thus established. As is well-known, Sidgwick was distraught with this conclusion thinking that only the existence of God can resolve the dualism. Contemporary thinkers prefer to avoid this way out and argue either that. egoism is not rationally justifiable, or that self-interest and morality always point in the same direction, or that properly understanding the conflict also shows that (...) the dualism can be avoided. We take a different route. We agree with Sidgwick that some part of practical reason might indeed be discordant but we provide examples when what appears to be discord is in fact harmony on a higher level. We call these sets of. conflict cases pockets of harmony. We first show how these pockets form and what shape they take before moving on to considering their scope. At this point we confront a possible objection using an adapted version of Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Once this objection is out of the way, we conclude with a discussion of exactly what we have shown: what is the nature of our solution, and how it relates to recent skeptical positions taking their inspiration from Sidgwick’s dualism. (shrink)

How should you decide what to do when you're uncertain about basic normative principles (e.g., Kantianism vs. utilitarianism)? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order" norm: e.g., "comply with the first-order norm you regard as most probable" or "maximize expected choiceworthiness". But what if you're uncertain about second-order norms too -- must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, it seems that any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty is doomed to a vicious regress. In this paper, I aim (...) to rescue second-order norms from this threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the suggestion some philosophers have entertained that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on agents regardless of their beliefs or evidence concerning that norm. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order (e.g., moral) norms, thus closing off any question of what an agent should do in light of her normative beliefs. Rather, it is more plausible to ascribe external force to a single, second-order rational norm: the enkratic principle, correctly formulated. This modest form of externalism, I argue, is both intrinsically well-motivated and sufficient to head off the threat of regress. (shrink)

Abstract. Richard Feldman’s Uniqueness Thesis holds that “a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of proposi- tions”. The opposing position, permissivism, allows distinct rational agents to adopt differing attitudes towards a proposition given the same body of evidence. We assess various motivations that have been offered for Uniqueness, including: concerns about achieving consensus, a strong form of evidentialism, worries about epistemically arbitrary influences on belief, a focus on truth-conduciveness, and consequences for peer disagreement. (...) We argue that each of these motivations either misunderstands the commitments of permissivism or is question-begging. Better understanding permissivism makes it a much more plausible position. (shrink)

Some of our reasons for action are grounded in the fact that the action in question is a means to something else we have reason to do. This raises the question as to which principles govern the transmission of reasons from ends to means. In this paper, we discuss the merits and demerits of a liberal transmission principle, which plays a prominent role in the current literature. The principle states that an agent has an instrumental reason to whenever -ing is (...) a means for him to do what he has intrinsic reason to do. We start by discussing the objection that this principle implies counterintuitive reason statements. We argue that attempts to solve this “too many reasons problem” by appealing to pragmatic strategies for debunking intuitions about so-called negative reason existentials are questionable. Subsequently, we discuss three important arguments in favor of Liberal Transmission, and argue that they fail to make a convincing case for this principle. In the course of the discussion, we also provide alternative, less liberal transmission principles. We argue that these alternative principles allow us to accommodate those phenomena that seem to support Liberal Transmission while avoiding its problems. (shrink)

Although in everyday life and thought we take for granted that there are norms of rationality, their existence presents severe philosophical problems. Kolodny (2005) is thus moved to deny that rationality is normative. But this denial is not itself unproblematic, and I argue that Kolodny’s defense of it—especially his Transparency Account, which aims to explain why rationality appears to be normative even though it isn’t—is unsuccessful. I close with a sketch of an alternative proposal, one that provides for a genuine (...) normative role for rationality while defusing the attendant problems. (shrink)

One of Bratman’s aims in Planning, Time, and Self-Governance is to develop his insights regarding planning to shed light on temptation. I focus on the main case of temptation Bratman appeals to in supporting his conclusion that it can be rational for an agent facing temptation to stick to her prior plan even if she finds herself with an evaluative judgment that favors deviating. Bratman’s reasoning is meant to be consistent with the priority of present evaluation, and to be sensitive (...) to Smart’s insight that, as Bratman puts it, ‘inference from the advantages of the general habit [of non-reconsideration] directly to a specific conclusion about what to do on the present occasion, once the question of what to do on the present occasion is raised, is fraught.’ My reasoning suggests that, interpreted in one way, the case Bratman uses to make his argument is not clearly a case of giving in to temptation (or else not a case that requires the sort of novel contribution Bratman thinks is needed); and interpreted otherwise, the case does not raise exactly the challenges Bratman suggests it does, and the challenges it does raise are not directly addressed by the solution Bratman provides. (shrink)

This book argues that pragmatism offers a solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of language and mind: namely, the problem of the place of conceptual meanings—and so human minds—in nature. It contends that a pragmatist approach to resolving the problem avoids the dual traps of either reductionist elimination of genuine meanings or rationalist metaphysical excess. -/- The current intellectual, scientific, and cultural landscape is dominated by scientism, reductionism, and scepticism about such things as values, meanings, and everything that (...) seems to make human life worth living. What, then, is the role of conceptual meanings in what makes human beings unique and important? This book contends that the true nature and depth of this problem is central to pragmatism, and that pragmatism offers the resources to overcome it. First, it demonstrates that radical semantic indeterminacy poses a real danger for all attempts to naturalize human mindedness. The author argues that meaning-destroying indeterminacy is a constant threat of attempts to naturalize meaning and mind, and that centring this aspect of the problem in constructing a version of pragmatism means that we will pay attention to it and thus avoid it, creating a more successful pragmatist approach to the problem of meaning and mind in nature. Second, the book shows that by paying close attention to the relation of meaning and habit in pragmatism, we can identify the threat of indeterminacy in existing pragmatisms and then rectify the problem by putting forward a better account of the relation of meaning and that does not face the threat of radical indeterminacy. (shrink)

There is currently a lively debate about whether there are practical reasons for belief, epistemic reasons for belief, or both. I will argue that the intuitions on all sides can be fully accounted for by applying an independently motivated contextualist semantics for normative terms. Specifically, normative terms must be relativized to a goal. One possible goal is epistemic, such as believing truly and not believing falsely, while another possible goal is practical, such as satisfying desires, or maximizing value. I will (...) argue that we have practical reasons given the practical goal and epistemic reasons given the epistemic goal. Disagreement disappears when we make the context explicit. The result is an independently motivated version ofpluralism. (shrink)

In Rational Powers in Action, Sergio Tenenbaum sets out a new theory of instrumental rationality that departs from standard discussions of means-ends coherence in the literature on structural rationality in at least two interesting ways: it takes intentional action (as opposed to intention) to be what puts in place the relevant instrumental requirements, and it applies to both necessary and non-necessary means. I consider these two developments in more detail. On the first, I argue that Tenenbaum’s theory is too narrow (...) since there could be instrumental irrationality with respect to an intention to X even if one is not yet engaged in any relevant intentional action. On the second, I argue against Tenenbaum’s claim that “an agent is instrumentally irrational if she knowingly fails to pursue some sufficient means to an end she is pursuing.”. (shrink)

What is the place of coherence, or structural rationality, in good first-personal deliberation? According to Kolodny (2005), considerations of coherence are irrelevant to good first-personal deliberation. When we deliberate, we should merely care about the reasons or evidence we have for our attitudes. So, considerations of coherence should not show up in deliberation. In response to this argument, Worsnip (2021) argues that considerations of coherence matter for how we structure deliberation. For him, we should treat incoherent combinations of attitudes as (...) off-limits in deliberation. Some important questions are left unanswered by both camps. What do we mean by considerations of coherence “showing up” in first-personal deliberation? How do we interpret the divide between reasons-responsiveness and coherence? How should we interpret cases in which considerations of coherence interact with other norms or requirements? In this paper, I show how Haack’s (1993) crossword puzzle analogy sheds light on these questions. Also, the crossword puzzle analogy allows us to evaluate Kolodny’s objection and identify promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument against the view that structural (or attitude-based) irrationality consists in failing to respond correctly to normative reasons. According to this view, a pattern of attitudes is structurally irrational if and only if that pattern guarantees that one has at least one attitude one ought not to have. I argue that this ought-violation view comes with three indispensable theoretical commitments. These commitments concern various relationships between normative permissions and oughts that govern beliefs and intentions, and (...) they may appear plausible when viewed in isolation. However, once they are collectively conjoined, they imply oughts that are incompatible with the ought-violation view of structural irrationality. In particular, on the ought-violation view, these oughts entail that you are necessarily structurally irrational whenever [you intend to p] and [you believe that it is not the case that you ought to p]. However, since you can rationally intend things that you believe to be normatively optional (e.g. merely permitted or supererogatory), the ought-violation view faces the following dilemma: it must either deny one of its essential commitments or accept as irrational a set of attitudes that are clearly not. Either way suffices to show that the ought-violation view cannot serve as a correct analysis of structural irrationality. (shrink)

Critical Notice of Alex Worsnip's 'Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality' (OUP 2021).

In the recent literature on coherence and structural rationality, it is widely assumed that sets of attitudes are coherent just in case they are not incoherent. In particular, the two most popular kinds of views of incoherence—those centered around wide-scope rational requirements and those centered around guaranteed failures of some normatively significant kind—rely on this assumption. We argue that this assumption should be rejected because it fails to capture the difference between positively coherent attitudes and random unrelated ones. We also (...) formulate and defend an alternative support-centric view of coherence and incoherence which captures this difference and has several additional advantages. (shrink)

Are perceptual experiences epistemically appraisable? In this paper, I argue, contra Siegel (Rationality of perception, Oxford 2017) that they are not (§§ 2–3). I also show how the problem of hijacked experience can be solved without endorsing the view that perceptual experience is epistemically appraisable (§§ 4–5). A key idea behind my proposal is a disjunctivist view on rationalising and epistemic powers of perceptual experience.

Perception can provide us with a privileged source of evidence about the external world – evidence that makes it rational to believe things about the world. In Reasons First, Mark Schroeder offers a new view on how perception does so. The central motivation behind Schroeder’s account is to offer an answer to what evidence perception equips us with according to which it is what he calls world-implicating but non-factive, and thereby to glean some of the key advantages of both externalism (...) and internalism, respectively. He answers this motivation by developing a more specific view that he calls the Apparent Factive Attitude view, which pairs an answer to what evidence is provided by a perceptual experience with an answer to why having that perceptual experience provides you with that evidence. In this paper we advance two interconnected problems for Schroeder’s Apparent Factive Attitude view. A traditional intuitive judgment that often motivates internalists is the idea that internal duplicates must necessarily be equally rational in whatever beliefs they have. Schroeder’s arguments rely on a weaker claim - that people who are both internal and historical external duplicates but differ only in the veridicality of a single perceptual experience must be equally rational in whatever beliefs they have. In this way he preserves what he argues to be a more compelling internalist intuition. But our arguments will show that Schroeder’s view is committed to denying an even more compelling internalist intuition yet - that internal duplicates must have the same phenomenology. (shrink)

A longstanding question is the extent to which "reasonable doubt" may be expressed simply in terms of a threshold degree of belief. In this context, we examine the extent to which learning about possible alternatives may alter one's beliefs about a target hypothesis, even when no new "evidence" linking them to the hypothesis is acquired. Imagine the following scenario: a crime has been committed and Alice, the police's main suspect has been brought to trial. There are several pieces of evidence (...) that raise the probability that Alice committed the crime. Her attorney's defense strategy is not to challenge this evidence, but instead to provide personal details about Alice's neighbour, Jane. While Jane is one of many people the police spoke to, they saw no reason to investigate her further. You now learn that Jane, too, had access to the shed where the murder weapon was stored, just like Alice. To what extent should this alter your beliefs about Alice's guilt? In this paper, we provide a formal description of the problem and a solution indicating circumstances under which learning about Jane will more or less impact beliefs about Alice. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of deontic normativity in terms of attributive goodness. An action is permissible for S in C just in case there is a good practical inference available to S in C that results in S performing (or intending to perform) the action. The standards of goodness for practical inferences are determined by what is a good or bad exercise of the human capacity of practical reason, which is an attributive (and not a deontic) assessment.

Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity” – it’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normatively” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative (...) normativity”: (1) that motivation for it originates in a parochial conception of “normative flavours”; (2) that arguments against alternative ways of explaining e.g., morality’s importance are overblown; and (3) that there are strong reasons against theorizing in terms of “authoritative normativity”. The overarching aim is not to show that “authoritative normativity” is incoherent or entirely unmotivated. Rather, it is to discuss some of “authoritative normativity’s” deeper commitments to correct the impression that is it largely benign or that it is entailed by familiar and popular “metanormative” positions. Authoritative normativity, it seems to us, is a solution in search of a problem. (shrink)

The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening provides me with or constitutes a further reason to garden, beyond whatever reasons arise from the commitment-independent merits of gardening. I will argue that we should reject this conception of commitment’s practical upshot and its attendant psychological story involving (...) the will. According to the view I develop here, a commitment to X is a decision to take seriously the reasons to which X gives rise, and where necessary, to give those reasons an elevated place in one’s practical thinking. (shrink)

The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening directly effects a change in the normative facts by giving me a further reason to garden. I argue that we should reject this view and its attendant psychological story involving a normatively significant will. According to the view I (...) develop here, a commitment to X just is a decision to take seriously the reasons to which X gives rise, and where necessary, to give those reasons an elevated place in one’s practical thinking. In virtue of being decisions to conduct one’s deliberation in a certain way, commitments alter what it is rational for us to do without giving us further reasons to act. (shrink)

Subjectivists about practical normativity hold that an agent’s favoring and disfavoring attitudes give rise to practical reasons. On this view, an agent’s normative reason to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream ultimately turns on facts about what appeals to her rather than facts about what her options are like attitude-independently. Objectivists—who ground reasons in the attitude-independent features of the things we aim at—owe us an explanation of why it is rational to choose what we favor, if not because favoring is (...) a source of reasons. My aim in this paper is to supply such a story. The proposal is roughly that when an agent cannot base her choices on her judgments about what she has most reason to do, structural rationality extends to her a license to choose something just because she favors it, without imbuing favoring with the authority of a normative reason. (shrink)

Classical theories of epistemic rationality take an agent\\textquoteright{}s individual beliefs to be the only things that are rational or irrational. For them, rationality is wholly static. Recent work in epistemology take sets of individual beliefs and also changes of belief over time to be rational or irrational. For these theories, rationality is both static and dynamic. However, for both groups, static rationality is fundamental. In my dissertation, I argue to the contrary that, in fact, all rationality is dynamic rationality. Epistemic (...) reasons, rationality, and justi{}cation as applying only to changes of belief. This wholly dynamic view of rationality, which I call \\textquotedblleft{}Dynamicism\\textquotedblright has wide-ranging epistemological consequences. A small set of simple, elegant, and independently motivated principles of dynamic rationality can illuminate and solve otherwise interminable epistemological disputes. (shrink)

Normative realism is the view that there are ought facts, i.e. facts about what we ought to do. A recent influential challenge to normative realism, raised separately by Justin Clarke-Doane and Matti Eklund, argues that ought facts—even if they exist—are inert in the sense that they cannot tell us what to do. The ground for this challenge is the epistemic possibility of a normative pluriverse, that is, the epistemic possibility of there being not only ought facts but also ought-like facts. (...) I counter this challenge by showing the inconsistency, and thus the epistemic impossibility, of a normative pluriverse. I do so mainly by revealing a certain constraint on ought-likeness. (shrink)

This paper aims to make progress in understanding the nature of reasoning. Its primary goal is to spell out and defend a novel account of what reasoning might be, in terms of how reasoning contributes to settling (practical and theoretical) inquiries. Prior to spelling out this constructive proposal, however, the paper problematizes a very common picture of reasoning in an attempt to demonstrate the need for an alternative approach. The overarching argument of the paper is comprised of three stages. The (...) first attacks the predominant conception of reasoning for its specious restriction to fully conscious and explicit episodes. The second stage offers a replacement for this faulty conception, according to which a reasoning agent is one who may be represented as if she were undergoing a fully conscious and explicit process. Finally, the last stage proposes one way to fill in the above schema, articulating and defending conditions for representing agents as reasoning fully consciously and explicitly. Each of the above stages is independent of the others: One may accept that reasoning need not be conscious and explicit but reject the schema proposed as a replacement; and again, the schema may be accepted but not the particular proposal for filling it in. (shrink)

A lineage of prominent philosophers who have discussed the second-person relation can be regarded as advancing structural accounts. They posit that the second-person relation effects one transformative change to the structure of practical reasoning. In this paper, I criticise this orthodoxy and offer an alternative, substantive account. That is, I argue that entering into second-personal relations with others does indeed affect one's practical reasoning, but it does this not by altering the structure of one's agential thought, but by changing what (...) reasons can become available. The importance of second-personal thought for action is heterogenous. Second-person relations make possible the emergence of a wide variety of different kinds of practical reasons: creating some, revealing others. Recognising this diminishes the appeal of the traditional, structural accounts of the practical significance of such second-personal relations. Moving away from structural accounts facilitates a more thorough understanding of the intersubjective form of action. (shrink)

The typical epistemology course begins with a discussion of the distinction between justification and knowledge and ends without any discussion of the distinction between justification and excuse. This is unfortunate. If we had a better understanding of the justification-excuse distinction, we would have a better understanding of the intuitions that shape the internalism-externalism debate. My aims in this paper are these. First, I will explain how the kinds of excuses that should interest epistemologists exculpate. Second, I will explain why the (...) intuitions that underwrite the new evil demon argument don't provide support for the internalist claim that justification is just in the head. The positive response that Cohen's example elicits is an indication that the subject should be excused if she violates an epistemic norm, not an indication that no norm has been violated. For just about any conceivable norm we can think of we can imagine situations in which someone violates that norm because they're moved by evidence that misleadingly suggests that they'd conform to it. When that happens, we'll respond positively in just the way we do when we consider Cohen's deceived subjects. When that happens, we cannot say that the subjects' responses were justified because we've stipulated that the subjects' responses contravene the relevant norms. Regardless of whether you think of norms along internalist or externalist lines, you should see that the intuitions that underwrite the new evil demon objection tell us nothing at all about whether a subject conforms to a norm. They tell us nothing about justification. (shrink)

That we have practical reasons to believe certain propositions even if sceptical arguments are cogent is nothing new. As Hume puts it, if sceptical principles were steadily accepted, “men would remain in a total lethargy until their miserable lives came to an end through lack of food, drink and shelter.” (Enquiry, 12, 2). This heart-breaking projection fails to move contemporary epistemologists who, for the most part, brush off pragmatist stances on scepticism. In this paper, I argue that the pragmatist stance (...) on scepticism is not necessarily as easily brushed off as some philosophers think. (shrink)

Perceptualism is a prominent theory analyzing emotions as perceptual experiences of value. A longstanding challenge to perceptualism says that emotions cannot be perceptual because they are subject to normative assessments in terms of reasons and rationality while perceptual experiences are not. I defend perceptualism from this charge. My argument begins by distinguishing two forms of normative assessment: fundamental and non-fundamental. Perceptualism is compatible with the latter (i.e., non-fundamental reasons and rationality); even sensory experiences are so assessable. I next argue that (...) emotions are only non-fundamentally assessable. Following this argument, I outline a perceptualist-friendly theory of emotions as non-fundamentally normatively assessable. (shrink)

The article analyzes the legislative issues on equal marriage in P. R. China. It adopts a path dependency analysis on the liberal institutional order’s effects to the regime’s structural discrimination on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population. The research adopted a duo-lingual paradigm on Christianity with intercultural and transnational interpretations, and the research found the mis-adaption of language in the Chinese text of the United Nations charter is the key source to the suppression of the LGBT population in (...) mainland China. Furthermore, theological development for sexually diverse interpretations of the Bible is essential to mitigate the stigmatization of the LGBT population on a comparative constitutional review. (shrink)

Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems currently used for decision-making are opaque, i.e., the internal factors that determine their decisions are not fully known to people due to the systems’ computational complexity. In response to this problem, several researchers have argued that human decision-making is equally opaque and since simplifying, reason-giving explanations (rather than exhaustive causal accounts) of a decision are typically viewed as sufficient in the human case, the same should hold for algorithmic decision-making. Here, I contend that this argument (...) overlooks that human decision-making is sometimes significantly more transparent and trustworthy than algorithmic decision-making. This is because when people explain their decisions by giving reasons for them, this frequently prompts those giving the reasons to govern or regulate themselves so as to think and act in ways that confirm their reason reports. AI explanation systems lack this self-regulative feature. Overlooking it when comparing algorithmic and human decision-making can result in underestimations of the transparency of human decision-making and in the development of explainable AI that may mislead people by activating generally warranted beliefs about the regulative dimension of reason-giving. (shrink)

The idea of believing for a good reason has both normative and psychological content. How are these related? Recently, a number of authors have defended a ‘disjunctivist’ view of rationalisation, on which a good reason can make a subject’s responses to it intelligible in a way that mere ‘apparent reasons’ cannot. However, little has been said about the possible epistemological significance of this view or its relationship to more familiar forms of disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception. This paper examines (...) the relationship between epistemological disjunctivism and disjunctivism about rationalisation, arguing that the latter provides an attractive articulation of certain elements of the former. The specific claim is that disjunctivism about rationalisation enables the proponent of epistemological disjunctivism to explain why beliefs that are based on conclusive normative reasons provided by perception are susceptible to a certain kind of undercutting defeat. On the way to motivating this claim, the paper considers possible ways of articulating epistemological disjunctivism in terms of reasons, distinguishes different forms of disjunctivism about reasons for belief and clarifies the relationships between them. (shrink)

This will be a volume on problems of choice with four sections dedicated to: normativity and choice, rationality and choice, value and choice, morality and choice. Chapters by: Chrisoula Andreau, Paul Bloomfield, Krister Bykvist, Sophie Grace Chappell, David Copp, Guy Fletcher, Joshua Gert, Olasv Gjelsvik, Natalie Gold, Marina Moreno, Fredrik Nyseth, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Andrew Reisner, Caj Strandberg, Sarah Stroud, Johanna Thoma.

It has been argued that rationality consists in responding correctly to reasons. Recent defenses of the normativity of rationality assume that this implies that we always ought to be rational. However, this follows only if the reasons rationality requires us to correctly respond to are normative reasons. Recent meta-epistemological contributions have questioned whether epistemic reasons are normative. If they were right, then epistemic rationality wouldn’t provide us with normative reasons independently of wrong-kind reasons to be epistemically rational. This paper spells (...) out this neglected challenge for the normativity of epistemic rationality by connecting the two bodies of literature. Moreover, it generalizes this challenge to the rationality of desire, intention, and emotion. The upshot is that we can only answer the normative question about rationality if we debate about blame and accountability for holding different kinds of irrational attitudes, as well as about the sources of mental normativity. (shrink)

Suppose there are no in-principle restrictions on the contents of arbitrarily intelligent agents’ goals. According to “instrumental convergence” arguments, potentially scary things follow. I do two things in this paper. First, focusing on the influential version of the instrumental convergence argument due to Nick Bostrom, I explain why such arguments require an account of “promotion,” i.e., an account of what it is to “promote” a goal. Then, I consider whether extant accounts of promotion in the literature -- in particular, probabilistic (...) and fit-based views of promotion -- can be used to support dangerous instrumental convergence. I argue that neither account of promotion can do the work. The opposite is true: accepting either account of promotion undermines support for instrumental convergence arguments’ existentially worrying conclusions. The conclusion is that we needn’t be scared -- at least not because of arguments concerning instrumental convergence. (shrink)