Abstract
This paper connects the traditional epistemological topic of justification with recent views focusing on epistemic reasons. In particular, I show that Conee and Feldman’s mentalism about justification can profitably be spelled out in terms of subjective normative reasons. I begin by motivating the claim that it is important not just to ask what kind of entities epistemic reasons are, but also reasons in which sense are fundamental to justification. I then argue that mentalism should be spelled out by appeal to normative rather than deliberative or explanatory reasons and discuss how exactly the resulting view should be elaborated. I conclude by suggesting a way in which this view ties in with an epistemological disjunctivism, so as to ensure a close connection between justification and truth.
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Notes
- 1.
I focus on non-factive mental states and duplicates throughout.
- 2.
To focus the discussion, I will restrict myself to a thesis about the justification of belief, rather than doxastic attitudes generally. Since it plays no role for my argument, I will spend no time on the claim involved in (ES) and (EJ) that only concurrent evidence makes a difference to justification.
- 3.
Note that Conee and Feldman (2008) instead appeal to explanatory relations.
- 4.
Conee and Feldman (2011) are not too happy with this suggestion, which Goldman uses to argue that their view is circular—but in response, they appeal to encyclopedia entries which, again, equate evidence with grounds or reasons.
- 5.
I have defended the view that there is a broader gap between practical reasons and evidence. See Schmidt (2017).
- 6.
One get-out strategy for mentalists/evidentialists is to reject the move from supervenience to grounding. Because of limited space, I cannot further motivate the grounding claim, so I here merely acknowledge that my proposal is indeed stronger than the original mentalist/evidentialist claim.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Contrary to my suggestion above that deliberative reasons are naturally incorporated into an anti-realist view, D-Mentalism would then be a realist position: It would presuppose the existence of mind-independent normative reasons after all.
- 11.
With one significant difference, though: More entities come into view as reasons if we turn to explanatory reasons, for these aren’t restricted to presentational attitudes that have considerations as their contents.
- 12.
There is a third option, which I cannot address here: Appealing to a purely subjective notion of rationality (Foley 1987).
- 13.
Plausibly, to possess reasons, one has to have certain mental states no matter what, but nonetheless the non-mental facts may be the reasons. Cf. Schmidt (forthcoming).
- 14.
Just like D-Mentalism, S-Mentalism faces the problem that not any kind of mental state—e.g. an imagining—that represents a subjective normative reason to adopt a belief makes a difference to its justification. It can be solved by restricting the mental states in S-Mentalism to presentational attitudes. Regarding beliefs about one’s own mental states, the correct account is indeed M-Mentalism. The fact that the subject has a mental state is a normative reason for her to believe that she does.
- 15.
Again, it should be combined with M-Mentalism to account for the justification of our beliefs about our own mental states.
- 16.
I thank Chrisoula Andreou, Vuko Andrić, Kevin Baum, Christoph Fehige, Susanne Mantel, Jean Moritz Müller, Stephan Padel, Katia Samoilova, Kurt Sylvan, Christian Wendelborn, Ulla Wessels, and Hong Yu Wong for helpful suggestions on this paper.
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Schmidt, E. (2018). Normative Reasons for Mentalism. In: Kyriacou, C., McKenna, R. (eds) Metaepistemology. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93369-6_5
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