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The illusion of discretion

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Abstract

Having direct doxastic control would not be particularly desirable if exercising it required a failure of epistemic rationality. With that thought in mind, recent writers have invoked the view that epistemic rationality gives us options to defend the possibility of a significant form of direct doxastic control. Specifically, they suggest that when the evidence for p is sufficient but not conclusive, it would be epistemically rational either to believe p or to be agnostic on p, and they argue that we can in these cases effectively decide to form either attitude without irrationality. This paper argues against the version of epistemic permissivism invoked by these writers and shows that other plausible versions of permissivism do not support their cause. It concludes that if we can exercise direct doxastic control without irrationality, it is not because epistemic rationality gives us options.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Alston (1988) and Feldman (2000).

  2. See Williams (1973), Scott-Kakures (1994) and Adler (2002) for normative and conceptual arguments, and Alston (1988), Curley (1975) and Feldman (2000) for (broadly) psychological arguments.

  3. See Bennett (1999)’s example of the Credamites.

  4. Though as Adler stresses (2002, p. 63), the cases that interested James were ones where the absence of decisive evidence wasn’t merely a temporary limitation; other voluntarists “want the blessing to extend much farther”.

  5. See McHugh (2014). Cf. Hieronymi (2008).

  6. Arguments of this form are not unprecedented in the relevant literature, however. From Williams (1973) onwards, many arguments for involuntarism have appealed to substantive norms like the truth norm, the knowledge norm, or evidentialist norms. See, e.g., Foley (1993, p. 16), Hieronymi (2006) and Velleman (2000). Some of these writers appeal only directly to the idea that belief has a certain aim, which might appear to be a non-normative claim. But as Wedgwood (2002), Shah (2003), Shah and Velleman (2005) and Gibbard (2005) argue, the idea that belief has an aim is best understood in terms of a normative standard of correctness.

  7. Some opponents of direct voluntarism considered the kinds of cases invoked by proponents of the Argument from Discretion and defended a conclusion like mine. Alston (1988, pp. 264–266), Feldman (2000, p. 681), and Adler (2002, p. 62) consider cases of good but inconclusive evidence and argue that when carefully examined, these cases don’t support direct voluntarism. Proponents of the Argument from Discretion neglect these earlier diagnoses of their cases.

  8. Discretion might be traced back as far as Chisholm. In particular, Chisholm (1977) defines epistemic “acceptability” in a way that makes room for discretion, and embraces Discretion for epistemic acceptability:

    All propositions that are beyond reasonable doubt will, of course, be acceptable, but there are many acceptable propositions that are not beyond reasonable doubt. Any adequate theory of perception, for example, might require us to say this: if I have that experience which might naturally be expressed by saying that I ‘seem to see’ a certain state of affairs (e.g., ‘I seem to see a man standing there’), then the state of affairs that I thus seem to perceive...is one that is, for me, ipso facto acceptable. It may be, however, that although the proposition is thus acceptable, it is not beyond reasonable doubt: i.e., although withholding it is not more reasonable than believing it, believing it cannot be said to be more reasonable than withholding it.

    Similar claims appear in Chisholm (1982, p. 15). Interestingly, however, he here thinks that there is a difference between acceptability and reasonableness: “‘Acceptable’, then, expresses less praise than does ‘reasonable”’. And elsewhere he defines reasonableness in a way that seems to preclude discretion for it; e.g., in Chisholm (1988, p. 82) and Chisholm (1966, p. 22), he stipulates that a belief is reasonable iff believing is preferable to withholding.

  9. White (2005, p. 453).

  10. McHugh and Frankish use the term “sufficient”, while Nickel uses the term “adequate”. Raz and Ginet use neither term, but it seems clear that they have the same cases in mind.

  11. I will return to this point again later, since it will play a role in my error theory. Precisely this point led Alston to doubt that cases where the evidence supports a proposition inconclusively are cases in which we can exercise direct doxastic control: “[H]ere too belief follows automatically, without intervention by the will, from the way things seem at the moment to the subject.” (1988, p. 266)

  12. Way (2007) expresses this tempting inference nicely: “It is far from obvious why there cannot be evidential states good enough to permit belief in p, without requiring belief in p, and thereby also permitting suspension of belief in p” (228; italics mine).

  13. For a defense of the non-existence of positive epistemic duties along these lines, see Nelson (2010).

  14. McHugh (2013) approvingly cites Friedman when explaining how he is understanding suspension of judgment.

  15. McHugh and Nickel both understand “conclusive evidence” in this way. Other fans of Discretion are less clear on what “conclusive evidence” is meant to mean.

  16. Nickel (2010, p. 314).

  17. Verbatim from Nickel (2010, pp. 313–314).

  18. Nickel (2010, p. 314); italics mine.

  19. By “akrasia” I do not mean weakness of will; like Holton (2009), I would distinguish the two. I rather mean acting or forming attitudes in a way that would amount to a failure to correctly respond to reasons if one’s beliefs about the reasons in play were true. So defined, claiming that there is such a thing as epistemic akrasia doesn’t presuppose that we have any kind of control over our attitudes.

  20. Credit goes to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to talk more explicitly about this objection.

  21. Some prominent level splitters include Lasonen-Aarnio (2010, 2014), Weatherson (Ms) and Williamson (2011). All three are sympathetic to the idea that there is a distinction between justification and some weaker status, though they have different words for that status—“reasonable” in Lasonen-Aarnio’s case, “praiseworthy” in Weatherson’s case (cf. Weatherson (2008)), and “excusable” in Williamson’s case (cf. Williamson (2007) and (2013)).

  22. See Christensen (2010) , Elga (2007) and Horowitz (2014) and Kelly (2010).

  23. Admittedly, these requirements are inconsistent with an extreme synchronic intrapersonal permissivism. But I have serious doubts about whether anyone would accept such a view. An interpersonal extreme permissivism might be plausible, and so might a diachronic intrapersonal extreme permissivism. Moreover, as Douven (2009) notes, it might be plausible to hold the counterfactual intrapersonal extreme permissivist claim that one could have had the same evidence at t and been rational in holding an opposite attitude on p at t to the one that one now rationally holds at t had one’s priors been different. But none of these claims conflicts with REQ-1 or REQ-2!

  24. Friedmans (2013, p. 170).

  25. An entertaining example is Jorge Luis Borges, who apparently said: “Being an agnostic means that all things are possible, even god, even the Holy Trinity”; see Shenker (1971).

  26. What about swamp-agnostics? Such agnostics could still be dispositionally responsive to the quality of their evidence in the relevant way, even if—lacking any psychological history—they hadn’t ever reflected on their evidence.

  27. See especially Driver (1989) and (2000).

  28. For discussion of this thought that I embrace, see Pryor (2004). Pryor invokes Broome’s notion of a wide scope requirement (though with qualifications about the language of “scope”) to explain these cases. He suggests that even if someone unjustifiably believes that the evidence for p is insufficient, this person would be violating a requirement of rationality if she believed p under these conditions. He also suggests that we should distinguish this notion of rationality from the notion of justification. So this view wouldn’t vindicate a diachronic version of Discretion, since agnosticism here wouldn’t attain the same epistemic status that belief would minus the higher-order doubt. I myself am tempted to say that the person’s evidence ceases to be sufficient here, precisely because this person is not in a position to form a doxastically rational belief.

  29. See, for example, Ryan (2003), Hieronymi (2008) and Steup (2008, 2012).

  30. McHugh (2014) defends such a model. He should rely solely on this model and reject the Argument from Discretion.

  31. Descartes (1641/1996, p. 40).

  32. See Weatherson (2008, pp. 545–546) and Ryan (2003, pp. 63–64).

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    Kurt Sylvan

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Sylvan, K. The illusion of discretion. Synthese 193, 1635–1665 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0796-z

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