A puzzle about epistemic akrasia

Philosophical Studies 167 (2):201-219 (2014)
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Abstract

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational

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Daniel Greco
Yale University

Citations of this work

Stop Making Sense? On a Puzzle about Rationality.Littlejohn Clayton - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:257-272.
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References found in this work

Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brainstorms.Daniel C. Dennett - 1978 - MIT Press.
Justification and the Truth-Connection.Clayton Littlejohn - 2012 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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