Synthese 176 (3):447-462 (2010)
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Abstract |
Beliefs can be evaluated from a number of perspectives. Epistemic evaluation involves epistemic standards and appropriate epistemic goals. On a truthconducive account of epistemic justification, a justified belief is one that serves the goal of believing truths and avoiding falsehoods. Beliefs are also prompted by nonepistemic reasons. This raises the question of whether, say, the pragmatic benefits of a belief are able to rationalize it. In this paper, after criticizing certain responses to this question, I shall argue that, as far as beliefs are concerned, justification has an essentially epistemic character. This conclusion is then qualified by considering the conditions under which pragmatic consequences of a belief can be epistemically relevant
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Keywords | Epistemic reasons Pragmatic reasons Blamelessness Deontological justification Charity |
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DOI | 10.1007/s11229-009-9575-z |
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References found in this work BETA
The Structure of Empirical Knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.
The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.William James - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge.Donald Davidson - 1986 - In Ernest LePore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation. Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Blackwell. pp. 307-319.
View all 22 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions.Selim Berker - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (3):337-393.
Doxastic Divergence and the Problem of Comparability. Pragmatism Defended Further.Anne Meylan - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):199-216.
A Pragmatic, Existentialist Approach to the Scientific Realism Debate.Curtis Forbes - 2017 - Synthese 194 (9):3327-3346.
The Rationality of Faith and the Benefits of Religion.Brian Ballard - 2017 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2):213-227.
Epistemic Reasons Are Not Normative Reasons for Belief.Samuel Montplaisir - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (4):573-587.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
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