24 found
Order:
Disambiguations
Sebastian Schmidt [20]Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt [6]
  1. Doxastic Dilemmas and Epistemic Blame.Sebastian Schmidt - forthcoming - Philosophical Issues.
    What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  2. On believing indirectly for practical reasons.Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (6):1795-1819.
    It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  3. Refusing the COVID-19 vaccine: What’s wrong with that?Anne Https://Orcidorg Meylan & Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (6):1102-1124.
    COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  4. Responsibility for rationality: foundations of an ethics of mind.Sebastian Schmidt - 2025 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. This book develops the foundations of an ethics of mind by investigating the responsibility that is presupposed by the requirements of rationality that govern our attitudes. It has five main goals. First, it (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  5. Wie vernünftig sind Verschwörungstheoretiker? Corona und intellektuelles Vertrauen.Sebastian Schmidt - 2021 - In Romy Jaster & Geert Keil (eds.), Nachdenken über Corona. Stuttgart: Reclam. pp. 98-109.
    Sebastian Schmidt (Zürich) fragt in seinem Beitrag »Wie vernünftig sind Verschwörungstheoretiker?«, wie es um die Vernunft derjenigen steht, die einer Verschwörungstheorie über die Corona-Pandemie anhängen. Im Umgang mit Corona scheint sich zu bestätigen, was die Psychologie seit Jahrzehnten lehrt: Menschen unterliegen in ihrem Denken kognitiven Fehlern und Verzerrungen. Doch ist verschwörungstheoretisches Denken, das solche Fehler ebenfalls begeht, deshalb irrational? Schmidt warnt davor, einander zu leichtfertig als irrational zu betrachten, und verweist auf die wichtige Rolle, die intellektuelles Vertrauen in Wissensgemeinschaften spielt. (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  6. Blameworthiness for Non-Culpable Attitudes.Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):48-64.
    Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  7. Incoherence and the balance of evidential reasons.Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):1-10.
    Eva Schmidt argues that facts about incoherent beliefs can be non-evidential epistemic reasons to suspend judgment. In this commentary, I argue that incoherence-based reasons to suspend are epistemically superfluous: if the subjects in Schmidt’s cases ought to suspend judgment, then they should do so merely on the basis of their evidential reasons. This suggests a more general strategy to reduce the apparent normativity of coherence to the normativity of evidence. I conclude with some remarks on the independent interest that reasons-first (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8. Responsibility for Attitudes, Object-Given Reasons, and Blame.Sebastian Schmidt - 2020 - In Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 149-175.
    I argue that the problem of responsibility for attitudes is best understood as a puzzle about how we are responsible for responding to our object-given reasons for attitudes – i.e., how we are responsible for being (ir)rational. The problem can be solved, I propose, by understanding the normative force of reasons for attitudes in terms of blameworthiness. I present a puzzle about the existence of epistemic and mental blame which poses a challenge for the very idea of reasons for attitudes. (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  9. Rationality and Responsibility.Sebastian Schmidt - 2020 - Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (4):379-385.
    Broome takes the debate on rationality to be concerned with the ordinary use of 'rational'. I argue that this is at best misleading. For the object of current theories of rationality is determined by a specific use of 'rational' that is intimately connected to blame and praise. I call the property it refers to 'rationalityRESP'. This focus on rationalityRESP, I argue, has two significant implications for Broome's critique of theories of rationality as reasons-responsiveness. First, rationalityRESP is plausibly conceived of as (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  10. Should We Respond Correctly to Our Reasons?Sebastian Schmidt - forthcoming - Episteme.
    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 (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity.Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst - 2020 - Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
    This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. -/- The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such (...)
  12. Können wir uns entscheiden, etwas zu glauben? Zur Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit eines doxastischen Willens.Sebastian Schmidt - 2016 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 93 (4):571-582.
    I argue that believing at will – i.e. believing for practical reasons – is in some sense possible and in some sense impossible. It is impossible insofar as we think of belief formation as a re-sult of our exercise of certain capacities (perception, memory, agency). But insofar as we think of belief formation as an action that might lead to such a result (i.e. a deliberation or an in-quiry), believing at will is possible. First I present and clarify the problem (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  13. Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Mind.Sebastian Schmidt - 2020 - In Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 1-20.
    This chapter locates our overall approach within the dialectic of contemporary philosophical debates and provides an overall framework for discussion. First, I introduce the problem of mental normativity. I show how this problem poses a prima facie threat to the common assumption in epistemology and metaethics that beliefs and other attitudes are governed by robust normative requirements. Secondly, I motivate philosophical inquiry about an ethics of mind by tracing this field back to recent debates in the ethics of belief. I (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  14. Beyond Evidence in Epistemology: Introduction.Marie Van Loon, Anne Meylan & Sebastian Schmidt - forthcoming - Philosophical Topics.
    This special issue arises from the observation that an exploration of the role of non-evidential considerations in epistemology through a broader lens is missing from the current landscape of philosophical research. The present collection of contributions fills this research gap by bringing together three central and much-discussed epistemological topics for which non-evidential considerations become relevant.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Why We Should Promote Irrationality.Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt - 2017 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 94 (4):605-615.
    The author defends the claim that there are cases in which we should promote irrationality by arguing (1) that it is sometimes better to be in an irrational state of mind, and (2) that we can often influence our state of mind via our actions. The first claim is supported by presenting cases of irrational _belief_ and by countering a common line of argument associated with William K. Clifford, who defended the idea that having an irrational belief is always worse (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  16.  42
    Ist es erlaubt zu philosophieren? Altruismus und das gute Leben.Sebastian Schmidt - 2024 - In Dagmar Kiesel, Thomas Smettan & Sebastian Schmidt (eds.), Altruismus. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.
    Wenn wir Peter Singers Konklusion in „Famine, Affluence, and Morality“ (1972) akzeptieren, dann handeln wir im Alltag sehr viel häufiger falsch, als es uns lieb ist. Anstatt über die Natur von Altruismus zu philosophieren, könnten wir auch möglichst effektiv Hungerleidenden helfen. Ist es daher etwa moralisch verwerflich – weil egoistisch – zu philosophieren? In diesem Beitrag beleuchte ich die Gründe, die wir haben, Philosophie in den Mittelpunkt unseres Lebens zu stellen. Ich argumentiere, dass Philosophieren – genauso wie die Beschäftigung mit (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17.  4
    (1 other version)Epistemic blame and the normativity of evidence.Sebastian Https://Orcidorg Schmidt - 2021 - .
    The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  18. The Ethics of Belief in a Burning World.Sebastian Schmidt - forthcoming - Australasian Philosophical Review.
    Danielle Celermajer advocates for reconceptualizing responsibility in light of the climate crisis. I argue instead that we must understand current concepts of responsibility which are implicit in actual responsibility practices. I illustrate this by appeal to the practice of holding each other responsible for our beliefs-a practice in which we are constantly involved, but which is often obscured. It extends our responsibility to involuntary aspects of our own mind and involves socially distributed cognitive duties. Cognitive responsibility is part and parcel (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Freier Wille, Personale Identität und epistemische Ungewissheit.Dagmar Kiesel & Sebastian Schmidt - 2019 - In Ferrari Cleophea & Dagmar Kiesel (eds.), Willensfreiheit. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. pp. 221-258.
    Freiwilligkeit, personale Identität (im Sinne eines harmonisch verfassten und stabilen Selbst) und epistemische Gewissheit sind bei den meisten antiken Philosophieschulen untrennbar miteinander verbunden und garantieren im Rahmen einer als Lebenskunst verstandenen Philosophie das Glück. Im Anlehnung an Überlegungen bei Aristoteles und dem zeitgenössischen Philosophen Peter Bieri analysieren wir, wie Entscheidungen, die zum Zeitpunkt ihres Treffens als bedingt frei und selbstbestimmt wahrgenommen wurden, im Nachhinein vom Han-delnden aufgrund des damals fehlenden Wissens über die Handlungsumstände als unfrei wahrgenommen werden und zu Erfahrungen (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20.  38
    Correction: Epistemic Blame and the Normativity of Evidence.Sebastian Schmidt - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (1):25-26.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21.  39
    Correction to: On Believing Indirectly for Practical Reasons.Sebastian Schmidt - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (10):3185-3185.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22.  41
    Altruismus. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven.Dagmar Kiesel, Thomas Smettan & Sebastian Schmidt (eds.) - 2024 - Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.
    Altruismus scheint im Alltagsverständnis seinen uneingeschränkt positiven Ruf als ebenso wünschenswerte wie seltene Tugend verloren zu haben und durch ein Ethos des Eigennutzens ersetzt worden zu sein. Angesichts globaler Krisen wie dem Klimawandel, großer Flüchtlingsbewegungen, Kriege und Armut ist die Bereitschaft zur Verhaltensänderung bzw. zum Verzicht zugunsten kommender Generationen oder hilfsbedürftiger Menschen weniger selbstverständlich als das Phänomen der psychologischen Reaktanz und die Weigerung, Einschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit oder des Konsums hinzunehmen. Zeitgenössische Ethikerinnen und Ethiker müssen sich demnach mit der Frage (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. The problem of mental responsibility: outlines of an ethics of mind.Sebastian Schmidt - 2020 - Dissertation, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
    The dissertation is mainly concerned with the following question: How can we be responsible for our attitudes? Traditional formulations of the philosophical problem underlying this question see it as a conflict between responsibility and the absence of voluntary control. I interpret it, by contrast, as a problem about the responsibility that we have for being (ir)rational. To illuminate this responsibility, I engage in discussions about the normative status of object-given reasons for attitudes, present a novel case against pragmatism about reasons (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24.  5
    Beati Patris. Martini Lutheri Liber de Servo Arbitrio, contra Desid. Erasmum Roterodamum: cum brevibus annotationibus... Editus a Sebastiano Schmidt.Martin Luther & Sebastian Schmidt - 1664
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark