Attitudes in Active Reasoning

Abstract

Active reasoning is the kind of reasoning that we do deliberately and consciously. In characterizing the nature of active reasoning and the norms it should obey, the question arises which attitudes we can reason with. Many authors take outright beliefs to be the attitudes we reason with. Others assume that we can reason with both outright beliefs and degrees of belief. Some think that we reason only with degrees of belief. This chapter approaches the question of what kinds of beliefs can participate in reasoning by using the following method: it takes the default position to be maximally permissive—that both graded and outright beliefs can participate in reasoning. It then identifies some features of active reasoning that appear at first glance to favor a more restrictive position about which types of belief we can reason with. It argues that the arguments based on these features ultimately fail.