Abstract
Here is a surprisingly neglected question in contemporary epistemology: what is it for an agent to believe that p in response to a normative reason for them to believe that p? On one style of answer, believing for the normative reason that q factors into believing that p in the light of the apparent reason that q, where one can be in that kind of state even if q is false, in conjunction with further independent conditions such as q’s being a normative reason to believe that p. The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate that that style of answer cannot be right, because we must conceive of believing for a normative reason as constitutively involving a kind of rationality-involving relation that can be instantiated at all only if there is a known fact on the scene, which the agent treats as a normative reason. A secondary objective, achieved along the way, is to demonstrate that in their Prime Time (for the Basing Relation) Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan do not succeed in undermining the factoring picture in general, only a simple-minded version of it.
Highlights
Ancestors of this paper were presented to audiences at the Universities of Warwick, London, Sheffield, and Edinburgh and I would like to thank those present for helpful feedback, objections, and suggestions for improvement
I argue at length that we need to posit the existence of a kind of believing-for-a-reason relation that can obtain at all only if there is a fact on the scene, known by the agent, which the agent treats as a normative reason to hold the relevant belief, and that on the proper understanding of the sort of factoring picture the Composite View is intended to codify, this serves to undermine that picture
The issue of whether the factoring picture is correct should be of interest to epistemologists working in the theory of justification, for according to a venerable tradition in epistemology, doxastically justified beliefs are beliefs that are rationally held
Summary
Some facts constitute normative reasons for us to believe certain propositions. That the car has four flat tyres is a reason to believe that it is unusable, that the exit-poll predicts a Labour victory in the by-election is a reason to believe that Labour will win, that the guitar is out of tune is a reason to believe that it would sound horrible were it played...and so on. It is possible for agents to hold beliefs in the light of normative reasons for believing the relevant proposition Such cases are cases in which the agent believes in a way that manifests a recognition of the fact in question and of its status as a reason to hold the relevant belief. Hold a belief in the light of what appears to them to be a normative reason for them to do so, even though they fail to count as being in the good+ case. This can happen in either of the following two ways. All that holds is the (ψb) condition.
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