The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism

The international thought of the early utilitarian thinkers Jeremy Bentham and James Mill remains little known and largely misunderstood. Most commentators give them a superficial appreciation or criticize their supposed naivety, in both cases mostly assuming that Mill borrowed his thoughts from Bentham's writings alone. This questionable reception overlooks some essential aspects of Bentham's and Mill's extensive reflections on war and peace, in particular their constant effort to overcome the tension between individual freedom and collective security. In reality, the fertile dialogue between the two thinkers gradually crystallized into an independent utilitarian peace theory centered on law and public opinion as instruments of an ambitious reform of international relations according to the principle of utility. They managed to elaborate a fragile synthesis between liberal principles and considerations of political realism, which grants their utilitarian peace theory a singular place in the historical efforts to systematically define the conditions of world peace.

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Why Only Evidential Considerations Can Justify Belief

10.1093/oso/9780198758709.003.0010 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kate Nolfi

Keyword(s):

Alternative Explanation ◽

Justify Belief ◽

Epistemic Normativity ◽

Epistemic Reasons ◽

Aim Of Belief ◽

The Way

At least when we restrict our attention to the epistemic domain, it seems clear that only considerations which bear on whether p can render a subject’s belief that p epistemically justified, by constituting the reasons on the basis of which she believes that p. And we ought to expect any account of epistemic normativity to explain why this is so. Extant accounts generally appeal to the idea that belief aims at truth, in an effort to explain why there is a kind of evidential constraint on the sorts of considerations that can be epistemic reasons. However, there are grounds for doubting that belief, in fact, aims at truth in the way that these accounts propose. This chapter develops an alternative explanation of why it is that non-evidential considerations cannot be epistemic reasons by taking seriously the idea that the constitutive aim of belief is fundamentally action-oriented.

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The Epistemic Norms of Action

10.1093/oso/9780198803454.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Mikkel Gerken

Keyword(s):

Explanatory Power ◽

Epistemic Norm ◽

Epistemic Normativity ◽

Epistemic Norms ◽

Knowledge Norm ◽

Knowledge Ascriptions ◽

Epistemological Principle ◽

Knowledge Norms

Chapter 6 concerns the normative relationship between action and knowledge ascriptions. Arguments are provided against a Knowledge Norm of Action (KNAC) and in favor of the Warrant-Action norm (WA). According to WA, S must be adequately warranted in believing that p relative to her deliberative context to meet the epistemic requirements for acting on p. WA is developed by specifying the deliberative context and by arguing that its explanatory power exceeds that of knowledge norms. A general conclusion is that the knowledge norm is an important example of a folk epistemological principle that does not pass muster as an epistemological principle. More generally, Chapter 6 introduces the debates about epistemic normativity and develops a specific epistemic norm of action.

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Metaepistemology

10.1093/oso/9780198805366.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Natural World ◽

Systematic Investigation ◽

Epistemic Normativity ◽

Present Volume

Epistemology, like ethics, is normative. Just as ethics addresses questions about how we ought to act, so epistemology addresses questions about how we ought to believe and enquire. We can also ask metanormative questions, like: What does it mean to claim that someone ought to do or believe something? Do such claims express beliefs about independently existing facts, or only attitudes of approval and disapproval towards certain pieces of conduct? How do putative facts about what people ought to do or believe fit in to the natural world? In the case of ethics, such questions have been subject to extensive and systematic investigation, yielding the thriving subdiscipline of metaethics. Yet the corresponding questions have had far less attention in epistemology. The present volume focuses on these questions and thus aims to promote the subdiscipline of metaepistemology. It brings together a collection of new essays drawing on the sophisticated theories and frameworks that have been developed in metaethics concerning practical normativity, and examining whether they can be applied to epistemic normativity, and what this might tell us about both.

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