Evolution and the Normativity of Epistemic Reasons

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 213-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Street
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action

Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.- Quine (1969)We think that some facts - for example, the fact that someone is suffering, or the fact that all previously encountered tigers were carnivorous – supply us with normative reasons for action and belief. The former fact, we think, is a reason to help the suffering person; the latter fact is a reason to believe that the next tiger we see will also be carnivorous. But how is the reason-giving status of such facts best understood? In particular, is it best understood as ultimately “conferred” upon these facts by our own evaluative attitudes, or do at least some facts possess normative reason-giving status in a way that is robustly independent of our attitudes? This is the modern, secular version of Plato's “Euthyphro question” - couched here in the philosophically useful, though not essential, language of normative reasons.

scholarly journals Authoritatively speaking : a speech pragmatic analysis of authority and power

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alek Willsey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Normative Status

A speaker needs authority to perform some speech acts, such as giving orders. A paradigm example of this is when a manager orders their employee to take out the trash; ordinarily, these words will give the employee a normative reason of considerable strength for them to take out the trash, and so they should take out the trash, all things considered. I will explore three related problems regarding a speaker's authority. First, there is the problem of defining how and within what scope a speaker has the capacity to set norms for others -- I will call this the Authority Problem. An answer to the Authority Problem would settle what constitutes a manager's capacity to change the normative status of their employee. Second, there is the problem of showing how a speaker uses their authority to produce felicitous authoritative speech -- I will call this the Illocutionary Authority Problem. An answer to this problem will show how a manager exercises their capacity to alter the normative status of their employee, assuming they have such a capacity. Third, there is the problem of explaining how a speaker's right to produce authoritative speech can be systematically infringed -- I will call this the Problem of Discursive Injustice. An answer to this problem will explain how a manager can have their orders systematically misfire despite exercising their capacity to alter the normative status of others in the usual way, such as when the employee routinely misapprehends their manager's orders as being requests. To answer each of these problems within the philosophy of language, I draw on recent work in social and political philosophy. I defend the view that a speaker's authority to alter what someone else ought to do (by giving them and taking away normative reasons for action) is constituted entirely by the respect their addressee(s) have for their use of power directed at them. Further, a speaker's powers are the linguistic tools by which they attempt to exert this normative influence over their addressee(s). Finally, a speaker may be discursively entitled to use their power in specific institutions because of the role they occupy, and this speech can systematically misfire despite this entitlement because they are wrongfully deprived of the respect they deserve.

The Range of Reasons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
First Order ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
Comprehensive Framework ◽  
Order Commitment

This book contributes to two debates and it does so by bringing them together. The first is a debate in metaethics concerning normative reasons, the considerations that serve to justify a person’s actions and attitudes. The second is a debate in epistemology concerning the norms for belief, the standards that govern a person’s beliefs and by reference to which they are assessed. The book starts by developing and defending a new theory of reasons for action, that is, of practical reasons. The theory belongs to a family that analyses reasons by appeal to the normative notion of rightness (fittingness, correctness); it is distinctive in making central appeal to modal notions, specifically, that of a nearby possible world. The result is a comprehensive framework that captures what is common to and distinctive of reasons of various kinds: justifying and demanding; for and against, possessed and unpossessed; objective and subjective. The framework is then generalized to reasons for belief, that is, to epistemic reasons, and combined with a substantive, first-order commitment, namely, that truth is the sole right-maker for belief. The upshot is an account of the various norms governing belief, including knowledge and rationality, and the relations among them. According to it, the standards to which belief is subject are various, but they are unified by an underlying principle.

scholarly journals Epistemic Blame and the Normativity of Evidence

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Plausible Assumption ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Epistemic Blame

AbstractThe 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 aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.

Can there Be Epistemic Reasons for Action?

2006 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Robert Booth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Basing Relation

In this paper I consider whether there can be such things as epistemic reasons for action. I consider three arguments to the contrary and argue that none are successful, being either somewhat question-begging or too strong by ruling out what most epistemologists think is a necessary feature of epistemic justification, namely the epistemic basing relation. I end by suggesting a "non-cognitivist" model of epistemic reasons that makes room for there being epistemic reasons for action and suggest that this model may support moral realism.

Internalism and Externalism about Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hille Paakkunainen
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action

Internalism about normative reasons for action, in its broadest characterization, holds that each agent A’s reasons to act are constrained by some motivational fact, M, about A. Different versions of internalism differ on what M is. This chapter examines Bernard Williams’s (1981) influential version of, and argument for, internalism, in a broadly sympathetic vein. I isolate the key assumptions driving Williams’s argument, tracing their influence on Williams’s views and on the literature he sparked; and arguing that each assumption, when properly understood, is more plausible than some recent critics think. The upshot is that Williams’s internalism, and the assumptions that generate it, remain serious contenders on the contemporary scene.

Might Desires Be Beliefs about Normative Reasons for Action?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Weakness Of Will ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Direction Of Fit

This paper examines the view that desires are beliefs about normative reasons for action. It describes the view, and briefly sketches three arguments for it. But the focus of the paper is defending the view from objections. The paper argues that the view is consistent with the distinction between the direction of fit of beliefs and desires, that it is consistent with the existence of appetites such as hunger, that it can account for counterexamples that aim to show that beliefs about reasons are not sufficient for desire, such as weakness of will, and that it can account for counterexamples that aim to show that beliefs about reasons are not necessary for desire, such as addiction. The paper also shows how it is superior to the view that desires are appearances of the good.

Prudence as a System of Categorical Imperatives

Dear Prudence ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Guy Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Prudential Value

This chapter examines whether there are prudential reasons. After clarifying the nature of prudential reasons (what it would take for there to be such reasons) it examines, and rejects, various positions that entail the denial of the existence of prudential reasons. These include forms of nihilism about prudential value, the view that all reasons are agent-neutral, and (its most pressing opponent) the view that all reasons are Humean, or fundamentally desire-based, in nature. The chapter aims to establish the following thesis: Prudential Value Matters (PVM) — Evaluative prudential facts generate directive prudential facts (including facts about prudential, normative, reasons for action and for attitudes).

Moral Error Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-29
Author(s):  
Christopher Cowie
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
The Relationship

Two varieties of moral error theory are identified. According to the first—the internalism-based error theory—moral judgements are committed to the existence of categorical normative reasons for action. These are incompatible with plausible constraints on the relationship between one’s reasons and one’s psychology. So they do not exist. According to the second—the irreducibility-based error theory—moral judgements are committed to the existence of irreducibly normative properties and relations. These are incompatible with plausible assumptions about the constituents of the world. So they do not exist. The differences and commonalities between these two varieties of moral error theory are identified.

What Matters in Survival

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Ehring
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Normative Reason ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Motivating Reasons ◽  
What Matters In Survival ◽  
Extreme View ◽  
What Matters

This work is about what matters in survival, that is, about what relation to a future individual gives you a reason for prudential concern for that individual. For common sense there is such a relation and it is identity, but according to Parfit, common sense is wrong in this respect. Identity is not what matters in survival. In this work, it is argued that this Parfitian thesis, revolutionary though it is, does not go far enough. The result is the highly radical view, “Survival Nihilism,” according to which nothing matters in survival. Although we generally have motivating reasons to have prudential concern, and perhaps even indirect normative reasons for such concerns—such as a commitment to find a vaccine for the Covid-19 virus—there is no relation that gives you a basic, foundational normative reason for prudential concern. This view goes beyond what Parfit calls the Extreme View. It is the More Extreme View, and is, in effect, something like an error theory about prudential reason as a special kind of normative reason.

Motivating Reasons and Normative Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David McNaughton ◽  
Piers Rawling
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Causal Account ◽  
Motivational Internalism ◽  
Normative Realism ◽  
Reasons Internalism ◽  
Motivating Reasons

Reasons for action are traditionally divided into “motivating reasons,” which explain why someone did something, and “normative reasons,” which concern why she should (or should not) have done it. We explore various positions concerning both types of reason, and the relations between them. We discuss Davidson’s causal account of action, reasons internalism and externalism, constructivism, motivational internalism and externalism, and practical normative realism (PNR)—the view that there are truths concerning what you have reason to do (this is opposed by error theorists and noncognitivists, whose views we also briefly address). In our account of PNR, we distinguish between what you ought to do and what you have most reason to do, by appealing to the idea of reasonable credences. And we include two appendices, one resisting Lewis’s argument to the effect that advocates of PNR must reject motivational internalism, the other responding to a concern about future contingents.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document