Parentheticalism, Normative Reasons, and Error Cases

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Subject Orientation

This chapter discusses another crucial use of parenthetical sentences in normative reasons-discourse. Due to their feature of subject-orientation, they enable us to cite known falsehoods as normative reasons without violating the factivity requirements of reasons-discourse. This is important, because it allows us to deal with error cases in a way that does not entail that putatively rational agents systematically misidentify their reasons. Ontological and linguistic objections to the idea that falsehoods can be full-blooded normative reasons for agents are discussed and rejected. A notion of quasi-factivity is introduced to characterize the requirements of reasons-discourse. Parentheticalism is shown to enable a unified account of normative reasons-discourse, avoiding divergences between veridical and error cases.

scholarly journals Rationality, Appearances, and Apparent Facts

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier González de Prado Salas
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Apparent Reasons ◽  
Normative Account

Ascriptions of rationality are related to our practices of praising and criticizing. This seems to provide motivation for normative accounts of rationality, more specifically for the view that rationality is a matter of responding to normative reasons. However, rational agents are sometimes guided by false beliefs. This is problematic for those reasons-based accounts of rationality that are also committed to the widespread thesis that normative reasons are facts. The critical aim of the paper is to present objections to recent proposed solutions to this problem, according to which the responses of deceived agents would be rationalized by facts about how things appear to them. My positive aim is to argue that accounts of reasons in terms of apparent reasons manage to capture the intuitions that seem to favor a normative account of rationality (more specifically, they capture the connection between attributions of rationality and praise and criticism).    

Reasons for emotion and moral motivation

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 805-827
Author(s):  
Reid Blackman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Rational Agents

AbstractInternalism about normative reasons is the view that an agent’s normative reasons depend on her motivational constitution. On the assumption that there are reasons for emotion I argue that (a) externalism about reasons for emotion entails that all rational agents have reasons to be morally motivated and (b) internalism about reasons for emotion is implausible. If the arguments are sound we can conclude that all rational agents have reasons to be morally motivated. Resisting this conclusion requires either justifying internalism about reasons for emotion in a way hitherto unarticulated or giving up on reasons for emotion altogether.

Evidence and Its Limits

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton Littlejohn
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Way Of Thinking

On a standard way of thinking about the relationships between evidence, reasons, and epistemic justification, a subject’s evidence consists of her potential reasons for her beliefs, these reasons constitute the normative reasons that bear on whether to believe, and justification is taken to result from relations between a subject’s potential reasons for her beliefs and those beliefs. This chapter argues that this view makes a number of mistakes about the rational roles of reasons and evidence and explores some parallels between practical and theoretical reasons. Just as justified action is unobjectionable action, justified belief is unobjectionable belief. Just as you cannot object to someone deciding to do something simply on the grounds that their reasons for acting didn’t give them strong reason to act, you cannot object to someone believing something simply on the grounds that they didn’t believe for reasons that gave their beliefs strong evidential support.

Pure Instrumental Morality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moehler
Keyword(s):  
Decision Situation ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Moral Ideals

This chapter discusses the domain of pure instrumental morality that represents the second level of the two-level contractarian theory. To this end, the chapter clarifies the features of the homo prudens model that underlies the derivation of the weak principle of universalization. Further, the chapter develops, in the form of the empathetic contractor theory, the hypothetical decision situation in which rational agents are placed to derive the weak principle of universalization. Finally, the chapter clarifies the features of the weak principle of universalization that, although its derivation does not rely on substantial moral premises as traditionally conceived, weakly expresses the moral ideals of autonomy, equality, impartiality, and reciprocity.

Parentheticalism and Requirements of Rationality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Structural Requirements

It is suggested that parentheticalism obviates the need to think of rationality as a distinct normative category, different from the category of support by normative reasons. So-called structural requirements are discussed as a potential obstacle to this proposal. It is shown that a parentheticalist account of the antecedents of rationality conditionals can explain away the impression that there are structural requirements of rationality. This account also solves the bootstrapping problem without introducing wide-scope oughts or the like. A notion of pseudo-detachment is introduced to describe the inferential behavior of the relevant conditionals. It is also explained how parentheticalism can capture the elusive idea of taking the subject’s point of view.

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.

scholarly journals THE NONRANDOM WALK OF KNOWLEDGE

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-264
Author(s):  
Jane R. Bambauer ◽  
Saura Masconale ◽  
Simone M. Sepe
Keyword(s):  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Selection Effect ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Evidence Gathering ◽  
Epistemic Goals ◽  
Epistemic Process

AbstractA person’s epistemic goals sometimes clash with pragmatic ones. At times, rational agents will degrade the quality of their epistemic process in order to satisfy a goal that is knowledge-independent (for example, to gain status or at least keep the peace with friends.) This is particularly so when the epistemic quest concerns an abstract political or economic theory, where evidence is likely to be softer and open to interpretation. Before wide-scale adoption of the Internet, people sought out or stumbled upon evidence related to a proposition in a more random way. And it was difficult to aggregate the evidence of friends and other similar people to the exclusion of others, even if one had wanted to. Today, by contrast, the searchable Internet allows people to simultaneously pursue social and epistemic goals.This essay shows that the selection effect caused by a merging of social and epistemic activities will cause both polarization in beliefs and devaluation of expert testimony. This will occur even if agents are rational Bayesians and have moderate credences before talking to their peers. What appears to be rampant dogmatism could be just as well explained by the nonrandom walk in evidence-gathering. This explanation better matches the empirical evidence on how people behave on social media platforms. It also helps clarify why media outlets (not just the Internet platforms) might have their own pragmatic reasons to compromise their epistemic goals in today’s competitive and polarized information market. Yet, it also makes policy intervention much more difficult, since we are unlikely to neatly separate individuals’ epistemic goals from their social ones.

scholarly journals IQ and digital inequality: An empirical investigation

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110240
Author(s):  
Alexander JAM van Deursen ◽  
Jan AGM van Dijk
Keyword(s):  
Intelligence Quotient ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Internet Access ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Digital Inequality ◽  
Cognitive Intelligence ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Current Contribution

Cognitive intelligence is rarely discussed in the context of digital inequality for practical and normative reasons: substantial difficulties around measurements and the fact that it cannot (easily) be changed. In the current contribution, cognitive intelligence is studied in relation to resources and appropriation theory which explains digital inequality as a process of four successive phases of Internet access: motivational, material, skills, and usage. For the measurement of cognitive intelligence, we build on considerable efforts devoted to developing alternatives to cumbersome intelligence quotient (IQ) tests of intelligence. We conducted a two-wave online survey in the Netherlands, resulting in a sample of 1733 respondents. The importance of IQ was confirmed with direct positive effects on education, economic, social, and cultural resources, and on Internet attitude and skills. The results reveal several details that can enhance our understanding of the specific mechanisms through which IQ and education operate in digital inequalities.

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