Epistemic Akrasia, Higher-order Evidence, and Charitable Belief Attribution

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 296-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Vahid
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
Radical Interpretation ◽  
Standard Argument ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Order ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

Epistemic akrasia refers to the possibility of forming an attitude that fails to conform to one’s best judgment. In this paper, I will be concerned with the question whether epistemic akrasia is rational and I will argue that it is not. Addressing this question, in turn, raises the question of the epistemic significance of higher-order evidence. After examining some of the views on this subject, I will present an argument to show why higher-order evidence is relevant to the epistemic status of the pertinent first-order beliefs. This helps to show why a standard argument for the rationality of epistemic akrasia does not work. Finally, I shall try to show how considerations involving Davidson’s theory of radical interpretation bear on the question of the rationality of epistemic akrasia.

scholarly journals Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-145
Author(s):  
Errol Lord ◽  
Kurt Sylvan
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Functional Profile ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Order ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Support Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Suspension Of Judgment ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

This paper has two main goals. The first and most central goal is to develop a framework for understanding higher-order defeat. The framework rests on the idea that higher-order evidence provides direct reasons for suspending judgment which leave evidential support relations on the first order intact. Equally importantly, we also seek to explain how this sort of defeat is possible by showing how direct reasons for suspension of judgment flow from the functional profile of suspension of judgment. As a result, our framework is embedded within an account of the nature of suspension of judgment that shows how new insights about its nature lead to a different picture of its rational profile. A second and subsidiary goal of the paper is to show how our framework provides a compelling basis for more moderate positions about disagreement and epistemic akrasia. We show that the puzzles about these topics rest on more fundamental mistakes about suspension and the relationship between reasons for suspension, reasons for belief, and evidence.

scholarly journals Higher-Order Uncertainty

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dorst
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Epistemology Of Disagreement ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Order ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

You have higher-order uncertainty iff you are uncertain of what opinions you should have. This chapter defends three claims about it. First, the higher-order evidence debate can be helpfully reframed in terms of higher-order uncertainty. The central question becomes how your first- and higher-order opinions should relate—a precise question that can be embedded within a general, tractable framework. Second, this question is nontrivial. Rational higher-order uncertainty is pervasive, and lies at the foundations of the epistemology of disagreement. Third, the answer is not obvious. The Enkratic Intuition—that your first-order opinions must “line up” with your higher-order opinions—is incorrect; epistemic akrasia can be rational. If all this is right, then it leaves us without answers—but with a clear picture of the question, and a fruitful strategy for pursuing it.

Higher-Order Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 312-344
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
Level Splitting ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

Chapter 10 explores a puzzle about epistemic akrasia: if you can have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence supports, then your total evidence can make it rationally permissible to be epistemically akratic. Section 10.1 presents the puzzle and three options for solving it: Level Splitting, Downward Push, and Upward Push. Section 10.2 argues that we should opt for Upward Push: you cannot have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence is or what it supports. Sections 10.3 and 10.4 defend Upward Push against David Christensen’s objection that it licenses irrational forms of dogmatism in ideal and nonideal agents alike. Section 10.5 responds to his argument that misleading higher-order evidence generates rational dilemmas in which you’re guaranteed to violate one of the ideals of epistemic rationality. Section 10.6 concludes with some general reflections on the nature of epistemic rationality and the role of epistemic idealization.

Can Your Total Evidence Mislead About Itself?

2019 ◽  
pp. 298-316
Author(s):  
Alex Worsnip
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Simple Mathematical Model ◽  
First Order ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

It’s fairly uncontroversial that you can sometimes get misleading higher-order evidence about what your first-order evidence supports. What is more controversial is whether this can result in a situation where your total evidence is misleading about what your total evidence supports: that is, where your total evidence is misleading about itself. It’s hard to arbitrate on purely intuitive grounds whether any particular example of misleading higher-order evidence is an example of misleading total evidence. This chapter tries to make progress by offering a simple mathematical model that suggests that higher-order evidence will tend to bear more strongly on higher-order propositions about what one’s evidence supports than it does on the corresponding first-order propositions; and then by arguing that given this, it is plausible that there will be some cases of misleading total evidence.

Epistemic Akrasia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Owens
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Order

In a case of practical akrasia, we freely do something even though we judge that we ought not to do it. This chapter discusses the possibility of epistemic akrasia. Epistemic akrasia is possible only if (a) a person’s (first-order) beliefs can diverge from their higher-order judgements about what it would be reasonable for them to believe, and (b) these divergent (first-order) beliefs are freely and deliberately formed. Several recent authors deny the possibility of epistemic akrasia because they doubt that (a) can be true. I argue that though (a) can indeed be true, (b) cannot. On this point, believing is contrasted with guessing.

Return to Reason

2019 ◽  
pp. 226-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Titelbaum
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Point ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
First Order ◽  
Doxastic Justification ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

This chapter discusses responses to the author’s “Rationality’s Fixed Point (or: In Defense of Right Reason).” Among other things, the chapter: explains how the author understands rationality; explains why akrasia is irrational; intuitively overviews the argument from the Akratic Principle to the Fixed Point Thesis; explains why you can’t avoid this argument by distinguishing the rational from the reasonable, ideal rationality from everyday rationality, or substantive from structural norms; responds to the suggestion that misleading higher-order evidence creates rational dilemmas; explains why the Fixed Point Thesis doesn’t assume objectivist or externalist notions of rationality; dismisses complaints about agents who aren’t able to “figure out” what’s rational; then responds to an objection that peer disagreement undermines doxastic justification. Finally, the chapter modifies the author’s steadfast position on peer disagreement to take into account cases in which peer disagreement rationally affects an agent’s first-order opinions without affecting higher-order ones.

Higher-Order Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 130-145
Author(s):  
Brian Weatherson
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Level Crossing ◽  
Wrong Answer ◽  
First Order ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

This chapter discusses higher-order evidence, i.e. evidence directly about the propriety of having some first-order belief. The mainstream position on higher-order evidence is that it can rationally require changes to first-order beliefs. In particular, it is irrational to both believe something, and think that belief is improper in some or other way. The usual argument for this rests on intuitions about cases. I argue that we haven’t considered enough cases, and that there are cases where level-crossing principles give the wrong answer. In particular, the literature has ignored cases where level-crossing principles implausibly imply we should increase our confidence in target propositions. I reconsider the cases that motivated level-crossing principles, and argue that a careful version of evidentialism can explain them.

scholarly journals Whither Higher-Order Evidence?

2019 ◽  
pp. 246-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
First Order ◽  
Distinctive Difference ◽  
Widespread View ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

A widespread view is that higher-order evidence makes a difference to whether it is rational for a person to believe a proposition. This chapter considers in what way higher-order evidence might do this. More specifically, it considers whether and how higher-order evidence plays a role in determining what it is rational to believe distinct from that which first-order evidence plays. To do this, it turns to the theory of reasons, and tries to situate higher-order evidence within it. The only place for it there, distinct from that which first-order evidence already occupies, is as a practical reason, that is, as a reason for desire or action. One might take this to show either that the theory of reasons is inadequate as it stands or that higher-order evidence makes no distinctive difference to what it is rational to believe. The chapter tentatively endorses the second option.

scholarly journals EPISTEMIC AKRASIA AND EPISTEMIC REASONS

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc-Kevin Daoust
Keyword(s):  
Partial Solution ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
First Order ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Square Well

ABSTRACTIt seems that epistemically rational agents should avoid incoherent combinations of beliefs and should respond correctly to their epistemic reasons. However, some situations seem to indicate that such requirements cannot be simultaneously satisfied. In such contexts, assuming that there is no unsolvable dilemma of epistemic rationality, either (i) it could be rational that one's higher-order attitudes do not align with one's first-order attitudes or (ii) requirements such as responding correctly to epistemic reasons that agents have are not genuine rationality requirements. This result doesn't square well with plausible theoretical assumptions concerning epistemic rationality. So, how do we solve this puzzle? In this paper, I will suggest that an agent can always reason from infallible higher-order reasons. This provides a partial solution to the above puzzle.

scholarly journals DISAGREEMENT, DRUGS, ETC.: FROM ACCURACY TO AKRASIA

Episteme ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
The One ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

ABSTRACTWe often get evidence concerning the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This “higher-order evidence” can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. This paper examines some pros and cons of two fairly general models for accommodating higher-order evidence. The one that currently seems most promising also turns out to have the consequence that epistemic akrasia should occur more frequently than is sometimes supposed. But it also helps us see why this might not be a bad thing.

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