Inference as doxastic agency. Part II: Ramifications and refinements

Justification stit logic is a logic for reasoning about proving as a certain kind of activity, namely seeing to it that a proof is publicly available. It merges the semantical analysis of deliberatively seeing-to-it-that from stit theory (Belnap, Perloff, Xu 2001) and the semantics of the epistemic logic with justification from (Artemov and Nogina 2005). In this paper, after recalling its language and basic semantical definitions, various ramifications and refinements of justification stit logic are presented and discussed: imposing natural restrictions upon the class of models under consideration, making use of modalities that assert the existence of a proof, introducing a variant of justification stit logic based on a semantics introduced by M. Fitting, and adding variable-binding operators and extending the set of proof polynomials.

Performance normativity and here-and-now doxastic agency

Sosa famously argues that epistemic normativity is a species of “performance normativity,” comparing beliefs to archery shots. However, philosophers have traditionally conceived of beliefs as states, which means that they are not dynamic or telic like performances. A natural response to this tension is to argue that belief formation rather than belief itself is the proper target of epistemic normativity. This response is rejected here on grounds of the way it obscures the “here and now” exercise of cognitive agency that I view as central to any account of epistemic normativity and doxastic agency. Although the etiology of a belief can be relevant to its normative status, often so much more is relevant and more centrally so. This generates a dilemma for anyone following Sosa in pursuing the idea that epistemic normativity is a species of performance normativity.