Subjective Reasons and Truth

Chapter 4 takes up the question of why epistemologists have been reluctant to endorse answers to what evidence supports basic perceptual beliefs that allow such evidence to be false, and argues that the best philosophical motivation for this commitment is closely related to the problem of unjustified belief. The idea that subjective reasons are just a special case of objective reasons is resisted, as are arguments drawing on felicity data about reports of subjective or motivating reasons. An alternative argument drawing on the idea that perceptual experiences can in themselves be instances of knowledge is addressed, and Williamson’s claim that knowledge is the most general factive stative attitude is refuted. Finally, a simple model for thinking about how subjective reasons could factor into the competition over what it is rational to believe without building in a prior truth or rationality constraint is introduced, drawing on work by John Horty.

Doxastic Wrongs

Chapter 9 extends the arguments of Chapter 8 by defending the view that we can wrong each other in virtue of what we believe about one another, and arguing that this is best and most conservatively explained by Pragmatic Intellectualism. It is argued that cases from Rima Basu, Simon Keller, Sarah Stroud, Tamar Gendler, and Berislav Marušić all involve doxastic wrongs. Though there are two prominent objections to the idea that beliefs can wrong, it is shown that Pragmatic Intellectualism offers answers to each of these objections. And finally it is argued that we have independent grounds to think that the best cases of doxastic wrongs are also among the very best cases for pragmatic encroachment, because of the way that the wrongs they involve are stable over time.

Basic Perceptual Reasons

Chapter 3 takes up the first obstacle to the idea that reasons come first among normative concepts in epistemology: the problem of unjustified belief. It does so by introducing the issues that arise in the epistemology of perception when we ask what reason or evidence you acquire for ordinary conclusions about the external world in virtue of having perceptual experiences. The resulting space of possible answers is explored, including the natural ways in which it leads to skepticism, rationalism, coherentism, dogmatism, pure externalism, and disjunctivism. These views are contrasted with answers that allow reasons to be false, and by doing so avoid all of the distinctive commitments of each of these alternatives.

Reasons are Competitors

Chapter 2 introduces the classical argument for the analytic and explanatory priority of reasons, and articulates a minimal characterization of normative reasons to be relied on throughout the remainder of the book. According to the classical argument, which derives from W.D. Ross, reasons play an important role in the analysis of what we ought to do because they compete in the determination of what we ought to do. This argument is developed and expanded to treat the contrasting explanatory perspective of consequentializing moral theories and extended to apply to a wide range of moral concepts. In addition to competing, it is argued that to play their explanatory role, reasons must support actions rather than outcomes, and must in general be the kind of thing that can be acted on.

Acting and Believing Well

Chapter 10 introduces and elaborates on the deliberative role for reasons, and lays out the Fundamental Argument for Reasons First. It is shown that the fact that reasons can be acted on played very little role in any of the main arguments in Chapters 3 through 9, and argued that this means that it is possible to apply yet more leverage in order to show that reasons have analytic and explanatory priority. It is argued that deontic properties such as being the right thing to do, permissible, rational, obligatory, advisable, and the like each come with the corresponding well property of not only doing the right thing, but doing it well. The fact that reasons can be acted on is especially important, it is argued, when it comes to understanding the relationship between right properties and their corresponding well properties. The Fundamental Argument for Reasons First seeks to show that we must appeal to reasons in our analysis and explanation of right properties in order for them to result in corresponding well properties in a way that is non-recursive.

The Apparent Factive Attitude View

Chapter 5 takes up the question of which way of developing a non-factive answer to what evidence perceptual experiences provide about the external world is most promising. Two forms of the apparent defeasibility of knowledge are introduced: objective defeat and subjective defeat. Each view’s resources for accounting for both objective and subjective defeat are compared, and it is argued that the non-factive content view fails to account for both objective and subjective defeat. In contrast, the apparent factive attitude view, because of its closer relationship to disjunctivist alternatives, is argued to offer clean treatments of both objective and subjective defeat—even better than the disjunctivist alternatives from which it borrows. The distinctive commitments of the apparent factive attitude view are defended, its distinctive treatment of the bootstrapping problem for dogmatism is introduced, and the resulting view is contrasted with Matthew McGrath’s objective looks theory.

Epistemic Reasons as Right-Kind Reasons

Chapter 7 takes up the question of how we can determine whether some putative reasons for or against belief count as epistemic or not. It is argued that this is a special case of a much broader question as to how we can determine whether some putative reasons for or against any attitude count as bearing on the distinctive rationality of that kind of attitude, and that answers to the narrower question about belief should be informed by answers to the broader question about attitudes in general. The object-given/state-given theory is introduced as a prominent candidate to answer the general question, but shown to be inadequate. The alternative idea that the right-kind/wrong-kind distinction for each attitude derives from the nature of that attitude is defended and illustrated with representative cases. Finally, the implications of this account of the right-kind/wrong-kind distinction are drawn out for the case of belief by showing how different plausible theories of the nature of belief can result in different plausible answers to which of the reasons against belief identified in Chapter 6 are genuinely epistemic.

Pragmatic Intellectualism

Chapter 8 introduces and defends the default reliance account of the nature of binary belief and the resulting package of views about epistemic reasons—Pragmatic Intellectualism. According to the default reliance account, binary beliefs play the role of giving us something to rely on in reasoning by default—without need to engage in further reasoning about what to rely on. It is argued that the default reliance account predicts and explains the rational inertia of beliefs, and explains why both the risks of error and the availability of further evidence will count as epistemic reasons against belief. The resulting view, Pragmatic Intellectualism, is contrasted with other defenses of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology with respect to the role it grants to knowledge-action principles, the rational stability of belief, the principle of reflection, and pragmatic encroachment on confidence or degreed belief.

Introduction

Chapter 1 introduces the project and central questions of Reasons First. After motivating and placing into context the idea of reasons first, which says that reasons play a fundamental and explanatory role in ethics, it contrasts ethics and epistemology as normative disciplines and formulates the book’s Core Hypothesis that epistemology has been disadvantaged by insufficiently appreciating the deep parallels with ethics. The relationship between reasons and evidence is explored and the hypothesis of Evidence as Reasons is supported in contrast to Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star’s thesis of Reasons as Evidence, offering the first central line of argument in the book that reasons play a fundamental explanatory role in epistemology. And finally, two important obstacles to the thesis that reasons come first among normative concepts in epistemology, the problem of unjustified belief and the problem of sufficiency, are introduced and the structure of the remainder of the book is foreshadowed.

Balance in Epistemology

Chapter 6 takes up the problem of sufficiency for the idea that reasons come first among normative concepts in epistemology. Seven puzzles about the sufficiency of evidence are presented, each of which lays out difficulties in accounting for what amount or strength of evidence is enough in order to render a belief rational. The two-stage strategy is introduced as a way of treating several of these puzzles, by showing that what they affect is not which beliefs are rational qua belief, but instead the prior question of whether to deliberate about what to believe. But the two-stage strategy is argued to be limited, and not to solve several of the remaining puzzles. In contrast, the simple idea that there are non-evidential epistemic reasons against belief is introduced as an alternative solution to most of the remaining puzzles.