Epistemic Rationality

Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing literature and sketching avenues for future investigation. It also argues for a reorientation of epistemology itself. This argument is the focus of Section 1. Section 2 briefly reviews philosophical accounts of attention, Section 3 focuses on issues in traditional, individualistic epistemology, and Section 4 turns to social epistemology.

This paper seeks to revive learning as a central topic in traditional (non-formal) epistemology.  I begin in §1 by reflecting on why learning might have become a marginal topic in epistemology after Gettier.  I argue that the case against treating learning as a central further topic in epistemology is not as compelling as it would need to be for learning to be so neglected.  I then argue more directly in §2 against what I call a redundant epistemology of learning—roughly, any view on which the question ‘What is learning?’ is answered by answering the question ‘What is knowledge?’ plus non-epistemic questions.  I give six reasons to think that learning is a non-redundant topic worth exploring centrally in epistemology.  I then offer a non-redundant analysis of learning in §3 that helps explain the phenomena noted in §2.  I conclude by exploring some wider implications in §4, suggesting that while non-philosophers interested in learning have not answered the question ‘What is learning?’, they have drawn attention to examples and analytical tools that the epistemologist can use to answer the question.

Moral encroachment is the thesis that morality has an effect-unrecognized by traditional epistemology-on which doxastic states are epistemically appropriate. The thesis is increasingly popular among those who, in opposition to Gendler (2011), desire harmony between epistemic and moral demands on belief. This paper has three main goals. First, drawing on attractive structural principles concerning belief and justification, it is shown that a thoroughgoing harmony between moral and epistemic demands is implausible. This weakens the motivation for positing moral encroachment, but a proponent might still hope that moral encroachment can have a significant effect, so that many of the central cases of apparent disharmony can be avoided. The next goal of the paper is to argue that any significant effect of moral encroachment would manifest itself in the credences which are most epistemically appropriate. Finally, it is shown that even a small effect of moral encroachment on credence is in tension with widely accepted basic constraints on epistemically appropriate credence.

The problem of forgotten evidence consists of a pair of scenarios originally proposed by Alvin Goldman. In the ''forgotten good evidence" and ''forgotten bad evidence" scenarios, subjects hold the same memory belief while irreversibly forgetting its original, though different, pieces of evidence. The two scenarios pose a series of challenges to current time slice (CTS) theories, which posit that memory beliefs are justified solely by contemporaneous states. Goldman's two scenarios pose an apparent dilemma to CTS theories given a naïve picture of how a memory belief is successfully retained while its evidence is irreversibly forgotten. In my view, however, CTS theories may find a solution to the apparent problem by carefully examining the conditions under which a memory belief is successfully retained while its evidence is completely forgotten. Namely, the two scenarios overlook an important difference between forgetting good evidence and forgetting bad evidence.

A single argument template-the EPH template-can be used to generate versions of the best known and most challenging skeptical problems. In his brilliantly groundbreaking book Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson presents a theory of knowledge and evidence which he clearly intends to provide a response to skepticism in its most important forms. After laying out EPH skepticism and reviewing possible ways of responding to it, I show how elements of Williamson's theory motivate a hitherto unexplored way of responding to EPH-generated skeptical arguments. Then I offer reasons to doubt the correctness of Williamson's response.

Abstract—reasoning is an important part of many fields like logic, artificial intelligence, philosophy of science, and so on. Reasoning can either be deductive (deduction) or it can be inductive (induction). The decisions based on induction are very helpful in research but ...

Se aborda la cuestión de la racionalidad desde la justificación de la lógica, considerando
la existencia de sistemas alternativos. Delimito este tema a la justificación de nuestros
criterios de racionalidad, centrándome en la racionalidad inferencial. Ante esto, sugiero
una solución a posteriori para reconocer sistemas lógicos como razonables, dada la inexistencia de una noción infalible de racionalidad. Esta propuesta es pluralista, reconociendo
múltiples sistemas válidos, y normativa, estableciendo que no todos tienen el mismo valor:
algunos son más aptos para inferencias que otros.
Palabras clave: racionalidad; pluralismo lógico; lógica; normatividad; lógica a posteriori.

This paper offers a defense of veritic epistemic consequentialism, addressing its principal critiques. I argue that the core of epistemological value lies in its conduciveness to truth, rendering true beliefs intrinsically valuable. In response to the criticism that this approach may sacrifice individual truths for a greater aggregate and undervalues autonomous inquiry, I emphasize the well-connectedness of beliefs. Each belief's content is a proposition. Propositions are classified as first-order, second-order, third-order, etc., depending on what they are about. Higher-order propositions are about lower-order ones. I assume that if an epistemic agent believes in p, then she tends to believe in higher-order propositions that are about p. These higher-order propositions are more structural beliefs of the agent. If p is false, then falsity may spread over the whole network through higherorder propositions about p. Thus, sacrificing a single belief may bring more damage to the network, which is not acceptable for veritic epistemic consequentialism. Regarding the issue of autonomy, epistemic acts like reflection, inference, etc. can be represented as higher-order propositions. Therefore, veritic epistemic consequentialism values them.

What is it for the verdict of a criminal trial to be just? It is widely agreed that a Guilty verdict is just only if the defendant did the relevant deed, and only if his rights were not violated in the process of apprehending, charging, and convicting him. I argue that more is required: he must be
found Guilty because he is guilty, and not solely for other reasons. The conviction must be based on the guilt. I argue that many rules of evidence and procedural rules designed to protect a defendant's rights also encourage fulfillment of this basing condition and that the condition helps to explain how an erroneous conviction involving no misconduct
can nevertheless be a moral wrong. I argue that the condition also gives an explanation (among others) of why a naked statistic is insufficient for a just conviction.

This is an encyclopedia entry written for the Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. It provides an overview of the concept of and literature surrounding "group agency" from the perspective of analytic philosophy. It begins with an introduction to agency in its most general sense before examining agency in the social world. Next, group agency as a research field is presented in the context of the problem of collective intentionality. Here, accounts of group intentions are presented, before moving into considerations on structure and metaphysics of group agents. Then, the features of and conditions for group agency are clarified, as well as its relation to rationality and mind. The entry closes with heterodox views of group agency and a description of group agency’s lasting relevance to law and social philosophy.

Shussett, Daniel. 2024. “Group Agency.” In M. Sellers & S. Kirste (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1151-1

What is the epistemic function of imagination? Traditionally, philosophers have claimed that the epistemic function of imagination is exhausted by its ability to provide justification for modal beliefs, or that it is epistemically irrelevant. However, in recent years a number of philosophers have broken with the tradition by arguing that imagination can generate justification or knowledge about contingent empirical facts. This paper argues against this view by developing a new dilemma. The upshot of the argument is that although imagination does have an important epistemic function that has evaded the traditional view, it cannot give rise to new empirical justification or knowledge.

Es frecuente interesarse por si la filosofía es un producto únicamente occidental o si se da ese tipo de reflexión intelectual en sociedades no occidentales, incluso en comunidades occidentales anteriores o ajenas a la escuela de Mileto. Quienes niegan la existencia de esta actividad en grupos humanos no occidentales, sostienen que la filosofía nació en las colonias griegas establecidas en Jonia (que en realidad es Asia Menor y actualmente pertenece a la costa oeste de Turquía), a partir de ciertas condiciones históricas muy particulares que no se dieron en otras regiones, aunque posteriormente esa tradición griega se propagara por todo el mundo. Los que afirman que sí existe filosofía no occidental presuponen, aunque no lo digan, que la ausencia de pensamiento filosófico en una sociedad mostraría cierta precariedad intelectual, de manera que amplían el significado de “filosofía” para incluir ejercicios intelectuales diferentes a los que se dieron en el mundo helénico a partir del siglo VI a.C. Ambas posiciones pueden esconder una forma enmascarada de eurocentrismo. Los que niegan la existencia de filosofía de origen no griego asumen que esa es la única manera correcta de hacer filosofía o que la palabra “filosofía” es una suerte de nombre propio que funciona como un designador rígido, que solo puede designar a un producto cultural con características esenciales –como si hubiera una esencia de la filosofía–, de suerte que producciones intelectuales con otros rasgos caerían necesariamente fuera de la referencia. Los que aceptan la existencia de formas de filosofía no occidentales suelen hacer calzar esas actividades en categorías occidentales, con frecuencia forzando ambas: las elaboraciones intelectuales no occidentales y los conceptos occidentales. En este texto me propongo discutir en qué sentido es posible hablar de filosofías, conceptos o intuiciones filosóficas peruanas prehispánicas.

The overall aim of this article is to reorient the contemporary debate about epistemic consequentialism. Thus far the debate has to a large extent focused on whether standard theories of epistemic justification are consequentialist in nature and therefore vulnerable to certain trade-off cases where accepting a false or unjustified belief leads to good epistemic outcomes. We claim that these trade-offs raise an important---yet somewhat neglected---issue about the epistemic demands on inquiry. We first distinguish between two different kinds of epistemic evaluation, viz., backing evaluation and outcome evaluation, and then go on to outline and discuss a consequentialist metatheory about the right combinations of decision procedures to adopt in inquiry. Note that the piece is exploratory in the following sense: we try to explore epistemic evaluation in consequentialist terms, which involves stating a form of epistemic consequentialism, but also pointing to what nonconsequentialist alternatives might be. Rather than trying to argue decisively for a particular conclusion, we aim to outline various intricate issues in an underexplored area of theorizing. In the course of doing this, we'll transpose some well-known themes from discussions of consequentialism in ethics to the current debate about consequentialism in epistemology, e.g., agent-neutrality, options, and side-constraints.

Abstract: Agents are enkratic when they intend to do what they believe they should. That rationality requires you to be enkratic is uncontroversial, yet you may be enkratic in a way that does not exhibit any rationality on your part. Thus, what I call the enkratic requirement demands that you be enkratic in the right way. In particular, I will argue that it demands that you base your belief about what you should do and your intention to do it on the same considerations. The idea is that, if you base your belief and your intention on different considerations, then you are inconsistent in your treatment of those considerations as reasons. The enkratic requirement demands that you be enkratic by treating considerations consistently as reasons. 1

Ove godine je u časopisu ‘Religions’ (Religije) objavljen zapažen tekst uglednog muslimanskog intelektualca i istraživača Josepha E. B. Lumbarda pod naslovom “Islam and the Challenge of Epistemic Sovereignty” (Islam i izazov epistemičke suverenosti). Smatrajući da u njemu autor otvara brojna bitna pitanja koja se tiču islamske intelektualnosti, u ovom osvrtu pokušat ćemo predstaviti najupečatljivije stavove i promišljanja koja iznosi Lumbard.

In this paper, I defend that logic has a normative status for reasoning. To support my argument, I question whether logic can be limited to a formal calculus that establishes relations among truth-bearers. Instead, I argue that logic encompasses the study of inference in ordinary language. Similarly, I challenge traditional views of reasoning that depict it as a private process of drawing inferences. Instead, I embrace perspectives that view reasoning as a social activity (Dutilh-Novaes, 2021; Godden, 2015; Kalis, 2022; Mackenzie, 1989). From these bases, I explore the concept of the natural normativity of argumentation (Gilbert, 2007; Jackson, 2019). Since argumentative practices inherently possess a normative dimension, logic aims to capture and represent the rules that govern these linguistic exchanges. Logical rules are the tools from which agents can exert normative control over argumentative practices.

With the discovery of Bayesian inductive logic optimism about the possibility of rationally justifying inductive inference has been renewed. The justification of Bayesian inductive rules is known as the Dutch-book argument (Ramsey-de Finetti theorem). The question dividing theoreticians of induction is whether such an argument can really justify Bayes' and Jeffrey's conditionalization rules (Bayesian inductive rules). In this paper, I will be interested, first, in distinguishing two senses of justification of inductive inference: on the one hand, persuasive justification of induction and, on the other, its explicative justification. Secondly, I will relate the problem of the justification of Bayesian conditionalization rules with Hume's classical problem of persuasively justifying causality and induction. Thirdly, I shall argue that the Dutch-book argument cannot persuasively justify Bayesian conditionalization rules in agreement with Hume's negative thesis concerning noncircular justification of inductive inference of a causal type. Finally, I will suggest a sort of explicative justification of Bayesian inductive rules in terms of a transcendental argument of kantian inspiration but davidsonian in its style.

Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it's standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing their limited resources tend to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations.

We motivate a picture of social epistemology that sees forgetting as subject to epistemic evaluation. Using computer simulations of a simple agent-based model, we show that how agents forget can have as large an impact on group epistemic outcomes as how they share information. But, how we forget, unlike how we form beliefs, isn't typically taken to be the sort of thing that can be epistemically rational or justified. We consider what we take to be the most promising argument for this claim and find it lacking. We conclude that understanding how agents forget should be as central to social epistemology as understanding how agents form beliefs and share information with others.

When I say that I am better off today than I was two weeks ago, I make a claim about my well-being at particular points in time, or at timespans that are shorter than my life as a whole. Thus, I talk about temporal wellbeing. Ben Bramble (2018) argues that there is no such thing as temporal well-being. He says it's okay for us to keep talking that way, but we should keep in mind that welfare at a time-say a day, a week or a year-doesn't really exist. Bramble suggests that most normal people wouldn't assume the existence of temporal welfare; it's mainly philosophers who make this mistake. I am highly suspicious about this empirical statement, since I hear non-philosophers talk about temporal well-being quite frequently. Bramble doesn't present any support for his empirical claim, and I'm not going to discuss it any further here. Instead, I'm going to evaluate and reject his ontological claim that there is no such thing as temporal welfare. What, then, are Bramble's arguments against the existence of temporal welfare? Bramble presents the "normative significance argument," which I will dismiss in Section 2, and the "no credible theory argument," which I will reject in Section 3. I will conclude in Section 4 that Bramble's attempt at rejecting temporal welfare fails, and I will draw out some implications. 2 Bramble's Argument from Normative Significance Bramble's first of two arguments against the existence of temporal welfare can be sketched as follows.

The method of reflective equilibrium (MRE) is a method of justification popularized by John Rawls and further developed by Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul, Folke Tersman, and Catherine Z. Elgin, among others. The basic idea is that epistemic agents have justified beliefs if they have succeeded in forming their beliefs into a harmonious system of beliefs which they reflectively judge to be the most plausible. Despite the common reference to MRE as a method, its mechanisms or rules are typically expressed in a metaphorical or simplified manner and are therefore criticized as too vague. Recent efforts to counter this criticism have been directed towards the attempt to provide formal explications of MRE. This paper aims to supplement these efforts by providing an informal working definition of MRE. This approach challenges the view that MRE can adequately be characterized only in the negative as a set of anti-essentialisms. I argue that epistemic agents follow MRE iff they follow four interconnected rules, which are concerned with a minimalistic form of foundationalism, a minimalistic form of fallibilism, a moderate form of holism, and a minimalistic form of rationality. In the critical spirit of MRE, the corresponding working definition is, of course, provisional and revisable. In general, the aim is to contribute to a reflective equilibrium (RE) concerning MRE. If it is successful, this working definition provides a better grasp of the most basic elements of the method and thereby enhances our understanding of it.

Sarah Moss has recently suggested that when they encounter conflict, epistemic peers should not split the difference between the credence that they each assign to some disputed proposition p, as has been suggested by conciliatory approaches to belief revision in the debate surrounding disagreement in the literature. Moss contends that an epistemic compromise between peers need not be the arithmetic mean of prior credences, in the sense that if my credence in some proposition p is x and yours is y, the credence that is the result of our compromise need not be (x + y)/2. More generally, Moss's proposal advocates an approach to how estimations of truth value, exhibited in credences, should in fact be considered in resolving conflict and disagreement. The general idea is that splitting the difference between credences may be inadequate, seeing as agents may assign different epistemic values to different credences. While novel and clearly argued, I think that Moss's proposal fail...

The proof paradox results from conflicting intuitions concerning different types of fallible evidence in a court of law. We accept fallible individual evidence but reject fallible statistical evidence even when the conditional probability that the defendant is guilty given the evidence is the same, a seeming inconsistency. This paper defends a solution to the proof paradox, building on a sensitivity account of checking and settling a question. The proposed sensitivity account of legal proof not only requires sensitivity simpliciter but sensitivity of each relevant step of the proof procedure and/or sensitivity concerning all relevant alternatives. This account avoids problems that have been identified for other sensitivity views of legal proof. Moreover, it is argued that sensitivity, rather than safety, is the crucial modal condition for legal proof. It is, finally, shown that the provided account can fruitfully support very different existing views on the relationship between knowledge and legal proof.

It is not unusual for epistemologists to argue that ordinary epistemic practice is a setting within which (infallibilist) scepticism will not arise. Such scepticism is deemed to be an alien invader, impugning such epistemic practice entirely from without. But this paper argues that the suggested sort of analysis overstates the extent to which ordinary epistemic practice is antipathetic to some vital aspects of such sceptical thinking. The paper describes how a gradualist analysis of knowledge can do more justice to what sceptics seek to achievewhile also showing how sceptical thinking can even be part of (and is able to have some muted epistemic impact within) ordinary epistemic practice. Keywords Knowledge. Scepticism. Skepticism. Ordinary epistemic practice. Fallibilism. Gradualism 1. How resistant to sceptical possibilities is ordinary epistemic practice? Many epistemologists have been tempted to conceive of such practice as setting or manifesting standards which render such possibilities ineffective by being irrelevant. Indeed, it is common among epistemologists to say that ordinary contexts of inquiry are ordinary in part because of their being so inhospitable towards sceptical possibilities. This is particularly true (it is thought) of infallibilist sceptical possibilities. 1 In this paper, I question that assumption, in a way which seeks to expand our understanding of the epistemic significance of both ordinary epistemic practice and (infallibilist) sceptical thinking. 2

Paradigmatically, epistemic akrasia occurs when a subject believes some proposition p and simultaneously believes that her belief that p is irrational (Horowitz 2014). This characterization is broad enough to admit of further precisification of a subject's possible mental states. For example, if a subject believes p despite taking p to be highly unlikely, she may take this low credence to suggest that her belief is irrational. Then she too counts as akratic. In this paper, we wish to call attention to cases like these. Let's consider a particular example. Taylor believes that her close friends and family think ill of her. She knows that this is an irrational thing for her to believe, especially since she knows her only apparent evidence is that she and they have been speaking less lately. This lack of communication, she admits to herself, is easily and plausibly explained by the fact that she has just moved to a new country to start a demanding job. Thus, she has a low credence that they think ill of her. Still, she believes it, despite her low confidence that it is true. Taylor's case is one of epistemic akrasia: she believes p, but knows she ought not believe p.

In this article, I argue that faith's going beyond the evidence need not compromise faith's epistemic rationality. First, I explain how some of the recent literature on belief and credence points to a distinction between what I call B-evidence and C-evidence. Then, I apply this distinction to rational faith. I argue that if faith is more sensitive to B-evidence than to C-evidence, faith can go beyond the evidence and still be epistemically rational.

Belief-credence dualism is the view that we have both beliefs and credences and neither attitude is reducible to the other. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that stakes alone can affect the epistemic rationality of states like knowledge or justified belief. In this paper, I argue that dualism offers a unique explanation of pragmatic encroachment cases. First, I explain pragmatic encroachment and what motivates it. Then, I explain dualism and outline a particular argument for dualism. Finally, I show how dualism can explain the intuitions that underlie pragmatic encroachment. My basic proposal is that in high-stake cases, it is not that one cannot rationally believe that p; instead, one ought not to rely on one's belief that p. One should rather rely on one's credence in p. I conclude that we need not commit ourselves to pragmatic encroachment in order to explain the intuitiveness of the cases that motivate it.

The most common definition of belief is taken from analytical philosophy, which understands it as a proposition that is considered as true. Such a broad definition is ambiguous for some fields of empirical research, like psychology, which deals with the mental state of the believer when holding the belief. This article aims to reach an operationalization of beliefs to pinpoint their distinctive features with respect to similar concepts (knowledge, opinion, preference, perception or prediction, for instance). We summarize the most influential interpretations of belief in psychology and psychiatry, which are mainly based on Immanuel Kant and analytical philosophy. We also expose the problem that arises from putting the mental states of beliefs, knowledge, opinions and preferences in the same bag. Our proposal is that a belief is: (1) a proposition that is taken to be true; and (2) which the subject is willing to hold even if irrefutable evidence were hypothetically argued against it. We introduce a narrower interpretation to reliably discriminate the mental state of believing, which is intended to be applied to empirical psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, sociology and related sciences.

How are justified belief and rational belief related? Some philosophers think that justified belief and rational belief come to the same thing. Others take it that justification is a matter of how well a particular belief is supported by the evidence, while rational belief is a matter of how well a belief coheres with a person's other beliefs. In this paper, I defend the view that justification is a dimension of rationality, a view that can make sense of both of these conflicting accounts. When it modifies belief, 'rational' is a multidimensional adjective, as there are multiple dimensions along which a belief can be rational. I will argue that one of these dimensions is justification, an account that can not only explain why philosophers give diverging theories of the relationship between justified belief and rational belief, but can also reveal why rational belief and justified belief are closely related despite being distinct.

Posibilidades y límites del análisis. A 60 años de "Is justified true belief knowledge?" 1) Forma y método: Elucidar el significado de un concepto es quizá una de las cuestiones filosóficas más antiguas. Muchos creen incluso que es la cuestión de la filosofía. La antigüedad del desafío se ve corroborada por el hecho de que Platón, según una interpretación frecuente, parece haberse dedicado a la cuestión de la definición de conceptos especialmente en buena parte de sus diálogos llamados "socráticos", i.e. en aquellos en los que presuntamente presentaría menos visiones propias y más la figura y eventualmente el pensamiento de su maestro Sócrates 1 .

Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it's standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing their limited resources tend to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations.

7 necessary for this type of academic work, but also in order to provide a proper background. Despite the theoretical character, in the course of the text I devote substantial effort to grounding the theorising in available empirical findings, whenever such results come as relevant. This work is based (largely but not exclusively) on a review and analysis of literature in the English language that dominates contemporary international research on the topic of categorisation and concepts. Philosophically, it builds to a substantial degree on the theoretical achievements of the Anglo-Saxon analytic tradition (but again, not to the exclusion of other relevant approaches). At various points in the course of this dissertation, I stop to discuss and clarify matters of terminology. The definitions of several key terms assumed in this work, such as category, concept, and mental representation, are concisely stated in the glossary at the end of this text. Profile and Scope This thesis can be classified as having a historical-systematising profile. I put the views of particular influential authors, as well as larger intellectual approaches, into perspective and broken down into components, with the exposition of underlying philosophical commitments. The survey and analysis of contemporary research into the issue of concepts and categorisation are set in the appropriate historical context. This context, however, is necessarily overall rather than exhaustive, for reasons related to the breadth of the issue under consideration: in practice, most large-scale theoretical problems in the history of Western thought can be claimed to have relevance to the question of concepts. I have chosen to give priority to those thinkers whose contributions can be seen as foundational for occidental epistemology or inspirational for later analytic philosophy of mind and language, including Plato and Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Gottlob Frege. As for the current intellectual background, the thesis follows closely Noam Avram Chomsky's general philosophical assumptions regarding the nature

¿Seguimos reglas de inferencia al razonar? Por más intuitiva que resulte la respuesta positiva a esta pregunta, hay una serie de dificultades para vincular reglas lógicas y prácticas inferenciales. El Problema de la Adopción de Reglas de Inferencia constituye un desafío para todo aquel que proponga que podemos seguir nuevos patrones inferenciales a partir del reconocimiento de reglas. En esta sección temática se exploran diversos asuntos conectados a si podemos seguir un nuevo patrón inferencial en virtud de una regla.

We may succed in the fulfillment of our desires but still fail to properly own our practical life, perhaps because we acted as addicts, driven by desires that are alien to our will, or as "wantons," satisfying the desires that we simply happen to have (Frankfurt, 1988). May we equally fail to own the outcomes of our epistemic life? If so, how may we attain epistemic ownership over it? This paper explores the structural parallelism between practical and epistemic rationality, building on Williamson's (2002) suggestion that we should commence with successful performances as the foundation for both domains, be it action or knowledge. By highlighting the limitations of higher-order regulative approaches in epistemology, exemplified by Sosa (2007, 2011, 2015, 2021), the paper introduces a form of teleological epistemic constitutivism inspired by Velleman (2000, 2009). The proposal is that epistemic ownership is not attained in the mere pursuit of truth or knowledge, but requires furthermore a struggle to understand what we know.

There seems to be an important intuition that there is a distinctive value associated with direct cognitive contact with reality, in the sense of a sensory experience of it. This intuition is unpacked. It is claimed that it is important to keep this thesis apart from related debates about the special value of first-hand knowledge, and cognate issues concerning the eudaimonic value of understanding and strong cognitive achievements. It is argued that there is an intellectual value associated with direct cognitive contact with reality. It is maintained that this thesis is not to be understood as a general preference for sensory experience of the world, but rather as the view that one desires to have a conception of reality that is experientially anchored to reality at critical junctures. It is argued that such a claim, while on the face of it in conflict with the veritist thesis that truth is the fundamental epistemic good, is in fact better understood as a natural consequence of veritism, at least insofar as that proposal is properly understood.

The Uniqueness Thesis (U), according to Richard Feldman and Roger White, says that for a given set of evidence E and a proposition P, only one doxastic attitude about P is rational given E. Luis Rosa has recently provided two counterexamples against U which are supposed to show that even if there is a sense in which choosing between two doxastic attitudes is arbitrary, both options are equally and maximally rational. Both counterexamples work by exploiting the idea that 'ought implies can' and trying to spell out situations in which some inferences are beyond the capabilities of some reasoners. I argue that on a descriptive account of doxastic rationality, questions of whether 'epistemic ought implies can' can be bracketed and that at least one of the inferential moves that Rosa describes in his cases is irrational. I further argue that a descriptive account of doxastic rationality is the appropriate notion of rationality that is to be considered when evaluating U. If my argument for a descriptive account of rationality is successful, then we have reason to revise our use of the term rationality to fit this descriptive understanding.

In situations where we ignore everything but the space of possibilities, we ought to suspend judgment-that is, remain agnostic-about which of these possibilities is the case. This means that we cannot sum our degrees of belief in different possibilities, something that has been formalized as an axiom of non-additivity. Consistent with this way of representing our ignorance, I defend a doxastic norm that recommends that we should nevertheless follow a certain additivity of possibilities: even if we cannot sum degrees of belief in different possibilities, we should be more confident in larger groups of possibilities. It is thus shown that, in the type of situation considered (in so-called 'classical ignorance', i.e. "behind a thin veil of ignorance"), it is epistemically rational for advocates of suspending judgment to endorse this comparative confidence; while on the other hand it is shown that, even in classical ignorance, no stronger belief-such as a precise uniform probability distribution-is warranted.

There are considerations – excuses – which reduce or eliminate responsibility for wrongdoing and so shield us from blame without casting doubt on the wrongfulness of our conduct. Many think that these excuses reflect the agent's incapacity to do the right thing in the face of duress, provocation, exhaustion etc. I shall suggest that the crucial thing is rather how much control one ought to exercise over one’s action, a requirement specified in a standard of culpability. This standard is distinct from the rules of conduct that determine what is right or wrong and it is often conventional. For example, social roles like that of soldier, engineer or parent have distinctive standards of culpability as well as rules of conduct associated with them and it is these standards which determine the range of excuses available to those who breach the rules of conduct.

According to a widely held norm of rationality, one should not change prior credences without new evidence. An important argument for this norm appeals to accuracy considerations, which says that changing priors doesn't maximize expected accuracy. This is because accuracy measures are strictly proper, and thus any probabilistically coherent person regards her own priors as uniquely maximizing expected accuracy compared with other priors. This paper attempts to resist the accuracy argument against changing priors. We argue that even if rational epistemic decisions maximize expected accuracy according to strictly proper accuracy measures, it can still be rational to change priors sometimes. The core idea of our argument is that changing priors can be rational if one wants to maximize not just one's current, short-term accuracy but also future, long-term accuracy. Our argument, if successful, shows that considering long-term accuracy has significant ramifications for the accuracy-first project.

There are considerations – excuses – which reduce or eliminate responsibility for wrongdoing and so shield us from blame without casting doubt on the wrongfulness of our conduct. Many think that these excuses reflect the agent's incapacity to do the right thing in the face of duress, provocation, exhaustion etc. I shall suggest that the crucial thing is rather how much control one ought to exercise over one’s action, a requirement specified in a standard of culpability. This standard is distinct from the rules of conduct that determine what is right or wrong and it is often conventional. For example, social roles like that of soldier, engineer or parent have distinctive standards of culpability as well as rules of conduct associated with them and it is these standards which determine the range of excuses available to those who breach the rules of conduct.

This paper develops four related claims: 1. Critical thinking should focus more on decision making, 2. the heuristics and bias literature developed by cognitive psychologists and behavioral economists provides many insights into human irrationality which can be useful in critical thinking instruction, 3. unfortunately the "rational choice" norms used by behavioral economists to identify "biased" decision making narrowly equate rational decision making with the efficient pursuit of individual satisfaction; deviations from these norms should not be treated as an irrational bias, 4. a richer, procedural theory of rational decision making should be the basis for critical thinking instruction in decision making. Résumé: Cet article développe quatre affirmations connexes: 1. La pensée critique devrait se concentrer davantage sur la prise de décision, 2. la littérature sur l'heuristique et les préjugés développée par les psychologues cognitifs et les économistes comportementaux fournit de nombreuses idées éclairées sur l'irrationalité humaine qui peuvent être utiles dans l'enseignement de la pensée critique, 3. malheureusement, les normes de «choix rationnel» utilisés par les économistes comportementaux pour identifier la prise de décision "partiale" assimilent étroitement la prise de décision rationnelle avec la poursuite efficace de la satisfaction individuelle; les déviations par rapport à ces normes ne devraient pas être traitées comme un parti pris irrationnel, 4. une théorie procédurale plus riche de la prise de décision rationnelle devrait être la base de l'enseignement de la pensée critique dans la prise de décision.

This paper introduces a model for evidence denial that explains this behavior as a manifestation of rationality, and it is based on the contention that social values (measurable as utilities) often underwrite these sorts of responses. Moreover, it contends that the value associated with group membership in particular can override epistemic reason when the expected utility of a belief or belief system is great. It is also true, however, that it appears to be the case that it is still possible for such unreasonable believers to reverse this sort of dogmatism and to change their beliefs in a way that is epistemically rational. The conjecture made here is that we should expect this to happen only when the expected utility of the beliefs in question dips below a threshold where the utility value of continued dogmatism and the associated group membership is no longer sufficient to motivate defusing the counterevidence that tells against such epistemically irrational beliefs.

This paper aims to show that Selim Berker’s widely discussed prime number case is merely an instance of the well-known generality problem for process reliabilism and thus arguably not as interesting a case as one might have thought. Initially, Berker’s case is introduced and interpreted. Then the most recent response to the case from the literature is presented. Eventually, it is argued that Berker’s case is nothing but a straightforward consequence of the generality problem, i.e., the problematic aspect of the case for process reliabilism (if any) is already captured by the generality problem.