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Normativity: Epistemic and Practical

Normativity: Epistemic and Practical EDITED BY

Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way, and Daniel Whiting

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # the several contributors 2018 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954189 ISBN 978–0–19–875870–9 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Contents Acknowledgements List of Contributors

vii ix

Introduction Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way, and Daniel Whiting

1

1. Putting Fallibilism to Work Charity Anderson

12

2. Pragmatic Approaches to Belief Jessica Brown

26

3. The Relevance of the Wrong Kind of Reasons Ulrike Heuer

47

4. Directives for Knowledge and Belief David Hunter

68

5. How Reasons Are Sensitive to Available Evidence Benjamin Kiesewetter

90

6. Evidence and Its Limits Clayton Littlejohn

115

7. The Explanatory Problem for Cognitivism about Practical Reason Errol Lord

137

8. Pragmatic Encroachment: Its Problems Are Your Problems!

Matthew McGrath

162

9. Why Only Evidential Considerations Can Justify Belief Kate Nolfi

179

10. Practical Interests and Reasons for Belief Baron Reed

200

11. Two Theses about the Distinctness of Practical and Theoretical Normativity Andrew Reisner

221

vi

CONTENTS

12. Reasoning with Reasons Daniel Star

241

13. Epistemic Instrumentalism, Permissibility, and Reasons for Belief Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen

260

Index

281

Acknowledgements This volume emerges from a two-year research project, Normativity: Epistemic and Practical, based at the University of Southampton. We are very grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this project (grant number AH/K008188/1). We are also grateful to our colleagues in Philosophy at Southampton for supporting it in many different ways, including, but not limited to, participating in the project’s various activities. Most of the contributions to this volume are descendants or relatives of papers presented in the seminars, workshops, and conferences accompanying the project. Thanks to all those who took part in these events, not least the contributors themselves.

Finally, thanks of different sorts to Oxford University Press, especially Peter Momtchiloff, for encouraging and overseeing the publication of this volume, and to Sophie Keeling for preparing the index.

List of Contributors C HARITY A NDERSON , Baylor University, Texas J ESSICA B ROWN , University of St Andrews U LRIKE H EUER , University College London D AVID H UNTER , Ryerson University, Ontario B ENJAMIN K IESEWETTER , Humboldt University of Berlin C LAYTON L ITTLEJOHN , King’s College London E RROL L ORD , University of Pennsylvania M ATTHEW M C G RATH , University of Missouri and University of St Andrews C ONOR M C H UGH , University of Southampton K ATE N OLFI , University of Vermont B ARON R EED , Northwestern University, Illinois A NDREW R EISNER , Uppsala University D ANIEL S TAR , Boston University, Massachusetts A SBJØRN S TEGLICH -P ETERSEN , Aarhus University J ONATHAN W AY , University of Southampton D ANIEL W HITING , University of Southampton

Introduction Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way, and Daniel Whiting

1 Introduction What should I do? What should I think? Traditionally, ethicists tackle the first question, while epistemologists tackle the second. This division of labour corresponds to a distinction theorists draw between practical and epistemic normativity, where normativity is a matter of what one should or may do or think, what one has reason or justification to do or to think, what it is right or wrong to do or to think, and so on, not simply of what one in fact does or thinks.1 The tendency is to investigate the issue of what to do independently of the issue of what to think, that is, to do ethics independently of epistemology, and vice versa. But there is a growing awareness that treating the two separately leads to distortions, omissions, and misunderstandings. Debates over epistemic normativity have failed to take on board developments on the practical side; those discussing practical normativity often make general claims whose implications in the epistemic case remain unexplored.

Several considerations seem to support adopting a more synoptic approach to matters normative. First, we use paradigmatic normative terms such as ‘ought’, ‘right’, and ‘justification’ when speaking both of action and of belief: for example, ‘You ought not to smoke’ and ‘You ought not to believe everything the tobacco companies tell you’. There is no obvious ambiguity here. Second, epistemic norms appear to govern actions of certain sorts, for example, asserting propositions or gathering evidence, while practical norms appear to govern thinking of 1

For ease of presentation, we will speak primarily of action and belief. But, of course, practical attitudes like intention are also subject to norms, and epistemic norms govern other attitudes, such as credences. Feelings are also subject to norms. The connection between those norms and the norms that govern action and belief is an interesting and important one, but not the focus of this volume (although see McGrath’s contribution in Chapter 8 for some discussion).

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CONOR M c HUGH , JONATHAN WAY , AND DANIEL WHITING

certain sorts, for example, practical reasoning. Finally, the question of what to do often seems closely tied to that of what to think. For example, it would be surprising if it were to turn out that the issue of whether to give a person chocolate were wholly independent of the issue of whether to think that she is diabetic.

The aim of this volume is to examine the norms which concern us as agents alongside the norms which concern us as inquirers. More specifically, it is to explore substantive and explanatory connections between practical and epistemic norms, to consider whether these norms are at some level unified, and to ask what that might mean. The aim of this introduction is to provide an overview of some—by no means all—of those issues and to indicate in which contributions they appear.

2 Substantive Connections In this section we will consider some of the ways in which epistemic and practical normativity might be thought to be substantively connected. A place to begin is the suggestion that there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, that whether a person knows a proposition does not depend only on, say, whether her evidence supports that proposition, but also on broadly practical considerations, such as what is at stake in believing it.2 To illustrate: LOW On Friday, Karen drives past the bank. She has a cheque to deposit though there is no urgent need to do so. Karen wonders whether she could come back tomorrow and recalls that the bank was open on Saturday two weeks ago. She concludes that the bank will be open tomorrow, too, and so decides to come back then. It turns out that Karen is right—the bank is open tomorrow.

HIGH Like LOW except that there is an urgent need for Karen to deposit the cheque. She has a mortgage payment to make by Sunday, when the bank is closed, and her house will be repossessed if she fails to make it.3 Many are inclined to judge that in LOW Karen knows that the bank is open. In contrast, many are inclined to judge that in HIGH she does not know this. In both cases, paradigmatically epistemic factors, such as the level of evidential

2

See Fantl and McGrath 2002, 2009; Hawthorne 2004; Stanley 2005.

LOW and HIGH are variants on the ‘Bank’ cases of DeRose 1992. The original versions of those cases involve explicit attributions or denials of knowledge, and were intended to support, not pragmatic encroachment, but the view that the truth-conditions of such attributions depend on the practical context in which they are made.

3

INTRODUCTION

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support, the reliability of the belief-forming mechanisms, and so on, are the same.

The only difference is that Karen has more to lose in HIGH than in LOW. Many of those who have the above inclinations are also inclined to say that in LOW Karen is justified in believing that the bank is open, while in HIGH she is not, at least, not fully or flat-out.4 Such cases, then, lend intuitive support to the idea that practical considerations bear on whether a person knows or is justified in believing a proposition.

(McGrath defends the idea in Chapter 8, while Anderson and Reed oppose it (Chapters 1 and 10, respectively); see also Brown (Chapter 2).)5 Lying behind those intuitions might be a linking principle like the following: If a person is justified in believing that p, she is justified in acting on the basis that p.

Of course, this is just a first pass. The idea it seeks to capture is that, if a belief is not an appropriate basis for action, if it is not appropriate to act on that belief ’s content, it is not appropriate to have it.6 This is to say that there is a substantive connection between the norms governing action and those governing belief. (For discussion of this idea, independent of the debate over pragmatic encroachment, see Littlejohn’s Chapter 6 and Star’s Chapter 12.)

If a principle like this holds, it explains the verdicts in HIGH and LOW. It is appropriate for Karen in LOW to use the content of her belief that the bank is open as a premise in her practical reasoning as to whether to come back tomorrow. But it is not appropriate for Karen in HIGH to do the same. Hence, in HIGH Karen is not justified in believing that the bank is open. Hence, she does not know this.

The proponent of pragmatic encroachment maintains that in some way practical considerations, specifically the costs of error, bear on whether to believe a proposition. An interesting question (which Reed discusses in Chapter 10) is how this relates to a more traditional form of pragmatism, according to which the costs and benefits of believing can provide reasons for and against doing so. Suppose, for example, that a representative of an unscrupulous oil company 4

See, for example, Fantl and McGrath 2009.

For further critical discussion, see Anderson 2015; Brown 2008; Levin 2008; Reed 2010.

6 The authors cited in n2 advance some version of this idea (see also Hawthorne and Stanley 2008). For critical discussion, see Brown 2008; Gerken 2011; McKinnon 2011; Neta 2009; Smithies 2012; Whiting Forthcoming.

A related, but distinct, principle is that, if a person is justified in believing that she is justified in performing some act, then she is justified in performing that act. For discussion and defence of principles in this ballpark, see Gibbons 2013; Kiesewetter Forthcoming; Littlejohn 2012; Way and Whiting 2016.

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CONOR M c HUGH , JONATHAN WAY , AND DANIEL WHITING

offers you a financial reward for believing that global temperatures are falling.

The offer is not evidence for the proposition. So, one might say, it is not an epistemic reason for believing it. But the offer nonetheless seems to many to count in favour of belief; it is, they say, a practical or pragmatic reason for believing.7 If there are practical reasons for belief in addition to epistemic reasons, this raises the question of how, if at all, they weigh against each other. If the practical considerations weigh in favour of belief but the evidential considerations weigh against it, what should a person believe overall or all-things-considered? It is difficult to know how to answer this question. That might suggest it is a bad one to ask. Perhaps there is something that a person should believe from an epistemic point of view and something that she should believe from a practical point of view, but nothing that she should believe full stop. (For discussion, see Reisner’s Chapter 11.)

The distinction between epistemic and practical reasons for belief seems to be an instance of a more general distinction between what are sometimes called reasons of the right kind and reasons of the wrong kind for attitudes.8 Suppose that the oil company rep offers you a reward for intending to drive to work. To get the reward, you do not have to drive to work—you only have to intend to do so. The offer is, one might think, a reason for having the intention but it is a reason of an unorthodox (wrong) sort. To see this, suppose that driving to work is quicker than walking. This is a reason of an orthodox (right) kind to intend to drive—it reveals or indicates something good about what you intend. But the rep’s offer does not in the same way reveal or indicate anything good about what you intend; instead, it indicates something good about intending it, about having that attitude.

This raises the issue of how exactly to distinguish reasons of the wrong kind from reasons of the right kind. In turn, it raises the issue of whether the way in which we draw the distinction in the case of belief carries over to the case of intention or other practical attitudes. If so, this might reveal some important unity between the norms governing each attitude; if not (as Heuer argues in Chapter 3), it might cast doubt on whether there is any such unity.

The suggestion that practical considerations bear in some way on the epistemic status of a belief seems like a challenge to evidentialism. A standard way of characterizing this is as the view that whether a person is justified in believing 7

For an overview of this issue, and extensive references, see Reisner Forthcoming.

For some influential discussions of this distinction, see Hieronymi 2005; Rabinowicz and R nnow-Rasmussen 2004; Schroeder 2012.

8

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a proposition is determined by her evidence.9 One way to understand this is to think that whether a person is justified in performing some act or having some attitude is in general determined by the reasons she possesses. The reasons she possesses for believing a proposition are provided (only) by evidential considerations, that is, considerations that indicate or make likely that that proposition is true. On this account, the question of what to believe is settled by a person’s evidence and her evidence alone. (In Chapters 4 and 6, Hunter and Littlejohn criticize this view in different ways.)

Evidentialists deny that practical considerations of the above sort provide reasons for believing.10 (If they are right to do so, the problem of how to reconcile the apparent demands of such reasons with the demands of evidential considerations does not arise.) Some deny more generally that reasons of the wrong kind are reasons at all; they hold that they are reasons only in name. In doing so, they often appeal to a principle along the following lines: That p is a reason for a person to φ only if she can φ for the reason that p.11 As stated, this principle applies in both the epistemic and practical domains. If true, it might seem to rule out reasons of the wrong kind. It seems that you cannot believe that global temperatures are falling for the reason that by so believing you will get a reward. Nor can you intend to drive for the reason that by so intending you will get a reward.12 (For discussion, see Heuer’s Chapter 3.)

The above is a motivational constraint on reasons. Consider also this epistemic constraint: That p is a reason for a person to φ only if she is in a position to know that p.13 This is a substantive principle which also applies in both the epistemic and practical domains. According to it, only facts within a person’s ken provide

9

See Conee and Feldman 2004.

More carefully, some deny this. Others make the more modest claim that only evidential considerations bear on whether a belief possesses the kind of justification necessary for knowledge, that is, for epistemic justification.

11 Williams 1981 is an influential proponent of this principle. For discussion and further references, see Way Forthcoming-b; Way and Whiting Forthcoming.

12 For versions of this argument, see Kelly 2002; Shah 2006, 2008. For doubts about the claims about what we can believe and intend that it relies on, see Frankish 2007; Pink 1991; Schroeder 2012; Sharadin 2016; Way Forthcoming-b. For defence, see Archer Forthcoming; Shah and Silverstein 2013.

13 Proponents of epistemic constraints of this sort include Dancy 2000; Gibbons 2013; Lord 2015; Raz 2011; and Kiesewetter (Chapter 5, this volume).

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CONOR M c HUGH , JONATHAN WAY , AND DANIEL WHITING

reasons for her to act or to think.14 This is to say, whether a fact is a reason for a person depends on her epistemic status with respect to that fact.

The motivational constraint might be taken to support the epistemic constraint. The idea, in short, is that if a person is in no position to know a reason, she is no position to act on it.15 An epistemic constraint of the above sort bears on the debate between objectivists and perspectivists about what is sometimes called the deliberative ought, the ought in play when a person asks herself, with the aim of making a decision, ‘What ought I to do?’16 Objectivists maintain that what a person ought in this sense to do is determined by the facts, without restriction. Perspectivists, in contrast, maintain that what a person ought in the deliberative sense to do is determined by her perspective. What constitutes a person’s perspective? Different answers to this question result in different versions of perspectivism. For present purposes, suppose that a person’s perspective is constituted by her evidence, understood as including only what she is in a position to know. In view of this, consider: A patient has a treatable disease. If left untreated it will lead to death. All of the doctor’s evidence indicates that drug A will cure her patient and drug B will kill her. In fact, drug A will kill the patient and drug B will cure her. (cf. Jackson 1991: 462–3) According to objectivists, the doctor in this case ought to give drug B. According to perspectivists, the doctor ought to give drug A. On the assumption that a person’s reasons determine what she ought to do, the epistemic constraint on reasons accords with the perspectivist’s verdicts (defended in Chapter 5 by Kiesewetter). Perspectivists thus give epistemic factors a crucial role in the substantive determination of central normative facts in the practical realm.

3 Explanatory Connections We turn now from substantive connections to explanatory ones. These include ways that epistemic norms might be thought to be explained in terms of the practical, or vice versa, as well as unifying explanations of both.

Suppose that evidence for a proposition justifies or provides a reason for believing it. What might explain this? A standard answer in epistemology is 14

One might, of course, propose alternative principles by appeal to a different epistemic status than that of being in a position to know.

15 Lord 2015 argues at length that the epistemic constraint follows from the motivational one, at least when these are restricted to decisive reasons.

16 For some further contributions to this debate, see Graham 2010; Kiesewetter 2011; Mason 2013; Zimmerman 2014.

INTRODUCTION

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teleological. Having true beliefs (and avoiding false beliefs) is an end. If a person has evidence for a proposition, this indicates that, in believing it, she will realize or secure this end. Hence, such evidence is or provides a reason for so believing.17 In what way is believing what is true an end? One—not the only—way to understand this is as an aim that people have in forming and revising beliefs.18 This proposal represents epistemic normativity as a species of instrumental normativity, which is often taken to be a paradigmatic form of practical normativity. If a person aims to bake a cake, instrumental rationality in some way requires her to take the means to satisfying this aim, say, by buying the ingredients. In a similar fashion, when a person aims to believe the truth, instrumental rationality in some way requires her to take the means to satisfying this aim, say, by following her evidence. (Steglich-Petersen defends such an account of epistemic normativity in Chapter 13.)

Another proposal takes off from the thought that beliefs provide the basis for action or the input to practical reasoning. For example, when a person believes that the recipe requires eggs, she might on that basis fetch some. This proposal can also be developed in a broadly teleological way. One might think that it is the function or purpose of belief to serve this role. In turn, one might seek to explain why evidence provides a reason for belief by appeal to that function or purpose.

Evidence for a belief indicates that it is an accurate guide for action, hence, that it is fit for inclusion in practical deliberation. Hence, such evidence is or provides a reason for belief.19 It is an interesting question whether this explanation competes with or complements the preceding one. (Nolfi defends a proposal of this sort in Chapter 9, while Brown challenges the idea that belief should be understood in terms of its practical role in Chapter 2.)

These are examples of how one might try to ground epistemic normativity in practical normativity or concerns. (For more examples, see Reed’s Chapter 10.)

In this way, we might find explanatory connections between the epistemic and practical domains. Of course, such explanatory connections might run in the other direction. Consider again instrumental rationality. Here is a rough formulation of a norm of instrumental rationality: You must intend to ψ if you intend to φ and believe that φing is a necessary means to ψing.

17 Foley 1987 gives a classic development of such an approach; for a more recent defence, see Ahlstrom-Vij and Dunn 2014. Influential critics include Berker 2013 and Kelly 2003.

18 For an influential discussion of this idea, see Velleman 2000. See also McHugh 2012-a, 2012-b; Shah and Velleman 2005; Steglich-Petersen 2006.

19 For other ways of developing this idea, see Côté-Bouchard 2015; Whiting 2014.

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CONOR M c HUGH , JONATHAN WAY , AND DANIEL WHITING

Suppose that intending to do something involves believing that you will do it. In that case, the above norm might seem to follow from a requirement of epistemic rationality: You must believe that you will ψ if you believe that you will φ and believe that you will φ only if you will ψ.

So, given the ‘cognitivist’ assumption that intentions involve beliefs, one might try to ground a certain sort of practical norm in a certain sort of epistemic norm.20 (For criticism of this approach, see Lord’s Chapter 7.)

An alternative way to ground the practical in the epistemic is to offer an account of some normative property, such as that of being a reason, which appeals to an epistemic property. Consider the proposal that a reason for a person to φ is evidence that she ought to φ.21 For example, that a person is in pain is evidence that you ought to help her. Hence, on this view, it is a reason for doing so. This account (which Star defends in Chapter 12) explains practical reasons in terms of a central epistemic property, that of evidence.

It is arguably an attractive feature of this view that it offers a unified account of reasons, one that applies to reasons for belief as well as reasons for action. Reasons of all kinds are evidence; epistemic reasons are evidence that a person ought to believe a proposition while practical reasons are evidence that a person ought to act.

Of course, it is not the only view of this unifying sort on the market. Consider the view that reasons are facts that explain why a person ought to φ, where φing might be acting or believing.22 Or consider the view that reasons are premises of good reasoning, whether to a theoretical conclusion, a belief, or a practical conclusion, an intention or action.23 The teleological proposal noted above might also be understood in this way: reasons to φ—whether φing is believing or acting—are considerations which help explain why φing promotes one’s aims (desires, wants, etc.).24, 25 Despite their differences, these accounts of what it is to be a reason assume that a unified explanation—that is, one that applies to both reasons for belief and reasons for action—is possible. Such an account is attractive, insofar as it 20

For an early statement of this kind of view, see Harman 1976. For more recent defences, see Setiya 2007; Velleman 1989; Wallace 2006. For criticism, see Bratman 1999: ch. 13; Brunero 2009.

21 22 See Kearns and Star 2009; Thomson 2008.

For this view, see Broome 2013.

23 For versions of this view, see Setiya 2014; Way Forthcoming-a.

24 Schroeder 2007 expresses sympathy for this view. See also Finlay 2006.

25 Unlike some of the views discussed earlier in this section, these views are typically presented as analyses of reasons—that is, accounts of what it is to be a reason—rather than simply as accounts of what grounds reasons or of what explains reasons. For a recent discussion of the relationship between analyses and grounds, see Rosen 2015.

INTRODUCTION

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promises to explain the similarities between reasons for belief and action. Nonetheless, one might, of course, doubt that any such account is possible. Perhaps reasons for belief are just very different beasts from reasons for action (as Heuer suggests in Chapter 3). Perhaps, in turn, oughts as they apply to belief are very different beasts from oughts as they apply to action. More generally, perhaps the norms governing belief are entirely independent of the norms governing action.

On these views, the domain of the normative is fragmented or, rather, there is not one such domain but a number of them. Such views would also have their attractions—for instance, they might explain why it is hard to make sense of weighing practical reasons against epistemic reasons. (For discussion, see also Reisner’s Chapter 11.)

4 Conclusion The above provides an overview of some of the themes which the contributions to this collection explore. We make no pretence that the overview, or for that matter the collection itself, is exhaustive. The question of how practical norms and epistemic norms relate raises many more issues than any one volume can cover.

The hope is that the collection as a whole demonstrates the importance and interest of asking that question and the many lines of inquiry that lead from it.

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Schroeder, M. 2007: Slaves of the Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schroeder, M. 2012: The Ubiquity of State-Given Reasons. Ethics 122: 457–88.

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1 Putting Fallibilism to Work Charity Anderson

1 Introduction A connection between knowledge and reasons for action is defended in recent literature as follows: when one knows p one is in a good enough epistemic position to treat p as a reason for action (hereafter, Sufficiency).1 Sufficiency— or some nuanced version of it—is used to motivate pragmatic encroachment: the view that pragmatic factors are relevant to whether a subject has knowledge.2 When combined with fallibilism—the widely accepted idea that knowledge is compatible with an epistemic chance of error—Sufficiency results in a rather counterintuitive picture.3 Namely, it results in the rejection of purism, the view that pragmatic factors are irrelevant to knowledge.4 Fallibilism, purism, and Sufficiency each have substantial prima facie intuitive support; and yet the three seem to form an inconsistent triad.

To see why these three have been thought to form a trilemma, consider two agents with the same rather strong epistemic position for a proposition. Suppose the practical details are such that one agent ought to act, but the other ought not 1 A knowledge-reasons connection has also been defended in terms of a necessary principle: one is appropriate to treat p as a reason for action only if one knows p. This chapter is neutral with respect to this principle.

2 See Fantl and McGrath (2002, 2007, 2009), Hawthorne (2004), Stanley (2005), and Hawthorne and Stanley (2008).

3 Fallibilism is a technical term and although there is no agreed-upon definition, there is a core idea that is often expressed in terms of the compatibility of knowledge with a chance of error. In Section 3, I offer a gloss on the notion of epistemic chance of error that provides a way to understand fallibilism while also maintaining a knowledge-first framework.

4 Also known as intellectualism, this view is sometimes characterized as the idea that two subjects with the same strength of epistemic position for p are in the same position to know p. It is not entirely clear which factors count as ‘epistemic’ and which do not, but one point of agreement that tends to guide discussion is that practical factors, such as the cost of being wrong about p, are not epistemic.

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to act, for some action (often this is done by positing that one agent is in a ‘highstakes’ setting and the other in a ‘low-stakes’ setting). Assuming fallibilism, it’s natural to think the agent in the ‘low-stakes’ setting knows. Given this assumption, we can see why Sufficiency and purism cannot both be affirmed: if Sufficiency is true, then the agent that ought not act does not know the relevant proposition. Since the difference between the agent that knows and the agent that doesn’t know is due to some non-epistemic factor (the agent’s practical situation), purism is violated. (If we instead start by holding purism fixed, we get the result that Sufficiency is violated.)5 For better or worse (in my opinion, for better), fallibilism has earned the status of an indispensable commitment of contemporary epistemology. From this vantage point, the problem could be stated as a dilemma for fallibilists: fallibilists must choose between purism and Sufficiency.6 One goal of this chapter is to show that there is a fallibilist option that can avoid the trilemma.

My primary goal, though, is to argue against pragmatic encroachment by arguing against Sufficiency. The structure of this chapter is as follows: in Section 2, I challenge the account of reasons that underlies one prominent way of arguing for Sufficiency and then propose an alternative account of the relationship between knowledge and reasons for action. Section 3 examines the trilemma between purism, fallibilism, and Sufficiency and delineates a position that can maintain all three. Thus, there is a way out of the trilemma. I conclude with a final consideration in support of my preferred resolution of the trilemma: rejection of Sufficiency.

2 Against Safe Reasons and KJ 2.1 Unpacking the principles The knowledge-action links have been formulated in a variety of nuanced ways.

I will focus here on the following conception of Sufficiency, defended at length by Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath (2009): (KJ) If you know that p, then p is warranted enough to justify you in ϕ-ing, for any ϕ.7 5

See Fantl and McGrath (2009: 84–6) for a detailed explanation of the trilemma.

Fantl and McGrath (2009: last chapter) discuss infallibilism as a tenable option, though they do not go as far as to recommend that we reject fallibilism; on the contrary, they seem to strongly favor maintaining fallibilism.

7 Alternative wordings of KJ replace “p is warranted enough to justify you in ϕ-ing, for any ϕ” with other phrases, such as “one is in a good enough epistemic position to rely on p in practical 6

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CHARITY ANDERSON

The central argument Fantl and McGrath offer to motivate KJ involves a framework that connects knowledge and rational action via reasons. Their case for KJ is based on the following two principles about reasons: (KR) If you know that p, then p is warranted enough to be a reason you have to ϕ, for any ϕ. (2009: 69) (Safe Reasons) If p is a reason you have to ϕ, then p is warranted enough to justify you in ϕ-ing, for any ϕ. (2009: 77)8 In what follows I will argue that Safe Reasons is false. If my argument succeeds, one motivation for KJ is undermined. The same line of reasoning I offer against Safe Reasons can be advanced against KJ directly, showing KJ to be false.

A few preliminary points are in order. First, there are multiple ways a proposition could fail to justify you in ϕ-ing; epistemic propriety is just one dimension along which we can evaluate reasons for action. These principles speak only to the epistemic propriety of p for justified action. To fix on how epistemic propriety comes apart from other kinds of propriety, consider a setting where free doughnuts are being given out just outside your office, but you have no idea that this is the case. You fail to be in the right kind of epistemic position towards the proposition there are free doughnuts outside your office that is required for you to be justified in treating this proposition as your reason for stepping outside.

Alternatively, a proposition could fail to justify you in ϕ-ing because, despite having strong warrant for the proposition, the proposition fails to be connected in the right way to ϕ-ing. For example, even if I have top-grade warrant for the proposition I exist, this proposition does not justify me in walking my dog because it fails to be connected in the right way to the action. Nevertheless, the proposition I exist is warranted enough to justify me in walking my dog. In this case, something other than epistemic propriety prevents I exist from justifying me in walking my dog. reasoning” (Brown 2012: 155) and “it is appropriate to treat p as a reason for acting” (Hawthorne and Stanley 2008: 578). The differences in wording will not be significant for my purposes: the difficulties I raise for KJ can be extended to these versions of the principle. In Section 3, I discuss a way of understanding Hawthorne and Stanley’s principle that does not equate it with KJ. 8

The argument depends on a further connecting principle: (Connecting Principle): If p is warranted enough to be a reason you have for ϕ-ing, then p is warranted enough to justify you in ϕ-ing, for any ϕ.

I will focus my discussion on Safe Reasons rather than the Connecting Principle for two reasons: first, it is the principle that plays a central role in Fantl and McGrath’s discussion; and second, the locution of a ‘reason one has’ maps onto ordinary language more easily than the ‘warranted enough to be a reason one has.’ But note that the argument I level against Safe Reasons is also a counterexample to the Connecting Principle.

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The discussion in this chapter concerns when weakness in one’s epistemic position makes it inappropriate to treat a proposition as a reason for action. In Fantl and McGrath’s preferred terminology, these are situations where weakness in epistemic position ‘stands in the way’ of a proposition justifying action.9 To identify when weakness in epistemic position stands in the way of a proposition justifying action, I introduce the following test: Strengthening test: conditional on p.

what S ought to do is the same as what S ought to do

When what one ought to do differs from what one ought to do conditional on some proposition, one fails the strengthening test for that proposition. When one fails the test, epistemic weakness stands in the way of appropriately treating that proposition as a reason to act.10 The strengthening test is naturally applied in a decision theory framework, where what one ought to do is the top ranked action on an ordering given by one’s epistemic position and utilities.11 What one ought to do conditional on some proposition is the action that ranks top conditional on that proposition.12 The strengthening test plays an important role in the principles above. Passing the strengthening test is a necessary condition on a proposition being a reason one has to ϕ (by Safe Reasons). In the same way, KJ makes passing the strengthening test a necessary condition on knowledge. I will argue against both of these principles. My discussion leaves KR untouched as a plausible connection between knowledge and reasons for action. The picture I am inclined towards is one whereby when one knows a proposition the proposition is a reason one has to act, but where being a reason one has does not entail that one is appropriate to treat 9

See Fantl and McGrath (2009: 67–8).

Passing the strengthening test is not a sufficient condition for one’s epistemic position to be warranted enough to justify action because one might pass the test even though one’s epistemic position is very weak. Plausibly there is some minimal threshold required, in addition to passing the strengthening test, in order for p to be warranted enough to justify action.

11 The notion ‘epistemic position’ is flexible with respect to various interpretations; as I use it here, it is subject to a few constraints: first, it excludes non-epistemic features of one’s situation; second, it is externalist—one’s epistemic position does not supervene on one’s internal mental state.

Third, one’s epistemic position is not to be construed as including one’s total knowledge, as on such a picture one will automatically pass the strengthening test for each proposition known. See Section 3 for further discussion and for a relaxing of this last constraint.

12 Some advocates of the knowledge-action principles may object to a test that relies on decision theory. For my purposes here, the helpfulness of the test relies on only basic and relatively harmless features of decision theory. The strengthening test bears strong similarity to the slogan test that Fantl and McGrath offer (2009: 68), which is as follows: “if merely strengthening your epistemic position can make a difference as to whether p justifies you in ϕ-ing, then weaknesses in your epistemic position stand in the way of its so justifying you.”

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