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Notes
This discussion assumes bivalence for propositions. But suppose there is a bona fide proposition k associated with ‘The king of France is bald’ which gets no truth value when France is kingless. This proposition and its negation are presumably maximally unattractive: a(k) = a(~ k) ≈ 0. But what should we say about r(k)? If repulsion is attraction to the negation, we know exactly what to say: r(k) ≈ 0. But there may be a sense in which both k and ~ k are utterly repulsive given what we know: r(k) = r(~ k) ≈ 1032. And if we understand repulsion in this way—as a matter of seeing p as to be rejected—we should not identify r(p) with a(~p).
This view would not have to say that moral considerations—like the fact that it would morally wrong to blame Boris on statistical grounds—count as evidence against Boris, or even as reasons against being strongly attracted that might compete with narrowly evidential reasons. The evidence and the epistemic reasons may be just as one would have thought: the known facts of the case. The claim would rather be that moral considerations play a role in determining the strength with which E favors a given doxastic attitude. To speak the language of reasons, moral considerations might function as second-order reasons: reasons for giving a certain weight to E in regulating one’s doxastic attitudes.
This is Buchak’s view. Her argument is an argument for seeing belief as a further state not fixed by credence (and whatever underlies it).
Earlier I suggested that we might streamline Sturgeon’s framework by supposing that the force attitudes interact in such a way that a(p) + r(p) + n(p) = 1. This is tenable so long as we think of n(p) as a measure of the extent to which one takes one’s evidence to be thin or muddled. But if moral considerations bear differentially on n(p), it's not. Take the case given earlier in which one’s evidence does not change but one loses one’s moral reasons for neutrality when the stakes are lowered. If this is a case in which one’s justifiable a(Boris) and r(Boris) remain fixed while n(Boris) goes from high to low, n(p) cannot in general be fixed by a(p) and r(p).
For a defense of the idea that if one is open to non-evidential reasons for withholding judgment, one should also be open to non-evidential reasons for belief, see E. Gordon-Smith (Unpublished).
References
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Buchak, L. (2014). Belief, credence, and norms. Philosophical Studies, 169(2), 1–27.
Gordon-Smith, E. (Unpublished). The ethics of disbelief.
Schroeder, M. (2012). Stakes, withholding, and pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. Philosophical Studies, 160(2), 265–285.
Sinhababu, N. (2009). The humean theory of motivation reformulated and defended. The Philosophical Review, 118(4), 465–500.
Sturgeon, S. (2020). The rational mind. Oxford University Press.
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Rosen, G. Six questions for Professor Sturgeon. Philos Stud 180, 3217–3229 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01887-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01887-2