Abstract
Philosophers have often noted a contrast between practical and theoretical reasons when it comes to cases involving equally balanced reasons. When there are strong practical reasons for A-ing, and equally strong practical reasons for some incompatible option, B-ing, the agent is permitted to make an arbitrary choice between them, having sufficient reason to A and sufficient reason to B. But when there is strong evidence for P and equally strong evidence for ~ P, one isn’t permitted to simply believe one or the other. Instead, one must withhold belief, neither believing that P nor believing that ~ P. This paper examines what explains this contrast, focusing in particular on a proposal recently developed by Mark Schroeder across several papers. Schroeder aims to explain the contrast by an appeal to non-evidential, epistemic reasons against belief. But, I argue, it’s not clear exactly what those reasons are, nor how those reasons are to be weighed against evidential reasons. Despite these challenges, I argue that there are grounds for optimism that the contrast can be explained within the broad framework Schroeder provides, and I aim to provide resources to meet the aforementioned challenges.
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Notes
Although I’ll often consider cases in which the reasons are equally balanced, there could be underdetermination due to incommensurability, in which case, strictly speaking, there wouldn’t be an equal balance. I’ll here follow Raz (1986: p. 322), who takes two options to be “incommensurate if it is neither true that one is better than the other nor true that they are of equal value.” To illustrate the possibility, Raz (1986: p. 332) provides the (now standard) example of someone choosing between two careers – a career in law and a career as a clarinetist. It won’t matter, for the purposes of this paper, whether the underdetermination is due to an equal balance or to incommensurability.
Berker (2018: p. 430).
Harman (2004).
Berker (2018).
As we’ll see below, once we recognize such non-evidential epistemic reasons, we’ll see how my initial description of the common contrast in the first paragraph, while fairly standard, is misleading in that such reasons are left out. There’s also a terminological difference in that Schroeder speaks of non-evidential epistemic reasons, not non-evidential theoretical reasons, and I presented the common contrast in terms of a difference between practical and theoretical reasons (which aligns with how it usually presented). But this is merely a different choice of terminology, and I take Schroeder’s use of “epistemic” (which will be explained below) to map onto my use of “theoretical” in this introduction. To avoid confusion, I’ll use “epistemic” in discussing Schroeder’s views below.
Harman (2004: p. 45) gives a similar pair of examples, on which these are based.
There are variations on John’s case in which the library reasons and party reasons are equally balanced, but he’s not permitted to arbitrarily choose one or the other: perhaps John knows that he’s about to receive more practically relevant information that may tip the scales in one direction or the other. Here, he would be prohibited (for now) from making an arbitrary choice between them. (Schroeder 2012b: pp. 470–473 discusses a similar case).
The common contrast cannot be explained simply by noting that when it comes to action there are two options (A-ing, not A-ing) whereas when it comes to believing there are three options (believing that P, believing that ~ P, withholding belief). For one thing, it’s not clear why we shouldn’t instead say that when it comes to believing there are two options (believing that P, not believing that P) and allow that there may be multiple ways of not believing that P (e.g., by withholding, or by instead believing that ~ P). That would then be analogous to the practical case, in which there might be multiple ways of not A-ing. (John, for instance, could not go to the party by instead going to the library, or by going nowhere.) Or, putting the point another way, it’s not clear why we shouldn’t think the practical case involves three (or more) options. For instance, we might think of John’s case as involving three options: going to the party, going to the library, and neither going to the party nor going to the library. I’m inclined to think that there are several acceptable ways of characterizing the options available to John and Jane. Additionally, even if we were forced to accept some strictly regimented conception of the relevant options, we still have to address the substantive question of how to explain the differences between John and Jane. That strictly regimented conception of the options could at best be a component of that explanation.
Schroeder (2015: p. 163). I’ll here follow Schroeder and take the competing reasons to be reasons against doing A. He does note other possibilities (pp. 163–164), some of which would make the parenthetical “(cohesive)” relevant, but I’ll set those aside. His formulation of Sufficiency as Balance also includes a statement of when reasons are conclusive (“A set S of reasons for X in favor of A is conclusive just in case for each (cohesive) set T of competing reasons, S is weightier than T.”) that’s not relevant to our purposes here.
Schroeder (2015: p. 165, 2012a: p. 274). The 2012a paper presents the third alternative as “withholding belief,” while the 2015 paper presents the third alternative as “lacking belief.” Some philosophers (Friedman, 2013; Sturgeon, 2010) have argued that withholding belief on whether P is a distinct positive attitude, not to be identified with lacking both a belief that P and a belief that ~ P. (Note that if you’ve never considered the question of whether P, you could lack both beliefs. But it would at least be somewhat odd to say that you’re withholding belief about P in that case.) If we follow Friedman and Sturgeon in thinking that withholding is a distinct positive attitude, then it’s plausible that not all reasons to lack belief are reasons to withhold. Consider Schroeder’s example (discussed in the following section) of the reason to lack belief in PvQ where someone already believes P with sufficient evidence, and Q is some arbitrary proposition. (The reason, roughly, is that such a belief would be useless for drawing new inferences.) Presumably, this wouldn’t also be a reason to have a distinct positive attitude of withholding with respect to PvQ.
In Schroeder’s view, this would be the kind of rationality which is entailed by knowledge. There may be some sense in which it is rational for one to believe that P when there’s a strong incentive to do so, but this wouldn’t be the kind of rationality involved in knowing that P.
It’s worth noting a potential terminological complication here. In introducing the John and Jane cases, I employed Berker’s (2018) terminology of permissive and prohibitive balancing, which I think helpfully describes those cases, since John is permitted to choose one of the options, and Jane is prohibited from simply believing one or the other. But if we look closely at Berker’s definition of prohibitive balancing (see p. 430), the idea is that in a case where there’s good epistemic reasons for believing that P and equally good epistemic reason for believing that ~ P and there are no other epistemic reasons in play, one is prohibited from simply believing one or the other. (It’s not just that there’s no other evidence, but that there are no other epistemic reasons.) In light of this, perhaps we should say that Schroeder’s strategy would show how cases like Jane’s case aren’t, strictly speaking, cases of prohibitive balancing, since there are actually other epistemic reasons in play which might go unnoticed: non-evidential, epistemic reasons. Terminology aside, Schroeder’s strategy would nonetheless provide a helpful way of explaining the differences between John and Jane – particularly, why Jane can’t just believe one or the other, while John is permitted to make an arbitrary choice between the library and the party – which is my main concern in this paper.
See, for instance, (2012a: p. 276).
Schroeder (2015: p. 166).
Schroeder (2012a: p. 277).
Schroeder (2012a: p. 277). The reference is to the well-known short story by Frank Stockton, “The Lady, or the Tiger?”. In the fable, one becomes the tiger’s next meal in choosing that door.
Schroeder (2012b: pp. 470–473).
Additionally, Jane is currently deliberating about whether John will show up, and we can assume that she cares, at least theoretically, about the answer, even if it will have no practical upshot for her plans. If there are reasons to avoid cluttering our minds (see Harman 1986: pp. 12–15) – reasons which might explain why it’s permissible to avoid forming beliefs in arbitrary disjunctions entailed by the contents of our current beliefs – those reasons are typically thought to be inapplicable when one is deliberating about the question or cares about the question. (For relevant discussion, see Broome, 2013: pp. 157–158).
See Schroeder (2007: pp. 93–97) for support for this general strategy.
Although I’m leaving out the qualification here, I’m taking “reasons” to refer to epistemic reasons (some of which are evidential, some of which are non-evidential). I take no stand in this paper on the contested question of whether there are pragmatic reasons for belief. For a small sample of important contributions to this debate, see Kelly (2002), Shah (2006), Leary (2017), and Berker (2018).
Schroeder would also reject the general principle. Recall his statement of Sufficiency as Balance: “A set S of reasons for X in favor of A is sufficient just in case for each (cohesive) set T of competing reasons, S is at least as weighty as T.” The qualification “cohesive” is designed to rule out having the reasons for both B and C compete with the reasons for A in the way that generates the problem mentioned in the main text. (See Schroeder, 2015: p. 164.).
The point here is just that the particular fact we’ve identified as a reason to withhold is also, intuitively, a reason against belief. (Other candidate reasons to withhold may also share this feature.) A stronger claim, which I’m not making here, would be that reasons to withhold just are reasons against believing, so anything identified as a reason to withhold is thereby a reason against believing.
Schroeder (2012a: p. 274).
As we noted earlier, it would be unwise to endorse the general thesis that reasons for an alternative to an option are always reasons against that option. (For another argument against this thesis, see Snedegar, 2021) Additionally, even if we did endorse that general thesis, it would be unwise to think that the weights of the reasons can always be added together in this way. (On this point, see Nair, 2016) But we’re endorsing no such general theses here.
Berker (2018: p. 450) notes that the weight of the reason would have to increase “like magic.” Berker doesn’t distinguish between the two weighing conceptions I’ve identified here. But he interprets Schroeder as employing the second, problematic weighing conception. (See p. 449.) See also Snedegar (2017: pp. 124–126) for relevant discussion.
I don’t think this objection provides a decisive refutation of the second weighing conception. There may be resources for dealing with the objection, especially if we relax Schroeder’s assumption that reasons to withhold are non-evidential. If we relax this assumption, we could perhaps maintain that the fact that the evidence for P and ~ P balances out will be a reason to withhold that will always increase in weight to outweigh the weight of the evidence. And it need not be entirely mysterious: it’s just that reasons to withhold are systematically sensitive to how the evidence balances out. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.) But the view would nonetheless still be somewhat puzzling. It’s not puzzling that the weight of the reason to withhold would be systematically sensitive to how the evidence balances out. But it’s puzzling why it would also be systematically sensitive to the amount of balanced evidence – say, whether it’s a (3,3) or (6,6) balance. But the latter sensitivity would be what’s needed if the reason to withhold is to continue to be weighty enough as we increase the evidence on both sides. But there may be ways of explaining away this puzzling feature.
See Snedegar (2017: p. 131).
For the purposes of this paper, I don’t need to commit myself to any particular view about the weights of reasons other than that mentioned in the text here (namely, that increasing the benefits of both the library and party options would increase the opportunity costs of staying home, thereby increasing the strength of the set of reasons against staying home). We don’t want to endorse the unpromising proposal, discussed in §3 above, according to which reasons for one option are always reasons of the same weight against other options, since, as we noted, this would have the unwelcome result in the case with three equally good options that none are permitted. Additionally, it would be odd, to say the least, for us to say in John’s case that the benefits of going to the party and the benefits of going to the library are both reasons against staying home whose weights add together, since John can get at most one of these sets of benefits; he can’t both go to the party and go to the library.
Nor does that evidence that ~ P count as a reason against withholding. Nor does the conjunction of the evidence that P and the evidence that ~ P. In this particular context, there’s nothing that plays the role of the opportunity costs in the practical case, counting against the third alternative.
See Dancy (2004, esp. Ch. 3). The examples that follow are both taken from Dancy.
Additionally, as the strength of the evidence for P increases in this case, the risk of being wrong would diminish, which would plausibly also reduce the weight of this reason against believing that P. This reason against believing that P would thus be both outweighed and further “attenuated,” in Dancy’s (2004: p. 42) terminology, as the evidence for P increases. I find this feature to be independently attractive, though nothing hinges on that here. (It’s worth observing that there are practical examples in which some fact functions as both a reason for A-ing and an attenuator of reasons against A-ing. Here’s one example involving risk: the risk of a messy divorce is a reason against marrying Sam. But Sam’s good character is a reason to marry Sam, and attenuates this reason against marrying Sam, by reducing the risk of a messy divorce.) The flip side of this is that the reason against belief can be “intensified” (again, in Dancy’s terminology) as the risk of being wrong increases. So, in cases like Jane’s, in which the evidence that John will show up balances out with the evidence that he won’t, the reason would be significantly weighty (since the risk of being wrong is very high).
On default rules, and their relationship to reasons, see Horty (2012).
James (1897: p. 18).
One might worry about how we should understand the risk of mistaken beliefs as a reason against belief, if it’s apart from the downstream practical consequences. One option would be to adopt a broadly instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality in which the rationality of doxastic attitudes is explained in terms of epistemic goals, such as, roughly, the goals of avoiding error and having true beliefs. (See Foley, 1987, Ch.1.) On this conception of epistemic rationality, Jane’s forming the belief that John will show up is instrumentally irrational with respect to her goal of avoiding error, in the same way that my not studying for an exam is instrumentally irrational with respect to my goal of doing well on the exam, since both risk not achieving the goal. But we could also work with non-instrumentalist conceptions of epistemic rationality. Some philosophers are skeptical that agents have any such general goals as avoiding error or having true beliefs, as opposed to more specific, fine-grained goals, such as avoiding error with respect to such-and-such (Kelly, 2003). And they thus suggest that epistemic rationality cannot be reduced to instrumental rationality. (Conceptions of epistemic rationality which appeal to belief’s “constitutive aim” need not count as instrumentalist, since that constitutive aim need not be the goal of any particular agent. On this point, see Velleman, 2000: pp. 19, 184, 253.) But both the instrumentalists and non-instrumentalists alike would deny that our reason to avoid mistaken beliefs must depend entirely upon the downstream practical consequences of mistaken beliefs.
However, we may wish to avoid identifying reasons against belief with reasons for withholding. See Schroeder (2017: p. 373).
Development of this thought would require that we discuss the nature of withholding (including whether and how it differs from merely lacking belief), as well as the nature of the reasons for and against withholding. Unfortunately, we lack the space to do that here. But I think we have some grounds for optimism that our approach will be able to generate good predictions when it comes to withholding.
On the distinction between reasons and background conditions, see Schroeder (2007: Ch. 2).
See Raz (1975: pp. 22–25).
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2021 St. Louis Annual Conference on Reasons and Rationality (SLACRR), where I received very helpful comments on the paper from Jeff Behrends. I also owe a large debt to the excellent referees for Synthese who helped me improve this paper significantly.
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Brunero, J. Practical reasons, theoretical reasons, and permissive and prohibitive balancing. Synthese 200, 92 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03628-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03628-8