Abstract
It is often controversial whether a certain infinite regress is generated in the first place. In this chapter, I will present a case study to illustrate this kind of controversy in some detail: a recent application of Lewis Carroll’s famous case to the debate on rationality. The main question throughout this chapter will be: is the regress suggested by Carroll’s Tortoise indeed generated? As we will see, this is a delicate issue and it is easy to be mistaken. At the end of the chapter, I will formulate a straightforward tool to check whether or not a given regress is generated.
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Notes
- 1.
The material of this chapter derives from Wieland (2013).
- 2.
Cf. “Here the narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair.” (Carroll 1895, p. 280).
- 3.
- 4.
Throughout this chapter, ‘p’ and ‘q’ are schematic letters to be replaced with full declarative sentences, and ‘φ’ and ‘ψ’, as before, with predicates which express actions.
- 5.
It may be controversial to say that we ought to believe all the consequences of the propositions we believe (even if they are obvious). Less controversial would be to conclude from (a) and (b) to: S is permitted to believe that q and prohibited from disbelieving that q. For simplicity I will stick to the obligation formulation.
- 6.
Both beliefs and intentions are propositional attitudes and may have the same content. As Broome (2002, Sect. 2) points out, believing that p differs from intending that p in at least the following sense: the former attitude is one of taking it as true (or at least plausible) that p, whereas the latter attitude is one of making it true that p.
- 7.
For an overview of these options, cf. Streumer (2010).
- 8.
Of course, complex issues attach to this wide-scope phenomenon that cannot be discussed here. For an overview, cf. Way (2010). For example, is it really rational to refuse to intend to stay home by sticking to one’s intention to publish and dropping one’s belief that publishing requires one to stay home? Also, to what extent are we psychologically free, even if we are entitled, to retract intentions and beliefs in the course of our reasoning?
- 9.
- 10.
Main pioneering applications of Carroll’s Tortoise to practical reasoning are Blackburn (1995) and Schueler (1995). Below I will mainly focus on Dreier (2001) and Brunero (2005). Importantly, some of these discussions concern the internal versus external reasons for action debate, rather than the rationality debate. Nevertheless, as we will see below, the parallel is quite close: where the latter speak of ‘obligations’, the former speak of ‘motivating reasons’.
- 11.
As Brunero himself notes, this case is a bit simplistic. Arguably, one has an obligation to believe what one’s evidence supports regarding whether p only if one is going to have any opinion about whether p at all, one is not in bad (or even misleading) evidential circumstances, and there are no strong non-evidential reasons to disbelieve that p.
- 12.
Note that, on Dreier’s account (2001, p. 35), to be motivated is not just to have a desire, but also to have a belief about how to satisfy that desire.
- 13.
For further details, see Failure Schema B in Chap. 3. As we have seen in that chapter, a slightly different story holds for Failure Schema A (where clause (ii) does not apply, but a different kind of premise does).
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Wieland, J.W. (2014). Case Study: Carroll’s Tortoise. In: Infinite Regress Arguments. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06206-8_4
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