Abstract
A reason is said to be “of the wrong kind” when, although it counts as a consideration broadly in favor of (or against) having an attitude, it seems to not bear on the object of the attitude in a way that is relevant to determining whether the attitude is appropriate. When applied to belief it is often taken as a datum that the only genuine or “right” reasons for belief are those that bear directly on the question of “whether p”; such reasons are often called “evidential” “epistemic” or perhaps “truth-directed” or “alethic.” Wrong kinds of reasons may have the appearance of reasons but are not genuine reasons. The challenge, or what is sometimes called “the wrong kind of reason problem” is to find some criterion which will delineate the right kind from the wrong kind such that only evidential reasons end up as the right kind. Many solutions have been offered and rejected, but there is a general consensus that there is a real distinction here and the challenge is to construct a theory which captures it. I argue that there is no distinction to capture, at least in the case of reasons for belief.
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Notes
- 1.
Nishi Shah defines evidentialism this way, namely as the view that “only evidence can be a reason for belief” and the pragmatist as one “committed to the existence of at least some non-evidential reasons for belief.” (Shah 2006, 482) Evidentialism is often used to describe a position about justification, and argues that beliefs are only justified if they are based on evidence; those opposed will offer examples where it appears that a belief can be justified without evidence. But anti-evidentialists of this kind are often also anti-pragmatists and so evidentialists in Shah’s sense. How these two kinds of evidentialism are connected is an interesting question, one I hope to pursue in future work. It should also be noted that some who are committed to evidentialism as a theory of justification can allow that non-evidential reasons exist, but that these are not relevant when we are evaluating belief from an epistemic perspective, and that believing for such reasons will lead one away from rationality. This is, for example, Richard Feldman’s (2000) view. I discuss and critique this view in Chap. 2 of Believing Against the Evidence.
- 2.
This distinction is often put in terms of state given reasons and object given reasons.
- 3.
The reasoning may not be as bad as it appears. Something like “The only way that believing the butler did it will save my life is if the butler did it” could be a suppressed premise.
- 4.
We will see an example of such an argument when discussing Nishi Shah’s view.
- 5.
For discussion and criticisms of Schroeder’s view along similar lines see Sharadin (2013)
- 6.
In (2017) I discuss the Referee example as well as some other cases where it appears agents have practical reasons to believe. There are many ways that one can re-describe this case to preserve the idea that only right kind of reasons for belief are ones that raise the probability of the belief being true. One could say that the non-evidential reasons are not reasons which bear on whether or not to revise one’s belief but instead bear on one’s broader epistemic goals. Or one might suggest that these are reasons which bear on Geoff’s action, namely the making of the call. I present cases like this not as way of demonstrating that they conclusively show that practical reasons can be genuine reasons for belief, but to try to show that in a very natural way of thinking about doxastic deliberation, non-evidential considerations are salient. If there are independent reasons for thinking that such cases cannot exist, then the motivation for such re-descriptions are clear. But whether such independent reasons have been given is exactly what I am questioning.
- 7.
In (2015) and (2017)
- 8.
For a helpful discussion of normativism about belief see Nolfi (2015). Among those Nolfi cites as endorsing normativism are Jonathan Adler, Allan Gibbard, Peter Graham, Peter Railton, Nishi Shah, Ernest Sosa and Ralph Wedgwood. Stephanie Leary (2016) argues that the strategy of appealing to the constitutive standards of correctness of belief to rule out non-evidential reasons for beliefs fails.
- 9.
See footnote 6 for some ways of responding to these cases. Another strategy is to argue that practical reasons could not be the kinds of reasons that determine whether one has knowledge and only reasons that are genuine reasons are those such that if one has a true non-Gettiered belief that one would have knowledge. This kind of view is very much like the one that appeals to the truth aim or norm, but instead appeals to knowledge as belief’s aim or norm. But again, what rules out that such considerations could bear on knowledge in a significant way? Any theory which allows for pragmatic encroachment on knowledge is allowing that practical considerations are not wholly irrelevant to whether one knows. Further, such a view seems to commit one to a particular view of knowledge which precludes that one can have a perfectly reasonable belief even when one is not in a position to know.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Jonathan Way (2016) has argued that for the constraint on reasoning to preclude non-evidential reasons for belief it needs to be this very strong constraint, but unlike the weaker constraint that just says it needs to be capable of motivating or of operating in deliberation or reasoning “the condition looks gerrymandered to support an argument for evidentialism.” (812) Susanna Rinard (2015) has recently argued that the characterizations of the basing relation which rule out non-evidential reasons for belief rule out a lot more, namely they rule out non-evidential reasons for action as well.
- 13.
I argue against this view in (2015), especially Chaps. 2 and 3. I do not there, however, offer an account of the basing relation so that we could sort reasons into good and bad ones, and so distinguish between cases where a belief is properly based on a practical reason and when it is not. This is the main topic of a forthcoming paper “Can Beliefs Be Based on Practical Reasons?”
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McCormick, M.S. (2018). No Kind of Reason Is the Wrong Kind of Reason. In: McCain, K. (eds) Believing in Accordance with the Evidence. Synthese Library, vol 398. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95993-1_15
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