Abstract
A growing number of philosophers are defending what can be understood as Right Reason Accounts of the norm of assertion. According to these accounts, an agent’s asserting that p is epistemically permissible only if that agent asserts that p for a right (normative) reason, i.e., a reason that at least contributes to making it epistemically permissible to assert that p. In this paper, I argue that Right Reason Accounts do not allow for the possibility of asserting epistemically permissibly only for the wrong reason(s). However, it is a commonplace in all normative domains (e.g., morality, prudence, and aesthetics) that an agent can—at least sometimes—φ rightly (or permissibly) only for the wrong reason(s).
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Notes
Bach & Harnish (1979).
I thank an anonymous referee for this journal for suggesting that I be clear that the right reason is undefeated.
Turri (2011) introduces talk of “simple” versions of the norm of assertion.
McHugh (2012, 9).
I am not suggesting that these domains (e.g., morality, prudence, and aesthetics) are only prescriptive, just that they provide or are partly constituted by prescriptive norms.
For more on the distinction between kinds of reasons, see: Alvarez (2010, Chapter 2). Many think that motivating reasons are a subset of explanatory reasons. For my purposes, I will understand “explanatory reasons” as referring to non-motivating explanatory reasons.
For my purposes, I can remain neutral on the exact ontology of the “reason for which” relation. Many proponents of RRT accounts (e.g., Turri, Pelling, and McKinnon) have in mind a causal account of the basing relation and, of course, a mainstream view of acting for a reason is likewise a causal view. For example, see Davidson (1980a and (1980b) and Arpaly and Schroeder, 2013, Ch. 3).
Lackey (2008), 125.
Turri (2011), 41.
Pelling (2013, 294).
Pelling (2013, 300).
Pelling (2013, 298-299).
McKinnon (2015), 52.
McKinnon (2015, 52).
Gerken (2017, 157).
Hughes (2019, 173, 181).
McKinnon (2015, Ch. 4). McKinnon explicitly notes that both her and Lackey’s and Turri’s accounts require asserting for the right reason (64, fn. 21).
McKinnon (2015, 55).
Infrequently, a single fact can constitute a right reason and a wrong reason. For example, the fact that an action will result in the death of innocent civilians counts against performing the action, but that same fact might also lead an evil empire to surrender and thus count in favor of performing the action. Thus, the fact that one’s action will result in the death of innocent civilians counts both for and against that action. Even though such cases exist, I will only rely on cases in which a wrong reason to φ is not also a right reason to φ. Moreover, the commonplace that one can φ permissibly for the wrong reason(s) is meant to apply to wrong reasons that are not also right reasons.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that this is a decisive reason for rejecting Right Reason Accounts. However, it certainly provides a strong reason against these views.
Aristotle NE 1105b.
Timmons (2002).
Kant G. 4:397.
The claim that the fact that p is an objective reason to believe that p, see: Sylvan & Sosa (2018, 569).
This distinction comes from Firth (1978) who distinguished between “propositional warrant” and “doxastic warrant.”
Martin (1983, 13).
Gardner (2007, 147).
Others defend the view that sincerity is a matter of having certain beliefs about what mental states one has when makes the relevant utterances (e.g., Ridge 2006). But, again, the view is not that one must perform some speech act on the basis of this belief, simply that one must have it at the time of utterance. Moreover, domains such as the promissory or assertoric are not the kind of authoritative demands that I am focused on. This is because, in part, they do not have distinctive blaming responses for unexcused violations of their norms. Moreover, the way that Austin speaks about insincere utterances suggests that he is talking about evaluative and not prescriptive standards. For example, he characterizes insincere utterances as “hollow” (1961, 226; 1962, 16, 18). Insofar as he is not just using a synonym for insincere, we might interpret him as meaning that these utterances lack a certain value.
Sverdlik (1996, 343).
I thank an anonymous referee for this journal for helping me see the importance of being clear about the generality of my objection.
Raz (1999, 39).
Raz (1999, 47).
Raz (1999, 49).
Raz (1999, 39).
Sometimes a single consideration can provide a first-order reason for an action and second-order reason to exclude acting for certain other reasons. For example, Raz (1999) gives the example of a soldier being ordered by his commanding officer to commandeer a van. This order is a first-order reason to commandeer the vehicle. However, it is, according to Raz, a second-order reason to exclude any reasons against commandeering the vehicle (42).
For a similar argument, see: Scanlon (2008, 58-60).
Dancy (2000, 4).
Of course, the “Koplik’s spots” need not figure in the literal content of Dave’s belief. Rather, he might just believe that they are “the spots that indicate measles” or something related.
Whiting (2017, 405).
For more on this point, see: Whiting (2017, 404).
I have placed “epistemically” in parenthesis because it is controversial whether there are different flavors of fittingness (e.g., moral, prudential, aesthetic, epistemic, etc.).
I thank an anonymous referee for this journal for suggesting that I offer some explanation of why so many epistemologists seemed to miss the fact that their views are incompatible with the possibility of asserting epistemically permissibly only for the wrong reason(s).
Hughes (2019) is explicit that the norm of assertion, whatever it precisely amounts to, ought to match the conditions for knowledge. Lackey (2007, 126, fn. 33) claims that the proper basing condition of her account is meant to be analogous to whatever condition on knowledge rules out Gettier cases—i.e., cases of justified, but accidentally true, belief.
For example, see: Markovits (2010).
In fact, Lackey (2007) seems to acknowledge that asserters that satisfy her performed norm of assertion are praiseworthy qua asserters (112).
Lackey, 2008, 118).
For example, see: Lewis (2021).
Moreover, it is also not clear that the important work done by the right reason requirement cannot be done with other machinery. For example, as I just mentioned, appealing to epistemic blameworthiness can plausibly account for why it is intuitively epistemically defective to assert on the basis of a bad epistemic reason.
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Acknowledgements
This paper benefitted from conversations with Errol Lord, Jaakko Hirvëla, Antti Kauppinen, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, Michael Vazquez, and Yunjie Zhang.
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Lewis, M. Right Reason Accounts of the Norm of Assertion. Erkenn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00806-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00806-7