Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Deontological evidentialism and ought implies can

  • Published:
Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Deontological evidentialism is the claim that S ought to form or maintain S’s beliefs in accordance with S’s evidence. A promising argument for this view turns on the premise that consideration c is a normative reason for S to form or maintain a belief that p only if c is evidence that p is true. In this paper, I discuss the surprising relation between a recently influential argument for this key premise and the principle that ought implies can. I argue that anyone who antecedently accepts or rejects this principle already has a reason to resist either this argument’s premises or its role in support of deontological evidentialism.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Richard Feldman argues, moreover, that (DE) can be separated from Locke’s apparent commitment to doxastic voluntarism (cf. Feldman 2001, 89–90) and from Clifford’s moral argument in its defense (cf. Feldman 2006, 20).

  2. The source of this normative authority is a matter of debate. Since the term ‘obligation’ is so often and so naturally associated with moral obligation, I will here give preference to the more neutral term ‘normative requirement’. I will elide the ‘authoritative’ qualifier throughout.

  3. See Oliveira (2017) for resistance to three other arguments for (DE). As already mentioned in that paper, much of the wider literature in defense of “evidentialism” states it as an account of epistemic justification. In such cases, it is often unclear which kind of normative claim evidentialism is intended to be and, more to my present point, whether and how it is related to (DE). I suspect, at any rate, that my criticism of (DE) in this paper will be relevant to a good number of evidentialists about epistemic justification.

  4. This is one way of expressing the view made famous by Ross (1930) and further developed by Nagel (1970), Scanlon (1998), Raz (2002), and Parfit (2011). Notice, however, that (NR) could be stated as a weaker, satisficing principle by substituting ‘most normative reason’ for ‘sufficient normative reason’. My argument in this section goes through on either formulation. (NR), moreover, is neutral with respect to the nature of normative reasons themselves. It favors neither consequentialism nor Kantianism, neither objectivism nor subjectivism, neither realism nor anti-realism, and so on. Whatever the nature of normative reasons, (NR) simply claims that they are ontologically prior to, or are the grounds for, the relation of normative requirement that can hold between a certain individual and a certain attitude or action.

  5. My aim here is undermining an influential argument for (Only Evidence). For direct arguments against (Only Evidence), see McCormick (2015) and Reisner (forthcoming).

  6. Williams focuses on the contrast between claims of the form ‘A has reason to \(\phi\)’ and claims of the form ‘there is a reason for A to \(\phi\).’ He claims that any attempt to understand the latter expression in a way where it does not collapse into the former expression—in a way, that is, which expresses what he calls an external reason—sacrifices the essential connection between reasons and deliberation. I am here using ‘there is a reason for A to \(\phi\)’ neutrally throughout.

  7. See Garcia (2004, 233–235) and Smith (2013, 102) for examples of this reading.

  8. See Shah (2006, 484) for an example of this reading.

  9. It is difficult to make sense of the modality of the ‘can’ in these principles. Part of difficulty bears a family resemblance to issues about deviant causal chains in the literature on intentional action and turns on understanding the nature of what Williams (1993, 35) later called a “sound deliberative route.” I will leave these difficulties aside for now but will return to them on Sect. 5 below.

  10. See Shah (2006, 486) and Jones (2009, 149). Way (2016, 805) provides a slightly different formulation: “Reasons for you to believe p must be considerations from which you could reason to believing p.” Nothing in my argument turns on the differences between these formulations.

  11. I am not alone. See Kearns and Star (2009, 219–221), Turri (2011, 384), and Booth (2012, 511–512).

  12. Notice that (B-Basis) allows one to resist the first premise of Cowie’s (2014, 4007) argument for instrumentalism about the normativity of evidence: “there is reason to believe in accordance with one’s evidence (or value in so believing) because it is of great practical utility” (my emphasis). His argument, roughly, is that those who find other sources for the normativity of evidence must explain the “striking coincidence” of these normative facts. If (B-Basis) is true, however, then practical utility alone is not sufficient to ground the existence of a reason for belief. If (B-Basis) is true, that is, then there is no coincidence to explain in the first place. In his discussion of attempts to brush away the existence of a coincidence, Cowie (2014, 4012–4013) is remiss in not considering this possibility.

  13. See Nisbett and Wilson (1977) for these and other well-known experiments. See Kornblith (2014, 20–26) for a detailed summary of the large body of empirical literature documenting the misfortunes of unreflective belief-formation.

  14. See Moran (2001), Shah and Velleman (2005), Zalabardo (2010), Boghossian (2014), and McHugh (2015) for careful discussions of transparency and related issues.

  15. See Shah and Velleman (2005) for the suggestion that (T) reflects a necessary feature of our concept of belief. See Steglich-Petersen (2013) for a criticism of this suggestion.

  16. We find versions of this argument in Kelly (2002), Kolodny (2005), Shah (2006), Jones (2009), and Raz (2013). See Steglich-Petersen (2006) for criticism of premise 1; see McHugh and Way (2016) for criticism of premise 2; and see Steglich-Petersen (2008) for a criticism of the conjunction of premises 1 and 2. I will not entertain any direct criticism of these premises here. My criticisms are instead about the unexpected consequences of combining them with further claims.

  17. Different versions of (OIC) can be formulated by modifying the relevant senses of ‘ought’ and ‘can’, and some no doubt will object to my particular choices in this respect. Such qualms, however, should not be mistaken for an objection to my argument in this paper. My argument, recall, claims that there are problems for the use of the Transparency Argument in support of (DE) for those who accept this version of (OIC) as well as for those who deny it. So my argument does not depend on being sympathetic to this particular formulation.

  18. Some direct counterexamples to (OIC), however, are more contrived. Graham (2011a, 345–346), for example, exploits cases where (i) “it is plausible that the moral permissibility of A’s \(\phi\)-ing depends on the moral impermissibility of B’s \(\psi\)-ing,” and where (ii) “it is not plausible that rendering B incapable of refraining from \(\psi\)-ing would render A’s \(\phi\)-ing morally impermissible.” If there are cases of which (i) and (ii) are true, then there are counterexamples to (OIC). Graham goes on to identify one such case, and to defend various attempts to resist the assessment that (i) and (ii) are true of it.

  19. Fischer (2006, 25) uses this principle to argue against (OIC), and Booth (2012, 511) uses this principle to argue that we can have all-things-considered duties to believe.

  20. This is different from saying that every true ought-claim is constrained by the same general principles. There are many counterexamples to the suggestion that every ought-claim requires control. Feldman (1988, 674–676) discusses contractual and role oughts, for example, and Chrisman (2012, 603) discusses oughts that express state norms. These ought-claims, however, are not claims about normative reasons and normative requirements. I have argued elsewhere, moreover, that while practical ought-claims are related to the common notion of permissibility, doxastic ought-claims are related only to the different notion of non-agential permissibility (cf. Oliveira 2015).

  21. Graham (2011b, 6–7) offers three more cases against (Bridge). One of them aims to show the possibility of blameworthy obligation-fulfilling, and two of them aim to show that these cases do not depend on ignorance of any kind.

  22. Littlejohn (2012, 3) argues against Graham (2011a) that he has not identified a counterexample to (OIC). His argument turns on identifying an alternative explanation to the moral permissibility of the relevant action which does not depend on the moral impermissibility of the other relevant action (see fn. 14). His argument depends on accepting a certain principle about the legitimate use of violence on passive threats, and on rejecting Graham’s rejection of that principle. This is yet another way to defend (OIC).

  23. Notice that the question of whether evidential voluntarism is true is distinct and independent from the question of whether doxastic voluntarism is true. What is at stake in the former question is not whether forming a belief that p is under our control, but rather whether we have control over the way in which we form or refrain from forming it.

References

  • Alston, W. (1988). The deontological conception of epistemic justification. Philosophical Perspectives, 2, 257–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anomaly, J. (2008). Internal reasons and the ought-implies-can principle. Philosophical Forum, 39(4), 469–483.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blum, A. (2000). The Kantian versus Frankfurt. Analysis, 60, 287–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boghossian, P. (2014). What is inference? Philosophical Studies, 169(1), 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Booth, A. R. (2012). All things considered duties to believe. Synthese, 187(2), 509–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chrisman, M. (2012). The normative evaluation of belief and the aspectual classification of belief and knowledge attributions. Journal of Philosophy, 109, 588–612.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, W. K. (Ed.). (1877/1999). The ethics of belief. In The ethics of belief and other essays (pp. 70–97). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

  • Cowie, C. (2014). In defence of instrumentalism about epistemic normativity. Synthese, 191(16), 4003–4017.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (1988). Epistemic obligations. Philosophical Perspectives, 2, 235–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (2000). The ethics of belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60(3), 667–695.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (2001). Voluntary belief and epistemic evaluation. In M. Steup (Ed.), Knowledge, truth, and duty: Essays on epistemic justification, responsibility, and virtue (pp. 77–92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (2006). Clifford’s principle. James’ options. Social Epistemology, 20(1), 19–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (2008). Modest deontologism in epistemology. Synthese, 161, 339–355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, J. M. (Ed.). (2006). Introduction: A framework for moral responsibility. In My way (pp. 1–37). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Frankfurt, H. (1969). Moral responsibility and the principle of alternative possibilities. Journal of Philosophy, 66, 829–839.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garcia, E. V. (2004). Value realism and the internalism/externalism debate. Philosophical Studies, 117(1–2), 231–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, P. A. (2011a). Ought and ability. Philosophical Review, 120(3), 337–382.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, P. A. (2011b). Fischer on blameworthiness and ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Social Theory and Practice, 37(1), 63–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, W. E. (2009). The goods and the motivation of believing. In D. Pritchard, A. Haddock, & A. Millar (Eds.), Epistemic value (pp. 139–162). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kearns, S., & Star, D. (2009). Reasons as evidence. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 4, 215–242.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, T. (2002). The rationality of belief and some other propositional attitudes. Philosophical Studies, 110(2), 163–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kolodny, N. (2005). Why be rational? Mind, 114(455), 509–563.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kornblith, H. (2014). On reflection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Korsgaard, C. (1996). The sources of normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Littlejohn, C. (2012). Does ‘ought’ still imply ‘can’? Philosophia, 40(4), 821–828.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, J. (1706/1966). John Locke’s of the conduct of the understanding. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

  • Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. London: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCormick, M. (2015). Believing against the evidence. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McHugh, C. (2015). The illusion of exclusivity. European Journal of Philosophy, 23(4), 1117–1136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McHugh, C., & Way, J. (2016). Against the taking condition. Philosophical Issues, 26(1), 314–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moran, R. A. (2001). Authority and estrangement: An essay on self-knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T. (1970). The possibility of altruism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nisbett, R., & Wilson, T. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliveira, L. R. G. (2015). Non-agential permissibility in epistemology. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93(2), 389–394.

  • Oliveira, L. R. G. (2017). Deontological evidentialism, wide scope, and privileged values. Philosophical Studies, 174(2), 485–506.

  • Parfit, D. (2011). On what matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pascal, B (1670/1966). Pensées (transl: A. J. Krailsheimer). New York, NY: Penguin Press.

  • Plantinga, A. (1993). Warrant: The current debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Raz, J. (2002). Practical reasoning and norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raz, J. (2013). From normativity to responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reisner, A. (forthcoming). Pragmatic reasons for belief. In D. Star (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of reasons and normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Ross, W. D. (1930). The right and the good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What we owe each other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shah, N. (2006). A new argument for evidentialism. Philosophical Quarterly, 56(225), 481–498.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shah, N., & Velleman, J. D. (2005). Doxastic deliberation. Philosophical Review, 114(4), 497–534.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. (2013). On the nature and significance of the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts. In S. Kirchin (Ed.), Thick concepts (pp. 97–120). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Steglich-Petersen, A. (2006). No norm needed: On the aim of belief. The Philosophical Quarterly, 56(225), 499–516.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steglich-Petersen, A. (2008). Does doxastic transparency support evidentialism? Dialectica, 62(4), 541–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steglich-Petersen, A. (2013). Transparency, doxastic norms, and the aim of belief. Teorema, 32(3), 59–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • Street, S. (2012). Coming to terms with contingency: Humean constructivism about practical reason. In J. Lenman & Y. Shemmer (Eds.), Constructivism in practical philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turri, J. (2011). Believing for a reason. Erkenntnis, 74(3), 383–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Way, J. (2016). Two arguments for evidentialism. Philosophical Quarterly, 66(265), 805–818.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wedgwood, R. (2013). Rational ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Philosophical Issues, 23(1), 70–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, B. (Ed.). (1981). Internal and external reasons. Moral luck (pp. 101–113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Williams, B. (Ed.). (1993). Internal reasons and the obscurity of blame. Making sense of humanity (pp. 35–45). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Zalabardo, J. (2010). Why believe the truth? Shah and velleman on the aim of belief. Philosophical Explorations, 13(1), 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

For discussion and comments on previous drafts, I am grateful to Hilary Kornblith, Chris Meacham, Ernesto Garcia, Timothy Perrine, Kristian Olsen, Scott Hill, Ed Ferrier, Dennis Kavlakoglu, Josh DiPaolo, Emma McClure, Liz Jackson, and audiences at the University of Toronto and at the 2017 Eastern APA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Houston, 513 Agnes Arnold Hall, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Luis R. G. Oliveira

Authors
  1. Luis R. G. Oliveira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luis R. G. Oliveira.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Oliveira, L.R.G. Deontological evidentialism and ought implies can . Philos Stud 175, 2567–2582 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0972-8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0972-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation