Abstract
This paper focuses on the relation between epistemic reasons and the subject’s epistemic perspective. It tackles the questions of whether epistemic reasons are dependent on the perspective of the subject they are reasons for, and if so, whether they are dependent on the actual or the potential perspective. It is argued that epistemic reasons are either independent or minimally dependent on the subject’s epistemic perspective. In particular, I provide three arguments supporting the conclusion that epistemic reasons are not dependent on the subject’s actual perspective. Furthermore, I show that variants of these arguments apply against popular views holding that epistemic reasons depend on the subject’s potential perspective, such as the view that epistemic reasons are facts that one is in a position to know.
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Notes
A debated issue in contemporary philosophy is whether all reasons for doxastic attitudes are epistemic (i.e., related to truth-relevant, evidential considerations) or whether there are non-epistemic reasons for these attitudes, such as practical or prudential ones. For an overview of the debate see Reisner (2018). This paper is about epistemic reasons. Here I remain neutral on whether there are non-epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes.
However, while all existing mentalists would subscribe to actual perspective dependence, we can conceive mentalist potential perspective dependent views, such as the view that epistemic reasons are possible mental states accessible to the subject. Notice also that the distinction between actual and potential perspective dependent and perspective independent conditions is orthogonal to other familiar epistemological distinctions, such as those between factive and non-factive conditions, or between internal and external conditions (e.g., reasonable vs. reliably formed belief).
This is because according to factive norms one shouldn’t believe what is false. If we assume the standardly accepted claim that one ought (not) to φ just in case there are decisive reasons (not) to φ (see fn 9 below), this entails that the falsity of a proposition is a decisive reason not to believe it. But whether a proposition is true or false doesn’t necessarily depend on one’s actual mental states. Thus, factive norms locate at least some epistemic reasons beyond the actual perspective of the subject. See Fassio (manuscript), McHugh and Way (2017) and Schroeder (2015).
I am here referring to principles such as the following:
(*) p is a reason for S to φ only if S is able to φ for the reason that p.
For similar constraints, see, among others, Gibbons (2013), Kolodny (2005), Raz (2011: 28), Shah (2006) and Williams (1981). The idea behind these constraints is that normative reasons, by their very nature, must be able to guide agents. However reasons can guide someone only if they are accessible to that person. If there can be inaccessible reasons, then these reasons cannot guide, and thus principles like (*) are false.
Here it is impossible to provide an exhaustive list of references. For philosophers endorsing actual perspective-dependence see, for example, Conee and Feldman (2004), Fantl and McGrath (2009), Mitova (2015), Pollock (1974), Turri (2009) and Williamson (2000). For potential perspective dependence views see, for example, Gibbons (2013), Kearns and Star (2008), Lord (2010), Schroeder (2015), Skorupski (2010), Smithies (2012a), Sylvan, manuscript. In the latter list we should also include philosophers who hold that while reasons to believe are dependent on the subjects’ actual perspective, reasons not to believe can belong to the potential perspective (e.g., Littlejohn 2011: 123, 2013: 17–18, 2018).
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to clarify this important point.
See Lord and Maguire (2016: §2) for a recent overview and discussion on how reasons are related to ‘ought’s. To my knowledge, the only philosopher who dissociates himself from the view mentioned in the text is Lord (2015, 2018). According to Lord, the reasons relevant to what you ought or may do are not all the reasons there are, but only the subset of accessible reasons. I find this view implausible, mainly for some of the reasons summarized in Kiesewetter (2017: 199–200).
Elsewhere (Fassio (manuscript)) I have defended the claims that rationality is a matter of being sensitive to normative reasons, motivating reasons are normative reasons for which an agent ϕs, and an agent justifiedly ϕs if she ϕs for sufficient reasons. See Gardner (2007) for a discussion and defense of similar views. Notice, however, that the arguments and conclusions of the present paper are independent of these further contentious claims.
For a partial list of replies to the ambiguity challenge see, for example, Broome (2013): ch. 3, Dancy (2000, 2009: 99–100), Gardner (2007), Gibbons (2013: ch. 2–3), Graham (2010: 94–95), Hawthorne and Srinivasan (2013: §6), Jackson (1991), Kiesewetter (2011: 2, 2017), Kolodny (2005: 512), Kolodny and MacFarlane (2010), Littlejohn (2013: §3), Lord (2015: §2.3), Mason (2013: 3), Parfit (2011), Williamson (2000: 192 and 223) and Zimmerman (2008: 6–8 and 15).
In the main text I have introduced the most common reply to the ambiguity challenge. Another popular reply consists in observing that if we admit different genuinely normative senses of ‘ought’ and ‘reason’, we will inevitably have situations in which these different senses deliver contradictory verdicts. All cases of reasonable but mistaken attitudes will count as dilemmas of this sort. However, intuitively, an agent that objectively ought to φ and subjectively ought not to φ is not really subject to a genuine deontic dilemma (e.g., Dancy 2009; Gibbons 2013; Lord 2015). There is no real conflict between objective and subjective reasons. Rather, in each specific circumstance there seems to be only one specific thing that the agent should ultimately (not) do or believe.
See Lord (2010) for a discussion and defense of the Factoring Account.
E.g., Conee and Feldman (2008: §1.4).
See Sylvan (2016, §4) for references and discussion.
See, for example, Dougherty and Rysiew (2009) and Kratzer (1977, 2008, 2012). For example, according to Kratzer, in using an epistemic modal, we are interested in what may or must be the case in our world given all the evidence available (2008: 646). According to Dougherty and Rysiew, what is epistemically possible for a subject, and thus might be the case in an epistemic sense, are those things which the evidence does not rule out (2009: 127). According to Littlejohn, what is epistemically possible depends upon your evidence (2012: 105). Some philosophers make the same point in terms of bodies of information rather than evidence (e.g., von Fintel and Gillies 2007).
See, e.g., Von Fintel and Gillies (2007) and Anderson (2014: §3). The extension of the relevant evidence can be determined by, for example, pragmatic and social features of the context such as conversational presuppositions and social roles. This doesn’t compromise the claim that only evidence constitutes the base of epistemic modals.
It is worth observing that some weakening of this premise would suffice for reaching the argument’s conclusion. For example, the argument is compatible with including in the base of epistemic modals also general rationality principles or entitlements to believe hinge propositions, which are not uncontroversially considered evidence.
Notice that C1 follows from P1 and P2 even if one conceived the extension of facts which can constitute evidence as contextually variable. It would still be true that in some contexts the total evidence includes facts beyond the subject’s perspective. This would suffice to refute the view that epistemic reasons are only facts belonging to the actual perspective of the subject they are reasons for.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to consider this possible worry.
For a list of such tests see Sennet (2016: §4).
See Sennet (2016: §5.2) for critical remarks about the methodological use of ambiguity as a way to shield a theory from counterexample. Sennet quotes Grice (1975)’s view that senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Similarly, Kripke (1977, p. 268) observes that “[i]t is very much the lazy man’s approach in philosophy to posit ambiguities when in trouble. If we face a putative counterexample to our favorite philosophical thesis, it is always open to us to protest that some key term is being used in a special sense, different from its use in the thesis. We may be right, but the ease of the move should counsel a policy of caution: Do not posit an ambiguity unless you are really forced to, unless there are really compelling theoretical or intuitive grounds to suppose that an ambiguity really is present”.
In a similar vein, Kelly (2016: §1) claims that “the concept of evidence is closely related to other fundamental normative concepts such as the concept of a reason. Indeed, it is natural to think that ‘reason to believe’ and ‘evidence’ are more or less synonymous […]”.
Consider some other examples in which judgments involving epistemic modals sound as normative. The claim that the president must be in the adjacent room seems clearly to entail that there are sufficient reasons to believe that the president is in that room. Similarly, it makes sense to criticize a police officer that commits a base-rate fallacy in administering a drunkenness test by saying “Your conclusion makes no sense! The person might very well not be drunk! We should definitely repeat the test”. The latter claim seems to entail that the officer shouldn’t conclude that the person is drunk given that there are no sufficient reasons to believe that.
On the distinction between justification and excuse see, for example, Botterell (2009), Duff (2006), Gardner (2007), Kelp and Simion (2017) and Littlejohn (forthcoming). It is worth observing that, while the present characterization of the justification-excuse distinction is nowadays the most popular and widely discussed in various domains of philosophy, this is only one of several ways of framing the distinction. For an overview see Botterell (2009): §5. For example, according to so-called ‘Responsibility’ views, excuses involve denying full responsibility for the action (e.g., Austin 1956). According to this classification, an excuse wouldn’t count as an agent’s rationalization—at least if the latter is understood as a vindication of the agent’s sensitivity to reasons. Similarly, according to certain versions of the so-called ‘Reasonable Belief’ view, an agent may be justified merely in virtue of reasonably believing that one did the right thing (e.g., Baron 2005). While, for the sake of argument, I shall stick to the present way of classifying justifications and excuses, let me stress that I am not here strictly interested in the extension of these concepts. Rather, my argument relies on a distinction between defenses pointing to full compliance with undefeated norms and defenses conceding a violation of such norms but pointing to the reasonability and blamelessness of the agent’s action despite that violation. While, like many others, I think that this distinction tracks the ordinary distinction between justification and excuse, I am open to reformulations of the argument using different terminology. For example, one can frame the distinction in terms of defenses involving rationalizations for norm-compliance vs. for blameless violations. Alternative terminological choices will not substantially affect the argument.
In particular, Hawthorne and Stanley (2008) express sympathy for the idea that p is a reason for belief iff p is known. Williamson (2000) endorses the view that evidence is knowledge. If one also assumes that a proposition is an epistemic reason if and only if it is part of one’s evidence, (ERK) follows.
In Fassio (2017), I use similar considerations against the idea that there are epistemic norms governing practical reasoning and action.
Since Arthur’s excuses point to the unknown fact that Transylvania is in Europe, the latter is an obvious candidate to be such a reason.
Remember that according to (ERK), q is not a reason to believe p, for q is not known.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to address this potential worry.
In support of the latter claim, while in a similar case it seems permissible for Arthur to respond with a less apologetic and sorry-sounding tone, it doesn’t seem appropriate for him to react by claiming that his belief that Charlie went on holiday in Asia was fully right, and there was nothing wrong for him to believe that. This indicates that, despite not sounding apologetic, Arthur’s response is not a justification but an excuse.
To use an example from Dancy (2000: 56), also purely objectivist, perspective-independent theories of practical reasons can admit that the fact that one doesn’t know that there is no traffic is a reason to slow down, and can justify that action. For other examples and discussion see Dancy (2000: 55–56). See also Kiesewetter (2011: fn. 8).
Coherently with the relevant literature, this formulation assumes that reasons are facts. However nothing here hinges on this assumption. The reader is free to substitute ‘fact’ with the generic ‘consideration’.
One may think that there are practical reasons to believe. If so, epistemic and practical reason relations cannot be distinguished on the basis of the object they support. If one endorses such a view, I suggest distinguishing the two kinds of reason relations by the different kind of support relation they involve (e.g., probabilistic in the epistemic case, preferential or related to utility in the prudential case, and so on). For discussion see also Littlejohn (2012: 209), Skorupski (2010: §2.9), Schroeder (2018), Stephanie Leary, Grounding the Domains of Reasons (manuscript).
For similar considerations see Littlejohn (2012: 105–106).
See also McHugh and Way (2017: §5.2) for similar considerations.
It is worth mentioning that the claim that there are practical reasons independent of the actual perspective of the subject is one on which most practical perspectivists also would agree. Some of these philosophers hold that moral obligation (or what they call the deliberative ‘ought’) depends on the available evidence, but they recognize the existence of actual perspective-independent practical reasons. A clear example is Lord, who endorses perspectivism about the deliberative ‘ought’, but also holds that this ‘ought’ is a factor of only the reasons that one possesses (e.g., Lord 2015). Other perspectivists endorse liberal conceptions of evidence availability which includes evidence that one can merely potentially possess (e.g., Zimmerman 2008; Gibbons 2013: ch.7). .
Some philosophers use a different notion of ‘being in a position to know’. For example Gibbons admits that one is in a position to know something also when one can know that thing by slightly changing one’s actual epistemic position (e.g., 2006: 28–29). In the present classification, Gibbons’ notion counts as a version of (ER◊K) – see below. Here I set aside a number of interpretative issues, such as whether Williamson’s notion is properly classified as a version of (ERPK). For a similar interpretation see Rosenkranz (2018: 316).
Kearns and Star (2008: 52) can be interpreted as endorsing a minimal dependence of epistemic reasons from the subject’s perspective.
Other examples illustrating the same point involve paradigmatic cases of moral uncertainty. We can easily conceive someone who has no easily available means to know whether it is morally wrong to eat meat or whether we have duties to future generations. Still, if it is wrong to eat meat, there are reasons not to do that.
Kiesewetter introduces this time constraint in order to address some serious problems affecting other perspectivist views, such as the problems of advice and of seeking new evidence.
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Funding
I would like to thank Maria Alvarez, Daniele Bruno, Julien Dutant, Jie Gao, Clayton Littlejohn, Arturs Logins, Veli Mitova and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the SIFA Conference in Pistoia, the Department Seminar at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou), the Journées Philosophiques de Gordes 2016, the Workshop ‘The Ontology of Epistemic Reasons’ at the University of Basel, the Joint Session 2017 at the University of Edinburgh, and the Epistemology Seminar at King’s College London. Thanks to the audiences for their helpful feedback. A special thanks goes to Veli Mitova for her careful and insightful commentary of the paper. Research for this article has been partially funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation research project ‘The Unity of Reasons’ (P300P1-164569).
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Fassio, D. Are epistemic reasons perspective-dependent?. Philos Stud 176, 3253–3283 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1173-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1173-9