David Christensen

What does friendship require of us cognitively? Recently, some philosophers have argued that friendship places demands on what we believe. Specifically, they argue, friendship demands that we have positive beliefs about our friends even when such beliefs go against the evidence. Call this the doxastic account of the cognitive demands of friendship. Defenders of the doxastic account are committed to making a surprising claim about epistemology: sometimes, our beliefs should be sensitive to things that don’t bear on their truth. I consider both motivations and worries for the doxastic account before developing a new account: the attentional account. According to it, friendship places demands on how we direct our attention. I argue that the attentional account can accommodate the considerations that motivate the doxastic account and weather the worries that trouble it, all while avoiding its surprising epistemological commitments. Along the way, I question the assumption that the cognitive demands of friendship center on positivity, and argue that the attentional account can support a more robust picture of friendship that calls for significant amounts of impartial thinking.

Much of the recent work on epistemology of inquiry defends two related theses. First, inquiry into a question rationally prohibits believing an answer to that question. Second, knowledge is the aim of inquiry. I develop a series of cases which indicate that inquiry is not as narrow as these views suggest. These cases can be accommodated if we take a broader approach and understand inquiry as aiming at epistemic improvement, described more generally. This approach captures a wider range of inquiring phenomena because it accounts for forms of epistemic improvement that fall short of, or go beyond, coming to know the answer to a question.

According to epistemic utility theory, epistemic rationality is teleological: epistemic norms are instrumental norms that have the aim of acquiring accuracy. What’s definitive of these norms is that they can be expected to lead to the acquisition of accuracy when followed. While there’s much to be said in favor of this approach, it turns out that it faces a couple of worrisome extensional problems involving the future. The first problem involves credences about the future, and the second problem involves future credences. Examining prominent solutions to a different extensional problem for this approach reinforces the severity of the two problems involving the future. Reflecting on these problems reveals the source: the teleological assumption that epistemic rationality aims at acquiring accuracy.

Some propositions are not likely to be true overall, but are likely to be true if you believe them. Appealing to the platitude that belief aims at truth, it has become increasingly popular to defend the view that such propositions are epistemically rational to believe. However, I argue that this view runs into trouble when we consider the connection between what’s epistemically rational to believe and what’s practically rational to do. I conclude by discussing how rejecting the view bears on three other epistemological issues. First, we’re able to uncover a flaw in a common argument for permissivism. Second, we can generate a problem for prominent versions of epistemic consequentialism. Finally, we can better understand the connection between epistemic rationality and truth: epistemic rationality is a guide to true propositions rather than true beliefs.

What should a person do when, through no fault of her own, she ends up believing a false moral theory? Some suggest that she should act against what the false theory recommends; others argue that she should follow her rationally held moral beliefs. While the former view better accords with intuitions about cases, the latter one seems to enjoy a critical advantage: It seems better able to render moral requirements ‘followable’ or ‘action-guiding.’ But this tempting thought proves difficult to justify. Indeed, whether it can be justified turns out to depend importantly on the rational status of epistemic akrasia. Furthermore, it can be argued, from premises all parties to the moral ignorance debate should accept, that rational epistemic akrasia is possible. If the argument proves successful, it follows that a person should sometimes act against her rationally held moral convictions.

Prevailing opinion—defended by Jason Brennan and others—is that voting to change the outcome is irrational, since although the payoffs of tipping an election can be quite large, the probability of doing so is extraordinarily small. This paper argues that prevailing opinion is incorrect. Voting is shown to be rational so long as two conditions are satisfied: First, the average social benefit of electing the better candidate must be at least twice as great as the individual cost of voting, and second, the chance of casting the decisive vote must be at least 1/N, where N stands for the number of citizens. It is argued that both of these conditions are often true in the real world.