Guowei Lai

Recently several philosophers have argued that practical and epistemic reasons for belief can be weighed against each other. Two weighing models have been provided by Andrew Reisner and Christopher Howard. A problem for both models is that they deliver highly implausible verdicts about specific cases. I propose a new model that retains all the advantages of the others but avoids their problems. My model relies on the idea that we almost always have strong practical reasons to hold a doxastic attitude supported by sufficient epistemic reasons. This reason is weighed with other practical reasons to determine which doxastic attitude we should hold all-things-considered.

In the ethics of belief debate, pragmatism is the thesis that practical considerations can be reasons for belief. By contrast, evidentialism is the thesis that only evidence can provide reasons for belief. Intuitions about specific cases seem to lend support to pragmatism. However, many evidentialists explain away these intuitive judgments by claiming that (a) there can be practical reasons to bring about a belief, and (b) in these cases one should bring about such beliefs. I argue that (a) and (b) are double-edged responses: if either of these claims is true, pragmatism is also true. Based on the assumption that either (a) or (b) is true, I provide three new arguments for pragmatism. I also consider evidentialist variants of the above response holding that practical considerations are reasons to intend, want, or try to bring about the belief that p. I argue that these variants are equally problematic.