Runyang G

How we understand the nature and role of grief depends on what we take its object to be and vice versa. This paper focuses on recent claims by philosophers that grief is frequently or even inherently irrational or inappropriate in one or another respect, all of which hinge on assumptions concerning the proper object of grief. By emphasizing the temporally extended structure of grief, we offer an alternative account of its object that undermines these assumptions and dissolves the apparent problems. The principal object of grief, we suggest, is a loss of life possibilities, which is experienced, understood, and engaged with over a prolonged period. Other descriptions of grief's object identify more specific aspects of this loss in ways that do not respect a straightforward distinction between concrete and formal objects.

Some pragmatists hold that there are both practical and epistemic reasons to believe. A crucial issue for this view is how epistemic and practical reasons should be weighed against each other to deliver all-things-considered verdicts regarding what one ought to believe. According to threshold models, when the strength of practical reasons for belief exceeds a certain threshold, practical reasons become prior to epistemic reasons. These models are affected by a threshold problem: they fail to specify the threshold at which practical reasons take priority. This prevents them from being sufficiently informative and well-motivated. This paper proposes a response to the threshold problem. I argue that in most situations there are higher-order practical reasons for conforming to epistemic reasons. These higher-order practical reasons in turn determine the threshold. This threshold view yields intuitive verdicts across various cases and provides a clear guide for determining when we should believe for practical rather than epistemic reasons. Moreover, the view can explain why exceeding the threshold triggers the priority of practical reasons over epistemic reasons, and why the threshold is context dependent.