Xian He

Epistemic constitutivists seek to ground the authority of epistemic norms in the nature of belief, claiming that belief is a fundamentally normative attitude and that epistemic norms are constitutive norm of it. A objection to this view holds that constitutive norms, by themselves, lack inherent authority. In response, Horst argues that violations of constitutive epistemic norms necessarily manifest defects in epistemic competence. In this paper, I argue that Horst’s defense fails, as there is no appropriate answer to what constitutes a “defect in epistemic competence.” As an alternative, I propose a role-based form of constitutivism. On this view, epistemic norms are constitutive of the role of the believer, and it is this role that secures their normative authority.

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.

According to the Quality Account of love, only lovable properties of the beloved person, such as beauty, wisdom and kindness, can make love for that person fitting. The account has been criticized for leading to implausible conclusions. If this account is correct, it would seem fitting to replace one’s lover with someone who possesses the same or more lovable properties, or stop loving someone who has lost these properties. Moreover, it is unclear how the Quality Account can differentiate between the fittingness conditions of love and other similar attitudes which seem also fitting in virtue of the same properties. I propose a new response to these objections. I argue that these challenges can be met by appealing to a distinctive lovable property that all objects of love share: their uniqueness. Uniqueness, along with other lovable properties, determines how worthy of love a person is.