If so, it is not reliable, since token, or one-time, events have no historical track record. Reliabilists respond to this challenge by saying it is the type of process that must be reliable in order for a belief to be justified, not the token.
If that is right, then we face the problem of determining which type of process formed the belief. There are innumerable options, and even if a combination of types were involved, each type would have to meet reliability conditions.
Putting the thought experiment to a very different purpose, if the evil demon world is possible, we can imagine two worlds: 1 a non-deceptive world, where our perceptions are reliably produced by the world outside of our minds, and 2 an evil demon world, where there are people just like you and me, who have exactly the same mental states that we do but whose perceptions are systematically unreliable—they track nothing of truth at that world.
There are no trees, buildings, bodies, and so forth. Whatever actually exists at that world, those people have no perception of it. According to externalists—process reliabilists, in particular—the beliefs of people in the real world are justified and those of people in the demon world are unjustified, despite the fact that their mental lives are identical.
Yet it is difficult to imagine that demon world beliefs about looking both ways before crossing the street and getting a second opinion about a medical diagnosis are unjustified.
People who believe such things are acting responsibly from their perspective on their evidence. This suggests that reliabilism is not really about justification at all.
In the literature, there are two versions of the metaincoherence problem. The first is what I call first-order metaincoherence, which attempts to show that externalism is insufficient for justification.
One famous example of first-order metaincoherence is a thought experiment given in various forms by Laurence BonJour and Keith Lehrer This person, whom Lehrer names Mr. Truetemp, is unaware of the device despite the fact that it regularly causes him to form reliable beliefs that he unreflectively accepts about the temperature.
On a given day, he might reliably form and accept the belief that it is degrees Fahrenheit outside. Is this belief knowledge? It must be granted that if, in arriving at his theory, he did fulfill the conditions his theory says are sufficient for knowing things about the world, then if that theory is correct, he does in fact know that it is.
But still, I want to say, he himself has no reason to think that he does have good reason to think that his theory is correct. The worry is that, since externalists claim that features of the world outside the mental life of a believer ultimately determine whether a belief is justified, then, if externalism is true, externalists have no reason to believe it is true; in fact, they are committed to believing that whether their belief that it is true is justified is outside their ability to determine from within their own perspective.
Again, the belief may be externally reliable, but it is internally unjustified. If these criticisms hit their mark, epistemologists must make some difficult decisions about which approach—internalism or externalism—has the fewest or least pernicious problems. In the 21 st century, much work is underway to address these problems. If one remains unconvinced, there are recent developments that attempt to salvage some of the insights of internalism and externalism.
A prominent example involves introducing character traits into the conditions for justification. We turn next to this view, called virtue epistemology. Classical theories of justification that imply a normative or belief-guiding dimension are modeled largely on normative ethical theories, whether teleological, or outcome-based, accounts or deontological, or duty-based, accounts. They ask whether people are rationally obligated to, permitted to, or obligated not to hold particular beliefs given their evidence.
These are decision-based theories of rational normativity, as opposed to character-based theories. Just as virtue theory offers a non-decision-based alternative in ethics, it also suggests a non-decision-based alternative in epistemology. The attitudes and circumstances under which people form, maintain, and discard beliefs can be described as virtuous or vicious, and just as decision-based theories in epistemology are concerned with rational obligation as opposed to moral obligation , character-based theories in epistemology are concerned either with intellectual character as opposed to moral character , or with cognitive faculties understood as traits of a person such as reason, perception, introspection, and memory.
Of course, in matters of normativity, it is not a simple task to distinguish moral dimensions from rational or intellectual ones, but space prevents us from exploring that relationship here.
Virtue theories of justification hold that part of what justifies a belief is the intellectual traits with which a believer forms or holds the belief. Virtue theorists, however, are sharply divided as to which intellectual virtues are relevant. One prominent view is that justification is a function of those virtues that enhance reliability, that is, they have a strong external component Sosa ; This view is known as virtue reliabilism.
A second prominent view is that justification is a function of those intellectual virtues that contribute to more general epistemic goods, including intellectual well-being, social trust, and the righting of epistemic injustice.
These virtue responsibilists regard the truth-goal in epistemology very differently than both traditional epistemologists and their virtue reliabilist counterparts Code ; Montmarquet ; Zagzebski A prominent version of virtue reliabilism is offered by Ernest Sosa in attempt to resolve the tension between foundationalists and coherentists. Sosa argues that if beliefs are grounded in truth-conductive intellectual virtues where truth-conducive is conceived in process reliabilist terms , then foundationalists have empirically stable abilities or acquired habits that help explain the connection between sensory experience and non-inferential belief.
Further, reliable virtues help explain how justification emerges from a coherent set of beliefs—coherence is a type of intellectual virtue. What do these intellectual virtues look like for Sosa? Borrowing an example from his , consider an archer who is aiming at a target.
These features are analogous to the epistemic state of having a true belief accuracy that is formed on the basis of good evidence adroitness. These two features alone, though, are insufficient for the person to believe in the right way. The person must also exercise his adroitness in circumstances that increase his likelihood of having accurate beliefs, that is, his shot must be accurate because it is adroit.
Aptness depends on just how the adroitness bears on the accuracy. The wind may help some, for example…. If the shot is difficult, however, from a great distance, the shot might still be accurate sufficiently through adroitness to count as apt, though with some help from the wind.
Imagine a person who has good evidence that P but who either does not appeal to that evidence when forming the belief that P, appealing instead to, say, wishful thinking, or who appeals to that evidence carelessly, refusing to consider alternatives or just how strong the evidence is.
Because of this external dimension, this branch of virtue epistemology is regarded as a form of reliabilism. Unlike externalist foundationalism, however, the reliability condition is not restricted to belief-forming processes; it is also highly dependent on context. Sosa says:. This shot is then both accurate and adroit. But it could still fail to be accurate because adroit. The arrow might be diverted by some wind, for example, so that, if conditions remained normal thereafter, it would miss the target altogether.
In epistemic cases, the believer must be suitably virtuous such that, under normal conditions, her beliefs are accurate because they are adroit. One prominent criticism is that Sosa does not take his use of virtues far enough. Rather than serving a more basic truth-goal, some argue that virtues should be conceived as central to the epistemic project. Code argues that epistemic responsibility the central intellectual virtue.
This means that virtue responsibilism is internalist through and through. Not all virtue responsibilists, however, eschew the truth-goal. There is more than one virtuous outcome, for example, in cases of creativity or inventiveness. This suggests that the conditions under which a subject is justified are highly contingent on changing context and the goal of our epistemic behaviors. And virtue epistemologists argue that this captures the typical contingency of our epistemic lives.
In addition to internal disputes between virtue reliabilists and responsibilists, there are more serious concerns with the adequacy of virtue epistemology. Virtue reliabilism faces many of the same criticisms that face traditional reliabilism, including the generality problem, the New Evil Demon Problem, and the meta-incoherence problems.
Similarly, virtue responsibilism faces many of the same problems as virtue ethics. There are questions about which intellectual states count as epistemic virtues different responsibilists have different lists , whether some virtues should be privileged over others for example, James Montmarquet argues that epistemic conscientiousness is the preeminent intellectual virtue , and the ontological status of virtues whether they are real dispositions or simply heuristics for categorizing types of behavior.
To alleviate some of these concerns, some virtue epistemologists defend a mixed theory, arguing that an adequate virtue epistemology requires both a reliability and a responsibility condition Greco A general concern for both types of virtue epistemology is that virtue theory associates justification too closely with the idea of credit or achievement, whether a person has formed beliefs well. In the case of innate knowledge, the knower does nothing to increase the likelihood that her beliefs are reliable; they are reliable for reasons outside her epistemic behavior.
If these criticisms are right, virtue epistemology may be unable to explain a range of important types of knowledge. For a more detailed treatment of virtue epistemology, see Virtue Epistemology. Each of the theories of justification reviewed in this article presumes something about the value of justification, that is, about why justification is good or desirable.
Traditionally, as in the case of Theatetus noted above, justification is supposed to position us to understand reality, that is, to help us obtain true beliefs for the right reasons. Knowledge, we suppose, is valuable, and justification helps us attain it. However, skeptical arguments, the influence of external factors on our cognition, and the influence of various attitudes on the way we conduct our epistemic behavior suggest that attaining true beliefs for the right reason is a forbidding goal, and it may not be one that we can access internally.
Therefore, there is some disagreement as to whether justification should be understood as aimed at truth or some other intellectual goal or set of goals. All the theories we have considered presume that justification is a necessary condition for knowledge, though there is much disagreement about what precisely justification contributes to knowledge. Some argue that justification is fundamentally aimed at truth, that is, it increases the likelihood that a belief is true.
Others argue that there are a number of epistemic goals other than truth and that in some cases, truth need not be among the values of justification.
Jonathan Kvanvig explains:. Perhaps, for instance, they typically value well-being, or survival, or perhaps even reproductive success, with truth never really playing much of a role at all. Given this disagreement, we can distinguish between what I will call the monovalent view, which takes truth as the sole, or at least fundamental, aim of justification, and the polyvalent view or, as Kvanvig calls it, the plurality view , which allows that there are a number of aims of justification, not all of which are even indirectly related to truth.
One motive for preferring the monovalent view is that, if truth is not the primary goal of justification—that is, it connects belief with reality in the right way—then one is left only with goals that are not epistemic, that is, goals that cannot contribute to knowledge.
The primary worry is that, in rejecting the truth goal, one is left with pragmatism. In response, those who defend polyvalence argue that, in practice, there are other cognitive goals that are 1 not merely pragmatic, and 2 meet the conditions for successful cognition. Such goals can be produced without appealing to truth at all. If this is right, justification aims at a wider array of cognitive states than knowledge.
Another argument for polyvalence allows that knowledge is the primary aim of justification but that much more is involved in justification than truth. The idea is that, even if one were aware of belief-forming strategies that are conducive to truth following the evidence where it leads; avoiding fallacies , one might still not be able to use those strategies without having other cognitive aims, namely, intellectual virtues.
As noted above, virtue responsibilists allow that the goal of having a large number of true beliefs can be superseded by the desire to create something original or inventive.
Further still, following strategies that are truth-conducive under some circumstances can lead to pathological epistemic behavior. If this argument is right, then truth is, at best, an indirect aim of justification, and intellectual virtues like openness, courage, and responsibility may be more important to the epistemic project. One response to the polyvalent view is to concede that there are apparently many cognitive goals that fall within the purview of epistemology but to argue that all of these are related to truth in a non-trivial way.
The goal of having true beliefs is a broad and largely indeterminate goal. According to Marian David, we might fulfill it by believing a truth, by knowing a truth, by having justified beliefs, or by having intellectually virtuous beliefs. All of these goals, argues David, are plausibly truth-oriented in the sense that they derive from, or depend on, a truth goal David David supports this claim by asking us to consider which of the following pairs is more plausible:.
If you want to have TBs [true beliefs] you ought to have JBs [justified beliefs]. This intuition, he concludes, tells us that the truth-goal is more fundamental to the epistemic project than anything else, even if one or more other goals depend on it. Almost all theories of epistemic justification allow that we are fallible, that is, that our justified beliefs, even if formed by reliable processes, may sometimes be false.
Nevertheless, this does not detract from the claim that the aim of justification is true belief, so long as it is qualified as true belief held in the right way. In spite of these arguments, some philosophers explicitly reject the truth goal as essential to justification and cognitive success. Yet, given competing uses of terms, vague domains of discourse, the failure of theoretical explanations, and the existence of domains of reality we have yet to encode into a discipline, there is not a single, unified reality to study.
Williams argues that because of this, we do not necessarily have knowledge of the world:. All we know for sure is that we have various practices of assessment, perhaps sharing certain formal features. Accordingly, it does not follow that a failure to understand knowledge of the world with proper generality points automatically to an intellectual lack.
In other words, our knowledge is not knowledge of the world—that is, access to a unified system of true beliefs, as the classical theory would have it. It is knowledge of concepts in theories putatively about the world, constructed using semantic systems that are evaluated in terms of other semantic systems. If this is, in fact, all there is to knowing, then truth, at least as classically conceived, is not a meaningful goal.
Another philosopher who rejects the truth goal is Stephen Stich ; Stich argues that, given the vast amount of disagreement among novices and experts about what counts as justification, and given the many failures of theories of justification to adequately ground our beliefs in anything other than calibration among groups of putative experts, it is simply unreasonable to believe that our beliefs track anything like truth.
Instead, Stich defends pragmatism about justification, that is, justification just is practically successful belief; thus, truth cannot play a meaningful role in the concept of justification. A response to both views might be that, in each case, the truth goal has not been abandoned but simply redefined or relocated. Correspondence theories of truth take it that propositions are true just in case they express the world as it is.
If the world is not expressible propositionally, as Williams seems to suggest, then this type of truth is implausible. Nevertheless, a proposition might be true in virtue of being an implication of a theory, and so, for example, we might adopt a more semantic than ontological theory of truth, and it is not clear whether Williams would reject this sort of truth as the aim of epistemology.
If something is useful, it is true that it is useful, even in the correspondence sense. Even if evidence does not operate in a classical representational manner, the success of beliefs in accomplishing our goals is, nevertheless, a truth goal. See Kornblith for an argument along these lines. Epistemic justification is an evaluative concept about the conditions for right or fitting belief.
A plausible theory of epistemic justification must explain how beliefs are justified, the role justification plays in knowledge, and the value of justification. A primary motive behind theories of justification is to solve the dilemma of inferential justification.
To do this, one might accept the inferential assumption and argue that justification emerges from a set of coherent beliefs internalist coherentism or an infinite set of beliefs infinitism.
Alternatively, one might reject the inferential assumption and argue that justification derives from basic beliefs internalist foundationalism or through reliable belief-forming processes externalist reliabilism.
If none of these views is ultimately plausible, one might pursue alternative accounts. For example, virtue epistemology introduces character traits to help avoid problems with these classical theories. Jamie Carlin Watson Email: jamie. Epistemic Justification We often believe what we are told by our parents, friends, doctors, and news reporters. Starting Points Consider your simplest, most obvious beliefs: the color of the sky, the date of your birth, what chocolate tastes like.
I see that the cat is on the mat. Seeing that X implies that X. Together, these seem to constitute a good reason for believing the proposition: 3. The cat is on the mat. Either way, proposition 3 is unjustified. Explaining the Role of Justification A second central aim of epistemology is to identify and explain the role that justification plays in our belief-forming behavior. Explaining Why Justification is Valuable A third central aim of theories of justification is to explain why justification is epistemically valuable.
Justification and Knowledge The type of knowledge primarily at issue in discussions of justification is knowledge that a proposition is true, or propositional knowledge. Internalist Foundationalism One way of resolving the DIJ is to reject the inferential assumption, that is, to reject the claim that all justification involves inference from other beliefs.
Basic Beliefs It is one thing to say basic beliefs resolve the DIJ and quite another thing to explain how they do. Arguments For and Against Foundationalism Foundationalism has remained competitive in the history of justification largely because of its intuitive advantages over competing views.
Internalist Coherentism Like foundationalists, coherentists attempt to avoid skepticism while rejecting infinitism. Figure 2: Simple Coherentist Justification P-S represent propositions; the arrows represent lines of inference. Objections to Coherentism There are three prominent objections to coherentism. Infinitism Infinitism is an internalist view that proposes to resolve the dilemma of inferential justification by showing that Horn B of the DIJ, properly construed, is an acceptable option.
Arguments for Infinitism There are two main lines of argument for infinitism. Objections to Qualified Infinitism Carl Ginet argues that even qualified infinitism is motivated on spurious grounds. Consider an example from Greco : Charlie is a wishful thinker and believes that he is about to arrive at his destination on time. For instance: Suppose that a person spontaneously and involuntarily believes that the lights are on in the room, as a result of the familiar sort of completely convincing perceptual evidence.
The Gettier Era The idea that justification is the crucial link between true belief and knowledge seems to be implicit in epistemology since Plato. The History of the Gettier Problem The idea is that there are cases where all three conditions on knowledge are met—a belief is justified and true—and yet that belief fails to be knowledge.
Here is another example Russell includes alongside his clock case: There is the man who believes, truly, that the last name of the Prime Minister in began with a B, but believes this because he believes that Balfour was Prime Minister then, whereas in fact it was Campbell-Bannerman. Responses to the Gettier Problem Some philosophers have tried to save strong internalist justification from Gettier cases.
Externalist Foundationalism Gettier cases, in addition to other challenges to internalism, have led some epistemologists to reject the idea that justification requires an internal condition. Reliabilism The concept of reliability is crucial to externalist theories of justification in contrast to externalist theories of knowledge, for example, Goldman , and Armstrong Objections to Externalism Though externalism, putatively, has the advantage of avoiding the Gettier problem though this is controversial and several other skeptical concerns and of capturing some important intuitions about knowledge, it faces several serious criticisms.
Earl Conee and Richard Feldman present an example to demonstrate the problem: Suppose that Smith has good vision and is familiar with the visible differences among common species of trees. Justification as Virtue Classical theories of justification that imply a normative or belief-guiding dimension are modeled largely on normative ethical theories, whether teleological, or outcome-based, accounts or deontological, or duty-based, accounts.
Virtue Reliabilism A prominent version of virtue reliabilism is offered by Ernest Sosa in attempt to resolve the tension between foundationalists and coherentists.
Sosa explains: Aptness depends on just how the adroitness bears on the accuracy. Objections to Virtue Epistemology In addition to internal disputes between virtue reliabilists and responsibilists, there are more serious concerns with the adequacy of virtue epistemology.
The Value of Justification Each of the theories of justification reviewed in this article presumes something about the value of justification, that is, about why justification is good or desirable. The Truth Goal All the theories we have considered presume that justification is a necessary condition for knowledge, though there is much disagreement about what precisely justification contributes to knowledge.
Jonathan Kvanvig explains: [I]t might be the case that truth is the primary good that defines the theoretical project of epistemology, yet it might also be the case that cognitive systems aim at a variety of values different from truth. Alternatives to the Truth Goal One motive for preferring the monovalent view is that, if truth is not the primary goal of justification—that is, it connects belief with reality in the right way—then one is left only with goals that are not epistemic, that is, goals that cannot contribute to knowledge.
Objections to the Polyvalent View One response to the polyvalent view is to concede that there are apparently many cognitive goals that fall within the purview of epistemology but to argue that all of these are related to truth in a non-trivial way. David supports this claim by asking us to consider which of the following pairs is more plausible: A1.
We want to have JBs because we want to have TBs. If you want to have JBs you ought to have TBs. We want to have TBs because we want to have JBs. Rejections of the Truth Goal In spite of these arguments, some philosophers explicitly reject the truth goal as essential to justification and cognitive success.
Williams argues that because of this, we do not necessarily have knowledge of the world: All we know for sure is that we have various practices of assessment, perhaps sharing certain formal features.
Conclusion Epistemic justification is an evaluative concept about the conditions for right or fitting belief. References and Further Reading Aikin, S. Aikin, S. Epistemology and the Regress Problem. London: Routledge. Alston, W. Epistemic Justification. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Armstrong, D. Belief, Truth, and Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bach, K. Reprinted in S.
Bernecker and F. Dretske, eds. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Search within book. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. George Pappas - - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 6 2 Justification, Internalism, and Cream Cheese.
Anthony Brueckner - - Philosophical Papers 38 1 Epistemic Supervenience and Internalism: A Trilemma. Colin Ruloff - - Theoria 75 2 John Turri - - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 2 William Harper - - Synthese 1 Inferential Internalism and Reflective Defeat. David Alexander - - Philosophia 40 3 Access Externalism. John Gibbons - - Mind Deontology and Defeat. Michael Bergmann - - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 1 Epistemic Internalism.
Bjc Madison - - Philosophy Compass 5 10 Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge. William P. Alston - - Cornell University Press. So the same may be true for motivating and explanatory reasons. Second, even if the same reason sometimes answers the two questions about motivation and explanation, this is not always so.
Although a reason that motivates an action can always explain it, a reason that can explain the action is not always the reason that motivates it. For example, that he is jealous is a reason that explains why Othello kills Desdemona. But that is not the reason that motivates him to kill her.
That is right and yet the example still shows that not all reasons that explain by citing psychological factors, e. Besides, the explaining and motivating reasons may differ even in cases where the reason that explains makes reference to the reason that motivates.
For suppose that John punches Peter because he finds out that Peter has betrayed him. This is an explanatory reason. That reason is a fact about Peter, namely that he has betrayed John. That is the reason that motivates John to punch Peter—his motivating reason. So in this case we have two different though related reasons: that Peter has betrayed John and that John knows that Peter has betrayed him, which play different roles.
One reason motivates John to punch Peter the betrayal ; and the other explains why he does it the knowledge of the betrayal. To be sure, the latter reason explains by reference to the former. Nonetheless, these are different reasons that answer different questions about motivation and explanation, respectively.
After all, the fact that motivates John, i. As we shall see below 3. Be that as it may, consider a different example. The fact that Othello believes that Desdemona is unfaithful explains why he kills her. But the fact that he believes in her infidelity is not the reason in light of which he kills her, the reason that, in his eyes, favours killing her. What he takes to favour killing her is the putative fact that she is unfaithful. Again, these are importantly different reasons: for it can be the case that Othello believes that Desdemona is unfaithful without it being the case that she is, and vice versa.
The intricacies of these controversies suggest that it may indeed be helpful to keep apart questions of motivation and questions of explanation even when we are dealing with reason explanations of action. The advantages of drawing this distinction will be spelled out in examining debates concerning motivating reasons and the explanation of action. We shall see there that apparently competing claims about motivating reasons and the explanation of action are often best understood and resolved as claims about motivating or explanatory reasons, respectively.
The following passage, in which Stephen Darwall comments on a putative disagreement between Dancy and Michael Smith, helps to illustrate the point of the distinction:. When Dancy says that reasons are putative facts that agents take to favour their actions, he is talking about motivating reasons.
By contrast, when Smith says that reasons are combinations of mental states of believing and desiring, he is talking about explanatory reasons. One of the most intensely debated issues concerning both motivating and explanatory reasons is their ontology: what kind of thing are these reasons? That consensus began to dissolve at the turn of the century and psychologism came under sustained attack. In that paper he characterises a reason as follows:. A primary reason is a combination of two mental states: a pro-attitude and a belief.
Psychologism is very appealing. Because of this, it is possible to explain his action by citing his desiring and his believing the relevant things. To return to our example, we can explain why Othello kills Desdemona by citing his wanting to defend his honour and his believing that, given that Desdemona has been unfaithful, killing her is the only way to do so.
This sort of consideration led to widespread acceptance of the view that explanatory reasons are mental states and, since the latter were not distinguished from motivating reasons, it also led to the view that motivating reasons are mental states. Among psychologists, some say that motivating and explanatory reasons are mental or psychological facts , rather than mental states.
These defenders of psychologism do not on the face of it disagree with champions of non-psychologism about the ontology of these reasons. For psychological facts are not themselves mental states, though they are facts about mental states. But they still disagree with non-psychologists about what these reasons are. Because of this, we need a way to distinguish between psychologism and non-psychologism other than in terms of ontology—the kind of thing that each camp says reasons are—in order to capture the deeper disagreement between them.
Perhaps a better way to do so is to say that psychologism holds that motivating and explanatory reasons are mental states or facts about mental states of agents, whereas non-psychologism says that motivating and explanatory reasons, like normative reasons, are facts about all sorts of things, including mental states of agents. The following sections examine current debates about psychologism, and other issues, concerning motivating and explanatory reasons.
It does so separately for reasons of each kind, as that will facilitate clarity in the various debates. We start with motivating reasons. As we saw above, the phrase is now generally used in the literature to refer to a reason that the agent takes to favour her action, and in light of which she acts.
Motivating reasons are also considerations that can figure as premises in the practical reasoning, if any, that leads to action.
Because the concept is somewhat technical, further clarification is needed. First, the current use of the term excludes some otherwise plausible candidates from being motivating reasons. But again, these are not motivating reasons in the sense at issue because they are not considerations that the agent takes to favour acting. Moreover, many hold that states of desiring are often grounded in considerations about the goodness or value of what is desired—a view defended by Anscombe , Nagel , Quinn , Raz , and Schueler , among others.
When this is so, the motivating reasons both for wanting and for acting accordingly are the considerations about the goodness or rightness of what is desired. These considerations are his reason for wanting to kill her and his reason for doing so. In short, what Othello desires to kill Desdemona , his goal to redress her betrayal , his state of desiring those things, or his motive jealousy are things that motivate him to kill Desdemona but they are not his motivating reasons in the semi-technical sense of the phrase stipulated above.
His motivating reasons, if we agree he has any, are, rather, the putative facts that she is unfaithful to him and that killing her is a fitting way to restore his reputation. Finally, I may consider a fact that counts against acting, for instance, that hoovering early will also disturb my other neighbour, who is very considerate.
Since motivating reasons are considerations that an agent takes to favour acting, and since the reasons that favour acting are facts, it might seem that motivating reasons are also facts or at least putative facts, rather than mental states. However, the view that they are mental states was, as noted earlier, the dominant view till the turn of the 20 th century, and it is still very popular today.
A seemingly compelling argument for adopting psychologism for motivating reasons is the following. For a reason to motivate you it must be a reason you have. This does not require that the reason should genuinely apply to you. And this appears to support the view that reasons are mental states of agents, or facts about those states. Rather your reason is what is known or believed: a putative fact.
To put the point differently, motivating reasons are the contents of mental states but not mental states themselves. This argument about motivating reasons is not, therefore, decisive for psychologism. And in fact, there are several compelling arguments against psychologism. A very influential argument, found in Dancy and , focuses on the relation between normative and motivating reasons. In order to act for a good reason, we need to act for a reason that is or could be a fact.
However, according to psychologism, motivating reasons are mental states. If so, the reasons for which we act are mental states, and not facts. If, by contrast, motivating reasons were, say facts and putative facts, then some of the reasons for which we act would be facts, and it would follow that we can, and sometimes do, act for a good reason.
But in saying that motivating reasons are mental states, psychologism eliminates this possibility, for a mental state can never be a fact. Dancy ff. On the one hand, if the response is that the reasons that motivate us are the contents of our mental states of believing, this meets the normative constraint but it does not favour psychologism.
It meets the normative constraint because the content is the fact that it is raining and that is a good reason. But this interpretation amounts to abandoning psychologism because the contents of mental states are not themselves mental states. On the other hand, the response might be just the assertion that a mental state with the right content can be a good reason for acting. For it remains unclear how, according to this response, we can ever act for a good i. This brings us to another, related argument against psychologism, which is simply that consideration of what agents take their reasons for acting to be, and of what they typically give and accept as their reasons for acting, count against psychologism.
Thus, as Othello considers what to do, even while in the grip of his jealousy, his reasoning does not include considerations about whether he believes this or that but rather considerations about what Desdemona has or has not done. The things that Othello considers, then, are not his mental states but rather facts, or alleged facts, about the world around him, in particular about Desdemona.
Again, these premises are sometimes considerations to the effect that one believes this or that; but much more often, they are considerations about the world, about the value or goodness of things and people around us, the means of achieving those things, etc. In short, although practical reasoning sometimes includes psychological facts about oneself among its premises, much more often these premises refer to perceived or real facts about the world beyond our minds.
Along with other arguments, they have led many philosophers see Alvarez , b, ; Bittner ; Dancy , ; Hornsby , Hyman , ; McDowell ; Raz ; Schueler ; Stout ; Stoutland ; Williamson , among others to reject psychologism.
But non-psychologism is not free from difficulties. In such a case, what the agent would give as his reason—say, that Desdemona has been unfaithful—is false. So, Othello cannot act in light of the fact that Desdemona has been unfaithful. And non-psychologism does not seem to have a ready answer to what the motivating reason is in these cases. Non-psychologists have offered different proposals to accommodate error cases. One proposal is to say that in error cases agents act for a reason that is a falsehood that the agent believes.
According to this proposal, then, Othello did act for a reason: a false belief, which is a putative fact that the agent takes to be a fact.
This response to problem of error cases is plausible but there are also considerations against it. One such consideration is that stating these alleged reasons often leads to paradox or infelicitous claims. Thus, Unger writes:. This response to the error cases—that a reason can be a falsehood—is therefore problematic. The fact that these claims about reasons are prima facie paradoxical or infelicitous is not a decisive argument against the views that generate them, but it has led some non-psychologists to offer alternative accounts of error cases.
One such alternative says that, in error cases, an agent acts on something that he treats as a reason and in light of which he acts but which is in fact not a reason.
On this view, an apparent motivating reason is not merely a bad reason but simply not a reason. So according to this alternative, agents who act on false beliefs are motivated by something, a false belief. They treat that belief as a reason and are guided by it in acting. Nonetheless, that false belief is not a motivating reason because it is not a fact, but merely an apparent fact, and hence only an apparent reason.
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