Weighing pragmatic and evidential reasons for belief

In this paper I argue that we can give a plausible account of how to compare pragmatic and evidential normative reasons for belief. The account I offer is given in the form of a ‘defeasing function’. This function allows for a sophisticated comparison of the two types of reasons without assigning complex features to the logical structures of either type of reason. I would like to thank John Broome, Stewart Cohen, Roger Crisp, Jonathan Dancy, Brie Gertler, and Iwao Hirose for their comments on earlier versions of this material. A number of revisions have also been made as a result of helpful questions raised during presentations of this paper at Arizona State University, McGill University, and the University of Virginia.     

Beliefs in conditionals vs. conditional beliefs

On the basis of impossibility results on probability, belief revision, and conditionals, it is argued that conditional beliefs differ from beliefs in conditionals qua mental states. Once this is established, it will be pointed out in what sense conditional beliefs are still conditional, even though they may lack conditional contents, and why it is permissible to still regard them as beliefs, although they are not beliefs in conditionals. Along the way, the main logical, dispositional, representational, and normative properties of conditional beliefs are studied, and it is explained how the failure of not distinguishing conditional beliefs from beliefs in conditionals can lead philosophical and empirical theories astray.

The possibility of pragmatic reasons for belief and the wrong kind of reasons problem

In this paper I argue against the stronger of the two views concerning the right and wrong kind of reasons for belief, i.e. the view that the only genuine normative reasons for belief are evidential. The project in this paper is primarily negative, but with an ultimately positive aim. That aim is to leave room for the possibility that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief. Work is required to make room for this view, because evidentialism of a strict variety remains the default view in much of the debate concerning normative reasons for belief. Strict versions of evidentialism are inconsistent with the view that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief.

Minimal disturbance: in defence of pragmatic reasons of the right kind

Philosophical Studies - This paper draws attention to an important methodological shortcoming in debates about what counts as a reason for belief. An extremely influential distinction in this...     

External reasons and the foundations of morality: Mother Teresa vs. Thrasymachus

This esssay originated from discussions with Bojana Mladenovic.     

Rationalizing flow: agency in skilled unreflective action

In recent work, Peter Railton, Julia Annas, and David Velleman aim to reconcile the phenomenon of “flow”—broadly understood as describing the “unreflective” aspect of skilled action—with one or another familiar conception of agency. While there are important differences between their arguments, Railton, Annas, and Velleman all make, or are committed to, at least one similar pivotal claim. Each argues, directly or indirectly, that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can, in principle, accurately answer “Anscombean” questions—”what” and “why” questions— about what they do. I argue against this claim and explore the ramifications for theories of skilled action and agency.     

The pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation: Speech act,argumentation and pragmatic inference

This paper is an attempt to give a general explanation of pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation. After a brief survey of classical accounts of negation within pragmatic theories (as speech act theory, argumentation theory and polyphonic theory), the main pragmatic uses of negation (illocutionary negation, external negation, lowering and majoring negation) are discussed within relevance theory. The question of the relevance of negative utterance is raised, and a general inferential schema (based on the so-called invited inference) is proposed and tested for the main uses of negation discussed in the paper.Translated from French by Anne Reboul and Lyne DaSylva.     

Adolescent reasons for quitting smoking: initial psychometric evaluation.

Most adolescent smokers report intentions to quit, and the majority attempt cessation. However, little is known regarding the relationship between adolescent motives for cessation and smoking cessation efforts. To this end, the present study describes an initial evaluation of the psychometric characteristics of the Adolescent Reasons for Quitting scale (ARFQ), a measure of adolescent motives for smoking cessation. Participants were 109 current smoking high school students assessed at baseline and 6-month follow-up. The ARFQ item content and format was developed in a separate qualitative study with 36 high school students who had previously attempted to quit smoking. Exploratory factor analyses of ARFQ items yielded 3 subscales: Short-Term Consequences, Social Disapproval, and Long-Term Concerns. Validation analyses were conducted in relation to concurrent intentions to stop smoking and prospective smoking cessation attempts, providing evidence of concurrent, predictive, and discriminant validity. In particular, the Social Disapproval and Long-Term Concerns subscales significantly predicted subsequent cessation attempts. As such, the ARFQ may prove valuable for informing interventions to encourage adolescent smoking cessation.     

面对基督教:克尔凯郭尔和尼采的不同取向——兼论尼采对克尔凯郭尔的批判

本文以互读的方法试图揭示克尔凯郭尔与尼采面对基督教信仰所采取的截然相反的态度。克尔凯郭尔坚持生存者需要一个"全知全能"的上帝,而尼采认为上帝的"全知全能"性正是上帝要被杀死的原因;克尔凯郭尔极力张扬基督教人本主义思想,而尼采则批判基督教人本主义的虚妄性和奴隶本性。尼采认为,克尔凯郭尔的基督教上帝正是形而上学式思想的残余,因此克尔凯郭尔的哲学在根本上是一种"基督教哲学";是尼采彻底颠覆了形而上学,真正使哲学的关注点落实到了人的"生活世界"。     

College Dropouts: Dismissed vs. Withdrew

This study investigated the effect of classifying under the common category of “dropout” both those students who are dismissed for academic reasons and those who withdraw voluntarily. Two groups of college dropouts, namely the dismissed and those who withdrew, were compared with a control group of persevering students in performance on cognitive and personality measures. The two groups were found to differ in an inverse relationship on several sets of measures, thus demonstrating differences in intellectual ability and personality characteristics.     

The story of some: everyday pragmatic inference by children and adults.

The statement, some elephants have trunks, is logically true but pragmatically infelicitous. Whilst some is logically consistent with all, it is often pragmatically interpreted as precluding all. In Experiments 1 and 2, we show that with pragmatically impoverished materials, sensitivity to the pragmatic implicature associated with some is apparent earlier in development than has previously been found. Amongst 8-year-old children, we observed much greater sensitivity to the implicature in pragmatically enriched contexts. Finally, in Experiment 3, we found that amongst adults, logical responses to infelicitous some statements take longer to produce than do logical responses to felicitous some statements, and that working memory capacity predicts the tendency to give logical responses to the former kind of statement. These results suggest that some adults develop the ability to inhibit a pragmatic response in favour of a logical answer. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of pragmatic inference.