The practical rationality of trust

Most action can be explained in Humean or teleological terms; that is, in most cases, one can explain why someone acted by reference to that person’s beliefs and desires. However, trusting and being trustworthy are actions that do not permit such explanation. The action of trusting someone to do something is a matter of expecting someone to act for certain reasons, and acting trustworthily is one of acting for these reasons. It is better to say that people act out of trust, rather than for some end. Thus, teleological considerations do not suffice to trust. This is the negative claim of the paper. Its positive proposal is an account of the practical rationality of trust. The key idea is that in trusting one takes on commitments, not merely to act in certain way, but also to premise one’s practical reasoning on a trust-based view of the interaction situation.     

A critique of Habermas' theory of practical rationality

Habermas' theory of practical rationality is a significant theoretical attempt to preserve both rationality and democracy at the level of political decision making that transcends both technocratic and decisionistic theories of rationality. Habermas' theory of rationality accords with his epistemological, sociological, psychological, and linguistic premises. His theory, however, overlooks the interactions between instrumental action and symbolic interaction, the relevance of professional knowledge of facts for the choice of ends, the conflict between the norms of efficiency and democracy, and the duality of subject and object in historical formation. The rational interest in reproduction of free communication, however, can be used to reformulate Habermas' theory of rationality.     

Bayesian inference for psychology. Part I: Theoretical advantages and practical ramifications

Bayesian parameter estimation and Bayesian hypothesis testing present attractive alternatives to classical inference using confidence intervals and p values. In part I of this series we outline ten prominent advantages of the Bayesian approach. Many of these advantages translate to concrete opportunities for pragmatic researchers. For instance, Bayesian hypothesis testing allows researchers to quantify evidence and monitor its progression as data come in, without needing to know the intention with which the data were collected. We end by countering several objections to Bayesian hypothesis testing. Part II of this series discusses JASP, a free and open source software program that makes it easy to conduct Bayesian estimation and testing for a range of popular statistical scenarios (Wagenmakers et al. this issue).     

Ambiguity and rationality

Recently, several theories of decision making and probability judgment have been proposed that take into account ambiguity (Einhorn and Hogarth, 1985; Gardenfors and Sahlin, 1982). However, none of these theories explains exactly what the psychological causes of ambiguity are or addresses the issue of whether ambiguity effects are rational. In this paper, we define ambiguity as the subjective experience of missing information relevant to a prediction. We show how this definition can explain why ambiguity affects decisions in the ways it does. We argue that there are a variety of rational reasons ambiguity affects probability judgments and choices in the ways it does. However, we argue that the ambiguity effect does not cast doubt on the claim that utility theory is a standard of rational choice. Rather, we suggest that the effect of ambiguity on decisions highlights the fact that utility theory, like any normative model of decision making only prescribes the optimal decision, given what one knows.     

Entitlement and rationality

This paper takes the form of a critical discussion of Crispin Wright’s notion of entitlement of cognitive project. I examine various strategies for defending the claim that entitlement can make acceptance of a proposition epistemically rational, including one which appeals to epistemic consequentialism. Ultimately, I argue, none of these strategies is successful, but the attempt to isolate points of disagreement with Wright issues in some positive proposals as to how an epistemic consequentialist should characterize epistemic rationality.     

Representation and rationality

David Lewis (1974, 1994/1999) proposed to reduce the facts about mental representation to facts about sensory evidence, dispositions to act, and rationality. Recently, Robert Williams (2020) and Adam Pautz (2021) have taken up and developed Lewis's project in sophisticated and novel ways. In this paper, we aim to present, clarify, and ultimately object to the core thesis that they all build their own views around. The different sophisticated developments and defenses notwithstanding, we think the core thesis is vulnerable. We pose a dilemma by considering the two sides of a current epistemological controversy over the relation between evidence and rational belief: permissivism vs. uniqueness. As we argue, the prospects for the Lewisian project look dim when either supposition is clearly made.     

Justifying inference to the best explanation as a practical meta-syllogism on dialectical structures

This article discusses how inference to the best explanation (IBE) can be justified as a practical meta-argument. It is, firstly, justified as a practical argument insofar as accepting the best explanation as true can be shown to further a specific aim. And because this aim is a discursive one which proponents can rationally pursue in—and relative to—a complex controversy, namely maximising the robustness of one’s position, IBE can be conceived, secondly, as a meta-argument. My analysis thus bears a certain analogy to Sellars’ well-known justification of inductive reasoning (Sellars, In: Essays in honour of Carl G. Hempel, 1969); it is based on recently developed theories of complex argumentation (Betz, In: Theorie dialektischer Strukturen, 2010a).     

The Survival Imperative

Science and Engineering Ethics - Humans are powerful and clever, and also more ignorant than they know. As a result, they too often fail to acknowledge or even recognize their limitations, and are...     

The Moral Imperative

Abstract

Given recent evidence concerning the prevalence of impairment in practitioners and its deleterious effects upon clients, therapist self-care must be viewed as a moral imperative. Despite the perception that self-care is especially problematic for women psychotherapists, research indicates that we are less ambivalent about practicing self-care and engaging in personal therapy than men practitioners (Mahoney, 1997). We propose a classification system based upon the dimensions of awareness of impairment and commitment to self-care and offer practical suggestions in order to create a climate more amenable for women therapists to engage in self-care activities.     

Psychological determinism and rationality

There are arguments which purport to rebut psychological determinism by appealing to its alleged incompatibility with rationality. I argue that they all fail. Against Davidson, I argue that rationality does not preclude the existence of psychological laws. Against Popper, I argue that rationality is compatible with the possibility of predicting human actions. Against Schlesinger, I claim that Newcomb's problem cannot be invoked to show that human actions are unpredictable. Having vindicated the possibility of a rationally-based theory of action, I consider the form it might take.