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According to the assurance view of testimony, we are often testimonially justified in believing a proposition p in virtue of the testifier's assurance that p or the recipient's acceptance of that assurance. This chapter focuses here on the logically weakest assurance view, suggested by the work of Richard Moran, that such assurance or acceptance gives the recipient an epistemic reason to believe p, though whether this reason is a good one depends on further “background conditions.” On this view, testimonial reason-giving turns on an actual or potential personal relation between the testifier and the recipient and on their free choices to offer or accept an agreement. The chapter objects to this view, on three grounds. First, though assurance may give the recipient a practical reason to trust the testifier as to whether p, neither assurance nor accepting assurance is sufficient to give the recipient an epistemic reason to believe p, as opposed to a practical reason in light of the cognitive goal of believing the truth. Second, assurance isn't necessary for testimony to give the recipient an epistemic reason to believe the proposition. Third, the assurance view cannot account for the conferring of epistemic reasons by testimony in the most important class of cases for a nonreductive view of testimonial justification—the primitive cases in which the recipient lacks nontestimonial reason. The chapter finally considers what these objections suggest for an alternative nonreductive view of testimony, the agreement view.

Introducing a distinction between standard and non-standard reasons, based on the ability to directly follow them, the chapter uses it to solve the ‘right kind of reason’ and the Toxin Puzzle, and to explain the difference between practical reasons and adaptive reasons, of which epistemic reasons are an instance. It then argues that normativity cannot be explained by its relationship to value because epistemic reasons are not related to value at all.

Austin maintained that standard waking experience is phenomenologically distinguishable from dreaming. In unpublished lectures delivered at UC Berkeley (one source for Sense and Sensibilia), Austin supported this claim by citing contingent, empirical facts about dreams. This chapter argues that if these factual claims and Austin’s broader epistemological framework are correct, then Austin provides a compelling empirical response to external world scepticism. Given Austin’s account of epistemic reasons and epistemic priority requirements, there is nothing problematic about making use of empirical background knowledge about dreams in the course of determining that we are awake. It might be thought that familiar sceptical arguments would undercut Austin’s position. However, using Barry Stroud’s reconstruction of Descartes’s dream argument as a stalking horse, this chapter argues that if Austin’s factual claims about dreams and his broader epistemological framework are correct, then the dream argument for external world scepticism—and, by extension, several other prominent sceptical arguments—won’t even get off the ground. Any compelling sceptical argument will be an empirical matter.

Discusses how to explain the distinction between epistemic and non‐epistemic reasons while allowing epistemic reasons to be affected by pragmatic considerations of simplicity, coherence, and conservatism. After noting difficulties with trying to explain epistemic reasons in terms of connections with truth or the goal of believing what is true, the chapter discusses issues about the nature of probability, suggesting that epistemic reasons connect with conditional probability in a way that non‐epistemic reasons do not.

The “problem of the source of epistemic normativity,” which is the problem of explaining the appropriateness of epistemic evaluation and epistemic reasons attribution, is introduced. Accounts of epistemic value in terms of wellbeing and social value are rejected, and an alternative type of account, “epistemic essentialism,” is introduced. The meaning of “epistemic” is discussed. On naturalistic grounds, it is argued that positing irreducible normativity should be avoided.

Instrumentalist and teleologist views in metaepistemology hold that epistemic reasons are goal-relative or value-relative. In the face of counterexamples involving apparently pointless or counterproductive beliefs that are nonetheless supported by excellent epistemic reasons, some have retreated to the following view: while even pointless or counterproductive beliefs can be supported by excellent epistemic reasons in a not-genuinely-normative sense, we can have genuinely normative epistemic reasons only for beliefs that do serve some goal or value. In this chapter doubts are raised about the distinction between genuinely normative and not-genuinely-normative epistemic reasons employed here. It is suggested that there’s no real need or intuitive motivation for the distinction, beyond the ad hoc need of salvaging instrumentalist and teleologist views from counterexamples. The sense in which all epistemic reasons—even reasons for apparently pointless or counterproductive beliefs—seem to be equally normative is explained; and the implications for instrumentalists and teleologists are outlined.

Most internalists about practical reasons are drawn to internalism because they favor ethical naturalism or are persuaded of the Humean theory of motivation and think normative judgments necessarily motivate. This chapter argues that even if we don’t share these internalists’ metaethical views, we should still take internalism seriously. Internalism offers an attractive account of what reasons are that brings out one way we’re all equally sources of claims on others. Because the account appeals to the comparatively uncontroversial normative standard provided by the procedural conception of rationality, it may also act as an Archimedean point against which we can brace ourselves in disputes about reasons. Internalism, unlike externalism, explains what makes some people better at responding to reasons than others. And thinking about what internalism and externalism about epistemic reasons might look like should make us skeptical about external practical reasons. The chapter closes by suggesting we should be more hopeful about discovering universally-shared internal reasons than most externalists and internalists have allowed.

“Humean” approaches to epistemic normativity, which explain epistemic normativity as a species of instrumental normativity, are articulated and criticized. A “teleological” conception of belief, on which belief requires a desire to believe nothing but the truth, is considered. It is argued that belief is not normally accompanied by the desires required by the Humean’s account. Objections, in defense of Humean approaches, are considered.

How could it be warranted and rational to accept anti-sceptical hypotheses (I’m not a brain in a vat, There is an external world, etc.) in the absence of evidence supporting such propositions? Crispin Wright has introduced entitlement of cognitive project—a non-evidential species of warrant—as a response to the sceptic. Critics (Pritchard and Jenkins) have argued that Wright-style entitlement is not an epistemic kind of warrant and does not sustain epistemic rationality. This chapter develops a consequentialist alternative to Wright’s proposal. Acceptance of anti-sceptical hypotheses is epistemically warranted and rational because it maximizes epistemic value. This is argued within an axiological framework that incorporates pluralism about epistemic value or goods. Truth is not the only epistemic good—contra veritic monism, the most widely held view about epistemic value. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the success of the consequentialist approach eliminates the need for Wright-style entitlement.

This chapter takes up the final constructivist thesis: that our beliefs are never to be explained in terms of the evidence we have for them, but only in terms of our contingent needs and interests. It distinguishes between a strong version of this thesis, associated with David Bloor, and a weak version, associated with Thomas Kuhn. It argues that neither is acceptable.

Critics like Matt Bedke, Terence Cuneo, and David Enoch have recently argued that an error theory that targets irreducible normativity has deeply problematic ramifications for hypothetical reasons, epistemic reasons, and deliberation. These challenges can all be viewed as versions of the companions-in-guilt response to the argument from queerness. It is argued that although Mackie and other error theorists have overlooked or not taken seriously enough the challenges discussed here, they can in the end be overcome. The chapter also considers and rejects Bart Streumer’s recent argument that we cannot believe the error theory.

While buck-passing accounts are widely discussed in the literature, there have been surprisingly few attempts to apply buck-passing analyses to specific normative domains such as aesthetics and epistemology. In particular, there have been very few works which have tried to provide complete and detailed buck-passing analyses of epistemic values and norms. These analyses are, however, both interesting and important. On the one hand, they can bring to the surface the advantages and difficulties of extending the buck-passing account to specific normative spheres, either providing further support for the approach or highlighting substantive difficulties. On the other hand, epistemic buck-passing analyses can be beneficial for normative epistemology, providing new perspectives on traditional epistemological problems, and possibly providing fresh approaches to such problems. This chapter aims at partially filling this gap.

It is argued that the first version of the parity premise—internalism-parity—is false. It is false because epistemic judgements are committed to the existence of ‘merely institutional’ reasons. Moral judgements, by contrast, are committed to the existence of genuinely normative reasons. This claim is defended by appeal to the basic rationale that epistemic judgements are normative or evaluative only in the sense of normative or evaluative judgements within ‘institutions’ such as sports and games, etiquette, fashion, and the law, but moral judgements are not. It is argued that this does not render epistemic norms merely conventional in an objectionable sense.

This chapter begins by outlining an internalist account of epistemic and practical reasons according to which they are conceptual truths. It then goes on to criticize the non-naturalist view that there are external practical reasons, by questioning its assumption that claims about these reasons which are supposed to be necessary, synthetic and known a priori, are possible. It futher contends that this view, in the form espoused by Derek Parfit, encounters the problem that it has to recognize two conflicting criteria for the rationality of desires. This implies, for instance, that it is both rationally required to be averse to pain for its own sake and rationally permissible to be indifferent to it. This chapter also draws a distinction between formal and substantive rationality and presents an account of the distinction between reasons for a desire and reasons for acquiring, keeping, or discarding a desire.

“Kantian” approaches to epistemic normativity, on which truth is belief’s constitutive standard of correctness (regardless of the desires of the believer), are articulated and criticized. A “normative” conception of belief is considered. It is argued that Kantian approaches are in tension with philosophical naturalism. More importantly, it is argued, the main argument for the Kantian’s view is unsound: the reality of the phenomena suggestive of the Kantian’s view (e.g. doxastic involuntarism) is contingent, and not necessary. Other arguments for the Kantian’s view are also criticized.

The aim of this chapter is to make it plausible by sketching some rough-and-ready considerations, largely familiar from the literature, that we can have no internally accessible, non-circular epistemic or truth-supporting reasons for our beliefs that our perceptions, seeming memories, inductions and other-minds attributions are generally reliable. Instead, we have pragmatic reasons to retain these beliefs and to rely on them when we act because it is necessary for our survival. However, this survey of cases of empirical beliefs with respect to which skepticism is hard to counter is primarily meant to provide a background against which the parallel claim, made in chapter 12, that we run out of practical reasons for our desires can be better appraised.

The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of goodness or value. This chapter makes an argument against VFA. It argues that epistemic reasons for belief should not be analysed in terms of value. But it argues that if epistemic reasons should not be analysed in terms of value but reasons for pro-attitudes should be analysed in terms of value, then epistemic reasons for belief cannot be instances of the very same relation as reasons for pro-attitudes. And this chapter argues that we should hold that epistemic reasons for belief are instances of the very same relation as practical reasons. So, we should reject VFA because it is inconsistent with the way in which epistemic normativity relates to practical normativity.

At least when we restrict our attention to the epistemic domain, it seems clear that only considerations which bear on whether p can render a subject’s belief that p epistemically justified, by constituting the reasons on the basis of which she believes that p. And we ought to expect any account of epistemic normativity to explain why this is so. Extant accounts generally appeal to the idea that belief aims at truth, in an effort to explain why there is a kind of evidential constraint on the sorts of considerations that can be epistemic reasons. However, there are grounds for doubting that belief, in fact, aims at truth in the way that these accounts propose. This chapter develops an alternative explanation of why it is that non-evidential considerations cannot be epistemic reasons by taking seriously the idea that the constitutive aim of belief is fundamentally action-oriented.

Chapter 5 continues with the second step of a modest analysis of the concept of a legal system. As a prelude to showing how only the Coercion Thesis can explicate law’s presumed conceptual normativity, this chapter is concerned to explicate the concept of normativity and distinguish among several classes of reasons that might be thought to figure into the problems associated with explicating law’s conceptual normativity. It proceeds to identify the class of reasons that the practices constituting something as a system of law must be presumed equipped to provide. The chapter ends with a description of three conceptual problems of legal normativity that must be solved to vindicate the very rationality of adopting legal systems to regulate behavior.