Epistemic vs. pragmatic reasons to believe that p (original) (raw)

Abstract

The view that epistemic reasons can justify a belief that p is quite uncontroversial, not least because epistemic reasons (evidential reasons in particular) can raise the probability that p is true. Can pragmatic reasons justify a belief that p? Short of a pragmatist theory of truth, a pragmatic reason does not generally raise the probability that p is true. Yet, even within a (moderate) evidentialist framework pragmatic reasons can obtain, most prominently in instances where evidential reasons are not available or inconclusive. My talk will investigate in which sense, if any, we can speak of "pragmatic beliefs" in this case. Does "to believe that p on pragmatic grounds" simply mean "to act as though proposition p were true" (in which case epistemology would seem to collapse into agency and action theory) or can we salvage its epistemic import by appealing e.g. to the notion of acceptance? Further, I will discuss specific arguments where pragmatic reasons to believe that p are said to obtain even though one has already sufficient epistemic reasons to believe that p. Specifically, I will investigate how these two kinds of reasons interrelate and ask under which conditions a pragmatic reason to believe that p may override or block an evidential reason to believe that non-p.

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