foley, richard (no date)—"the foundational role of epistemology in a general theory of...

8/13/2019 Foley, Richard (No Date)"The Foundational Role of Epistemology in a General Theory of Rationality"

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THE FOUNDATIONAL ROLE OF EPISTEMOLOGY IN A GENERAL THEORY OF

RATIONALITY

RICHARD FOLEY

ABSTRACT

A common complaint against contemporary epistemology is that its issues are

too rarified and, hence, of little relevance for the everyday assessments wemake of each other=s beliefs. The notion of epistemic rationality focuses ona specific goal, that of now having accurate and comprehensive beliefs,whereas our everyday assessments of beliefs are sensitive to the fact that wehave an enormous variety of goals and needs, intellectual as well as non-intellectual. Indeed, our everyday assessments often have a quasi-ethicaldimension; we want to know, for example, whether someone has been responsible,or at least non-negligent, in forming opinions. Nevertheless, epistemology,properly conceived, is relevant to our commonplace intellectual concerns.Epistemic rationality is an idealized notion, but its idealized charactermakes it suitable to serve as a theoretical anchor for other notions ofrationality, including notions that are less idealized and, hence, potentiallymore directly relevant to our everyday assessments.

An unfortunate methodological assumption of much recent

epistemology is that the properties which make a belief rational

(or justified) are by definition such that when a true belief

has these properties, it is a good candidate for knowledge (with

some other condition added to handle Gettier-style

counterexamples). The assumption has the effect of detaching the

theory of rational belief from a general theory of rationality

and placing it instead in service to the theory of knowledge.

If it is stipulated that the properties which make a belief


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rational must also be properties that turn true belief into a

good candidate for knowledge, an account of rational belief can

be regarded as adequate only if it contributes to a successful

account of knowledge. The theory of rational belief is thus

divorced from everyday assessments of the rationality ofdecisions, plans, actions, and strategies, and it is even

divorced from everyday assessments of the rationality of

opinions, which tend to focus on whether individuals have been

responsible and non-negligent in forming their opinions rather

than on whether they have satisfied all the prerequisites of

knowledge.

The remedy is for epistemologists, at least at the

beginning of their enterprise, to be wary of the idea that

knowledge can be adequately understood in terms of rational

(justified) true belief plus some fillip to handle Gettier

problems. By the end of the enterprise, after accounts of

rational belief and knowledge have been independently developed,

interesting connections between the two may have emerged, but

epistemologists ought not simply assume from the start that

there is a simple, necessary tie between them. Trial

separations are often liberating for both parties, and this oneis no exception. Relaxing the tie between the two frees the

theory of knowledge from overly intellectual conceptions of

knowledge, thus smoothing the way for treatments which

adequately recognize that people are not in a position to

provide a justification, or to cite reasons, in defense of much

of what they know, and it simultaneously creates a space for the

theory of rational belief to be embedded in a general theory of

rationality.

My focus here will be on these latter benefits. The notion

of rational belief ought not be cordoned off from other notions

of rationality, as if the conditions that make a belief rational


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have little to do with the conditions that make a decision,

action, strategy, or plan rational. The way we understand the

rationality of beliefs ought to be of a piece with the way we

understand the rationality of other phenomena.

A first step towards a well-integrated theory of

rationality is to recognize that rationality is concerned with

the effective pursuit of goals. However, it is too stringent to

insist that rationality requires that one succeed in satisfying

one=s goals. Consider plans, for example. Even rational plans

sometimes turn out badly. A plan can be rational even if one=s

goals are unlikely (in an objective sense) to be achieved by the

plan, because it may be that no one could be reasonably expectedto see that the plan was likely to have unwelcome consequences.

Considerations such as these suggest a general schema of

rationality:

A plan (decision, action, strategy, belief, etc.) is rationalfor an individual if it is rational for the individual tobelieve that it will satisfy his or her goals.

An obvious drawback of this schema is that it includes areference to the notion of rational belief. It thus leaves us

within the circle of notions we wish to understand. For the

moment, however, I will set aside this problem, because there

are other questions about the schema that also need to be

addressed. For instance, for a plan (decision, action, strategy,

belief, etc.) to be rational, must it be rational to believe

that it does a better job of achieving one=s goals than any of

the alternatives, or might something less than the very best do?

As I will be using the terms,


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usage has the welcome consequence of leaving open the

possibility that several options might be rational for an

individual even though there are reasons to prefer some of the

options over others. Thus, the refined schema of rationality

is:

A plan (decision, action, strategy, belief, etc.) if it isrational for the individual to believe that it does anacceptably good job of contributing to his or her goals.

To say that a plan will do ?an acceptably good job of

contributing to one=s goals@is to say its estimated

desirability is sufficiently high, where estimated desirability

is a function of what it is rational to believe about the

probable effectiveness of the plan in promoting one=s goals and

the relative value of these goals.1 Contextual factors are also

relevant in determining whether a plan does an ?acceptably good

job.@ A plan is rational if its estimated desirability is

sufficiently high given the context, where the context is

determined by the relative desirability of the other available

options and their relative accessibility. The fewer

alternatives there are with greater estimated desirabilities,

the more likely it is that the plan in question is rational.

Moreover, if these alternatives are only marginally superior or

they cannot be readily implemented, it is all the more likely

that the plan is rational. It will be rational because it is

good enough, given the context.

The expression ?estimated desirability=is Richard Jeffrey=s; see The Logicof Decision, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

This schema can be further refined. When we are assessing


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the rationality of a decision, strategy, etc., we can take into

consideration all of the individual=s goals or only a subset of

them. Often, we do the former. We assess what it is rational

for one to do, all things considered. Sometimes, however, our

focus is more narrow. We are interested in how effectivelysomeone is pursuing a specific type of goal. For example, we

may want to evaluate a plan exclusively with respect to goals

that concern an individual=s economic well-being. If we judge

that the plan is an effective way of promoting this subset of

goals, we can say that the plan is rational in an economic sense

for the individual. We can say this even if, with respect to

all the person=s goals, both economic and non-economic, it is

not rational to adopt the plan. Thus, the general schema ofrationality can be qualified to reflect that there are various

kinds of rationality corresponding to various kinds of goals:

A plan (decision, action, strategy, belief, etc.) is rational insense X for an individual if it is rational for the individualto believe that it does an acceptably good job of contributingto his or her goals of type X.

The distinction among different types of rationality isespecially important when it is the rationality of beliefs that

is at issue. In evaluating each other=s beliefs, we typically

focus attention on intellectual goals rather than pragmatic

ones.

For example, in assessing whether it is rational for you to

believe a hypothesis H, as a rule I am not interested in

considering whether believing H would produce economic,

psychological, or health benefits for you. More notoriously, inassessing whether it might be rational for you to believe in

God, I am unlikely to join Pascal in regarding as relevant the

possibility that you might increase your chances of salvation by

being a theist. Nevertheless, the above general schema of


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rationality implies that there is nothing in principle wrong

with evaluating beliefs in terms of how well they promote one=s

non-intellectual goals. This is an important point to which I

will return later.

A point of more immediate interest is that in their

accounts of epistemically rational belief, epistemologists have

traditionally been concerned with not just any intellectual

goal, but rather a very specific intellectual goal, that of now

having beliefs that are both accurate and comprehensive, or as

some epistemologists prefer to put it, that of now believing as

much of what is true as possible while believing as little of

what is false as possible. This goal, which I shall call


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comprehensive belief system. Despite these long-term benefits,

there is an important sense of rational belief, indeed the sense

that traditionally has been of the most interest to

epistemologists, in which it is not rational for me now to

believe P. Moreover, the point here is not affected byshortening the time period in which the benefits are

forthcoming. It would not be rational, in this sense, for me to

believe P if we were to imagine instead that believing P would

somehow improve my prospects for having accurate and

comprehensive beliefs in the coming week, or in the coming hour,

or even in the coming minute. The precise way of making this

point, in light of the above distinctions, is to say that in

such a situation, it is not rational in a purely epistemic sense

for me to believe P.

There are competing views about how this purely epistemic

sense of rational belief is best explicated. Classical

foundationalists have one view. Coherentists have another.

Probabilists, reliabilists, modest foundationalists, and virtue

theorists have yet other views. For purposes here, however, it

is not important which of these approaches is best, because my

primary concern is to illustrate how the notion of epistemicallyrational belief, whatever precise account one gives of it, plays

a crucial role in the general theory of rationality. In

particular, I will be arguing that epistemic rationality serves

as a theoretical anchor for other notions of rationality.

According to the general schema, a plan, (decision, action,

strategy, belief, etc.) is rational in sense X for an individual

if it is rational for the individual to believe that the plan

(decision, action, strategy, belief, etc.) does an acceptably

good job of promoting his or her goals of type X. This schema,

which makes use of the notion of rational belief, leaves us

within the circle of notions we wish to understand. However,


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the above accounts of epistemically rational belief standardly

do not, and should not, make use of any notion of rationality,

or any cognate of rationality (warrant, justification, etc.), in

their explications of epistemic rationality. For example,

classical foundationalists understand epistemic rationality interms of deductive relations plus direct acquaintance or

infallible belief; coherentists understand the notion in terms

of belief and deductive and probabilistic relations;

reliabilists understand the notion in terms of the propensity of

cognitive processes to generate true opinions; and so on. These

accounts make no reference to any other notion of rationality,

and thus they provide the above schema with an escape route from

circularity. In particular, with an account of epistemically

rational belief in hand, the general schema of rationality can

be further refined:

A plan (decision, action, strategy, belief, etc.) is rational insense X for an individual if it is epistemically rational forthe individual to believe that it does an acceptably good job ofcontributing to his or her goals of type X.

The refined schema illustrates how epistemic rationality

can serve as an anchor for other kinds of rationality. Moreover,

the schema is perfectly general. It applies to all phenomena

(plans, decisions, strategies, and so on) and to all forms of

rationality for these phenomena (economic rationality,

rationality all things considered, and so on). Most relevant for

my present purposes, the rationality of belief is itself an

instance of the schema. Even epistemically rational belief is an

instance. For example, inserting the epistemic goal into the

general schema for


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accurate and comprehensive beliefs.

On all the major theories of epistemically rational belief,

this instantiation of the general schema will indeed be the

case. According to coherentists, it is epistemically rational

for one to believe that believing P acceptably contributes to

the epistemic goal of one=s now having accurate and

comprehensive beliefs only when the proposed coherentist

conditions are met with respect to a proposition P, i.e., only

when P coheres appropriately with one=s other beliefs and hence

it is epistemically rational to believe that P is true.

According to reliabilists, it is epistemically rational for one

to believe that believing P acceptably contributes to theepistemic goal

only when the recommended reliabilist conditions are met with

respect to P; similarly for foundationalists, virtue theorists,

and probabilists.2 Thus, according to the above accounts, every

According to probabilists, when assessing the rationality of opinions, theprimary phenomena to be assessed are not beliefs simpliciter, but ratherdegrees of beliefs (or subjective probabilities). Nevertheless, the abovepoint holds for probabilists as well, mutatis mutandis. Only when one hasdegree of belief xin proposition P and this degree of belief meets the

recommended probabilist conditions is it epistemically rational for one tohave xdegree of belief in the proposition that this opinion contributes tothe goal of having accurate and comprehensive degrees of belief. Accuracyhere is to be construed in terms of one=s subjective degrees of beliefconforming to the objective probabilities. See Bas van Fraassen, ?Calibration:A Frequency Justification for Personal Probability,@in R.S. Cohen and L.Laudan (eds.), Physics, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis (Dordrecht: Reidl,1983), 295-319. See also Richard Foley, Working Without a Net(New York:


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belief which is an instance of the general schema, where the

relevant goal is specified to be that of now having accurate and

comprehensive beliefs, is also a belief which satisfies the the

account=s requirements of epistemic rationality.

Oxford University Press, 1993), especially pp. 156-7.

It might be objected that goals are necessarily future

oriented, and thus it is awkward, or perhaps even senseless, to

understand the epistemic rationality of a current belief in

terms of the belief contributing, in the sense of being an

effective means, to the present tense goal of now having

accurate and comprehensive beliefs. According to this

objection, G can be a goal only if G does not currently obtain,

and correspondingly something M can be an effective means to G

only if M is an causally effective way of bringing about G at

some future time. However, I am using


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devise alternative terminology.


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rational for us to believe about the consequences of doing so.

It may be that taking the time to gather additional information

would greatly improve the quality of our beliefs, but it won=t

be rational for us to do so unless it is epistemically rational

for us to believe that the estimated benefits of gathering thisinformation are acceptably high relative to alternative ways of

spending our time. So, important as questions of intellectual

progress and improvement are, questions of the synchronic

rationality of our beliefs have a theoretical priority.

The general schema of rationality implies that the

rationality of an plan, decision, action, strategy, belief, etc.

is a matter of its being epistemically rational for one to

believe that it will do an acceptably good job of satisfying

one=s ends. Recall, however, that in applying the general

schema, we can take into consideration either all of one=s goals

or only a subset of them. This creates a risk of confusion. If

we take into consideration only economic goals, for instance, we

may judge that it is rational, in an economic sense, for one to

do X, but if we take into consideration all of one=s goals, both

economic and non-economic, we may well conclude that it is not

rational, all things considered, for one to do X.

These same possibilities for confusion arise, and indeed

arise even more acutely, when the rationality of beliefs is at

issue. Beliefs can be assessed in terms how well they promote

the epistemic goal, but as I have already observed, they can

also be assessed in terms of how well they promote other goals.

For example, inserting


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goals.

There are two notions of rational belief at work in this

characterization. The first is the anchoring notion of

epistemically rational belief, defined in terms of the epistemic

goal. The second is the derivative notion of rational belief all

things considered, defined in terms of the anchoring notion and

the complete set of one=s goals.

A common complaint against epistemology is that its issues

are too rarified to shed light on the everyday assessments we

make, and need to make, of each other=s beliefs. Our everyday

assessments have to be sensitive to the fact we have many goals,

ends, and needs, which place sharp limitations on how much time

and effort it is reasonable to spend on intellectual matters,

whereas epistemic rationality is concerned with a single

intellectual goal, that of now having accurate and comprehensive

beliefs. On the other hand, rational belief all things

considered is characterized in terms of the total constellation

of one=s goals. So, it is tempting to think that this notion

might provide a way of addressing the above complaint, but I

will be arguing that this is not in fact the case. There isnothing inherently improper in assessing beliefs in terms how

well they promote the overall collection of one=s goals, but

this way of introducing non-epistemic goals into the assessments

of beliefs is too direct and too crass to be of much interest or

general use. Our everyday assessments bring non-epistemic goals

into the evaluations of beliefs in more subtle, indirect ways,

but before explaining how, I need first to discuss why

epistemically rational belief and rational belief all thingsconsidered tend not to conflict with one another, although it is

in principle for them to do so.

It can be epistemically rational to believe that the


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overall consequences (long term as well as short term, and

pragmatic as well as intellectual) of believing P are

significantly better than those of not believing P even when it

is not epistemically rational to believe that a proposition P is

true. Thus, what it is rational to believe, all thingsconsidered, can differ from what it is epistemically rational to

believe. Conflicts of this sort rarely occur, however. In all

but a few extreme situations, the benefits that might accrue

from believing propositions that are not epistemically rational

to regard as true are outweighed by the costs associated with

the overall decline in the accuracy of one=s belief system.

To be sure, there are conceivable exceptions. If a madman

will kill my children unless I come to believe a proposition P

for which I lack evidence, then I have good reasons to find some

way of getting myself to believe P. However, it is not a simple

matter to get oneself to believe something for practical

reasons. Becoming fully convinced that there is powerful

evidence in favor of P=s truth is ordinarily sufficient to

occasion belief in P, but becoming fully convinced that there

are powerful pragmatic reasons to believe P will not

automatically occasion belief in P. Pascal did not think that

his pragmatic argument for theistic belief would directly

convince anyone to believe in God=s existence. His strategy,

rather, was to convince non-believers to manipulate their

situation so that belief would eventually become possible for

them. They might do so, he suggested, by surrounding themselves

with believers, attending religious services regularly, reading

religious literature, listening to religious music, and so on.It is no different with non-theological propositions. If one is

to come to believe P for pragmatic reasons, as opposed to

evidential reasons, one will usually need to engage in Pascalian

manipulations of one=s evidential situation, with the aim of


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altering the situation in such a way that one will ultimately

become convinced that there is after all good evidence for P=s

truth. Such manipulations require one to plot against oneself.

For example, one may have to find a way to forget or at least

to downplay one=s current evidence against P. Tampering in this

way with one=s evidential situation will produce what one would

now regard as inaccuracies in one=s beliefs system. Moreover,

because beliefs cannot be altered piecemeal, the inaccuracies

will typically extend well beyond P itself. Beliefs come in

clusters. As Peter van Inwagen once observed, one cannot

believe that the moon is made of green cheese without also

believing all sorts of other, equally astounding claims, for

example, that there are (or were) enormously large cows capableof producing prodigious quantities of milk, that there is (or

was) an immense cheese processing plant capable of turning this

milk into cheese and forming it into a huge sphere, and so on.

Getting oneself to believe a proposition P for which one lacks

evidence is not something one can do in isolation from one=s

other beliefs, It requires a project, a project which involves

altering one=s opinions towards a wide number of related

propositions as well. From one=s current perspective, such aproject will be at the expense of the overall accuracy of one=s

belief system, and because effective decision making normally

requires accurate beliefs, this in turn is likely to affect

adversely the overall success one has in promoting one=s goals.

If my children=s lives are at stake, costs such as these will

be well worth paying, but in less extreme situations, they will

not be. The costs associated with the manipulations will be

unacceptably high relative to the benefits of the resultingbelief. So, although what it is rational for one to believe,

when all one=s goals are taken into account, can in principle be

at odds with what it is epistemically rational for one to

believe, in practice this tends not to happen. There are


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pressures that tend to keep the two together.

With this conclusion in mind, reconsider the

complaint that the notion of epistemically rational belief is of

little relevance for the everyday assessments we make of eachother=s beliefs. This much is correct about the complaint:

epistemic rationality is concerned with a very specific goal,

that of now having accurate and comprehensive beliefs, whereas

our everyday assessments are sensitive to the fact that all of

us have many goals. Nevertheless, this is not so much a

criticism as an acknowledgment that epistemic rationality is an

idealized notion. This has its advantages, however. Its

idealized character makes the notion suitable as a theoretical

anchor for other notions of rationality, including notions that

are less idealized and, hence, potentially more relevant to our

everyday intellectual concerns.

The complication, as we have seen, is that the most

straightforward way of introducing a derivative notion of

rational belief is too crude to be of much relevance for our

everyday intellectual concerns. According to the general schema,

believing P is rational, all things considered (that is, whenall of the individual=s goals are taken into account), if it is

epistemically rational for him or her to believe that the

overall effects of believing P are sufficiently beneficial.

However, it is rare for epistemically rational belief and

rational belief, all things considered, to come apart in a

simple Pascalian manner. There are pressures that keep the two

from being in conflict with one another in all but unusual

circumstances. So, if non-epistemic goals, values, and needsare to be used to fashion an account of rational belief relevant

for our everyday intellectual assessments of belief, they will

have to be introduced in a more indirect way.


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A first step is to recognize that our everyday evaluations

of each other=s beliefs tend to be reason-saturated. We are

interested in whether one has been reasonably reflective,

reasonablyattentive, and reasonably cautious in forming one=s

belief. We are also interested in negative assessments, for

example, in whether one has been unreasonablycareless in

gathering evidence or unreasonablyhasty in drawing conclusions

from this evidence. The standards of reasonability and

unreasonability at work in these assessments are realistic ones.

They reflect the fact that all of us have non-intellectual

interests, goals, and needs, which impose significant

constraints on how much time and effort ought to be devoted to

intellectual inquiry and deliberation.

Only a non-idealized notion, which is sensitive to

questions of resource allocation, will be capable of capturing

the spirit of these everyday evaluations. Indeed, since we

evaluate each others' beliefs in a variety of contexts for a

variety of purposes, perhaps several notions will be needed.

Still, at least many of our daily evaluations can be understood

in terms of a pair of notions, which I will call 'responsible

belief=and


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result will be theoretically respectable accounts of responsible

and non-negligent belief, that is, accounts that make no

ineliminable use of a notion of rationality or any of its

cognates.

More specifically, I shall say that one responsibly

believes a proposition P if one believes P and one also has an

epistemically rational belief that the processes by which one

has acquired and sustained the belief P have been acceptable,

that is, acceptable given the limitations on one=s time and

capacities and given all of one=s goals. Thus, if an individual

has an epistemically rational belief that he or she has spent an

acceptable amount of time and energy in gathering and evaluatingevidence about P and has also used acceptable procedures in

gathering and processing this evidence, then the belief P is a

responsible one for the individual to have.

However, we often do not have a very good idea of how it is

that we came to believe what we do. We may not remember or

perhaps we never knew. Consequently, with respect to many of

our beliefs, we may not think that the processes which led to

them were acceptable, but by the same token we may not think,

and need not have evidence for thinking, that these processes

were unacceptable either. I shall say, under such conditions,

that the beliefs in question are non-negligent.

More exactly, one non-negligently believes a proposition P

if (a) one believes P and (b) one does not believe, and it is

not epistemically rational for one to believe, that one=s

procedures with respect to P have been unacceptable, that is,unacceptable given the limitations on time and capacities and

given all of one=s goals. For example, if an individual does not

believe, and if it is not epistemically rational for the

individual to believe, that he or she has spent an unacceptably


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small amount of time in gathering evidence or in evaluating this

evidence, or that he or she has used unacceptable procedures in

gathering and processing this evidence, then his or her belief P

is non-negligent.

The notions of responsible and non-negligent beliefs are

less idealized than the notion of epistemically rational belief.

They provide a way of acknowledging that given the relative

unimportance of some topics, the scarcity of time, and the

pressing nature of many of our non-intellectual ends, it would

be inappropriate to spend a significant amount of time gathering

information about these topics and thinking about them.

Indeed, we acquire many of our beliefs with little or no

thought. I believe that there is a table in front of me because

I see it. I don't deliberate about whether to trust my senses.

I simply believe. Most of our beliefs are acquired in an

unthinking way, Moreover, in general this is an acceptable way

to proceed. Unless there are concrete reasons for suspicion, it

is foolish to spend time and effort deliberating about what we

are inclined to believe spontaneously. It is better to keep

ourselves on a kind of automatic pilot and to make adjustmentsonly when a problem manifests itself.3 The old saw, don't try

to fix what isn't broken, is good intellectual advice as well,

and the above notions of responsible and non-negligent belief

provide the theoretical framework for recognizing the wisdom of

this proverb.

On the other hand, neither notion should be taken as an

implicit endorsement of intellectual passivity. We ordinarily

have good reasons, both intellectual and otherwise, to seek out

See Kent Bach, ?Default Reasoning,@Pacific Philosophical Quarterly65(1984), 37-58.


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people, situations and experiences that will challenge our

existing opinions. We likewise have good reasons to be vigilant

in monitoring whether our standard repertoire of intellectual

methods, practices, and skills is serving us well. However, it

is also true that any intellectual project will make use of anenormous number of opinions, skills, and habits, most of which

we must rely on without much thought. The bulk of our

intellectual proceedings has to be conducted in a largely

automatic fashion. We have no choice in this matter. Only a

fraction of our intellectual methods, practices, and faculties,

and only a fraction of the opinions they generate, can be

subject to scrutiny. Our real difficulty is to identify that

which is the most deserving of our attention.

Which issues, opinions, methods, etc. are most deserving of

our attention is not something that can be determined a priori.

We must instead look at the details of our lives and at the

relative importance of our various goals. We are constantly

confronted with potential intellectual problems. Indeed, every

new situation presents us with new challenges, if only because

we will want to know the best way to react to the situation. We

are thus bombarded with potential intellectual projects andquestions, but given the total constellation of our goals, some

of these projects are more important than others, and likewise,

given the scarcity of time, some are more pressing than others.

These are the ones most deserving of our attention and time.

Because of the relative unimportance of some topics and the

pressing nature of many of our non-intellectual ends, we can

have responsible beliefs about these topics even if we have

spent little or no time gathering evidence and deliberating

about them. Indeed, we can have responsible beliefs about them

even if we are in the possession of information which, had we

reflected upon it, would have convinced us that what we believe


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is incorrect. This is one of the ways in which responsible

belief and epistemically rational belief can come apart. Even

if an individual has evidence that makes it epistemically

irrational to believe P, he or she might nonetheless responsibly

believe P, since given the unimportance of the topic, it mightbe appropriate for him or her not to have taken the time and

effort to sift through this evidence.

Similarly, consider the logical implications of a

proposition P which is epistemically rational for an individual.

Perhaps not every implication of P will itself be epistemically

rational for the individual, since some may be too complicated

for him or her even to understand. Still, on most accounts of

epistemic rationality, a large number of these implications will

be epistemically rational for the individual. But of course, it

ordinarily won't be reasonable for him or her to try to identify

and, hence, believe all these propositions. After all, most of

the implications of P will be unimportant ones. So, this is

another of the ways in which responsible belief and

epistemically rational belief can come apart. An individual can

responsibly not believe these propositions even though they are

epistemically rational for him or her.

The lesson, obvious as soon as it is stated but not

sufficiently acknowledged in philosophical discussion of

rational belief, is that it is inappropriate for us to be

fanatical in our intellectual pursuits. Of course, it is also

inappropriate to be lackadaisical. We usually have good

reasons, intellectual and otherwise, to be active in trying to

ensure that our belief systems are both accurate and

comprehensive, but we shouldn't get carried away and spend all

of our time on intellectual matters. The unreflective life may

not be worth living, but neither is the overly reflective life.

Time is a scarce commodity, and many of our most important goals


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are not intellectual ones.

The result is a call for moderation. Being a responsible

and non-negligent believer requires one not to be slovenly in

one=s intellectual pursuits, but it doesn't normally require oneto exercise extraordinary care either. More precisely, it

doesn't require extraordinary care unless the issue itself is

extraordinarily important. The standards that one must meet if

one=s beliefs are to be responsible (or non-negligent) slide up

or down with the significance of the issue. If nothing weighty

is at stake, there won't be a point in going to great lengths to

discover the truth about the issue. Accordingly, the standards

one must meet are low. These are the kinds of cases I have beenfocusing on up until now, ones in which the standards of

responsible belief tend to be lower than those of epistemically

rational belief. On the other hand, when issues of great

consequence are at stake, the standards of responsible belief

become correspondingly high. Indeed, they can be more stringent

than those of epistemically rational belief. The more important

the issue, the more important it is to reduce the risk of error.

For example, if having inaccurate opinions about a given topic

would put people's lives at risk, one should conduct especially

thorough investigations before settling on an opinion. If one

fails to do so, the resulting beliefs will be irresponsible.

They will be irresponsible even if they are epistemically

rational.

This is possible because epistemically rational belief does

not require certainty, not even moral certainty, whereas moral

certainty sometimes is required for responsible belief. For abelief to be epistemically rational, one needs to reduce the

risks of error to an acceptable theoretical level, that is, to

an acceptable level insofar as one=s goal is to have accurate

and comprehensive beliefs. But the risks might be acceptable in


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this theoretical sense even if one=s procedures have been

unacceptably sloppy, given that people's lives are hanging in

the balance. If so, the beliefs in question will be

irresponsible despite the fact that they are epistemically

rational.

The intellectual standards it is appropriate for one to

meet vary not just with the importance of the topic at issue but

also with one=s social role. If it is your job but not mine to

keep safety equipment in good working order, the intellectual

demands upon you to have accurate beliefs about the equipment

will be more serious than those upon me. My belief that the

equipment is in good working order might be responsible even ifI have done little, if any, investigation of the matter. I need

not have tested the equipment, for example. A cursory look

might suffice for me, but this won't do for you. It would be

unreasonable for you not to conduct tests of the equipment. The

standards of responsible belief are higher for you. You need to

do more, and know more, than I in order to have a responsible

belief about this matter.

One's social role can be relevant even when the issue at

hand is primarily of theoretical interest. For example, my

responsibly believing that the principle of conservation of

energy is not violated in the beta decay of atomic nuclei is a

very different matter from a theoretical physicist responsibly

believing this. My familiarity with the issue derives mainly

from brief, popular discussions of it. This kind of appeal to

authority is presumably enough to make my belief a responsible

one, since no more can be reasonably expected of me. On theother hand, more is reasonably expected of the authorities

themselves. They are part of a community of inquirers with

special knowledge and special responsibilities, and as a result

they should be able to explain away the apparent violations in a


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detailed way.

Non-epistemic ends help prescribe what one can responsibly

(and non-negligently) believe, but not in the way that Pascal

envisioned. The idea is not they give one good reasons tobelieve a proposition for which one lacks good evidence.

Rather, they define the extent of evidence gathering and

processing that it is reasonable to engage in with respect to a

particular issue. They thus shape what it is responsible for one

to believe in an indirect way rather than a direct, Pascalian

way. They impose constraints on inquiry, but subject to these

constraints, one=s aim will be to determine which beliefs are

true, not which beliefs are useful.

This conforms to our actual intellectual practice. We

rarely engage in Pascalian deliberations. We weigh evidence in

favor and against claims, but we don't very often weigh the

practical costs and benefits of believing as opposed to not

believing a claim. On the other hand, it is altogether common

for us to weigh the costs and benefits of spending additional

time and resources in investigating an issue. In buying a used

car, for example, I will want to investigate whether the car isin good condition, but I need to make a decision about how

thoroughly to do so. Should I merely drive the car? Should I

look up the frequency of repair record for the model? Should I

ask a mechanic, or perhaps even more than one mechanic, to

inspect the car? Similarly, if I am interested in how serious a

threat global warming is, I need to decide how much time to

spend investigating the issue. Should I be content with looking

at the accounts given in newspapers, or should I take the time

to read the recent piece in Scientific American, or should I

even go to the trouble of looking up some articles in the

relevant technical journals?


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The reasonable answer to such questions is a function of how

important it is for me to have accurate opinions about the matter

in question. As the stakes go up, so too should my standards.

Thus, the standards of responsible and non-negligent belief are

different for different issues. They can even be different for aproposition and its contrary. If I am picking wild mushrooms for

your dinner tonight, the costs associated with my falsely

believing that this mushroom is poisonous are relatively

insignificant. After all, there are other mushrooms to pick and

other foods to eat. On the other hand, the costs associated with

my falsely believing that this mushroom is nonpoisonous are much

more significant. So, the standards for my responsibly believing

that the mushroom is not poisonous are higher than the standards

for responsibly believing that it is poisonous. They are higher

because there are heavy costs associated with a false negative

and only relatively negligible ones associated with a false

positive.

The notion of responsible belief provides a way of

understanding not only our everyday evaluations of beliefs, but

also our everyday evaluations of decisions and actions. The

latter evaluations, like everyday evaluations of beliefs, aresensitive to issues of resource allocation. They reflect the

fact that we do not have time to deliberate over each and every

decision. Here too we have no choice but to operate in a largely

automatic fashion. Typically, we deliberate only when there are

special reasons to do so, for example, when the issues are

especially important or when our accustomed ways of acting begin

to create unexpected problems.

However sensible this practice may be, it will sometimes

result in our doing things that we ourselves would have regarded

as unwise, had we taken more time to think about them. Even so,

we may have been acting responsibly. After all, given the


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constraints on our time and given the importance of our other

needs and goals, there may not have been any reason for us to

suspect that special care was needed, and, accordingly, we may

have responsibly believed that our actions would not lead to

unacceptable results. The notion of responsible belief thusprovides the necessary infrastructure for an account of

responsible action. At least in the most simple cases, an

individual has acted responsibly if he or she responsibly

believed that his or her action would yield acceptable results.

The importance of the notions of responsible and non-

negligent belief for our everyday purposes does not detract from

the importance of the more idealized notion of epistemically

rational belief. On the contrary, the former put us in a better

position to appreciate the significance of the latter. Our

everyday evaluations of beliefs and actions are reason-saturated;

they presuppose a notion of rationality or one of its cognates.

They thus leave us within the circle of terms for which we want a

philosophical account. The notion of epistemically rational

belief permits an escape from this circle. It provides a

theoretical anchor for understanding the everyday notions we use

to assess each other=s beliefs and actions. Epistemicrationality is thus indispensable for an adequate philosophical

understanding of these assessments. It is indispensable, in

other words, for a complete theory of rationality.

Descartes, and many of the other great epistemologists of

the modern period, regarded epistemology as the czar of the

sciences. Its role was to provide assurances of the reliability

of properly conducted inquiry and thus place science, and inquiry

in general, on a secure foundation. This conception of

epistemology is now almost universally regarded as overly

grandiose. Nonetheless, Descartes and the other great

epistemologists of the modern era were not completely mistaken.


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Epistemology does have a foundational role to play, but not that

of a guarantor of knowledge. Its role, rather, is the less

flamboyant but nonetheless theoretically crucial one of providing

a philosophically respectable foundation for a general theory of

rationality.

____________________________________________

NOTES


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((

((((There are competing views about how this purely epistemic

notion of rational belief is best explicated. Classicalfoundationalists, such as Bertrand Russell, C.I. Lewis, and

Roderick Chisholm have one view. Coherentists, such as Wilfred

Sellars, Keith Lehrer, and Laurence BonJour, have another view.

Probabilists, such as Frank Ramsey, Richard Jeffrey, and Bas van

Fraassen, have still another. Reliabilists, such as Alvin

Goldman, D.M. Armstrong, and Robert Nozick have yet another. In

addition, there are moderate foundationalists, such as Robert

Audi, Peter Klein, Ernest Sosa, and myself. For my purposes

here, however, it is not important which of these approaches is

best, since my primary concern is to illustrate how the notion of

epistemically rational belief, whatever precise account one gives

of it, plays a crucial role in the general theory of rationality.

In particular, I will be arguing that epistemic rationality

serves as a theoretical anchor for other notions of

rationality.))))

(((((More specifically, I shall say that one responsibly believes

a proposition if it is epistemically rational for one to believethat one=s procedures with respect to it have been acceptable,

that is, acceptable given the limitations on one=s time and

capacities and given all of one=s goals. Thus, if it is

epistemically rational for an individual to believe that he or

she has spent an acceptable amount of time and energy in

gathering evidence and evaluating this evidence and has used

acceptable procedures in gathering and processing this evidence,

then the belief is a responsible one for the individual to have.However, we often do not have a very good idea of how it is

that we came to believe what we do. We may not remember or

perhaps never knew. Consequently, there may not be enough

evidence for it to be epistemically rational for us to believe


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that our procedures with respect to these beliefs have been

acceptable. On the other hand, we may not have any reason to

think that our procedures have been unacceptable either. I shall

say that such beliefs are non-negligent.

More exactly, an individual non-negligently believes aproposition if it is not epistemically rational for the

individual to believe that his or her procedures with respect to

it have been unacceptable, that is, unacceptable given the

limitations on one=s time and capacities and given all of one=s

goals. For example, if it is not epistemically rational for one

to believe that one has spent an unacceptably small amount of

time in gathering evidence or in evaluating this evidence and if

it is not epistemically rational for one to believe that one has

used unacceptable procedures in gathering and processing this

evidence, then one=s belief is non-negligent.4))))

A qualification is needed, however. If you non-negligently believe that yourprocedures with respect to P have been unacceptable, then you cannot non-negligently believe P even if it is not epistemically rational for you tobelieve that these procedures have been unacceptable. Situations of this sortare a possibility because you can non-negligently believe a proposition thatisn't epistemically rational for you. Suppose that it isn't epistemicallyrational for you to believe P', where P' is the proposition that yourprocedures with respect to P have been unacceptable. This creates a

presumption that your belief P is a non-negligent, but the presumption can beoverridden. Suppose, for example, that you have reasonably reflective andthorough in thinking about P' and that as a result you have concluded that P'is true. Then this belief is non-negligent even if P' is not epistemicallyrational for you. Perhaps you would have changed your mind about P' if youhad reflected still more. Nevertheless, if you have been reasonablyreflective and thorough, your belief is still non-negligent. But if you non-negligently believe P'Ci.e., if you non-negligently believe the propositionthat your procedures with respect to P have been unacceptable Cthen it isnegligent for you to believe P .

(((????Analogous sorts of considerations suggest that your belief Qneed not be negligent even if it is epistemically rational for you to believethat your procedures with respect to Qhave been unacceptable. There is apresumption here that your belief Q is negligent, but once again thepresumption can be overridden. Let Q' be the proposition that your procedures

with respect to Qhave been unacceptable. Suppose that the evidence thatmakes Q' rational for you is complicated and that you have not reflectedenough to see why this evidence makes it likely that Q' is true. Nonetheless,given all of your ends and needs, you have been reasonably reflective, and onthe basis of this reflection you may have concluded that notQ' is true Ci.e., you have concluded that your procedures with respect to Qwereacceptably careful. Then this belief Q' is non-negligent, despite yourevidence to the contrary. But if you believe that your procedures withrespect to Qhave been acceptable and if this belief is a responsible one for


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you to have, then your belief Qis also a responsible one for you to have.Having made these qualifications, I will for the most part ignore them, sothat the main idea is not obscured.????))))


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One way to appreciate this feature of responsible belief is

to consider cases in which you have lost or forgotten the

evidence that originally made a belief rational for you. If you

no longer have this evidence, the belief may not be defensible

given your current situation. It may no longer be epistemically

rational for you. Still, you might not have a good reason to

reconsider the proposition or to try to reconstruct your evidence

for it, especially if your believing it hasn't led to any

noticeable problems. Indeed, you may not even realize that you

have lost your original evidence, and in any event, it is

unrealistic to expect you to keep track of your evidence for

everything you believe.i To be sure, some issues are so

important or so subject to public debate that you should try to

keep track of your evidence. It may even be part of your job to

keep track of the evidence with respect to some issues. But in a

great many other cases, you can responsibly continue to believe aproposition, despite the fact that you no longer have positive

evidence for it.

Of course, it will often be the case that even if you have

lost or forgotten your original evidence for a proposition, you

will not have forgotten the fact that you once did have this

evidence, and this itself may be enough to make your current

belief epistemically rational. Think, for example, of a theorem

that you remember having proved long ago. Even if you are not

now able to reconstruct the proof, you nonetheless do have

indirect evidence for its truth.

Thus, in practice, this difference between epistemically

rational belief and responsible belief may not be quite as


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dramatic as first appearances would suggest. Even so, there is a

difference, and it is theoretically important. It helps explain,

for example, a divergence in intuitions about the doctrine of

epistemic conservatism. On the one hand, there are those who

claim that the mere fact that you believe a proposition gives youa reason, albeit perhaps a weak one, to continue believing it,ii

while there are others who cannot understand why this should be

so.iii Why, they ask, should the mere fact that you believe a

proposition always give you a reason to think that it is true?

The distinction between responsible and rational belief

suggests that each side may be on to something. The opponents of

conservatism are right if the issue is one about egocentrically

rational belief. It is not conservative. The fact that you

believe a proposition is not in itself enough to give you an

egocentric reason, even a weak one, to think that what you

believe is true. After all, you can believe strange

propositions, ones that even you would regard as having nothing

to recommend them were you to reflect for even a moment.

On the other hand, responsible belief is conservative, or at

least it is more conservative than egocentrically rational

belief. It is not conservative in as strong a way as some would

wish. Believing a proposition is not enough in itself to makeyour belief a responsible one, all else being equal. But

something close to this often is the case. Most of our beliefs

are ones that we acquire without thought. We simply believe.

And most of the time, these beliefs will be responsible ones for

us to have. Moreover, it is responsible for us to continue

holding such beliefs unless there are positive reasons for not

doing so.

There is another way in which the notion of responsible

belief reflects the importance of having stable beliefs. Suppose

you irresponsibly believe a proposition. Perhaps it is rational

for you to think that you have not gathered enough evidence or

not the right kind of evidence, or alternatively it may be


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rational for for you to think that you have been sloppy in

processing your evidence. Whatever the exact problem, how does

your irresponsibility affect subsequent belief, both in the

proposition at issue and in other propositions that you might

believe as a result of it? Are they also irresponsible? Is theirresponsibility passed on from one generation of belief to

another until you have done something concrete to correct the

original difficulty Csay, gather new evidence or process more

adequately the old evidence?

Not necessarily. Once again it depends upon your situation

and the proposition in question. The key is whether or not it

continues to be egocentrically rational for you to think that you

have dealt with the proposition inadequately. Sometimes this

will continue to be the case until you have reconsidered or

re-investigated the proposition. But often enough, this won't be

necessary. Instead, the passage of time will do the work. With

time it may no longer be rational for you to think that your

treatment of the proposition has been inadequate. This might be

so simply because you no longer have evidence of your original

sloppiness. It may have been lost with time.

Thus, the notion of responsible belief, as I am

understanding it, is not equivalent to the notion of havingresponsibly acquired a belief. If the procedures that originally

led you to believe P were unreasonably sloppy, then you acquired

the belief in an irresponsible manner. Still, your current

situation might be such that you can no longer reasonably be

expected to see (or remember) that these procedures were sloppy.

If so, it can be responsible for you to go on believing P even

though the belief was originally acquired irresponsibly.

As I have said, this can be so because the evidence of

your original sloppiness has been lost with time. But it

also might be so because your overall treatment of P has

begun to look more respectable in light of the fact that

your belief P apparently has not led to any significant


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problems, theoretical or otherwise.

Consider an analogy. Despite having heard that the

magnets in telephones sometimes interfere with the proper

functioning of computers, I placed my computer close to my

telephone. This may well have been an irrational decision.Yet as time goes by without there being any difficulty, my

overall history with respect to the placement of the

computer begins to look better and better. It's not that

this history makes the original decision any more rational.

Given my perspective at that time, it probably was an

irrational decision. On the other hand, from my present

perspective, my overall treatment of this issue, which

includes not only my original decision but also my

subsequent refusals to move the computer, looks

increasingly respectable. It looks as if it will have

acceptable consequences. As far as I can tell, the

placement has not yet led to any problems, and this

increases my confidence that it is not likely to do so in

the future either.

Something similar is the case for irresponsible belief.

You may have been sloppy in acquiring a belief, but if the

belief leads to no significant difficulties or anomalies,the importance of the original sloppy treatment tends to be

diluted with time. It may be diluted not because you have

done anything positive to correct the original sloppiness

but simply because the sloppiness seems less and less

problematic when viewed in the context of your overall

history with the belief. Irresponsible beliefs tend to

become respectable with age as long as they behave

themselves and don't cause problems.

Often enough there will be something of a self-fulfilling

prophecy about this, since the irresponsible belief might

influence your other opinions in such a way as to remove

your original qualms about it. This isn't surprising,


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however. Phenomena of this sort are common enough whenever

issues of rationality are involved. For example, even if

you have irrationally opted for a plan, you can sometimes

turn it into a rational one simply by sticking with it. It

originally may have been rational for you to move to NewYork rather than California, but if the irrational decision

has already been made and you are now driving towards

California, it may now be rational for you to continue on

your way rather than turn around. Plans often have a

snowballing effect. They require you to make arrangements

for carrying them out, and these arrangements foster still

other plans and arrangements, ones that are often

complicated and costly to undo. Thus, the further you are

along on a plan, the greater will be the pressures for not

abandoning it.iv

In an analogous way, beliefs can have snowballing

effects. Just as plans tend to engender yet other plans,

so beliefs tend to engender yet other beliefs, the

collective weight of which may make it increasingly

unreasonable for you to re-consider the original beliefs,

even if they were sloppily acquired. This is especially

likely to be unreasonable if the original beliefs and theones they engendered seem to be serving you well enough.

The advantages, theoretical and otherwise, of having a

stable belief system are thus built in to the notion of

responsible belief. Not only does responsible belief tend

to be transferred from one moment to the next, but in

addition irresponsibility tends to dissipate with time.

Related considerations can be used to illustrate the

relevance for epistemology of the so-called theoretical

virtues Csimplicity, fertility, problem-solving

effectiveness, and the like. Consider simplicity, for

example. Suppose that simplicity is not a mark of truth

and that as such it cannot give you an objective reason to


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believe a hypothesis.v Suppose also that on reflection you

wouldn't take simplicity to be a mark of truth and that,

accordingly, it does not give you an egocentric reason to

believe a hypothesis either.

Even so, considerations of simplicity are likely to playa significant role in shaping what you believe. They may

not have the important positive role in theorizing that

some philosophers have ascribed to them. If you have

limited the number of hypotheses you are seriously

considering to just two and if neither is terribly complex,

then considerations of simplicity may not play much of a

role in your deliberations about the respective merits of

these two hypotheses, even if one is somewhat more simple

than the other. On the other hand, considerations of

simplicity inevitably do play a role in your theorizing,

albeit a less fine-grained one. They do so because you

have only limited cognitive abilities and only a limited

amount of time to exercise these abilities. Indeed, if a

hypothesis is complex enough, it may not be possible for

you even to understand it. So, it won't even be a

candidate for belief. It will be filtered out

automatically. But even among those hypotheses that youare able to understand, some will be so complex that it

would be impractical for you to take them seriously. It

would take far too much of your time even to deliberate

about them, much less to use them in making predictions and

constructing other hypotheses. They are so complex that

they would be of little value to you or anyone else even if

they were true. So, they too will be filtered out. You

won't take them seriously. You will simply ignore them.

This need not be a conscious policy on your part. You

need not have made a decision to follow such a procedure.

It is more likely to be a matter of your dispositions and

practices, ones to which you may have given little thought.


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But the result of these dispositions and practices is that

simple hypotheses as a group tend to get a preferential

treatment over complex hypotheses as a group. As a group,

you are disposed to take them more seriously than complex

ones, and often enough the result may be that you are moredisposed to believe them as well.

You are disposed to believe them even though, we are

assuming, the simplicity of a hypothesis does not give you

a reason to believe it insofar as your aims are purely

episemic. Nor need you have good reasons to believe these

hypotheses, all things considered C.e.g., when all of your

ends, both epistemic and non-epistemic are taken into

consideration. It may be rational, all things considered,

for you to commit yourself to their truth rather than

believe them. Nevertheless, these beliefs might still be

responsible ones for you to have.

This is so because it need not be unreasonable for you to

have dispositions or engage in practices or adopt

procedures that produce irrational beliefs. This may have

the sound of paradox, but in fact it is merely an

acknowledgment that you are operating under various

constraints Cconstraints imposed by the kind of cognitive

equipment you have and the kinds of situation in which you

find yourself, as well constraints imposed by the fact you

have many goals and only a limited amount of time and

resources to pursue them.

Let me make the point in terms of dispositions, although

it can be made for practices and procedures as well. Your

being disposed to use simplicity as an initial filter may

result in your also being disposed to believe somehypotheses that are not egocentrically rational for you.

Even so, you might not have good egocentric reasons to try

to rid yourself of this disposition. It may not be worth

the effort, especially if the disposition is a deeply


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seated one. Besides, believing as opposed to committing

yourself to these hypotheses may have few if any

disadvantages beyond the purely epistemic ones. The

irrationality here may not adversely affect your life in

any major way, and thus it may not be that big a deal Itmay be analogous to your believing that the tie that has

just been given to you really is your favorite color rather

than merely acting as if this were the case. You believe

this because you are touched by the gift, and this causes

you, at least temporarily, to ignore the fact you never buy

ties of this color for yourself. This belief may be

irrational, but you probably don't have reasons to try to

change those elements of your character that are

responsible for this irrationality. It's not worth the

effort.

Moreover, it's not just that you don't have good reasons

to rid yourself of the disposition to believe simple

hypotheses. You may not have good reasons to worry about

the resulting beliefs either, even if they are irrational.

Once again, it may not be worth the effort. It may be too

difficult and too costly to reconsider these hypotheses and

evaluate your evidence for them, especially if yourbelieving them hasn't led to any apparent difficulties.

But this is just to say that you can responsibly continue

to believe these hypotheses. It is responsible for you to

do so despite the fact that you didn't have adequate

evidence for them when you first came to believe them and

despite the fact that you still don't.

An even stronger result may be possible. It may be

positively rational for you to have a disposition to

believe rather than commit yourself to simple hypotheses.

This may be rational for you in an objective sense and an

egocentric sense as well. It may be rational for you to

have this disposition even though the beliefs themselves


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tend to be irrational, and not just irrational with respect

to your epistemic goals but also irrational, all things

considered Ci.e., when all your goals are taken into

account.

This again may have the sound of paradox, but consider ananalogy. The love you have for your family may sometimes

cause you to act wrongly. It may cause you to go too far

in your efforts to do what is best for them. The result

may be that sometimes your actions cause undue hardships

for others. You excessively favor your family's interests

over their interests. Still, it might be worse if you did

not have this strong love for your family. If you loved

them less, you perhaps wouldn't be disposed to favor them

excessively. So, it would correct this problem, but on the

other hand it might be far worse for your family. If you

loved them any less, you might carry out your

responsibilities towards them less well, and this might

lead to results that overall are much worse than those that

are produced by your being too zealous in favoring them.

Thus, it might be best for you to have this strong love for

your family. This might be best even though, given the

kind of person you are, it sometimes inclines you to actwrongly.

Similarly, given the kind of cognitive creature you are,

it might be positively desirable for you to have a

disposition to believe simple hypotheses. It might be part

of the best set of cognitive dispositions for you to have.

Any other set, or at least any other set that you are

capable of, might be worse. If you didn't have this

disposition, you wouldn't be as inclined to believe simple

hypotheses and, thus, you would avoid one kind of

irrational belief. But it might have other drawbacks.

Were you to lack this disposition, you might have to spend

more time in deliberations over whether to believe or


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merely commit yourself to hypotheses, and this might divert

your attention from other, more important matters, causing

you to make errors of judgement about them. Besides,

committing yourself to a hypothesis, as opposed to

believing it, may not be easy. It may require more effortand more monitoring than belief. The difference may not

amount to much with respect to any given hypothesis, but

when a large number of hypothesis are involved, the costs

of committing yourself to them may be considerable. If so,

it is objectively rational for you to have this disposition

to believe, despite the fact that it inclines you towards

objectively irrational beliefs.

Analogous points hold for egocentric rationality. It

might be egocentrically rational for you to have this

disposition, despite the fact that it often inclines you to

have egocentrically irrational beliefs.

Points of this general sort are enormously important for

epistemology. They mark the path towards a more realistic

epistemology, one that pays something more than lip service

to the idea that our intellectual lives are constrained by

the kind of cognitive creatures we are.

In doing so points of this sort also provide a usefulframework for thinking about the significance of recent

empirical work that has been done on irrational belief.

Much of this work seems to show that we have disturbingly

stubborn tendencies to make certain kinds of faulty

inferences C e.g., even well educated subjects tend not to

seek out relevant and readily available base rate

information. But points of the above sort hold out at

least a sliver of hope that the cognitive dispositions that

tend to produce these faulty inferences might nonetheless

be rational ones for us to have. They might be rational

because they might serve us well enough on most occasions.

Indeed, they might even be part of the best set of


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cognitive dispositions available to us. Any other

available set might have even worse failings. Or short of

this, they at least may be dispositions that it is not

rational for us to go to the trouble of extinguishing. In

our normal everyday affairs, they may not do enough harm tomake it rational for us to try to rid ourselves of them.

This is not to say that we shouldn't correct faulty

inferences when they are pointed out to us. But it is to

say it may be rational for us to put up with the

dispositions that tend to produce these faulty inferences.

But whether or not this is so is a side issue. For the

discussion here, the main importance of such points is that

they constitute the beginnnings of a possible defense for

simplicity. And similar defenses may be available for many

of the other theoretical virtues Cfertility and

problem-solving effectiveness, for example. It is not a

defense that tries to argue that simplicity really is a

mark of truth or that all of us at least implicitly treat

it as such. Nor is it a defense that ignores the

difference between belief and commitment. On the contrary,

it acknowledges that it may very well be irrational for youto believe as opposed to commit yourself to a hypothesis if

simplicity has played a significant role in selecting it.

This may be irrational not only in an epistemic sense, but

also all things considered.

The defense instead consists of arguing that the

irrationality here is of a very weak kind. A mark of its

weakness is that ordinarily you won't have adequate

reasons, objective or egocentric, to rid yourself of the

belief in the hypothesis, and likewise you ordinarily won't

have adequate reasons to rid yourself of the disposition to

acquire such beliefs. It may even be positively rational

for you to have such a disposition, despite the fact that


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it often inclines you to have irrational beliefs. It may

rational for you to be irrational in this way.

The notion of responsible beliefs provides us with a way

to recognize all of these points. Your disposition to use

simplicity as a filter and your corresponding dispositionto believe simple hypotheses can produce responsible

beliefs even if they don't produce rational beliefs. They

can do so even if you are aware of the influence of these

dispositions. For despite this, you need not have good

egocentric reasons to believe that these are unacceptable

dispositions for you to have, given all your goals and

given all the constraints you are operating under. But if

not, the beliefs you acquire as the result of these

dispositions are ones that it can be responsible for you to

have.

Three characteristics of responsible belief combine to

account for this and the other features I have been

cataloguing. First, the emphasis is upon the intellectual

procedures that led to and sustain our believing what we

do. Second, the evaluation takes into consideration not

just our epistemic ends but our other ends as well. Third,

the evaluations are negatively anchored; what matters isits not being egocentrically rational for us to think that

the procedures, habits, decisions, etc. that led to or

sustain our beliefs are unacceptable in the light of all

our goals and all of the constraints we are operating

under.

The belief system it is responsible for us to have is

thus determined by our lives in all of their fullness. It

is not a matter of what would be unacceptable were we

purely intellectual creatures, ones who had only

intellectual ends, and it is not a matter of what would be

unacceptable were we creatures who had unlimited time and

resources to pursue our ends. We are not such creatures.


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We have all sorts of ends, some simply by virtue of being

human and others by virtue of our special circumstances.

Moreover, there are strong constraints on the time and

resources we have to pursue these ends. So, choices have

to be made. The notion of responsible belief recognizesthe inevitability of such choices.

This then begins to have the appearance of what we wanted

all along: a general and theoretically respectable but

nonetheless realistic way of evaluating our beliefs. It is

the beginnings of an epistemology that matters, one that

takes into account the constraints of our intellectual

lives and the roles that we actually play in our societies

and one that thus has application to the intellectual

pursuits of real human beings.

Although this notion of responsible belief captures many

of the concerns that are present in our everyday

evaluations of beliefs, it does not capture them all. No

single notion is capable of doing that. We make such

evaluations in a number of different contexts and for a

number of different purposes, but we nonetheless tend to

express them all using the language of rationality. This

might seem to preclude a theoretically unified treatment ofrational belief, but part of my purpose has been to

illustrate this need not be so.

My strategy has been to introduce a general way of

thinking about questions of rationality of whatever sort.

All such questions concern a perspective, a set of goals,

and a set of resources. Questions of rational belief are

no different. To say that it is rational for you to

believe ___ is essentially to say that from the presupposed

perspective, believing ___ seems to be an effective way for

someone with your resources to satisfy some important goal

that you have. Different senses of rational belief result

from the fact that different goals and different


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perspective can be adopted. These constitute the basic

notions of rational belief, but once these basic notions

are in hand, they can anchor other related notions, such as

the one that I have called 'responsible belief'.

The terminology is not important, however. What isimportant is that this general approach to questions of

rationality provides a framework for understanding an

especially important kind of evaluation. It is an

evaluation that results in a favorable assessment of your

beliefs just in case it is not unreasonable by your own

lights for you to have these beliefs, where this is

essentially a matter of the three characteristics listed

above.

This notion of responsible belief, in turn, can be of use

in helping us to understand our everyday evaluations of

decisions and actions. As with our everyday evaluations of

belief, these evaluations are frequently shaped by

considerations of resource allocation. They reflect the

fact that we do not have time to deliberate over each of

our actions and decisions. Here too we have no choice but

to operate in a largely automatic fashion. We deliberate

only when there is a special reason to do so Cfor example,when the issues are especially important or when our

accustomed ways of acting have led to difficulties.

However sensible such a procedure may be, it will

sometimes result in our doing things that we ourselves

would regard as unwise, were we to take more time to think

about them. Even so, we may be acting responsibly. After

all, we might responsibly believe that our action won't

have unacceptable results. Or short of having this

positive belief, we may at least fail to believe that the

action will have unacceptable consequences, and our not

believing this may be perfectly responsible, given the

constraints on our time and given the importance of other


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needs and goals. There may be no reason for us to think

that special care is needed. In this way, responsible

belief helps us understand responsible action.

The importance of this notion of responsible belief for

our everyday purposes does not detract from the importanceof the more idealized notion of egocentrically rational

belief. On the contrary, it puts us in a position to

appreciate the latter's importance. Our everyday

evaluations tend to be reason-saturated. They themselves

make use of the notion of rationality or one of its

cognates. They thus leave us within the circle of terms

for which we want a philosophical account. This is why the

idealized notion is important. Its importance is primarily

theoretical, which is what we should have expected all

along. It provides a theoretical anchor for our egocentric

but everyday notions. Egocentric rationality is important

because it is indispensable for understanding these

notions. It is indispensable for a complete theory of

rationality.

See ?Pragmatic reasons for belief@below


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justified, rational, reasonable, or warranted.

Propositions, statements, claims, hypotheses, and theories

are also said to be justified, but these uses are best

understood as derivative; to say, for example, that a

theory is justified for an individual is to say that werethe individual to believe the theory (perhaps for the right

reasons), the individual=s belief would be justified.

Decisions, actions, policies, procedures, punishments,

laws, rules, and host of other things can be justified or

unjustified. They are justified only if there are adequate

reasons for them, and unjustified if there are not.

Epistemic justification is concerned with the justification

of beliefs, and hence with reasons for believing. However,

being epistemically justified is not simply a matter of

having adequate reasons for believing, since one can have

reasons for believing a claim that are not epistemic. If I

offer you a million dollars to b

foley, richard (no date)—"the foundational role of epistemology in a general theory of...

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