Does knowledge depend in any interesting way on our practical interests? This is the central question in the pragmatic encroachment debate. Pragmatists defend the affirmative answer to this question while purists defend the negative answer. The literature contains two kinds of arguments for pragmatism: principle‐based arguments and case‐based arguments. Principle‐based arguments derive pragmatism from principles that connect knowledge to practical interests. Case‐based arguments rely on intuitions about cases that differ with respect to practical interests. I argue that there are insurmountable problems for both kinds of arguments, and that it is therefore unclear what motivates pragmatism.
Doxastic involuntarists have paid insufficient attention to two debates in contemporary epistemology: the permissivism debate and the debate over norms of assertion and belief. In combination, these debates highlight a conception of belief on which, if you find yourself in what I will call an ‘equipollent case’ with respect to some proposition p, there will be no reason why you can’t believe p at will. While doxastic involuntarism is virtually epistemological orthodoxy, nothing in the entire stock of objections to belief at will blocks this route to doxastic voluntarism. Against the backdrop of the permissivism debate and the literature on norms of belief and assertion, doxastic involuntarism emerges as an article of faith, not the obvious truth it’s usually purported to be.
According to what I will call 'the disanalogy thesis,' beliefs differ from actions in at least the following important way: while cognitively healthy people often exhibit direct control over their actions, there is no possible scenario where a cognitively healthy person exhibits direct control over her beliefs. Recent arguments against the disanalogy thesis maintain that, if you find yourself in what I will call a 'permissive situation' with respect to p, then you can have direct control over whether you believe p, and you can do so without manifesting any cognitive defect. These arguments focus primarily on the idea that we can have direct doxastic control in permissive situations, but they provide insufficient reason for thinking that permissive situations are actually possible, since they pay inadequate attention to the following worries: permissive situations seem inconsistent with the uniqueness thesis, permissive situations seem inconsistent with natural thoughts about epistemic akrasia, and vagueness threatens even if we push these worries aside. In this paper I argue that, on the understanding of permissive situations that is most useful for evaluating the disanalogy thesis, permissive situations clearly are possible. Epistemologists have grown increasingly interested in the question how epistemic rationality compares to practical rationality (Berker 2013, Cohen 2016, Rinard 2017, etc.), but epistemologists have been asking the more general question how belief relates to action for a very long time-for at least as long as they've wondered whether, and to what extent, we can control our beliefs. According to the currently dominant view, beliefs differ from actions in at least this way: while we often have direct control over our actions, we never have direct control over our beliefs. On this view, just as we might cause ourselves to blush by thinking about something embarrassing, we might cause ourselves to believe (e.g.) that the lights are on by looking at the lights and turning them on (Feldman 2001). But on this view, we can't form the belief that the lights are on, or any other belief, by simply deciding to form it, the way we can (for example) raise our arms by simply deciding to raise them. On this view, if direct control over our beliefs isn't fully conceptually impossible, it's at least impossible for cognitively healthy people like you and me. Perhaps Bennett's Credamites can do it (1990), but they aren't functioning properly, and we can't do it without getting ourselves into a defective cognitive state like theirs. Thus, while cognitively healthy people often exhibit direct control over their actions, there is no possible scenario where a cognitively healthy person exhibits direct control over her beliefs. Call this thesis about belief and action the 'disanalogy thesis.'
Purists think that changes in our practical interests can't affect our knowledge unless those changes are truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. Impurists disagree. They think changes in our practical interests can affect our knowledge even if those changes aren't truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. I argue that impurists are right, but for the wrong reasons, since impurists haven't appreciated the best argument for their own view. As I show, there is an argument for impurism sitting in plain sight that is considerably more plausible than any extant argument for impurism. How, if at all, do our practical interests affect our knowledge? According to the thesis that I will call 'purism,' changes in our practical interests can't affect what we know unless those changes are truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. According to the negation of this thesis, which I will call 'impurism,' changes in our practical interests can affect what we know even if those changes aren't truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. If impurism is true, then changes in our practical interests might affect our knowledge without affecting our evidence for the relevant proposition, the reliability of the cognitive faculties responsible for our belief in that proposition, the safety of our belief in that proposition, and so on, for any other truth-relevant property that we might care about. 1 The literature contains two kinds of arguments for impurism: what I will call 'principle-based arguments' and 'intuition-based arguments' ('PBAs' and 'IBAs' for short). 2 The former attempt to motivate impurism by motivating some principle like KA, below, and then deducing impurism from this principle. (KA) S knows that p only if she can rationally act as if p.
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