According to the fitting-attitudes account of value, for X to be good is for it to be fitting to value X. But what is it for an attitude to be fitting? A popular recent view is that it is for there to be sufficient reason for the attitude. In this paper we argue that proponents of the fitting-attitudes account should reject this view and instead take fittingness as basic. In this way they avoid the notorious 'wrong kind of reason' problem, and can offer attractive accounts of reasons and good reasoning in terms of fittingness.According to the fitting-attitudes account of value, what it is for X to be good is for it to be fitting to value X. Famously proposed by Brentano and Ewing, the fitting-attitudes account takes goodness to be similar to properties like that of being admirable, fearful, or amusing. 1 These properties are plausibly understood as a matter of the fittingness or appropriateness of a certain human response: admiration, fear, or amusement. Similarly, on the fitting-attitudes view, goodness, or being valuable, is a matter of the fittingness of the response of valuing.The fitting-attitudes account is often thought to constitute an attractive middle-ground between subjectivist views on which something is good just if we value it and Moorean views * For very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, we would like to thank Richard Chappell, Guy 2 on which goodness is a basic, non-natural -and, so critics say, mysterious -property. And while the advantages of the fitting-attitudes account over Moorean views should not be overstated -the metaphysical questions that arise about Moorean goodness seem also to arise about fittingness -the connection between value and human valuing responses does seem an attractive feature of the fitting-attitudes account.Nonetheless, and even putting aside the question of whether fittingness is a 'nonnatural' property, there is an important question about how fittingness is to be understood. A popular recent suggestion is that fittingness should be understood in terms of reasons -roughly, that what it is for it to be fitting to value X is for there to be sufficient reason to value X. This idea is especially natural for those sympathetic to the recently influential reasons-first approach to normativity. On this approach, reasons are the basic normative unit, and the rest of the normative and evaluative domain can be understood in terms of reasons. 2 If we put this view together with the fitting-attitudes account, we reach the buck-passing account of value: what it is for X to be good is for there to be sufficient reason to value X.The aim of this paper is to argue that proponents of the fitting-attitudes account should not take this path. Instead, they should take fittingness as basic. Doing so results in a view which has all the attractions of the buck-passing view, and more, but avoids a serious problem facing the buck-passer. In making this case, we also show how reasons (and thus oughts) can be understood in terms of fittingness. The paper thus makes ...
How can we be responsible for our beliefs? It is tempting to think that this responsibility is grounded in a form of agency that we exercise in our doxastic lives. If so, what exactly is the nature of this connection, and can it be given some deeper explanation? In this paper I argue that the central condition on responsibility is a kind of reasons-responsiveness, and that it is only because we are doxastic agents-because we can regulate our beliefs through the activity of inquiry, and, in particular, acts of judging-that as believers we can satisfy this condition.In the first section I motivate and develop the view that responsibility for belief is grounded in doxastic agency. But agency, I note, is not sufficient for responsibility. In the second section I argue that the central condition for responsibility is a reasons-responsiveness condition. I criticise an alternative view associated with Thomas Scanlon, arguing that it gives mistaken or questionable verdicts in both epistemic (paranoid delusions and alienated beliefs) and practical (psychopaths) cases. In the third section I argue that the reasons-responsiveness condition explains why and when agency makes us responsible, because reasons-responsiveness can only be secured through agency. Responsibility for Belief and Doxastic Agency Responsibility for BeliefIt seems that we are often responsible for what we believe. To say this is not merely to say that our beliefs are attributable to us-the same is true of our handsomeness or our intelligence-but that we are accountable for them. The buck for our beliefs lies with us.
I argue that, if belief is subject to a norm of truth, then that norm is evaluative rather than prescriptive in character. No prescriptive norm of truth is both plausible as a norm that we are subject to, and also capable of explaining what the truth norm of belief is supposed to explain. Candidate prescriptive norms also have implausible consequences for the normative status of withholding belief. An evaluative norm fares better in all of these respects. I propose an evaluative account according to which the goodness of true belief is, in Geach's sense, attributive rather than predicative.I will argue that, if belief is subject to a norm of truth, then that norm is evaluative rather than prescriptive in character. No prescriptive norm of truth, I will argue, is both plausible as a norm that we are subject to, and also capable of explaining what the truth norm of belief is supposed to explain. Candidate prescriptive norms also have implausible consequences for the normative status of withholding belief. An evaluative norm fares better in all of these respects. I will propose an evaluative account according to which the goodness of true belief is, in Geach's sense, attributive rather than predicative.
It is widely held that when you are deliberating about whether to believe some proposition p, only considerations relevant to the truth of p can be taken into account as reasons bearing on whether to believe p and motivate you accordingly. This thesis of exclusivity has significance for debates about the nature of belief, about control of belief, and about certain forms of evidentialism. In this paper I distinguish a strong and a weak version of exclusivity. I provide reason to think that strong exclusivity is an illusion and that weak exclusivity may also be an illusion. I describe a number of cases in which exclusivity seems not to hold, and I show how an illusion of exclusivity may be generated by a rather different feature of doxastic deliberation, which I call demandingness.
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