Propositional Attitudes as Commitments: Unleashing Some Constraints

Abstract

In a series of articles, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen and Nick Zangwill argue that, since propositional attitude (PA) ascription judgements do not behave like normative judgements in being subject to a priori normative supervenience and the Because Constraint, PAs cannot be constitutively normative.1 I argue that, for a specific version of normativism, according to which PAs are normative commitments, these arguments fail. To this end, I argue that commitments and obligations should be distinguished. Then, I show that the intuitions allegedly governing all normative judgements do not even purport to hold for commitment-attributing judgements.

The norms of belief as the norms of commitment: A case for pluralism

“…Independently from the debate on how to formulate the truth norm of belief, a group of normativists have suggested we conceive of belief as cognitive commitment (Baldwin, 2007;Bilgrami, 2004;Brandom, 1994;Coliva, 2015;Kazemi, 2020Kazemi, , 2021Kazemi, , 2022aLevi, 2002;Millar, 2004;Moran, 2001;Tebben, 2018). According to them, to believe that p is to undertake a commitment to the truth of p. 8 Just as we have three doxastic attitudes towards a proposition (belief, disbelief, and suspension of belief), we may undertake a commitment to the truth of p, undertake a commitment to the falsity of p, or remain noncommitted to the truth or falsity of p. These normativists have different reasons to adopt such a view.…”

“…Independently from the debate on how to formulate the truth norm of belief, a group of normativists have suggested we conceive of belief as cognitive commitment (Baldwin, 2007; Bilgrami, 2004; Brandom, 1994; Coliva, 2015; Kazemi, 2020, 2021, 2022a; Levi, 2002; Millar, 2004; Moran, 2001; Tebben, 2018). According to them, to believe that p is to undertake a commitment to the truth of p .…”