Rational hope

McCormick, Miriam Schleifer

doi:10.1080/13869795.2017.1287298

Cited by 29 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…He should instead proportion his degree of confidence in the hoped‐for outcome's occurrence to the evidence (Calhoun, 2018, p. 48, Martin, 2014, p. 87). Low probability estimates are consistent with strong hopes (see Martin, 2014, p. 5; p. 141; McCormick, 2017, p. 132), but they have to be evidentially grounded.…”

Section: Normative Issues: Rationality Fittingness Actionmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Hope: Conceptual and normative issues

Rioux

2021

Philosophy Compass

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Hope is often seen as at once valuable and dangerous: it can fuel our motivation in the face of challenges, but can also distract us from reality and lead us to irrationality. How can we learn to "hope well," and what does "hoping well" involve? Contemporary philosophers disagree on such normative questions about hope and also on how to define hope as a mental state. This article explores recent philosophical debates surrounding the concept of hope and the norms governing hope. It also underlies hope's significance for the philosophy of emotion and the ethics of interpersonal relations. 1 | INTRODUCTION Our hopes are multifarious, ranging from the mundane or the prosaic to the life-shaping or the profound: we hope that it won't rain tomorrow, hope for success in our personal endeavors, hope to be cured from life-threatening diseases, and hope that we will somehow overcome the climate crisis. At bottom, is there anything that sets apart our "deepest" hopes from more superficial ones? Or do all hopes, including even the kind we "invest" in other people, in fact share the same underlying nature? Since hope is often portrayed as both valuable and dangerous, questions about its nature take on special significance. We are indeed often told to "never give up hope"; that "there is always room for hope," while also being warned against the possibility of entraining "false hopes," somehow divorced from reality and potentially leading to disastrous outcomes. But without knowing what hope is, how can we aspire to hope well? And what does "hoping well" even mean? Until quite recently, conceptual and normative questions about hope hadn't received much attention within the analytic tradition. This could be due, as Pettit (2004, p. 54) suggests, to the influence of a conception of hope emerging in the Modern period (notably in the works of Hobbes and Hume), according to which all hope consists in the combination of a desire for an outcome and the belief that outcome is possible but not certain. 1 If all there is to hope is "desire in the context of epistemic uncertainty," 2 then hope might not seem worthy of a standalone philosophical investigation. Attitudes toward hope's philosophical significance have now shifted, however, while hope also figures prominently in current public discourse. 3 This article aims to take stock of these recent philosophical developments. Section 2 turns to descriptive questions about the nature of hope, centering on the relationship between hope, desire, and the emotions, while Section 3 focuses on various evaluative measures used for assessing hope, in

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Section: Normative Issues: Rationality Fittingness Actionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…12 12 McCormick (2017) argues that both set of norms should factor equally into our assessment of hope's “overall” or “all‐things‐considered” rationality, such that a high score on one dimension can “compensate” for a low score on the other. …”

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confidence: 99%

Hope: Conceptual and normative issues

Rioux

2021

Philosophy Compass

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“…It at least seems plausible to assume that whether to rely on one's hope in one's actions will depend on the probability of the hoped-for outcome (and the value assigned to it). For an account of rational hope that involves probability as a parameter, see (McCormick 2017). Alternatively, on Adrienne Martin's view, what matters for the rationality of one's hope is only that one sees the probability of the outcome as good enough to license hopeful activity (which is rational if it promotes one's rational ends) (Martin 2013).…”

Section: The Secular Highest Good: Duties To the Poor And The Intertw...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Poverty and Kantian Hope

Blöser

2022

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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Development economists have suggested that the hopes of the poor are a relevant factor in overcoming poverty. I argue that Kant’s approach to hope provides an important complement to the economists’ perspective. A Kantian account of hope emphasizes the need for the rationality of hope and thereby guards against problematic aspects of the economists’ discourse on hope. Section 1 introduces recent work on hope in development economics. Section 2 clarifies Kant’s question “What may I hope?” and presents the outlines of his answer. Crucially, hope is rational if it is rational to trust in the structures of reality on which the realization of one’s hope depends. Section 3 argues that central tenets of Kant’s account of what makes hope rational can be applied to the context of poverty. It becomes apparent that the poor often have good reason to be hopeless since they may not trust fundamental structures that are necessary for realizing their hope. Thus, the insight that the poor need more hope must go hand in hand with a commitment to establishing trustworthy political structures, such that their hope can be rational. Section 4 highlights the relevance of the secular highest good for a better understanding of the justification and scope of our duties to the poor in a Kantian framework.

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“…Hoping in vain to be released from prison when we are serving a life‐sentence for a crime we freely admit committing may seem desirable, but holding this attitude, rather than accepting the reality, may only produce despair in us while doing nothing to bring about the hoped‐for result. So, adapting the ideas of McCormick (), the rationality and usefulness of a hope can be assessed along four interrelated dimensions: (i) epistemic reasonability, (ii) desirability, (iii) practical value, and (iv) efficaciousness. The better a hope collectively ‘rates’ across these dimensions, the more rational and practically beneficial it may be considered.…”

Section: From Beliefs To Hopeful Imaginingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics of Belief in Student Ability

Standley¹

2018

Journal of Philosophy of Education

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It has been suggested that in order to aid students in fulfilling their potential and achieving optimum academic outcomes, both teachers and students themselves should hold beliefs that significantly overestimate student ability and go beyond the available evidence. In this article, I contend that teachers adopting such beliefs or instilling them in their students is neither desirable nor practicable. I instead propose a pair of alternative cognitive attitudes—hope and imaginings– that can substitute for belief in producing self‐fulfilling prophecy‐type mechanisms, which I argue have often been misattributed to belief within the literature on this topic. These attitudes offer a plausible route to academic improvement that does not breach epistemic norms.

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Rational hope

Cited by 29 publications

References 12 publications

Hope: Conceptual and normative issues

Hope: Conceptual and normative issues

Global Poverty and Kantian Hope

The Ethics of Belief in Student Ability

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