The Activity of Reasoning: How Reasoning Can Constitute Epistemic Agency

Abstract

We naturally see ourselves as capable of being active with respect to the matter of what we believeas capable of epistemic agency. A natural view is that we can exercise such agency by engaging in reasoning. Sceptics contend that such a view cannot be maintained in light of the fact that reasoning involves judgements, which are not decided upon or the products of prior intentions. In response, I argue that reasoning in fact can amount to epistemic agency in virtue of its being aim-directed in a way that cannot be reconciled with the sceptics' conception of it.

Epistemic control without voluntarism

“…Recently, Jenkins (2021) has argued that reasoning , by which he means “a conscious process with constituent events such as judgments, inferences, and acts of supposition”, is the locus of epistemic agency (my emphasis added). One way to endorse a non‐eliminativist conception of epistemic agency is to think that consciously reasoning about whether some proposition p is true—with the aim or purpose of settling the question “ p ?”—is a manifestation of agency, conscious effort and purposiveness being characteristically agentive features.…”

“…13 Kornblith's problem seems to revolve around claims made by the likes of Moran (2001) and Sosa (2007), which involve the idea that capacities for reflection and reflectively formed beliefs are the marks of epistemic agency. See Jenkins (2021) for a recent defense of a similar, reasoning-based view of epistemic agency. 14 This picture resembles the compatibilist-friendly, conditional analyses of free action due to Moore (1912), Schlick…”

How to judge intentionally

“…Cf. Strawson (2003); O'Shaughnessy (1980) p.544; Friedman (2019b, 2020), Jenkins (2021), Moran (2001, 2003, 2004), and Owens (2000).…”