Table Of ContentRational Belief
Rational Belief
STRUCTURE, GROUNDS, AND
INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE
Robert Audi
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Audi, Robert, 1941-
Rational belief : structure, grounds, and intellectual virtue / Robert Audi.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978–0–19–022183–6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–022184–3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Belief and doubt. I. Title.
BD215.A93 2015
121—dc23
2014044483
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
I. BELIEF: ITS STRUCTURE, CONTENT, AND RELATION TO THE WILL
1. Dispositional Beliefs and Dispositions to Believe 11
2. Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief 27
3. Belief: A Study in Form, Content, and Reference 47
II. NORMATIVITY AND VIRTUE IN EPISTEMOLOGY
4. Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge 71
5. Reliability as a Virtue 85
6. Knowledge, Justification, and the Normativity of Epistemology 98
III. EPISTEMOLOGICAL INTERNALISM AND GROUNDS OF JUSTIFICATION
AND KNOWLEDGE
7. An Internalist Theory of Normative Grounds 119
8. Theoretical Rationality: Its Sources, Structure, and Scope 144
v
vi CONTENTS
9. Doxastic Innocence: Phenomenal Conservatism and Grounds of
Justification 169
10. Skepticism about A Priori Justification: Self-Evidence, Defeasibility,
and Cogito Propositions 189
IV. SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY
11. The Place of Testimony in the Fabric of Knowledge and Justification 217
12. Testimony as a Social Foundation of Knowledge 237
13. The Ethics of Belief and the Morality of Action: Intellectual Responsibility
and Rational Disagreement 258
Index 277
Preface
This book represents an integrated grouping drawn from the many papers I have
published in epistemology since The Structure of Justification (1993), which brought
together papers of mine mainly from the previous decade. One major difference
between the books is the presence in this one of essays presenting an epistemol-
ogy more deeply informed by studies in related areas of the philosophy of mind.
Another difference is a focus on intellectual virtue, a topic of increasing inter-
est since the middle 1990s. Still another is a concern with voluntarism and with
the ethics of belief. My overall theory of justification and knowledge remains
central, as does a distinction between the epistemological roles of internal—and
mind-dependent—elements and of external elements in human experience that
are independent of mind. These wide concerns appear in many of the essays, but
each also constitutes a detailed treatment of the less broad topic that it specifically
addresses, and all of them are self-contained.
Part I, centering on belief and its relation to the will, brings points in the phi-
losophy of mind to bear on issues in epistemology. It should also interest readers
concerned with the psychology of cognition. It addresses the issue of whether our
responses to information—say, from perception or testimony—always produce
beliefs or are received and retained in other ways. It explores our degree of control
of our beliefs; and it details several forms belief may take and shows how some of
these do, and others do not, essentially connect us with the world outside the mind.
Part II concerns normative aspects of epistemology and the way in which virtue
takes intellectual forms. This part will interest many readers in ethical theory. It
presents three related positions: an outline of my theory of moral perception—a
topic now much discussed in ethics as well as by some epistemologists—a con-
ception of intellectual virtue, and an account of an often overlooked distinction
between two kinds of normativity. Normativity itself is an elusive notion conceived
in quite disparate ways, and the essays in this part represent an attempt to clarify it.
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viii PREFACE
The essays in Part III extend the work of the second part: grounds of both
justification and knowledge are described, compared, and shown to extend to the
self-evident; rationality is distinguished from justification and each is clarified in
relation to the other; and the epistemological importance of the phenomenal—of
the “private” immediate aspects of mental life—is explored. An overaching question
here is how knowledge and justification are grounded, whether they are are similarly
grounded, and whether our dependence on experience of the world makes room for
knowledge of certain truths holding in any possible world.
The final part, Part IV, is devoted to questions in social epistemology, especially
to epistemology as concerned with the sharing and transmission of justification
and knowledge. It treats testimony as essential in human knowledge yet different
from such essential sources as perception and intuition. The discussion extends to
the related question of how reasonable resolution is possible for rational disagree-
ments between parties attesting to incompatible views. Different kinds of disagree-
ments are distinguished; challenges posed by disagreements with one’s peers are
described; and rational ways of responding to those challenges and maintaining
high intellectual standards are outlined.
All four parts of the book are designed to be individually usable in teaching in
areas of epistemology that overlap those of one or more of its essays. Part I is usable
both in epistemology courses centered on belief or epistemic voluntarism and in
certain philosophy of mind courses. Part II can serve both in general epistemology
and in courses on intellectual virtue or epistemic normativity. This part should also
be useful in some studies in ethical theory. Part III is important for the very concep-
tion of epistemology and the broad question of the sense in which it is either natu-
ralistic or empirical in a sense implying a status like that of theories in psychology.
Part IV is a natural focus for studies in social epistemology, and it bears significantly
on the relation between epistemology and ethics.
The essays appear essentially as previously published with only a few minor cor-
rections desirable in the light of a copyeditor’s review and, where the original had
endnotes, with those changed to footnotes for greater ease of reference. Particularly
since many of the essays have been discussed in some detail, I have thought it best
to leave for later work the possible revisions and significant extensions that have
occurred to me. The introduction, which is intended to help both students and pro-
fessional readers, may indeed foreshadow extensions, and it should certainly provide
a sense of both the content and the unity of the book. It should also help in selecting
essays for use in a course or in relation to one or another epistemological project.
My hope in bringing these essays together is that their clarity and multitude of con-
crete examples will make them engaging for professional philosophers; accessible to
students of philosophy, whether or not they are concentrating on epistemology; and
intriguing for educated non-specialist readers interested in the topics.
Acknowledgments
All of the essays appearing here were given to audiences, or read by other philos-
ophers, in one or another pre-publication draft, and each acknowledges—incom-
pletely, I know—colleagues and others who helpfully commented on some earlier
draft. Given the two length of time since some of the essays were drafted, I can-
not recall everyone I would like to thank for responses or illuminating discussion.
They include many former students. I have, however, benefited from discussions
(and in some cases written comments) from discussion with many people not
mentioned (or not mentioned often enough) in acknowledgments accompany-
ing individual chapters. These include Paul Audi, Michael Bergmann, Sven
Bernecker, Lara Buchak, Albert Casullo, E. J. Coffman, Roger Crisp, Mario De
Caro, Marian David, Michael DePaul, the late Fred Dretske, Richard Feldman,
Elizabeth Fricker, Richard Fumerton, Douglas Geivett, the late Bernard Gert,
Sanford Goldberg, Alvin Goldman, Peter J. Graham, John Greco, Scott Hagaman,
John Haldane, Brad Hooker, Michael Huemer, David Alan Johnson, Thomas
Kelly, Ralph Kennedy, Peter Klein, Christopher Kulp, Jonathan Kvanvig, Jennifer
Lackey, Markus Lamenranta, Matthew Lee, Alfred Mele, Thomas Nagel, Nikolaj
Nottelmann, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Duncan Pritchard, Peter Railton,
Bruce Russell, Jack Sammons, T. M. Scanlon, Russ Shafer-Laudau, Thomas
Senor, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, David Sosa, Ernest Sosa, Jeff Speaks, Matthias
Steup, Leopold Stubenberg, Mark Timmons, Raimo Tuomela, Mark Van Roojen,
Richard Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen, Thomas Vinci, Fritz Warfield, René van
Woudenberg, Timothy Williamson, and Linda Zagzebski.
Advice and help at several stages were provided by Peter Ohlin, my editor at Oxford
University Press in New York, and I heartily thank him for facilitating production of
the book. Lucy Randall and Emily Sacharin, also helped in the process and, for the
immense work of copyediting the entire volume, I am grateful to Ginny Faber. I also
want to thank Mary Jo Rhodes for overseeing the entire production process.
ix
