Rationality Through Reasoning

Reading:John Broome,

Rationality Through

Reasoning

John Broome• Born 1947• British philosopher and economist

• PhD in Economics from MIT

• Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

John Broome• (1983) The Microeconomics of Capitalism. London New York: Academic Press.

• (1992) Counting the cost of global warming : a report to the Economic and Social Research Council on research by John Broome and David Ulph. Cambridge: White Horse.

• (1995) Weighing goods: equality, uncertainty, and time. Oxford England: Basil Blackwell.

• (1999) Ethics out of economics. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press.

• (2006) Weighing lives. Oxford: Clarendon. • (2012) Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World. New York: W.W. Norton.

• (2013) Rationality Through Reasoning. New York: Blackwell.

The Editor’s webpage on Reasoning Through Rationality

• Rationality Through Reasoning answers the question of how people are

motivated to do what they believe they ought to do, built on a comprehensive account of normativity, rationality and reasoning that differs significantly from much existing philosophical thinking.

• Develops an original account of normativity, rationality and reasoning significantly different from the majority of existing philosophical thought

• Includes an account of theoretical and practical reasoning that explains how reasoning is something we ourselves do, rather than something that happens in us;

• Gives an account of what reasons are and argues that the connection between rationality and reasons is much less close than many philosophers have thought;

• Contains rigorous new accounts of oughts including owned oughts, agent-relative reasons, the logic of requirements, instrumental rationality, the role of normativity in reasoning, following a rule, the correctness of reasoning, the connections between intentions and beliefs, and much else;

• Offers a new answer to the ‘motivation question’ of how a normative belief motivates an action.

The Framework• Harman, Gilbert. 1986. Change in View. Boston: MIT.• Parfit, Derek. 1997. Reasons and Motivation, Aristotelian Society Supplementary 71: 99–130.

• Broome, John. 1999. Normative Requirements. Ratio 12: 398-419.

• Boghossian, Paul. 2012. What is inference? Philosophical Studies

• Broome, John. 2012. Comments on Boghossian. Philosophical Studies.

• Wright, Crispin. 2012. Comment on Paul Boghossian, “What is inference". Philosophical Studies.

Contents

I. Normativity

II. Rationality

III. Reasoning

The Motivation Problem

• B(O(ϕ)) I(ϕ)• !! ≠ mind-body problem: when you believe you ought to do stg, your belief often causes you to do it

• Easy answer: “enkratic disposition”, we are disposed to intend to do what we ought to do.

• When automatic processes fail, we use “enkratic reasoning”

• Motivation problem < reasoning < rationality < normativity

I. Normativity

Normative and Non-normative Oughts

• You ought to look both ways before you cross the road.

• The plural of ‘mouse’ ought to be ‘mouses’.• The raspberries ought to ripen in June.• Christine ought to know her seven-times table by the age of nine.

• No continuity• Normative = in terms of (normative) oughts = in a normative ‘oughty’ way

• no possible definition

Owned and Unowned Oughts

• Alison ought to get a sun hat. • Owned: required of her, personal obligation

• She should do stg in order to get a sunhat

• Alex ought to get a severe punishment. • Unowned• Someone else should do stg in order for him to get a punishment.

Owned Oughts• Reducible to unowned oughts + agency?

Central Oughts• Central oughts are owned oughts• Enkrasia (roughly): Rationality requires of you that, if you believe that you yourself ought that you F, you intend that you F.

No “will to believe”

Qualified and Unqualified Oughts

• Moral ought, rational ought, prudential ought, etc.

• Central = all-things-considered

Requirements• 1999. Normative Requirements, Ratio 12: 398-419.

• To pay taxes, eat vegetables, be kind to strangers…

• Not necessarily normative• Is rationality normative? (Not sure, see ch. 11)

The need to decide

Choice and rationality

• Sometimes, choice between two opinions that areo incommensurate in value o equally good.

• Many requirements, not only enkrasia.

• Need to deal with uncertainty.

• What should we do?

Consequentialism• You ought to do what will have the best consequences.

• Supposed to rule out deontic conflicts. • Consequence:

o Outcome: state of the world as it would be if you did the act

o Prospect: portfolio of possible outcomes (associated with a probability) for the world that would result from doing the act

• Central ought: “objective” or prospective?

Outcome vs. Prospect

Consequentialism

Outcome Consequentialism

Prospect Consequentialism

Summary

The central ought is normative, owned, unqualified and prospective.

Normativity and Reasons

• Joseph Raz: ‘The normativity of all that is normative consists in the way it is, or provides, or is otherwise related to reasons.’

• John Skorupski identifies all of thinking as the domain of reasons, and says that all other normative concepts are reducible to the concept of a reason.

• This book is devoted to rationality, not reasons.

• Many philosophers assume that reasons and rationality are closely linked together. Broome argues that the link is less close than they think.

Reasons• Explanatory and motivating reasons: not normative• Normative reasons: why someone ought to do (/believe, ϕ) stg = explanations of deontic facts

• Pro toto reason for S to ϕ = the an explanation of why S ought to ϕ

• Pro tanto reason for S to ϕ: o participating in a normative explanation according to their weights

o plays the for-ϕ role in a weighing explanation of why S ought to ϕ, or of why S ought not to ϕ, or of why it is not the case that S ought to ϕ and not the case that S ought not to ϕ.

An objection to weighing

explanations

Supererogation cont’d

Reason as a Mass Noun?

• There is a reason for S to ϕ• ≠ There is reason for S to ϕ• Property of being a reason? • Normative attraction of ϕ? • Reasons explain ought through weighing explanation, without (“most”) reason.

Agent-relativity vs. Agent-neutrality

• Distinction from Nagel

• R is a reason owned by S to ϕ

• Agent-neutral reason: for any S • Agent-relative reason: for some S

• Rests on ownership rather than the structure of reasons

A Lesson

II. Rationality

Responding to reasons

• Rationality: a property of people• Rationality = responding correctly to reasons? (No)

• Entailment: Necessarily, if you are rational you respond correctly to reasons.

• Sufficiency of reasons: Necessarily, if you respond correctly to reasons you are rational.

• Both: equivalence

Responding to reasons

• Reasons: normative, owned, pro toto• To respond correctly to reasons =

o to ϕ whenever one’s reasons require her to ϕo because of these reasons (appropriate counterfactual connection)

• “Core Condition”: Necessarily, if you are rational, you ϕ whenever your reasons require you to ϕ.

• Broome: no

The “Quick Objection”

• It can happen that your reasons require you to ϕ but you do not know it / you do not believe your reasons require you to ϕ (although you are rational)

• Many accept it• Hence, thesis: rationality = responding correctly to your beliefs about reaons

Attitudinal Reasons• Answer to the quick objection: if you are rational, your reasons require you to ϕ even though you do not believe your reasons require you to ϕ

• Attitudinal reasons: beliefs, intentions• They impose strict liability, i.e. if you are rational you respond to them

• These attitudes are conditions of rationality

• Response: automatic or through reasoning

Attitudinal Reasons

There are No Attitudinal Reasons• If there were, you could add some evidence for a belief thanks to your other beliefs:

• Bootstrapping problem = epistemic circularity

• E.g. intending to do stg would be a reason to do it

Recap• What is rationality? • Thesis: To be rational = to respond correctly to reasons

• Quick objection: sometimes you don’t know your reasons (/you don’t believe that your reasons require you to ϕ)

• Answer: attitudinal reasons (beliefs, intentions) impose strict liability (if you are rational you respond correctly to them anyway)

• But: there are no attitudinal reasons• Nevertheless, since the quick objection holds, we can modify the thesis

Thesis Modified• Thesis’: To be rational = to respond correctly to reason-beliefs

• Thesis’’: To be rational = to ϕ whenever you believe you have reasons to ϕ

• Objection: bodily acts are not fully determined by properties of the mind

• Thesis’’’: To be rational = to intend to ϕ whenever you believe you have reasons to ϕ

• But: Broome rejects the “sufficiency of reasons” part because

Enkractic Condition• Rationality entails that: B(reasons require to ϕ) I(ϕ)

• The “sufficiency of reasons” part does not hold because: many other conditions are necessary for rationality (no contradictory beliefs, instrumental requirements, logical principles, etc.)

Meeting your own standards

• Liberal interpretation of the Enkratic Condition: “provided you yourself believe your reasons require you to satisfy it”

• E.g. dialetheists are rational to accept contradictory pairs of propositions

• But: rationality cannot be judged entirely by people’s standards (which are more or less in accordance with rationality)

Objection to the Enkratic Condition

Responding correctly to P-

Beliefs• P-Belief: whose propositional content would, if true, be a reason

• E.g.: the content of the belief that the atomic number of sulphur is 16 is a reason to give the answer 16 to the question of its atomic number

• Derek Parfit: rationality entails responding correctly to P-Beliefs

• Broome: yes, when pro toto reasons• Practical P-beliefs: no strict liability, if the P-belief conflicts with a normative belief you may not respond correctly to the P-belief.

RecapDoes rationality entail responding correctly to P-beliefs?

Conclusion• About the view that rationality consists in responding correctly to reasons, Broome hopes to “have done enough to scotch this view”

• Against Equivalence, • Against Belief Equivalence• For Belief Entailment = Strengthened Enkratic Condition

Requirements• Rationality does not consist in responding to reasons.

• It must be an independent source of requirements in its own right.

• Requirements: o Property: “Beauty requires hard work”o Source : “The bill requires payment”

(/“prescribes”)

o Continuity property/source???

Property Requirements

• Not Broome’s object• Modal analysis:

o Necessarily, if N has the property F, then p. o Problem of scope

• Subjunctive analysis: o If p were not so, N would not have the propery F

o because p is not so. • Comparative interpretation (for properties that come in degrees)

• Friendly to Standard Deontic Logic

Source Requirements• Morality, rationality, prudence…: property / source

• The Law: model of source • Not necessarily normative• In the source sense, requirements are local (context ≠global property of being moral, rational, etc.). Requirements at a world.

• Logic of requirement? Doubtful that it comes from “requires”, rather from the object of requirement (morality, etc.)

What ought we to do?