Why be disposed to be coherent?

Ethics

Volumn 118, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 437-463

  Kolodny, Niko ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 48749105455     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/528783     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (43)

1. See, most notably, John Broome, "Normative Requirements," Ratio 12 (1999): 398-419,
2. and "Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?" Philosophical Issues 15 (2005): 321-37.
3. I ignore, for simplicity, possible qualifications about the obviousness of the logical relationship and reasons for having an opinion whether q.
4. In "The Myth of Practical Consistency" (European Journal of Philosophy [forthcoming]), I separately discuss Intention Consistency: one is rationally required (either not to believe at t (that if one Xs, then one does not Y), or not to intend at t to X, or not to intend at t to Y). Henceforth, I drop, for simplicity, the temporal markers.
5. Most notably, Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
6. See, e.g., Broome's "Normative Requirements."
7. There are other requirements of rationality. Later, I discuss "Believed Reason": the narrow-scope requirement of rationality to conform to one's own assessment of one's reasons. If what reason requires is a function solely of perceptual experiences, beliefs, or desires - which I allow - then the requirements of reason will also be requirements of rationality.
8. I discuss these principles at greater length in "How Does Coherence Matter?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (2007): 229-63.
9. Granted, a necessary condition of his (believing p and not believing not-p) is his (either (believing p and not believing not-p) or (not believing p and believing not-p)). So one can say that in (not believing p and believing not-p), he has satisfied a necessary condition of (believing p and not believing not-p). But this cannot explain what we want to explain: why, when he satisfies N in this way, he does something that he ought, whereas he would not have done something that he ought, at least not in the same respect, if he had continued with contradictory beliefs. For another necessary condition of his (believing p and not believing not-p) is his (either (believing p and not believing not-p) or (both believing p and believing not-p)). So, by the same logic, in continuing to have contradictory beliefs (or, indeed, in doing anything at all), he equally satisfies a necessary condition of (believing p and not believing not-p).
10. Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, 35; see also 43, 46, and 52.
11. Further see Michael Bratman, "Intention, Belief, Practical, Theoretical," in Spheres of Reason, ed. Jens Timmerman, John Skorupski, and Simon Robertson (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, forthcoming).
12. Since Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, Bratman has suggested that the disposition to satisfy ME may be valuable as a constituent of certain structures of autonomy, integrity, and sociality. See Michael Bratman, Structures of Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). I briefly discuss this suggestion in "The Myth of Practical Consistency."
13. Broome, "Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?" 333.
14. See also John Broome, "Is Rationality Normative?" Disputatio (forthcoming).
15. Compare Donald Davidson, "Incoherence and Irrationality," in his Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 189-98, at 196-97.
16. Compare Christine Korsgaard, "The Normativity of Instrumental Reason," in Ethics and Practical Reason, ed. Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 215-54. However, Korsgaard has in mind specifically the acceptance of, or commitment to, requirements of formal coherence, which is more than a mere disposition to satisfy them.
17. One might complain that this Difference, this totting up of attitudes, is too crude. However, it is not enough for a proponent of N-means merely to register this complaint. He must provide some clear and workable alternative measure. Otherwise, N-means, while insulated from refutation, is at the same stroke deprived of the chance of positive support. If one wanted a more sophisticated measure, one might add weights to reflect the relative importance of certain beliefs. So long as the weights were not biased in some way, I doubt that this would significantly affect the results that I go on to discuss.
18. A lesson of Lewis Carroll, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles," Mind 4 (1895): 278-80.
19. Why not suggest, instead, that the Negative Side is simple but the Positive Side: to believe p if one ought to believe p, is composed of the N-disposition and the Positive N-complement: (either to believe p or both to believe p and to believe not-p) if one ought to believe p? The answer is that, because of Stronger Evidence, this complement and the simple Negative Side would suffice for the Disposition to Believe as Reason Requires. The N-disposition would be superfluous.
20. In fact, the N-disposition will very rarely lead one to lose both beliefs. If one is otherwise disposed to be in the incoherent pattern, then one is otherwise disposed to believe p and otherwise disposed to believe not-p. Thus, believing neither is the coherent pattern that one is otherwise most disposed to avoid. The coherent patterns that one is otherwise least disposed to avoid are believing p and not believing not-p, and not believing p and believing not-p.
21. I am indebted here to comments from John Broome, which prompted me to elaborate on this point.
22. As in my formulation of C, I ignore qualifications about the obviousness of the logical relationship and reasons for having an opinion whether q. I offer more explanation of Epistemic Transmission in "How Does Coherence Matter?"
23. For example, the man in the getaway car appears to me in one moment to be Tweedledee and in the next to be Tweedledum. (Or one witness tells me that he is Tweedledee, while another tells me that he is Tweedledum.) There is not sufficient evidence to conclude that he is Tweedledee, and there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that he is Tweedledum. But there may be conclusive evidence for a logical consequence of each of these would-be conclusions: that either he is Tweedledee or he is Tweedledum.
24. Joseph Raz points out to me (without endorsement) that one might understand the Restricted Positive C-complement as to believe p if (all things considered, reason requires one to believe p, and also, as far as the noninferential evidence goes, reason requires one to believe p). However, this would still face Problem A. And it would vitiate the division of labor. It would require us to monitor directly the inferential evidence but forbid us to respond directly to it.
25. Just as we left it open whether evidence was a function of belief or objective factors, we can likewise leave it open whether reason for intention is a function of desires or value.
26. The same is true of the Positive ME-complement.
27. This is in the spirit of, if not strictly entailed by, the "facilitative principle" that Joseph Raz formulates in "The Myth of Instrumental Rationality," Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005): 1-28.
28. In "The Myth of Practical Consistency," I offer, in effect, more explanation of Effectiveness.
29. Objection: "Suppose that reason requires one to intend to E provided that one does not intend to M because reason requires one to intend to E whether or not one intends to M. Why should the difference change in this case?" Reply: It is not affected in such a case, and our scorekeeping does not imply otherwise. Since (c1) is the case, there is a decrease of one, but since (b1) is also the case, this is offset by an increase of one.
30. This may also count as a requirement of rationality, as Fabrizio Cariani points out to me.
31. Of course, no one will readily express his or her belief in these terms. Recall that "reason requires" is an artificial covering term. In the case of believing that p, the relevant judgment might be more commonly expressed as: "There's compelling evidence that p," or as "It's overwhelmingly likely that p."
32. This clause, or at least the phrase "live doubt," needs further elaboration. As Mike Martin and Mike Titelbaum point out to me, there are cases in which it does not seem irrational to continue believing something while considering whether there is sufficient evidence for it.
33. Compare Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), ix. David Owens and Geoff Sayre-McCord suggested this to me.
34. See, e.g., Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 31-35. Notice that, even if the N-disposition were valuable, this problem would stand in the way of accounting for a normative requirement to satisfy N.
35. Broome ("Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?" 335-36) proposes an ingenious way to bridge the gap between general and particular. It is natural, he suggests, that complaints about a person's failure to cultivate a disposition should be focused on particular failures to manifest it. For the latter is particularly salient evidence of the former. Thus, when we say, "Given that you believe that reason requires you not to X, you ought rationally not to X," what we mean is something like "To the extent that you believe that reason requires you not to X, but still X, this indicates that you have failed to cultivate the disposition to be rational to the fullest degree, which reason required you to do." I don't find this proposal entirely persuasive. First, there are cases in which it makes sense to criticize someone as being irrational for a particular episode, even though we do not believe that he failed to take steps, that reason required him to take, to cultivate a dis position that would have led him to avoid that irrationality. Even if we have reason to want a disposition to be rational to the fullest degree, it does not follow that reason requires us to acquire that disposition to the fullest degree. At the margins, the costs of improving our disposition - extensive therapy, e.g. - might be quite high. There is no guarantee that the costs will not outweigh the benefits. Second, there are cases in which we believe that someone failed to take steps, that reason required him to take, to improve his disposition to be rational, but do not criticize him for irrationality in any particular case. We may not have witnessed any irrationality, and there may not even be any irrationality to witness. Suppose an agent happens by luck to acquire the disposition to be rational, even though he failed to take the steps he should have taken to bring that about. Even when confronted with evidence of this failure, we do not criticize him for being irrational. Finally, even when we witness some present failure to manifest some disposition, and know, on this basis, that the agent failed in the past to take steps, which reason required him to take, to acquire this disposition, it is not generally true that we express our criticism of this past failure to acquire in terms of a criticism of the present failure to manifest. An adult illiterate, brought up in a suitable environment, without congenital defects, ought to have acquired the capacity to understand the written word. So we might say, "You ought to be able to read this sign. You ought to have acquired that capacity." But we would never say: "You ought to read this sign here and now. Read it!" It might be replied that there is a crucial difference between this case and the case of someone who lacks the disposition to be coherent: the illiterate, who lacks the capacity to read, simply cannot understand the sign here and now, whereas the person who lacks the disposition to be rational still can be rational here and now, although he is not disposed to. This is why it makes sense to say to the irrational person: "You ought not X here and now; it would be irrational of you to X! Don't!" whereas we would not say to the illiterate: "You ought to read this sign here and now! Read it!" The question, however, is why this difference should matter, if what we are really criticizing, in both cases, is not what the agent is failing to do here and now but instead what the agent failed to do in the past. In that respect, the two cases are relevantly similar. The agent could have acquired the capacity or the disposition.
36. The same cannot be said for N, because N's content does not guarantee that, when N would require one to revise either the belief that p or the belief that not-p, one believes that reason requires one either to revise the belief that p or to revise the belief that not-p.
37. This is the "Transparency Account" of my "Why Be Rational?" (Mind 114 [2005]: 509-63).
38. For careful and forceful objections, see Jason Bridges, "Rationality, Normativity, and Transparency," Mind (forthcoming);
39. and Nadeem Hussain, "The Requirements of Rationality" (unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, 2007). Some of these objections may be answered by the observation that satisfying BR qualifies one for positive appraisal.
40. I thank Alex Sarch and Nishi Shah, in particular, for pressing me on this.
41. Now, one might wonder why there should be further sensitivities to reason. If there were sensitivities that might determine, with some reliability, which coherent pattern reason requires one to have, then why weren't they deployed earlier, so that one never entered into an incoherent pattern in the first place? One answer might be that our Disposition to Believe as Reason Requires consists in coarser-grained sensitivities, which are deployed first, and finer-grained sensitivities, which are more costly to deploy and so are more efficiently deployed only when there is some indication, such as an incoherent pattern, that the coarser-grained dispositions are not reliable.
42. What, one may ask, are we to say about children and brutes? They have something like beliefs and perhaps even something like intentions. But arguably they lack reasons. (If they have no deliberative perspective, the argument would run, then no consideration can carry weight within their deliberative perspective.) Nevertheless, they have unconscious sensitivities to something structurally analogous to reason: to what is likely to be true and (perhaps) to what is likely to achieve a certain balance of "objectives" (e.g., nourishment, reproduction, avoidance of predators) fixed by natural selection or by some independent conception of the creature's good. Like our sensitivity to reason, and unlike the dispositions to formal coherence as such, these sensitivities produce specific attitudes in response to features of the creature's situation. And like our sensitivity to reason, and for similar reasons, one might expect, these sensitivities will lead the creature to patterns of attitudes that are formally coherent.
43. The Myth may be reinforced by a further thought: that, our limitations being what they are, we must somehow rely on simple, easily followed rules - which requirements of formal coherence undoubtably are - in order to believe and intend as reason requires. This thought is itself highly questionable. To a very great extent, we succeed in believing and intending as reason requires not by consciously applying rules but instead by relying on unconscious mechanisms. And while these unconscious mechanisms must be tailored to our limitations, it is far from obvious that this means that they must somehow correspond (whatever "correspond" might mean) to rules that we consciously find simple to apply. In any event, if we do need such rules, then requirements of formal coherence as such cannot be among them - or so as I have tried to show.