Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves Ted Shear University of California, Davis University of Queensland Workshop: Beyond Rational Choice Project? tedshear.com/documents/anu_slides.pdf October 13, 2016 Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 1
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs Some context: my previous work investigates various joint coherence requirements governing diachronic aspects of our doxastic attitudes. For example, I have explored issues surrounding: the joint coherence requirements governing revisions to our beliefs and credences, and the interactions between the diachronic norms governing explicit reasoning and belief revision. This has led me to the meta-normative questions that I will explore in this talk. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 2
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs These questions include: What is the normative domain of epistemic rationality? What is the source of its normativity? How do we square answers to these questions with the realities of our cognitive architecture and our broader normative situation as agents? Aim of this talk: Sketch a basic meta-normative picture of epistemic rationality. Situate transformative experience in this picture. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 3
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs We’ll proceed by discussing the following: Epistemic holism, epistemic normativity, and our epistemic 1 system Varieties of inter -attitude joint coherence requirements 2 Varieties of intra -attitude joint coherence requirements 3 Concluding remarks about transformative experience and 4 dispositional norms Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 4
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs Basic picture: We have an adapted cognitive capacity to generate, maintain, and interact with representational systems. We use these capacities in service of one such system containing information that plays a crucial functional role in our ability to navigate the world — this is what I will call our epistemic system . The ways in which we are able to interact with our epistemic system as well as the nature of the system itself are mediated by our cognitive architecture, cognitive capacities, and the functional role of the system. Since these are diverse constraints, we are faced with conflict between normative requirements that govern di ff erent parts of the system. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 5
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs Why do we have epistemic systems? There are things that we desire, want, or are in our interests. While, indeed, living is a di ffi cult business, acting in accord with methods that are generally conducive to achieving our goals provides us with an avenue towards fulfillment. Belief systems present us with one a tool for doing so by providing us with a way to storage information that we may interact with through deliberations. So, systems of belief play a functional role in allowing us to satisfy the system-external normative requirements of practical rationality. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 6
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs What are epistemic systems? In order to properly serve their functional role, epistemic systems must be structured so as to allow us to store , acquire , and interact with the information that is available to us. But, (i) our computational resources are bounded, (ii) the information we collect is heterogeneous in type and content, and (iii) our various cognitive abilities for interacting with information are themselves bounded. Our epistemic systems must then be able to e ffi ciently accommodate deeply variable information that is accessible and manipulable in a multitude ways. So, in whatever form our epistemic systems consist, they are able to satisfy their functional role only by solving the massively di ffi cult engineering problem of straddling these constraints. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 7
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs How do we accommodate and interact with new information? Unsurprisingly, in a wide variety of ways through the use of a variety of di ff erent cognitive capacities. These capacities are themselves adapted (perhaps as e ffi cient solutions to other not purely epistemic problems). Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 8
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs Which of our cognitive capacities are used for (and thereby mediate) acquiring information and interacting with our epistemic systems? While largely an empirical question, there are a number of relevant capacities of which we are immediately aware and a few that I will focus on today. Whatever they are underlying, we possess the adapted cognitive capacities for natural language, mathematical thought, and imagination. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 9
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs How do our various doxastic attitudes fit into our epistemic system? Our doxastic attitudes provide us with (mediated) access to the information that we have collected and is stored in our underlying epistemic system. So, they serve as di ff erent tools for di ff erent ways of engaging and interacting with our information. Natural language serves as a ready vehicle for the transmission of qualitative information, so the use of our capacity capacity for natural language in service of our epistemic acts may be seen as an e ffi cient way to utilize our information. Similarly, our capacity for mathematical thought plausibly bears a similar relation to credences. Finally, our imaginative capacity seems to be especially important in our ongoing process of situating and understanding ourselves in the world. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 10
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs For each type of doxastic attitude, there are three general types of normative coherence requirements: Synchronic norms governing the internal integrity of the system. e.g. “have credences representable by a probability function”, or “have logically consistent beliefs” Diachronic norms governing single-step diachronic behavior. e.g. “update credences by conditionalizing on new information”, or “make minimally mutilating revisions that accommodate new information”, or “make inferences that are classically sound” Dispositional norms governing long-term or strategic types of behavior. e.g. “rely on a single method for update / revision / inference” These are each (internal) coherence requirements for the doxastic attitude in question. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 11
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs Provided with two doxastic attitudes A and A ′ , it is often thought that there are inter-attitude joint coherence requirements on how A and A ′ should line up. For example, we might endorse the following well-known synchronic inter-attitude joint coherence requirement: (Lockean thesis) Rationality requires that an agent believes p just in case her credence in p is above some threshold, t . Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 12
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs But, there are substantive implications for this inter-attitude coherence requirement that result from the exact contents of the internal coherence requirements of each attitude. For example, in addition to the Lockean thesis, if we accept that: credences must be probabilistic and updated via 1 conditionalization, beliefs must be deductively cogent ( i.e. closed under 2 consequence and logically consistent) and updated via AGM revision, and rational belief does not require certainty, 3 2 then the Lockean threshold, t , must fall in [ 1 / 2 , 5 ≈ 0 . 618]. √ 1 + Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 13
Setup Nature of belief Inter-attitude coherence Intra-attitude coherence Concluding Remarks on TEs But, while each of type of internal coherence requirements of an doxastic attitude has their own normative domain, they may jointly constrain one another. e.g. “if your synchronic norm requires consistency, then your diachronic norm should not permit inconsistent posteriors” Some (like the example above) are unsurprising; however, others are notable. Shear (UCD / UQ) Epistemic normativity and becoming our future selves 14
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