TEORÍAS RELACIONADAS AL DESEMPEÑO DOCENTE:

If epistemic rationality is fundamentally instrumental, if our reasons for belief derive from the fact that doing so allows us to achieve our goals, then this raises the possibility that some reasons for belief might derive from goals that are not properly epistemic. We might then have pragmatic reasons for belief: reasons to believe, not because doing so will help us to know or to get at the truth, but because doing so will make us happier, more successful, richer, and so forth. For instance, I might be offered a monetary reward to believe against my

evidence; I might be more professionally successful if I benefit from the confidence that accompanies believing that I am more talented than I really am; I might be happier if I believe that I am more widely beloved than is in fact the case.

Pragmatic reasons, however, strike many philosophers as ‘the wrong kind’ of reasons to serve as reasons for belief. For a start, pragmatic reasons will be rejected by any adherent

of evidentialism.82 _{This view is not universal; some have explicitly argued for the existence}

of such pragmatic reasons for belief, and so would view such reasons as a welcome result of

instrumentalism.83 _{However, pragmatic reasons for belief are widely enough rejected that}

entailing them would have the effect of damaging the credibility of my view.

One significant defense that my view has against this charge lies in the fact that, given the sort of voluntary control over beliefs that I argued for in chapter 2, it is impossible

to believe on the basis of pragmatic reasons. A reason on the basis of which one believes

must be a reason that leads one to evaluate affirming that p as a suitable means for pursuing

one’s end of knowing that p; since this end is epistemic, any reason that one takes to bear on

its pursuit must be an epistemic reason as well. To deny that one can believe on the basis of

pragmatic reasons is not quite the same as to deny that pragmatic reasons for belief exist, but

it is commonplace to hold that reasons for believing must be reasons on the basis of which

one could, potentially, believe.84 _{Adopting this assumption, my account in fact entails that}

there cannot be pragmatic reasons for belief.

82 _{Such as Chisholm (1966), Conee & Feldman (2004). For discussion of the distinction between}

right- and wrong-kind reasons, see Schroeder (2012).

83 _{Defenders of pragmatic reasons for belief include Pascal (1995), McCormick (2014), Rinard}

(2017).

In all fairness, though, matters are a bit more complicated than that. For while I deny that one can believe on the basis of pragmatic reasons, I accept that one’s belief can

ultimately be motivated by the pursuit of pragmatic ends.85 _{Although a belief is an}

affirmation for the sake of knowing, one may [affirm for the sake of knowing] all for the sake of some further end, epistemic or pragmatic. For instance, suppose that I have been offered a substantial fellowship from my university for believing that it is the world’s foremost

institution of higher education; our deans being the remarkably perceptive sort, merely feigning belief won’t work. Recognizing that I cannot simply affirm the university’s

supremacy for the sake of getting the money – for such an affirmation would not constitute a

belief – I set out to know whether this university is the best, hoping that my investigation will

lead me to conclude that it is.

In such a case, if I do find evidence suggesting that my university is the best, I can

then form that belief based purely on epistemic reasons. On the other hand, what if the evidence I find begins to suggest that some other university is better, and so that any

affirmation I make in the attempt to know will not constitute the necessary belief? Supposing

that offered money was my only reason for attempting to know, then it seems that in such a

case I might perfectly well respond by abandoning the attempt to know, and so failing to come to believe despite the evidence that I have gained. As long as I maintain the goal of knowing whether my university is the best, I think that I must pursue that goal solely on the basis of epistemic reasons, but non-epistemic considerations rather might lead me to abandon the project and render the epistemic reasons irrelevant.

85 _{In the previous chapter I follow Hyman (2015) in distinguishing between the reasons for which one}

acts, and the ends for the sake of which one acts. Briefly, ends specify one’s motivation for acting at all, while reasons guide the manner in which one pursues one’s ends.

Notice that this form of the pragmatic reasons objection ends up bearing a striking similarity to Kelly’s indifference objection: I end up in the situation where I have evidence that some other school is better, but have no reason to believe that it is because I lack a relevant epistemic goal. I can therefore appeal in the same way as I did above to broad, standing goals of generally knowing about the world. Yet I have no principled argument that

everyone must have such a goal, or must apply it to every case, and so I cannot rule out the

possibility of an agent who fails to believe despite sufficient evidence to do so.

In sum then, I can deny the possibility of pragmatic reasons for belief, but cannot deny that pragmatic considerations may sometimes effect whether or not I engage in the sort of goal-directed activity where epistemic reasons arise. For myself, I don’t find this a

particularly unsettling end result, but readers must judge for themselves. (Or not, if they don’t find it practical to do so.)