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Rational Requirements
Edited by Jonathan Way (University of Southampton)
About this topic
| Summary | Rational requirements, as the expression has come to be used, are requirements of coherence – for instance, the requirements to be consistent in your beliefs and in your intentions, and to intend what you take to be the necessary means to the ends you intend. The central questions about such requirements include: (i) how are rational requirements best formulated? For instance, should we accept so-called wide- or narrow-scope formulations of rational requirements (ii) Are there reasons to comply with rational requirements (that is, to be coherent)? If not, in what sense, if any, is rationality normative? (iii) How do rational requirements relate to other kinds of requirements (for instance, requirements of morality or prudence) and other normative notions, such as reasons, ‘ought’, and good reasoning? |
| Key works | Much recent work on this topic takes off from Broome 1999 and Kolodny 2005. |
| Introductions | Way 2010 |
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Related
Siblings
- Delusions (619)
- Irrationality (176)
- Moral Rationality (437)
- Rationality, Misc (246)
- Rationality and Cognitive Science (623)
- Reasons and Rationality (1,071)
Contents
488+ found
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| 1 — 50 / 488 |
- What ought probably means, and why you can’t detach it.Stephen Finlay - 2009 - Synthese 177 (1):67 - 89.Some intuitive normative principles raise vexing 'detaching problems' by their failure to license modus ponens. I examine three such principles (a self-reliance principle and two different instrumental principles) and recent stategies employed to resolve their detaching problems. I show that solving these problems necessitates postulating an indefinitely large number of senses for 'ought'. The semantics for 'ought' that is standard in linguistics offers a unifying strategy for solving these problems, but I argue that an alternative approach combining an end-relational theory (...)
- Towards an Objective Theory of Rationality.Leslie Allan - manuscriptDrawing on insights from Imre Lakatos' seminal work on theories of rationality, Leslie Allan develops seven criteria for rational theory choice that avoid presuming the rationality of the scientific enterprise. He shows how his axioms of rationality follow from the general demands of an objectivist epistemology. Allan concludes by considering two weighty objections to his framework.
- Imre Lakatos: A Critical Appraisal.Leslie Allan - manuscriptImre Lakatos holds a well-deserved primary place in current philosophy of science. In this essay, Leslie Allan critically examines Lakatos' theory of knowledge in two key areas. The first area of consideration is Lakatos' notion that knowledge is gained through a process of competition between rival scientific research programmes. Allan identifies and discusses four problems with Lakatos' characterization of a research programme. Next, Allan considers Lakatos' proposed test of adequacy for theories of rationality using his methodology of historiographical research programmes. (...)
- Personal Identity, Self Connectedness, and Time-Biases.Conall Clarke, Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller & Wen Yu - manuscriptEmpirical evidence suggests that one explanation for a certain sort of time-bias—near-bias—is diminution in self-connectedness between current person-stages and temporally farther future stages. In this paper we extend this research in two directions. First, we explore the association between self-connectedness towards past person-stages and retrospective near-bias, with the aim of determining whether we can explain retrospective near-bias in terms of diminished feelings of connectedness between current person-stages and temporally farther past stages. Second, we explore the association between future-bias and asymmetries (...)
- Are There Any Good Reasons?Danny Frederick - manuscriptDavid Miller argues that there are no good reasons, either sufficient or insufficient. I show that most of his arguments are invalid or unsound. Several of his arguments depend upon the false claim that every deductively valid argument is circular. I accept one of Miller's arguments for the conclusion that there are no good reasons which are less-than-sufficient. I accept one of his arguments to the conclusion that there are no probative sufficient reasons. But I explain how there are epistemic (...)
- (1 other version)Exploring People’s Normative Judgements About Future Bias and The Temporal Value Asymmetry.Andrew J. Latham, Rita Li, Kristie Miller & Wen Yu - manuscriptThis paper empirically probes people’s judgements about whether future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry (TVA for short) are rationally permissible, obligatory, or impermissible. While philosophers are divided about the normative status of these attitudes/preferences, they have typically agreed that non-philosophers will judge that future-bias is at least permissible, and probably obligatory, and will judge that TVA is not permissible. If this is right, it is important for two reasons. First, many researchers have argued that future-bias is a manifestation of TVA. (...)
- On the Normativity of Rationality and of Normative Reasons.Clayton Littlejohn & Julien Dutant - manuscriptThis paper is an early draft of something that we've polished up and posted above: n-1 Guilty Men. Check that one out, if interested.
- Twenty-one Theories of Rationality Assessed for Which Is the Most Explanatory.Lantz Fleming Miller - manuscriptThis article serves as either an addendum or as an expansion of ideas and work developed in my 2024 book, The Rationality Project: Across the Millennia, issued by Palgrave Macmillan. The book explores 21 potential theories for explaining rationality in terms of why and how one among these can serve in the position of explanatory power. The book does not fully explain all of these candidate theories, assigning that complete role to this addendum or work-in-progress. The main reason for this (...)
- Neo-Sellarsian Metaphilosophy.T. Parent - manuscriptThis draft now appears (in revised form) as the Preamble to _Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_. See http://philpapers.org/rec/PARSFT-3.Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Pockets of Harmony in Practical Reason: A Partial Solution to the 'Profoundest Problem in Ethics'.Attila Tanyi & Michael Morreau - manuscriptHenry Sidgwick has famously stated that the conflict between self-interest (prudence) and morality cannot be resolved: a dualism of practical reason is thus established. As is well-known, Sidgwick was distraught with this conclusion thinking that only the existence of God can resolve the dualism. Contemporary thinkers prefer to avoid this way out and argue either that. egoism is not rationally justifiable, or that self-interest and morality always point in the same direction, or that properly understanding the conflict also shows that (...)Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- What rationality is.Arif Ahmed - A choice function C is rational iff: if it allows a path through a sequence of decisions with a particular outcome, then that outcome is amongst the ones that C would have chosen from amongst all the possible outcomes of the sequence. This implies, and it is the strongest definition that implies, that anyone who is irrational could be talked out of their own preferences. It also implies weak but non-vacuous constraints on choices over ends. These do not include alpha (...)
- State or process requirements?John Gardner - manuscriptMind 116:462 (2007): 371–85. (A reply to John Broome’s comment, “Wide or Narrow Scope?”).
- Uniqueness and Modesty: How Permissivists Can Live on the Edge.Darren Bradley - forthcoming - Mind.There is a divide in epistemology between those who think that, for any hypothesis and set of total evidence, there is a unique rational credence in that hypothesis, and those who think that there can be many rational credences. Schultheis offers a novel and potentially devastating objection to Permissivism, on the grounds that Permissivism permits dominated credences. I will argue that Permissivists can plausibly block Schultheis' argument. The issue turns on getting clear about whether we should be certain whether our (...)
- The Extended Theory of Instrumental Rationality and Means-Ends Coherence.John Brunero - forthcoming - Philosophical Inquiries.In Rational Powers in Action, Sergio Tenenbaum sets out a new theory of instrumental rationality that departs from standard discussions of means-ends coherence in the literature on structural rationality in at least two interesting ways: it takes intentional action (as opposed to intention) to be what puts in place the relevant instrumental requirements, and it applies to both necessary and non-necessary means. I consider these two developments in more detail. On the first, I argue that Tenenbaum’s theory is too narrow (...)
- Review of Daniel Whiting’s The Range of Reasons: in Ethics and Epistemology. [REVIEW]Bowen Chan - forthcoming - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
- On the Normative Status of Future Bias.Conall Clarke, Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller & James Norton - forthcoming - Synthese.While philosophers disagree about the permissibility of future-bias, they have typically agreed that non-philosophers will at least judge that future-bias is permissible, and probably judge that it is obligatory as well. Recent empirical work supports this supposition: people overwhelmingly judge that they themselves ought to prefer, of a negative event, that it lies at a certain point in the past rather than an equidistant point in the future. This finding can potentially be marshalled into an argument that people ought to (...)
- (1 other version)Teaching the web of rationality: a case study on coherence and conspiracy world-views.Marc-Kevin Daoust & Marie Laplante-Anfossi - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy of Education.In this article, we analyse how coherence should be addressed in critical thinking courses. Our starting point is the fact that, while coherence seems important for rationality and critical thinking, several studies now suggest that thinkers with conspiracy world-views give more importance to coherence than other criteria. However, conspiracy world-views do not (fully) embrace the ideals of rationality and critical thinking. This suggests that some desiderata of rationality or critical thinking can, in isolation, be counterproductive. In response to this puzzle, (...)
- (1 other version)Teaching the Web of Rationality: A Case Study on Coherence and Conspiracy Worldviews.Marc-Kevin Daoust & Marie Laplante-Anfossi - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy of Education.In this paper, we analyze how coherence should be addressed in critical thinking courses. Our starting point is the fact that, while coherence seems important for rationality and critical thinking, several studies now suggest that thinkers with conspiracy worldviews give more importance to coherence than other criteria. However, conspiracy worldviews do not (fully) embrace the ideals of rationality and critical thinking. This suggests that some desiderata of rationality or critical thinking can, in isolation, be counterproductive. In response to this puzzle, (...)
- Ends and Persons: A Transcendental Argument.David DeMatteo - forthcoming - Episteme: An Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy.This paper makes a transcendental argument. It assumes the normative validity of the instrumental principle, and then investigates the conditions of its validity. Ultimately, it argues that there are three necessary conditions for its validity. Firstly, agents must be rationally capable of regarding themselves as having a single self that possesses the same reasons, ends, and means. Secondly, agents must be rationally capable of distinguishing themselves from other selves that possess ends. Thirdly, these two conditions must actually obtain, which means (...)Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Stochastic Dominance for Incomplete Preferences.Tomi Francis & Johan E. Gustafsson - forthcoming - Analysis.According to Stochastic Dominance, it is rationally obligatory to prefer one gamble to another if it gives you the same chances of getting final outcomes you prefer. According to Statewise Maximality, it is rationally permissible not to disprefer a gamble if it is guaranteed not to result in a final outcome you disprefer. These principles conflict in cases involving incomplete preferences, known as Opaque Sweetening cases. In this paper, we argue for Stochastic Dominance and against Statewise Maximality in Opaque Sweetening (...)
- Revenge of the Lockeans.Jaakko Hirvelä - forthcoming - Mind.It’s plausible that you cannot know, or be justified in believing that your lottery ticket is a loser solely on the basis of the odds involved. I argue that extant views which deliver this result fall prey to a revenge problem. They entail that if you believe that your ticket is a winner on the basis of the astronomically low odds of it being a winner, your belief would be just as justified as in the case where you believe that (...)
- Robust vs Formal Normativity II, Or: No Gods, No Masters, No Authoritative Normativity.Nathan Robert Howard & N. G. Laskowski - forthcoming - In David Copp & Connie Rosati, The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics. Oxford University Press.Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity”. It’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normative” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative normativity”: (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 7 citations
- Rationality, coherence, and reasons responsiveness.Samuel Kahn - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.In Nora Heinzelmann's recent ‘Rationality is not Coherence,’ she sets out a novel and forceful challenge for coherence accounts of rationality (henceforth: CRs). Heinzelmann argues that, first, there are cases in which the norms in CRs generate conflict and, thus, agents cannot be rational; but, second, it is counterintuitive that agents cannot be rational in these cases; and, third, reasons responsiveness accounts of rationality (henceforth: RRs) do not have this counterintuitive result. From this, Heinzelmann concludes that RRs are superior to (...)
- Coherence as the Possibility of Joint Success?: The Way to Success.Wooram Lee - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.According to a recent family of views of structural rationality (or coherence), a combination of attitudes is coherent just in case it is possible for those attitudes to be jointly satisfied or successful. This paper argues that existing versions of this view face a dilemma. On the one hand, they face counterexamples, given standard assumptions about the satisfaction or success conditions of the relevant attitudes. On the other hand, modifying those satisfaction or success conditions to avoid such counterexamples would render (...)
- Epistemic Akrasia and Treacherous Propositions.Bar Luzon - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.I argue that one ought not be epistemically akratic. Although this position may look self-evident, it is hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong with the akratic subject. Indeed, some philosophers argue that epistemic akrasia is permissible. The standard anti-akratic response focuses on the weird downstream implications of this state for action and assertion. This approach, however, is unsatisfactory, since it fails to explain the epistemic impermissibility of epistemic akrasia. Here, I argue that epistemic akrasia is impermissible on a purely (...)
- The Rationality of Aesthetic Self-Transformation.Irene Martínez Marín - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.Aesthetic self transformation, the deliberate cultivation of appreciation for objects substantively different from those one currently values, raises distinctive rational challenges. Aspirants often experience conflicting aesthetic attitudes. Newly formed aesthetic judgments can clash with prior preferences, violating a fundamental coherence requirement that one’s aesthetic judgments should align with one’s aesthetic likings. Although coherence could be restored either by revising one’s likings or by abandoning the new judgments, this requirement alone cannot determine which path constitutes genuine transformation. This tension reflects a (...)
- Bargaining with Myself: Humean Temptation and Rational Resistance.Marina Moreno - forthcoming - In Mathea Slåttholm Sagdahl & Attila Tanyi, Problems of Choice: Normativity, Rationality, Axiology, and Morality. London: Routledge.This paper examines robustly Humean solutions to temptation cases. Such cases are typically characterized by a pattern of preference reversal: at an initial time t1, an agent prefers not to give in to a temptation; at a later time t2, when the temptation becomes imminent, this preference reverses; and at a subsequent time t3 after the agent has either succumbed to or resisted the temptation, the preference often reverts again. Standard Humean accounts of rationality and motivation face a difficulty here. (...)
- Past Achievements and Future Bias.Felipe Pereira - forthcoming - Analysis.According to the Permissive View, it is rationally permissible for a person’s preferences to be both future-biased about pleasant experiences and temporally neutral about achievements. Some philosophers argue that, intuitive though it may be, the Permissive View can’t be right because it runs afoul of a plausible requirement for rationality: namely, that it is rationally impermissible to form one’s preferences by moving back and forth between different evaluative perspectives. Samuel Scheffler has recently attempted to show that this requirement is in (...)
- Advancing the Boltzmann Brain Skeptical Challenge.John Pittard - forthcoming - The Philosophical Review.Some leading cosmological models predict that in the future history of the universe, there will be vast numbers of Boltzmann Brains (“brains” formed by chance in otherwise empty space), including many that are physical duplicates of your own brain and that (arguably) have conscious experiences indistinguishable from your own experiences. This article advances the skeptical challenge posed by this prediction in two ways. First, the author challenges the common assumption that scientific evidence for Boltzmann Brain superabundance presents a serious skeptical (...)
- Enticing Epistemic Reasons.Z. Quanbeck - forthcoming - Noûs.Most epistemologists hold that epistemic norms not only forbid believing propositions for which one lacks sufficient evidence, but also sometimes positively require believing propositions for which one has excellent evidence. That is, on the standard view, there are both negative and positive epistemic obligations. Yet proponents of positive epistemic obligations face a serious challenge: namely, to provide an extensionally adequate, explanatorily satisfying account of when positive epistemic obligations are triggered. In light of this challenge, this paper defends the claim that (...)
- Deciding Decision-Making Away.Matthew Rachar & Jules Salomone Sehr - forthcoming - Mind.When faced with a hard decision, we can and sometimes should decide decision-making away, for instance by flipping a coin. At first, this strategy might look suspect: it seems that conforming with the verdict of a coin flip and φ-ing as a result involves making the decision to φ. To address this worry, we inquire into the psychological structures that make deciding decision-making away possible. Our main contention is that it involves conditional intentions: you form the intention to φ if (...)
- Rationality and Possessing Normative Reasons.Mohamad Hadi Safaei - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.Epistemicism about reason possession holds that one possesses a fact as a normative reason just in case one has appropriate epistemic access to that fact. This paper argues that (i) the purely epistemic view of reason possession is untenable, as it fails to account for the role of reasoning abilities in possessing normative reasons; (ii) possessing a normative reason requires both the general and specific ability to respond to that reason; (iii) these abilities consist of four particular components—the deliberative ability, (...)
- Problems of Choice: Normativity, Rationality, Axiology, and Morality.Mathea Slåttholm Sagdahl & Attila Tanyi (eds.) - forthcoming - London: Routledge.(Under contract with Routledge, Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory.) This book will be an edited volume on problems of choice with four sections dedicated to: normativity and choice, rationality and choice, value and choice, morality and choice. Chapters by: Chrisoula Andreau, Paul Bloomfield, Krister Bykvist, Sophie Grace Chappell, David Copp, Guy Fletcher, Joshua Gert, Olasv Gjelsvik, Natalie Gold, Marina Moreno, Fredrik Nyseth, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Andrew Reisner, Caj Strandberg, Sarah Stroud, Johanna Thoma.
- Neo-Humean Rationality and the Profoundest Problem in Ethics.Caj Strandberg - forthcoming - In Mathea Slåttholm Sagdahl & Attila Tanyi, Problems of Choice: Normativity, Rationality, Axiology, and Morality. London: Routledge.This chapter puts forward a Neo-Humean view on reasons that combines the distinction between rationally requiring reasons and rationally justifying reasons with a Neo-Humean view on rationality which understands this notion in terms of coherence between final desires and pro-attitudes. According to this view, moral reasons consist in rationally justifying reasons whereas prudential reasons consist in rationally requiring reasons. In contrast to a reasons-based view on rationality, the view makes it possible to explain and compare an agent’s moral and prudential (...)
- The Normativity Challenge (for Morality, Structural Rationality, and Fit).Jonathan Way - forthcoming - In Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 22. Oxford University Press.The Normativity Challenge holds that certain norms that we might take to be robustly normative are only generically normative. This challenge has been raised about norms of morality, structural rationality, and fit, among others. This paper addresses this challenge by developing a new test for robust normativity. On this ‘metaethics test’, robust normativity is, very roughly, the normativity which raises central questions of metaethics – it is normativity that seems stance-independent, sui generis, and armchair accessible. I argue that this test (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 1 citation
- Reason Judgments - Political or Motivational?Gunnar Björnsson & Ragnar Francén - 2026 - In Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 21.According to commonly endorsed “enkratic principles”, one is practically irrational if one judges that one ought to φ without intending to φ, or judges that one has a normative reason to φ without being motivated to φ. Such principles are often considered both a priori or conceptually true and revelatory of the nature of reason-implying judgments, including moral judgments. This paper, however, argues that: (1) There is intuitive ground for expanding these familiar enkratic principles to a principle we call EnkrasiaPlus. (...)
- Truth Against Life? Rational Belief between Pragmatism, Nietzsche, and Nihilism.Ivan Catanzaro - 2026 - Dissertation, University of CologneThis MA thesis examines the normativity of belief at the intersection of contemporary epistemology, pragmatism, Nietzsche studies, and the philosophy of nihilism. It argues that neither evidentialism nor austere forms of pragmatism provide an adequate account of rational belief. Against belief-relative pragmatism, the thesis develops an objection based on the distinction between thin instrumental intelligibility and thicker forms of agential ownership. It then explores more selective, value-shaped forms of pragmatism, arguing that empowerment cannot serve as a sufficient condition for rational (...)
- Structural Rationality and the Separateness of Requirements.Marc-Kevin Daoust - 2026 - Synthese 207 (125):1-28.I propose a new way of thinking about the normativity of structural rationality, or coherence. Perhaps coherence requirements do not have normative significance when we separate them from everything else. But these requirements can be attractive once we see how they fit in the broader normative landscape. In various theories of rationality, justification and evidence-responsiveness, coherence plays an important role, but can’t be isolated from other desiderata. This lends support in favour of a “nonseparable” vindication of the normativity of structural (...)
- Questions Should Have Answers.Michael Deigan - 2026 - European Journal of Philosophy 34 (2).Making sense of the world often requires one to come up with new ideas, including ideas one had previously been unable to think of. How and when should this be done? I propose and defend a norm of rationality linking wondering, belief, and abilities to conceive: one must not both wonder a question and reject all answers to it that one can conceive. This norm explains judgements about an array of cases, some of which cannot be explained by appeal to (...)
- Doxastic resilience: on rational doubt, defeat, decision, and desire.Jakob Donskov - 2026 - Dissertation, University of LeedsBeliefs can be more or less supported by evidence. When the evidence speaks in favour of some proposition p, you can rationally be confident that p. On the Bayesian interpretation of doxastic states, this amounts to a high credence in p. But this cannot be the full account of confidence. Gaining evidence that supports the credence you already have improves your epistemic situation. Here, your credence level should remain unchanged, but the credence should become more resistant to change. Doxastic resilience (...)
- Belief, doubt, and inquiry.Wooram Lee - 2026 - Synthese 208 (50):1-21.This paper aims to resolve the recent debate over whether belief is incompatible with inquiry. I first argue that belief that p is compatible, metaphysically or rationally, with merely having some doubt about whether p, but is incompatible with being in doubt about it. On the view I propose, one has some doubt about whether p if and only if one thinks both that it is possible that not-p and that it is possible that p and is thereby disposed not (...)
- Even Bigger-Picture Causalism.Olof Leffler - 2026 - Acta Analytica 41 (2).Causalism about action explains what an action is in terms of its causes. Causalism about free action explains what a free action is in terms of its causes. Carolina Sartorio (2023) suggests that they add up into ‘big-picture causalism’. This paper develops an even bigger-picture causalism. The central addition comes from the distinction between structural and substantive rationality. The problem of the disappearing agent is raised for Sartorio’s causalism about action, and a solution based on dispositions of structural rationality is (...)
- Parity and the Permissivism Puzzle: A Defense of Epistemic Options.Chris Tucker & Elizabeth Jackson - 2026 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 113 (1):233-247.Moral philosophers generally affirm that there are moral options: a single person sometimes has multiple morally permissible actions at a time. But epistemologists generally deny that there are epistemic options: a single person never has multiple epistemically permissible doxastic attitudes at a time. This asymmetry is striking. Furthermore, there are intuitive cases of epistemic options. However, it’s not clear how these cases differ from cases where withholding is required, such as a coin flip case. We call this the Permissivism Puzzle. (...)
- Evoked Questions and Inquiring Attitudes.Christopher Willard-Kyle, Jared Millson & Dennis Whitcomb - 2026 - Philosophical Quarterly 76 (1):384–406.Drawing inspiration from the notion of evocation employed in inferential erotetic logic, we defend an ‘evoked questions norm’ on inquiring attitudes. According to this norm, it is rational to have an inquiring attitude concerning a question only if that question is evoked by your background information. We offer two arguments for this norm. First, we develop an argument from convergence. Insights from several independent literatures (20th-century ordinary-language philosophy, inferential erotetic logic, inquisitive epistemic logic, and contemporary zetetic epistemology) all converge on (...)
- Against Coherence.Darren Bradley - 2025 - Logos and Episteme 16 (1):7-20.Some philosophers argue that coherence is a normatively significant type of rationality, over and above substantive rationality. The most detailed and substantive arguments are given by Alex Worsnip (2021, 2022). In this paper I will criticize his arguments. We are left with the thesis that the only type of rationality we need is substantive rationality.
- Having Normative Practical Reasons.Botan Dolun - 2025 - Dissertation, University at BuffaloThis dissertation investigates the nature of reason-possession, a topic that has received significant attention in recent philosophical literature. Existing discussions often center on a key puzzle: How can false beliefs appear to provide agents with reasons to act, making them rationally responsible for forming intentions based on these beliefs? This puzzle highlights a potential tension between the objective sense of reasons, understood as facts tied to the rational advisability of actions, and the subjective sense of reasons, grounded in an agent's (...)
- Humeans Should Suspend Judgment on the Humean Account of Laws.Aldo Filomeno - 2025 - Philosophia 1 (1):1-24.There is an old strong objection to the Humean account of laws according to which, if the laws of nature are such as the Humean believes, it is an unexplained cosmic coincidence that the actual Humean mosaic is as extremely regular as it turns out to be. However, this objection has been neglected, mainly due to an implicit appeal to an unwarranted principle of indifference. In (Filomeno, 2019) I appealed to recent proofs of the epistemic rationality of the principle. Instead, (...)
- When Things Fail to Fit Together.Daniel Fogal - 2025 - Analysis 85 (3):761–779.Critical Notice of Alex Worsnip's 'Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality' (OUP 2021).
- Coherence and Incoherence.Daniel Fogal & Olle Risberg - 2025 - Philosophical Review 134 (4):405-454.In the recent literature on coherence and structural rationality, it is widely assumed that sets of attitudes are coherent just in case they are not incoherent. In particular, the two most popular kinds of views of incoherence—those centered around wide-scope rational requirements and those centered around guaranteed failures of some normatively significant kind—rely on this assumption. This article argues that this assumption should be rejected because it fails to capture the difference between positively coherent attitudes and random unrelated ones. The (...)
- The Normative Insignificance of the Will.Jason Kay - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (3):891-909.The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening directly effects a change in the normative facts by giving me a further reason to garden. I argue that we should reject this view and its attendant psychological story involving a normatively significant will. According to the view I (...)
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