Abstract

A theory of rational state transition must answer four questions: are shifts within its domain brought about by agents or do they simply happen to them? Is the approach part a theory’s dynamics or kinematics? Does the approach make use of everyday or ideal rationality? Are the mental states involved coarse- or fine-grained? The questions are used to generate a sixteen-fold classification of rational shift-in-view. It is then argued that rational inference leads to the idea of a _coordinated epistemic reason_: roughly, a reason where causal-efficacy and evidential-relevance fuse together. This idea is illustrated with everyday examples and it is then argued that the theory of rational inference turns crucially on the non-ideal rationality of agential dynamics. The chapter closes by developing a theory of rational inference and a take on the human mind to go with it.