Belief and Difficult Action

Marušić, Berislav

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Belief and Difficult Action

Berislav Marušić

December 2012, Volume 12, No. 18, pp. 1-30

Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0012.018

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Abstract

Suppose you decide or promise to do something that you have evidence is difficult to do. Should you believe that you will do it? On the one hand, if you believe that you will do it, your belief goes against the evidence—since having evidence that it’s difficult to do it constitutes evidence that it is likely that you won’t do it. On the other hand, if you don’t believe that you will do it but instead believe, as your evidence suggests, that it is likely that you will fail, your decision is not serious and your promise is not sincere. This problem—I call it the Epistemological Problem of Difficult Action—is a pressing philosophical problem that each of us faces. In this paper I consider several possible responses to it. I conclude that the right response is to say that we should believe against the evidence. Cases in which we decide or promise to do something that we have evidence is difficult to do are the best counterexamples to evidentialism.

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Yet before this conclusion begins to seem even remotely plausible, let me consider the problem, and a number of apparently plausible responses, in some detail. I will proceed as follows: In section one, I will formulate the Epistemological Problem of Difficult Action with some care. In section two, I will offer a preliminary defense of my view of the Sincerity Condition for promising and the Seriousness Condition for deciding. In section three, I will consider and reject three apparently easy solutions to the problem: the appeal to trying, the appeal to different senses of ‘should’, and the appeal to degrees of belief. In section four, I will consider and reject the Practical Knowledge Response, according to which we should believe that we will do what we’re deciding or promising to do, because we have practical knowledge that we will do it. In section five, I will consider and reject the Evidentialist Response, according to which we should not believe that we will do what we’re deciding or promising to do and hence should not make the decision or promise in the first place. In section six, I will consider and reject the Non-Cognitivist Response, according to which we should intend but not believe that we will do what we’re deciding or promising to do. In section seven, I will consider and reject the Acceptance Response, according to which we should accept but not believe that we will do what we’re deciding or promising to do. In section eight, I will consider and defend the Pragmatist Response, according to which we should believe that we will do what we’re deciding or promising to do, provided it’s rational to decide or promise to do it. That is because our belief about what we will do, when doing it is up to us, is to be evaluated in terms of the standards of practical reasoning. In section nine, I will respond to objections to the Pragmatist Response. I will conclude by suggesting that the Epistemological Problem of Difficult Action reveals the best case against evidentialism — the view that what we should believe is determined by our evidence.

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