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    To act for the reason that p, an agent must believe that p. — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    To act for the reason that p, an agent must believe that p.

    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Acting for a motivating reason requires the agent to stand in some epistemic relation to the reason that motivates her.
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    • 2.The relevant epistemic relation is belief.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Philosophers like Williamson argue that knowledge, not belief, is the fundamental factive mental state that grounds action.
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    • 2.If the operative epistemic relation is knowledge rather than belief, an agent who merely believes p but does not know p may fail to act for the reason that p.
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    • 3.This inverts the standard claim: belief is neither sufficient nor the correct criterion—knowledge is the relevant epistemic relation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Agents can act on subdoxastic states—perceptual or proprioceptive states that causally guide behavior without rising to the level of belief.
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    • 2.If subdoxastic states can rationalize and explain action, then belief is not a necessary condition for acting for a reason.
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    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge

    Related

    Acting for a motivating reason requires the agent to stand in some epistemic rel...Agents can act on subdoxastic states—perceptual or proprioceptive states that ca...If subdoxastic states can rationalize and explain action, then belief is not a n...If the operative epistemic relation is knowledge rather than belief, an agent wh...
    +3 moreShow less
    Philosophers like Williamson argue that knowledge, not belief, is the fundamenta...The relevant epistemic relation is belief.This inverts the standard claim: belief is neither sufficient nor the correct cr...

    Similar

    An agent may act on the basis of a belief merely by treating what she ...82%If an agent believes φ then the agent knows that the agent believes φ82%Any agent who has the power to do something must believe himself to ha...81%For R to be a genuine reason for an agent to act, R itself must be a g...80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: reasons-just-vs-expl
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    We noted above that most if not all accounts of acting for a motivating reason require as a condition that the agent be in some kind of epistemic relation to the reason that motivates her. And we saw also that a widespread view is that this epistemic relation is one of belief: for an agent to act for the reason that p, the agent must believe that p. It is this thought that led many to endorse the view that reasons are mental states (often as part of the “desire-belief” conception of reasons for
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit