Andrew Reisner (Uppsala): “Why and how alethic and pragmatic considerations jointly determine what we ought to believe”

Abstract: For roughly two decades evidentialism, of some nearby variant thereof, has been the orthodoxy about normative reasons for belief, or as I would prefer to put it, the determinants of what one ought to believe. While some form of evidentialism or alethicism remains the dominate view, a small but growing number of philosophers are defending the view that there are pragmatic reasons for belief. Amongst them the most popular view is strict pragmatism: the view that all reasons for belief are pragmatic reasons for belief. While some authors suggest a pluralist alternative, many seem to imply that evidential/alethic reasons for belief and pragmatic reasons for belief nonetheless cannot be compared. In this talk I offer some considerations about why we should expect to be able to compare alethic and pragmatic reasons for belief and offer a new suggestion about how to do so. Or to put the point in a preferable way, I offer a suggestion about how alethic and pragmatic considerations contribute to determining what we ought to believe.