Is Rationality Normative?

@article{Broome2007IsRN,
  title={Is Rationality Normative?},
  author={John Broome},
  journal={Disputatio},
  year={2007},
  volume={2},
  pages={161 - 178},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:171079649}
}
  • J. Broome
  • Published 1 November 2007
  • Philosophy
  • Disputatio
Abstract Rationality requires various things of you. For example, it requires you not to have contradictory beliefs, and to intend what you believe is a necessary means to an end that you intend. Suppose rationality requires you to F. Does this fact constitute a reason for you to F? Does it even follow from this fact that you have a reason to F? I examine these questions and reach a sceptical conclusion about them. I can find no satisfactory argument to show that either has the answer ‘yes’. I… 

What You’re Rationally Required to Do and What You Ought to Do (Are the Same Thing!)

This chapter is about whether we ought to be rational—i.e., whether rationality is normative or deontically significant. Although this is a truism, skepticism about whether we ought to be rational is

IX—Against Requirements of Rationality

Are inferences, theoretical and practical, subject to requirements of rationality? If so, are these of the form ‘if … ought …’ or ‘ought … if …’? If the latter, how are we to understand the ‘if’? It

The property of rationality: a guide to what rationality requires?

Can we employ the property of rationality in establishing what rationality requires? According to a central and formal thesis of John Broome’s work on rational requirements, the answer is ‘no’—at

Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions

When it comes to epistemic normativity, should we take the good to be prior to the right? That is, should we ground facts about what we ought and ought not believe on a given occasion in facts about

Why Care about Being an Agent?

ABSTRACT The question ‘Why care about being an agent?’ asks for reasons to be something that appears to be non-optional. But perhaps it is closer to the question ‘Why be moral?’; or so I shall argue.

The Real Myth of Coherence

In this paper, I offer a novel view of the coherence (or structural) requirements on belief and intention, according to which they are not norms, but rather principles describing how your belief and

Structural Irrationality Does Not Consist in Having Attitudes You Ought Not to Have: A New Dilemma for Reasons-Violating Structural Irrationality

ABSTRACT This paper presents a new argument against the view that structural (or attitude-based) irrationality consists in failing to respond correctly to normative reasons. According to this view, a

Respect and the reality of apparent reasons

Rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons. Given the independence of appearance and reality, why think that apparent normative reasons necessarily provide real normative

Metanormative regress: an escape plan

How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some “second-order” norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize

Normative Reasons for Mentalism

This paper connects the traditional epistemological topic of justification with recent views focusing on epistemic reasons. In particular, I show that Conee and Feldman’s mentalism about
...

Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?1

Most of us take it for granted that we ought to be rational—to have the bundle of dispositions and abilities that constitute the faculty of rationality. Most of us also take it for granted that we

Why Be Rational

Normativity involves two kinds of relation. On the one hand, there is the relation of being a reason for. This is a relation between a fact and an attitude. On the other hand, there are relations

Reasoning with preferences?

Rationality requires certain things of you. It requires you not to have contradictory beliefs or intentions, not to intend something you believe to be impossible, to believe what obviously follows

Dispositional Theories of Value

(3) Motivating reasons are constituted, inter alia, by desires. The apparent inconsistency can be brought out as follows. From (1), the state expressed by a valuation is a belief, which, from (2), is

Wide or Narrow Scope

This paper is a response to ‘Why Be Rational?’ by Niko Kolodny. Kolodny argues that we have no reason to satisfy the requirements of rationality. His argument assumes that these requirements have a

A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects

ion, Etc. Part II Of the Ideas of Space and Time, Part III Of Knowledge and Probability Part IV Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of