On the Activity of Theoretical and Practical Reason

Our moral responsibility for our beliefs depends on whether and to what degree we exercise agency in forming our beliefs. There are two predominant ways in which participants in the so-called “ethics of belief” literature defend a unique form of epistemic (i.e. belief-forming) agency. The first takes intentional action as the paradigm of agential activity and then works to show that beliefs align with intentional action rather than non-agential events/processes such as growing to be 5’2” or being blown over by a strong gust of wind. The second joins the longstanding literature on free will and focuses on freedom as the property constitutive of agency and then argues that beliefs are among the things that instantiate freedom.

In this dissertation, I argue against both strategies of defending so-called “epistemic agency.” We are responsible for our beliefs and we exercise agency in forming them, but we do not exercise direct control over our beliefs in the way proponents of these strategies suggest. To think that we do is to confuse the activity of theoretical reason with the activity of practical reason.