The Normativity of Rationality

Suppose you believe you ought to complete your grading on time but don't intend to do so. Nearly everyone agrees this akratic combination of attitude-states involves irrationality. One plausible explanation of why you're irrational is that you violate a requirement of “structural” rationality that prohibits you from having this combination. In other words, the rational code requires, roughly, that you not both believe you ought to φ and fail to intend to φ. But what is the normative status of this rational requirement? Do we necessarily have reasons to conform to it? More generally, do we necessarily have reasons to conform to the requirements of rationality? This is the familiar question of the normativity of rationality—a question that famously received a negative answer in Niko Kolodny's landmark paper “Why Be Rational?” (Kolodny 2005), and that is the central topic of Benjamin Kiesewetter's book.The Normativity of Rationality is excellent from start to finish. It is carefully argued and well structured, and displays comprehensive knowledge of the vast literature on reasons and rationality. Moreover, the book meticulously develops a sophisticated and original approach to the question of rationality's normativity, and is the most important treatment of the topic since Kolodny's paper. Kiesewetter aims to show that we can vindicate rationality's normativity by rejecting structural requirements and working instead with a reasons-responsive conception of rationality. In this review, I'll outline the central ideas of the book, while noting some places one could raise challenges to them.One possible approach to the question of rationality's normativity is to deny rational requirements are normative. We're familiar with the possibility of nonnormative requirements, such as, perhaps, the requirements of etiquette, fashion, and law. Why not add rationality to this group? We might hesitate because, as Kiesewetter observes, these other requirements seem to be explained by contingent social practices, while the requirements of rationality purport to be necessary (42–44). Moreover, it's hard to square this approach with the fact that we criticize people for irrationality.This point about criticism—one of the most novel and important contributions of the book—is developed in detail in chapter 2. Kiesewetter presents a two-premise argument:(1) If A is rationally required to φ, then A would be criticizable for not φ-ing.(2) If A would be criticizable for not φ-ing, then A has decisive reason to φ. (25)It follows that rationality is strictly normative—not only do we necessarily have reasons to be rational, but those reasons are also decisive.Kiesewetter argues forcefully for each premise. However, I'm not convinced of (2). Think about the criticism directed against those who incompetently pursue immoral aims. McArthur Wheeler attempted to rob a bank by covering himself with lemon juice in the hope of rendering himself invisible. We might think Wheeler is criticizable for not planning well, but also not think he had decisive reason to plan well. He doesn't get off the hook, so far as criticism of his practical competence goes, simply because he had an end he had no good reason to pursue. Or think of the bumbling monarch who fails twice over, failing to adequately publicize some substantively unjust or harmful law.1 We can criticize him on two counts, both for the failure of publicity and for the harmfulness or injustice of the law, while at the same time recognizing that there may not be decisive reason for him to better publicize this particular law. Despite my skepticism about (2), I expect that Kiesewetter's “criticism argument” will have an impact on the literature on rationality, with both proponents and opponents of rationality's normativity paying more attention to criticizability.As noted above, Kiesewetter believes rationality is normative. But the middle chapters of the book argue against “the structuralist view” according to which there are structural rational requirements that are normative. Chapter 3, which insightfully discusses the nature of structural rationality, is largely background for the argument that follows. Chapter 4 begins the attack against the structuralist view. On “narrow-scope” interpretations of structural requirements, such as the following simplistic formulation of our anti-akrasia requirement:If you believe you ought to φ, then rationality requires you to intend to φ.it would obviously be problematic to hold that you have decisive reason to be rational, since that would entail that you have decisive reason to intend to do whatever you believe you ought to do. (The weaker view that you have a reason to be rational still licenses an unacceptable “bootstrapping”—surely you can't come by reasons to intend to φ so easily.) In contrast, “wide-scope” interpretations (where “requires” has logical scope over a conditional) such as the following:Rationality requires that [if you believe you ought to φ, then you intend to φ].avoid this objection, but run into “detachment problems” when combined with highly plausible principles governing the transmission of reasons to necessary and to sufficient means. Chapter 5 continues the attack, noting the difficulty involved in attempting to specify reasons, either intrinsic or instrumental, to conform to structural requirements.Although these kinds of objections to the structuralist view will be familiar to those already acquainted with the rationality literature, Kiesewetter develops and defends the most plausible versions of them, responding to structuralist critics along the way. The result is a persuasive, careful case against the structuralist view.So far, Kiesewetter has argued that rationality is normative, and that if there are structural requirements, they are not normative. There would be obvious trouble if he believed in the existence of structural requirements. The next couple of chapters explain why he doesn't. In chapter 6, he argues directly against the existence of structural requirements, and in chapter 7, he presents an alternative reasons-responsive conception of rationality.The argument in chapter 6 proceeds by detailed examination of the wide-scope/narrow-scope debate and will be of interest to specialists working in this area. Kiesewetter argues that both wide-scope and narrow-scope interpretations have problems, and that this lends support to the view that structural rationality is a myth. My own view of this debate is that a version of the wide-scope view is correct. Putting that aside, I'm unsure about the step to the conclusion that structural rationality is a myth. There are other areas of philosophy where specialists quibble about precise interpretations of requirements, and uncontroversial, problem-free formulations seem unavailable. (Various debates in ethics, decision theory, and political philosophy come to mind.) But we aren't thereby tempted toward thinking the requirements are mythological.Chapter 7 begins the main positive project and most interesting part of the book, where Kiesewetter presents the case for understanding rationality as responsiveness to available reasons, where a reason is available if it's part of your evidence.2 (Rationality doesn't require you to respond to unavailable reasons. There's nothing irrational about failing to take an umbrella when your evidence doesn't include the fact that it's raining.) This view of rationality gives rise to a puzzle. Suppose Smith and Jones both believe it's raining, and are exactly alike in every psychological respect. Intuitively, there's no difference in what rationality requires of them without a difference in their psychologies. But suppose that Smith is right and Jones is wrong about the rain. There's a difference in the available reasons, since Smith's evidence includes the fact that it's raining while Jones's does not. Does the theory thereby issue the counterintuitive prediction that there's now a difference in what rationality requires of Smith and Jones? Kiesewetter, drawing on Huemer's phenomenal conservatism, argues that the fact that it seems to Jones that it's raining is part of Jones's evidence and hence an available reason, of the same strength as Smith's reason, to take the umbrella. So, it comes out that there's no difference in what rationality requires of Smith and Jones, even though they differ in their reasons (171–74).If we combine this conception of rationality with the thesis that rationality is normative—particularly the strict view of rationality's normativity supported by the criticism argument—we get the result that you ought to do what you have decisive available reason to do. This view is defended in chapter 8, where Kiesewetter presents several arguments against “pure objectivists” who think that what you ought to do depends on the facts, regardless of availability.Chapters 9 and 10 return to structural rationality. Kiesewetter denies the existence of structural requirements. The challenge is to explain the irrationality involved in cases covered by those requirements, such as my believing I ought to get my grading done on time but not intending to do it. His general idea is that “internal incoherence is not by itself forbidden by rationality, but only indicates that at least one of the attitudes involved is insufficiently supported by available reasons” (231). For instance, it's assured here that either my belief, or my not intending, is insufficiently supported by available reasons. This general idea is developed in impressive detail for several varieties of irrationality. Instrumental rationality is given a separate treatment in chapter 10, since the problem of incoherence with respect to merely permissible ends poses complications for the general idea. (The resulting treatment of means-ends incoherence is closer to traditional structuralist accounts.)The defender of structural rational requirements will argue that Kiesewetter's view has trouble explaining the intuition that you satisfy a rational requirement when you escape incoherence by revising in a direction other than the direction required by available reasons (242). Suppose I shouldn't believe I ought to get my grading done on time—there are more pressing matters—but I believe this anyway, and overcome my akrasia by intending to do so. Intuitively, I've satisfied a rational requirement. This would easily be explained were there structural requirements. Kiesewetter offers three antistructuralist “alternative explanations” (243). First, he argues that I do satisfy a requirement, but it's actually a “second-order requirement to review and reassess” my reasons (243). Second, he argues that we think I satisfy some requirement because I engage in correct reasoning. Third, he agues that we think I satisfy a requirement because I manifest a valuable disposition (243–44).I'm not sure these alternative explanations work. As for the first, suppose we set up my case so that I've already reflected on and reassessed my reasons, reaffirming my belief, but haven't yet entered the phase of revising my attitudes.3 Intuitively, I'd satisfy some requirement by then forming the intention. But that can't be explained in the proposed way. As for the second, correct reasoning is best understood in terms of basing permissions, not requirements (see Broome 2013: 246–48), and so can't explain the intuition that I satisfy some requirement. As for the third, the intuition that I satisfy some requirement would persist even when enkratic behavior is out of character, and so doesn't manifest a valuable disposition. So, I think more needs to be said to resolve the “satisfaction problem” for Kiesewetter's view. But there's no doubt that he has provided us with a superb book that presents a powerful case for rationality's normativity

Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · General interest · Rationality · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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