June 13, 2007...5:05 pm
New papers
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I’ve updated my ‘papers’ page. New papers include a shortened version of my paper on maximal rationality and the first half of my paper on contractualism and aggregation. Check them out and send me comments.
2 Comments
June 14, 2007 at 6:04 pm
quick thought about the max rational paper maybe email would have been better oh well though.
consider a case like this:
jones is a doctor and she is treating her patient smith. smith has a heart condition that is making her tired. neither smith nor jones know this at this point. smith explains to her doctor that she is feeling tired. jones immediately judges that smith has a heart condition. jones’s judgment is not justified. however, jones goes through the motions of listening to smiths heart but does not pay any attention to what she hears. if jones had attentively listened to smith’s heart she would have been justified in her belief. jones judgment that smith has a heart condition is true. jones judges that the fact that smith has a heart condition is a reason to give her some medicine which is extremely dangerous to anyone who does not have this condition. suppose that this judgement is true and jones gets the weight right.
doesn’t jones turn out to be immune from rational criticism on ur view? she is in a position to know that smith has a heart condition and that it counts in favor of giving her the medicine. but she doesn’t go about acquiring the belief that way rather she just guesses. at least, it seems like ur account will say that jones’s action of giving smith the medicine is immune from rational criticism which i doubt.
im sure im missing something
June 15, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Shyam,
This is an interesting case. I think that my view’s answer is going to depend on some other facts about the case. All you specified was that Jones judges that the fact that Smith has a heart condition is a reason to give her the medicine. However, that judgment presupposes that Jones believes that Smith has a heart condition. What is her judgment about her reason for belief? If it is merely that she guesses, then she is criticizable for that. Now, it also matters exactly what goes on when she listens to Smith’s heart. She might not actually be in a position to know that there is a reason to believe that Smith has a heart condition (if she didn’t actually hear her Smith’s heart). If that is the case, and she believes Smith has a condition anyway, then she is critizable for that belief. If she did hear her heart, then she might not be criticizable. I don’t think that is what you were intending, though. Thus, I think it boils down to her not being in a position to know the reason for belief.
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