Evidence and Agency ISBN: 9780198714040 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Philosophy Metaphysics/ Epistemology Moral Philosophy;
Evidence and Agency is concerned with the question of how, as agents, we should take evidence into account when thinking about our future actions. Sometimes we promise and resolve to do things that we have evidence is difficult for us to do. Should we believe that we will follow through, or believe that there is a good chance that we won't? If you believe the former, you seem to be irrational since you believe against the evidence. Yet if you believe thelatter, you seem to be insincere since you can't sincerely say that you will follow through. Hence, it seems, your promise or resolution must be improper. To meet this challenge, Berislav Maru%si'c considers andrejects a number of responses, before defending instead a solution inspired by the Kantian tradition and by Sartre in particular: as agents, we have a distinct view of what we will do. If something is up to us, we can decide what to do, rather than predict what we will do. But the reasons in light of which a decision is rational are not the same as the reasons in light of which a prediction is rational. That is why, provided it is important to us to do something we can rationally believe thatwe will do it, even if our belief goes against the evidence.
Berislav Maru%si'c is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Brandeis University. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 and his AB from Harvard in 2001. His work lies at the intersection of epistemology and ethics, and he is especially interested the relationship between practical and theoretical reason, the nature of reasons, existentialism, and skepticism.
