Beings of Thought and Action
Epistemic and Practical Rationality

Examines the ways in which epistemic and practical rationality are intertwined.

Andy Mueller (Author)

9781108994941, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 September 2023

254 pages
27 x 18 x 1.7 cm, 0.432 kg

In this book, Andy Mueller examines the ways in which epistemic and practical rationality are intertwined. In the first part, he presents an overview of the contemporary debates about epistemic norms for practical reasoning, and defends the thesis that epistemic rationality can make one practically irrational. Mueller proposes a contextualist account of epistemic norms for practical reasoning and introduces novel epistemic norms pertaining to ends and hope. In the second part Mueller considers current approaches to pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, ultimately arguing in favor of a new principle-based argument for pragmatic encroachment. While the book defends tenets of the knowledge-first programme, one of its main conclusions is thoroughly pragmatist: in an important sense, the practical has primacy over the epistemic.

Prologue
Part I. Beings of Thought in Action: 1. Epistemic encroachment on practical rationality
2. Practical reasoning, ends, and the end of hope
3. Contexts, costs, and benefits
4. Knowledge and seemingly risky actions
Part II. Beings of Action in Thought: 5. Pragmatic encroachment in epistemology
6. Reasons for belief and the primacy of the practical
7. Assessing potential explanations of pragmatic encroachment
8. Social beings
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]