Abstract ‘Reductive Evidentialism’ seeks to explain away all ‘structural’ requirements of rationality—including norms logical coherence—in terms ‘substantive’ rationality, i.e., responsiveness evidence. While this view constitutes a novel take on the source normativity logic, I argue that it faces serious difficulties. My argument, in nutshell, is assumption individuals with same evidence can h...

Logic has traditionally been construed as a normative discipline; it sets forth standards of correct reasoning. Explosion is a valid principle of classical logic. It states that an inconsistent set of propositions entails any proposition whatsoever. However, ordinary agents presumably do—occasionally, at least—have inconsistent belief sets. Yet it is false that such agents may, let alone ought,...

Although in everyday life and thought we take for granted that there are norms of rationality, their existence presents severe philosophical problems. Kolodny (2005) is thus moved to deny that rationality is normative. But this denial is not itself unproblematic, and I argue that Kolodny’s defense of it—particularly his Transparency Account, which aims to explain why rationality appears to be n...

This article repudiates the common view that the study of religion, in order to qualify as academic, must be descriptively neutral and naturalistic rather than normative or prescriptive. Following philosophers like John McDowell, John Cottingham, and Tyler Roberts, I claim that such a methodological stance amounts to viewing humans as determined rather than free agents. On the basis of W.V.O. Q...

According to one view about the rationality of belief, such rationality is ultimately nothing other than the rationality that one exhibits in taking the means to one’s ends. On this view, epistemic rationality is really a species or special case of instrumental rationality. In particular, epistemic rationality is instrumental rationality in the service of one’s distinctively cognitive or episte...

Belief, some say, is normative. To say this is to say, not only that beliefs are subject to normative standards or principles, but that it is part of the essence of belief to be subject to such norms. Call this view, Normativism. Normativism, so characterised, should be distinguished from three related claims. First, that it is part of the concept of belief that it is subject to normative stand...

I discuss eight theses espoused or occasioned by Toulmin: (1) The validity standard is nearly always the wrong standard for real-life reasoning. (2) Little in good reasoning is topic neutral. (3) The probability calculus distorts much probabilistic reasoning. (4) Scant resources have a benign influence on human reasoning. (5) Theoretical progress and conceptual change are connected. (6) Logic s...