DescriptionShould you believe that p? Many epistemologists think you can answer this question by figuring out the answers to two other questions: what information or evidence do you have bearing on whether p, and what’s the right way for you to interpret and evaluate that evidence? One problem with this proposal is that it seems there isn’t always some right way for you to interpret and evaluate your evidence. Or rather, the answer to this last question isn’t always a given one, as opposed to one we give ourselves. I suggest that what we should believe, in the sense of what it’s rational for us to believe, depends in part on our own commitments as to good ways of interpreting and evaluating evidence. These commitments, I further suggest, are not simply given. At least some of our precise epistemic commitments are things we make and shape. They are also things for which we are responsible.
I offer support for the idea that we are importantly responsible for what it’s rational for us to believe over the course of three chapters. First, I call attention to a phenomenon: epistemic underdetermination. In chapter 2, I argue that this phenomenon spoils standard “permissivist” responses to the arbitrariness objection and hence that would-be permissivists should embrace “epistemic existentialism” – a view that entails we have substantial responsibility for what it’s rational for us to believe. Finally, in chapter 3, I deal with a primary objection to epistemic existentialism and subjectivist views of rationality in general. I attempt to motivate principled, objective constraints on the sorts of subjective frameworks that can render attitudes rational.