Why Believe This or That or Anything at All? An Instrumental Theory of Epistemic Normativity

Abstract

We are bombarded with epistemic standards. Respect your evidence. Don't believe in contradictions. Don't arbitrarily change beliefs. But how do such standards get their normative force? Why should we respect our evidence, for example? In this thesis, I offer an answer: embedded epistemic instrumentalism. It is the potent and persistent usefulness of conforming to the epistemic standards that gives rise to their normative force. I claim that there is an uncontroversial core to this theory, facts we will all agree on and facts that are integrated well with other things we know. These facts are the ontological foundation of the theory. I then argue for a recipe for responding to the main source of objections, intuitive arguments. The result is that we have an extremely well-motivated theory, that is immune from the main source of criticism, or so I argue. These properties make embedded epistemic instrumentalism stand out from the crowd. I offer two relevant interpretations of this theory, error theory and non-analytic natural realism. I defend the error theory interpretation from a charge that epistemic error theories are self-undermining. And finally, I defend the theory from the charge that I have failed to identify any actual normativity in my theory of epistemic normativity.