JUSTIFIED NORMATIVE JUDGMENT

Should your conscience be your guide? I really can’t say because we’ve never met. If you are
conscientious, you will often make the move from a belief about what ought to be done to an action
rationalized (in part) by the belief:
(The Move) SBSOΦ
S Φ’s
I can’t say that you should have made The Move if I don’t know the specifics. It’s not obviously
irrational to make The Move. Indeed, it seems often that it would be irrational not to. Still, I think
this principle can’t be true:
(Con) SBSOΦ  SOΦ
The best people make The Move, but so do the worst. For counterexamples to Con, see any
movie about Nazis.1
If you think there must be some sort of normative relation between practical judgments
and the actions and intentions those judgments rationalize, perhaps it is captured by something like
this:
(W-Con) SO(SBOΦ  SOΦ)2
While all kinds of people make The Move, only those who act rightly conform to W-Con.
Conscientious Hitlers are no threat to W-Con, only Con.
W-Con seems trivial. Gibbons (2009: 172) seems to agree. Note that W-Con permits
what he calls ‘strengthened detachment’. With W-Con, we can infer (2) from (1):
(1) SOBSOΦ
(2) SOΦ
When should someone believe they ought to Φ? He suggests that someone who considers whether
to Φ, gives the matter serious attention, has the intellectual skills to knowingly deduce that she
ought to Φ, and has sufficient evidence ought to judge that she ought to Φ. It’s hard to say what
sufficient evidence amounts to, but two claims are intuitively plausible:

1
In addition to counterexamples to Con, Zimmerman (2008) notes that you cannot accept Con and
that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.
2
In other words, S ought to see to it that S believes S ought to Φ only if S ought to Φ.
 (SE1) S has sufficient evidence for her belief that p if S has
precisely the same evidence as someone who knows p.
(SE2) S ought to believe p if S has given the matter sufficient
attention and has sufficient evidence to believe p.3
Rather than bicker about whether evidence consists of knowledge or something else, I’ll just say
now that nothing here turns on whether we opt for the right view of evidence or some alternative
to E=K. Evidence can be pretty much whatever you want it to be, provided that you agree that
even if p is part of S’s evidence, p isn’t the evidence that justifies S’s believing p when that belief is
an inferential belief. Combine (SE1), (SE2), and W-Con, and the result is that you are permitted
to do whatever it is that your epistemic counterparts are permitted to do.4 Indeed, you and your
epistemic counterpart often ought to do the same things, provided that you ought to believe that
you ought to do the same things.
This seems to be the view defended by Fantl and McGrath (forthcoming: 85). They say
that if you have knowledge-level justification for believing p, it is permissible to treat p as a reason
for action as well as belief.5 Suppose you have knowledge-level justification for believing that you
ought to Φ. It would then be proper for you to treat that you ought to Φ as a reason for action, say,
when you judge that you should Ψ because you know that Ψ-ing is the only means by which you
could Φ. Suppose you have knowledge-level justification for believing p where you kow or
justifiably believe you ought to Φ if p. It would then be proper for you to treat p as a reason for
3
Personally, I think that epistemic obligations tend to be obligations to refrain from believing
rather than obligations to believe. Since Gibbons thinks that we ought to believe what we cannot
rationally refrain from believing when we give the matter sufficient attention and have the
intellectual skills to reason in such a way to gain knowledge concerning the relevant subject matter,
the criticisms apply to his version of The View. Maybe my other targets think that sufficient
evidence permits believing but does not obligate believing. That’s okay. The cases below will
cause trouble for a weakened version of (SE2) that merely gives a permission to believe on
sufficient evidence.
4
For the purposes of this discussion, S’s epistemic counterparts have all the same evidence for their
beliefs and do not differ in terms of their non-factive mental states from S.
5
Whereas Fantl and McGrath (forthcoming) and Gibbons (forthcoming) seem to think that there’s
practical justification for Φ-ing whenever there’s adequate epistemic justification for believing that
you should Φ, Gerken (forthcoming), and Neta (forthcoming) seem to defend only the more
cautious view that there’s nothing epistemically wrong with treating p as a reason for action even if
~p, provided that your belief that p is the case is justified. It seems that they can avoid the
difficulties that arise for The View, but only if they give up W-Con. Much of this work is written
in response to Hawthorne and Stanley (2008) who argue that it is proper to act only on what you
know.
action and, arguably, proper to Φ accordingly. Like Fantl, McGrath, and Gibbons, I have a hard
time seeing how W-Con could be false. Whatever it is that neutralizes the threats to the normative
standing of the normative judgment should take care of whatever normative obstacles stand in the
way of plowing ahead and acting on the normative judgment. In spite of the view’s intuitive
plausibility, there is something wrong with:
(The View) W-Con, (SE1), and (SE2)6
Those who defend The View believe that someone can have sufficient evidence to believe p
even if ~p. Here is what Fantl and McGrath say on the matter:
… it is highly plausible that if two subjects have all the same very
strong evidence for my glass contains gin, believe that proposition
on the basis of this evidence, and then act on the belief in reaching
to take a drink, those two subjects are equally justified in their
actions and equally justified in treating what they each did as a
reason, even if one of them, the unlucky one, has cleverly
disguised petrol in his glass rather than gin. Notice that if we asked
the unlucky fellow why he did such a thing, he might reply with
indignation: ‘well, it was the perfectly rational thing to do; I had
every reason to think the glass contained gin; why in the world
should I think that someone would be going around putting petrol
in cocktail glasses!?’ Here the unlucky subject is not providing an
excuse for his action or treating what he did as a reason; he is
defending it as the action that made the most sense for him to do
and the proposition that made most sense to treat as a reason
(forthcoming: 141).
It seems Fantl and McGrath are moved by a kind of anti-luck intuition. If someone shouldn’t Φ,
there have to be reasons in light of which the subject shouldn’t Φ and should do something else
instead, but they cannot be reasons that are inaccessible to the subject. Why? Perhaps it’s because
the best that you can ever do is to do what the rational or reasonable person would do in your
shoes. While there’s something to be said for the view that says (i) you should do the best you can

6
Fantl and McGrath (2002: 77) say that S justifiably believes p only if S is rational to act as if p. It
might seem that they reject (SE1) and (SE2). They do. But, they do so on the grounds that it is
possible for subjects with the same evidence for believing p to face practical situations where the
stakes of acting on p differ. These differences are differences that their subjects are aware of. In my
cases, the differences between the situations Coop and his epistemic counterparts face are not
differences that they are aware of. Fantl and McGrath’s remarks concerning cases of facts that the
subject is not cognizant of that have some practical significance make it pretty clear that they think
that such facts do not affect the normative standing of the agent’s actions, attitudes, or the
reasoning that connects them.
and (ii) it cannot be that you should have done more or done otherwise than the best you could
given your circumstances, I don’t think that this can be what motivates The View.
In another manuscript currently under review, I have argued that there can be facts we are
non-culpably ignorant of that nevertheless determines what our overall moral obligation is.7 In
other words, factual ignorance and mistaken belief excuse wrongdoing, it does not obviate the need
for justification.8 These cases show that there’s a reading of ‘sufficient evidence’ on which (SE1) is
trivial and a reading on which (SE2) is perfectly harmless, but these are different readings. If
‘sufficient evidence’ just means evidence that ensures that it is permissible to believe, (SE2) is
trivial but (SE1) is (arguably) mistaken.9 If ‘sufficient evidence’ just means evidence that ensures
that we satisfy whatever evidential requirements there are on permissible belief, (SE1) is trivial but
(SE2) is (arguably) mistaken. This reading leaves open the possibility that the right to believe turns
on more than just the evidence. The view I would defend is that only beliefs that can properly
figure in deliberation are permissibly held and since any false belief will pass off a non-reason as if it
were a reason, no false beliefs can justifiably be held.10 If someone has a false belief that leads them
to engage in wrongdoing but has the same evidence as someone who acts rightly, the evidence not
ensure that the agent conforms to the norms governing action or belief but it might provide an
excuse for acting on beliefs that oughtn’t be included in deliberation. The problem with this line
of attack was that it appealed to intuitions about the duties you have in light of facts inaccessible to
the agent. Intuitions about such cases don’t move those who defend The View.

7
For example, if someone is innocent they should not be suffered to force the hardships of prison
life. That’s why we owe a debt of compensation to those who have been locked away for crimes
they have not committed even when we could not have known at the time of sentencing that the
subject was innocent. Even if all responsible parties reasonably and responsibly believed that the
innocent party was guilty, it would not be mere beneficence or charity to offer financial assistance
to someone who was forced to spend decades in prison.
8
An action can be wrongful or an instance of wrongdoing without being impermissible or wrong,
such as when there is a prima facie reason not to perform the action but that reason is defeated by
stronger reasons that demand that the agent perform that action.
9
Suppose that you should not believe p unless you know p. You cannot believe p properly unless
you have sufficient evidence for satisfying the relevant necessary conditions for knowledge, but it
does not seem to follow from the fact that you have sufficient evidence for that belief (e.g.,
evidence such that someone else could believe on just that evidence and have knowledge) that your
belief is properly held.
10
If normative reasons are facts, any false belief included in practical deliberation will pass off a
non-reason as if it were a reason. In a paper under review, I argue that there is always reason to
refrain from treating non-reasons as if they were reasons and that there is no justifying reason that
would make it permissible to include such beliefs in deliberation.
 I want to try a different line of attack. Coop thinks it’s his lucky day. He’s found a quarter
on the ground and heads off to buy a gumball. He passes a vending machine and sees that trapped
inside are an infant, a puppy, and a kitten. On the machine, a sign says that anything in the machine
could be had for a quarter. He’s seen people buying things for quarters from this machine all
afternoon and doesn’t know why no one has bothered to release the infant, puppy or kitten instead
of buying bags of chips. He has good reason to believe that the machine is in good working order.
He knows that it would be best if the infant were freed, second best if the puppy were set free,
third best if the kitten were set free, and that the worst state of affairs involves his buying that
gumball he wants. Coop judges:
(3) Cooper ought to bring it about that the infant is freed.
It seems that someone could have just Coop’s evidence and know that (3) is true. So, it follows
from The View that (3) is true. It is, however, perfectly consistent with everything I’ve just said
that the mechanism that would allow Coop to free the infant is broken. Perhaps the only buttons
that work are the buttons that free the puppy or free the kitten. Now, consider:
(OIC) If S ought to Φ, S can Φ.
According to (OIC), what Coop ought to do is something other than what (3) says.11
Here’s an argument against The View. It implies that your obligation can be what you
cannot do. Obligations aren’t like that. Thus, either epistemic obligations are not fixed entirely by
facts about an individual’s evidence or facts about what ought to be done are not fixed by facts
about epistemic obligation. Having considered the arguments for W-Con, I find them convincing.
When there’s a decisive case to be made against Φ-ing, there’s not a decisive case to be made for
settling the issue by judging that you should Φ. As Fantl and McGrath observe, “When trying to
determine what is true – that is, in forming beliefs – we draw conclusions from the reasons we

11
Suppose we weaken The View. There aren’t obligations to believe, there are only permissions to
believe and prohibitions against believing. A justified belief is a permissible belief. On this
weakened version of The View, we say that you are permitted to believe what your epistemic
counterparts permissibly believe and permitted to do what your epistemic counterparts are
permitted to do. Consider the principle: [(SBSOΦ & ~SO~BSOΦ)  ~SO~Φ]. In other
words, if S believes S’s obligation is to Φ and that belief is permissible, it can’t be that S is obliged
to do other than Φ. Let ‘Φ’ stand for saving the infant. Let ‘Ψ’ stand for saving the puppy. Given
(OIC), it cannot be that Coop is obliged Φ. He’s obliged to do the next best thing, Ψ. Given that
he’s obliged to Ψ rather than Φ, he’s obliged to refrain from judging that he should Φ. His
judgment that he should Φ cannot be justified. Weaken The View, and it still faces essentially the
same problems with (OIC) that the view faces.
have. The same goes for trying to decide what to do. Here, too, we draw conclusions about what
to do – we form intentions – from the reasons we have. We bring reasons into our reasoning
knowing that we might draw all sorts of conclusions from them along the way, some practical and
some theoretical” (forthcoming: 78). We draw conclusions about what to do and believe on the
basis of the very same reasons. One intuitive motivation for The View is the thought that the
reasonable and conscientious agent cannot fail to discover and then do what should be done. If we
were to say otherwise, then it often is a matter of dumb luck that we managed to meet our
epistemic and moral obligations.12 It turns out that that cannot be the rationale for The View, not if
it is incompatible with (OIC).
A colleague plausibly suggested that the subject ought to try to release the infant rather
than, say, bring it about that some critter is freed from the vending machine. It’s true that this
costs a quarter and does no good at all, but it’s the right thing to do. Someone could say that, but
look what that does to The View. In some nearby possible world our vending machine is working
properly and some counterpart of Coop’s has saved the infant. It surely seems possible that he
knows that when he pushes the relevant button the baby will be released. So, he has sufficient
evidence to believe this. By (SE1), Coop has sufficient evidence to believe that by pushing the
button the baby will be released. By (SE2), that is what he ought to believe. By W-Con, that is
what he ought to do—release the baby by trying to do so. But, it’s not the case that that’s what he
ought to do. He can’t do it.
It seems that those who love The View have to say that our initial supposition was
mistaken. Coop’s counterpart did not know that pushing the button causes the baby to be released.
Why didn’t he know? Because an epistemic counterpart could have just his evidence for believing
this proposition and be mistaken where this mistaken belief would rationalize an action that the
agent cannot perform. So, S knows p only if S has no epistemic counterparts in any possible world
who falsely believe p and whose belief that p would rationalize forming the intention to perform an
action the agent cannot perform under those circumstances. If that’s right, is there anything we can
know about the external world? Given The View, all it took to show that Coop’s counterpart did
not have knowledge was to find some counterpart of Coop’s counterpart (i.e., Coop) who had the
same evidence but had a mistaken belief. Now it is starting to look like The View is committed to

12
See Gibbons (forthcoming: 18) where he offers this sort of objection ‘The Bad’ (i.e., the view on
which the overall demands that the reasons place on an agent can come apart from what the agent
can be rational, reasonable, or responsible for doing).
the view that we have sufficient to believe p only when our evidence for believing p entails p.
That’s worse than my view! My view rules out false, justified beliefs that figure in deliberation.
The View rules out the possibility of justified belief based on fallible grounds. So, The View rules
out false, justified beliefs and justified, true beliefs based on even the best inductive grounds. It’s a
bad view, much worse than mine.
I haven’t found the passage where those who defend The View say that they accept (OIC).
So, I haven’t found the passage that shows that The View is incompatible with some view they
cherish, only that The View is incompatible with something that strikes many of us as being
obviously true. They are well within their rights to say that ignorance subverts obligation, but
impotence does not. If they were to go this route, they have to say that someone who doesn’t
know p can Φ even if it is physically impossible for someone who does not realize that p is true to
Φ.13 Suppose people can get things out of our very sturdy vending machine either by putting a
quarter in its slot or using the right combination to open a combination lock. Coop has no idea
what the combination is. Someone could say that Coop isn’t obliged to open the lock to release the
infant because he does not know that the combination for that lock is 12-34-56. They can say that
he’s obliged to release the infant, the puppy, and the kitten by pulling the vending machine apart
with his bare hands even though this is something he cannot do. People can say all sorts of things
they shouldn’t.

REFERENCES

Fantl, J. and M. McGrath. forthcoming. Knowledge in an Uncertain World. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Gerken, M. Forthcoming. Warrant and Action. Synthese
Gibbons, J. 2009. You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do. Nous 43: 157-77.
____. Forthcoming. Things That Make Things Reasonable. Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research.
Hawthorne, J. and J. Stanley. 2008. Knowledge and Action. Journal of Philosophy 105: 571-90.
Neta, R. Forthcoming. Treating Something as a Reason for Action. Nous.
Zimmerman, M. 2008. Living with Uncertainty. New York: Cambridge University Press.

13
This is a problem for those who think that can implies know-how and know-that.