Ambiguous rationality

Abstract

The paper distinguishes a content-oriented conception of rational belief, which concerns support relations between the proposition believed and one's evidence, from a disposition-oriented conception of rational belief, which concerns whether someone generally disposed to conform their belief to their evidence would believe the given proposition in the given circumstances. Neither type of rationality entails the other. It is argued that conflating the two ways of thinking about rational belief has had damaging effects in epistemology.