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9 - Primitively rational belief-forming processes
- By Ralph Wedgwood, University of Oxford
Edited by Andrew Reisner, McGill University, Montréal, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
Book:

Reasons for Belief

Published online:

05 July 2011

Print publication:

02 June 2011, pp 180-200
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Summary

This chapter focuses on belief-forming processes, that is, types of mental process that result in the thinker's forming a belief in some proposition. It discusses a specific example of the belief-forming process that has three properties. The chapter articulates some crucial features that all rational belief-forming processes must have, without attempting to ensure that these crucial features are picked out in strictly non-normative terms. It explains what it would mean for the rationality of a belief-forming process to be a priori. The chapter argues that the rationality of the primitively rational processes is a priori in this way. It argues that the mere existence of an essential connection between a belief-forming process and the truth was not enough to make the process rational; it is also necessary that one should be able to engage in this process precisely because of its connection with the truth.