The Certainty Norm Of Action

Our ordinary practices and actions are based on some epistemic status and our normative assessments of actions are related to whether certain epistemic status is met.It seems that there is a normative link between actions and some epistemic status.Specifically,rational actions are governed by an epistemic norm.The debate in contemporary epistemology about epistemic norm of action focuses on which kind of epistemic norm we can rely on to assess whether our action and practical reasoning are appropriate.The debate tries to answer the question:on the basis of which epistemic status is satisfied one’s action is appropriate or permitted.The current proposals can be generally referred to as doxastic norms,which hold that it is rational to rely on p if and only if S is in a relevant epistemic position with p.Depending on the difference of doxastic states in the norms,they can include the knowledge norm and a variety of non-knowledge belief norms.Moreover,depending on the epistemic properties of the epistemic status,belief norms can be classified into factive norms and non-factive norms.Among them,the knowledge norm and Contextualized Epistemic Certainty Norm proposed by Bob Beddor in recent years are factive norms.Most of the non-knowledge belief norms,on the other hand,are non-factive norms.This thesis argues that there is a new kind of non-factive doxastic epistemic norm of action:Certainty Norm.This norm holds that in relevant context C it is rational to rely on p to act if and only if p is epistemically certain for the subject.This thesis has two main parts.The first part will discuss the knowledge norm of action.However,the explanation power of the knowledge norm is limited.The second part will discuss the Certainty Norm of action.To begin with,we provide a clarification of the nature of certainty as an epistemic state by employing a semantic approach.In contrast to knowledge,certainty is a gradable,non-factual epistemic state.On this basis,this paper attempts to sketch and defend a Certainty Norm.In contrast to the knowledge norm,the context-sensitive properties of certainty norms can explain the different epistemic standards required by rational action in different contexts.In contrast to other context-sensitive factive and non-factive belief norms,Certainty Norm can respond to the challenges of both the preface paradox and the lottery paradox in the same time.Therefore,the certainty norm is a more plausible and explanatory epistemic norm of action.