Kierkegaard on the Relationship Between Practical and Epistemic Reasons for Belief

Abstract

On the dominant contemporary accounts of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, practical considerations either encroach on epistemic rationality by affecting whether a belief is epistemically justified, or constitute distinctively practical reasons for belief which can only affect what we ought to believe by conflicting with epistemic rationality. This paper argues that Søren Kierkegaard offers a promising alternative view on which practical considerations can affect what we ought to believe without either encroaching on or (necessarily) conflicting with epistemic rationality by determining which among the epistemically permitted outright doxastic attitudes one should all-things-considered adopt.