A Scale for Mixed Reasons for Belief

Abstract

Epistemic reasons matter for what you should believe. But then, some think there are practical reasons that matter, too. How could both sorts of reasons be weighed together to determine the doxastic states you ought to hold, all things considered? I argue for general constraints on any way of understanding such combinations and offer a well‐motivated decision‐theoretic model that, unlike its competitors, meets them. When epistemic reasons are conceived of as arising from the value or disvalue of a true or false belief, they can be weighed with practical reasons on a common scale.