The Normativity of Structural Rationality

This chapter turns to the question of how, if at all, structural rationality (or coherence) is normative, or normatively significant. It spends some time getting clear about what the question at issue here is, then lays out the more pressing challenge for the normativity of structural rationality, which concerns how considerations about structural rationality could fit into our deliberation about what attitudes to have. It then attempts to meet this challenge by arguing that considerations about structural rationality (or coherence) are reasons to structure deliberation in certain ways; more particularly, to treat incoherent combinations of attitudes as off-limits in one’s deliberation and focus one’s deliberative attention on the coherent combinations. It also explores how this account relates to questions about the force or point of charges of structural irrationality.