Reasons and theoretical rationality

This chapter explores the relationship between reasons and epistemic rationality. In recent debates about rationality and evidence, internalist evidentialism is quite popular. Using this theory as our stalking horse, we examine debates about the ontology of evidence and reasons, a puzzle about rationality and evidential support relations, work on the relationship between reasons and rationality, and some underexplored issues concerning the relationship between knowledge, evidence, and normative reasons. We shall see that there are good grounds for thinking that the normative reasons that matter in epistemology are not always pieces of evidence, that there is no simple story about the relationship between believing rationally and responding correctly to the evidence or the reasons, that there are problems with formal accounts of evidential support, and that attractive views about the ontology of reasons suggest that it can be rational to believe without having a belief based on reasons.