ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out one plausible strategy for explaining why epistemic reasons are evidential, which proceeds on the basis of two principles:
Transparency: when we want to determine whether we ought to believe that p, we always find that our inquiry immediately gives way to the question of whether p is true.
Guidance: for all subjects, S, potential reasons, R, and beliefs or actions, φ: for R to count as a normative reason for S to φ, it must be possible for S to take R into account as relevant to the determination of whether S ought to φ.
If both of these principles are correct, then epistemic reasons must consist of evidence. The chapter defends Guidance against several objections. It also argues against John Gibbons’s externalist take on the accessibility requirement imposed by Guidance. Finally the chapter argues that the strategy under consideration here fails because Transparency turns out to be false.
The chapter ends with a brief appendix explaining several conditions argued to be necessary to include in the analysis of the epistemic basing relation, which is the relation between beliefs and the reasons on which they are based.
