2023.02.6 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Juan Comesaña, Being Rational and Being Right, Oxford University Press, 2020, 222pp., $85.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198847717.
Reviewed by Adam Marushak, South China Normal University
Suppose you’re hungry and your friend offers you what looks to be a piece of candy. Upon taking a bite, however, you realize that what you thought was candy is actually a marble that looks like candy. Intuitively, your action of putting the marble in your mouth was rational even though you did not succeed in satisfying your hunger. In Being Rational and Being Right, Juan Comesaña argues that cases like these—where rational action is based on a false belief—pose problems for prominent theories of evidence and rational decision.
Consider, for example, the theories of evidence Comesaña calls ‘Factualism’ and ‘Psychologism’. Factualism holds that evidence is knowledge, and Psychologism holds that evidence consists in either our experiences themselves or propositions about…
Originally appeared on Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // News Read More
