5. The relative paucity of SPRs

Let’s grant that Ameliorative Psychology offers some wonderful SPRs. But

there just aren’t that many, compared to the number of significant reasoning

problems we face every day. If John had at his disposal all successful, tractable

SPRs, they would not help him deal with the overwhelming majority of the

significant reasoning problems in his life. Throughout this book, you attack

SAE for offering theories that do not provide useful guidance to reasoners. But

your theory fares just about as badly on this score. A handful of successful

SPRs for making judgments about a hodgepodge of issues hardly counts as

useful reasoning advice.

There are three points to make in response to this objection. First,

Ameliorative Psychology provides considerably more guidance than is

here suggested. There is more to Ameliorative Psychology than SPRs. For

example, the consider-the-opposite strategy and the various strategies for

thinking about causation (chapter 9) are potentially applicable to a very

wide range of reasoning problems. Second, this objection seems to assume

that the epistemological theory we defend, Strategic Reliabilism, is exhausted

by the practical advice offered by Ameliorative Psychology. This is

a misunderstanding. Strategic Reliabilism offers a general framework that

accounts for the epistemic quality of particular reasoning strategies. While

Strategic Reliabilism grounds the prescriptions of Ameliorative Psychology,

it is not exhausted by those prescriptions. And third, while Ameliorative

Psychology might not provide as much reason-guidance as we

might hope, it does provide more than the theories of Standard Analytic

Epistemology. The theories of SAE are almost entirely indifferent to issues

of significance and to issues of the costs and benefits of reasoning. Such

theories can perhaps advise that we should only adopt justified beliefs, and

they can explain in exquisite detail what they mean by ‘justified’. But this

hardly counts as useful advice for three reasons. (a) We doubt that SAE

embodies a reasonable method of identifying the proper goal of reasoning

(see chapter 7). (b) For most of us at most times, there are infinitely many

justified beliefs we could adopt. Without an account of significance or an

account of the costs and benefits of reasoning, the theories of SAE have no

way to advise someone to adopt one justified belief rather than any other

(see chapters 5 and 6). And (c) at best, the theories of SAE define a goal of

reasoning, they don’t provide any useful guidance about how to achieve

that goal (see chapter 9). This is reminiscent of the advice offered by one

of our Little League baseball coaches who told his players, ‘‘When I tip my

cap, that means you should hit a home run.’’ Unlike proponents of SAE,

the coach was joking.

Let’s grant that Ameliorative Psychology offers some wonderful SPRs. But

there just aren’t that many, compared to the number of significant reasoning

problems we face every day. If John had at his disposal all successful, tractable

SPRs, they would not help him deal with the overwhelming majority of the

significant reasoning problems in his life. Throughout this book, you attack

SAE for offering theories that do not provide useful guidance to reasoners. But

your theory fares just about as badly on this score. A handful of successful

SPRs for making judgments about a hodgepodge of issues hardly counts as

useful reasoning advice.

There are three points to make in response to this objection. First,

Ameliorative Psychology provides considerably more guidance than is

here suggested. There is more to Ameliorative Psychology than SPRs. For

example, the consider-the-opposite strategy and the various strategies for

thinking about causation (chapter 9) are potentially applicable to a very

wide range of reasoning problems. Second, this objection seems to assume

that the epistemological theory we defend, Strategic Reliabilism, is exhausted

by the practical advice offered by Ameliorative Psychology. This is

a misunderstanding. Strategic Reliabilism offers a general framework that

accounts for the epistemic quality of particular reasoning strategies. While

Strategic Reliabilism grounds the prescriptions of Ameliorative Psychology,

it is not exhausted by those prescriptions. And third, while Ameliorative

Psychology might not provide as much reason-guidance as we

might hope, it does provide more than the theories of Standard Analytic

Epistemology. The theories of SAE are almost entirely indifferent to issues

of significance and to issues of the costs and benefits of reasoning. Such

theories can perhaps advise that we should only adopt justified beliefs, and

they can explain in exquisite detail what they mean by ‘justified’. But this

hardly counts as useful advice for three reasons. (a) We doubt that SAE

embodies a reasonable method of identifying the proper goal of reasoning

(see chapter 7). (b) For most of us at most times, there are infinitely many

justified beliefs we could adopt. Without an account of significance or an

account of the costs and benefits of reasoning, the theories of SAE have no

way to advise someone to adopt one justified belief rather than any other

(see chapters 5 and 6). And (c) at best, the theories of SAE define a goal of

reasoning, they don’t provide any useful guidance about how to achieve

that goal (see chapter 9). This is reminiscent of the advice offered by one

of our Little League baseball coaches who told his players, ‘‘When I tip my

cap, that means you should hit a home run.’’ Unlike proponents of SAE,

the coach was joking.