Permissivism, epistemic utility, and arbitrariness

The talk addresses the question of "epistemic permissivism": does epistemic rationality ever permit more than one doxastic attitude to some proposition, given some body of evidence? One approach, due initially to Thomas Kelly, has taken up William James’s idea that there are different ways of weighing our two central cognitive goals as believers: Believe truth! Shun error! This justifies an affirmative answer to the question: agents with the same evidence can rationally come to different conclusions about some proposition, because they weigh the importance of the goals differently. 

The aim of the talk is, first, to show how a more precise formulation of the "Jamesian" argument predicts the permissibility of different incompatible conclusions not just across agents, but for a single agent. That is, we get the possibility of intrapersonally permissive situations, where more than one conclusion is rationally open to a single agent. This leads me, secondly, to consider some worries about the apparent arbitrariness of rational belief on this view. And, finally, I consider how to respond; I suggest that looking to practical rationality and the practical aspects of belief can explain (away) the arbitrariness worries.