Reasons to Suspend Judgment as Premises of Good Reasoning

ABSTRACT

There can be reasons to believe and to disbelieve propositions. It is widely held that there can also be reasons to suspend judgment on them. A general account of reasons should thus allow for reasons to suspend and give plausible verdicts about them. One promising constitutive account says that reasons are premises of good reasoning. This account seems well placed to handle reasons for belief, but some objections to the account claim that it cannot handle reasons to suspend. The aim of this paper is to show, on the contrary, that the account has plausible implications when applied to reasons to suspend, and that the objections can be resisted. This requires certain assumptions concerning suspension, reasoning, the dependence of reasons on other facts, reasons for conflicting responses, and guidance conditions on reasons and good reasoning. The assumptions are non‐trivial but, I argue, all very plausible. The upshot is that considerations pertaining to suspension of judgment confirm rather than falsify the account.