I agree with you that Branden’s putative counterexample to LL cuts no ice. But, in contrast to you, I am perfectly happy with CE. For what it is worth, the root of my unhappiness with the cards case is simply that the probability of the intersection of the hypotheses is non-zero. For this reason, I find it counterintuitive to claim that the evidence favours one of the hypotheses over the other, or, equivalently, that it provides evidence that one hypothesis is true rather than the other. Once LL is appropriately restricted, it demonstrably satisfies CE. (I have made this observation in print, in a forthcoming Synthese piece: ‘Contrastive Confirmation: Some Competing Accounts’. There I adduce various further arguments in favour of LL.).

All the best,
Jake

But, hell! I’ll take our almost-everything agreement and be happy.

Sounds strange to me, still. But, that’s not going to surprise you.

Coop doesn’t have a reason for giving Audrey the stuff? Given B-D, he couldn’t have any reason but the fact that there’s gin in the glass. So, we agree on everything but one small point.

Now,

(#) It’s not because there was gin in the glass that Coop had a justifying reason to give Audrey the stuff but Coop’s justifying reason for giving her the stuff was that there was gin in the glass.

Yeah, it sounds bad. But I think it’s true in this case. Put “the proposition” between “was” and “that” and it sounds a whole lot better to me.

I probably would reject A and say instead:

A’) When Coop gives the stuff to Audrey, he takes himself to have a reason to do so.

The fallibility he has concerning the facts extends to the fallibility he has in describing his reasons/the reasons he has for acting. No gin means no reason. That’s what B-D suggest (when you add in the extra stuff that I think supports the factivity of justifying reasons).

You deny that there is any entailment from 1a to 2a, so it should be true that:
(#) It’s not because there was gin in the glass that Coop had a justifying reason to give Audrey the stuff but Coop’s justifying reason for giving her the stuff was that there was gin in the glass.

Is that true on your view? I like B-D and don’t like (#), so I’d reject A and E. That’s maybe not the best way to describe cases like this, but bracketing that, I’m just curious about (#).

(2a*) Because p is justified for C, C has a justifying reason for V-ing.

So, an instance:

(2*#) Because it was justified for Coop that there was gin in the glass, Coop had a justifying reason for giving Audrey the stuff.

But (I think, though I guess you do not) that it was justified for Coop that there was gin in the glass. So it fits just fine that Coop had a justifying reason for giving Audrey the stuff.

I’ve always liked that you agree that “p can’t be your justifying reason unless it is your reason”. I think so too. I’ve always thought that this should make my case really easy with you. Because all I’d need to add, it seems to me, are these premises:

A) When Coop gives the stuff to Audrey, he does so for some reason (HIS reason).

B) If Coop gives the stuff to Audrey for a reason it will be the reason expressed in the best recapitulation of his psychology: “R, so I’ll give the stuff to Audrey.”

C) Coop’s psychology is not best recapitulated by replacing R with “I think that there’s gin in the glass” nor with “It’s justified for me that there’s gin in the glass” nor with “It looks like there’s gin in the glass.”

D) The only plausible alternative to the options in C is: “There is gin in the glass”

So, Coop’s reason for giving the stuff to Audrey is that there is gin in the glass. And, given what we agree about, he can’t have any justifying reason that isn’t his reason. So, if he has a justifying reason, it’s that there is gin in the glass.

But,

E) He is justified in giving the stuff the Audrey and it is a reason that justifies him.

So, that there is gin in the glass is his justifying reason.

I’m guessing you will reject…. the second conjunt of E? No, earlier, because you’re not going to like that there is gin in the glass being Coop’s reason. So B? Or the inference from A-D to the first sentence of the subsequent paragraph?

I’m glad that we might be on the same page when it comes to the factivity of evidence. Quick question about justifying reasons and “because” claims. Consider your:

(1*) Coop’s justifying reason for giving Audrey the toxic stuff was that there was gin and tonic in that glass.

Abstracting a bit, I’m interested in claims of this form:

(1a) C’s justifying reason for V-ing was that p.

To my ear/eye, that does seem to entail:

(2a) Because p, C had a justifying reason for V-ing.

So, instances of it:

(2*) Because there was gin in the glass, Coop had a justifying reason for giving Audrey the stuff.
(2**) Because there was gin in the glass, something justified Coop in giving Audrey the stuff.
(2***) Because there was gin in the glass, there was some reason for Coop to give her the stuff.

My own intuitions, fwiw, is that (1*) entails (2*)-(2***).

Your belief case is interesting. You said that this could be right even if there was no gin:

(1***) That there is gin and tonic in the glass is the thing he believes.

This sounds weird to me, but it might just be because it is sort of stilted English and not because it is semantically defective. Here’s a potential difference between “belief” and “justifying reason”.

(3) Coop’s justifying reason for giving Audrey the toxic stuff was that there was gin and tonic in that glass but he doesn’t know that there was gin and tonic in the glass.
(3′) Coop gave Audrey the glass for the reason that there was gin in it but he didn’t know that there was gin in it.
(3”) Coop gave Audrey the glass for the reason that there was gin in it but there was no gin in it.
(3”’) Coop’s justifying reason for giving Audrey the stuff was that there was gin and tonic in it, but I don’t know if there was any gin in it.
(4) Coop’s belief was that there was gin and tonic in the glass, but Coop doesn’t know that there’s gin in the glass.
(4′) Coop believes that there was gin and tonic in the glass, but he doesn’t know that there’s gin in the glass.
(4”) Coop believes that there was gin and tonic in the glass, but I don’t know if there was or not.
(4”’) Coop believes that there was gin and tonic in the glass, but there wasn’t.

According to Unger and Hyman (maybe), if p is your reason for V-ing, you know p. I think that p can’t be your justifying reason unless it is your reason. Myself, I think this is a bit trickier than Unger thought when he wrote _Ignorance_, but it is interesting that there could be an asymmetry between belief and reasons ascription that comes out when combined with knowledge ascriptions.

The Philosophy Carnival pointed me here, so I apologize for breaking in late. Clayton, we’ve discussed the relevant inference elsewhere, I think — the one from

(1) What justified Coop in giving Audrey the toxic stuff was that there was gin and tonic in that glass.

to

(3) Coop was justified in giving Audrey the toxic stuff (in part) because there was gin in the glass.

When we say “what justified S in phi-ing is p”, we’re talking of course about justifying reasons. So, what this means is this: S’s justifying reason for phi-ing is p. Construing (1) in this way gives us (1*):

(1*) Coop’s justifying reason for giving Audrey the toxic stuff was that there was gin and tonic in that glass.

There is no clear inference from (1*) to (3). If you don’t like the use of “p justifies S in phi-ing” as a shorthand for “S’s justifying reason for phi-ing” then just go with the latter. Personally, I think it’s fine because “p justifies S” is ambiguous (it seems to me) between a causal reading according to which some fact causes S to be justified and the justifying-reason reading. On the former reading, it’s only true if p is true. On the latter reading it’s not. It’s the latter reading that matters. It’s justifying reasons that we’re saying can be false.

I see no reason why p being a justifying reason you have for phi-ing entails that p, no more than p being a belief you have entails that p.

For example, when there is no gin and tonic in the glass, there is something weird about

1**) That there is gin and tonic in the glass is his justifying reason for giving Audrey the toxic stuff.

But whatever is weird about 1** is also weird about 1***

1***) That there is gin and tonic in the glass is the thing he believes.

But there is clearly a sense in which 1*** can be true even when there is no gin and tonic in the glass. I don’t see a reason yet why 1** can’t be true in that same sense.

Of course, there’s Christopher’s evidence point. I’m not in love with the idea of allowing falsehoods as evidence, either. My intuition that Coop’s justifying reason for giving Audrey the toxic stuff is that there is gin and tonic in the glass. I don’t have the intuition that that there is gin and tonic in the glass is evidence Coop has. I guess my intuitions run afoul of the Equivalence thesis.

At noon:

(1) I got the job because of my superior talents.

You at two:

CC: Um, did I hear you say, “I got the job because of my superior talents”?
CL: Yes.
CC: And you subscribe to the knowledge-rule of assertion?
CL: Of course!
CC: So, you shouldn’t have said what you said at noon.
CL: Nonsense, I knew what I said was true.
CC: But you didn’t get the job! And, to be blunt, you don’t have superior talents!!!
CL: Irrelevant. If what I said at noon doesn’t entail that I got the job, you can’t argue from the fact that I didn’t get the job to the conclusion that I didn’t know what I said was true at noon.
CC: [Beating CL mercilessly with a copy of KAIL]

And at this point, I think CC is right. CL is talking nonsense. So, another data point. You can’t say later that I knew earlier p b/c q once it is clear that either ~p or ~q. It doesn’t matter if earlier you justifiably believed with great confidence that p and q were true. It doesn’t matter that in nearby possible worlds p and q stand in the right relations to be explanans and explanandum.