Basing Beliefs on Epistemic Reasons: A Challenge for Instrumentalism

According to epistemic instrumentalism, epistemic reasons are a species of a familiar and unmysterious type of reason: instrumental or means-end reasons. Believing that p is the means to some relevant cognitive end. If this view is correct, then whether one has an epistemic reason to believe p isn’t merely a matter of having evidence for p; one must also have (or have reason to have) the relevant cognitive end. In this paper, I raise a challenge for the view, one concerned with its implications concerning basing beliefs on epistemic reasons. We regularly base our beliefs on epistemic reasons. I see the pouring raining and conclude that the planned picnic will be canceled; the realtor checks the client’s financial statements and concludes they won’t be able to afford a certain house. In such cases, one doesn’t merely have good epistemic reasons to believe a certain proposition; one believes the proposition for those reasons; and this might be part of the explanation of how one comes to have an epistemically justified belief or knowledge. I argue that the instrumentalist does a poor job of accommodating the phenomenon of basing belief on epistemic reasons.