Rational Hope

Sincere commitment to a difficult project, to supporting our friends and significant others in difficult ventures, as well as to stand up for them when their reputation is questioned all appear to require adopting the same doxastic state: belief. But belief in our future success and in that of others, as well as belief that they have not behaved badly, all seem epistemically irrational: we often have good evidence that we won’t succeed at our difficult projects and that neither will our friends, as well as good evidence that they have been less than upstanding. Some have concluded from such putative conflicts between our practical and epistemic responsibilities that we should revise our picture of the relation between the practical and the epistemic as independent normative domains. This dissertation argues for a novel view of the doxastic attitude characteristic of “first-personal” and “other-directed commitment” on which no such revision is needed. I argue that committing to a difficult project or committing to supporting someone else does not require the belief that you (or they) will succeed: it instead requires the hope that you (or they) will. Identifying hope’s role in rational deliberation involves embracing a theory of practical rationality more permissive than the orthodox view. The result, though, is an account of the doxastic dimension of commitment that better captures our experience as future-oriented agents.Ph.D