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The aim of this thesis is to examine what affect, if any, finding an argument both unanswerable yet unbelievable has on three purported first-person doxastic constraints. The three proposed constraints are the principle of truth, the principle of adequate reason and the principle of epistemic explanation. In Chapter 1, I lay out the claim of each of these constraints; differentiate them from one another, examine under what conditions they can be said to apply and provide what I take to be the strongest arguments for each of them. In Chapter 2, I explicate what I mean by finding an argument unanswerable yet unbelievable. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, I detail how it is that finding an argument unanswerable yet unbelievable could constitute a threat to each of these constraints. I conclude that while the principle of adequate reason is undermined in the face of this threat, both the principle of truth and the principle of epistemic explanation fail to be undermined by this challenge.

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Many of us take for granted that rationality requires that we have our attitudes combined only in certain ways. For example, we are required not to hold inconsistent beliefs or intentions and we are required to intend any means we see as crucial to our ends. But attempts to justify claims like these face two problems. First, it is unclear what unifies the rational domain and determines what is (and is not) rationally required of us. This is the content problem. Second, as philosophers have been unable to find any general reason for us to have our attitudes combined only in certain ways, it is unclear why, or in what sense, we are required to comply with these putative requirements in the first place. This is the normativity problem. My dissertation offers an account of rationality which solves these problems. I argue that the entire domain of rational requirements can be derived from a single ultimate requirement demanding that we not have sets of intentions and beliefs which cause their own failure. This General Requirement of Structural Rationality explains the unity of the rational domain and directly solves the content problem. But it also solves the normativity problem. I argue that whenever we violate the General Requirement we are engaged in a form of criticizable self-undermining. I propose that this is enough to ground the claim that we ought to comply with the General Requirement's demands. This conclusion can be secured as long as we accept the thesis of normative pluralism, according to which there is more than one fundamentally distinct form of normative 'ought.' / Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture Graduate Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

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David B. Burrell, CSC, author of Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions, Friendship and the Ways to Truth, and Knowing the Unknowable God, spoke in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition Series on the mediating role of culture in the relation of faith and reason, utilizing illustrations from the tradition of Islamic philosophy. / David B. Burrell, CSC, Professor, University of Notre Dame / McGuinn 121