Do Beliefs Have Reasons?

In the first, methodological essay of On Human Conduct, Oakeshott claims that on pain of ‘categorial’ confusion, the historian, sociologist and political theorist must understand beliefs to have ‘reasons’ rather than ‘causes’.  This doctrine is basically just asserted by Oakeshott though, a fact I find problematic given the claim does not obviously make sense for beliefs as they feature in action  – for when a belief grounds an action, it is held categorically, held not because such-and-so but just held.  If this weren’t the case, then instead of acting, the agent would be bothering about whether the belief or beliefs that ground her intended deed are really true!

Now, maybe the idea is that a logical presupposition of a belief being held is that the believer holds its content to be true.  Given (a) saying something is ‘true’ is to say it is justifiable and (b) ‘reasons’ are the sorts of thing that justify, we may reach the conclusion that even beliefs-in-action have reasons.  The fact that in the moment of actually acting beliefs are not things the agent may seek to justify, then, is not to deny they still have reasons in principle.

The problem with this line of thought, however, is that it doesn’t rule out saying beliefs-in-action also have causes (or may have causes).  To borrow a favoured example of some analytic philosophers, consider the action of my reaching for an umbrella upon going outside in the rain.  Here, the belief that it is raining entered into the meaning of my action – in Collingwood’s terms, it was the causa quod of my act of reaching for an umbrella (the causa ut being my aim of staying dry).  If I were to justify this belief, it would then be with the thought that it actually was raining – the fact that it was raining, then, justifies my belief that it was raining.  Now, this justification may be spun out with the further claim that there was a causal process beginning with the rain and ending in my perception of the rain; doubt this causal process, and I would now not have reason to reach for an umbrella.  That the belief was caused and that it had reason, then, are two attributes of it that are thoroughly intertwined, pace Oakeshott’s doctrine.