The Probabilistic Structure of Rational Entitlement

Many terms can be used to evaluate beliefs, belief-forming processes, and other similar mental states and processes of reasoning. Such mental states and processes can be called “right” or “wrong”, “correct” or “incorrect”, “reasonable” or “unreasonable”, “justified” or “unjustified”, and so on. In recent years, ever since Tyler Burge gave his John Locke lectures in Oxford in 1993, many philosophers evaluate mental states or processes of reasoning by saying that they are mental states that the thinker in question is “entitled” to have, or processes of reasoning that the thinker is “entitled” to perform. As these philosophers would say, a central part of epistemology is concerned with investigating the conditions under which thinkers are in this sense “entitled” to various beliefs and processes of belief-formation or belief-revision.