When one has both epistemic and practical reasons for or against some belief, how do these reasons combine into an all-things-considered reason for or against that belief? The question might seem to presuppose the existence of practical reasons for belief. But we can rid the question of this presupposition. Once we do, a highly general ‘Combinatorial Problem’ emerges. The problem has been thought to be intractable due to certain differences in the combinatorial properties of epistemic and practical reasons. Here we bring good news: if we accept an independently motivated version of epistemic instrumentalism—the view that epistemic reasons are a species of instrumental reasons—we can reduce The Combinatorial Problem to the relatively benign problem of how to weigh different instrumental reasons against each other. As an added benefit, the instrumentalist account can explain the apparent intractability of The Combinatorial Problem in terms of a common tendency to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an elliptical manner.

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关于如何权衡信仰的认知和实践原因的工具主义论述

当一个人同时具有支持或反对某种信念的认识论和实践原因时，这些原因又如何组合成支持或反对某种信念的全盘考虑的理由？这个问题似乎以存在信仰的实际原因为前提。但是我们可以摆脱这种预设的问题。一旦我们这样做，就会出现一个非常普遍的“合并问题”。由于认识和实际原因在组合特性方面的某些差异，该问题被认为是棘手的。在这里，我们带来了一个好消息：如果我们接受一个独立动机的认识论工具主义版本（即认识论原因是工具性原因的一种观点），我们可以将组合问题简化为相对良性的问题，即如何权衡各种工具性原因之间的相互关系。作为额外的好处，