Encapsulated Failures

Abstract: Are all failures to respond to reasons irrational? When we fail to respond to reasons due to pride or indolence, a verdict of irrationality seems apt. But some features of cognitive architecture complicate the idea that there is a broad requirement to respond to one’s reasons. Information encapsulation in perception, social cognition, emotion, language processing, and other mental systems renders some reasons inaccessible, due not to person-level features of agents but simply to how human minds are constructed. Two polarized positions rise to the fore: either we are only required to respond to the reasons that are accessible in the moment, and thus informationally encapsulated failures are excused, or accessibility of reasons is irrelevant, and all encapsulated failures are just as irrational as any others. I argue instead for a middle path. Normative requirements to respond to reasons are sensitive to the fixed constraints of cognitive architecture in their timescale and degree, but there are still significant rational demands on informationally encapsulated systems to respond to reasons.