Abstract:

People often resolve to do difficult things, despite having evidence that they might fail. This presents a puzzle: How can these resolutions be rational and sincere, given the evidence of likely failure? Adding to the puzzle, studies have shown that people are overly optimistic about their own success while offering realistic assessments of other people’s prospects.

Research on the planning fallacy, maintaining evidentialist commitments, argues that people’s overconfidence in their own success prospects is irrational. By contrast, some philosophers claim that agents must divorce practical from evidential reasoning, allowing them to rationally and sincerely intend difficult actions despite the evidence.

I argue for an empirically informed, evidentialist account of how agents can rationally and sincerely resolve to do difficult actions. By forming the right kinds of implementation intentions, agents can raise their probability of success in many cases. Further, the view explains how the observed self-other asymmetry can be rational.