Reason and the Grain of Belief*

This paper is meant to be four things at once: an introduction to a Puzzle about rational belief, a sketch of the major reactions to that Puzzle, a reminder that those reactions run contrary to everyday life, and a defence of the view that no such heresy is obliged.In the end, a Lockean position will be defended on which two things are true: the epistemology of binary belief falls out of the epistemology of confidence; yet norms for binary belief do not always derive from more fundamental ones for confidence.The trick will be showing how this last claim can be true even though binary belief and its norms grow fully from confidence and its norms.The paper unfolds as follows: §2 explains Puzzle-generating aspects of rational belief and how they lead to conflict; §3 sketches major reactions to that conflict; §4 shows how they depart radically from common-sense; §5 lays out my solution to the Puzzle; §6 defends it from a worry about rational conflict; §7 defends it from a worry about pointlessness.