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Notes
To be fair, some of the discussions of conciliationism vs steadfastness do worry about a kind of ‘spinelessness’ that might be brought on as a result of adopting a conciliationist policy. But to the extent that conciliationism is a prescription, this view still falls under the heading of ‘be less adamant in your belief,’ and the assumption is that conciliationism will represent a departure from our instinctive steadfastness.
Kidd’s 2016 paper is a notable exception. I was fortunate enough to come across his discussion mid-way through the writing of this paper, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the issues raised here. Kidd’s paper is especially commendable for its discussion of the relationship between underconfidence and philosophical methods, particularly our argumentative strategies and practices.
As an anonymous reviewer points out, I don’t have an answer to the question of how much attention to the self is appropriate; the difference between being properly attentive and overly self-conscious is tricky to describe, though worthy of further discussion. One approach would be the kind of consequentialism Cassam adopts: perhaps an agent is overly self-conscious just when that self-consciousness obstructs knowledge or other epistemically virtuous pursuits.
Kidd (2016: 397) also talks about “confidence calibration” but his sense of the term is different from the sense in which I use it here: he is interested in a dynamic process by which we form and revise our confidence more generally, while I’m using the term to refer to a match between the accuracy of our beliefs and our estimation of their accuracy.
The distinction is that vices for which we’re responsible are blameworthy; if we’re not responsible, we’re not blameworthy but may still be criticized. Yet the question remains, in virtue of what do we merit criticism? Cassam makes a few suggestive comments throughout Chapter 7, but these all seem to indicate that an agent is criticized because the vice somehow belongs to or is identified with them: there’s talk of vices that are “not separate,” from agents, and those that cast a “negative shadow” over the agent (see 137–138). At one point he tells us, “…when we criticize someone for wishful thinking… What we are responding to is its harmful effects and the possibility of doing something about it by changing how we think.” (142) This sounds like attributing kind of responsibility or agency is involved in our criticism. So I have to confess that I’m a bit unclear on the criticizable/blameworthy/reprehensible distinction.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out this concern.
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Plakias, A. Some Probably-Not-Very-Good Thoughts on Underconfidence. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23, 861–869 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10093-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10093-0