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Notes
“What are the duties, then, engendered by an individual’s right to privacy? So far, there has been surprisingly little discussion about this issue in the literature.” See Benedict Rumbold and James Wilson, “Privacy Rights and Public Information,” Journal of Political Philosophy 27(1) (2019): 3‒25, p. 7.
We might want more precision regarding the question of what it means exactly that an intention is directly causally responsible for Ф-ing. For present purposes, I think the simple characterization offered above suffices. See Kyle G. Fritz, “Moral Responsibility, Voluntary Control, and Intentional Action,” Philosophia 46 (2018): 831‒855; Alfred R. Mele, “Direct Control,” Philosophical Studies 174 (2017): 275‒290 for extended discussion.
See Judith Jarvis Thomson, “The Right to Privacy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 4(4) (1975): 315‒322, p. 307.
An alternative interpretation that we might gain from the quote is a distinction between mental and non-mental duties. Notice, though, that this might not capture fully what Thomson has in mind as there are mental ways of inquiring (say, recalling and assessing evidence mentally) that seem conceptually more akin to listening and looking (non-mental modes of inquiry) than doxastic states. See David Matheson, “A Duty of Ignorance,” Episteme 10(2) (2013): 193‒205; Rumbold and Wilson, op. cit., defend the possibility of mental duties to respect privacy, although not direct doxastic duties.
Andrei Marmor, “What Is the Right to Privacy?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 43(1) (2015): 3‒26, p. 4.
See also Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, “The Irrelevance of a Moral Right to Privacy for Biomedical Moral Enhancement,” Neuroethics 12(1) (2019): 35‒37, p. 36: “It would be odd to think we have a moral duty not to acquire certain beliefs [which they contrast with a duty not to acquire information in certain ways]: the objects of moral duty are plausibly things that are under the control of our will.” Klemens Kappel, “Epistemological Dimensions of Privacy,” Episteme 10(2) (2013): 179‒192, p. 190, seems to endorse a similar view when claiming: “Privacy wrongs […] are path-dependent, they depend on epistemic pathways, certain ways of trying to acquire epistemic states about sensitive facts.”
Rima Basu, “A Tale of Two Doctrines: Moral Encroachment and Doxastic Wronging,” in Jennifer Lackey, ed., Applied Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder, “Doxastic Wronging,” pp. 181‒205 in Brian Kim and Matthew McGrath, eds, Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology (New York and London: Routledge, 2019); David Hunter, “Directives for Knowledge and Belief,” in Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way, Daniel Whiting, eds, Normativity: Epistemic and Practical (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 68‒89.
The reader should feel free to replace this proposition with any other proposition that seemingly falls within the scope of our privacy interests.
See Blake Roeber, “Permissive Situations and Direct Doxastic Control,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (2020): 415‒431, for a discussion of relevance of the distinction between credence and full belief in the context of doxastic control; see Matthew McGrath, “Being Neutral: Agnosticism, Inquiry and the Suspension of Judgment,” Noûs (2020); 1‒22, for discussion of belief-suspension; James Fritz and Elizabeth Jackson, “Belief, Credence, and Moral Encroachment,” Synthese (2020), discuss practical reasons for belief considering the credence/full belief distinction.
See, e.g., Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
for a version of the interest theory of rights.
See, e.g., Neil Levy, “Doxastic Responsibility,” Synthese 155(1) (2007): 127‒155.
See, e.g., Nicholas Southwood, “‘The Thing to Do’ Implies ‘Can’,” Noûs 50 (2016): 61‒72.
Hunter, op. cit., claims that we ought not to believe certain private facts about others without offering discussion of the worry regarding doxastic control, as I do below. This is one way in which our efforts differ. As far as I can tell, Hunter’s primary motivation for thinking that the right to privacy engenders doxastic duties is that “the right to privacy would not amount to much if we could override it simply by learning the private fact” (p. 86). Although multiple interpretations of this argument exist, it is unclear why the right to privacy would “not amount to much” if it did not engender doxastic duties. As I have suggested above, the common view is that the right to privacy engenders indirect (and only indirect) doxastic duties, and these are far from trivial. There also seems to be something amiss with the antecedent in Hunter’s claim, as doxastic duties are not necessary to guard against the possible implication that the right to privacy could be overridden by “simply learning the private fact.” The reason is that learning some private fact does not necessarily entitle one to further inquiry or dissemination of that fact. It is therefore false to assert that learning the private fact would necessarily “override” the right to privacy if no doxastic duty existed (see Rumbold and Wilson, op. cit., for discussion of this).
Again, Raz, op. cit., p. 184, is helpful: “One may know the existence of a right and of the reasons for it without knowing who is bound by duties based on it or what precisely these duties are.”
Although I suspect this requirement is too strict in one sense for my purposes. A duty is still a duty in the sense of being a legitimate way of doing what one is obligated to do, even if it is not uniquely indispensable but—weaker—belongs to a disjunctive set of permissible ways in which one might discharge one’s duty.
One might also deny the control requirement. I do not want to pursue this line of reasoning, however, since I suspect that my interlocutors would endorse it.
For a helpful overview over which properties of belief are typically taken to imply that belief at will is conceptually impossible and a rejection of the thesis on these grounds, see Rik Peels, “Believing at Will Is Possible,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93(3) (2015): 524‒541. See also, e.g., Dion Scott-Kakures, “On Belief and Captivity of the Will,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 77‒103; Pamela Hieronymi, “Controlling Attitudes,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2006): 45‒74; Bernard Williams, “Deciding to Believe,” in Problems of the Self (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Gregory Antill, “Epistemic Freedom Revisited,” Synthese 197 (2020): 793‒815.
For a general discussion, see Roeber, op. cit.; Blake Roeber, “Evidence, Judgment, and Belief at Will,” Mind 128: 511 (2019): 837‒859. The “perceived” qualification is important since, as is stressed by Alex Worsnip, “From Impossibility to Evidentialism?” Episteme, forthcoming, it seems very possible to believe that p based on considerations that do not actually constitute good evidence that p (say, if one is mistaken about what counts as a consideration in favor of believing that p), but much harder to believe that p based on something that one does not oneself take to be a consideration in favor of believing that p.
By “conclusive,” I do not imply that the belief is guaranteed to be true if based on this kind of evidence.
Philip J. Nickel, “Voluntary Belief on a Reasonable Basis,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81(2) (2010): 312‒334, p. 312.
Roeber, op. cit., p. 837. Notice that, to Roeber, such cases (which he calls “equipollent cases”) are different from cases of balanced evidence where one has equally strong evidence in favor of belief and disbelief. For other defenses of the idea that permissive situations can justify doxastic control, see Keith Frankish, “Deciding to Believe Again,” Mind 116(2) (2007): 523‒547; Carl Ginet, “Deciding to Believe,” in Matthias Steup, ed., Knowledge, Truth, and Duty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 63‒76; Joseph Raz, Engaging Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Conor McHugh, “The Illusion of Exclusivity,” European Journal of Philosophy 23(4) (2012): 1117‒1136; Miriam Schleifer McCormick, “Responding to Skepticism about Doxastic Agency,” Erkenntnis 83 (2018): 627‒645; Basu and Schroeder, op. cit. For criticism, see, e.g., Kurt Sylvan, “The Illusion of Discretion,” Synthese 193 (2015): 1635‒1665.
According to proponents of the view typically referred to as permissivism, adequate evidence cases are possible. For more on this topic, see Elizabeth Jackson, “A Defense of Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism,” Episteme (2019): 1‒15; Elizabeth Jackson and Margaret Greta Turnbull, “Permissivism, Underdetermination, and Evidence,” in Clayton Littlejohn and Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, eds, The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence (New York: Routledge, forthcoming); Thomas Kelly, “Evidence Can Be Permissive,” in Matthias Steup, John Turri, and Ernest Sosa, eds, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): 298‒312; Miriam Schoenfield, “Permission to Believe: Why Permissivism Is True and What It Tells Us about Irrelevant Influences on Belief,” Noûs 48 (2014): 193‒218; Roger White, “Evidence Cannot Be Permissive,” in Steup, Turri, and Sosa, op. cit., pp. 312‒323; Robert Mark Simpson, “Permissivism and the Arbitrariness Objection,” Episteme 14 (2017): 519‒538. Since the truth of permissivism is central to my argument and I do not defend it comprehensively, it makes sense to indicate the implication for my argument should permissivism prove false. In this case, my argument might still succeed, since people might even then be able to suspend judgment on private matters, and doing so might still have some moral value. Should permissivism prove false, such conduct would merely also manifest an additional epistemic flaw; to wit, falsely believing that one finds oneself in a permissive situation.
It is not normally the case that taking oneself to have options in terms of whether or not to Ф is sufficient for direct control over Ф-ing. I might believe I am able to ride a bike and thus take myself to have the option, but this is not enough for direct control over riding a bike (I might, falsely, believe that I have legs). However, believing and biking seem importantly dissimilar. It is much less clear what should prevent me from exercising direct doxastic control if I take myself to have options in terms of what to believe.
Some might reasonably object that moral considerations have no bearing on what we ought to believe. I turn to this worry in section V.
Thomson, op. cit.; Marmor, op. cit.; Thomas Scanlon, “Thomson on Privacy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4(4) (1975): 315‒322.
Marmor, op. cit., p. 8.
For overviews of the literature, see Ferdinand D. Schoeman, “Privacy: Philosophical Dimensions,” American Philosophical Quarterly 21(3) (1984): 119‒213; Judith DeCew, “Privacy,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018). Not everyone agrees with Marmor’s analysis, and I primarily use it for illustrative purposes.
See also Charles Fried, “Privacy,” Yale Law Journal 77 (1968): 475‒493; James Rachels, “Why Privacy Is Important,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4(4) (1975) 323‒333.
Op. cit., p. 8.
For the view that social relations have an attitudinal component, see Fried, op. cit.; Rachels, op. cit.; Rima Basu, “What We Epistemically Owe to Each Other,” Philosophical Studies 176(4) (2019): 915‒931; Sarah Stroud, “Epistemic Partiality in Friendship,” Ethics 116(3) (2006): 498‒524; Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Relational Egalitarianism: Living as Equals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Niko Kolodny, “Which Relationships Justify Partiality? The Case of Parents and Children,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 31(1) (2010) 37‒75; Basu, “Two Doctrines.”
See, e.g., Joel Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 3: Harm to Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); James Stacey Taylor, “Privacy and Autonomy: A Reappraisal,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 40(4) (2002): 587‒604 for the relationship between privacy and autonomy. Adam Slavny, “The Normative Foundations of Defamatory Meaning,” Law and Philosophy 37 (2018): 523‒547 for discussion of our non-instrumental interest in managing our reputation.
William A. Parent, “Privacy, Morality, and the Law,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12(4) (1983): 269‒288; Lauritz A. Munch, “The Right to Privacy, Control Over Self‐Presentation, and Subsequent Harm,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 37(1) (2020): 141‒154.
Some also justify privacy rights based on respect-concerns and concerns about avoiding shameful embarrassment and offense. See Feinberg, op. cit.; David J. Velleman, “The Genesis of Shame,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30(1) (2001): 27‒52; Craig Konnoth, “An Expressive Theory of Privacy Intrusions,” Iowa Law Review 102(4) (2017): 1533‒1581. Since it is less clear how belief figures essentially in spelling out these kinds of badness, my argument does not speak clearly to these accounts of the value of privacy. Notice, however, that my argument does not require that all accounts of why there exist privacy rights concern belief. Perhaps, on a shame-based or offense-based justification, we might care irreducibly about being sense-perceived by others, taking little interest in whether people actually form certain beliefs. Perhaps I can be ashamed when people look at my naked body, even though I can somehow be confident that they do not form any beliefs.
Marmor does not explicitly say how the notion of “control over self-presentation” should be fleshed out and whether it involves belief. I think, however, that a belief-centric interpretation is natural and hospitable to much of what Marmor writes on the matter.
Basu, “Two Doctrines.” See also Don Fallis “Privacy and Lack of Knowledge,” Episteme 10(2) (2013): 153‒166, p. 165: “someone believing a fact is a big part of why privacy violations are bad.”
Marmor might retort that control over self-presentation can (wrongfully) undermine in morally significant ways even if no new justified belief is obtained as a result. However, it is hard to see how our social relations could be damaged in a morally significant way by acts that undermine our control over self-presentation if these acts never resulted in justified belief, as the example above illustrates.
The “remote acquaintance” part of the example is a crucial detail, because—as is well recognized in the privacy literature—different kinds of social relations seemingly come with different entitlements to know; see Rachels, op. cit.
In cases such as X-ray, proponents of IC could maintain that what is objectionable (and only objectionable) in these cases is to be found in the truth-obtaining acts or, in other words, the indirect ways of regulating belief. By contrast, Rumors-type cases enable us to focus directly on objectionable belief, as there are no indirectly belief-regulating acts involved to which the objectionableness can be attributed. Notice that I do not claim that X-ray necessarily involves the violation of a direct doxastic duty, primarily because it is easy to think that A lacks direct doxastic control due to having conclusive evidence.
Of course, he could have done some things, but these easily appear too demanding. For instance, A could stay home behind locked doors to avoid hearing rumors inadvertently.
Notice that I do not deny that after having formed the belief, A might have indirect duties to try to rid himself of the belief, say, by trying to forget the evidence. Depending on the particular account of privacy rights one endorses, this might be as good as exercising direct control.
See Alex Worsnip, “Can Pragmatists Be Moderate?” forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, for discussion of the “cannot”-question.
The Problem of Practical Reasons for Belief interact with my main argument in the following way: There is a difference between i) being able to exercise direct doxastic control simpliciter and ii) being able to exercise direct doxastic control due to a particular kind of consideration. My argument requires the latter to be true, and so The Problem of Practical Reasons for Belief threatens the second premise of my argument.
See Basu and Schroeder, op. cit.; Susanna Rinard, “Believing for Practical Reasons,” Noûs 53(1) (2018): 763‒784; Mark Schroeder, “Stakes, Withholding, and Pragmatic Encroachment,” Philosophical Studies 160 (2012): 265‒285; McCormick, op. cit.; Stephanie Leary, “In Defense of Practical Reasons for Belief,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95(3) (2017): 529‒542.
Schroeder, op. cit., p. 283.
I thank an anonymous reviewer from The Journal of Value Inquiry for pointing me toward Schroeder’s work.
“… any disadvantage of forming beliefs—of making up your mind—is potentially a reason to withhold (Schroeder, op. cit., p. 277).” Or, adapted to the present context: a disadvantage of forming belief is that you might get it right about others’ private affairs and so diminish their control over self-presentation. Basu (“Two Doctrines,” p. 7) also recognizes this point: “In fact, I believe that we run this risk merely in forming true beliefs about others, irrespective of whether we ourselves took the prying steps necessary for the unsanctioned release of information.”
How could A know about B’s (assumed morally legitimate) privacy-related preference? As many have recognized, social convention (deeming certain matters “private”) is normally a reasonable guide to getting it right, although this need not necessarily be the only way.
For helpful overviews, see Renée Jorgensen Bolinger, “Varieties of Moral Encroachment,” Philosophical Perspectives 34(1) (2020): 5‒26; Worsnip, “Can Pragmatists Be Moderate?”.; Fritz and Jackson, op. cit.
Rima Basu, “Radical Moral Encroachment: The Moral Stakes of Racist Beliefs,” Philosophical Issues 29 (2019): 9‒23; Rima Basu, “The Wrongs of Racist Beliefs,” Philosophical Studies 176(9) (2019): 2497‒2515.
Pace Mark Schroeder, “When Beliefs Wrong,” Philosophical Topics 46(1) (2018): 115‒127; Basu and Schroeder, op. cit. I do not claim falsehood or insufficient epistemic justification to be a necessary condition for a doxastic wrong. By contrast, the concern about privacy seems to be a concern about others having true beliefs about one’s private matters, compare Fallis, op. cit., p. 163‒164. In passing, Basu and Schroeder claim that the right to privacy cannot be a right that others do not obtain knowledge about private affairs. I agree with their conclusion but for a different reason. On my view, it follows from the thought that if one takes oneself to have evidence that suffice for knowledge, then one is unlikely to have sufficient direct doxastic control to suspend judgment. The restricted direct doxastic we can exercise partly shapes the contours of the moral right to privacy.
Berislav Marušić and Stephen White, “How Can Beliefs Wrong? A Strawsonian Epistemology,” Philosophical Topics 46(1) (2018): 97‒114.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Tom Douglas, Gabriel De Marco and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen; the audience at a work-in-progress seminar held at The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics in the autumn of 2019; as well as an anonymous reviewer from The Journal of Value Inquiry and an anonymous reviewer from another journal for valuable comments and suggestions that significantly improved the manuscript.
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Munch, L.A. How Privacy Rights Engender Direct Doxastic Duties. J Value Inquiry 56, 547–562 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-020-09790-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-020-09790-x