Abstract
The New Evil Demon Problem presents a serious challenge to externalist theories of epistemic justification. In recent years, externalists have developed a number of strategies for responding to the problem. A popular line of response involves distinguishing between a belief’s being epistemically justified and a subject’s being epistemically blameless for holding it. The apparently problematic intuitions the New Evil Demon Problem elicits, proponents of this response claim, track the fact that the deceived subject is epistemically blameless for believing as she does, not that she is justified for so believing. This general strategy—which I call the “unjustified-but-blameless maneuver”—is motivated, in part, by the assumption that the distinction between epistemic justification and blamelessness is merely an extension of the familiar distinction between moral justification and blamelessness. In this paper, I consider three ways of drawing the distinction between justification and blamelessness familiar from the moral domain: the first in terms of a connection with reactive attitudes, the second in terms of the distinction between wrongness and wronging, and the third in terms of reasons-responsiveness. All three ways of drawing the distinction, I argue, make it difficult to see how an analogous distinction in the epistemic domain could help externalists explain away the intuitions which underwrite the New Evil Demon Problem. Motivating the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver, I conclude, is a much less straightforward task than its proponents tend to assume.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Philosophers have devoted more attention to the question of what it takes for a belief to be (epistemically) excused—see, for example, Boult (2017), Brown (2018a, Chapter 4), Cohen and Comesaña (2013), Gerken (2011), Greco (2019), Littlejohn (forthcoming), Schechter (2017), Williamson (forthcoming). That’s because the question of what it takes for a belief to be excused—and not the question of what it takes for a belief to be blameless per se— is of special interest to externalists about justification. For reasons that will become clear in Sect. 2.3, my focus here will be on the general concept of ‘blameless belief’, which has received somewhat less attention in the literature—though see Brown (2018b, 2020) and Boult (2020).
Thanks to Tez Clark for suggesting the name “Dupe”.
Formulating the problem gets a little tricky if one accepts certain forms of content externalism. I will set these complications aside for the sake of clarity.
Though no one would be particularly surprised if Bill did blame Albert for his hurtful belief, the question of whether Bill would be justified in blaming Albert is a controversial one among philosophers. For arguments in favor of the thesis that we can be held morally accountable (e.g. blamed) for our beliefs, see Basu (2018, 2019a, 2019b), Hieronymi (2008), McHugh (2013, 2014), and Smith (2005). For arguments against, see Levy (2007) and Setiya (2013).
See Brown (2018b) for discussion.
Before moving on, I should note that many of the cases discussed in the literature on blameworthy doxastic attitudes involve subjects who are intuitively blameworthy for failures to believe (or know) some relevant proposition. In the moral case, consider an intuitive example from Smith (2005): it seems appropriate for my close friend to morally blame me for failing to remember her birthday, a date which I know is very important to her. In the epistemic case, Weatherson (2008) writes that there is something epistemically blameworthy about a subject who, after looking in the fridge, fails to believe that the house needs more orange juice because he fails to check whether the carton he sees—which he knows his roommate tends to put back in the fridge, even when empty— is also empty on this particular occasion. (Goldberg (2017) discusses similar examples but defends the view that the fact that subjects should have known some relevant proposition in such cases makes them unjustified in their beliefs.) The idea that subjects might be blameworthy not only for holding morally or epistemically problematic beliefs, but also for failing to believe certain morally or epistemically significant propositions, brings up a number of interesting issues. These issues, I think, are irrelevant for my purposes here. In what follows, then, I will focus on instances of purportedly blameworthy/blameless belief, though I suspect my arguments will generalize to other instances of purportedly blameworthy doxastic conduct.
See Littlejohn (forthcoming), Hawthorne and Srinivasan (2013), and Williamson (forthcoming).
Externalists, then, are interested in excuse, not just blameless belief per se. It’s worth pausing to think about why this is the case. The category of blameless belief is a quite diverse one: plausibly, it includes both false beliefs like Dupe’s—beliefs impeccably formed on the basis of misleading evidence—but also false beliefs formed by subjects suffering from temporary insanity or incapacitation. Externalists don’t want to say that Dupe’s beliefs are blameless in the same way as the beliefs of the insane and incapacitated. For, as many authors have already noted, we’re supposed to have stipulated that Dupe’s beliefs were formed impeccably on the basis of her misleading evidence—the same cannot be said of beliefs formed by those whose belief-forming capacities have been compromised. So it would be misleading to lump Dupe’s false beliefs in with the false beliefs of the insane and incapacitated (see Cohen and Comesaña (2013), Madison (2018: 4559), Schecter (2017), and Pryor (2001: 117) for versions of this criticism). Here’s where the externalist’s limited focus comes into play: Plausibly, beliefs formed by incapacitated or insane subjects are exempted, but not excused, from blame (see Littlejohn [forthcoming] for further discussion of this distinction). So externalists will object to the comparison between these beliefs and the ones held by subjects like Dupe. (I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.).
To be more careful: The externalist will say that there’s some sense in which failing to meet a normative standard with an excuse or exemption is better than failing to meet that normative standard without any excuse or exemption. There’s of course another sense in which it’s not obviously better: Consider the case where one is exempted from blame because one lacks the capacities to be held responsible. In this case, one has (1) failed to meet a normative standard and (2) lacks the capacities to be held responsible. In some sense, it would be “better” if only (1) were true. For further discussion of the “ladder of defences” in the legal context, see Gardner (2007: Sect. 3). (Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to be more careful here.).
See Boult (2017), Cohen and Comesaña (2013), Gerken (2011), Greco (2019) and Schechter (2017) for relevant discussion. One thing that complicates the debate, here, is that Unwavering Externalists have at their disposal what Greco calls the “Anna Karenina Response”: “[j]ustified beliefs are all alike…but each merely excused belief is merely excused in its own way” (Greco 2019: 4). So a natural strategy for replying to the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver—pointing to systematic differences between Dupe’s case and other cases of merely excusable epistemic activity—is not available. For further discussion, see Littlejohn’s (forthcoming) discussion of “contrast arguments”. If the Anna Karenina Response is a good one—and I think that it is—opponents of the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver would do well to appeal to independent considerations (e.g. considerations about blame). That is my strategy here.
That blame in the moral and epistemic cases should be treated in a unified fashion is asserted both by proponents of strongly externalist theories—see Williamson (forthcoming) and Littlejohn (forthcoming)—and by those more critical of such theories—see Brown (2018b).
Before moving on, I encourage the reader to note that evaluation in terms of blameworthiness is typically taken to presuppose that the subject being evaluated can be held responsible for their action or attitude. Some philosophers think that it makes no sense to consider subjects responsible or accountable for their beliefs, since we have no voluntary control over our beliefs and since voluntary control is required for responsibility or accountability (see Levy 2007; Setiya 2013). Of course, many philosophers deny this, holding that subjects can be responsible or accountable for things they lack voluntary control over (see Hieronymi 2008; McHugh 2013, 2014 and Smith 2005). And I myself will proceed with this assumption. But we should note that the assumption is not uncontroversial. Thus, proponents of the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver who do take voluntary control to be required for responsibility will need to rethink their appeal to epistemic blame at a much earlier step in the dialectic than I will be supposing.
There are, of course, a few prominent exceptions. T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism, in its original formulation, equates wrongness with unjustifiability (Scanlon 1998). And (as an anonymous reviewer helpfully points out), there’s this passage from G. E. Moore (1903: §60):
The only possible reason that can justify any action is that by it the greatest possible amount of what is good absolutely should be realized. And if anyone says that the attainment of his own happiness justifies his actions, he must mean that this is the greatest possible amount of Universal Good which he can realise.
So the term ‘justification’ does show up occasionally in moral philosophy. When it does, the justified is often treated as a rough equivalent of the right, as the passage above suggests. This is all compatible with how I’ll go on to characterize moral justification.
There is some debate over just which reactive attitudes are required for a subject to count as blaming another. Emotional theories of blame stress the hot reactive attitudes (see Strawson 1962, Wallace 1994, Wolf 2011). Conative theories of blame stress the colder reactive attitudes (see Sher 2005 and Scanlon 2008, 2013a).
Connecting this with the work on excuses, there are a few different reasons why negative reactive attitudes might not be fitting: a subject’s action may be outright justified, unjustified but excused, or the subject may be exempted from blame (despite the fact that her action was both unjustified and unexcused).
Early versions of such accounts characterize identify blame with a negative judgment about a subject’s “moral ledger” (see Smart 1961 and Zimmerman 1988). More contemporary versions identify blame with the judgment that a subject’s action manifested insufficient responsiveness to moral reasons (see Arpaly 2006 and Hieronymi 2004). I will come back to such accounts in Sect. 5.
See, for instance, Arpaly (2006, 25–28).
Note that (1) should be understood in a very specific way. The externalist does want to say that Dupe is epistemically blameless while Maud and Carl are epistemically blameworthy. But for the externalist, the considerations that can render a subject blameless are a “motley bunch”, as Littlejohn (forthcoming) puts it (see also my discussion in Footnote 9). Some considerations—like non-culpable ignorance—excuse a subject from blame. Other considerations—like infancy or insanity—exempt a subject from blame. Going forward, then, it’s important to note that what most externalists writing about these issues have in mind with (1) is not the kind of blamelessness associated with infancy, insanity, and exemption—what they have in mind is the kind of blamelessness associated with ignorance and excuse. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing this point.
I’m not the first to notice that Dupe, Maud, and Carl can be difficult to distinguish given things externalists say about justification and blamelessness—see, for example, the discussion in Simion, Kelp and Ghijsen (2016).
Thanks to Evan Behrle for discussion.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to say more here. As the reviewer points out, a defender of this view might respond as follows: The function of the epistemic reactive attitudes is to enable us to appropriately adjust our confidence in the opinions or testimony of others. For this function to be fulfilled, the epistemic reactive attitudes just need to enable us to do this effectively across a broad range of circumstances in which we typically find ourselves. If we focus on the function of the epistemic reactive attitudes, it’s not so implausible to think that character assessment is relativized to normal worlds. But as the reviewer also helpfully points out, once the appeal to normal circumstances is doing this much heavy lifting in the story, it’s unclear why the externalist in question doesn’t just go in for a straightforward normal worlds Reliabilist response to the New Evil Demon Problem. I wholeheartedly agree: It’s not clear that the response in question is available to the externalists I’m targeting, who presumably want to rely on the analogy with moral blamelessness because they have independent reasons for rejecting the standard, normal worlds response to the New Evil Demon Problem.
I think these considerations tell against at least one way of understanding Littlejohn’s account of the distinction between justification and blamelessness, according to which “the agent can be excused for having φ-d only if she shows excellence in the exercise of her rational capacities” (Littlejohn forthcoming: 14). I will address this proposal more directly in Sect. 5.
But see Driver (2017) for an argument against this popular view.
See Greco (2019) for discussion of what it might mean to have an “excuse” in the epistemic case.
Could the externalist say that Dupe has epistemically wronged herself by harboring a false belief? This avenue of response is certainly open to the externalist. But we should ask whether a plausible account of epistemic wronging will have the implication that one can epistemically wrong oneself merely by having a false belief, no matter how well-formed that belief is. This brings up a more general point, which I originally raised at the end of Sect. 2: Social epistemologists (e.g. Basu) have done a lot to develop accounts of epistemic blame and doxastic/epistemic wronging. But there is a question about whether these accounts can do the work the externalist needs to fight off the New Evil Demon problem.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.
Arpaly (2003, 72): “For an agent to be morally praiseworthy for doing the right thing is for her to have done the right thing for the relevant moral reasons—that is, the reasons for which she acts are identical to the reasons for which the action is right.”.
In the moral case, “blameworthiness” is usually treated as a property of unjustified actions. Justified actions not performed for the right reasons are usually considered “not praiseworthy”. In what follows, I will use the term “blameworthy” to cover both cases, since I think this makes the epistemic analogy a lot easier to understand.
To put this in terms of the moral analogy: In the moral case, responding to one’s moral reasons is sufficient for justified action. But the externalist does not want to say that Dupe’s beliefs are justified. Alternatively, to put this in terms of reasons: On an externalist picture of epistemic justification, responding to one’s epistemic reasons involves forming a belief that meets certain externalist standards—that is true, knowledgeable, the result of a reliable belief-forming process, etc. The very idea that Dupe is unjustified-but-blameless for believing as she does presupposes that Dupe’s beliefs have fallen short of such standards. So again, Dupe cannot be blameless in virtue of the fact that she’s responded to her epistemic reasons.
Note that Arpaly would probably not want to identify sufficient/insufficient responsiveness with such modal notions. On her view, “[t]he mere frequency or predictability of an action should not matter at all to its moral worth—unless frequency or predictability are taken to be signs of deep moral concern in the agent” (Arpaly 95). If the Unwavering Externalist wanted to characterize reasons-responsiveness without recourse to modal notions, then, she would need to develop some notion of “epistemic concern”. I think that it is very unclear what this kind of epistemic concern might involve, especially if the externalist is interested in responsiveness to epistemic reasons de re.
I say significantly revisionary because, in Williamson’s framework, justification is not sufficient for blamelessness: one can comply with a primary norm while still violating the derivative norm to which it gives rise. This strikes me as at least slightly revisionary when applied to the moral case: If one takes seriously the idea that morally justified subjects are justified for conducting themselves in a morally exemplary way, then this idea would at least seem to imply that justification entails blamelessness.
As an anonymous reviewer points out, proponents of the Lasonen-Aarnio line might try to argue that these distinctions are one and the same. I agree that this is a possibility worth considering—but also that it is a substantive view which would require argument.
References
Arpaly, N. (2003). Unprincipled virtue: An inquiry into moral agency. Oxford University Press.
Arpaly, N. (2006). Merit, meaning, and human bondage: An essay on free will. Princeton University Press.
Basu, R. (2018). Can beliefs wrong? Philosophical Topics, 46(1), 1–17.
Basu, R. (2019a). The wrongs of racist beliefs. Philosophical Studies, 176(9), 2497–2515.
Basu, R. (2019b). What we epistemically owe to each other. Philosophical Studies, 176(4), 915–931.
Bergmann, M. (2006). Justification without awareness: A defense of epistemic externalism. Oxford University Press.
Brown, J. (2018a). Fallibilism: Evidence and knowledge. Oxford University Press.
Brown, J. (2018b). What is epistemic blame? Noûs, 54(2), 389–407.
Brown, J. (2020). Epistemically blameworthy belief. Philosophical Studies, 177, 3595–3614.
BonJour, L. (1980). Externalist theories of empirical knowledge. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5(1), 53–74.
Boult, C. (2017). Epistemic normativity and the justification-excuse distinction. Synthese, 194(10), 4065–4081.
Boult, C. (2020). There is a distinctively epistemic kind of blame. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Christensen, D. (2007). Three questions about Leplin’s reliabilism. Philosophical Studies, 134(1), 43–50.
Cohen, S. (1984). Justification and truth. Philosophical Studies, 46(3), 279–295.
Cohen, S., & Comesaña, J. (2013). Williamson on Gettier cases and epistemic logic. Inquiry, 56(1), 15–29.
Darwall, S. (2006). The second-person standpoint: Morality, respect, and accountability. Harvard University Press.
Driver, J. (2017). Wronging, blame, and forgiveness. Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, 4, 206.
Frick, J. (manuscript). Dilemmas, luck, and the two faces of morality.
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.
Gardner, J. (2007). In defence of defences. In: Offences and defences: Selected essays in the philosophy of criminal law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gerken, M. (2011). Warrant and action. Synthese, 178(3), 529–547.
Goldman, A. (1986). Epistemology and cognition. Harvard University Press.
Goldman, A. (1988). Strong and weak justification. Philosophical Perspectives, 2, 51–69.
Goldberg, S. C. (2017). Should have known. Synthese, 194(8), 2863–2894.
Goldberg, S. C. (2018). To the best of our knowledge: Social expectations and epistemic normativity. Oxford University Press.
Graham, P. J. (2017). Normal circumstances reliabilism: Goldman on reliability and justified belief. Philosophical Topics, 45(1), 33–62.
Greco, D. (2019). Justifications and excuses in epistemology. Noûs, 55, 517–537.
Hawthorne, J., & Srinivasan, A. (2013). Disagreement without transparency: Some bleak thoughts 1. In D. Christensen & J. Lackey (Eds.), The epistemology of disagreement: New essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hazlett, A. (2018). Review of S. Goldberg, to the best of our knowledge: Social expectations and epistemic normativity. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Hieronymi, P. (2004). The force and fairness of blame. Philosophical Perspectives, 18, 115–148.
Hieronymi, P. (2008). Responsibility for believing. Synthese, 161(3), 357–373.
Kauppinen, A. (2018). Epistemic norms and epistemic accountability. Philosophers’ Imprint, 18(8), 1–16.
Lasonen-Aarnio, M. (2010). Unreasonable knowledge. Philosophical Perspectives, 24, 1–21.
Lasonen-Aarnio, M. (2014). Higher-order evidence and the limits of defeat. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(2), 314–345.
Lehrer, K., & Cohen, S. (1983). Justification, truth, and coherence. Synthese, 55(2), 191–207.
Lemos, N. (2007). An introduction to the theory of knowledge. Cambridge University Press.
Levy, N. (2007). The responsibility of the psychopath revisited. Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, 14(2), 129–138.
Littlejohn, C. (2012). Justification and the truth-connection. Cambridge University Press.
Littlejohn, C. (forthcoming). A plea for epistemic excuses. In The New Evil Demon, edited by Julien Dutant and Fabian Dorsch.
Lord, E. (2018). The importance of being rational. Oxford University Press.
Lyons, J. C. (2013). Should reliabilists be worried about demon worlds? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86(1), 1–40.
Madison, B. J. C. (2018). On justifications and excuses. Synthese, 195, 4551–4562.
Marušić, B., & White, S. (2018). How can beliefs wrong?—A strawsonian epistemology. Philosophical Topics, 46(1), 97–114.
May, S. C. (2015). Directed duties. Philosophy Compass, 10(8), 523–532.
McHugh, C. (2013). Epistemic responsibility and doxastic agency. Philosophical Issues, 23, 132–157.
McHugh, C. (2014). Exercising doxastic freedom. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88(1), 1–37.
Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia ethica. Cambridge University Press.
Owens, D. (2012). Shaping the normative landscape. Oxford University Press.
Pryor, J. (2001). Highlights of recent epistemology. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 52, 95–124.
Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What we owe to each other. Harvard University Press.
Scanlon, T. M. (2008). Moral dimensions. Harvard University Press.
Scanlon, T. M. (2013a). Interpreting blame. In D. Justin-Coates & N. A. Tognazzini (Eds.), Blame: Its nature and norms (pp. 84–99). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scanlon, T. M. (2013b). Giving desert its due. Philosophical Explorations, 16(2), 101–116.
Scanlon, T. M. (2015). Forms and conditions of responsibility. In: The nature of moral responsibility: New essays, pp. 89–111.
Schechter, J. (2017). No need for excuses against knowledge-first epistemology and the knowledge norm of assertion. In J. Adam-Carter, E. C. Gordon, & B. Jarvis (Eds.), Knowledge first: Approaches in epistemology and mind (pp. 132–162). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Setiya, K. (2013). Epistemic agency: Some doubts. Philosophical Issues, 23, 179–198.
Sher, G. (2005). In praise of blame. Oxford University Press.
Simion, M., Kelp, C., & Ghijsen, H. (2016). Norms of belief. Philosophical. Issues, 26(1), 374–392.
Smart, J. J. C. (1961). Free-will, praise and blame. Mind, 70(279), 291–306.
Smith, A. M. (2005). Responsibility for attitudes: Activity and passivity in mental life. Ethics, 115(2), 236–271.
Smith, A. M. (2007). On being responsible and holding responsible. The Journal of Ethics, 11(4), 465–484.
Srinivasan, A. (2019). Radical externalism. Philosophical Review.
Strawson, P. F. (1962). Freedom and resentment. In: Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 48, pp. 1–25. Reprinted Fischer and Ravizza 1993b: 45–66.
Sutton, J. (2005). Stick to what you know. Nous, 39(3), 359–396.
Sutton, J. (2007). Without justification. MIT Press.
Thompson, M. (2004). What is it to wrong someone?: A puzzle about justice. In R. J. Wallace, P. Pettit, S. Scheffler, & M. Smith (Eds.), Reason and value: Themes from the philosophy of Joseph Raz. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomson, J. J. (1986). Rights, restitution, and risk: Essays, in moral theory. Harvard University Press.
Wallace, R. J. (1994). Responsibility and the moral sentiments. Harvard University Press.
Watson, G. (1996). Two faces of responsibility. Philosophical Topics, 24(2), 227–248.
Weatherson, B. (2008). Deontology and descartes’s demon. The Journal of Philosophy, 105(9), 540–569.
Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford University Press.
Williamson, T. (forthcoming). Justifications, excuses, and sceptical scenarios. In: The New Evil Demon, edited by J. Dutant and F. Dorsch.
Wolf, S. (2011). Blame, Italian style. In R. J. Wallace, R. Kumar, & S. Freeman (Eds.), Reasons and recognition: Essays on the philosophy of T. M. Scanlon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zimmerman, M. J. (1988). An essay on moral responsibility. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Evan Behrle, Dave Chalmers, David Christensen, Tez Clark, Clara Lingle, Bar Luzon, Daniel Viehoff, Crispin Wright, and especially Jane Friedman for valuable comments and discussion of earlier drafts. This paper began its life as a term paper for Ernie Sosa and Matt McGrath’s graduate seminar at Rutgers, Fall 2019. I’d like to thank seminar participants, as well as audiences at NYU’s Washington Square Circle and Women’s Work-in-Progress Group for their constructive questions and discussion.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ballarini, C. Epistemic Blame and the New Evil Demon Problem. Philos Stud 179, 2475–2505 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01774-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01774-2