Abstract
Supererogatory acts, those which are praiseworthy but not obligatory, have become a significant topic in contemporary moral philosophy, primarily because morally supererogatory acts have proven difficult to reconcile with other important aspects of normative ethics. However, despite the similarities between ethics and epistemology, epistemic supererogation has received very little attention. In this paper, I aim to further the discussion of supererogation by arguing for the existence of epistemically supererogatory acts and considering the potential implications of their existence. First, I offer a brief account of moral supererogation and how morally supererogatory acts generate a strong intuition that a similar phenomenon should exist in epistemology. Afterward, I argue for the existence of epistemically supererogatory acts by examining five cases where an epistemic activity appears to be epistemically supererogatory. Epistemic supererogation appears to provide the best explanation for our considered judgments about the individuals’ behavior in these different cases. Finally, I consider how epistemic supererogation might impact the contemporary study of epistemology, particularly with regard to how we appraise certain epistemic duties.
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Notes
Prior treatments of epistemic supererogation also assume that epistemic evaluations can apply to actions. Plantinga speaks of “supererogatory effort” to live a life of epistemic excellence (Plantinga 1986, p. 7; Plantinga 1988, p. 10). Such a pursuit is an activity that one undertakes. Tidman argues that certain kinds of critical reflection are epistemically supererogatory, and critical reflection is a mental action that we can voluntarily perform.
Although it will not be my focus, I will return to the possibility of there being epistemically supererogatory cognitive states in the concluding section.
There can be cases where a morally good action is forbidden because better alternatives are available, and there can also be cases where a morally required action is morally bad because all the alternatives available are awful.
The Roman Catholic ethical tradition is a notable example.
The definitive critic of Urmson in this regard is Elizabeth Pybus, who defends the traditional trichotomy of moral actions. See Pybus (1982).
To give a few general examples, see Attfield (1979), Jackson (1986), Jackson (1988), and Postow (2005). Attempts to accommodate MSAs into certain moral theories have been undertaken by both consequentialists (Sikora 1979; Vessel 2010) and Kantians (McCarty 1989). Certain debates also presuppose that MSAs exist. For instance, when one considers whether or not a promise to perform an MSA is obligatory (e.g. Kawall 2005), one must assume that there are some genuine MSAs. Otherwise, the worrisome paradox (about being obligated to perform a supererogatory action) could not arise, since there would be no MSAs to promise to perform.
I assume in this paper that one is never morally permitted to do something morally blameworthy and that one is never morally forbidden from doing something morally praiseworthy.
There may, of course, be some minor dissimilarities between the two. The isomorphism between ethics and epistemology is suggested as a general rule rather than an absolute one.
As mentioned earlier, Feldman thinks that there are no epistemic duties pertaining to actions. My disagreement with Feldman on this point arises from his claim that the only requirement for having a justified belief is that one adopts the attitude about a given proposition that is justified by the evidence presently available regarding that proposition. I believe that whether one’s beliefs are justified is a more complicated matter than this. To give one illustration, beliefs formed by deliberately avoiding the acquisition of counterevidence are surely sometimes unjustified, even though the cognitive attitude that one adopts regarding the relevant propositions may perfectly mirror the evidence that one has access to at the time.
I borrow this example from (Kornblith 1983, p. 36).
I cannot offer a comprehensive list of epistemic virtues and vices, but a robust list of that sort will not be necessary for the case analyses in the next section.
In defining epistemic praise and blame in this manner, I leave open the possibility that there are cases where one is epistemically blameworthy for performing an action even though the action is not epistemically irresponsible (and so violates no epistemic duty). In this manner, my definition of ESAs allows for the possibility that failing to perform a particular action could be epistemically blameworthy even if performing the action is not required by any epistemic duty, which explains why conditions (1) and (3) are not redundant. This is parallel to how Mellema’s account of MSAs allows for cases where an act’s omission could be blameworthy even if there is no moral duty to perform the act.
For an overview of the philosophical issues surrounding incommensurability, see Hsieh (2007). The application of this concept to the issue at hand is that there can be cases where an action generates epistemic benefits and harms that are simply too different to be compared to one another. Some cases certainly admit of sensible comparisons between epistemic harms and benefits. When an action produces no effects other than two true beliefs, it clearly produces more epistemic benefits than epistemic harms. But this kind of comparison can easily become more complicated. For instance, does the epistemic harm of forming a false belief outweigh the epistemic benefits of turning two true beliefs into justified true beliefs? Does the epistemic benefit of coming to understand a subject outweigh the epistemic harms of forming several false beliefs about a different subject? These kinds of questions do not admit of easy answers, and in at least some cases where actions produce effects like these, the epistemic benefits and harms may prove incommensurable with one another.
My definitions of epistemic blameworthiness and epistemic praiseworthiness both require that the actions in question can be “reasonably expected” to bring about certain effects. This clause is meant to account for bizarre circumstances in which the epistemic consequences resulting from certain actions are much different than what could ordinarily be expected. Throughout these case analyses, when discussing the epistemic benefits and harms caused by the actions under scrutiny, I will generally assume that the consequences under discussion are consistent with what we could reasonably expect to result from these actions. Hence, explicit examination of reasonable expectations about the actions’ consequences is generally absent.
The amount of time chosen here is arbitrary and inconsequential. However long the duty of critical reflection requires John to reflect on his beliefs, we can posit that John performs the activity for longer than the duty requires.
While many topics could be used in C3, I have chosen this one in an attempt to avoid the encroachment of moral praise. If the issue presented were global climate change, for example, the praiseworthiness of Anna’s actions could be derived from the moral relevance of the topic she was researching. My hope is that this debate in metaphysics is regarded as morally neutral.
Anna may, for example, worry that her attitude about the topic would affect how she perceived the evidence presented in the article. When confronted with information that appears inconclusive, people will almost always interpret the information in a way that supports beliefs they already hold. This psychological phenomenon is often called “Confirmation Bias.” One of the classic studies that discusses this phenomenon is Lord et al. (1979). A useful overview of some relevant literature on the topic can be found in Gilovich (1991). Notably, Thomas Kelly has recently written about this phenomenon in an epistemic context; see Kelly (2008).
One may worry about a Sorites paradox here. Anna’s decision to read 50 additional articles on the topic may indeed demonstrate unwarranted skepticism, but will she still manifest this unwarranted skepticism if she decides to read an additional article 50 times in succession? If she examines an additional article and decides to read it before forming a judgment, and then reiterates this process 49 more times, one may think that her action is epistemically praiseworthy each time, which means that her reading of 50 additional articles would be epistemically praiseworthy if carried out in this manner. But that outcome clearly looks incorrect: surely Anna cannot be praiseworthy for reading 50 additional articles and being so epistemically overcautious. Fortunately, if we keep the details the same as specified in C3, I think this worry can be allayed. Remember that the initial ten articles provided sufficient evidence for Anna to conclude that realism was the correct view. If she decides to suspend judgment and read an extra article, she is epistemically praiseworthy for performing this particular action. She might also be praiseworthy for reading a second article—perhaps even a third. But with each subsequent article that she reads, Anna gets closer and closer to an unhealthy skepticsm that is epistemically blameworthy: at a certain point, the weight of the evidence will become so great that it become epistemically irresponsible of her to continue suspending judgment. Of course, it may not be possible to specify precisely where Anna’s decision to read an additional article becomes blameworthy (rather than praiseworthy), but this only shows that the progression from reasonable further inquiry to unwarranted skepticism is a gradual one.
I allude here to the general thought that a moral theory that forces an agent to make extraordinary personal sacrifices is implausible. This objection is commonly lodged against utilitarianism.
We may, for instance, be able to construct a case in which one is plausibly under no duty to gather counterevidence but is epistemically praiseworthy for doing so.
The deontologically-oriented approaches to epistemic justification that Zagzebski mentions would be one way of accomplishing this task, but they may not be the only way of doing so. A virtue-based approach to epistemic justification, to give just one example, might also work.
I borrow this sentiment from Alston (1988).
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Acknowledgments
I must first thank E. J. Coffman and David Palmer. Both offered detailed feedback on the first complete draft of the paper, and prolonged exchanges with them helped me improve the paper’s central arguments tremendously. I also thank two anonymous referees for this journal who provided rigorous, helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper; their remarks have forced me to refine and clarify many of the paper’s subtleties. Finally, I thank the attendees of the 2011 Appalachian Regional Student Philosophy Colloquium who participated in a fruitful discussion of a much earlier version of this paper.
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Hedberg, T. Epistemic supererogation and its implications. Synthese 191, 3621–3637 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0483-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0483-5