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The Reasons-Responsiveness Account of Doxastic Responsibility and the Basing Relation

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Abstract

In several papers (2013, 2014, 2015) Conor McHugh defends the influential view that doxastic responsibility, viz. our responsibility for our beliefs, is grounded in a specific form of reasons-responsiveness. The main purpose of this paper is to show that a subject’s belief can be responsive to reasons in this specific way without the subject being responsible for her belief. While this specific form of reasons-responsiveness might be necessary, it is not sufficient for doxastic responsibility.

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Notes

  1. See also Fischer (2006).

  2. The literature on agentive responsibility contains several objections against Fischer and Ravizza’s account. See e.g. McKenna (2001, 2005), Sartorio (2017), Todd and Tognazzini (2008), Zimmerman (2002). It is beyond the scope of this article to consider all the potential flaws of Fischer and Ravizza’s account of responsibility. There is, however, one very crucial counterexample to the sufficiency of Fischer and Ravizza’s account—the so-called Saber Killer case—that I consider in detail below. It is indeed—as an anonymous reviewer legitimately emphasizes—important to show that McHugh cannot avoid the objection raised in this paper by “simply” re-using Fischer and Ravizza’s persuasive ways of circumventing the Saber Killer case. This—as I argue at length in Sect. 6—is something that McHugh cannot do. In this sense, the sufficiency of McHugh’s account of doxastic responsibility is much more fragile than the sufficiency of Fischer and Ravizza’s account of agentive responsibility (even if the latter, as just said, is certainly not immune to every objection).

  3. Note that the objection levelled in this paper also threatens other accounts of doxastic responsibility in terms of reasons-responsiveness like e.g. the one defended Steup (2011, 2012), Ryan (2003) or Hieronymi (2008, 2009a). See fn. 24 for more detail.

  4. See e.g. McCormick (2015), Nottelmann (2007), Peels (2017), Meylan (2013, 2015, 2017) for alternative accounts of doxastic responsibility in terms of indirect control or influence.

    The present paper should also serve to reinforce Peels’ claim (2012) that compatibilist accounts are not sufficient to capture doxastic responsibility, However, Peels reaches this conclusion by another route and does not consider McHugh’s specific version of compatibilism in detail.

    Another persuasive objection against compatibilist accounts of doxastic is due to Booth (2009, 2014). Booth’s objection focuses on Steup’s account (2008, 2011, 2012) and leaves, I suspect, McHugh’s compatibilist account untouched. It is, therefore, very relevant to develop an objection that targets McHugh’s compatibilist account specifically as I aim at doing in the present paper.

  5. Peels 2017 (see mainly pages 67, 90-1) makes an interesting distinction between the control and the influence that we might be able to exercise over our beliefs and argues that doxastic responsibility is grounded in influence alone. I agree with Peels on this. In this paper I use the term “control” in a somewhat looser sense that denotes both control (stricto sensu) and influence.

  6. This assumption is also widely accepted in the philosophical literature on doxastic responsibility. See e.g. Hieronymi (2006, 2008, 2009a), McHugh (2015), McCormick (2011, 2015), Steup (2012).

  7. The locus classicus for the view that we cannot believe “at will” is Williams (1973). See also Alston (1988), Hieroymi (2006, 2009b), Setiya (2008), Pojman (1985). See, however, (a) Peels (2015) for the view that we might be able to believe at will since the truth of a proposition is sometimes dependent on whether we believe it or not (b) Steup (2012) for the view that beliefs can be reactive to intentions and (c) Frankish (2007) for the view that some form of weak voluntarism is conceivable.

  8. McHugh’s formulates a similar idea in terms of the non-reactivity of beliefs to practical reasons: “We are, in our doxastic lives, systematically unreactive, or only very restrictedly reactive, to practical reasons. In this respect, doxastic states stand in contrast with actions, which are reactive to any kind of reason you can recognise.” McHugh (2014), 10.

  9. See McHugh (2013, 2014, 2015), but also e.g. Hieronymi (2006, 2008, 2009a), Steup (2011, 2012), Ryan (2003), Meylan (2015, 2017).

  10. See footnote 4 for references.

  11. I am, however, conscious that the literature on agentive responsibility contains many objections to Fischer and Ravizza’s account. See footnote 2 for several references and remarks about the sufficiency of their account.

  12. I explain what is an understandable pattern of reasons recognition in Sect. 6. The requirement that the subject display such an understandable pattern allows Fischer and Ravizza to avoid the objection raised by the Saber Killer example. I also discuss this objection and this reply in detail below.

  13. This brief presentation of Fischer and Ravizza’s account of agentive responsibility ignores certain subtleties that are not relevant for my purpose in this paper. For instance, according to Fischer and Ravizza, it is the mechanism that actually issues in the action—and not the action itself—that has to be moderately reasons-responsive. Furthermore, what is, stricto sensu, sufficient for agentive responsibility is moderate reasons-responsiveness associated with mechanisms’ ownership. Since mechanisms’ ownership does not have influence on the objection that I raise against McHugh’s account (Sect. 5), I do not mention this component of Fischer and Ravizza’s guidance control below. For an interesting discussion of mechanisms’ ownership in the field of beliefs, see McCormick (2011).

  14. See Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 48.

  15. See Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 76–77. Beside young children, psychopaths are also occasionally considered not to be responsible for their misdeeds in virtue of their insensitivity to reasons. I discuss the case of psychopaths in more details in Sect. 6.

  16. As said already, I explain what an understandable pattern of reasons recognition is in Sect. 6.

  17. See also McHugh (2013), 142.

  18. See also Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 81.

  19. Note, however, that I could reach the same conclusion even if I was relying on another account of the basing relation like e.g. a purely causal (see e.g. Moser 1989) or a doxastic account (see e.g. Audi 1986).

  20. See Sylvan (2016), 383. Sylvan’s account is similar to dispositional accounts of the basing relation such as that defended by Evans (2012) and Turri (2011).

  21. The reason in question is defeasible or prima facie. As the description of what happens in the counterfactual scenario shows, some additional information is susceptible to defeat the actual reason relation.

  22. Following Sylvan (2016), I assume here that normative reasons to believe are facts and not e.g. mental states. Nothing, however, depends on this ontological assumption.

  23. As Evans (2012) points out, a belief can be based on a reason without the latter being a good reason. See also Audi (1986), Korcz (1997).

  24. Steup (2011, 2012), Ryan (2003) and Hieronymi (2008, 2009a) defend accounts of doxastic responsibility in terms of reasons-responsiveness that differ from McHugh’s account. It is, at this point, legitimate to wonder whether the case of Poor Sonia 2 raises a worry for these other reasons-responsiveness accounts of doxastic responsibility as well. I think that the objection levelled in this paper also threatens these other reasons-responsiveness accounts. However, since a thorough demonstration of this would require a presentation of each of these alternative views—something that is impossible within the space of a single article—I would like to content myself with just considering Hieronymi’s account. To cut a long story short, according to Hieronymi (2009a), one is responsible for believing that p whenever one believes that p as an ipso facto result of having settled for oneself the question whether p. When we form or revise our beliefs in this way, we exercise what she calls “evaluative control” over our beliefs and evaluative control is, she thinks, sufficient for doxastic responsibility. Let us re-consider the case of Poor Sonia 2 in this light. Poor Sonia 2 exercises evaluative control over her actual and over her counterfactual disbelief. After all, both are doxastic attitudes that she holds as an ipso facto result of having settled the question whether something bad is going to happen to her community in the close future. But, as I argue in the body of the text, Poor Sonia 2 is not responsible for her actual belief. It seems, therefore, that the case of Poor Sonia 2 is a worry for Hieronymi’s as much as for McHugh’s account. I am very thankful to an anonymous referee for pushing me to consider the possibility of extending my objection to other reasons-responsiveness accounts.

  25. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to take this important worry into consideration. The whole Sect. 6 has emerged as a reaction to his/her comment.

  26. See mainly Fischer and Ravizza (1998), chap. 3, pages 65–72 and pages 84–5.

  27. See Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 84.

  28. As Fischer and Ravizza admit themselves (1998, fn. 14, 71), the notion of an “understandable pattern” remains quite vague even with this clarification. As we shall see below, this clarification is, however, sufficient to show that the pattern of reasons recognition of Poor Sonia 2 is perfectly understandable. Consequently, the upholder of the reasons-responsiveness account of doxastic responsibility cannot rely on the lack of understandability of this pattern to explain why Sonia 2 is not responsible for her belief.

  29. Of course, there are ways of filling in this case that will make Linda’s pattern of reason recognition understandable again. We can, for instance, imagine that Linda does not want to pay too little money for watching the game because she considers it unfair to the players.

  30. See e.g. Pritchard (2011), 3.

  31. For instance, this description does not tell us anything regarding the exact difference between practical and epistemic reasons for believing. Addressing this complicated and much debated issue clearly falls outside the scope of this paper.

  32. Even if, as repeatedly said, Fischer and Ravizza’s account is certainly not immune to every objection. See footnote 2 for several references.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Matthew Chrisman, Davide Fassio, Robin McKenna, Veli Mitova, Andrea Robitzsch, Melanie Sarzano, Marie van Loon, and the audiences at the University of Southampton (Epistemic and Practical Normativity Workshop, June 2015), at the University of Erlangen (Ethics of Mind Conference, August 2017) and the University of Munich (ECAP, August 2017) for helpful discussions, comments and references. This article has also very much benefited from the insightful suggestions and criticisms of two anonymous reviewers. I thank them too.

Funding

Funding was provided by Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Grant No. PP00P1_157436)

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    Anne Meylan

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Meylan, A. The Reasons-Responsiveness Account of Doxastic Responsibility and the Basing Relation. Erkenn 84, 877–893 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-9985-8

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