Abstract
According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, our beliefs can non-derivatively wrong others. A recent criticism of this view claims that proponents of the doxastic wronging thesis have no principled grounds for denying that credences can likewise non-derivatively wrong, so they must countenance pervasive conflicts between morality and epistemic rationality. This paper defends the thesis of doxastic wronging from this objection by arguing that belief bears distinctive relationships to inquiry and blame that can explain why beliefs, but not credences, can non-derivatively wrong. First, forming a belief (but not updating one’s credence) closes inquiry, and suspending judgment (but not updating one’s credence) opens inquiry. Consequently, beliefs can distinctively wrong others by prematurely closing inquiry or inappropriately opening inquiry. Second, beliefs (but not credences) can constitute blame. Unfittingly blaming someone can wrong them, and hence beliefs which constitute unfitting blame can distinctively wrong. In addition to defending the claim that only beliefs can non-derivatively wrong, this paper gestures towards an ethics of belief which attends to the relationship between belief and attitudes such as inquiry, faith, trust, and blame.
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Notes
Following Nelson (2010), Basu and Schroeder argue that we are rarely (perhaps never) epistemically required to believe any particular proposition (even after considering whether that proposition is true). This claim enables them to avoid conflict between the moral norms and epistemic norms governing belief. (While it does not guarantee coordination between moral and epistemic norms, Basu and Schroeder appeal to moral encroachment to secure coordination.) However, this approach is less promising as a way to avoid conflicts between the moral norms and the epistemic norms governing credences. For example, in Wine Stain it is very plausible that, in light of the strong evidence your spouse has for the proposition that you drank at the colloquium, she is epistemically required to have a high credence in this proposition (at least after she has considered whether you drank at the colloquium). Having a high credence may be required even if (as credal permissivists, such as Johnson King and Babic 2020, claim) there is not a unique credence that she is epistemically required to adopt.
Notably, Enoch and Spectre do not deny that beliefs and credences can derivatively wrong (forthcoming: Sect. 1).
While Enoch and Spectre’s main target is doxastic wronging itself, Fritz and Jackson’s main target is “radical” moral encroachment (according to which the moral costs of beliefs themselves, independently of their role in guiding action, affect epistemic justification). Here I’m only addressing one step of their argument: the claim that if beliefs can non-derivatively wrong, then credences can non-derivatively wrong.
This is not to say that premises 2 and 4 are undeniable. Johnson King and Babic (2020) reject premise 2 by arguing that morality can determine which inferences (among those which are epistemically permitted) one all-things-considered should make and thus which credence (among those which are epistemically permitted) one all-things-considered should have. (However, while Johnson King and Babic’s view avoids conflicts between morality and epistemic rationality, it does not secure coordination.) And as Fritz and Jackson note (2021: 1404), proponents of the view that credences can wrong can simply bite the bullet and accept that there are pervasive conflicts between morality and epistemic rationality.
Enoch and Spectre make a similar point (forthcoming: Sect. 2).
Fritz and Jackson consider, and ultimately reject, three candidate asymmetries between beliefs and credences which may promise to explain why only beliefs can non-derivatively wrong: 1) that believing that p involves ruling out the possibility of not-p, settling the matter, committing oneself, or taking a stand; 2) that we possess control or exert agency with respect to our beliefs that we lack with respect to credences; and 3) that beliefs may be associated with behavioral dispositions and dispositions to form certain mental states (such as judging or occurrently believing) (2021: 1400–1401). My aim is to identify two different asymmetries between beliefs and credences which provide more promising explanations of how beliefs but not credences can non-derivatively wrong. (However, one of the asymmetries I appeal to—belief’s distinctive relationship to inquiry—may vindicate the first and/or the second asymmetry that Fritz and Jackson reject).
I won’t argue here that these distinctive features of belief extend to other cases of putative doxastic wronging, such as beliefs formed about another person on the basis of merely statistical evidence (Basu 2019; Fabre 2022; Schroeder 2018) or failures to believe testimony (Marušić and White (2018). But parts of my account of why only beliefs can non-derivatively wrong—especially the appeal to belief’s distinctive relationship to inquiry, faith, and trust—can arguably be applied to these other types of cases as well.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for prompting me to clarify the structure of my argument.
Of course, not all epistemically irrational credences can wrong. While it goes beyond the scope of this paper to offer a complete account of when epistemically irrational credences can wrong, a prima facie plausible view is that credences can wrong partly in virtue of their epistemic irrationality when their epistemic irrationality is caused by morally objectionable attitudes (e.g., ill will, disrespect, or prejudice). Cf. Miranda Fricker’s account of testimonial injustice, on which a credence attributing to someone a credibility deficit can wrong them when this credence is epistemically irrational because of prejudice (2007: Sect. 1.3).
Friedman’s (2019) official view seems to be that while suspending judgment metaphysically or descriptively entails inquiring, belief is normatively incompatible with inquiring (such that it rationally commits one to closing inquiry). However, Friedman elsewhere seems sympathetic to the view that it is psychologically possible for a subject to be mentally “fragmented” or “compartmentalized” such that relative to one fragment the subject has closed inquiry and believes p, while relative to a different fragment the subject continues to inquire and thus suspends judgment on p (2017: n. 8). A plausible interpretation of Friedman’s considered view is thus that belief descriptively closes inquiry within a fragment, yet it is psychologically possible but rationally incoherent for a subject to simultaneously believe and inquire relative to different fragments.
Berger (ms. b) develops this idea to defend an inquiry-based account of encroachment.
This idea could be developed in a subtly different way when combined with the view that simultaneously believing p and inquiring about whether p is rationally incoherent. (See n. 14 above.) This approach could appeal to Friedman’s “OIA” norm, which says “if one ought not both inquire into Q at t and believe pQ at t…and one ought to inquire into Q at t, then one ought not believe pQ at t” [where Q is a question, pQ is a complete answer to Q, and t denotes a particular time slice] (2019: 305). However, this approach faces the challenge of specifying the type of “ought” the consequent of OIA expresses. The first conjunct in OIA’s antecedent expresses a wide-scope coherence requirement not to simultaneously believe and inquire, while the second conjunct in the antecedent expresses a substantive requirement (e.g., a prudential or moral requirement) to inquire. Thus, it is not entirely clear whether the requirement not to believe in OIA’s consequent should be understood as a coherence requirement or a substantive requirement. The approach in the main text—on which believing psychologically entails closing inquiry—can avoid these difficulties by saying that the fact that someone ought to inquire immediately entails that they ought not to believe (without needing to appeal to coherence norms governing the combination of belief and inquiry-related states). (Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out this challenge.).
See Quanbeck and Worsnip (forthcoming) for one such non-encroachment-based account of how practical and epistemic considerations interact to determine what we all-things-considered ought to believe.
However, if Nelson (2010) is correct that there are no positive epistemic obligations, then believing is not epistemically required even when you have very strong evidence.
Even if all beliefs that wrong are epistemically irrational, given moral encroachment, their epistemic irrationality may be partly explained by the moral stakes.
Basu and Schroeder note that they themselves are divided over whether we can wrong others in virtue of not having certain beliefs about them (2019: n. 19). Nonetheless, I hope to show in this section that it’s plausible that suspending judging can wrong. See von Klemperer (forthcoming) for another recent defense of the claim that suspension of judgment can wrong.
While Buchak sometimes characterizes faith as involving a commitment to action (2012), Buchak elsewhere describes faith as involving a commitment to maintaining a belief even in the face of a certain amount of counterevidence (2017: 129–131; 2021). It is the latter characterization of faith as involving resilient, committal belief which I will assume here.
The same may be true of trust (Nguyen forthcoming).
While I find it especially plausible that losing faith or trust in someone by inquiring into their fidelity or trustworthiness can wrong them, perhaps when you never had faith in another person, continuing to have an IA and thus continuing to suspend judgment when you ought to cease inquiring and have faith in the other person can wrong them. Cf. Morton and Paul’s (2018) claim that we can wrong others by failing to believe in them.
There may also be other ways in which suspending judgment can wrong. For instance, it’s intuitively plausible that we can wrong others by keeping inquiry open too long before forming a belief. Suppose that in a variant of Wine Stain, you tell your spouse that you didn’t drink at the colloquium and that the colloquium speaker spilled the wine on your sleeve. If your spouse remains suspicious and continues to inquire into (and thus suspend judgment about) whether you drank at the colloquium despite your testimony, it’s plausible that your spouse thereby wrongs you.
Many other philosophers defend a similar view. For further discussion and numerous references, see Enoch and Spectre (2021).
Buchak’s original blame norm says, “Blame someone if and only if you believe (or know) that she transgressed, and blame her in proportion to the severity of the transgression” (2014: 299). However, this seems to express two distinct norms: one referencing belief, and one referencing knowledge. My preferred version of the subjective blame norm—stated in the main text—references rational belief rather than either knowledge or belief simpliciter. One might also supplement this blame norm by adding other necessary conditions for fitting blame (regarding blameworthiness, standing, etc.), but these details don’t matter for our purposes.
I will remain neutral on whether unfitting blame always wrongs or only sometimes wrongs (e.g., in cases of close interpersonal relationships).
Which of these specifications you prefer will depend on whether you accept an evidence-relative or fact-relative conception of rights (and wrongings corresponding to rights violations). Regarding doxastic wronging in particular, those who think that only false beliefs can wrong (such as Schroeder 2018, 2021) may prefer the objective/fact-relative specification of this claim, and those who think that true beliefs can also wrong (such as Basu 2019; Fabre 2022) may prefer the subjective/evidence-relative specification.
Cf. Preston-Roedder’s claim that we can wrong others by subjecting them to undeserved condemnation—i.e., by unfittingly blaming them (2013: 680–681).
The wrongness of the belief on which the blame is based might sometimes be derivative from an epistemic flaw the belief would have independently of the moral stakes. But this isn’t necessarily the case. According to proponents of moral encroachment, for instance, the moral stakes can make it such that a belief which would be epistemically justified in a low-stakes context is epistemically unjustified in a high-stakes context.
Bolinger interprets Buchak’s view as a version of moral encroachment on which morality affects the type of evidence on which certain beliefs should be based (2020: 17).
Buchak herself entertains (though does not outright endorse) the claim that beliefs partially constitute blame (2014: 308).
As Coates and Tognazzini observe in their Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on blame, even many philosophers who think that blame also involves an affective or conative component take belief to be one important component of blame (2018: Sect. 2).
This type of blame corresponds to “responsibility as attributability” (in contrast with “responsibility as accountability”).
This implication raises thorny questions about the relationship between the descriptive and evaluative content of our beliefs. But many of the paradigm cases of doxastic wronging that involve believing ill of others seem to contain negative evaluative content. Moreover, Buchak’s blame norm refers to “transgressions,” which I take to be a thick normative concept with an evaluative component. Believing that Jake stole your iPhone arguably involves believing that he committed a transgression (in the absence of exculpating factors or other considerations justifying theft) and thus having a belief with negative evaluative content.
I will remain neutral here on whether all cases of doxastic wronging essentially involve negative evaluative content. My argument here is consistent with accepting other types and other explanations of doxastic wronging.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rima Basu, Dominik Berger, Yifan Li, Genae Matthews, Ram Neta, Pavel Nitchovksi, Sarah Stroud, Leah Suffern, Zach Thornton, and Oliver Traldi for helpful comments and/or discussion. Special thanks to Alex Worsnip for providing detailed feedback on multiple drafts of this paper. Finally, thanks to an anonymous referee at Philosophical Studies for exceptionally helpful comments and suggestions.
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Quanbeck, Z. Belief, blame, and inquiry: a defense of doxastic wronging. Philos Stud 180, 2955–2975 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02012-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02012-7