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A social solution to the puzzle of doxastic responsibility: a two-dimensional account of responsibility for belief

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Abstract

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend (and indeed, typically must depend) on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence.

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Notes

  1. McHugh (2017) also discusses a version of the same puzzle, which he calls “the problem of epistemic responsibility,” though his version involves four claims, and depends explicitly on a comparison with the kind of control we have over our (bodily) actions. This added comparative claim is helpful, since the puzzle arguably arises partly from thinking that responsibility for belief must share certain features of responsibility for action. However, I will not here discuss responsibility for action, and will focus on the simpler version of the puzzle.

  2. The puzzle is often traced back to The Anti-Voluntarism Argument, usually attributed to Alston (1988), but has been given in various forms. Ryan (2003) gives a version of the argument in terms of “epistemic obligations” requiring voluntary control, which is effectively Alston’s original version. McCormick (2015) gives a modified version in terms of “attributions of responsibility for beliefs” instead of “epistemic obligations.” I am interested here in the issue of responsibility for belief rather than the notion or possibility of epistemic obligations, so I will be concerned with McCormick’s version of the argument. It is an open question, of course, whether the very notion of responsibility for belief requires the notion of epistemic or doxastic obligations.

  3. See Levy (2007, 2011), and arguably also Alston (1988). McCormick (2015) argues that Hieronymi (2008) can and perhaps should be read as giving a version of this answer as well.

  4. See Feldman (2000, 2001), Heller (2000), Smith (2005, 2008), Chrisman (2008, 2018), Hieronymi (2006, 2008), Weatherson (2008), and McHugh (2014, 2017).

  5. See Ginet (2001), Ryan (2003), Steup (2000), and arguably McCormick (2011, 2015).

  6. However, some theorists have taken this route: Chuard and Southwood (2009), Chrisman (2008, 2018), Feldman (2000, 2008), Kornblith (1983, 2001), and Owens (2000) all seem to go this way. Though one wrinkle here is that Chrisman, Feldman, and Kornblith are seeking to give accounts of epistemic obligations or doxastic oughts, and Chuard & Southwood of epistemic norms and demands, where all of them seem to hold that the central lesson is about epistemic normativity generally. So none of their accounts are explicitly or specifically ones of doxastic responsibility. Of course, it is perhaps only a short step from obligations, oughts, and norms to responsibility—but it is one in need of substantial elucidation.

  7. E.g., see Boyle (2009) for intrinsic control, Smith (2005) for rational control, Hieronymi (2006, 2008) for evaluative control, Rettler (2018) for reflective control, McHugh (2017) for attitudinal control, McCormick (2011, 2015) for guidance control, Moran (2001) for deliberative control, and Peels (2017) for a rejection of doxastic control in general and an argument instead for doxastic influence. Meanwhile, Levy (2007) holds that dual control is required for doxastic responsibility, and so no non-voluntary or compatibilist form with suffice. Ryan (2003), Heller (2000), and Weatherson (2008) also discuss different forms of doxastic control, but don’t name them. There is also disagreement in the literature about whether ‘non-voluntary control’ is conceptually possible. E.g., see McHugh (2017).

  8. See Smith (2015b) for a discussion of answerability in relation to the notion of ‘intelligibility’.

  9. Angela Smith (2005) has also argued for an answerability view of attitudinal responsibility. I will discuss aspects of Smith’s view at greater length below.

  10. The degree to which this simply marks a terminological preference is a sticky issue. I’m inclined to think there is a substantial disagreement to be had here that goes beyond terminology. I will address this more below.

  11. I’ll note that the account I give in this paper is intended as an account of responsibility for belief in the sense of full belief, rather than partial belief or rational credence. It seems plausible that we are responsible for our partial beliefs and credences as well, and I suspect that my account could be extended, mutatis mutandis, to these attitudes as well. But I will not argue for that extension here.

  12. E.g., see Watson (1996) and Shoemaker (2011).

  13. E.g., see McHugh (2013, 2017).

  14. E.g., see Hieronymi (2008), McCormick (2011, 2015), Peels (2017) and Tollefsen (2017). See Strawson (1962) for the seminal discussion of the reactive attitudes.

  15. See Smith (2012, 2015b) for arguments to this effect.

  16. I take this claim to apply to doxastic attitudes generally, not only beliefs. So one is answerable for one’s beliefs, one’s states of disbelief, and one’s suspensions of belief or judgment. It may also be that one can be answerable for absences of doxastic attitudes, e.g., where one in a sense should believe something that one has no attitude about. For the most part, I will speak in terms of ‘belief’, but I mean this to apply to the doxastic attitudes in general.

  17. In this sense, the demand for reasons concerns doxastic justification and not merely propositional justification.

  18. As Hieronymi (2008: p. 365) argues, “believing brings with it its own distinctive form of answerability. In believing, you are answerable for reasons that you take to show the belief true.”.

  19. See Nolfi (2015) for a recent discussion and defense of normativism. See also McHugh & Whiting (2014) for a general discussion of the view.

  20. For example, Wedgwood (2002) holds that the aim of belief is truth, which in turn gives rise to a standard of correctness and a norm of rationality for the practice of reasoning. Hieronymi (2006, 2008) holds that belief is subject to a truth norm in the sense that the kinds of reasons that uniquely rationalize belief are “constitutive reasons,” that is, ones that bear on the truth of the belief’s content.

  21. See Williams (1973) for an influential early version of the claim that belief aims at truth. See also Whiting (2012) on the idea that belief aims at truth. See McHugh (2011) for a defense of the claim that belief aims at knowledge, not merely truth. See also Wedgwood (2002).

  22. See Shah and Velleman (2005) for a discussion of ‘transparency’ in doxastic deliberation.

  23. E.g., see Shah and Velleman (2005).

  24. E.g., see Hieronymi (2005, 2006).

  25. This is very close to Hieronymi’s (2006, 2008) view, although she does not put it in terms of a ‘norm of belief’ or in terms of answerability being partly grounded in such a norm. Rather, she argues that truth-related reasons are “constitutive reasons” for belief, while non-truth-related ones are “extrinsic reasons.”.

  26. E.g., see McHugh (2013, 2017) and McCormick (2011, 2015). Some reasons-responsiveness or guidance control views regard mechanism ownership as a necessary condition on doxastic responsibility and/or doxastic control. In Osborne (2019), I argue that there are important problems with McCormick’s (2015) account of ownership.

  27. Smith (2005) discusses this general class of cases and calls them “implantation cases.”.

  28. See my discussion of this kind of case in Osborne (2019) for further details.

  29. Smith (2015a: p. 103) makes essentially this point about answerability with respect to moral responsibility. She argues only that it must be “intelligible” to ask an agent to “answer for” her action or attitude, but allows that “there may not in fact be anyone in a position to legitimately make such a request of the agent in the circumstances”.

  30. It’s unclear whether this explanation can also work in the case of moral duties to oneself. There is a question here about what separate moral duties to oneself from norms of prudence. I’ll simply need to bracket this issue here.

  31. Nevertheless, I think it is difficult to fully dispense with the interpersonal flavor of answerability itself. This is because, when we consider whether an agent is (appropriately or rationally) answerable to some demand, we typically imagine that demand as embodied in the demands of a particular agent, not merely an impersonal norm. This is likely because we take answerability (even in the individual dimension) to be importantly connected with accountability, that is, with the notion of being accountable to the demands of other agents.

  32. This is similar to, and arguably a version of, one of Clifford’s (1877/1999) original arguments for an “ethics of belief” in his seminal essay of that title. Clifford argues that there is an ethical norm of responsible belief because when we believe irresponsibly, we not only risk poisoning the well of shared knowledge and evidence, but we also risk doing serious and sometimes irreversible practical harm to others.

  33. See Goldberg (2017, 2018) for a helpful and well-developed account of the relation between (general) social expectations and epistemic normativity. Goldberg is mostly concerned with epistemic justification rather than responsibility, but his account of expectations, social practices, and the conditions for the normative legitimacy of both is instructive.

  34. See Chrisman (2008) for a discussion of a similar idea in context of epistemic normativity and the doxastic ‘ought’.

  35. This is effectively what Reed (2018) calls the normative persistence of social practices.

  36. The sense in which we can make legitimate demands upon one another merely in virtue of our common sociality or our shared humanity is likely connected with the most fundamental moral norms or values that bind us together, such as, e.g., the moral obligation to respect the intrinsic rational dignity of others. Consideration of the relation between epistemic normativity and fundamental moral normativity is something I hope to return to elsewhere.

  37. Hieronymi (2008: p. 358).

  38. Hieronymi (2008: p. 372).

  39. For example, see Basu (2018, Forthcoming), Basu & Schroeder (2019), and Marušić & White (2018).

  40. Namely, Chuard and Southwood (2009), Chrisman (2008), Feldman (2000, 2008), and Kornblith (1983, 2001). Though, again, this is a tricky issue, because none of these theorists are explicitly giving accounts of doxastic or epistemic responsibility. So there is a sense in which Peels’ criticism perhaps partly misses the mark.

  41. Again, see Fricker (2016) on the notion of “no-fault epistemic responsibility”, which is relevant here. See also Smith (2015b) for an analogous argument regarding moral responsibility and blame. See also Calhoun (1989).

  42. See Westlund (2018) for a relevant discussion of answerability without blame.

  43. See Hieronymi, “I’ll Bet You Think This Blame is About You” (unpublished/in-progress manuscript).

  44. It is worth noting that there is a deep, substantive disagreement at issue here: roughly, the disagreement between Strawsonians (like Peels) and Scanlonians (like Smith, myself, and perhaps also Hieronymi). This is a disagreement about whether characterizing the basic conditions on (moral or epistemic) responsibility constitutively involves giving conditions on blame and praise. Strawsonians say ‘yes’ and Scanlonians say ‘no’. It is beyond the scope of this paper to weigh in on this disagreement to any greater degree. But it is important to note that Peels’ objection hangs on this dispute about the basic structure of responsibility.

  45. Smith (2015b, p. 113).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who talked with me about or gave me feedback on this paper, including Jennifer Lackey, Baron Reed, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Miriam McCormick, Rachel Zuckert, Lauren Leydon-Hardy, Whitney Lilly, and Elissa Jeffers. Special thanks to Sandy Goldberg for reading and giving invaluable feedback on many, many drafts. Thanks also to two anonymous journal referees for giving multiple rounds of very helpful comments that greatly improved the paper.

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    Robert Carry Osborne

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Osborne, R.C. A social solution to the puzzle of doxastic responsibility: a two-dimensional account of responsibility for belief. Synthese 198, 9335–9356 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02637-9

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