Abstract
What, if anything, do we epistemically owe to each other? Various “traditional” views of epistemology might hold either that we don’t epistemically owe anything to each other, because “what we owe to each other” is the realm of the moral, or that what we epistemically owe to each other is just to be epistemically responsible agents. Basu (Philos Stud 176:915–931, 2019) has recently argued, against such views, that morality makes extra-epistemic demands upon what we should believe about one another. So, what we owe to each other is not just a matter of word and deed, but also of belief. And in fact, Basu argues, sometimes those moral demands require us to believe in ways that cut against orthodox epistemic norms. This paper has three aims. First, to offer two strategies for accommodating the kinds of cases Basu discusses while nonetheless holding that only epistemic normativity makes demands on belief. Second, to offer an alternative account of what we owe to each other that does not hold that morality demands that we sometimes believe against our evidence or in violation of epistemic norms. And third, to give a brief diagnosis of why it seems intuitive that morality makes extra-epistemic doxastic demands on us. Ultimately, I argue that what we epistemically owe to each other does not require us to violate orthodox, invariantist epistemic norms. Morality demands that we have a proper regard for others, not that we sometimes believe against our evidence.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Some (e.g., Gardiner 2018) talk about “orthodox” epistemic norms when discussing how to resist moral encroachment views. For Gardiner, this mostly means orthodox evidentialist (or ‘intellectualist’) norms. However, given that Basu (and others) try to make their encroachment views compatible with certain evidentialist principles, it is worth saying a bit more. I think the kind of “orthodox” epistemic norms we should try to hold onto are invariantist norms, that is, norms that persist across contextual changes; in particular, norms that persist in the face of moral changes to an agent’s context, and are resistant to the influence of “moral risks.” See Reed (2010) for a defense of what he calls stable invariantism; this is roughly sense of ‘invariantism’ I will have in mind.
Basu (2019: 926).
Basu (2019: 927).
Specifically, Basu writes: “Again, my hypothesis is that his relationship with Maria allows him to expect better of her and entails that she believe better of him and not immediately settle on the belief that he had a drink—even when the evidence strongly suggests that he did” (pp. 917–918).
Basu (2019: 916).
Basu (2019: 917).
Goldberg (2019: 2226).
Basu (2019: 919).
See Gardiner (2018) for a discussion of why beliefs based on such racial generalizations are (virtually) always epistemically deficient.
See Hieronymi (2006) for an influential argument that one can only believe, or at least only reason about what to believe, on the basis of “constitutive,” i.e., truth-related reasons.
As we will see below, Darwall (2006) also endorses the separation of the moral and the epistemic, in the form of a separation between the second-personal and the third-personal standpoints.
Presumably affective states also play a role in regard. Depending on one’s theory of affect or emotion, these states might be evaluative judgments or they might be a kind of perceptual state. While I think they can be incorporated into my notion of regard, I won’t here discuss them separately. I will simply assume that they fall under the heading of the ‘perceptual states’ that I will be discussing.
Some theorists hold that (at least some) perceptual states just are beliefs. This is a minority view, and I will simply be assuming here that it is false.
Smith (2005: 251–252).
Towards the end of the paper, I will suggest that this fact plays an important role in diagnosing the intuitiveness of the idea that morality makes demands upon belief.
Basu (2019: 916).
There are difficult and important questions about if and how statistical data or demographic generalizations can be used to justify beliefs or predictions about particular individuals or members of the relevant groups. E.g., see Gardiner (2018), who also engages with Basu. But addressing this issue more directly or fundamentally is beyond the scope of this paper. So I will here be assuming that, at least in principle, statistical data can justify beliefs about individuals, though these may not be ‘outright’ or ‘full’ beliefs.
See Gardiner (2018, Sect. 11.7) for a relevant discussion put in terms of how beliefs are connected with and integrated into an agent’s broader “understanding,” where this is what gives beliefs their moral properties.
Basu (2019: 919).
Gardiner (2018: 184).
It is, I think, an empirical and thus open question whether the epistemic flaws and errors that Gardiner discusses are in fact “ubiquitous” in the sense that we can assume that any immoral belief will exhibit at least one such flaw. I suspect that Gardiner’s strategy will need to be supplemented in order to account for certain kinds of immoral beliefs that are not based on statistical evidence or statistical reasoning. However, while it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue, I think there are various other ways in which immoral beliefs can be epistemically flawed beyond those that Gardiner discusses. I hope to return to this issue at a later time.
One might wonder, if I am drawing upon Gardiner here, why do we need my own account? It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer criticisms of Gardiner. However, I am here only appealing to one part of Gardiner’s account (the view that immoral beliefs are always epistemically deficient), and not her positive account of how beliefs come to have their moral properties. Further, Gardiner does not address the issue of how what we owe to each other might be non-doxastic, and so my account extends beyond hers.
As Basu suggests in a footnote (fn. 22), this might involve something like wokeness. So, both proper regard and being epistemically responsible likely involve being woke.
Basu (2019: 930).
Basu (2019: 925).
References
Basu, R. (2018a). Can beliefs wrong? Philosophical Topics, 46(1), 1–17.
Basu, R. (2018b). The wrongs of racist beliefs. Philosophical Studies, 176(9), 2497–2515.
Basu, R. (2019). What we epistemically owe to each other. Philosophical Studies, 176, 915–931.
Basu, R., & Schroeder, M. (2019). Doxastic wrongings. In K. Brian & M. Matthew (Eds.), Pragmatic encroachment in epistemology (pp. 181–205). Abingdon: Routledge.
Blackburn, S. (1996). Securing the notes: moral epistemology for the quasi-realist. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong & M. Timmons (Eds.), Moral knowledge?. Oxford: OUP.
Darwall, S. (2006). The second-person standpoint: morality, respect, and accountability. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Gardiner, G. (2018). Evidentialism and moral encroachment. In K. McCain (Ed.), Believing in accordance with the evidence. Berlin: Springer.
Goldberg, S. (2019). Against epistemic partiality in friendship: value-reflecting reasons. Philosophical Studies, 176, 2221–2242.
Hawley, K. (2014). Partiality and prejudice in trusting. Synthese, 191, 2029–2045.
Hieronymi, P. (2005). The wrong kind of reason. Journal of Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119420828.ch3.
Hieronymi, P. (2006). Controlling attitudes. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 87(1), 45–74.
Hieronymi, P. (2008). Responsibility for believing. Synthese, 161(3), 357–373.
Keller, S. (2004). Friendship and belief. Philosophical Papers, 33(3), 329–351.
Reed, B. (2010). A defense of stable invariantism. Noûs, 44(2), 224–244.
Stroud, S. (2006). Epistemic partiality in friendship. Ethics, 116(3), 498–524.
Smith, A. (2005). Responsibility for attitudes: activity and passivity in mental life. Ethics, 115(2), 236–271.
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
Osborne, R.C. “What do we epistemically owe to each other? A reply to Basu”. Philos Stud 178, 1005–1022 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01469-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01469-0