Epistemic Blame and the Normativity of Evidence

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.

Prejudice

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense defective? No doubt, many of them will be false. Some will also be harmful. But many philosophers further argue that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by culpably violating our epistemic responsibilities. Moreover, it is assumed that we are morally responsible for the harms that our prejudiced beliefs cause only because, in forming these beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. This book argues that these common convictions are false and misguided. It shows in detail that there can be plenty of epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief. Moreover, it argues that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to give content to ethical responsibilities. In particular, this would unreasonably burden victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, this book develops an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. In support of this view, the book offers a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, it develops a systematic platform for “non-ideal epistemology” which would apply also to a wide range of other socio-epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more.

Shared Epistemic Responsibility

It is widely acknowledged that individual moral obligations and responsibility entail shared (or joint) moral obligations and responsibility. However, whether individual epistemic obligations and responsibility entail shared epistemic obligations and responsibility is rarely discussed. Instead, most discussions of doxastic responsibility focus on individuals considered in isolation. In contrast to this standard approach, I maintain that focusing exclusively on individuals in isolation leads to a profoundly incomplete picture of what we're epistemically obligated to do and when we deserve epistemic blame. First, I argue that we have epistemic obligations to perform actions of the sort that can be performed in conjunction with other people, and that consequently, we are often jointly blameworthy when we violate shared epistemic obligations. Second, I argue that shared responsibility is especially important to doxastic responsibility thanks to the fact that we don't have the same kind of direct control over our beliefs that we have over our actions. In particular, I argue that there are many cases in which a particular individual who holds some problematic belief only deserves epistemic blame in virtue of belonging to a group all the members of which are jointly blameworthy for violating some shared epistemic obligation.

Is Epistemic Blame Distinct from Moral Blame?

In contemporary epistemology, recent attempts have been made to resist the notion of epistemic blame. This view, which I refer to as ‘epistemic blame skepticism,’ seems to challenge the notion of epistemic blame by reducing apparent cases of the phenomenon to examples of moral or practical blame. The purpose of this paper is to defend the notion of epistemic blame against a reductionist objection to epistemic blame, offered by Trent Dougherty in “Reducing Responsibility.” This paper will object to Dougherty’s position by examining an account in favour of epistemic blame and demonstrate concerns over the reductionist methodology employed by Dougherty to argue for his sceptical position.

The “Consequentialism” in “Epistemic Consequentialism”

Driver compares ethical and epistemic consequentialism in order to get clearer on the latter’s view on the relationship between the epistemic right and the epistemic good. She notes that the process reliabilist is a kind of epistemic consequentialist that is able to avoid a number of objections to consequentialism adapted from the ethical literature. It does this by evaluating beliefs indirectly with reference to processes, and then processes directly with reference to the beliefs they tend to produce. But she worries that such a picture may be unmotivated: why think that beliefs are to be evaluated in one way, while processes are to be evaluated in another? One answer lies in a sophisticated form of consequentialism on which the good of true belief is taken to be a regulative aim, and where that notion of goodness is separate from issues concerning epistemic blame.

An Evaluative Norm for Belief

It is often argued that belief is partly constituted by a norm of truth. Most recent discussions have assumed that the norm is deontic concerning what may or ought to be believed. I criticize two proposals, one canvassed by Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi, and the other defended by Daniel Whiting. Instead, I argue in favour of an evaluative norm, according to which we would do well to believe the truth. I show that an evaluative norm fares better than its deontic competitors with respect to the demandingness of truth, the aim of truth, and epistemic blame.