Believing the wrong thing can have drastic consequences. The question of when a person is not only ill-guided, but genuinely at fault for holding a particular belief goes to the root of our understanding of such notions as criminal negligence and moral responsibility. This book explores the conditions under which someone may be deemed blameworthy for holding a particular belief, drawing on contemporary epistemology, ethics and legal scholarship.
There must be some connection between our deontic notions, rightness and wrongness, and our responsibility notions, praise- and blameworthiness. Yet traditional approaches to each set of concepts tend to take the other set for granted. This book takes an integrated approach to these questions, drawing on both ethics and responsibility theory, and thereby illuminating both sets of concepts. Elinor Mason describes this as 'normative responsibility theory': the primary aim is not to give an account of the conditions of agency, but to give an account of what sort of wrong action makes blame fitting. She presents a pluralistic view of both obligation and blameworthiness, identifying three different ways to be blameworthy, corresponding to different ways of acting wrongly. First, ordinary blameworthiness is essentially connected to subjective wrongness, to acting wrongly by one's own lights. Subjective obligation, and ordinary blame, apply only to those who are within our moral community, who understand and share our value system. By contrast, detached blame can apply even when the agent is outside our moral community, and has no sense that her act is morally wrong. In detached blame, the blame rather than the blameworthiness is fundamental. Finally, agents can take responsibility for some inadvertent wrongs, and thus become responsible. This third sort of blameworthiness, 'extended blameworthiness', applies when the agent understands the objective wrongness of her act, but has no bad will. In such cases, the social context may be such that the agent should take responsibility, and accept ordinary blame from the wronged party.
This book develops and defends a theory of responsible belief. The author argues that we lack control over our beliefs, but that we can nonetheless influence them. It is because we have intellectual obligations to influence our beliefs that we are responsible for them.
Epistemic Blame is the first book-length philosophical examination of our practice of criticizing one another for epistemic failings. People clearly evaluate and critique one another for forming unjustified beliefs, harbouring biases, and pursuing faulty methods of inquiry. But what is the nature of this criticism? Does it ever amount to a kind of blame? And should we blame one another for epistemic failings? Through careful analysis of the concept of blame, and the nature of epistemic normativity, this book argues that there are competing sources of pressure inherent in the increasingly prominent notion of "epistemic blame". The more genuinely blame-like a response is, the less fitting in the epistemic domain it seems; but the more fitting in the epistemic domain a response is, the less genuinely blame-like it seems. These competing sources of pressure comprise a puzzle about epistemic blame. The most promising resolution of this puzzle lies in the interpersonal side of epistemic normativity. Drawing on work by T. M. Scanlon, R. J. Wallace, and others, Cameron Boult argues that members of epistemic communities stand in "epistemic relationships", and epistemic blame just is a way of modifying these relationships. By thinking of epistemic blame as a distinctive kind of relationship modification, we locate a response that is both robustly blame-like, and distinctly epistemic. The result is a ground-breaking new theory of epistemic blame, the relationship-based account. With a solution to the puzzle of epistemic blame in hand, a new project for social epistemology comes into view: the ethics of epistemic blame. Boult demonstrates the power of the relationship-based account to contribute to this project, develops a systematic analysis of standing to epistemically blame, and defends the value of epistemic blame in our social and political lives. He shows that epistemic relationships can also be used to illuminate foundational questions about epistemic normativity, responsibility for our beliefs and assertions, and a wide range of epistemic harms, such as epistemic exploitation and gaslighting. Throughout the investigation, a more structured and precise understanding of the parallels and points of interaction between the epistemic and practical domains emerges.
What is it to blame someone, and when are would-be blamers in a position to do so? What function does blame serve in our lives, and is it a valuable way of relating to one another? The essays in this volume explore answers to these and related questions.
There have been many books over the past decade, including outstanding collections of essays, on the topic of the ethical virtues and virtue-theoretic approaches in ethics. But the professional journals of philosophy have only recently seen a strong and growing interest in the intellectual virtues and in the development of virtue-theoretic approaches in epistemology. There have been four single-authored book length treatments of issues of virtue epistemology over the last seven years, beginning with Ernest Sosa's Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge, 1991), and extending to Linda Zabzebski's Virtue of the Mind (Cambridge, 1996). Weighing in with Jonathan Kvanvig's The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind (1992), and James Montmarquet's Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (1993), Rowman & Littlefield has had a particularly strong interest in the direction and growth of the field. To date, there has been no collection of articles directly devoted to the growing debate over the possibility and potential of a virtue epistemology. This volume exists in the belief that there is now a timely opportunity to gather together the best contributions of the influential authors working in this growing area of epistemological research, and to create a collection of essays as a useful course text and research source. Several of the articles included in the volume are previously unpublished. Several essays discuss the range and general approach of virtue theory in comparison with other general accounts. What advantages are supposed to accrue from a virtue-based account in epistemology, in handling well-known problems such as "Gettier," and "Evil-Genie"-type problems? Can reliabilist virtue epistemology handle skeptical challenges more satisfactorily than non-virtue-centered forms of epistemic reliabilism? Others provide a needed discussion of relevant analogies and disanalogies between ethical and epistemic evaluation. The readings all contribute
Blame is an unpopular & neglected notion that goes against the grain of a therapeutically-orientated culture & has received relatively little philosophical attention. George Sher discusses questions about the nature, normative status & the relation to character of blame, arguing that it is inseparable from morality itself.
Belief is a fundamental concept within many branches of contemporary philosophy and an important subject in its own right. This volume comprises 11 original essays on belief written by a range of the best authors in the field.
Epistemic norms play an increasingly important role in current debates in epistemology and beyond. In this volume a team of established and emerging scholars presents new work on the key debates. They consider what epistemic requirements constrain appropriate belief, assertion, and action, and explore the interconnections between these standards.
This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief, the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity, responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and rationality of other mental states—especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies, decisions, and emotions. These essays illustrate how we might approach an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also more generally on debates about responsibility and rationality, as well as on normative questions concerning other mental states or attitudes. The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology.
