An Approach to Indirect Doxastic Responsibility

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-97
Author(s):  
Andrea Robitzsch
Keyword(s):  
Doxastic Responsibility

scholarly journals DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY, GUIDANCE CONTROL, AND OWNERSHIP OF BELIEF

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Carry Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Guidance Control ◽  
Doxastic Control ◽  
Doxastic Responsibility

ABSTRACTThe contemporary debate over responsibility for belief is divided over the issue of whether such responsibility requires doxastic control, and whether this control must be voluntary in nature. It has recently become popular to hold that responsibility for belief does not require voluntary doxastic control, or perhaps even any form of doxastic ‘control’ at all. However, Miriam McCormick has recently argued that doxastic responsibility does in fact require quasi-voluntary doxastic control: “guidance control,” a complex, compatibilist form of control. In this paper, I pursue a negative and a positive task. First, I argue that grounding doxastic responsibility in guidance control requires too much for agents to be the proper targets for attributions of doxastic responsibility. I will focus my criticisms on three cases in which McCormick's account gives the intuitively wrong verdict. Second, I develop a modified conception of McCormick's notion of “ownership of belief,” which I call Weak Doxastic Ownership. I employ this conception to argue that responsibility for belief is possible even in the absence of guidance control. In doing so, I argue that the notion of doxastic ownership can do important normative work in grounding responsibility for belief without being subsumed under or analyzed in terms of the notion of doxastic control.

Against Voluntarism about Doxastic Responsibility

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 33-51
Author(s):  
Stephen J. White ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Plausible Account ◽  
Doxastic Responsibility

According to the view Rik Peels defends in Responsible Belief (2017), one is responsible for believing something only if that belief was the result of choices one made voluntarily, and for which one may be held responsible. Here, I argue against this voluntarist account of doxastic responsibility and in favor of the rationalist position that a person is responsible for her beliefs insofar as they are under the influence of her reason. In particular, I argue that the latter yields a more plausible account of the conditions under which ignorance may serve as an excuse for wrongdoing.

On Doxastic Responsibility

1975 ◽  
pp. 229-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. T. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Doxastic Responsibility

Responsible Belief, Influence, and Control: Response to Stephen White

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Rik Peels ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Difference ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Reasons Responsiveness ◽  
Control Response ◽  
The Will ◽  
Doxastic Responsibility ◽  
Epistemic Obligation ◽  
And Control ◽  
Epistemic Obligations

I reply to Stephen White’s criticisms of my Influence View. First, I reply to his worry that my Appraisal Account of responsibility cannot make sense of doxastic responsibility. Then, I discuss in detail his stolen painting case and argue that the Influence View can make sense of it. Next, I discuss various other cases that are meant to show that acting in accordance with one’s beliefs does not render one blameless. I argue that in these cases, even though the subjects act in accordance with their own beliefs, there is plenty of reason to think that at some previous point in time they violated certain intellectual obligations that led to them to hold those beliefs. Even on a radically subjective account of responsibility, then, we can perfectly well hold these people responsible for their beliefs. I go on to defend the idea that reasons-responsiveness will not do for doxastic responsibility: we need influence on our beliefs as well. Thus, doxastic compatibilism or rationalism is untenable. Subsequently, I defend my earlier claim that there is a crucial difference between beliefs and actions in that actions are often subject to the will, whereas beliefs are not. Finally, I respond to White’s worry that if one has a subjective epistemic obligation just because one believes that certain actions are epistemically bad, some people will have a wide range of absurd epistemic obligations, such as the obligation to listen to Infowars.

INTELLECTUAL AGENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR BELIEF IN FREE-SPEECH THEORY

Legal Theory ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Robert Mark Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Policy ◽  
Doxastic Responsibility ◽  
Intellectual Responsibility

The idea that human beings are intellectually self-governing plays two roles in free-speech theory. First, this idea is frequently called upon as part of the justification for free speech. Second, it plays a role in guiding the translation of free-speech principles into legal policy by underwriting the ascriptive framework through which responsibility for certain kinds of speech harms can be ascribed. After mapping out these relations, I ask what becomes of them once we acknowledge certain very general and profound limitations in people's capacity for intellectual self-governance. I argue that acknowledging these limitations drastically undermines the putative justifications for free speech of the type that I identify in the first part of the paper. I then show how we can reformulate an “ascriptive” account of intellectual and doxastic responsibility on which we may still be held responsible for what we think or believe even though we lack agent-causal capacities in our thinking and believing. Then, in light of this ascriptive account of intellectual responsibility, I show how the key idea—that people “have minds of their own”—can (and should) still play a significant role in guiding the legislative outworkings of free speech.

Does doxastic responsibility entail the ability to believe otherwise?

Synthese ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 190 (17) ◽  
pp. 3651-3669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik Peels
Keyword(s):  
Doxastic Responsibility

Scepticism, perceptual knowledge, and doxastic responsibility

Synthese ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 189 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Millar
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Doxastic Responsibility
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