Why doxastic responsibility is not based on direct doxastic control

Synthese ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 194 (8) ◽  
pp. 2811-2842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Doxastic Control ◽  
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.

Permissive Situations and Direct Doxastic Control

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blake Roeber
Keyword(s):  
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

Deontology and doxastic control

Synthese ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 191 (12) ◽  
pp. 2835-2847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Tebben
Keyword(s):  
Doxastic Control

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.

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