Epistemic agency

Abstract

Similarities to action suggest that believing is an exercise of agency. But it has proven difficult to specify precisely where and how agency is involved in believing. And the relevant similarities seem to be present in phenomena where there is no question of agency at all. A fan of epistemic agency might look for it in three places. First, she might hold that believing something is itself an active phenomenon. This faces the difficulty that on standard views beliefs are states not actions or activities, but recent theorists have challenged this traditional metaphysical framework. Second, she might look for agency in how a person makes up and changes her mind. One venerable view is that judging or inferring is a mental act that generates or yields belief. But most also hold that we cannot judge or infer something at will, at least not in the way that we can raise an arm or blink an eye at will, and this difference seems to undercut the idea that inference can explain the similarities between action and belief. Finally, a fan of epistemic agency might look for it in the epistemic activities that precede judgment and inference. All sides can agree that investigating something is an activity or an action, though they should also agree that investigating whether, say, the cat is on the mat is one thing and believing that the cat is on the mat is another. But the impact of such activities on believing may be too indirect to account for the similarities between believing and acting. These similarities include the following: there are things a person ought to believe just as there are things she ought to do; people can be assessed based on what they believe just as much as on what they do; and people usually know what they believe without having to rely on evidence, just as they usually know what they are doing without having to rely on evidence. These similarities have led some to claim that believing is fundamentally normative in a way that can be vindicated only if believing is an exercise of agency. In this entry I consider these three approaches to understanding epistemic agency and briefly survey the ways that acting and believing are similar.