Why Responsible Belief Is Permissible Belief

Abstract

It is widely thought that we are at least sometimes responsible for our doxastic attitudes. We can be praised, blamed, or neutrally appraised for our beliefs, disbeliefs, and withholdings. However, many epistemologists have also pointed out that, despite the fact that we are responsible both for certain actions and for certain beliefs, there are crucial differences between responsibility for beliefs and responsibility for actions. In this paper we discuss one such alleged difference, namely that whereas in many circumstances two or more different actions are equally permissible, our evidence is always such that there is a unique doxastic attitude that we are epistemically obliged to have given that evidence. We call this thesis the Uniqueness Thesis (UT) and its denial the Permissibility Thesis (PT). Like many authors writing on this topic, we will interpret the issue deontologically: for a belief to be obliged or permitted is for it to be responsible or blameless. Thus, we do not understand the issue merely evaluatively, but deontologically: the question is not whether doxastic attitudes are obliged or rather merely permitted if they are to be ideally rational or ideally reasonable. The central aim of this paper is to defend PT by rebutting certain arguments against PT and by providing some considerations that favour PT over UT. If we succeed, we have shown that there is good reason to think that responsible or blameless belief is permissible rather than obliged belief. Also, if we succeed, we have shown that the gap between the way we should normatively assess belief and action may not be as wide as has been thought. This paper is structured as follows. First, we distinguish between several varieties of UT and PT and select those that we deem relevant to our discussion (§ 2). Next, we discuss a couple of objections to PT and argue that they fail (§ 3). However, even if we are correct that they do not succeed, it does not follow that UT is false. Therefore, we also discuss two arguments for PT (§ 4) and provide two motivations for PT by showing that it is entailed by two views that are quite popular among theorists working on doxastic responsibility (§ 5). Even if our strategy does not establish or demonstrate the truth of PT, it will provide enough reasons to prefer PT over UT.