Abstract
It is widely held that our beliefs can be epistemically faultless despite being morally flawed. Theories of moral encroachment challenge this, holding that moral considerations bear on the epistemic status of our attitudes. According to attitude-based theories of moral encroachment, morality encroaches upon the epistemic standing of our attitudes on the grounds that we can morally injure others with our epistemic practices. In this paper, I aim to show that current attitude-based theories have asymmetric mechanisms: moral features only make it harder for attitudes to secure epistemic merits. I argue that, if attitudes can incur moral injury, failure to form attitudes can too. To make sense of this, I contend, attitude-based accounts require symmetric mechanisms, allowing that moral considerations make it both harder and easier for attitudes to attain epistemic merits. I maintain that, once we recognize this, attitude-based encroachment views must soon concede that they sometimes demand we believe against the evidence.
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Notes
I use “morally injure” to include both risking harm and wronging, as some attitude-based accounts appeal to risk of harm as the basis of moral encroachment while others appeal to wronging. I elucidate this further in section III.
I use “epistemic merit” as shorthand for the relevant positive epistemic status of belief, be that counting as justified, rational, warranted, or knowledge.
Kelp (Manuscript) takes up a similar project for pragmatic encroachment—the view that knowledge partially depends on practical factors. In particular, he assumes that pragmatic encroachment is true, and offers an account of what the best version of pragmatic encroachment looks like. His project is importantly different than mine in that he focuses on “reasoning-based” accounts of pragmatic encroachment, while I focus on “attitude-based” accounts of moral encroachment. As such, we should not expect that the account of pragmatic encroachment he offers will necessarily generate a demand to believe against the evidence (for detail on the distinction between reasoning-based and attitude-based accounts, and on how this distinction might bear on the demand to believe against the evidence, see footnote 16). Further exploration of the relation between Kelp’s picture of pragmatic encroachment and my project is warranted, but outside the scope of this paper. Many thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the relevance of Kelp (Manuscript).
Bolinger (2020) names this the “no conflicts thesis,” and identifies that it underlies most all moral encroachment theories. As Bolinger notes, Fritz (2017) departs from other moral encroachers in this respect, instead seeking to motivate moral encroachment by appealing to a strategy closer to that which is sometimes used in pragmatic encroachment (as in Fantl and McGrath (2002, 2009).
One might be curious about the extent to which moral encroachment aligns with our actual epistemic practices. Cusimano and Lombrozo (2021) explore this, maintaining that the thesis of moral encroachment is supported by intuitions in folk ethics of belief. In particular, they document ways in which the moral value of belief does indeed affect the evidential threshold required for an epistemic agent to believe in practice.
These questions are often not pulled apart in the moral encroachment literature—some encroachers take stances on these questions only implicitly, and others offer accounts of encroachment that leave these questions entirely unanswered. See Bolinger (2020) for a robust catalogue and analysis of the questions, or, “choice points” that yield distinct varieties of moral encroachment.
It remains to be seen whether there are other viable candidate mechanisms by which moral encroachment might occur.
Only a handful of philosophers suggest in passing that it might be appealing to have an account of encroachment with the explanatory power to epistemically critique morally faulty lack of belief (see Basu (2019b), Crewe and Ichikawa (2021), and Gardiner (Manuscript)). They do not, however, take up the project of building such encroachment accounts themselves.
In fact, without seeking to capture the asymmetry present in moral encroachment mechanisms, Bolinger’s (2020) gloss on moral encroachment theories reflects this one-sidedness. She maintains that moral encroachment proponents hold that “moral norms explain why the range of epistemically permissible attitudes is narrower in some the cases of interest.” Moral encroachment advocates argue that the relevant moral reasons “operate to undermine the [relevant] positive epistemic status” (Bolinger, 2020, p. 12).
Importantly, in the literature, when attitude-based encroachers hold that Esther morally injures (risks harm upon or wrongs) Franklin in believing “Franklin is staff,” they make the assumption that Esther’s belief is on the basis of Franklin’s blackness. When I maintain that, if Esther morally injures Franklin in believing, then Esther morally injures Franklin in suspending, I retain the literature’s assumption that Esther’s epistemic state is because of Franklin’s blackness. This is to say: if Esther morally injures Franklin in believing he is staff because of his blackness, then Esther would by the same token morally injure Franklin in suspending on whether he is staff because of his blackness. In this way, I do not speak to cases in which Esther’s suspension has nothing to do with identity prejudice. Note, however, that even if we do stipulate that identity prejudice doesn’t impact Esther’s epistemic state, our intuitions do not undermine my symmetry thesis – if Esther doesn’t morally injure Franklin when her suspension on whether Franklin is staff has nothing to do with prejudice, in parallel, it is intuitive that Esther doesn’t morally injure Franklin when her belief that Franklin is staff has nothing to do with prejudice.
This example parallels important features of Wine Spill, a paradigmatic example used to argue for attitude-wrong encroachment, while forgoing Wine Spill’s more disputed components. In Wine Spill, a recovering alcoholic comes home to his wife with wine on his sleeve despite successfully remaining sober. Basu & Schroeder hold that the wife wrongs her husband in believing he relapsed (Basu & Schroeder 2018, pp.182–185). One might disagree that the wife wrongs her husband in believing he drank: as the spouse of an alcoholic, we might think so believing is a way of promoting her own safety; or we might recognize so believing as an act of care that could allow her to help her husband. Alternately, in Mugging, (again, if we grant the idea that beliefs can wrong) it is intuitively less controversial that Elina wrongs Nikki in believing she was not mugged despite Nikki saying that she was mugged. Unlike Wine Spill, Elina derives no potential protection or safety from doubting that Nikki was mugged, nor does she stand to benefit Nikki in so doubting. Many thanks to two anonymous reviewers for pointing out these controversial features of Wine Spill and suggesting that I employ a parallel example absent these features.
One might wonder: are all cases in which attitude-based encroachment insists we believe against the evidence ones that involve “contaminated evidence” – evidence that reflects racism, sexism, etc. (Goldberg, 2022, p. 396)? While many cases involve contaminated evidence (such as Cosmos Club), not all do. To see this, consider Mugging. Attitude-based encroachment insists that Elina believe against the evidence that “Nikki was mugged”. Elina fails to believe that Nikki was mugged because, while Nikki says her bag and car were stolen and that her arm was bruised, Elina sees Nikki holding a bag identical to her old one, sees a car identical to her old one in their driveway, and sees no bruising on Nikki’s arm. This evidence has nothing to do with racism, sexism, etc. Or, consider Wine Spill: attitude-based encroachment demands that the wife believe against the evidence that “my husband remained sober.” The wife fails to believe that her husband stayed sober because he’s a recovering alcoholic and there’s a wine stain on his arm. Once more, this evidence has nothing to do with racism, sexism, etc.
Importantly, I am unpacking the stance that attitude-wrong encroachers would have to take given their commitments. Attitude-wrong encroachers seem to implicitly endorse that wronging is always impermissible, indeed, it is forbidden. It is worthy of note that there is precedent in ethics and moral theory for challenging this claim. On a standard view of rights, one wrongs another when and only when one violates another’s claim right and does something impermissible (Anscombe, 1990, p. 152; Feinberg 1987, p. 34; Owens 2012, p. 46; Thompson 2004, p. 334; Thomson 1990, p. 122). On accounts of others who challenge this standard view, one’s violating another’s rights is not necessary for wronging her – one can wrong another in infringing her rights and doing something that is permissible (Kamm, 2008, p. 241; Kamm 2015, pp. 86–87; Cornell 2015; Driver, 2017, p. 208.) What an attitude-wrong account would look like were it to adopt the non-standard view on which wronging is sometimes permissible warrants further exploration.
Nonetheless, there are some who reject this standard assumption. Hughes (2019, 2021), for instance, rejects the idea that the existence of epistemic dilemmas should only be accepted as a last resort. It is not clear, the thought goes, that recognizing dilemmas would require us to give up principles that we have good reason to keep – principles that are motivated independently of rejecting dilemmas. Further, he takes it that accepting epistemic dilemmas allows us to make sense of a handful of epistemological puzzles. While I will refrain from entering the debate on whether or not we should accept epistemic dilemmas here, it is helpful to note that there is precedent for accepting epistemic dilemmas, were attitude-based encroachers to take this path. Many thanks to an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this relevant debate in the literature.
Do all accounts of moral encroachment sometimes demand we believe against the evidence? Reasoning-based accounts are a sub-species of encroachment views that differ from attitude-based views. On reasoning-based accounts, encroachment falls out of the relationship between knowledge and reasons for action (Fantl & McGrath, 2002, 2009; Fritz, 2017; McGrath, 2018). The epistemic appropriateness of a doxastic attitude hinges on whether the relevant proposition is epistemically appropriate to use in reasoning, and moral stakes can impact epistemic appropriateness of use in reasoning. Unlike attitude-based models, reasoning-based models locate the relevant risk of harm or wrong not in the attitude, but instead in the pertinent action. As reasoning-based theories are shaped differently from attitude-based theories in this way, it is not clear whether they sometimes insist we believe against the evidence–this question warrants further exploration.
E.g. Littlejohn (2012), Nelson (2010), and Wrenn (2007). Nelson (2010), for instance, argues that it’s implausible to demand belief in all of what the evidence supports – the evidence supports a lot, and we’re epistemically finite agents. Different epistemologies offer distinct views of what it is to be critiquable in believing: believing falsely, believing on insufficient evidence, believing truly out of luck, believing unwarrantedly, believing inaptly, etc. Across these views, beliefs are thought to be sometimes forbidden when they are faulty: when one’s belief falls sufficiently short by the relevant epistemic metric, one should not believe in this way. Rarely are epistemic agents thought to be critiquable for failures to believe (notable exceptions to this view are Ichikawa, (2022) and Simion (Forthcoming), who argue for positive epistemic duties).
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Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Endre Begby, Matt McGrath, and Ernie Sosa, whose mentorship and guidance have improved most every aspect of this paper. For further helpful feedback, many thanks to Jordan Bridges, Elisabeth Camp, Frederick Choo, Tez Clark, Mike Deigan, Carolina Flores, Danny Forman, Esther Goh, Alex Guerrero, Matt Jope, AG McGee, Sarah McGrath, Paul Pietroski, Verónica Gómez Sánchez, Ted Sider, Jeff Tolly, Jordan Scott, Wes Skolits, Bram Vaassen, Chris Willard Kyle, Elise Woodard, and Itamar Weinshtock Saddon. Thanks to members of Ernie Sosa and Matt McGrath’s 2019 and 2021 Epistemology seminars, members of Ted Sider’s third year seminar, and audience members at the 2021 Eastern APA where this paper was presented under the title “Moral Encroachment, Suspension, and Reasons for Belief”. Finally, sincere thanks to two anonymous referees for their formative feedback.
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von Klemperer, C. Moral Encroachment, Symmetry, and Believing Against the Evidence. Philos Stud 180, 2175–2190 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01969-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01969-9