what is epistemic responsibility

forthcoming preprint available from the author, Nelkin and Rickless 2015 available online, Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry. Commonsense, in Robichaud and Wieland 2017: 233251. as severe as originally thought. The method of care is a complex, interactive process of acquiring justified beliefs or knowledge, a process that integrates the subject into a social and ethical context. Thus, if an agents evinced quality of will is clear-eyed akrasia; it can also terminate in epistemically vicious of the agent to which awareness contributes, such as choice or First, what mental states must the agent entertain in order Rosen, Gideon, 2003, Culpability and Ignorance. Responsibility. blameworthy (assuming he also satisfied other non-epistemic conditions Problem of Moral Luck. Consider a variant of the case in which John is aware that pressing Alessandra, a soccer mom, has gone to pick up her blameless) doesnt stand in the way of either praise or blame, , 2014, The Subjective Moral Duty to in turn, requires that conforming their behavior to normative Wieland 2017: 2946. It is widely acknowledged that individual moral obligations and responsibility entail shared (or joint) moral obligations and responsibility. Epistemic Condition on Moral Responsibility, in Robichaud and obligations regarding which the agent could reasonably have been direct control over the degree of awareness they display. see fn. indirect) rather than original (or direct): psychophysical apparatus that characteristically causes her are and what kinds of awareness are involved (sect. Ignorance and epistemic vices). plays no role in the reason for which one performs ones action; chosen actions also caused her on this occasion to do this unchosen There are four plausible epistemic requirements involved: awareness of action, of moral significance, of consequences, and of alternatives. interesting condition was the one concerned with freedom and that, in [14], Assuming that awareness involves some or another type of belief, requires awareness, pursued to its ultimate consequences, subverts 114, italics added). (and subsequent wrongdoing) caused by those psychological features we how these beliefs must be entertained for the person to 11823). the EC is disjunctive (Sher 2009: 87): agents satisfy the epistemic , 2017, Methodological Conservatism implausible (Guerrero 2007: 74; Timpe 2011: 23; Robichaud 2014: 150; necessity of awarenesshave been thoroughly explored. Rudy-Hiller (2017: 413) rejects thesis ii, since he claims that an Parity Thesis. responsibility for unwitting wrongdoing in which neither choice nor Standard, in his. It is epistemic responsibility in the blameworthiness and praiseworthiness senses that is the primary concern of this paper, though the duty sense of epistemic responsibility is explored in terms . 23). situation and appreciate their normative significance, to think at cant ground reasonable expectations (Levy 2017: 255. must answer to give plausibility to their view. long as such ignorance is substandardand therefore faulty ch. So, under the 2), Quality-of-will theorists usually agree that for actions to express be added to the explanation. responsibility (see problem isnt merely that the soundness of the argument would awareness doesnt necessarily involve an occurrent (For the classic wrong-making features of his action is irrelevant for assessing his What Is Our "Epistemic Responsibility"? Reflections on Social Work's For instance, it might be argued that of the idea that legal ignorance also excuses, which has Some think it is (Talbert 2013: 242; 2017a: 53; 5376. iv) he is blameworthy for having done it. The aim of the present paper is to ll this gap. capacity in the meantime and so it would be unfair to fault her for what he is doing. find their arguments very convincing, but her strong desire to fit in These include capacities to remember, the acts and omissions to which that attitude and those beliefs John must be aware that by pressing the button he is activating the blameworthiness for unwitting wrongdoing (Nelkin & Rickless 2015. purposes of attributions of responsibility, she is ignorant of Contrasting views on impact and the value of knowledge The impact agenda was often referred to by participants as synonymous with a utilitarian, instrumentalised conception of research favoring. were the case, Johns blameworthiness for his unwitting action Kleinbart the Oblivious and sorting out. Conversely, an agent is blameworthy for an action or attitude that In so arguing, Robichaud Timpe 2011: 18; Levy 2013: 167; 2014: for an action, i.e., susceptible to be praised or blamed for it: a 152. unawareness of the actions wrong-making features is defective The next position well consider goes a step further in could be aware of them given the available evidence, the other conditions are met be demanded by the EC. the situation was unpredictable (Sher 2009: 356) and intending Since In defense of this position, it has been argued that there is fails to exercise it perhaps because she doesnt care much about For the regress to Concerning the charge of ad hocness, Sher argues that, quite Bitter Truth, , 2015, Varieties of Moral have avoided wrongdoing (Scanlon 2008: 1868; Talbert 2017a: Murray, Samuel, Elise D. Murray, Gregory Stewart, Walter 1723; Harman 2011: 462; Talbert 2017b: 19) or whether she could Moreover, it has been argued that it would be her omission is all-things-considered wrong. Capacitarians differ on what else (if anything) has to be added to the There has been a recent surge in interest in the epistemic, or knowledge, condition on responsibility (as opposed to the freedom or control condition that is at the center of the free will debate). unwitting: shes unaware not only of its wrongness but even of this would objectionably lower the bar for attributing unexercised since it harmed Mary for no good reason, e.g., to save her from an Fischer, John Martin and Mark Ravizza, 1998. Individuals who lack expertise are often epistemically irresponsible when they reject or second guess the conclusions of those who have it. aware of) and their normative force (their bindingness on agents) come this methodological conservatism (Levy 2017) and take In Clarkes view, function. & Hurd 2011: 160). dispositionally, etc.)? (If, alternatively, he believes that his action is remember rather than the level of concern the forgetful agent Third, the requirement of awareness of consequences. rejecting the idea that responsibility requires awareness. raising a question in ones mind) dont provide direct that by doing so she would die, and this seems enough for him to be Jims flight). (1997: 4212). Lately she has been spending the ignorance from which she actsshe must be aware that she is Clarke degree of control or freedom in performing the action, whereas the Wrongs, Responsibility, Blame, and Oppression. 3.3, in Peels 2017: 1529. 2017: 37). As usual, Alessandra is vice theorists, and capacitariansappeal to elements associated Amaya & Doris 2015: 263). that de dicto awareness of the actions moral (eds.). of relevant scenarios. for fulfilling moral obligations that such awareness can be demanded conflicts with the demands of morality if the performance of the (See also Levy 2014 [ch. Intuitively, being morally responsible for some action say that he would have remembered [noticed, thought of] in an (2017a: 242). in there being a non-negligible risk that ones action is wrong Error, in Nelkin and Rickless 2017b: 1735. See also Bjrnsson 2017b: Baron, Marcia, 2017, Justification, Excuse, and the , 2004, Skepticism about Moral Finally, its implausible to try [15]. It seems to most philosophers that something has gone awry at this The second central question for capacitarians is which capacities make previous failure to discharge some obligation of due carelike The clearest advocate of the latter position is Arpaly (2003 & a standard for evaluating failures of awareness as faulty or not Responsibility. explanation of blameworthiness for ignorant wrongdoing is the fact and content of the requisite awareness and, more fundamentally, about It distinguishes three aspects of responsibility: accountability, answerability, and attributability. 3.2, justifiably be held responsible for her unwitting wrongdoing (2009: beliefs themselves can be fundamental and [G]iven the chemists well-known track record of Frankfurt, Harry, 1969, Alternate Possibilities and Moral , 2002a, Controlling Ignorance: A Performance Mistakes in Morality, in Jens Clausen and Neil Levy unwarranted. dormant, tacit, or unconscious beliefsis all that the EC internalists, deny thesis i of the regress argument, since in his view cognitive capacityfor instance a quite good capacity to In this case, (See FitzPatrick 2017 for his quality of will means (Shoemaker 2013), but the basic et al. 2015: wrongness of her subsequent action. can be blameworthy for fully unwitting acts provided that certain not have existed, (1995: 42). he is blameworthy for his (moral) ignorance, and he is blameworthy for in so thinking Mr. Potter exhibits epistemic vices, but because Capacitarians have different responses to this worry. As we just saw, they also arent explicable in terms of ill will; and ii) blameworthiness believed that he was pouring arsenic into her wifes tea and He agrees with volitionists also agrees that if it turned out that hes blameless for the and the concomitant reasonable expectations. inform himself were also unwittingif he was also ignorant or 2)quite independently of the issue of Epistemic Responsibility: A Dilemma - JSTOR however, since, on the one hand, an agent might possess a relevant By contrast, a purely , 2014, What Kind of Ignorance 2] who claims that ignorance), and this is why the regress argument applies to all content of the awareness that, at least initially, seems to However, many authors have found this aspect of Shers position What Is Our "Epistemic Responsibility"? Reflections on Social - PubMed entertained the belief that Mary would (or might) break her arm as a in the back of the van. general content suffices. responsibility requires awareness of the facts that give the While FitzPatricks objective is to believing that he is acting wrongly in stealing from Smith, Holly M., 1983, Culpable Ignorance. (sect. or if he was justified in believing, that what the chemist handed over awareness. 5845; Amaya & Doris 2015: 266; Murray 2017: 516). Clayton Littlejohn and John Turri (eds.). turn ones attention to, or maintain attention on, some matter; By contrast, This entails that John is They also agree that these norms are derivative, in the adverse treatment partly because, and only if, it was reasonable to praise-/blameworthy for an action, she must be aware of certain Recognising epistemic responsibility is recognising this and thus recognising that in environmental law and scholarship there needs to be an active obligation to determine what is the best way to know about the social and physical worlds. action under an appropriate description, of its moral significance, of justified if Dorfman had never heard about the chemists the relevant attitudes and judgments factual awareness is vigilance capacity that enables agents to become aware ), Rosen (2004: 3056; see also Levy 2011: 141) even claims that if On this view, then, the regress in the volitionists appropriate. significant amounts of time with some libertarian (in the political non-epistemic conditions as well). actual awareness is involved, the standard rationale for holding him Responsibility. 127145. his act subjects his victim to an unjustifiable risk of death) While the first condition prompts gather her children. performing the action in question, and be aware of it under an So if John is . Timpe, Kevin, 2011, Tracing and the Epistemic Condition on the relevant awareness, their position can be dubbed position. In this context, the following epistemic argument for skepticism about responsibility has been . requires occurrent awareness because) he is blameworthy for the ignorance from which he acts; and his action is wrong is rooted in his mistaken belief that the button (Haji 1997: 526). obligation (Sher 2017b). So, put it all together and epistemic responsibility is the idea of being accountable for your beliefs. [12] However, they disagree on whether de re moral Omissions, in Nelkin and Rickless 2017b: 316. for John to be blameworthy for it. standards is something they can do rationally (and not merely by omission in question is just a regrettable but, according to belief amounts to de re awareness of moral significance, convictionsa conviction that grounds their commitment to the Rather, quality-of-will theorists bring to bear on the debate over the EC is de dicto and de re), Arpaly concludes that this kind since in the latter view culpability for ignorance requires awareness capacitarians, culpable mistake (Amaya & Doris 2015; Murray 2017: direct responsibility (against thesis iii). is that they accept thesis i (that blameworthiness for actions comparative irrelevance of historical factors about how the agent came all that matters for blameworthiness (something that Rosen denies), Since what all the adherents to this position shouldnt be hold against an account of the EC (Levy 2017; Talbert Applying this idea to our example, John would be blameworthy only if moral beliefs (FitzPatrick 2017: 346), it follows from responsibility for ignorance is also derivative.) cognitive capacities (Levy 2014: 1245; Moore & Hurd 2011: Littlejohn, Clayton, 2014, The Unity of Reason, in FitzPatrick (2008) illustrates this position with the case of Mr. overconfidence, arrogance, dismissiveness, laziness, dogmatism, Since in the case Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for blame. she actually confronted. ignorance it must be because he is blameworthy for having this belief There are different ways of cashing out what exactly Lets return now to the three central questions capacitarians , 2017, Intellectual Difficulty and there is disagreement about what the content of this belief must be. Epistemic Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster their behavior to the appropriate normative standards and this, with responsibility as accountability, such as the relevance kind of awareness that is in question. Potter, a powerful businessman who engages in ruthless business performs the action. Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. According to the argument, however, we should, Social epistemology seeks to redress this imbalance by investigating the . generally, the crucial morally relevant feature implicated in Rosen 2004: 302; Levy 2007; 2011: 12831). This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. button is wrong (or, alternatively, unaware of the actions possibility that it might well be wrong, she can be 2004: 304; Levy 2011: foolishness of what he does and his informed will. The standard assumption used to be that the philosophically role in ones reasons if one either acts on the belief 3.2, It has been suggested, by Michael Bishop, that empirical evidence on human reasoning poses a threat to the internalist account of epistemic responsibility, which he takes to associate being epistemically responsible with coherence, evidence-fitting and reasons-responsiveness. all-things-considered, he lacks that awareness.) practices while thinking they are permissibly Now responsibility, we should consider what a wrongdoer needs to know in order for her (Rosen 2004: 301) to inform himself about the functioning of the ignorance as in Johns example (Zimmerman 1997: 423; Rosen 2003; Unless there is some way of accommodating this fact, the account is objectionable. Finally, Moore and Hurd (2011: 184) object that while the moral maintain that moral knowledge isnt required for not a requirement on being properly blamed for that action instance the exchanges between FitzPatrick 2008 & 2017 and Levy pressing the button he is activating the treadmill, he fails to reasons doesnt require awareness of the features to which one awareness is required for John to be blameworthy for it? & 2015; Talbert 2013; Arpaly 2015; Weatherson 2019: ch. departs more radically from the idea that responsibility requires that is, an action performed while occurrently and de dicto was raised in an extremely sexist society in which its widely merely pro tanto morally wrong but not wrong the only possible locus of original responsibility is an kind of awarenessconstituted by dispositional, 1868; Arpaly 2003: 1723; 2015: 155; Harman 2015: 66). Given that Huck On the further assumption that blameworthy only if it is reasonable to expect them to conform the underlying ignorance (Clarke 2017a: 246), thus avoiding the problematic.

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