Epistemic responsibility

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 179-200

  Corlett, J Angelo ^a  

^a SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Intentionality; Justification; Knowledge; Luck; Responsibility; Voluntariness

Indexed keywords

EID: 51249135250     PISSN: 09672559     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09672550802008625     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Such work includes: Mark Bernstein, 'Moral and Epistemic Saints', Metaphilosophy, 17 (1986), pp. 102-8;
2. Roderick Chisholm, 'C. I. Lewis's Ethics of Belief, in Paul Schilpp, (ed.) The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis (LaSalle: Open Court, 1968), pp. 223-42;
3. "Firth and the Ethics of Belief, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 51 (1991), pp. 117-28;
4. Jonathan Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992);
5. Jack Meiland, 'What Ought We to Believe? Or the Ethics of Belief Revisited', American Philosophical Quarterly, 17 (1980), pp. 15-24;
6. James A. Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993);
7. Anthony O'Hear, 'Belief and the Will', Philosophy, 47 (1972), pp. 95-112;
8. H. H. Price, "Belief and the Will', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 28 (1954), pp. 1-22;
9. Holly Smith, 'Culpable Ignorance', Philosophical Review, 92 (1983), pp. 543-71;
10. Ernest Sosa, "Knowledge and Intellectual Virtue', The Monist, 68 (1985), pp. 226-45;
11. Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
12. J. T. Stevenson, "On Doxastic Responsibility', in Keith Lehrer (ed.) Analysis and Metaphysics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), pp. 229-53;
13. Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
14. Linda Zagzebski and Abrol Fairweather (eds) Virtue Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
15. Laurence Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 8.
16. Lehrer's most considered epistemological views are found in Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edn (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000);
17. Metamind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990);
18. Self-Trust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
19. 'Justification, Coherence and Knowledge', Erkenntnis, 50 (1999), pp. 243-58;
20. 'Discursive Knowledge', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2000), pp. 637-53;
21. 'The Virtue of Knowledge', in Zagzebski and Fairweather, Virtue Epistemology, pp. 200-13.
22. Lehrer, 'The Virtue of Knowledge'. A concept of epistemic self-reflection that is not inconsistent with Lehrer's concept of trustworthiness is found in Linda Zagzebski, 'Must Knowers Be Agents'?', in Zagzebski and Fairweather, Virtue Epistemology, pp. 142-57.
23. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, p. 126.
24. Perhaps intellectual sobriety is not dissimilar to the virtue of epistemie continence, construed as 'an enduring state of a person that enables him or her to deliberate well' (Christopher Hookaway, 'Epistemic AKRASIA and Epistemic Virtue', in Zagzebski and Fairweather, Virtue Epistemology, p. 196).
25. Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, p. 23.
26. For a broader attempt at analysing the epistemic virtues, see Alvin I. Goldman, 'The Unity of the Epistemic Virtues', in Zagzebski and Fairweather, Virtue Epistemology, pp. 30-48.
27. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind.
28. Contrast Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, ibid., p. 60: 'Responsibility . must be keyed to the attempt rather than the end result.'
29. J. Angelo Corlett, Responsibility and Punishment, 3rd edn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), Chs 1, 7-8.
30. The view that moral responsibility and some of its conditions are matters of degree is also found in Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970);
31. Harmless Wrongdoing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
32. Robert Audi, "Epistemic Virtue and Justified Belief, in Zagzebski and Fairweather, Virtue Epistemology, pp. 82-97.
33. David O. Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 20.
34. Hilary Kornblith, 'Justified Belief and Epistemically Responsible Action', Philosophical Review, 92 (1983), pp. 47-8; also see p. 34.
35. Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, Ch. 6.
36. H. L. A. Hart refers to this as 'causal responsibility' (H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), Ch. 9).
37. Joel Feinberg, "Responsibility for the Future', Philosophy Research Archives, 14 (1988-9), pp. 93-113.
38. Robert Audi, Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 149.
39. Laurence Bonjour, 'Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1980), p. 55.
40. For philosophical analyses of testimony in epistemic contexts, see C. A. J. Coady, Testimony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992);
41. Alvin Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), Ch. 4.
42. Keith Lehrer, 'Freedom, Preference and Autonomy', Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), p. 25.
43. Lehrer, Self-Trust, pp. 102-3.
44. Saul Kripke, 'A Puzzle about Belief', in A. Margalit (ed.) Meaning and Use (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), pp. 248-9.
45. For a critical assessment of Kripke's belief puzzle, see J. Angelo Corlett, 'Is Kripke's Puzzle Really a Puzzle?', Theoria, 55 (1989), pp. 95-113.
46. For a broader discussion of the nature of belief, see Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 36-51.
47. This notion of epistemic intentionalily is borrowed from the notion of intentional action found in Alvin Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). This notion of the nature of intentionalily is consistent with an important aspect of Harry Frankfurt's conception of higher-order volition where this entails that one 'really wants' to do that for which she is morally responsible. Applying this to epistemological contexts, one might argue that intentionally held beliefs are those that cognizers accept in the sense that cognizers really want to accept them.
48. Plato, Cratylus 428d, trans. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), p. 144.
49. Zagzebski, 'Must Knowers Be Agents?'.
50. As Lehrer puts it: 'beliefs arise in us without our willing that they do and sometimes against our will' (Lehrer, 'Discursive Knowledge', p. 640).
51. Bonjour argues, in the context of epistemic responsibility, that beliefs presented to a cognizer involuntarily can often be doubted and rejected (Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, p. 640).
52. Lehrer, 'Freedom, Preference and Autonomy'.
53. William P. Alston, 'Concepts of Epistemic Justification', The Monist, 68 (1985), pp. 57-89.
54. See Harry G. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
55. For a rather select list of critical discussions of Frankfurt's analysis or moral responsibility, and competing analyses, see Ethics, 101 (1991), pp. 236-321;
56. John Martin Fischer, (ed.) Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986);
57. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza (eds) Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993);
58. John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will (London: Blackwell, 1994), Chs 7-8;
59. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
60. John Martin Fischer, My Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007);
61. Journal of Ethics, 1 (1) (1997);
62. Journal of Ethics, 3 (4) (1999);
63. Journal of Ethics, 4 (4) (2000);
64. Journal of Ethics, 12 (2-4) (2008);
65. Ferdinand Schoeman (ed.) Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987);
66. Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983);
67. R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996);
68. Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
69. (J. Angelo Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge (Totowa: Rowman &Littlefield, 1996), p. 117).
70. For another helpful philosophical analysis of scepticism, see Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
71. For discussions of varieties of scepticism, see Robert Audi, Epistemology (London: Routledge, 1999), Ch. 10;
72. Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), Ch. 2.
73. Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck', in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 27.
74. For more on moral luck, see Bernard Williams, 'Moral Luck', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 50 (1976), pp. 115-35.
75. (Audi, Epistemology, p. 313).
76. Nagel, "Moral Luck', p. 27.