The ethics of belief and the morality of action: Intellectual responsibility and rational disagreement

Philosophy

Volumn 86, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 5-29

  Audi, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79958116781     PISSN: 00318191     EISSN: 1469817X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0031819110000586     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. Why explaining our control over our own beliefs is a challenge is indicated by my account of our voluntary powers regarding beliefs, provided in 'Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief', Facta Philosophica 1, 1 (1999), 87-109;
2. I have extended it in 'The Ethics of Belief: Doxastic Selfcontrol and Intellectual Virtue,' Synthese 161 (2008), 403-418.
3. For a response to the skepticism supported by the frequency of rational disagreement, see Thomas Kelly 'The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement', in John Hawthorne and Tamar Szabo Gendler (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 167-196.
4. In 'Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief' (cited in note 1), I indicate in some detail how such virtue may be exercised. I should add that I take 'ground' to be broader than 'evidence', e.g. in including false beliefs and their propositional objects; nor need grounds be truth-valued, whereas some take evidence to be or at least require (as do facts) truth.
5. In The Architecture of Reason: The Substance and Structure of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), I have defended this point in the context of a unified theory of theoretical and practical rationality.
6. For informative discussion of the similarities and differences between belief and action in relation to the will see James A. Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993)
7. and Bruce Russell, 'Epistemic and Moral Duty', in Matthias Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty. Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 34-62.
8. This idea is developed in detail in my 'Doxastic Voluntarism', cited in note 1.
9. See William P. Alston, 'Audi on Nondoxastic Faith', in Mark Timmons, John Greco, and Alfred R. Mele, (eds.), Rationality and the Good: Critical Essays on the Ethics and Epistemology of Robert Audi (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), 123-39.
10. Alston argues that each 'belief-forming practice' has a kind of epistemic autonomy; and my response is in 'Justifying Grounds, Justified Beliefs, and Rational Acceptance', in Timmons, Greco, and Mele, esp. 243-47.
11. For further critical discussion of the independence requirement, see Hilary Kornblith, 'Belief in the Face of Controversy', forthcoming in Richard Feldman and Ted Warfield (eds.), Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
12. and Jennifer Lackey, 'Disagreement and Belief Dependence', forthcoming. Both cite Thomas Kelly as a proponent;
13. see his 'Peer Disagreement and Higher Order Evidence', forthcoming in Feldman and Warfield. My points here seem consistent with theirs.
14. Roger Crisp, in 'Intuitionism and Disagreement' (in Timmons, Greco, and Mele, 31-39)
15. forcefully raises this kind of problem, and I have responded in 'Intuition, Reflection, and Justification', in the same volume, 206-209.
16. For extensive discussion of the nature and epistemic status of disagreement see Nathan King, The Epistemology of Disagreement: Puzzles, Solutions, and Applications, a doctoral dissertation (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 2009).
17. Recent epistemological literature has said less than one might expect about dogmatism. I have provided a partial account in 'Foundationalism, Coherentism, and Epistemological Dogmatism', Philosophical Perspectives II (1988), 407-442.
18. The status of the view that knowledge is the norm of assertion is critically discussed by Bradley Rettler, 'No Epistemic of Assertion' (American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 2010). 'Knowledge as the Norm of Assertion' (forthcoming).
19. For an influential statement of the view see, e.g., Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).
20. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sec 10, Part I (73 in the edition edited by Eric Steinberg [Indianapolis: Hackett: 1977]).