RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING
S. Joel Garver
CHAPTER EIGHT
Responsible Believing:
Intellectual Virtue and Real
Existing Knowledge
Section II
In addition to our responsibility for belief, a second important line of argumentation was developed in respect to epistemic justification, especially in regard to the "deontological conception" of justification. These were the third through fifth areas of discussion set out in the opening chapter, to wit:
[3] That the degree of control we do have is not sufficient to ground a deontological conception of epistemic justification (since being justified presupposes a belief being formed truth-conducively).
[4] That, despite [3], deontological notions are closely tied to questions of justification; questions of whether or not it is rational to take someone to be justified in a belief and demands for justifying belief arise (at least very often) in the context of negative evaluations of belief; furthermore, such evaluations can be countered by justifying belief (in the ways talked about above).
[5] That [4] implies that an account of when justification is reasonably taken to obtain and of justifying belief will illuminate on what basis our evaluations are made; Alston's doxastic practice approach to epistemology can be our starting point since it begins to show us under what conditions it is practically rational to take a belief to be (prima facie) justified.
If we are, for the most part, responsible for what we believe, and granting that notions such as knowledge and justification are normative and, moreover, prescriptive, then it may make a lot of sense to speak of epistemic obligations, prohibitions, permission, virtue, vice, and the like. The question also arises whether epistemic justification may be analyzed in a way that essentially involves responsibility: a deontological notion of justification. Since we have no direct or immediate control over what we believe, any deontological analysis of justification would have to be constructed in terms of indirect influence over belief-formation through the various means that we have suggested above. The easiest and most straightforward deonotological acc ount takes a belief to be justified just in case the belief was formed in a permissible way: the doxastic practices involved in the formation of the belief are permitted ones, they were engaged in only in permissible ways, and nothing prohibited was done in respect to the formation of the belief in question.
This account of justification, however, is not successful. The basic problem is that beliefs that turn out to be formed in a truth-conducive fashion (and thus are justified on a truth-conducive account of justification) do not coincide with all thos e beliefs that have deontological justification. Unless we have independent reasons to prefer a deontological account of justification over a truth-conducive one, the deontological account of epistemic justification is unsatisfactory. Since I concur with the idea that whatever we mean by "justification" (or "warrant" and the like) it is best thought as involving truth-conducivity (since, whatever else justification is, it is that nonaccidental link between a belief and what makes that belief true), I too must reject a deontological account of epistemic justification.
The usefulness of deontological notions, however, is not exhausted in examining only the state of a belief's having justification. Alston has proposed a "doxastic approach" to epistemology which is not so concerned with an analysis of what it is for a belief to be justified, but rather under what conditions it is reasonable to take a belief to have prima facie justification. Instead of applying the deontological notions to an analysis of justification, we can apply them to the conditions under which it is reasonable to take a belief to be (prima facie) justified. Thus, it is reasonable to take a belief to be justified just in case it was formed in a permissible way. There is reason to think that a modified deontological and a doxastic practice approach are compatible.
Actual arguments about justification and the practice of justifying belief presuppose the doxastic practice approach. Beliefs are challenged when it is thought that they are unreasonable to take as justified because either their grounds are inadequate (which presupposes a shared doxastic practice that requires certain kinds of grounds) or the doxastic practice that produced the belief is not permissible (it is prohibited) or that it was improperly engaged in. Justification is defended by appeals to the adequacy of grounds (which presupposes a shared belief forming practice which is mutually taken as justification-conferring) and by appeals to practices as permissible and properly engaged in (and thus as reasonably taken to be justification conferring). On one hand, such arguments and defenses are grounded in a doxastic practice approach and, on the other hand, they make use of deontological and prescriptive notions regarding belief-formation and justification. The modified deontological approach an d the doxastic practice approach have a shared appeal to the conditions under which it is reasonable to take beliefs to be justified.
We conclude, then, that epistemic virtue requires us to shape our doxastic lives in such a way that we acquire, utilize, and maintain only doxastic practices that are permissible and in permissible ways. Epistemic values coupled with more centrally ethical ones (as well as other kinds of value) will help define which permissible doxastic practices in which we will engage. They will also mark out what epistemic virtue positively requires. This brings us to our next set of conclusions.
