Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue

KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, AND DUTY

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KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, AND DUTY ESSAYS ON EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION, RESPONSIBILITY, AND VIRTUE

EDITED BY Matthias Steup

OXJORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

2001

OXTORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 2001 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Knowledge, truth, and duty : essays on epistemic justification, responsibility, and virtue / edited by Matthias Steup. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-512892-3 1. Justification (Theory of knowledge) 2. Duty. I. Steup, Matthias. BD212.K57 2000 121—dc2l 00-021215

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Acknowledgments

The following essays have been published previously: Essay 1, Susan Haack, '"The Ethics of Belief Reconsidered," in The Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, vol. xxv of The Library of Living Philosophers (Chicago and LaSalle, 111.: Open Court, 1997). Reprinted by permission of the Open Court Publishing Company. Essay 7, Alvin Goldman, "Internalism Exposed," The Journal of Philosophy XCVI, no. 6 (1999): 271-93. Reprinted by permission of The Journal of Philosophy. Essay 11, Ernest Sosa, "Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles," The Journal of Philosophy, XCIV, no. 8 (1997): 410-30. Reprinted by permission of the Journal of Philosophy.

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Contents

Contributors

ix

Introduction

3

Part I: Epistemic Duty and the Normativity of Justification 1. "The Ethics of Belief" Reconsidered 21 S U S A N HAACK

2. Epistemic and Moral Duty

34

BRUCE RUSSELL

3. Epistemic Justification and Normativity

49

RICHARD FUMERTON

Part II: Epistemic Deontology and Doxastic Voluntarism 4. Deciding to Believe 63 C A R L GINET

5. Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation RICHARD FELDMAN

77

viii

Contents 6. Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief

93

R O B E R T AUDI

Part III:

Epistemic Deontology and the Internality of Justification 7. Internalism Exposed

115

ALVIN GOLDMAN

8. Epistemic Duty, Evidence, and Internality

134

MATTHIAS S T E U P

Part IV: Justification and Truth 9. Truth as the Epistemic Goal

151

M A R I A N DAVID

10. Value Monism in Epistemology

170

M I C H A E L R. D E P A U L

Part V: Epistemic Virtue and Criteria of Justified Belief 11. Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles

187

ERNEST SOSA

12. Commonsensism in Ethics and Epistemology NOAH LEMOS

Part VI: Beyond Deontology 13. Knowing People

221

V R I N D A DALMIYA

14. Recovering Understanding LINDA Z A G Z E B S K I

Index

253

235

204

Contributors

Robert Audi University of Nebraska

Alvin Goldman University of Arizona

Vrinda Dalmiya University of Hawaii

Susan Haack University of Miami

Marian David University of Notre Dame

Noah Lemos De Pauw University

Michael R. DePaul University of Notre Dame

Bruce Russell Wayne State University

Richard Feldman University of Rochester

Ernest Sosa Brown University

Richard Fumerton University of Iowa

Matthias Steup St. Cloud State University

Carl Ginet Cornell University

Linda Zagzebski University of Oklahoma

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KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, AND DUTY

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Introduction

I This volume is divided into six parts, all of which bear, more or less directly, on issues having to do with epistemic justification, responsibility, and virtue. The first two essays in part I, written by Susan Haack and Bruce Russell, examine the relation between epistemic and moral duty. In the third essay of this part, Richard Fumerton examines the question of whether relating epistemic justification to an epistemic 'ought' warrants the widespread assumption that epistemic justification is a normative matter. According to what Haack calls the special-case thesis, epistemic appraisal is merely an instance of moral appraisal. Haack argues that we should reject this thesis as well as the correlation thesis, according to which moral and epistemic appraisal are correlated such that whenever a positive (negative) epistemic appraisal of a belief is appropriate, a positive (negative) moral appraisal of it is also appropriate. The kind of case that, according to Haack, refutes these theses is of the following kind: (i) The subject believes that p without having adequate evidence for p; (ii) the reason why the subject believes thatp lies in personal or cultural cognitive inadequacy, a kind of inadequacy for which the subject bears no responsibility. Because of (i), the subject's belief is epistemically unjustified. Because of (ii), however, a negative moral appraisal would be inappropriate. Thus not all cases of epistemically unjustified belief are cases in which an unfavorable moral judgment is appropriate. So epistemic appraisal is neither a special case of, nor correlated with, moral appraisal. However, Haack thinks that there is overlap between them and thus endorses the overlap thesis: An unfavorable moral appraisal of epistemically unjustified be3

4

Introduction

lief is sometimes appropriate. Clifford's famous example is a case in point: The shipowner's belief in the seaworthiness of his vessel led to great harm and thus was not merely epistemically but also morally unjustified. Regarding the Clifford-James controversy, Haack argues that it is always epistemically wrong to believe without sufficient evidence and in this respect sides with Clifford. But she also sides with James inasmuch as she rejects the Cliffordian claim that it is always morally wrong to believe on insufficient evidence. Russell's essay begins with the distinction between subjective and objective moral justification. An action is an instance of subjective moral justification, if, and only if, the agent has no adequate reason to think it is wrong, or has a legitimate excuse for it. An action is an instance of objective moral justification if it is not forbidden. For example, a doctor who unintentionally kills his patient is subjectively justified, objectively unjustified. A killer who intends to poison his victim but actually cures her of a fatal disease is objectively justified, subjectively unjustified. Likewise, there is subjective and objective epistemic justification. A belief is subjectively justified if and only if it is not epistemically blameworthy. What determines whether a belief is objectively justified is whether it is supported by adequate evidence. Consider a belief that results from wishful thinking. Under normal circumstances, such a belief is both subjectively and objectively unjustified. However, if the subject lives in a society in which wishful thinking is accepted as a common practice, he cannot be blamed for engaging in wishful thinking. In that case, if the subject believes something because of wishful thinking, his belief is subjectively, but not objectively, justified. Russell's main thesis is that knowledge requires the combination of both subjective and objective justification. This allows him to rebut certain counterexamples by Plantinga, the purpose of which is to challenge the necessity of justification for knowledge. Furthermore, Russell also replies to Plantinga's London bus example, suggesting that it involves mistaken assumptions about the nature of subjective and objective justification. In the third essay of part I, Richard Fumerton examines the claim, shared by many contemporary epistemologists, that epistemic justification is a normative matter.1 Fumerton argues that it is by no means clear what this claim amounts to. He considers various candidates for explaining normativity and finds each one of them problematic. First, we might say that the epistemic 'ought' functions in analogy with the moral 'ought.' But in which sense can we take the moral 'ought' to be normative if we subscribe to cognitivism; the view that epistemic judgments have truth values? For according to cognitivism, true judgments involving the moral 'ought' describe objective reality, just as true judgments that do not involve an 'ought' do. Second, we might want to explicate epistemic normativity via an appeal to rules. However, is all moral evaluation reducible to rules? And does it make sense to ground normativity in rule-conformance if we are cognitivists? Third, it might be suggested to ground epistemic normativity in its relation to the goals that are appropriate to cognitive conduct. Here the problem is to avoid the circularity that results from analyzing epi stemically justified belief in terms of the goal of believing what we would be justified in believing. Finally, Fumerton considers the proposal to analyze epistemic normativity in terms of epistemic blame and praise. His objection to this approach is

Introduction

5

that the connection between epistemic justification and praise/blame is a tenuous one. The gist of Fumerton's arguments, then, is that it is not all that easy to pin down exactly what the claim that epistemic justification is normative amounts to. The chief problem would appear to be that cognitivism, the prevalent view among epistemologists that epistemic judgments describe objective features of the world, makes it difficult to explain why epistemic judgments should be any different from other kinds of judgments that describe objective reality. II

In his influential essay, "Concepts of Epistemic Justification," William Alston has stated an objection to epistemic deontology that is commonly referred to as the "argument from doxastic involuntarism."2 According to Alston, there can be an obligation to believe that p, or an obligation to refrain from believing that p, only if we have direct voluntary control over our beliefs. But according to Alston, we do not. As he succinctly puts the matter: "When I see a car coming down the street I am not capable of believing or disbelieving this at will."3 This point—that we cannot choose at will between believing and not believing—applies, Alston argues, to the vast majority of our beliefs. Alston's argument raises two critical issues: (i) Is it indeed correct that we cannot exert the kind of voluntary control over our beliefs that deontology requires? (ii) Does the application of deontology to belief require in the first place that we can exert voluntary control over our beliefs? The three essays of part II address these issues. In his contribution to this volume, Richard Feldman argues that doxastic involuntarism—the thesis that our beliefs are completely beyond our control—is false. However, although we have some kind of control over our beliefs, it must be conceded that it is not of the right kind. Since it is not, the argument from doxastic involuntarism can easily by modified to yield the intended conclusion. Next, Feldman discusses an argument of mine for the conclusion that we have control over belief after all. According to this argument, we can make doxastic decisions because we can deliberate. Feldman replies that a belief can be involuntary even if it results from deliberation. What is needed to make belief voluntary is intentionality. But beliefs that result from deliberation are not beliefs that exemplify intentionality. Consequently, from the fact that we can deliberate about what to believe, it does not follow that we have voluntary control over what to believe. Feldman, then, accepts that we do not have the kind of control over beliefs that we have over actions, but rejects the second premise of the argument from doxastic involuntarism: the claim that such control is necessary. The epistemic 'ought,' according to Feldman, is a role 'ought.' Judgments involving such an 'ought' tell us how we ought to act if we play a certain role. Epistemic evaluations tell us that, as beings who form beliefs, we ought to follow our evidence. This is something we ought to do even though we do not have control over whether we do so or not. In marked contrast to Alston and Feldman, Carl Ginet makes a case for the thesis that we are sometimes in the sate of believing that p simply because we have decided to believe that/). He proposes an analysis of the following locution:

6

Introduction

In deciding to A, S decided to believe that p if and only if in deciding to A S decided to count on its being the case that p. To count on its being the case that p is to dismiss the possibility of not-/), to be surprised should it turn out that not-/?. What comes into being when one decides to count on its being the case that p is the disposition to count on the truth of that statement in closely similar situations. But that we can acquire a disposition by deciding to have it should be unproblematic. Consequently, it should be unproblematic to assume that a belief that p is the sort of thing we can acquire by deciding to acquire it. However, Ginet points out that, although deciding what to believe is something we can do, it is something we do only rarely. In the last two sections of his essay, he discusses and rejects arguments for doxastic involuntarism by Bertrand Williams and William Alston. In the third essay of this part, Robert Audi attempts to find a place for an ethics of belief although he rejects doxastic voluntarism, which he takes to be the thesis that belief is sometimes under direct control. He distinguishes between a behavioral and a genetic version of voluntarism. According to the behavioral version, believing itself is sometimes an action-type; according to the genetic version, the formation of a belief is sometimes an action-type. Audi reject the behavioral version on the ground that actions are events, beliefs are not. Thus if volitions are actions of the will, then beliefs cannot be volitions. He rejects the genetic version as well. Distinguishing between causing oneself to believe something, and a belief's forming, he likens belief formation to the forming of a damp ring on a glass of water. Belief formation, then, is not causing oneself to believe something, but simply a belief's forming. But if this is what belief is like, in which sense can we speak of an ethics of belief? At the end of his essay, Audi suggests that there are various ways in which an ethics of belief can emerge. For example, we may say that it is morally objectionable to conduct one's intellectual life sloppily. Furthermore, we may accept an epistemic obligation to be attentive to one's evidence, from where may be led to an ethics of inquiry. Ill

The two essays of the third part are about the relation between epistemic deontology and the internality of justification. In the first essay, Alvin Goldman subjects internalism—the view that the things that determine whether a belief is justified must be suitably accessible to the subject—to a penetrating critique. In the second essay, I defend internalism against Goldman's objections. Goldman begins his critique of internalism by reconstructing the rationale for it, which he takes to be derived from what he refers to as the "guidance deontological" conception of justification. This conception imposes an accessibility constraint on justifiers: If they are to guide the subject in meeting their epistemic duties, then they must be readily knowable. The rationale derived from this conception, however, presents the internalist with a dilemma. The desideratum is a conception of internality that identifies reliabilism as an externalist theory. The dilemma arises because the accessibility constraint as derived from the guidance-deontological conception of justification does not meet this desideratum, whereas the kind of accessibility constraint that

Introduction

7

does meet the desideratum cannot be derived from the guidance deontological conception. Moreover, internalism faces numerous problems when it comes to avoiding a collapse into skepticism. Some justified beliefs are justified by evidence the subject has forgotten. Goldman argues that internalism lacks the resources to identify such beliefs as justified ones and thus leads to skepticism. Furthermore, it does not allow for logical and probabilistic relations, nor for epistemic principles, to play the role of justifiers and thus leads to skepticism once again. And since internalism demands that justifiers be accessible, it faces a problem with regard to the availability of the methods that must be employed to recognize justifiers, and thus runs again into the problem of skepticism. At the end of his paper, Goldman objects to internalism on the ground that the a priori methodology with which it is associated is problematic. For as research in cognitive science has shown, which characteristics determine whether, for example, memorial beliefs are justified is a question that must be answered empirically. In my response to Goldman, I propose an alternative rationale for internalism. I agree with Goldman that the accessibility constraint does not give internalists what they want: a conception of internality according to which reliability cannot play the role of a justifier. However, suppose we replace the accessibility constraint with an evidential states constraint, according to which only evidential states qualify as justifiers. This constraint effectively bars reliability from the club of justifiers and thus gives internalists the desired notion of internality. It would be a mistake, however, to think that what internalists want is to denounce reliability as altogether irrelevant. As I argue in this essay, internalism need not be construed as a view according to which reliability is altogether without epistemological significance. Rather, what internalists and externalists disagree about might merely be the proper role of reliability within the analysis of knowledge. And its proper role is, as I would suggest, that of an ingredient in the fourth condition of knowledge, the job of which is to make the analysis of knowledge immune to Gettier cases. So one can motivate internalism without having to maneuver oneself into a corner from where a proper appreciation of what externalism has to offer is not possible. However, can internalism be defended against Goldman's charge that, for a plethora of reasons, it has skepticism-breeding consequences? I argue that it can. What is common to the battery of Goldman's objections is the assumption that, if we understand justification deontologically, we cannot have justified beliefs unless we also form (or are at least capable of forming) correct beliefs about which justifiers justify our beliefs, about the logical/probabilistic relations by virtue of which our beliefs are justified, and about the epistemic principles that license our beliefs. I reject this assumption, for it seems to me that, to have justified beliefs, we must meet one, and only one, condition: We must have adequate evidence. But if having adequate evidence is indeed sufficient for deontological justification, then internalism does not have the skeptical consequences Goldman attributes to it. IV

What is distinctive about epistemic justification? After all, our beliefs can also be justified morally or prudentially. Clearly, though, these types of justification are to

8

Introduction

be distinguished from epistemic justification. Exactly how is the difference to be explained? As Marian David points out in his essay "Truth as the Epistemic Goal," to explain the nature of epistemic justification, epistemologists, regardless of what particular approach they favor, tend to invoke the idea that what makes justification epistemic is its relation to what David calls the truth-goal: roughly, the goal of believing what's true and not believing what's false. However, invoking the truth-goal is anything but unproblematic. To begin with, there is the problem of whether ascribing the truth-goal to us gets our psychology right. Furthermore, even supposing that most of us do have the truth-goal, it is not clear that having justified/unjustified beliefs requires having the truth-goal, for it seems plausible to say that those who do not have the truth-goal have nevertheless justified/unjustified beliefs. A different set of problems has to do with the question of how the truth-goal ought to be expressed. Is it the goal with regard to every proposition p to believe p if, and only if, p is true? Thus understood, the goal seems excessively demanding. However, after reviewing alternatives and indicating their respective problems, David argues that we might as well stick to our original version of the truth-goal. A further set of problems arises when we attempt to spell out exactly how individual justified/unjustified beliefs are related to the truth-goal. Exactly what makes justified/unjustified beliefs good/bad in relation to that goal? One answer is to say that the relation is that of a causal ends-means relationship. David argues that such a diachronic conception of justification is unacceptable, for future causal consequences of a belief do not affect its justificational status in the present. Another answer is that the relation is one of constitution: having a justified belief is part of what's involved in reaching the truth-goal. However, David argues that this approach collapses justified belief into true belief. As a constitutive part of the truth-goal, a true belief is a good thing even if it is unjustified, and a false belief is a bad thing even if it is justified. How can this collapse be blocked? One option is to abandon the truth-goal, that is, to view the truth-condition and the justification-condition in the analysis of knowledge as conditions that are independent of each other. However, if that option is exercised, the problem of explaining the nature of justification might remain unsolved. Another option is to adopt two goals: truth and justification. Unfortunately, this approach does not allow for justified false beliefs, for in relation to the truth-goal, having a false belief is a bad thing, even if that belief is justified and thus meets the other goal. A third option is to conceive of the relation in the way Chisholm suggested: If I aim at the truth-goal, it is rational to prefer justified to unjustified beliefs. But how is the relevant notion of rationality to be understood? The attempt to answer this question will run into either a circularity problem, or the difficulties of the ends-means-relationship approach, or the problem of abandoning the truth-goal altogether. The final option David considers is reliabilism, which blocks the collapse because, according to it, justified beliefs are related to the truth-goal since they are produced by processes that produce mostly true beliefs. However, David argues that reliabilism is implausible as long as it remains a diachronic theory: a theory that makes justification dependent on the performance of cognitive processes in the past and future. He concludes the essay by considering an alternative version of reliabilism, one that involves a subjunctive truth-goal and a subjunctive conception of reliability.

Introduction

9

In the second essay of this part, Michael DePaul argues against what he calls value monism in epistemology: the view that truth is the only intrinsic epistemic good. From the point of view of monism, justification is valuable only as a means to true belief. However, value monism is dominant only within epistemology proper, the project of analyzing the concept of knowledge. It is not dominant in broad epistemology, where we find a pluralism of epistemic values. For example, Foley-rationality is an epistemic good, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for turning true belief into knowledge.4 Consequently, Foley-rationality is an epistemic value within broad epistemology but not within epistemology proper. Within epistemology proper, as DePaul claims, value monism is the dominant view. And DePaul rejects value monism because it is inconsistent with what he takes to be an obvious truth: Knowledge is better than mere true belief. To see what's wrong with value monism, we need to consider the following two propositions: (1) Truth is the only intrinsic epistemic good, and

(2) Knowledge is better than mere true belief. DePaul argues that (1) and (2) cannot both be true. Since he takes (2) to be an obvious truth, he concludes that (1) is false. What, however, is the alternative to value monism in epistemology? According to DePaul, the alternative is value pluralism, the view that in addition to truth there are further intrinsic epistemic goods, such as knowledge and justification. However, as DePaul points out in the concluding paragraph of his essay, from this pluralist point of view, justification must be good independently of any connection between justification and truth. V

The essays in this part address issues having to do with the question of how, in the attempt to analyze knowledge, we can choose philosophical starting points without falling into vicious circularity. According to both Ernest Sosa and Noah Lemos, our starting points are reasonable and can be chosen without vicious circularity if they arise from the exercise of virtuous cognitive faculties. What makes cognitive faculties virtues is, however, an external matter that goes beyond the fulfillment of epistemic duties. On the other hand, neither Sosa nor Lemos mean to propose what could accurately be labeled an externalist account of epistemic justification. Their papers, then, illustrate ways in which external elements can be appreciated even by those who think that knowledge involves an internal dimension as well. According to skeptics, we cannot know how we know, for we cannot argue for the reliability of our faculties without vicious circularity. Sosa argues that externalist virtue epistemology affords us a way to stay clear of skepticism. The externalist element of Sosa's virtue epistemology is motivated by the circularity problems we can find in Descartes and Moore. How can Descartes know he is thinking without know-

10

Introduction

ing in the first place that clear and distinct perceptions are perfectly reliable? How can Moore have knowledge of his hand without knowing he is not dreaming in the first place? In response to these questions, Sosa recommends externalism: For the strategy employed by Descartes and Moore to work, it merely must be the case that they know their starting points; it is not necessary they know how they know their starting points. Do they, however, know their starting points? According to Sosa, they do, if their starting points arise from virtuous, or apt, faculties. The key idea here is that a belief amounts to knowledge—exemplifies epistemic virtue—if its truth is not an accident. This account faces an important objection: If externalist virtue epistemology were right, we could justify using a crystal ball, relying on the crystal ball's own testimony as to its reliability. Sosa replies that even if the users of crystal balls can attain justification just as well as ordinary perceivers—assuming, of course, things are equal with regard to internal coherence—a crucial difference emerges, nevertheless, when we consider knowledge: While the users of crystal balls do not have knowledge, ordinary perceivers do, for unlike crystal ball gazing, perception is reliable. Sosa's account, then, is externalist, for knowledge requires no more than the exercise of apt faculties. But the kind of knowledge thus attained is mere animal knowledge, not reflective knowledge. How, though, can the latter kind of knowledge be achieved? Sosa proposes to follow the lead of Descartes and Moore. We can begin with instances of animal knowledge as starting points and use these to advance explanations of how we know, thus giving our account explanatory coherence. Sosa, then, makes a case for virtue perspectivism, according to which reflective knowledge—first-order knowledge plus knowledge of how we know— involves two essential components: external aptness as well as coherence internal to the subject's epistemic perspective. Like Sosa's, Lemos's essay is concerned with the question of how we can, without falling into circularity, derive criteria of justification and knowledge. The strategy Lemos prefers is to appeal to common sense beliefs, among which he includes epistemic beliefs such as "I know that I have two hands." What makes it reasonable of us to appeal to such beliefs is that they have a positive epistemic status. But wouldn't we first have to show that such beliefs have a positive epistemic status? Lemos argues that this objection presupposes an unacceptable theory of justification. Next, Lemos examines the objections Brandt and Hare have directed against common sensism in ethics. They have argued that the appeal to common sense beliefs is parochial—it merely shuffles our own, culturally inherited biases around—and moreover involves vicious circularity. To the first of these objections, Lemos replies that the methods Brandt and Hare prefer, to go outside of ethics and appeal to considerations of logic and rationality, are unlikely to be any less parochial. In response to the second objection, he proposes that the attribution of reliability to one's own cognitive faculties may be derived from the attribution of knowledge to oneself, that is, from an epistemic common sense belief one accepts to begin with. Such a procedure faces the objection that it is as well available to madmen and crystal-ball users. In reply to this worry, Lemos endorses Sosa's strategy. The relevant difference is that, whereas our common sense beliefs have epistemic virtues as their source, the beliefs of madmen and crystal-ball gazers do not.

Introduction

11

VI The duty-based approach to understanding epistemic justification is challenged not only by externalists such as Goldman, but also by those philosophers who favor a virtue-based approach to epistemology. According to Linda Zagzebski, virtue epistemology ought to be construed in analogy to the virtue approach in ethics and thus ought to be not act-based but agent-based. According to her, the evaluation of particular beliefs must be derived from an evaluation of the agent.5 The essays in the last part of this volume represent this approach. In the first essay of this part, Dalmyia makes a case for redirecting epistemology toward a new paradigm, the two most important elements of which are virtue-ethics and the method of care. According to virtue epistemology, what confers epistemic value are properties of the epistemic subject: her epistemic character, belief-forming habits, or cognitive dispositions. 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. Starting out with a discussion of knowledge of other minds (selves), Dalmyia moves on to an examination of the role the knowing self plays within the kind of epistemology she has in mind. Epistemic responsibility is one important element of that kind of epistemology. It cannot, however, be reduced to epistemic duty-fulfillment. Rather, what matters within care-based epistemology is to cultivate and reinforce attitudes that are deemed admirable in the epistemic community. Dalmyia, then, argues for a departure from epistemic deontology and the internalism that is connected with it. In the concluding essay of this part and this volume, Zagzebski proposes an analysis of the concept of understanding, which, as she argues, epistemologists have neglected. According to Zagzebski, there are three important strands that can be found in Plato and Aristotle's thinking about understanding: (i) understanding arises from techne, that is, from practical activities that are not purely cognitive; (ii) understanding has to do with mastering an entire field of interrelating parts; (iii) understanding involves representing the world nonpropositionally, for example, through visualization or diagrams. Taking (iii) to be the defining characteristic, Zagzebski proposes that understanding is a state of comprehending nonpropositional structures of reality, such as automobiles, pieces of music or art, the character of a person, or a causal nexus. Thus Zagzebski takes understanding to be something that is essentially different from knowledge, which, unlike understanding, has a prepositional object. Consequently, she argues that virtue epistemology is better suited than non-virtue epistemology to provide an adequate analysis of understanding. For unlike the theories from which it departs, virtue epistemology takes the objects of valuable epistemic states to consist of not only propositional but nonpropositional objects as well.

VII In his contribution to this volume, Bruce Russell refers to and endorses my view on the issue of whether we have the kind of control over our beliefs that epistemic deontology requires, and in his essay, "Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation,"

12

Introduction

Feldman discusses and rejects my view. It seems to me, therefore, that I should provide a brief account of my view here. Let us call the control thesis the claim that we have over our beliefs the kind of control that epistemic deontology—the evaluation of beliefs in terms of epistemic duty, or an epistemic 'ought'—requires. Suppose we argue against the control thesis by comparing a typical belief, say the belief that it is raining when you see that it is, with a typical action such as taking a walk. This comparison seems to suggest that belief and action differ with regard to our control over them. When you perceive that it is raining you cannot refrain from believing that it is; that is, your belief that it is raining is forced on you. However, taking a walk is a different matter. Few people take walks because of internal compulsion or external force. Rather, whether or not to take a walk is typically a matter of choice/This comparison lends itself to generalization. Perceptual beliefs about our environments and introspective beliefs about our mental states are hardly a matter of choice. The same would apply to memorial beliefs and beliefs about logical and mathematical matters. Actions, however, seem different. True, some people act sometimes out of compulsion. However, ordinarily we do enjoy choice with regard with what we do. And so the conclusion seems inescapable that, while we have (at least normally) control over our actions, beliefs are, as Alston suggests, just as much beyond our control as are cell metabolism and the secretion of gastric juices.6 The chief problem with this argument is that it bypasses the question of whether we really have control over our actions in the first place. After all, there is such a thing as determinism, a view that cannot be dismissed lightly. So anybody who thinks we have control over our actions would have to take a stand in response to the following questions: Is determinism true? If it is, how is control over our actions possible? And if determinism is not true, how is control over our actions possible in that case?7 An argument for or against the control thesis doesn't get to the bottom of the issue unless these questions are answered in the first place. And when they do get answered, we get, it seems to me, the following result. If we take determinism to be true and nevertheless think we have control over our actions, that is, if we are compatibilists, then it turns out that we have plenty of control over our beliefs and certainly as much as is needed for deontology. If, on the other hand, we are incompatibilists and take determinism to be false, we do get the result that we can control what to believe only to a very limited extent. However, as I will argue below, it will in that case turn out that if we are prepared to apply deontological evaluation to actions, there is no reason not to apply such evaluation to beliefs. Suppose, then, we take compatibilism to be true. As compatibilists we accept determinism, the view that every event and every state has a sufficient causal condition. But if determinism is true, then any action of mine is such that, given antecedent history and the laws of nature, it had to occur, which is to say that no alternative path of action was open to me at the time I performed that action. If this is so, the question arises of how I can have control over my actions at all. There are many moves that, as compatibilists, we can employ for the purpose of attempting to reconcile determinism and control. Let us consider just two. First, we might employ suitable conditionals. We might say, for example, that my doing x was something over which I had control—despite the fact that my doing x was causally determined—because if

Introduction

13

I had decided not to do x, I would not have done x. It is hard to see how the claim that we do not have control over our beliefs can be sustained if we endorse this sort of compatibilism. For if what puts us in control of our actions is the truth of the sort of conditional we just considered, then by far most of our beliefs turn out to be under our control as well. Consider perceptual beliefs. While taking a walk in the park you see a dog on the lawn. So you believe there is a dog on the lawn. But suppose you assess your overall evidence and conclude (sincerely, that is) that you are hallucinating. What reason is there to deny that you would then not believe that there is a dog on the lawn?8 In general, what reason is there to suppose that the relevant conditionals about actions are true but that the relevant conditionals about beliefs are false? It is true that, since our perceptual evidence typically supplies us with decisive evidence, perceptual beliefs are typically forced on us. But they are no more forced on us than those of our actions and omissions that are supported by decisive reasons, such as stepping on the brakes when approaching a busy intersection or not throwing oneself in front of an oncoming bus. According to the kind of compatibilism under consideration now, we have control over such actions and omissions, although they are the result of causal determination, because had our reasons been different, we would have acted differently. The parallel move works just as well for perceptual beliefs: Neglecting exceptions, for any such belief we can say that, had your total body of evidence been different (e.g., had you had reasons for doubting the reliability of your perceptual faculties), you would have refrained from acquiring (or sustaining) it. The same can be said for memorial and introspective beliefs.9 It seems appropriate, then, to conclude that the version of compatibilism we just considered does not lend itself very well for claiming that we can control what we do but not what we believe.10 Alternatively, compatibilists might say that we enjoy control over those of our actions that have the right kind of causal history and have control over those states of affairs that bear the right kind of causal relation to us. But surely, with regard to this criterion, our beliefs are on a par, not with cell metabolism and the secretion of gastric juices, but rather with our actions. Unlike those processes, our beliefs are sensitive to our evidence and respond to reasoning. There are neural pathways leading from evidential states and the activity of reasoning to the formation of doxastic states: states of believing, not believing, and disbelieving, just as there are neural pathways that lead from practical reasons to actions. If the latter connection brings our actions under our control, why should the former connection not bring out beliefs under our control? Of course, neural pathways and other requisite connections are sometimes blocked so as to render control impossible. Sometimes beliefs result from fears, desires, neuroses, or paranoia. In such cases, their causal origin puts them beyond the reach of reason and thus beyond our control. It would be exceedingly implausible, however, to suggest that all of our beliefs are like that. Rather, it seems to me that if we endorse the causal history criterion, the vast majority of our beliefs turn out to be no less under our control than our actions are. So if involuntarists accept compatibilism, they face the following general problem. The starting point they accept, determinism, raises the question of how we can have control over anything at all. To solve this problem, compatibilists employ devices that allow them to reconcile control with causal determination. These recon-

14

Introduction

ciliation devices, however, are equal opportunity devices. Unless a special case is made, we cannot reasonably take them to discriminate between beliefs and actions. Of course, I have not even begun to rummage in earnest through all the devices that can be found in the compatibilist' s treasure box. My point, then, can be understood as a request for clarification. If you are a compatibilist, and if you think that whereas our actions are under our control, our beliefs are not, then you had better come up with a special explanation of why the compatibilists' reconciliation devices bring under our control actions but not beliefs. Alternatively, the involuntarist might favor libertarianism. There are, however, different versions of libertarianism, and thus we cannot simply identify one standard way in which a libertarian might make a case to the effect that unlike actions beliefs are beyond our control. I will, therefore, merely indicate how I would approach this matter. I agree with Peter Van Inwagen that, whereas compatibilism makes control over action easy to come by, libertarianism makes this rather hard.11 Ironically, then, libertarianism has the consequence of significantly shrinking the range of things over which we enjoy control. This is so because it would be rather implausible of the libertarian to assert that we can always freely choose between doing x and not doing x. Rather, such a choice is possible only when decisive reasons either for or against doing x are absent, which is sometimes the case but not very frequently.12 The same applies to beliefs. Though certainly not all of them, by far most of our beliefs are supported by decisive evidence.13 If, as libertarians do, we identify control over beliefs with the dual ability to believe that/? and not to believe thatp under exactly the same circumstances, then the majority of our beliefs lies beyond our control. The same applies to our actions and omissions: To the extent that they are supported by decisive reasons, they also lie beyond our control. Consider approaching a red light at a busy intersection. Decisive moral and prudential reasons demand that you step on the brakes. It seems to me that libertarians should admit that you have no choice here: It is not within your power to refrain from doing this. The same applies to beliefs that are supported by decisive reasons. For example, your perceptual beliefs about your environment are (typically) supported by decisive evidence. If we are libertarians, then I think we should admit that it is not within our power to reject these beliefs. Note, however, that we do not hesitate to say that, when approaching a busy intersection, you ought to step on the brakes. It is your moral and prudential duty to do so. The fact that you cannot do otherwise is no obstacle to this verdict. But if that much is agreed on, then libertarians can with equal right apply deontological evaluation to beliefs. The perceptual beliefs you have about your environment are the beliefs you ought to have, notwithstanding the fact that it is not within your power to get rid of these beliefs as long as you have decisive reasons for them. Of course, libertarians believe that at least sometimes you can, under exactly the same circumstances, choose between doing and not doing x, as well as choose between believing and not believing that/?.14 However, since this is only sometimes so, libertarians can sustain the broad range of deontological judgments that we ordinarily make, only if they reject the principle that we are responsible at a time t for a particular action or belief only if we have at t libertarian, dual control over that action or belief. On the other hand, what motivates libertarianism to begin with is the

Introduction

15

thought that without control there cannot be any responsibility at all. Thus one of the problems libertarians face is to reconcile this thought with the denial of a straightforwardly direct connection between responsibility and control. Let me sum up. Compatibilism makes control easy to come by. Consequently, it does not lend itself very well for making a case for the claim that we lack control over beliefs. Unless a special explanation is offered, we have no reason for thinking the compatibilist reconciliation devices do not equally apply to beliefs. Libertarianism, in contrast, makes control hard to come by. Consequently (and perhaps ironically) libertarianism lends itself well for making a claim for quasi-involuntarism: the view that although what to believe is sometimes under our control, most of the time it is not. However, the same quasi-involuntarism applies to actions and omissions: Many, if not most of them, are beyond our control. I doubt libertarians favor limiting the scope of deontological evaluation accordingly. And thus I conclude that if we are libertarians and consider deontological evaluation of actions and omissions as legitimate although so many of them are not under our control, then we must be prepared to accept a parallel conclusion for the application of deontological evaluation to beliefs. The difference between the way compatibilists and libertarians must view the issue of belief and control presents itself clearly when we ask how they ought to respond to the following statement by H. H. Price: "If you are in a reasonable frame of mind, you cannot help preferring the proposition which the evidence favors, much as you may wish you could."15 Let us begin with compatibilism. Note that compatibilists do not merely say that causal determination is no obstacle to control and responsibility but rather say that control and responsibility even require causal determination. If your reasons, together with your attitudes, preferences, character traits, and so on, did not causally determine your actions, in which sense could you then be said in control of them? Thus, if an action is under our control, is must be the result of the right kind of causal determination; that is, it must be the result not of causal determination involving things like neuroses or paranoia but rather of causal processes in which reasons figure appropriately. But why should this point not apply with equal force to beliefs that are produced by causal processes in which epistemic reasons figure appropriately? It seems to me that if epistemic reasons figure appropriately in a belief's causal history, then by parity of argument we should conclude that they are just as much under our control as actions in whose causal history practical reasons figure appropriately.16 I do not think, therefore, that compatibilists are in a position to appeal to Price's point as an argument for denying that we have control over our beliefs. Rather, they should say exactly the opposite: When the perceptual experience of seeing that it is raining "causes" us to believe that it is, then that belief is within the scope of our control precisely because what causes it is a good reason, and not something like an irrational fear or a neurotic compulsion. The libertarian response to Price's point, on the other hand, looks rather different. Libertarians would have to argue that, if a decision you made (practical or doxastic) was a matter of causal determination, where the strength of your reasons was one element of what determined your decision, then you were not in control. However, the same point would have to be made for actions as well. And thus, if we are libertarians, Price's observation poses no special problem for beliefs. Rather, if

16

Introduction

we are libertarians, then, given the fact that practical as well as epistemic reasons can be compelling, that is, add up to causal determination, we face the task of having to explain why deontological evaluation can be applied to both beliefs and actions even on those occasion when they are causally determined. To conclude, let us return to the comparison with which we began. We compared our being unable to refrain from believing that it is raining when we perceive that it is with our being able to choose between taking and not taking a walk. Since similar comparisons can be listed ad nauseam, opponents of the control thesis might argue that in general we have control over what we do but not over what we believe. But from the compatibilist point of view, is there really a difference here? Suppose then you did take a walk, and we say that while that is something over which you had control because you could have refrained from doing it, your belief that it is raining is not because you cannot refrain from believing this. However, if we are compatibilists, we must acknowledge that your belief and your walk are both the result of causal determination. Yet compatibilists would say that if you took the walk not because of compulsion but for a good reason, then you had control over it. But shouldn't we then say the same about your belief that it is raining? After all, this belief is not the result of compulsion. You wouldn't believe it's raining no matter what your evidence is. Rather, you believe it's raining because your belief is supported by excellent evidence. Where, then, is the difference that would justify compatibilists in saying that, whereas the walk was under your control, your belief was not? The matter looks different for libertarians. If nothing much is at stake with regard to the question of whether to take a walk, then, so libertarians would argue, we can indeed do both under exactly the same circumstances: decide to take a walk and decide not to take a walk.17 Obviously, this is not the case with regard to deciding to believe that it is not raining when we see that it is. That's a decision we cannot make. But surely it would be wrong to conclude that our comparison establishes that belief and action differ with regard to control. For, as libertarians should argue, the comparison is not fair. It is misleading to compare a doxastic attitude that is decisively opposed by our epistemic reasons with an action that is neither opposed nor demanded by decisive practical reasons. Rather, what we should compare the belief case with is an action that is decisively opposed by practical reasons, such as giving the first person you see on the street a hefty blow to the nose. Once the comparison is carried out in this way, what emerges is that we cannot decide to do either of these things. The difference the comparison was meant to establish no longer exists. Note that I have not set forth a straightforward defense of the thesis that we have voluntary control over our beliefs. Rather, I have argued for the following two claims. First, if we endorse compatibilism, then critics of epistemic deontology need an explanation of why we have less control over our beliefs than over our actions. I do not think there is such an explanation, but others disagree. Feldman, for example, argues in his contribution to this volume that there is such an explanation. Second, if we endorse libertarianism, then critics of epistemic deontology need again an explanation of why beliefs are less suitable for deontological evaluation than actions are. Again, I do not think that there is such an explanation, but doubtless there will be others who disagree with that verdict.18

Introduction

17

Notes 1. For statements to the effect that epistemic justification is normative, see, for example, Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989); John Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), 7; William Alston, "Concepts of Epistemic Justification," in Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 83. 2. See "Concepts of Epistemic Justification," The Monist 68 (1985), as well as Alston's paper, "The Deontological Concept of Epistemic Justification," Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988). Both papers are reprinted in Alston's Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 81-114 and 115-52. 3. See Alston (1989), 92. 4. See Richard Foley, Working Without a Net (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 5. See Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 6. See Alston (1989), 122. 7. The problem is that it is hard to see how we can exert control over our actions, and thus be responsible for them, if our reasons, choices, preferences, decisions, and the like are not causes of our actions. In short, the point is that control and responsibility seems to require causal determination. 8. Of course, you might still believe it because of cognitive dysfunction. For that kind of case, I would say that your belief is beyond your control. 9. It is, of course, difficult to see how one could have countervailing evidence with regard to many introspective beliefs or beliefs about logical or mathematical matters. Nevertheless, the point remains: If such evidence were to be had and was strong enough, we would believe differently. 10. As an explanation of the relevant difference, it might be suggested that in response to a practical reason I can do, or not do, a certain thing, but I cannot believe, or not believe, a certain proposition. The problem with this argument is its bias in favor of practical reasons. Why must it be the case that, for us to have control over our beliefs, we must be able to adopt doxastic attitudes in response to practical reasons? Why doesn't it suffice that we can adopt doxastic attitudes in response to epistemic reasons? 11. See Peter Van Inwagen, "When Is the Will Free?" in Timothy O'Connor, ed., Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 219-38. 12. Alternatively, libertarians might say that, while none of our actions are causally determined, our beliefs are. In that case, I would want to know what the reason is for saying that our actions, but not our beliefs, are under control. Why is it that, whereas decisive reason for an action (like the ones you have for stepping on the brakes when approaching a red light at a busy intersection) do not (in conjunction with other relevant factors) add up to causal determination, decisive reasons for a belief (say the reasons you have for believing that cats are mammals) do? Libertarians might also say that nothing is causally determined. But if my not believing that cats are insects does not have a sufficient causal condition, why is it nevertheless not within my power to decide in favor of a different doxastic attitude, that is, to believe that cats are insects? 13. If this were otherwise, so much the better for doxastic voluntarism. 14. For example, supposing libertarianism is true, it seems plausible to me that you can both decide to do x and decide not to do x when you are completely indifferent with regard to the question of whether to do x or not. And, again supposing libertarianism to be true, I see no objection to saying that, for example, if your reasons against believing that p are opposed by a powerful desire to believe that p, deciding to believe that p and deciding not to believe that p is both within your power.

18

Introduction

15. H. H. Price, "Belief and the Will," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. 28 (1954): 1-27. 16. Here it might be objected that reasons simply do not figure appropriately in the causal history of our beliefs. But that assertion flies in the face of the evidence. Obviously reasons are causally efficacious not only in the domain of action, but in the domain of belief as well. In fact, I would say that the very reason why we seem not to be in control of our beliefs lies in the fact that, for example, perceptual evidence is so remarkably effective in triggering the beliefs it supports. 17. Alternatively, we could consider a case where you have decisive reasons for taking a walk. In that case, the intended contrast between the action and the belief would immediately disappear. 18. I defend an expanded version of the argument presented here in "Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology,"Acto Analytica 15 (2000): 25-56. This article is also available on my web-site (http://condor.stcloudstate.edu/~steup/).

Part I EPISTEMIC DUTY A N D T H E NORMATIVITY OF JUSTIFICATION

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The Ethics of Belief" Reconsidered

SUSAN HAACK

What is the relation of epistemic to ethical appraisal? Possible answers include: (1) that epistemic appraisal is a subspecies of ethical appraisal—henceforth, for short, the special-case thesis', (2) that positive/negative epistemic appraisal is distinct from, but invariably associated with, positive/negative ethical appraisal—the correlation thesis; (3) that there is, not invariable correlation, but partial overlap, where positive/negative epistemic appraisal is associated with positive/negative ethical appraisal—the overlap thesis', (4) that ethical appraisal is inapplicable where epistemological appraisal is relevant— the independence thesis; (5) that epistemic appraisal is distinct from, but analogous to, ethical appraisal—the analogy thesis.

I hope this list exhausts the serious options.1 But refinements will be needed to take account of the fact that each of the positions listed has both a completely general form ("for every dimension of epistemic appraisal"), and a variety of specific forms (e.g., "where epistemic appraisal of someone as completely, or to some degree, justified, or as unjustified, in believing that . . . is concerned"). The correct account may be different with respect to different dimensions of epistemic appraisal. But the logical relations among the positions listed are the same whether one considers each in its general form, or each in the same specific form. The special-case thesis is incompatible with any of the others. The correlation thesis is incompatible with the overlap thesis and with the independence thesis. The analogy thesis, however, though incompatible with the special-case thesis, is compatible with the correlation thesis, with the overlap thesis, and even with the independence thesis. 21

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In "Firth and the Ethics of Belief," published in 1991, Chisholm writes that since 1938, when he and Firth both enrolled in Ralph Barton Perry's seminar on value theory, "Firth's inclination was to say that [epistemic justification] is merely an analogue [of ethical justification]; and my inclination was to say that it is a subspecies.... I still find myself inclined to accept the original view."2 For most of this paper, I shall concentrate, like Chisholm and Firth, specifically on the relation of epistemic to ethical justification. Here, as I see it, the special-case thesis is too strong, the analogy thesis (not false but) too weak; the relation of epistemic to ethical justification is as stated in the overlap thesis: less intimate than partial identity, more intimate than analogy. Interwoven with my arguments for this specific version of the overlap thesis will be some speculations of a more historical character: that in the celebrated debate between Clifford and James, it is their shared failure to distinguish epistemological from ethical justification which creates the false impression that one must choose either the morally over-demanding account proposed in "The Ethics of Belief" or the epistemologically over-permissive account proposed in "The Will to Believe." And interwoven with these speculations will be an argument that locates Chisholm closer to the Jamesian side of that debate, significantly more permissive epistemologically than Clifford—and somewhat more permissive epistemologically than myself. Finally, I shall turn my attention briefly to the relation of epistemic to ethical appraisals of character, which, I shall suggest, seems more intimate than the relation of epistemic to ethical justification. This will suggest a friendly, if revisionary, reinterpretation of what is plausible in Clifford's, and Chisholm's, talk of "the ethics of belief." Like Chisholm, I take for granted the essentially evaluative character of epistemological concerns, the focus on what makes evidence better or worse, what determines to what degree a person \sjustified in a belief, how inquiry should be or is best conducted. But when one thinks about the different ends on which epistemological and ethical appraisal are focused, it looks likely that their relation is to be expected to be at least as complex and oblique as the relation of knowledge to human flourishing. This expectation is confirmed by reflection on such questions as: Is all knowledge conducive to human flourishing, or is there some knowledge we should be better off without? Is it always morally, as it is epistemologically, best to seek out all available evidence, or are some means of obtaining evidence unethical? Is it always harmful to believe unjustifiedly, or is it sometimes harmless or even beneficial?3 If it is possible that there should be cases where a person believes unjustifiedly, but where the appropriate moral appraisal is favorable or indifferent, the claim that to say that a person believes unjustifiedly is eo ipso to make an unfavorable moral appraisal—henceforth, the special-case thesisj—is false. Unless, therefore, it is incoherent to claim that believing unjustifiedly is sometimes simply harmless, or, as some philosophers have done, that there is moral merit in faith, or in a husband's believing that his wife is faithful even if the evidence indicates otherwise, the specialcase thesis; is false. And, whether or not they are true, such claims are surely coherent. This argument is not quite conclusive, however, for a defender of the special-case thesisj might reply that the coherence of these descriptions is insufficient to refute

"The Ethics of Belief" Reconsidered

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his thesis; in the cases described, he might argue, there is a prima facie moral failing (believing unjustifiedly), but it is so slight as to be negligible, or has been overridden by weightier considerations (the moral value of trust between husband and wife, for example). Another argument against the special-case thesisj appeals to the fact that "morally ought" implies "can," and hence that "epistemically ought" cannot be a subspecies of "morally ought," since it does not imply "can"; for believing, and hence believing unjustifiedly, is not in any straightforward sense voluntary. If this argument were conclusive, it would rule out not only the special-case thesisj, but also the correlation thesisj and the overlap thesisj. But it is not conclusive. Chisholm observes that, though indeed one cannot stop believing that p or start believing that/? now, no more can one fulfill all one's (as the special-case thesisj would have it, all one's other) moral obligations now; what is required is only that one can in due course.4 Of course, the sense in which one can't just stop believing or start believing that/? now is quite unlike the sense in which one can't, say, answer all one's correspondence now; the difficulty isn't that one hasn't time just now to stop or start believing that/;, but that one can't simply stop or start believing that/? at any time. Believing that p is a condition one finds oneself in, not something one does. However, as Chisholm pointed out in an earlier discussion of this issue,5 one can sometimes bring it about that in due course one believes . . . ; one can sometimes induce a belief, by bringing about the circumstances in which that condition is likely to arise. One cannot believe at will; nevertheless, sometimes the wish is father to the thought,6 and this may be enough for moral appraisal to be applicable. A better argument against the special-case thesis, is this. A person is epistemically unjustified in believing that p just in case his evidence isn't good enough. But he can't be morally at fault in believing that/? unless his belief is willfully induced. And his evidence may not be good enough even in cases where his belief is not willfully induced. So it is possible that there should be cases where a person is epistemically unjustified but not morally at fault; and the special-case thesisj is false. Before I turn to the correlation thesis:, however, I need to consider a reinterpretation of the special-case thesis: recently suggested by Chisholm. "The distinguishing feature of ethical duty," Chisholm writes in a paper published in 1991, "is not to be found in the considerations that impose that duty. Rather, an ethical duty is simply a requirement that is not overridden by any other requirement."7 And so, he argues, when an epistemic requirement is not overridden by any other requirement, it is one's ethical duty. Even if this account of what it is to be an ethical requirement were acceptable, this would be insufficient to establish the special-case thesisj; for it would show only that some epistemic requirements—those which are not overridden by other requirements—are ethical. And, in any case, it seems that "ethical" has been persuasively redefined, as "any normative requirement not overridden by some other requirement"; that this is a re-definition becomes apparent when one considers that it implies, for example, that any requirement, of prudence, say, or of aesthetics, would thereby be classified as ethical provided only that it is not overridden by any other requirement.8 According to the correlation thesisj, although to say that a person believes unjustifiedly is not eo ipso to say that he is morally at fault, nevertheless, whenever

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a person believes unjustifiedly, he is morally as well as epistemologically at fault. Two arguments against this thesis immediately suggest themselves. If it is ever true (not merely, as the first argument considered against the special-case thesis required, possible) that believing unjustifiedly is beneficial or harmless, or if it is ever false (not necessarily, as the second argument considered against the special-case thesis required, always) that a person is responsible for believing unjustifiedly, then the correlation thesis is false. There are cases in which a person's believing unjustifiedly is harmless or even beneficial. My believing, on inadequate evidence, that the apples I just selected are the best in the supermarket, is, like many inconsequential beliefs, harmless. Again, if a patient's believing, on inadequate evidence, that he will recover from his illness significantly improves the chances that he will recover, then he may properly be appraised neutrally from a moral point of view.9 Cases like this are sufficient to show it false that, whenever a person believes unjustifiedly, his so believing is always also subject, all things considered, to unfavorable moral appraisal. They are not sufficient, however, to show it false that, whenever a person believes unjustifiedly, his so believing is always also subject to unfavorable moral appraisal prima facie. But if a subject is not always responsible for believing unjustifiedly, even a prima facie correlation thesisj is false. Possible explanations of someone's believing unjustifiedly are: negligent incontinence10—he has been careless or perfunctory in inquiry, but, jumping to conclusions, has formed a belief anyway; self-deception—self-interest has skewed his perception of the weight or relevance of this or that evidence; or cognitive inadequacy —he has done his best, but on this matter his best cognitive effort isn't good enough, and has resulted in an unjustified belief. (The first two kinds of explanation are not really so distinct as this rather crude list makes them appear, since a sort of one-sided carelessness in inquiry is one of the forms in which self-deception manifests itself; but, though they may be, negligence in inquiry and incontinence in belief-formation need not be self-interested.) One may distinguish two kinds of cognitive inadequacy: the personal—an individual's good-faith misjudgment of the weight of complex evidence—and the cultural. The latter arises because of the perspectival character of judgments of relevance, their dependence on background beliefs. Sometimes the explanation of someone's believing on skimpy evidence is that he doesn't realize that certain relevant evidence is relevant, because the background beliefs which determine what evidence he perceives as relevant are mistaken—background beliefs which are taken for known facts in his epistemic community, and which he may have no way of knowing are not so. Where there has been no negligence and no covert operation of wishes or fears, where the explanation of the person's believing unjustifiedly is cognitive inadequacy, personal or cultural, unfavorable moral appraisal is inappropriate even if the belief is harmful. 11 Perhaps it will be argued in defense of a prima facie correlation thesis; that, even in cases of unjustified believing explicable by cognitive inadequacy, the subject is still morally culpable in an indirect way; culpable, that is, not directly for believing unjustifiedly (ex hypothesi, that represents his best cognitive effort at the time), but

"The Ethics of Belief" Reconsidered

25

indirectly, for not having cultivated better judgment. There are circumstances where this is appropriate—for example, in some cases where it is this person's (this doctor's, this lawyer's, this juror's, this academic's) particular responsibility to know about the matter at hand; but the correlation thesisj requires that it always be so. And this is not true. Even if one were morally required to cultivate one's capacity to judge evidence to the very best of which one is capable (a very demanding assumption), still, for any person, there would be some degree of finesse which he could not, by even the most strenuous mental discipline, surpass. Or perhaps it will be argued in defense of the correlation thesisT that, even in cases of unjustified believing explicable by cognitive inadequacy, the subject is still morally culpable by omission: he morally ought to be aware of his cognitive limitations. There are circumstances where this observation is appropriate too; but, again, the correlation thesisj requires that it always be so. And this is not true either. Even if one were morally required to be as aware as possible of one's cognitive limitations (again, a very demanding assumption), a complete grasp of those limitations may be beyond one's cognitive powers. If a person has done the best he can, not only to find out whetherp, but also to determine that he is competent to find out whether;?, he is not morally culpable even if his belief in his competence and his belief that p are, by reason of cognitive inadequacy, unjustified. If these arguments are correct, the correlation thesisj, even in its weaker, prima facie, form, is false. Unlike the correlation thesisj, which requires that unjustified believing be always (at least prima facie) harmful and always something for which the subject may properly be held responsible, the overlap thesisj requires only that unjustified believing sometimes cause (at least prima facie) harm and sometimes be something for which the subject may properly be held responsible. And this is so. Acting on false beliefs sometimes causes either actual harm or, at least, unacceptable risk of harm. Justified beliefs may be false, and unjustified beliefs may be true; nevertheless if, as we hope and believe they are, our criteria of justification are indicative of truth, justified beliefs are likely to be true, and unjustified beliefs are likely to be false. And so, acting on unjustified beliefs is also (though less) likely to cause harm or, at least, unacceptable risk of harm. And when unjustified believing is the result either of negligence or of selfdeception, though it is not belief at will, it is willful—it is, as we say, a kind of "willful ignorance." One might reasonably feel that a person who knowingly causes harm reveals himself to be a more hardened character than a person who induces himself to believe, unjustifiedly, that his action will not be harmful. Nevertheless, the quasivoluntary nature of willful ignorance seems to suffice, at least sometimes, for the ascription of responsibility. In other words, believing unjustifiedly is sometimes a form of morally culpable ignorance. It is not, of course, the only form. Ignorance comes in at least three varieties: one may fail to know because one has no belief on the matter at hand (agnosticism), or because the belief one has is false (mis-belief), or because the belief one has is unjustified (over-belief). Agnosticism, in turn, comes in at least three subvarieties: one may have no belief because one hasn't investigated and has no evidence either way (plain agnosticism); because, though one has investigated and has

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evidence, that evidence seems insufficient to settle the matter (can't-tell agnosticism); or because one has failed to draw a conclusion which the evidence would support (under-belief). There are epistemologically and psychologically interesting similarities between the phenomena of under-belief and over-belief;12 but it is the latter that concerns me here. Over-belief, unjustified believing, constitutes culpable ignorance when, as it sometimes but not invariably is, it is both harmful and peccable. If these arguments are correct, the overlap thesisj is true.13 The arguments thus far put the strategy of W. K. Clifford's celebrated essay, "The Ethics of Belief,"14 in a new perspective. The main thesis of that essay is that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" (p. 77). Neither here nor elsewhere in the essay does Clifford ever distinguish "it is epistemologically wrong" from "it is morally wrong."15 But he offers no arguments for identifying the two, or even for the special-case thesisj, that the former is a subspecies of the latter. Instead, extrapolating from a striking case where unjustified believing is culpable ignorance, he tries to persuade one that all cases of unjustified believing are, in some measure, both harmful and willful. He offers, in other words, only arguments that could, at most, establish the correlation thesisj. It is illuminating—as a further test of the claim that the correlation thesisj is not true, although the overlap thesisj is—to show how Clifford's attempted extrapolation fails. In the vivid case with which Clifford's essay opens, we are to imagine a shipowner who "knowingly and willingly" suppresses his doubts, doesn't check, manages sincerely to believe that his vessel is seaworthy, and allows the ship to depart. He "had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him" Clifford observes; and he "is verily guilty" of the deaths of passengers and crew when the ship goes down (p. 70). The description of the ship-owner's self-deception as "knowingly and willingly" undertaken (p. 71) is a bit lacking in subtlety; and it would have been desk-able that Clifford say explicitly that it is the element of willfulness that justifies an unfavorable moral appraisal in this case, as in more-straightforward cases where harm is knowingly caused—for example, if the ship-owner knew full well that the vessel was unseaworthy and allowed it to depart anyway. Nevertheless, Clifford's judgment of this case seems correct: it is a case of morally culpable ignorance, of failure in a duty to know. But the case has a number of features which are not invariably found whenever someone believes unjustifiedly, and some of which are essential to the unfavorable moral appraisal appropriate here. The unjustified belief is false; the proposition concerned is of great practical importance; the person concerned is in a position of special responsibility; the false belief leads to dramatically harmful consequences; and the belief is willfully self-induced. The correlation thesisj is false unless the ignorance would still be morally culpable even if all these features were absent. Clifford is aware that a belief held on insufficient evidence may be true, and clear that it is the belief's being unjustified, not its being false, that matters. There are two points to consider here, only one of which Clifford raises. The first, which he does not mention, concerns cases of false but justified belief. If the ship-owner had investigated carefully and honestly, and had been justified in believing the vessel seaworthy, but his justified belief had been false, and the ship went down, the appropriate verdict from a moral point of view would surely be that he was not to blame for the

"The Ethics of Belief" Reconsidered

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false belief, nor, therefore, for what one would be inclined to describe as a tragic accident. The second point, which Clifford does discuss, concerns cases of unjustified but true belief. He first remarks that the ship-owner would still be morally responsible even if his belief that the vessel was seaworthy was true, because "he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him." This trades on his failure to distinguish epistemic from ethical justification, and hence fails. Later, however (p. 72), Clifford comes up with a better argument: by failing to investigate properly and inducing himself to believe on inadequate evidence, the ship-owner would have taken an unacceptable risk of causing harm. That seems correct. So far, so good, for Clifford and for the correlation thesisj. But what if the proposition concerned were not, as in the original case, a consequential one, or if the person with the unjustified belief were not the person responsible for deciding whether the ship is to be allowed to make the voyage? Where, then, is the harm, or, if the unjustified belief happens to be true, the risk of harm? Clifford offers what are in effect two kinds of answes to these questions about apparently harmless unjustified belief. The first is—urging that a belief must be connected to action somehow, however indirectly, to count as a belief at all—that no belief is really altogether inconsequential; there is always at least the potential that action might be based on it, and might prove harmful (p. 73). The second is to suggest that unjustified believing always discourages scrupulous inquiry and strengthens the habit of "credulity"; it weakens the epistemic fiber, one might say, and hence carries, if not invariably a risk of harm, a risk of risk of harm (p. 76). Clifford's responses depend on two false assumptions: that mere potential for harm, however remote, is sufficient for unfavorable moral appraisal (provided the subject is responsible for the unjustified belief); and that a subject is always responsible for unjustified believing. But remote potential for harm is not sufficient; if it were, not only drunken driving, but owning a car, would be morally culpable. And a subject is not always responsible for believing unjustifiedly; the cause, sometimes, is cognitive inadequacy. Matters are confused by the way Clifford combines the two responses in the argument that unjustified believing encourages "credulity," and thereby carries potential for harm or risk of harm. It is true that sloppy inquiry, jumping to conclusions, and wishful thinking manifest undesirable dispositions—dispositions to which, no doubt, some people are temperamentally more inclined than others, but dispositions which one can either check and discourage in oneself, or allow to operate unchecked, and, by unchecked indulgence, encourage. They are bad habits which may, if unchecked, become inveterate. (It is not clear, however, that Clifford is right to suggest that any individual's indulgence in such habits is bound to encourage them in others.) But it is not true that unjustified believing is always the result of self-deception or negligence; so Clifford's oblique argument that unjustified believing is always harmful also fails. These disagreements with Clifford by no means imply agreement with his most famous critic, William James.16 Clifford holds that it is always wrong to believe on insufficient evidence. I have pointed out that Clifford fails to distinguish "epistemologically wrong" from "morally wrong," and argued that his thesis is not true if interpreted as an ethical claim. James holds that it is not always wrong to believe on

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insufficient evidence. He would be correct, therefore, if by "wrong" he meant "morally wrong" only; but this is not what he means. Like Clifford, James never distinguishes these two possible ways of taking "ought," "justified," "our duty in the matter of opinion," and so on. Some of the arguments in "The Will to Believe" seem to be intended as epistemological: that knowing the truth is no less valuable than avoiding error (pp. 17ff); that believing that p sometimes contributes to bringing it about that;? is true (pp. 23-24). But others seem to be of an ethical character: that we should not condemn those who have faith for believing without adequate evidence, but should "respect one another's mental freedom" (p. 30); and the quotation from Fitz-James Stephen at the close of the essay, urging that we have faith because "if death ends all, we cannot meet death better" (p. 31). This suggests that the best way to read James is as holding that it is not always wrong either epistemologically or morally to believe on insufficient evidence.17 James's argument about respect for others' mental freedom deserves special comment. If, like James, one fails to distinguish epistemic from ethical justification, one can make room for (moral) tolerance of others' unjustified opinions only as James seems to, by weakening one's standards of epistemic justification. But if one distinguishes the two, one has no need of any such radical epistemological measures. In any case, one's judgment that another's belief is unjustified must, because of the perspectival character of judgments of justification, their dependence on one's background beliefs, be acknowledged to be thoroughly fallible. And, most to the present point, unjustified believing is not morally culpable if it results from cognitive inadequacy, whether personal or cultural. Unlike both James and Clifford, I distinguish epistemological from ethical justification. Like James and unlike Clifford, I do not think it always morally wrong to believe on inadequate evidence. Clifford's position is over-demanding morally. Like Clifford and unlike James, however, I think it is always epistemologically wrong to believe on inadequate evidence—in the sense that believing on inadequate evidence is always epistemologically unjustified belief. James's position is over-permissive epistemologically. Perhaps it will be objected that sometimes it is all to the good—epistemologically all to the good—that a person believe something even though his evidence is inadequate; for example, the scientist whose faith in an as yet inadequately supported theory motivates him to develop, articulate, and test it, and thus advances inquiry. This objection is focused, not on the concept of epistemic justification, but on questions about the conduct of inquiry.18 It is irrelevant to the claim that believing on inadequate evidence is always believing unjustifiedly; it argues, rather, that believing unjustifiedly is not always damaging, and may even be helpful, to the progress of inquiry. This, I think, is true. Not that over-belief is ever an optimal condition for the conduct of inquiry; the ideal, I take it, would be, not for our hypothetical scientist to have faith in the theory's truth, but for him to recognize it as, though thus far unworthy of belief, nevertheless promising enough to be worthy of serious further investigation.19 Still, given human inquirers' inevitable frailties, a scientific community in which some are disposed to over-belief and others to under-belief may, by virtue of individuals' epistemic imperfections serendipitously compensating for each other, be a reasonable ersatz of a community of inquirers who conform to the episte-

"The Ethics of Belief" Reconsidered

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mological ideal. So, although over-belief is always epistemologically wrong in the sense both of "epistemologically unjustified" and in the sense of "not the ideal with respect to the conduct of inquiry," it is not always epistemologically wrong in the sense of "damaging to the conduct of inquiry." So I do not mean to deny that, as James observes, "science would be much less advanced than she is if the passionate desires of individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been kept out of the game" (p. 21). The point is, rather, that because James fails to distinguish the question whether believing on inadequate evidence is always unjustified belief, from the question whether believing on inadequate evidence is always damaging to the conduct of inquiry, he runs together a correct negative answer to the latter with an incorrect—over-permissive—negative answer to the former.20 Clifford and James simply fail to distinguish epistemic from ethical justification; Chisholm explicitly maintains that epistemic justification is a subspecies of ethical justification. James claims that it is sometimes legitimate to believe on insufficient evidence, suggesting that a man who has a moral duty to believe that p may thereby be epistemologically justified in so believing; Chisholm explicitly denies this, but he also protests that Clifford's "rigid evidentialism" is epistemologically overdemanding, suggesting, instead, that a belief is epistemologically "innocent until proven guilty."21 So Chisholm's position is further from Clifford's and closer to James's than his borrowing Clifford's title for part I of Perceiving might have led one to expect. And so my disagreement with Chisholm, like my disagreement with James, extends beyond the matter of the distinctness of epistemological from ethical justification to a more strictly epistemological issue. For, where the question of epistemic justification is concerned, my position is closer to Clifford's than to James's. Closer, but not identical; for I think it vital to acknowledge the gradational character of epistemic justification:22 whether, or to what degree, a person is justified in a belief depends on how good—how supportive, how comprehensive, and how independently secure— his evidence with respect to that belief is.23 Ideally, I should prefer to put this in terms which also acknowledge that belief, as well as justification, comes in degrees. But the point on which I am presently taking issue with Chisholm doesn't depend on these subtleties; it is that, by my lights, one believes that p unjustifiedly, even if one's evidence supports p over not-/?, unless one's evidence includes enough of the relevant evidence.24 The goal of inquiry is substantial truth. When one focuses on guidelines for the conduct of inquiry, one must concern oneself with substance as well as truth. But when one focuses on criteria of justification, one is ipso facto restricting oneself to the dimension of truth; for truth-indicativeness is the characteristic virtue of criteria of justification. Chisholm, noting, correctly, as James does that "playing it safe" is not always the most successful course in inquiry, then suggests, incorrectly, as James does, that this motivates less demanding criteria of justification.25 Complex as this has been, it has been, thus far, focused quite narrowly, on the question of the relation of epistemic to ethical justification only—on which I find myself in disagreement with Chisholm. I want, by way of conclusion, to offer some more

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positive thoughts with regard to a different dimension of epistemic appraisal—the appraisal of a person qua inquirer or cognizer.26 Our vocabulary for epistemic appraisals of character is varied and subtle ("meticulous," "sloppy," "imaginative," "closed-minded," "brilliant," "obtuse," etc.). It is striking that a significant subclass of this vocabulary is shared with ethics: "honest," "responsible," "negligent," etc., come immediately to mind. And I am not sure but that here the relation of epistemic to ethical appraisal may be as intimate as the special-case thesis maintains; perhaps, at least without an "otherwise," "he is a good man but intellectually dishonest" really does have the authentic ring of oxymoron. Recall that, if my earlier arguments are correct, it is precisely when a person's unjustified believing stems, not from cognitive inadequacy, but from self-deception or negligent incontinence—from a lack of intellectual integrity27 on his part— that we hold him responsible for his belief. This suggests a friendly reinterpretation of what is most plausible in Clifford's condemnation of "the habit of credulity," and Chisholm's defense of the special-case thesis, as pointing to the moral importance of intellectual integrity. Which prompts the following concluding observation: at the price of a little oversimplification, one might say that, as courage is the soldier's virtue par excellence, so intellectual integrity is the academic's. (The over-simplification is that intellectual integrity itself requires a kind of courage, the hardihood called for in relinquishing dearly held beliefs, or in resisting some conventional wisdom or fashionable shibboleth.) As C. I. Lewis writes, more eloquently than I could: "Almost we may say that one who presents argument is worthy of confidence only if he be first a moral man, a man of integrity.... [W]e presume, on the part of those who follow any scientific vocation, . . . a sort of tacit oath never to subordinate the motive of objective truth-seeking to any subjective preference or inclination or any expediency or opportunistic consideration."28 Notes This paper is reprinted, with minor modifications, from Lewis Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Roderick ML. Chisholm (Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 25, La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1997), 129^14, by permission of the publishers. I would to thank Richard Brandt, Peter Hare, Mark Migotti, Sidney Ratner, Harvey Siegel, David Stove, and Joanne Waugh for helpful comments on a draft of this paper; Howard Burdick and Risto Hilpinen for helpful conversations; and the audiences at the universities (Washington State, Utah, Saint Cloud State, Michigan, Toronto, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Granada, the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian) and conferences ("A Hundred Years of American Philosophy" in Cerisy La Salle, and the Mid-South Philosophical Association at the University of Memphis) where this paper was presented. 1. In principle, there are two other possibilities: that epistemic appraisal and ethical appraisal are identical, and that ethical appraisal is a special case of epistemic appraisal. I shall not consider either here. The first seems too obviously false to consider; the latter, with its Platonic overtones, would require a paper of its own. 2. R. M. Chisholm, "Firth and the Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 51.1 (1991): 119-28 (the quotation is from p. 119). See also R. M. Chisholm, "Epistemic Statements and the Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (1956): 447-60; R. M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

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University Press), 1957; R. Firth, "Chisholm and the Ethics of Belief," Philosophical Review 68 (1959): 493-506; R. M. Chisholm, "'Appear,' Take,' and 'Evident'," Journal of Philosophy 53.23 (1956): 722-31; R. Firth, "Ultimate Evidence," Journal of Philosophy 53.23 (1956): 732-39; R. M. Chisholm, "Evidence as Justification," Journal of Philosophy 58 (1961): 739^8; R. M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966; 2d ed., 1977; 3d ed., 1989); R. M. Chisholm, "Lewis' Ethics of Belief," in The Philosophy of C. 1. Lewis, P. A. Schilpp, ed. (La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1968), 223-42; R. Firth, "Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?" in Values and Morals, eds. A. I. Goldman and J. Kim, (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Reidel, 1978), 215-30; R. M. Chisholm, "SelfProfile," in Roderick M. Chisholm, ed. R. J. Bogdan, (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1986), 3-77. From time to time Chisholm writes of "analogies" between ethics and epistemology: see, e.g., Perceiving, pp. 12, 13, 18, 30; "'Appear,' 'Take,' and 'Evident'," pp. 723ff; Theory of Knowledge, first, 1966, edition (1) and third, 1989, edition (57-8); "Epistemic Reasoning and the Logic of Epistemic Concepts," in Logic and Philosophy, ed. G. H. Von Wright, (The Hague, the Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1980), 71-78. If, as it seems, his point is that there are structural analogies between the overriding of one moral requirement by another, and the inductive overriding of certain body of evidence by further evidence, this is quite compatible with his commitment to the special-case thesisj. On p. 54 of his "Self-Profile" Chisholm writes that "epistemic concepts are not moral concepts"; by the final sentence of the section, however (56), he writes that the concepts of epistemology are reducible to the concepts of ethics. 3. If, as I believe, the answer to the next-to-last of these questions is clearly "yes," this is sufficient to show the special-case thesis false in its most general form. 4. Chisholm, "Firth and the Ethics of Belief," 125-27. 5. Chisholm, "Lewis' Ethics of Belief," 223-24. 6. A phrase of which F. C. S. Schiller reminds us in his commentary on James's "The Will to Believe," Problems of Belief (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), 111. See, besides Chisholm's discussion of the quasi-voluntary nature of belief referred to above, H. H. Price's, in "Belief and the Will," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl., 28 (1954): 1-27. 7. Chisholm, "Firth and the Ethics of Belief," third, 1989, edition 127; cf. Theory of Knowledge, 58-59. 8. In his "Self-Profile," Chisholm suggests two arguments for the general form of the special-case thesis. The concept of requirement, Chisholm says, is central to ethics, and the concept of epistemic preferability can be defined in terms of requirement; to reach the conclusion that the concept of epistemic preferability is reducible to ethical concepts, however, one needs the stronger premise that the concept of requirement is uniquely ethical. Knowledge, Chisholm says, is, as Aristotle thought, intrinsically valuable; to reach the conclusion that epistemic concepts are reducible to ethical concepts, however, one needs the stronger premise that knowledge is intrinsically morally valuable. 9. Perhaps, if surviving his illness enables him to continue his morally admirable work or to meet his obligations to others, a favorable moral appraisal is in order; but that issue need not be decided here. In the case described, the person's believing thatp makes it more likely thatp will turn out true, but the point does not depend on that. Think of the kind of the case Peirce envisages when he observes that he could not condemn a man who, having lost his wife, induces himself to believe in an afterlife in which they will be reunited, even though the belief is unjustified, if, without it, "his usefulness would be at an end"; see C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, eds. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-58), 5.583, 1898. 10. A phrase adapted from J. Heil, "Doxastic Incontinence," Mind 93 (1984) 56-70. 11. This comports with the attractive conjecture (proposed by J. Shelton, "Contextualism: A Right Answer to the Wrong Question," Southwest Philosophical Studies 9.2 (1983): 117124), that the appeal of contextualist theories of epistemic justification may arise in part from

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a confusion of epistemological with ethical justification. The same conjecture might also serve to explain Goldman's claim that there are two concepts of epistemic justification, one objective and reliabilist, the other context-relative; see A. I. Goldman, "Strong and Weak Justification," in Philosophical Perspectives, 2: Epistemology, ed. J. Tomberlin, (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1988), 51-70. 12. See Chisholm, Perceiving, 14. 13. My arguments against the special-case thesisj and the correlation thesisj presuppose that harmfulness and responsibility are necessary for unfavorable moral appraisal; my arguments for the overlap thesisj presuppose that they are sufficient. These assumptions, though fairly weak, are, of course, not vacuous. For example, as the argument against the correlation thesisj revealed, someone who maintained that one has a moral obligation to develop one's capacities, generally, or one's capacity to judge evidence, specifically, would reject the former presupposition. 14. W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief (1877), in The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (London: Watts and Co., 1947), 70-96. 15. Richard Gale, "William James and the Ethics of Belief," American Philosophical Quarterly 17.1 (1980): 1-14, claims (p. 1) that Clifford has to be read as proposing the ethical thesis, that it is always morally wrong to believe on insufficient evidence; he observes in a footnote, however, that Clifford's words also bear another interpretation, that it is always epistemologically wrong to believe on insufficient evidence. 16. W. James, "The Will to Believe" (1896), in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), (New York: Dover, 1956): 1-31. 17. Cf. Jack W. Meiland, "What Ought We to Believe? or, The Ethics of Belief Revisited," American Philosophical Quarterly 17.1 (1980): 15-24, which precisely, but more explicitly, follows James in this regard. 18. The distinction is articulated in more detail in my Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), chap. 10. 19. The Will to Believe is dedicated "To My Old Friend, CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE, to whose philosophic comradeship in old times I owe more incitement and help than I can express or repay." In a letter of thanks, Peirce writes to James that in practical affairs, "'Faith,' in the sense that one will adhere consistently to a given line of conduct, is highly necessary.. .. But if it means that you are not going to be alert for indications that the moment has come to change your tactics, I think it ruinous in practice" (Collected Papers, 8.251, 1897). The next year one finds Peirce writing of the "Will to Learn" (5.583), and commenting that, where science is concerned, "full belief is willingness to act upon . .. the proposition . . . [The] accepted propositions [of science] are but opinions at most; and the whole list is provisional" (1.635). 20. The argument here raises an awkward question about the intended scope of James's Will to Believe doctrine. His initial statement, that "our passional nature lawfully may decide" any genuine option "that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds," strongly suggests that the doctrine is to apply only to hypotheses, for example, of a religious nature, which are in principle undecidable by evidence (which, however, raises the further awkward question, whether such hypotheses would qualify as meaningful by the standards of the Pragmatic Maxim). James's later reference to the role of "faith" in scientific inquiry, however, suggests that the scope of the doctrine is intended to be much broader, applying also to hypotheses with respect to which we merely happen, thus far, to lack sufficient evidence. 21. Chisholm, Perceiving, 9, 11, 100; Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966), 18-19. (The reference to Clifford is, however, missing from the second and third editions of Theory of Knowledge.) Chisholm's disagreement with Clifford on this matter seems to have escaped the attention of some commentators; see, for example, L. Pojman, "The Ethics of Belief," Southwest Philosophical Studies 9.2 (1983): 85-92, who describes Chisholm as subscribing to "rigid evidentialism," according to which "one ought to believe propositions if and only if they are backed by sufficient evidence." Pojman attributes this account of Chisholm's position to Meiland, "What Ought We to Believe?"; but the attribution is incorrect, since Meiland is careful to distinguish a stronger evidentialism (one has a

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right to believe that p only if the evidence is sufficient) from a weaker (one has a right to believe that p provided one does not have sufficient evidence for not-p), and does not say which, if either, he takes Chisholm to hold. 22. Chisholm too seems to acknowledge the gradational character of epistemic justification, most clearly in the third edition of Theory of Knowledge. But the fact that epistemic justification comes in degrees, whereas (I take it) ethical justification does not, suggests a further argument against the special-case thesisj. 23. It is because I take comprehensiveness to be only one of three determinants of degree of justification that I shifted, above, from Clifford's favored expression, "insufficient evidence," to writing of "inadequate evidence," which is, I hope, less likely to suggest failure of comprehensiveness alone. 24. My account of the determinants of degree of epistemic justification, one of which is how much of the relevant evidence the subject's evidence includes, is spelled out in detail in Evidence and Inquiry, chap. 4. My comprehensiveness requirement is motivated in part by an analogy between the structure of empirical justification and a crossword puzzle; as the reasonableness of one's confidence that a crossword entry is correct depends in part on how many of the intersecting entries one has completed, so one's degree of justification in a belief depends in part on how much of the relevant evidence one's evidence includes. So my neglect of the analogy thesis; does not stem from any prejudice against analogies, nor, I should add, from the belief that there are no interesting analogies between meta-epistemology and meta-ethics. For explorations of such analogies, see (besides the papers of Firth's referred to above) R. B. Brandt, "Epistemology and Ethics, Parallels Between," in Paul Edwards, ed., the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967) "The Concept of Rational Belief," The Monist 68.1 (1985), 3-23; and W. P. Alston, "Meta-Ethics and Meta-Epistemology," in Goldman and Kim, eds., Values and Morals, 275-98. 25. Chisholm, Perceiving, 22; Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed., 13-14. 26. There remain, of course, many other important questions which I shall have to put aside: for example, whether Chisholm and Firth are correct in supposing that justification is as central a concept in ethics as, I agree, it is in epistemology. 27. An expression that comports with the plausible idea that thinking is well construed as inner dialogue and self-deception as involving distracting one's own attention from inconvenient evidence, as the deception of another involves distracting his attention. Cf. Peirce, Collected Papers, 5.421, 1905. 28. C. I. Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955): 34. Of course, Lewis is using "scientific" in a broad sense, equivalent to "intellectual." The reference to a "tacit oath," by the way, suggests that the special-case thesisj may seem more plausible than it really is to those who are bound by such an oath and thus have a special moral duty to objective truth-seeking.

2

Epistemic and Moral Duty BRUCE RUSSELL

In this discussion, I will explore the similarities between epistemic and moral duty, especially regarding the distinctions between subjective and objective duties and between acting in accordance with and acting from duty. I will also discuss what seems to be the most noteworthy difference between epistemic and moral duty, namely, that moral duties apply to actions that are within our control while if there are any epistemic duties they apply to beliefs that are not within our control.

I. Moral Duty There are two senses in which a person can have a moral duty. In one sense, a person has a moral duty if she is blameworthy if she does not fulfill it, but there is another more fundamental sense in which a person can have a duty. To illustrate the difference, consider a physician who is about to treat a comatose individual. The physician does all that he can to determine whether the patient is allergic to the drug he is about to administer. He finds no evidence that he is and, because it's an emergency, cannot wait until the patient regains consciousness. He administers the drug, and the patient has an allergic reaction and dies. In one sense, the physician did not do what he should since he should not have given the patient the drug. In another sense, he did, since he did what it was reasonable of him to think was best for his patient, and he was blameless even though what he did killed the patient. We might say that the physician did not fulfill his objective, but did fulfill his subjective, duty. Duty can be defined in terms of wrongness: a person has a duty to do something if it is not wrong of him to do it and wrong of him to fail to do it. So I will take wrongness to be the

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primitive concept and discuss what objective and subjective wrongness are, keeping in mind that this will then allow us to define objective and subjective duty. It is tempting to define objective wrongness in terms of blame, namely, as what a person would be blameworthy for doing if he had no legitimate excuse. But examples can be given where a person is blameworthy and has no legitimate excuse but does what is objectively right. Suppose, for instance, that I have every reason to believe that doing something is objectively wrong, say, giving an innocent person something I think is poison, even though, as it turns out, it is a substance that will cure the person of her fatal disease. Then, whether intentionally or out of laziness or inattention, if I give the person what is in the bottle marked "poison" but is really the medicine that will cure her, I will do what is objectively right, even though I will be blameworthy and have no legitimate excuse for doing it. So objective wrongness will consist in doing something that is morally forbidden. A person will be blameworthy just in case she has adequate reason to believe that what she did was objectively wrong and has no legitimate excuse for doing it. It does not matter whether it was in fact objectively wrong, as the above example shows, since the person is blameworthy even though she does what is objectively right. She will be blameless just in case she has no adequate reason to believe that what she did was objectively wrong or has a legitimate excuse for doing it. Again, it does not matter whether it was in fact objectively wrong, as the example of the physician shows, since he is blameless even though he does what is objectively wrong. The following matrix indicates the four possible cases and specifies the conditions that determine why a given case will fall in some particular cell of the matrix: blameless

blameworthy

objectively right

no adequate reason to think it's objectively wrong or a legitimate excuse

adequate reason to think it's objectively wrong & no legitimate excuse

objectively wrong

no adequate reason to think it's objectively wrong or a legitimate excuse

adequate reason to think it's objectively wrong & no legitimate excuse

Now, a full account of what objective rightness/wrongness and blamelessness/blameworthiness are would require an account of what a legitimate excuse is and what objective Tightness or wrongness is. However, all I want to do here is argue that ignorance of what the correct principles are that determine objective Tightness and wrongness can serve as a legitimate excuse. Imagine people who grow up thinking that certain fairly mild forms of slavery, the subjugation of women or the cruel treatment of animals are morally permissible even though they are objectively morally wrong. I think that in certain circumstances such people would be blameless in supporting slavery or practices that subjugate women or in treating animals cruelly, despite the fact that what they do is objectively wrong. The second distinction I want to draw is between acting in accordance with, and acting from, duty. Perhaps the best illustration of this difference comes from Kant's

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example of the two grocers. The one grocer does not cheat his customers because he follows the prudential principle that honesty is the best policy. However, if he thought he could get away with cheating them he would. The other grocer does not cheat his customers because he thinks it is the wrong thing to do. Both grocers act in accordance with duty, but only the second acts from duty; that is, only he is motivated to do what he does because he believes that what he does is morally required. II. Epistemic Duty There is a distinction in epistemology that corresponds to the difference between objective wrongness and blameworthiness. Someone who grows up in a religious society and is taught to listen to the deliverances of an oracle can be epistemically blameless in believing those deliverances even though her belief may not really be supported by the evidence and so is objectively iwijustified. Someone who grows up in a society where everyone forms hasty generalizations or engages in wishful thinking would be in the same boat. From the standpoint of blame, these people are like the physician who gives a drug that kills, having every reason to think it would save. Contrast this with a person who is epistemically blameworthy for believing something on the basis of wishful thinking (say, that he will win some prestigious award) even though relative to the evidence he has he is objectively justified in believing what he does. This person is like the person who gives someone else the contents of a bottle marked "poison" even though it luckily turns out that the bottle contains a lifesaving drug. Of course, there are the standard cases where one is both objectively justified and blameless in believing what one does, say, your believing that there is a piece of paper in front of you, and cases where one is both objectively unjustified in believing something and blameworthy for believing it, for example, your now believing that there is an elephant in front of you. The following matrix illustrates the four possible cases involving belief and where the cases fit in that matrix. blameless

blameworthy

objectively justified

piece of paper

the award winner

not objectively justified

society of hasty generalization or wishful thinking

elephant

A difference between epistemic and moral duty is that one must either believe a proposition, disbelieve it, or suspend judgment, while sometimes one can permissibly either perform or not perform some action.1 There is no epistemic attitude that it is merely permissible to have, while it can be merely permissible to perform some action. If my evidence for and against extraterrestrial intelligence has equal weight, I must suspend judgment; I cannot suspend judgment, believe, or disbelieve. However, assuming that the moral reasons for and against my now getting up and getting a drink of water are equal, it is permissible for me to do either. It is not the case that I must do one or the other.

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The cases I have given illustrate the two pairs of epistemic differences: objectively justified/objectively unjustified and epistemic ally blameless/epistemically blameworthy. I now want to argue that epistemic distinctions that others have made do not capture the distinctions that the examples illustrate. In "Strong and Weak Justification," Alvin Goldman initially thinks of weak justification as "faultless, blameless, or non-culpable belief" and illustrates the sort of justification he has in mind with an example of a scientifically benighted culture whose members use methods for forming beliefs that "appeal to the doctrine of signatures, to astrology, and to oracles."2 However, because he wants strong justification to be opposed to weak justification, so that no one could be both strongly and weakly justified in believing something, he requires that weak justification be "ill-formed-butblameless belief" (p. 56), where by "ill-formed" he means "not reliably produced." Still, according to Goldman, a person can be blameless in holding such an ill-formed belief if she does not think it was not reliably produced and she does not believe there are, and there in fact are no, reliable processes or methods available to her through which she could discover the belief' s unreliable origins. But ultimately Goldman does not mean by "weak justification" merely epistemically blameless belief, since he also requires that such beliefs be ill-formed. So, for instance, your belief that you are now looking at a piece of paper would not be weakly justified on Goldman's account, even though you would be epistemically blameless in holding it, if it were the result of a reliable belief-producing process or mechanism. His account of strong justification is even further from what I have in mind with the notion of objective justification than his account of weak justification is from epistemic blamelessness, since weak justification is at least a species of blameless belief. Roughly, for Goldman, a belief is strongly justified if it is the result of a reliable cognitive process or method, and its reliability is not undermined by the subject's cognitive state (e.g., his believing that the process or mechanism that produced the belief is not reliable).3 On the basis of this account, Goldman concludes that a cognizer in a Cartesian demon world is not strongly (though he is weakly) justified in believing what he does, since his beliefs are not the result of a reliable cognitive process or method (though he is blameless in holding them).4 But Goldman's account of strong and weak justification does not allow him to contrast the cognizer in the demon world with the subjects in the religious society. On Goldman's account, both are weakly, but not strongly, justified in believing what they do, since (1) their beliefs are the result of unreliable cognitive processes or methods that they do not believe are unreliable; (2) they do not believe that there is a reliable method that they possess, or that is available to them, that would enable them to discover that unreliability; and (3) there is not. But surely from the standpoint of justification, the person in the demon world is more like his counterpart in the real world than like members of the religious society. In both those worlds, there really is evidence for the existence of the external world, while in the religious society, the deliverances of the oracle are not founded on good evidence. Because of this difference, people in the demon and the nondemon worlds are equally objectively justified in believing what they do about the world, while the people in the religious society are not objectively justified in believing the deliverances of the oracle. In other words, Goldman is forced to find a contrast in justification between demon and

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nondemon world subjects where there is none (they are both objectively justified) and cannot account for the contrast between people in the demon world and those in the religious society (the former are objectively justified; the latter, only subjectively justified). Of course, people in the demon and nondemon worlds and those in the religious society are all epistemically blameless in believing what they do. The grounds for saying that people in the demon and the nondemon worlds are, from the standpoint of justification, in exactly the same situation is not, as Goldman thinks, that if we did not say this we would be allowing luck to play a role in justification that it should not. (One might think that the people in the nondemon world are lucky to have true beliefs, since if they were in the demon world, they would have false beliefs based on the same evidence they have.)5 Rather, it is the intuition that each has equally good evidence for what he believes—from which it follows, of course, that the goodness of evidence is independent of its tendency to produce true beliefs. The contrast with the example of the religious society shows that questions of epistemic blamelessness are separate from questions of the goodness of evidence, and both are distinct from questions of reliability. Again, Goldman's distinction between weak and strong justification forces us to draw a distinction regarding justification between people in the nondemon and demon worlds that is not there, and it fails to account for the distinction between people in the demon world and those in the religious society. I now want to consider Richard Feldman's distinction between various forms of subjective justification and objective justification to see if they can better account for the intuitive similarities and differences in these three cases. In the course of discussing John Pollock's way of distinguishing subjective and objective justification, Feldman draws a distinction between what he calls radical subjective epistemic justification, which only requires that a subject believe he has some reason to believe some proposition, and what he calls moderate subjective epistemic justification, which requires that a subject have good reason to think she has good reason to believe some proposition.6 He goes on to argue that a person is not justified in any sense merely because she is radically subjectively justified in believing something. Surely the mere fact that I believe I have good reason to believe I will win the lottery does not in any sense justify me in believing I will. In any case, being merely radically subjectively justified does not imply that I am epistemically blameless in believing what I do, as the lottery example also shows, and so does not imply what I have called subjective epistemic justification. Feldman argues that moderate subjective justification implies objective justification, which means that he thinks that whenever a person has good reason to think he has good reason to believe p, he does have good reason to believe p. Whether it is reasonable to think that this is necessarily true will depend, I think, on what one says about arguments that involve subtle fallacies of equivocation. Suppose a person is justified in believing the premises of such an argument, and the appearance of validity gives him good reason to believe that the argument is valid. Does that appearance of validity give him good reason to believe the conclusion or must the premises really support the conclusion for that to be true? If the appearance is enough, then the example does not count against Feldman's view, which implies that the person has objectively good reason to believe the conclusion. But if the appearance of va-

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lidity does not give the person good reason to believe the conclusion, this is a counterexample to Feldman's view that moderate subjective epistemic justification implies objective epistemic justification, since the person would have good reason to think he has good reason to believe the conclusion even though he does not (since the premises do not really support it). In any case, moderate subjective justification is not equivalent to what I have been calling subjective epistemic justification and that I have identified with epistemic blamelessness. On the basis of his professor's arguments, a student might have good reason to believe that he has good reason to believe, say, that God does not exist and yet still in fact believe that he does not have such reason. Suppose as the result of the emotional pressure of his atheist friends, the student ends up disbelieving in God. Then he will be epistemically blameworthy for believing contrary to his epistemic conscience even though he really is moderately subjectively justified in his belief. Conversely, a person might be epistemically blameless in her belief but be neither moderately nor objectively justified in believing what she does. Suppose everyone in her society constantly makes hasty generalizations. She then makes a hasty generalization herself about a particular matter, say, that there is a higher rate of mental retardation among a certain group of people than among other groups. In that case, she would neither have good reason to believe nor good reason to think she has good reason to believe what she does. In other words, she would be epistemically blameless but neither objectively nor moderately subjectively justified in believing what she does. So what Feldman considers under the category of subjective epistemic justification, namely, radical and moderate subjective justification, are not equivalent to epistemic blamelessness. Yet an epistemically blameless belief need not be one a person is either objectively or moderately subjectively justified in holding—as the examples of the religious society and the one involving hasty generalization show. So Feldman's distinctions do not allow him to account for the contrast between the cases that I am interested in here. I propose that we adopt Feldman's account of an objectively justified belief, namely, a belief that a person has good reason to believe, and let a subjectively justified belief be one that the person is epistemically blameless in holding. She will be blameless in holding it if the belief is objectively justified for her and she has no adequate reason to think otherwise, or if the belief is not objectively justified for her but she has an excuse for holding it, as with the oracle-based beliefs in the religious society or the belief of the woman in the society where hasty generalizations are rampant. This account of objective and subjective justification can make sense of the differences and similarities between the examples in a way that neither Goldman's nor Feldman's accounts can when taken alone. Like Feldman's account and unlike Goldman's, it does not distinguish between people in a demon and a nondemon world but implies that they are both objectively justified. Like Goldman's initial account of weak justification (as blameless, nonculpable, faultless belief), it implies that people in the demon and nondemon worlds and people in the religious society are blameless in believing what they do. Unlike Goldman's account, it allows us to draw a distinction between the justification of people in a demon world and those in the religious society. Feldman's account will imply that people in the religious society

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are objectively justified in believing the pronouncements of the oracle if they are objectively justified in trusting their elders and teachers, and the same results will follow for those in the society where hasty generalization and wishful thinking are the rule. Since he does not discuss the notion of epistemically blameless belief, we cannot tell whether he would allow that there could be a society where people are not objectively justified in trusting their elders and teachers yet they are epistemically blameless in accepting what they are not objectively justified in believing. While the distinction between objective and subjective epistemic justification parallels a similar distinction in ethics, the similarity is not exact. As Feldman argues, "objective justification in ethics is taken to be independent of beliefs or cognitive states of the agent. It in no way depends on the agent's perspective."7 But an account of objective epistemic justification that says that a person is objectively justified if and only if what she believes is true "amounts to identifying a kind of epistemic justification with truth and that is surely a counter-intuitive identification."8 Feldman goes on to say that both objective ethical and epistemic justification are evaluative but "objective ethical justification turns on what really has value, while its epistemic counterpart turns on what really are good reasons to believe."9 Good reasons are relative to a person's cognitive states so, as Feldman says, objective epistemic justification is perspectival in a way that objective ethical justification is not. What about the other distinction in ethics between acting from and acting in accordance with duty? There seems to be a similar distinction in epistemology. Consider Keith Lehrer's example of Mr. Raco, who originally, and out of prejudice, believes that only members of a particular race contract a certain disease but who then learns in medical school that this is true.10 Suppose that at some point Mr. Raco has the medical evidence but does not hold his belief on the basis o/that evidence. Then, since he is aware of the evidence, he is objectively and subjectively justified in believing what he does even though his belief is not based on the evidence. Here we might say that Mr. Raco acts in accordance with his epistemic duty but not from it and so is like Kant's grocer who gives the correct change because doing so is good for business. However, earlier I said that someone who has sufficient evidence to believe he will win some coveted prize but bases his belief on wishful thinking is epistemically blameworthy in what he believes. Both this person and Mr. Raco believe in accord with, but not from, the good evidence they have for their beliefs and so are objectively justified in believing what they do. But I said the prize winner is epistemically blameworthy for believing what he does but Mr. Raco is not. What is the difference between the two? Neither of them bases his belief on the evidence he has; both of them have good evidence for their beliefs. Why is one blameless and the other blameworthy? I think the difference is that the person who bases his belief on wishful thinking must think that he does not have sufficient evidence to support his belief and so believes against reason. However, after Mr. Raco attends medical school, he does not believe he lacks sufficient evidence and so does not believe against reason. The first person goes against his epistemic conscience but Mr. Raco does not. The difference between the two is like the difference between someone who thinks that what he is doing is wrong but goes ahead and does it anyway and someone who does not think that what he is doing is wrong and does the same thing. Even if both do what they

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have reason to believe is objectively permissible, the one is morally blameworthy and the other is not. In other words, there are four possible epistemic cases: bases belief on good evidence he has believes he does not have good evidence does not believe he does not have good evidence

does not base belief on good evidence he has

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

The case of wishful thinking falls in cell (2); the case of Mr. Raco in cell (4). Standard cases of both objectively and subjectively justified belief will fall in (3), say, your belief that you are looking at a piece of paper. A case that seems to fit in cell (1) is the following: I have good evidence that my wife has been unfaithful to me. However, I have been going to a psychiatrist to deal with my excessive jealousy and learn that out of jealousy I often jump to conclusions when they are not supported by the evidence. Hence, I believe that the evidence I now have that my wife has been unfaithful is not good evidence—though in fact it is. Nevertheless, I find myself believing that she has been unfaithful and, in fact, the basis of my belief is the evidence of her unfaithfulness that I have (e.g., her staying late at the office, phone records of calls to a male colleague, a phone message from that colleague filled with sexual innuendo and overtones left on our answering machine, her reawakened interest in her appearance, and hints dropped by her secretary that she is having an affair.)11 In both this case and the case of wishful thinking, the person is epistemically blameworthy in going against his conscience. In cases that fall in the second row of the matrix, people are not epistemically blameworthy whether or not they base their beliefs on the good evidence they have. This shows that epistemic blameworthiness is not a function of what a person bases his belief on. Rather, it is a function of what the person believes about the merits of the evidence he has or, to allow for negligence, of what he should believe about that evidence. This parallels ethics, since a person's moral blameworthiness is a function of what he believes or should believe about the moral status of the action he performs. Mr. Raco and Kant's grocer who gives the correct change because it's good for business show that someone can be blameless even if they lack virtue, epistemic and moral, respectively. And someone who has epistemic or moral virtue can on occasion do something wrong or hold a belief for which he is epistemically blameworthy. So there are many similarities between moral and epistemic duty, with the main difference so far being that objective epistemic justification is perspectival, that is, necessarily depends on the internal psychological states of the subject, while objective ethical justification need not. But you might be wondering whether there isn't an even more crucial difference, namely, that actions are at least sometimes within our control, while beliefs never are. And if beliefs never are, how can it make sense to talk of epistemic duty and blame?

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There are several types of reply that have been given. Richard Feldman has argued that people have certain types of obligations even when they cannot do what they are obligated to do. He gives examples of academic, financial and legal obligations where a person is still obligated to do something, say, pay his mortgage, even if he cannot do it or even if, for some peculiar reason, he is not able to avoid doing it. And he argues that epistemic obligations are like those, in that they remain even if the person cannot meet them or cannot fail to meet them.12 The problem is that we do not think it appropriate to blame people if they cannot fulfill the obligations Feldman cites because fulfilling them is beyond their control. However, talk of epistemic blame seems appropriate, for example, where you believe against your epistemic conscience, even if you have good evidence to support your belief. So it seems necessary to argue that what doxastic attitude we take is, in some sense, within our control.13 Some try to get around the problem by granting that beliefs are not in our control but that what we accept is. We can evaluate our beliefs relative to a background system and then either accept or reject them. Suppose I involuntarily believe that the wall is red. Still, I can ask myself, say, whether I have any reason to think there is a red light shining on this wall, which is really white, and, if I have, refrain from believing that the wall is red. On this view, beliefs are justified insofar as they would be accepted by the person who holds them if he were seeking the truth and using his background system of acceptances to evaluate the truth of his beliefs.14 It does not matter whether the beliefs themselves are within our control as long as what we accept is. The problem with this solution is that it seems to change the subject. Why should people be epistemically blameworthy for what they believe if beliefs are not in their voluntary control even if what they accept is? Suppose it were granted that deliberation is within a person's voluntary control but that actions are not. We would then want to ask a parallel question: why is a person blameworthy for his actions if they are not in his voluntary control even if what he deliberates about is? So talk of what a person accepts does not seem to face the issue. The best solution, I think, is one that has been offered by Matthias Steup.15 His basic idea is that beliefs are not different from actions with respect to voluntary control. It's true that I cannot decide whether to believe a car is coming at me when I see one bearing down on me or whether I have hands, arms, and legs. But neither can I decide to stick a knife in my eye for no reason, nor to kill a baby or rob a bank. In general, I can neither decide to believe nor do what I think there is decisive reason against, regardless of whether the reason is epistemic or practical. Furthermore, I have a moral duty not to kill a baby or rob a bank even if doing those things is not, in some sense, within my voluntary control. So why can't I have an epistemic duty to believe there is a car coming at me, or that I have a hand, and so forth, even if believing those things is not within my voluntary control? Perhaps someone will respond that even if I have a duty not to kill a baby, if refraining from killing a baby is not within my voluntary control, then I should not be blamed if I kill one. Similarly, if what I believe is not within my voluntary control, I should not be blamed if I do not believe it.

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But this response elicits two replies: First, it does not defeat Steup's point that actions and beliefs are on a par from the standpoint of duty and blame and, second, suggests that some sort of compatibilist notion of voluntary control is sufficient for ascribing blame. For instance, one might say that a person is blameworthy for doing what he does if he does what, were he perfectly rational, he would not want to do and he has no legitimate excuse (e.g., stemming from ignorance or his psychological state) for doing it. Similarly, one might say that a person is blameworthy for the epistemic attitude he has taken (belief, suspension of belief, disbelief) if he has an epistemic attitude that he would not have were he perfectly rational and he has no legitimate excuse (e.g., stemming from ignorance or his psychological state) for having it. The unfair contrast between the voluntariness of belief and action comes from illegitimate comparisons where, say, epistemic reason requires me to believe something (e.g., that there is a piece of paper in front of me), while practical reason permits either of two actions (e.g., my raising or not raising my arm). Where both epistemic and practical reason require or prohibit something, the contrast disappears. In normal situations, where a person's decisions are not controlled by madness or outside forces, both belief and action are under the person's voluntary control, in a sense that is compatible with determinism, and neither are under his voluntary control in a sense that is incompatible with determinism. Hence, epistemic duties and blame are possible if and only if ethical duties and blame are possible. III.

The Significance of the Epistemic Distinctions

The distinctions between objective and subjective epistemic duty and between acting from and acting in accord with such duty are important because I believe that a person has knowledge only if she bases her belief on the evidence and believes in accordance with both her objective and subjective epistemic duties. Mr. Raco does not know that only members of the relevant race get the disease because knowledge requires that the person base his belief on the evidence. Alvin Plantinga has given many examples of people who he says lack knowledge but have justified beliefs, and who suffer from brain lesions or whose beliefs have been manipulated by demons or Alpha Centaurian scientists. For instance, there is Paul who, when he hears the sound of church bells, believes something orange is making that sound. Plantinga says that Paul has a "nearly ineluctable tendency or impulse" to believe that there is something orange making the churchbell sounds when he hears them. Plantinga asks us to assume that this tendency has been caused by demons, Alpha Centaurian cognitive scientists, or a brain lesion, and that "those around him suffer from a similar epistemic deficiency." Plantinga concludes that surely "Paul is doing his epistemic duty in excelsis" but, even if what he believes is true, he lacks knowledge. Plantinga gives another example in which he suffers from a brain lesion that causes his belief that he will be the next president of the United States to seem as obvious to him as, say, 1 + 1 = 2 seems to

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us. Here, too, Plantinga thinks it obvious that he is doing his epistemic duty in believing he will be the next president but lacks knowledge even if it is true that he will be the next president.16 However, these examples only show that a person can be subjectively justified in believing something that is true, that is, can be epistemically blameless in believing it because of a legitimate excuse (e.g., a brain lesion, demons, Alpha Centaurian scientists), yet lack knowledge even where Gettier problems are absent. Still leaving Gettier problems aside, they do not show that objectively justified true belief is not knowledge because they are not cases where objective justification is present. However, the suggestion that knowledge is objectively justified true belief (plus some condition to handle Gettier cases) also seems mistaken. In the example given above of my believing that my wife has been unfaithful on the basis of what is in fact good evidence, I am objectively justified in believing what I do and it is true, but I lack knowledge. The reason I lack knowledge is that I am epistemically blameworthy in believing what I do, since I do not think I have good evidence for my belief. Philippa Foot says the following of a person who acts against his moral conscience: One might say that there could not be a more radical moral defect than that of being prepared to do what one believes to be wrong. A man of whom this is true is like an archer who does not even aim at the target, it will be the merest chance if he does what is good when he is doing what he sees as bad.17 People who act contrary to their epistemic conscience are prepared to believe what they see as supported by bad evidence, and so it will be "the merest chance" if they believe what is true. It is this element of chance that is incompatible with their having knowledge. So my proposal is that both objective and subjective justification are needed for knowledge—Plantinga's examples showing that, leaving Gettier problems aside, subjectively justified true belief is not enough and the last example showing that objectively justified true belief based on the evidence is not enough either. However, Plantinga has another example that seems to show that justification is not necessary for knowledge, since a person can have knowledge and yet, in some sense, violate his epistemic duty. In Plantinga's example, a big red London bus is heading toward a subject who has been given reason to believe that if he believes what his senses incline him to believe he will end up believing many falsehoods.18 In this example, the epistemic subject thinks that he has an epistemic duty to believe what is true and avoid believing what is false, which is understood to mean that he has a duty to hold more true than false beliefs. That person also nonculpably and truly believes that certain Alpha Centaurian conquerors will bring it about that in the future he will have a set of absurdly false beliefs if he believes he is seeing something red when he is appeared to redly. So he makes a great effort not to believe he is seeing something red even when it seems he is. Finally, the big red London bus comes driving by, and he can't help himself. He forms the belief that there is something red in front of him. Plantinga says that he violates his epistemic duty and so is not justified in believing there is something red in front of him. Yet

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we can imagine that, at least in certain circumstances of this sort, he knows there is a red bus in front of him. Plantinga concludes justification is not necessary for knowledge. In what sense does this person violate his epistemic duty? Well, he would be blameworthy for going against his epistemic conscience in believing there is a big red bus in front of him if he did not have an excuse. But doesn't he? I would think he does, for he is like the drug addict who thinks that he should stay clean but succumbs to temptation when his buddies start shooting up in front of him. The red, bus-like sensations, the sound of the engine, the smell of the burned gasoline are just too much for our epistemic subject. Though he thinks he shouldn't, he nevertheless gives in and believes there is a big red bus in front of him. So he is epistemically blameless in believing what he believes. Does he violate an objective epistemic duty? Well, he would if he had an objective duty to believe something if believing that thing would mean that he would have more (perhaps, important) true than false beliefs throughout the course of his life. And then assuming, as I do, that the subject knows there is a big red bus in front of him, this would be a counterexample to my claim that knowledge requires objective justification, since the subject would have knowledge despite violating his objective epistemic obligation. However, I take this example to show that a person's objective epistemic obligation is not to believe something if and only if believing it will result in her believing more true than false (important) propositions in the future course of her life. Perhaps that is the appropriate epistemic goal, just as maximizing happiness might be the appropriate moral goal. But just as plausibly, one might contend that the appropriate epistemic goal is to believe some proposition if and only if it is true.19 In that case, if the appropriate goal directly determines the duty, the subject in the example would have a duty to believe that there was a big red bus in front of him, and so he would be objectively justified in believing what he does. Furthermore, if truth is the appropriate epistemic goal, it does not directly determine objective epistemic duty as the above discussion of the contrast between epistemic and moral duty showed. Objective epistemic duty is relative to what a person has good reason to believe, and good reason does not imply truth or even objective (or factual) probability of truth—as demon world examples show. As we have seen, objective ethical duty is not always perspectival in this way, at least sometimes being relative to what is in fact the morally best course of action independently of what the agent believes. Here there is a danger that the analogy with ethics will mislead. Of course, if reliabilists were right in thinking the reliably produced true belief is knowledge, then no sort of justification would be necessary for knowledge. But the reliabilists proposal seems wrong even when it is coupled with Plantinga's idea that the reliably produced true belief must also result from "cognitive faculties functioning properly in an appropriate environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth."20 Ironically, Plantinga offers an example that seems to show that these conditions are not sufficient for knowledge. He asks us to suppose God (or evolution) designed human beings so that

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Bruce Russell Just as we are by nature such that when appeared to by something that is red, we form the belief that we are appeared to in that way by something that is red, so these creatures are by nature such that when appeared to in the church-bell fashion, they form the belief that they are appeared to that way by something that is orange.21

Someone is appeared to in the church-bell fashion just in case he seems to hear the sound of church bells. We are to assume that "there is a common but rarely visible [orange] bird that makes the church-bell sound" and that most things that appear in the church-bell fashion on this planet really are orange, though atmospheric conditions make it nearly impossible for the people on the planet to confirm this connection between sound and color. He then asks rhetorically why the inhabitants wouldn't know that this orange bird that makes the church-bell sound is orange simply on the basis of hearing (but never seeing) the bird. Of course, the belief would be the result of cognitive faculties functioning properly in an appropriate environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth and so, according to Plantinga's theory, the people would know that the bird is orange. But despite Plantinga's rhetorical question, I would think that nearly everyone would agree that the inhabitants of the planet do not know that the bird is orange. Epistemically, they are in no better position than Paul of a few pages earlier who believed on no evidence that things that make a church-bell sound are orange. The inhabitants of the planet have no grounds for thinking that the bird, or any of the other things that make the church-bell sound, are orange. They have never confirmed that things that make that sound are orange. And even if grounds are not needed for knowledge in some cases, say, when I believe the corresponding conditional of modus ponens or that it is wrong to lie about my colleagues in order to advance my career,22 surely they are needed here. If epistemic subjects lack the appropriate evidence for their beliefs, reliabilities that are hidden from them won't turn non-knowers into knowers. Neither Paul nor his doppleganger on the strange planet will know that something that makes the church-bell sound is orange.23 Plantinga's diagnosis of why Paul lacks knowledge is mistaken. He does not lack knowledge because he is not functioning properly; he lacks it because he lacks the appropriate evidence. And the same is true of his counterparts on the other planet. If reliably produced true belief in an organism that is functioning properly is not sufficient for knowledge, how is it possible for young children and animals to have knowledge? Doesn't my account imply that they do not, since they lack the concepts of justification and so cannot have a justified true belief? My answer is that it allows for children and animals to have knowledge, since one can be epistemically justified in believing something without having the concept of justification. To be subjectively justified, one must be epistemically blameless, but children and animals will be epistemically blameless, just as they are morally blameless, just because they lack the concept of justification and so have a legitimate excuse for believing or doing whatever they do. They can be objectively justified because they can be in appropriate internal states that provide evidence for what they believe, even though they do not realize that they do. Furthermore, putting Gettier problems aside, if children or animals are objectively justified in believing what they do and their beliefs are caused by the evidence they have, then they also have knowledge. So my account of knowl-

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edge as subjectively and objectively justified true belief (with some added conditions to handle Gettier problems) will offer a unified account of knowledge that applies to normal adult human beings as well as to children and animals.24 Notes 1. Richard Feldman, "Epistemic Obligations," in Philosophical Perspectives, 2: Epistemology, James E. Tomberlin, ed. (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1988), 235. 2. Alvin Goldman, "Strong and Weak Justification," Philosophical Perspectives, 2: Epistemology, 51-69; the quotes are from 53 and 51, respectively. 3. Ibid., 58. 4. Ibid., 59. 5. Ibid., 64-65. 6. Feldman, 411 and 414, respectively. 7. Richard Feldman, "Subjective and Objective Justification in Ethics and Epistemology," The Monist 71 (1988): 408. It is important to note that objective ethical justification need not be independent of everyone's cognitive or psychological states; otherwise, there could be no objective duties for utilitarians. And requiring that they be independent of the agent's cognitive states will imply that we will not be able to have an objective Kantian duty not to treat people as mere means, since whether we treat them in that way is at least partly a function of our beliefs and intentions. Perhaps the best way to contrast objective ethical and epistemic justification is to say that necessarily the latter is a function of what is internal to the person, viz., his beliefs and sensations, while the former need not be (as in the case of the physician who will kill his patient if he does what he has every reason to think is best for the patient). Remarks made by my colleague Stephen Kershnar drew my attention to this problem with Feldman's account of objective ethical justification. 8. Ibid., 410. 9. Ibid., 411. 10. Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), 172. 11. I owe this example to my colleague, Herbert Granger. 12. Feldman, "Epistemic Obligations," 240-43. 13. See Matthias Steup, An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996), 76-77, where he writes that, "Feldman's solution will be unappealing to those who find the voluntariness principle intuitively plausible." That principle says, roughly, that if I have an epistemic duty to believe p, then my believing p must be voluntary. 14. Keith Lehrer gives an account of knowledge in terms of what one is justified in accepting, not in terms of what one is justified in believing. See his Theory of Knowledge, esp., 10-11, 20-21, 26-27, 113-114; and "Proper Function versus Systematic Coherence," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan L. Kvanvig, ed., (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 25^t5, especially, 32-33, 35, 37, 40. Feldman discusses Lehrer's position in "Epistemic Obligations," 240, but prefers his solution that recognizes that we can have obligations with respect to involuntary behavior. 15. In his Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology but more fully in "Doxastic (In)Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology," presented to the Department of Philosophy, Wayne State University, Dec. 11, 1997. Steup's discussion is much more complicated than I indicate. He distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical voluntary control of actions and beliefs and discusses whether each is compatible with determinism. He argues that we have a great deal of hypothetical voluntary control, and little categorical voluntary control, over both beliefs and actions, and that moral duties do not require categorical voluntary control, only hypothetical and compatibilist voluntary control. So there is no reason to think that epistemic duties require more. I summarize all this by saying that he sees actions and beliefs on a par with respect to voluntary control. 16. See Alvin Plantinga's Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 42 for the example of Paul; p. 44 for the example involving Plantinga himself.

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17. Philippa Foot, "Moral Relativism," reprinted in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral, Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz, eds. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 159. 18. See Plantinga's Warrant: The Current Debate, 45. 19. In "The Coherence Theory of Knowledge," Philosophical Topics 14, no. 1 (Spring 1986), 6-7, Keith Lehrer writes: It is acceptance of something for the purposes of obtaining truth and eschewing error with respect to just the thing one accepts that is a condition of knowledge. . . . I add the qualification "with respect to just the thing one accepts" because it is possible that accepting something that the evidence indicates is false [e.g., that there is nothing red in front of one] might serve the general purpose of accepting as much as one can of what is true and accepting as little as one can of what is false. Accepting the one falsehood might be bountifully fecund with respect to accepting other truths. It is clear, however, that accepting something that the evidence indicates is false for such a generally worthwhile purpose is not the sort of acceptance that is required to know that the thing in question is true. (My addition in brackets.) Lehrer says that the acceptance of a "bountifully fecund" falsehood is not required for knowledge. My point is that it, together with true belief and a condition to handle Gettier cases, is not sufficient for knowledge either. Our epistemic duties not only do not require, they actually prohibit, our accepting what we have sufficient reason to believe are "bountifully fecund" falsehoods. Feldman distinguishes between goals and obligations in "Epistemic Obligations," pp. 246^48, 254-55 and in "Subjective and Objective Justification" p. 410. 20. Alvin Plantinga, "Why We Need Proper Function," Nous 27, no. 1 (1993), 73. 21. Platinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, 62; his description of the case continues on 63. 22. Plantinga, "Respondeo," Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, 332, gives these examples in response to William Lycan's paper. 23. The same considerations apply to Laurence BonJour's well-known example of Norman, who one day, on the basis of clairvoyance but for no reason, comes to believe that the President is in New York. It is assumed that clairvoyance is a reliable belief producing mechanism, though Norman has no reason to think it is. Hence the relevant reliability is "hidden" from Norman. See Bonjour's The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 41-42. 24. I want to thank my colleagues at Wayne State University, especially Herbert Granger, for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper that I delivered at a departmental colloquium. I am especially grateful to Sharon Ryan and Matthias Steup who gave me detailed written comments on an earlier version of the paper. I also want to thank Matthias for his photograph of what certainly looks to be a barn.

3

Epistemic Justification and Normativity RICHARD FUMERTON

It is plausible to argue that the concept of epistemic justification is the most fundamental concept in epistemology. The so-called traditional account of knowledge takes justified belief to be a constituent of knowledge.1 Furthermore, on many accounts of knowledge, the conditions for knowledge that go beyond having justified belief, for example, the truth condition and conditions designed to "Gettier-proof" the analysis, seem to be less interesting to the philosopher seeking assurance of truth from the first-person perspective. There is a sense in which the best one can do through philosophical reflection is assure oneself that one has a justified belief—whether or not one has knowledge as well is a matter of "luck," is a matter of whether the world cooperates so as to reward justified belief with truth. It is an understatement to suggest that there is no agreement among epistemologists as to how to analyze the concept of epistemic justification. But a surprising number of philosophers with radically different approaches to analyzing justified belief seem to agree that the concept of epistemic justification is in some sense a normative concept.2 The issue is potentially significant because the alleged normativity of epistemic justification has been used to attack prominent analyses of justified belief. Ironically, many of these attacks have focused on externalism. The irony lies in the fact that the most prominent externalist, Alvin Goldman (1979 and 1986), explicitly endorses the claim that the concept of epistemic justification is a normative concept and denies for that reason that he is proposing a meaning analysis of epistemic justification. Rather he proposes to identify the nonnormative (necessary and sufficient) conditions on which epistemic justification supervenes. But whether he was proposing a meaning analysis or identifying synthetic necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of concept, a number of his critics have com49

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plained that one can have a belief that results from an unreliable process, even though it would be quite inappropriate to blame the person for having the belief or criticize the person for the way in which the belief was formed.3 If the concept of epistemic justification is genuinely normative, how can we describe such a belief as unjustified? How can we characterize the victims of demonic machination as having unjustified beliefs when such victims are believing precisely what they should believe given the available subjective evidence (evidence that is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the evidence you and 1 use to reach our conclusions about the physical world)? The above objection may well confuse evaluation of a subject with evaluation of a subject's belief, but it may be enough to motivate a more-detailed examination of the question of whether and in what sense epistemic justification is usefully thought of as normative. In examining this question, we must get clear about what makes a concept or judgment normative. Epistemic Judgments and Value Terms One might begin to suspect that a judgment is normative if it is equivalent in meaning to a conjunction of statements that include paradigmatically normative terms. This approach would seem to require that we give some characterization of what makes a term normative, but we might try to side-step this problem initially by simply listing some paradigmatic normative expressions and characterizing as derivatively normative other expressions whose meaning can be partially explicated using these. Our list of paradigm normative expressions might be long or short depending on whether we are reductionists with respect to the content of various sorts of normative judgments. Thus, if one is a consequentialist of some kind who thinks that all ethical judgments are ultimately judgments about the ways in which actions produce things of intrinsic value, one might get by with "intrinsically good/bad" as the fundamental normative terms—all other normative terms will be derivatively normative because an explication of their meaning will inevitably involve reference to intrinsic goodness/badness. But so as not to prejudice such issues, one might make the initial list relatively long and include such terms as "good," "ought," "should," "right," "permissible," "obligatory," and their opposites. If we proceed in this fashion, it seems undeniable that the concept of epistemic justification looks suspiciously like a normative concept. As Plantinga (1992) has effectively reminded us, the etymology of the word "justification" certainly suggests that we are dealing with a value term. And epistemologists often seem quite comfortable interchanging questions about whether evidence £ justifies one in believing P with questions about whether or not one should believe P on the basis of E. In what is often taken to be one of the earliest statements of a justified true belief account of knowledge, Ayer (1956) described knowledge as true belief where one had the right to be sure. So again, the idea that the concept of justification is normative is at least prima facie plausible. But we must surely proceed more cautiously than this. While it may be all right to begin by listing paradigm normative expressions and

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characterizing judgments as normative whose meaning can be explicated (in part) through the use of these expressions, it doesn't require much reflection to convince us that expressions like "right" and "should" are importantly ambiguous. When we talk about whether someone should do X, we might be talking about what that person morally should do, prudentially should do, legally should do, should do given the rules of etiquette, should do given that the person has certain goals or ends, and so on. If we add to the mix judgments about what someone should believe, it seems that we must add to the list of "shoulds" the epistemic "should." If it makes sense to treat belief as something one can do (and be held responsible for), then it seems obvious that we must carefully distinguish our moral obligations with respect to what we should believe, what prudence dictates, and what it is epistemically rational to believe.4 Thus it has been argued that a husband might have a special moral obligation to believe in his wife's innocence even in the face of rather strong evidence that she is guilty of infidelity. It might also be the prudent thing to do in the sense that his subjective goals or ends might be more effectively satisfied by trusting his wife. But at the same time it might be wildly irrational epistemically to believe in his wife's innocence. There has been a great deal of literature attempting to cast doubt on the intelligibility of treating believing as an action, as something one chooses to do. One doesn't just decide to believe something the way one decides to go to the store. Many of our beliefs might seem to be forced on us in a way that makes inappropriate questions about whether we should have the beliefs in question.5 At the same time, it is hard to deny that one can indirectly influence one's beliefs. If one concludes that one would be happier if one believed in an afterlife and that it would be advantageous to have such a belief, there are certainly things one can do that will increase the probability of bringing about the belief. In any event, I am not concerned in this essay with the question of whether it makes sense to talk about what a person ought to believe. I presuppose the intelligibility of such judgments but insist that we make the relevant distinctions between kinds of judgments we can make about what we ought to believe. Ethical Judgments as the Paradigm of Normativity If we recognize the ambiguity inherent in judgments about what one ought to believe, then one must decide whether it is all or only some of these "oughts" that indicate the normativity of judgments that employ them. One approach is to begin by simply stipulating that the moral "ought" is the example of a normative expression, par excellence, and the question of whether the epistemic "ought" is normative rests on how close its meaning is to the moral "ought." But if this is the approach we take then to investigate the relevant similarities, we will still need to characterize what it is about moral judgments that makes them normative. At this point, our investigation into the alleged normativity of epistemic judgments seems headed into a morass of issues involving metaethics. There is no agreement among ethical philosophers about what makes moral judgments distinctively normative, nor indeed what the relevant contrast is supposed to be between the norma-

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live and the nonnormative. For many, the relevant contrast is between descriptive judgments (concepts, terms) and prescriptive judgments (concepts, terms). According to many of the classic noncognitivists, the normativity of ethical judgments consists specifically in the fact that their primary function is not to describe some state of affairs but rather to recommend or prescribe some specific action or action kind. The most straightforward version of this view is Hare's claim that moral judgments are grammatically disguised (universalizable) imperatives.6 Frankly, I don't know of any prominent epistemologists who endorse the idea that epistemic judgments are normative and who explicitly intend thereby to contrast them with descriptive judgments that have a truth value.7 We can put the conclusion conditionally. If moral judgments are disguised imperatives lacking truth value, and if one is a cognitivist with respect to epistemic judgments, then one must surely hesitate before reaching the conclusion that epistemic judgments are in some important sense normative. Of course, not all ethical philosophers are noncognitivists. Indeed, noncognitivism is very much a product of twentieth-century philosophy. If one holds that there are genuine moral properties and that moral judgments typically describe their exemplification by things, people, or actions, what would the relevant contrast be between the way in which these judgments are normative and the way in which other descriptive claims are not normative? One can, of course, simply stipulate that a judgment is normative if and only if it refers directly or indirectly to these distinctively moral properties. But if we take this approach, then after we distinguish the epistemic "ought" from the moral "ought," there isn't even a prima facie reason to suppose that epistemic judgments are normative in this sense. If referring to moral properties is a necessary condition for a judgment's being normative and we reject any reduction, in part or in whole, of epistemic judgments to moral judgments, then we will have removed epistemic judgments from the class of normative judgments. One can try to combine one's descriptivism in ethics with an acknowledgment of the claim that morality necessarily motivates rational people. And one could go on to describe the normative character of moral judgments as consisting precisely in this "pull" that moral judgments have. Just as one cannot recognize that one ought to take some action X without being "moved" to do X, so one cannot recognize that one epistemically ought to believe P without being at least moved to believe P. But it is precisely the acknowledgment of this special character that moral judgments are supposed to have that leads so many philosophers either to abandon descriptivism in ethics or combine it with some version of subjectivism. If moral judgments describe objective properties, it is more than a little difficult to see how the mere belief that something has the property can in itself necessarily motivate the person to pursue that thing.8 If the connection is only contingent, then the claim that it exists might be philosophically unproblematic (though empirically suspect). I certainly have no interest in denying that when one decides that it is epistemically rational to believe P, one sometimes (or even usually) ends up believing P as a result, and if the existence of a propensity to believe what one judges epistemically rational to believe is all that is meant by claiming that epistemic judgments have normative force, I concede that they might well be normative in this sense (though again, the normative character of a judgment is now a matter for empirical investigation).

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Normativity and Rules Without identifying normative judgments with prescriptive judgments, one might still suppose that Hare was on to something in his attempt to characterize what makes normative judgments special. A great many philosophers concerned with metaethics have sought to tie the meaning of ethical judgments to rules. Hare thought of those rules as universalizable imperatives, but one needn't go that far to embrace the conclusion that moral judgments always involve at least implicit reference to rules. To judge that one ought to do X is to judge that the relevant rules of morality require one to do X. To judge that it is morally permissible that one do X is to judge that the relevant rules of morality do not prohibit one from doing X. And to judge that it would be wrong for one to do X is to judge that the relevant rules of morality do prohibit one from doing X. If we turn to judgments about what one is legally required, permitted, or prohibited from doing, one might suppose that there, too, the relevant concepts are to be defined by reference to rules, this time the rules of law. Legally prohibited actions are those the rules of law prohibit. Legally permitted actions are those the rules of law do not prohibit. Even etiquette has its "rules," and one can easily follow the model to define the relevant judgments concerning what one ought to do from the perspective of etiquette. Perhaps, then, we should view normative judgments as those that make implicit reference to rules that prescribe, permit, and prohibit certain actions or moves, and epistemic judgments might be viewed as paradigmatically normative because there are certain rules of inference that tell us when we must believe, are permitted to believe, or are prohibited from believing certain propositions, given that we believe certain others or are in certain nondoxastic states (in the case of noninferentially justified belief). While the above might seem initially promising, it is clear that we must proceed more carefully lest we overlook important distinctions between the kinds of rules to which judgments might make implicit or explicit reference. In metaethics, there is again no consensus on whether the content of moral judgments does always involve reference to rules or, if they do, how we should understand those rules. It is useful, however, to distinguish two importantly different kinds of rules. Some rules, for example, the rules that a rule utilitarian has in mind in analyzing the content of moral judgments, can themselves be thought of as propositions that have a truth value. Thus, according to some rule utilitarians, the relevant rules take the form: It is always (prima facie) right (wrong) to take some action of kind X. The statement of the rule will be true if a certain proposition describing the consequences of people following that rule compared to the consequences of their following alternative rules is true.9 The rules of law, the rules of a game, or the rules of etiquette, might be better thought of as imperatives that are neither true nor false. Propositions describing particular actions as permissible or impermissible relative to the rules are true or false but are so because they report what the relevant rules prescribe and prohibit. One can, of course, take precisely the same approach with respect to moral judgments, but as I indicated, one certainly need not. If epistemic judgments involve implicit reference to rules, how should we think of those rules? Again, one could be a noncognitivist with respect to the relevant rules.

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One could think that rules of nondeductive inference, for example, are imperatives that are neither true nor false. Individual epistemic judgments are either true or false but only because they report what the relevant epistemic rules require, permit, and prohibit. But I daresay most epistemologists would resist this suggestion. The relevant generalized rules of epistemology will take the form of propositions that assert that one is justified in believing certain propositions relative to one's justifiably believing certain others or relative to one's being in certain nondoxastic states. It doesn' t hurt to characterize these propositions as rules, if one likes, but if the "rules" themselves have a truth value, then it is not clear to me that we have uncovered an interesting sense in which epistemic judgments are normative. Epistemic judgments are no more normative than judgments about lawful necessity and possibility are normative. Such judgments also implicitly involve reference to general propositions. To claim that it is lawfully possible that X is probably just to claim that the conjunction of the laws of nature, L, is logically consistent with the proposition describing the occurrence of X. Events "obey" laws in the sense that we can usefully generalize over kinds of events that always occur. In the same sense, individual beliefs are justified or not in virtue of exemplifying certain general properties, where we think of the "rules" of epistemology as generalizations describing the kinds of conditions under which beliefs are justified. Normativity and Goals or Ends Richard Foley (1987) and others have suggested that we might profitably view the different "oughts" as species of a common genera. Crudely put, Foley's idea is that normative judgments all assess the efficacy of achieving goals or ends. In a sense, all normative judgments are species of judgments concerning practical rationality. There are different kinds of normative judgments concerning what we ought to do and what we ought to believe because there are different goals or ends that we are concerned to emphasize. Thus when we are talking about morally justified action (what we morally ought to do), the relevant goal might be something like producing moral goodness (avoiding evil), and the actions that we ought to perform are those that are conducive to the goal of producing the morally best world. When we are concerned with what prudence dictates, however, the relevant goals or ends to be considered expand, perhaps to include everything that is desired intrinsically, for example. On one (rather crude) view, what one prudentially ought to do is what maximizes satisfaction of one's desires. What one ought to do legally or what one is legally justified in doing is a function of the extent to which an action satisfies the goal of following the law. What one ought to do from the standpoint of etiquette is a function of following the goals or ends set down by the "experts" who worry about such things. So all one has to do to fit the epistemic "ought" into this framework (and thus classify usefully the kind of normativity epistemic judgments have) is delineate the relevant goals or ends that define what one epistemically ought to believe. And the obvious candidates are the dual goals of believing what is true and avoiding belief in what is false. If Pascal were right about his famous wager, belief in God might be the path one prudentially ought to follow, focusing on such goals as avoiding pain and seeking

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comfort. If you have promised your parents to believe in God, if it is good to keep a promise, and if there are no other good or bad effects of such a belief to consider, it might follow that prima facie you morally ought to believe in the existence of God. But neither of these normative judgments is relevant to whether you epistemically ought to believe in the existence of God. The only consideration relevant to this normative judgment is the efficacy with which such a belief contributes to the goals of believing what is true and avoiding belief in what is false. Now as plausible and potentially illuminating as this account might seem initially, it is, I think, fatally flawed. In the first place, it must be immediately qualified to accommodate certain obvious objections. Suppose, for example, that I am a scientist interested in getting a grant from a religious organization. Although I think that belief in the existence of God is manifestly irrational (from the epistemic perspective), I discover that this organization will give me the grant only if it concludes that I am religious. I further have reason to believe that I am such a terrible liar that unless I actually get myself to believe in the existence of God, they will discover that I am an atheist. Given all this and my desire to pursue truth and avoid falsehood, which I am convinced the grant will greatly enable me to satisfy, I may conclude that I ought to believe in the existence of God (or do what I can to bring it about that I believe in the existence of God). Yet, by hypothesis, this belief is one that I viewed as epistemically irrational. We cannot understand epistemic rationality simply in terms of actions designed to satisfy the goals of believing what is true and avoiding belief in what is false. How might one modify the account to circumvent this difficulty? Foley suggests restricting the relevant epistemic goal to that of now believing what is true and now avoiding belief in what is false.10 Even this, however, will fall prey to a revised (albeit more farfetched) version of the objection presented above. Suppose, to make it simple, that belief is under one's voluntary control and that I know that there is an all-powerful being who will immediately cause me to believe massive falsehood now unless I accept the epistemically irrational conclusion that there are unicorns. It would seem that to accomplish the goal of believing what is true and avoiding belief in what is false now, I must again adopt an epistemically irrational belief. The obvious solution at this point is to restrict the relevant goal that defines the epistemic "ought" to that of believing what is true now with respect to a given proposition. If I epistemically ought to believe that there is a God, the only relevant goal is that of believing what is true with respect to the question of whether there is or is not a God. If we say this, however, we must be very careful lest our account collapse the distinction between true belief and epistemically justified or rational belief. If we are actual consequence consequentialists11 and we take what we ought to do or believe to be a function of the extent to which our actions and beliefs actually satisfy the relevant goals, then trivially we epistemically ought to believe in God when there is a God, and we epistemically ought not believe in God when there is no God. Foley suggests at this point that it is something about beliefs an agent has (or more precisely would have after a certain process of reflection) about the efficacy of achieving the epistemic goals that is relevant to evaluating what one epistemically ought to believe. But there is a much more natural way of explicating the relationship between epistemic goals and what a person ought to believe, just as there is a more natural way of explicating the relevant relation that holds between a person's moral goals

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and what a person morally ought to do and a person's prudential goals and what a person prudentially ought to do. The obvious move is to say simply that what a person ought to believe is a function of what that person is justified in believing would accomplish the goal of believing now what is true with respect to a given proposition. But that is, of course, a convoluted way of saying that what a person is justified in believing is what a person is justified in believing, an account entirely plausible but less than enlightening. Notice too that on many standard consequentialist accounts of morality or practical rationality, it is also crucial to introduce epistemic concepts into the analyses of what one morally or prudentially ought to do. I have argued in some detail that the concepts of what one morally ought to do and what one rationally ought to do are extraordinarily ambiguous.12 Although there are actual consequence consequentialist analyses of what one morally or rationally ought to do that find occasional expression in ordinary discourse, they are far from dominant.13 Consider the sadist who kills for pleasure the pedestrian in the mall when that pedestrian (unbeknownst to the sadist) was a terrorist about to blow up the city. There is surely a clear sense in which the sadist did not behave as he morally ought to have behaved.14 The conventional poker wisdom that one should not draw to fill an inside straight is not falsified by the fact that this person would have filled the straight and won a great deal of money. How can we acknowledge that a person did what he ought to have done even when the consequences are much worse than would have resulted from an alternative? How can we acknowledge that a person behaved as he should not have behaved even when the consequences are far better than would have resulted from some alternative? The answer seems obvious. We must recognize the relevance of the epistemic perspective of the agent. To determine what someone (morally or prudentially) ought to have done, we must consider what that person was epistemically justified in believing the probable and possible consequences of the action to be. Indeed, I have argued that there are literally indefinitely many derivative concepts of morality and rationality that also take into account what a person was epistemically justified in believing about the morality or rationality of actions, given more fundamental concepts of morality and rationality.15 But if the analysis of familiar concepts of what a person ought to do must take into account the epistemic situation of the agent, it is simply a mistake to try to assimilate the epistemic "ought" to the "ought" of morality or practical rationality. In fact, an understanding of the "oughts" of morality and practical rationality is parasitic on an understanding of rational or justified belief. It would be folly, needless to say, to try to understand fundamental epistemic concepts in terms of what the agent was epistemically justified in believing about the probable and possible consequences of having a certain belief. Even philosophers who do not mind "big" circles in their philosophical theories will get dizzy traveling the circumference of this one. Normativity, Praise, and Criticism So far the only sense in which we have acknowledged that epistemic judgments are normative is that they are sometimes expressed using an "ought." That "ought" has

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been shown not only to be distinct from other "oughts" used in the expression of paradigm value judgments, but it has been shown to be fundamentally different. Nevertheless, we have not yet exhausted attempts to explicate normativity in a way that allows us to fit both epistemic judgments and our paradigm normative moral judgments under the same umbrella. It is sometimes claimed that our epistemic judgments are normative in that they implicitly involve praise or blame and criticism. Should we construe this as the relevant mark of normativity? Almost surely not. The problems with doing so are enormous. For one thing, however we define normativity, we want our paradigm of normative judgments, moral judgments, to fall under the concept. But it is far from clear what the relationship is between judging that someone did not do what he or she ought to have done and blaming or criticizing that person. If you see a fire in the house next door and heroically attempt to save the people inside, I may conclude that you ought to have called the fire department instead of trying to solve the problem on your own. At the same time I might not blame you for failing to make the call. I might decide that under the circumstances it is perfectly natural for a person to panic and fail to do the rational thing. I might also think that you are just too stupid to figure out what you ought to do, and indeed, I might seldom blame you for the many idiotic things you do that you should not do. In short, there seems to be no conceptual connection between the evaluation of an agent's action and the praise or blame of the agent who acted that way. And if this seems right concerning the evaluation of what a person ought to have done, it seems even more obvious in the epistemic evaluation of a person's belief. Do we blame or criticize very stupid people for believing what they have no good epistemic reason to believe?16 At the very least, logic does not require us to blame people for believing what it is epistemically irrational for them to believe. It might be argued, however, that I am confusing the praise or blame of an agent with the positive evaluation or criticism of the agent's action or belief. "I am not criticizing you," someone might say, "I am criticizing what you did." And there surely does seem to be some sense in which when one's beliefs are called unjustified or irrational, one takes those beliefs to have been criticized. Shall we say that judgments about the epistemic justifiability or rationality of a belief are normative in that they imply praise or criticism of the belief (as opposed to the subject who has that belief)? This is not helpful for two reasons. First, the notion of implying praise or criticism is simply too vague. When I tell the store owner that the knife I bought is extremely dull, there is surely a sense in which I am criticizing the knife (or implying criticism). When after test driving the car, I complain that it accelerates very slowly and pulls to the left, I am in some sense criticizing the car. But does that make "dull," "accelerating slowly," and "pulling to the left" normative expressions? Surely not. But why? One answer might be that there is no conceptual connection between judging that something has these characteristics and criticism. I might have wanted a dull knife to minimize the possibility of accident, for example. Now is there any conceptual connection between judging of a belief that it is epistemically irrational and criticizing the belief? Can we not imagine societies in which one values a kind of irrationality much the way a few people value dull knives? Indeed, I can think of a few philosophical movements that for all the world seem to place a premium on the inco-

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herence of belief systems. And if that suggestion seems a little snide, can we not at least find some subculture of poets who explicitly disdain the confines of epistemically rational belief systems, the pursuit of truth, and so on? I have already agreed, of course, that there is a sense of "ought" that is customarily used in describing beliefs that a person is justified or rational in holding. And one can claim that if a belief is judged to be irrational, it is being implicitly criticized as one that the subject ought not to have, but this will now take us full circle to the earlier problematic attempt to characterize the normativity of the epistemic "ought." Conclusion We have explored a number of different ways in which we might interpret the claim that epistemic judgments are normative. But after we have carefully distinguished the epistemic judgments we make about beliefs from the other ways in which we might evaluate beliefs, it is not clear to me that there is really any interesting sense in which epistemic judgments are normative. Indeed, it is not clear that we can really develop any philosophically interesting sense of normativity that does not itself presuppose highly controversial views. If any judgments are normative, it is ethical judgments, but unless some version of noncognitivism is true, ethical judgments describe some feature of the world in precisely the same sense in which other judgments describe some feature of the world. We explored the idea that the relevant feature of the world might be the existence of rules that lack a truth value, and that this might be the essence of their normativity, but we saw that a great many moral philosophers would deny that the relevant moral rules lack truth value, and an even greater number of epistemologists would resist the analogous suggestion that the relevant epistemic rules lack truth value. The idea that normative judgments all make implicit reference to goals or ends gave little comfort to the idea that epistemic judgments are normative, for on reflection, the way in which other normative judgments involve reference to goals or ends seems to presuppose a prior understanding of epistemic probability. It seems even more hopeless to claim that there is a conceptual connection between judgments about epistemic justification and praise and blame. If the above is correct, then some epistemic internalists may be off target in their criticisms of externalism. As we noted at the beginning of the essay, many would argue that externalist epistemologies are implausible precisely because they fail to capture some alleged normativity of moral judgments. Although I believe there are fatal objections to the externalist's approach to understanding epistemic concepts, I'm not convinced that this is one of them.17 Notes 1. Butchvarov (1970) has argued, somewhat persuasively, that the "traditional" account of knowledge is remarkably hard to find in the history of philosophy. 2. Chisholm has flirted off and on with attempts to reduce epistemic concepts to normative concepts ever since he first toyed with the idea in Chisholm (1957). Goldman (1979) and (1986), Foley (1987), Sosa (1991), Kim (1988), Hookway (1994), Plantinga (1992) and (1993), and Steup (1988), among many others, have all stressed the normative dimension of epistemic concepts.

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3. Goldman himself became so sensitive to this objection that he eventually introduced a second (nonreliabilist) conception of justification to accommodate it—see Goldman (1988). See also Foley (1985) for a clear presentation of the objection. 4. We could even imagine a society odd enough that it tries to legislate over matters of belief, thus creating legal obligations to believe and refrain from believing certain propositions. 5. See, for example, Alston (1988). 6. The emotivists Ayer and Stevenson also emphasize the "quasi-imperative" character of moral judgments. See Ayer (1952) and Stevenson (1944). 7. My colleague Laird Addis, whose area of specialization is not epistemology, would endorse the idea that epistemic judgments lack truth value, but as I say, he is surely the exception. 8. One of the fundamental objections to objectivism first raised by Hume (1988) and developed by many others, perhaps most vigorously by Mackie (1977). 9. This is, of course, a crude statement of rule utilitarianism. There are all kinds of subtle variations on the view designed to circumvent objections. 10. Foley (1987), 8. 11. For a detailed discussion of what constitutes actual consequence consequentialism and what differentiates it from other versions of consequentialism, see Fumerton (1990). 12. Fumerton (1990), chap. 4. 13. We do sometimes seem to tie our evaluation of an agent's action to the actual consequences of that action. The child playing catch in the living room who breaks the picture window gets accused of a far greater wrongdoing than the child playing that same game of catch who makes a luck stab at the ball deflecting it just before the window breaks. I'm inclined to think that appropriate philosophical reflection should lead one to reject an analysis of wrongdoing that makes it dependent on actual consequences, but in the end I'm content to argue that there are more interesting and fundamental concepts of what someone ought to do that must take into account epistemic perspective. 14. A sense that is still distinct from our evaluation of the moral character of the agent. 15. For a detailed discussion of these important derivative concepts of morality and rationality, see, again, Fumerton (1990), chap. 4 and Foley (1990). 16. For a useful critical evaluation of possible conceptual connections between epistemic evaluation and moral evaluation, see Alston (1988), Plantinga (1988), and Feldman (1988). 17. I owe special thanks to Matthias Steup. Through extensive e-mail correspondence, he helped me better understand many of these issues. References Alston, William. 1988. The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification. Vol. 2 of Philosophical perspectives, edited by James Toberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. Ayer, A. J. 1952. Language, Truth, and Logic. New York: Dover. . 1956. The Problem of Knowledge. Edinburgh, Scotland: Penguin. Butchvarov, Panayot. 1970. The Concept of Knowledge. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press. Chisholm, Roderick. 1957. Perceiving: A Philosophical Study. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Feldman, Richard. 1988. Epistemic Obligations. Vol. 2 of Philosophical Perspectives, edited by James Tomberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. Foley, Richard. 1985. What's Wrong with Reliabilism? The Monist 68 (April): 188-202. . 1987. The Theory of Epistemic Rationality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. . 1990. Fumerton's Puzzle. Journal of Philosophical Research 15: 109-13. Fumerton, Richard. 1990. Reason and Morality. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Goldman, Alvin. 1979. What is Justified Belief? In Justification and Knowledge, edited by George Pappas. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel.

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. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. . 1988. Strong and Weak Justification. Vol. 2 of Philosophical Perspectives, edited by James Toberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. Hookway, Christopher. 1994. Cognitive Virtues and Epistemic Evaluations, International Journal of Philosophical Studies (2): 211—27. Hume, David. 1888. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. London: Oxford University Press. Kim, Jaegwon. 1988. What is "Naturalized Epistemology"? Vol. 2 of Philosophical Perspectives, edited by James Tomberlin. Ataradero, Calif.: Ridgeview. Mackie, J. L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. New York: Penguin. Plantinga, Alvin. 1988. Positive Epistemic Status and Proper Function. Vol. 2 of Philosophical Perspectives, edited by James Toberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. . 1992. Justification in the 20th Century. Rationality in Epistemology. Vol. 2 of Philosophical Issues, edited by Enrique Villanueva. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. 1993. Warrant: The Current Debate. New York: Oxford University Press. Sosa, Ernest. 1991. Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steup, Matthias. 1988. The Deontic Conception of Epistemic Justification, Philosophical Studies 58: 65-84. Stevenson, C. L. 1944. Ethics and Language. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Part II EPISTEMIC DEONTOLOGY AND DOXASTIC VOLUNTARISM

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Deciding to Believe CARL GINET

Sometimes we judge that a person was not justified in coming to have a particular belief. We think that, given what she was aware of at the time, she ought not to have adopted the belief. For example: "You ought not to have leaped to the conclusion that he was bored just because he looked at his watch." "You ought not to have concluded she was still at home just because her phone was busy." "The jurors ought not to have believed his mother's statement (that at the time of the murder he was with her two miles away from the scene of the crime), since they knew she had a strong motive to lie about the matter." It seems that in making such judgments we presuppose that the person could in the circumstances have not come to have the belief in question, that she chose or decided to believe that which we fault her for believing. Or else (if we are unsure of, or disbelieve, this presupposition, as is often the case) our judgment is tacitly conditional: We mean that, if she could have decided otherwise, then she ought not to have decided as she did. If this is right, then our judgment makes sense only if it makes sense to suppose that a person might come to believe something simply by deciding to do so. Some, however, have thought that this is ruled out by the very concept of what it is to believe a truth-valued proposition.1 Others have thought that, though it is conceptually possible, deciding to believe is never psychologically possible and, if it did occur, it would be quite irrational.2 Against these views, I wish to defend the naive intuition that coming to believe something just by deciding to do so is possible, that it sometimes seems to us that we do this, and that our doing so need not offend against epistemic reason. My hope is to make it plausible that there is a sort of state that counts as a state of believing a proposition, which state is such that it is clear that one could 63

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come to be in such a state simply by deciding to do so, and clear, moreover, that such decisions can (though they need not) be perfectly rational and motivated entirely by one's appraisal of the available evidence and one's general desire that one's beliefs be true. (Later I will consider the reasons some have offered for denying that deciding to believe is conceptually possible or for denying that it is psychologically possible.)

I Let me start by giving examples of the sorts of cases that seem to me good candidates for being described as someone's deciding to believe something. Then I will indicate what it is in these cases that (as it seems to me) both constitutes the subject's believing a proposition and is such that it came into existence directly by the subject's deciding that it would. 1. Sam is on a jury deliberating whether to find the defendant guilty as charged; if certain statements of a certain witness in the trial are true, then the defendant cannot have done what he is charged with; Sam deliberates whether to believe those statements, to believe the prosecutor's insinuations that the witness lied, or to withhold belief on the matter altogether. He decides to believe the witness and votes to acquit. 2. Sue is in a poker game of seven-card stud. After all cards have been dealt, everyone folds except Sue and Hank. Sue has three aces showing and two kings in the hole. The fourth ace was seen in an already folded hand. Hank has three jacks showing. If he has a fourth jack in the hole, he beats Sue's full house. Hank raises by a fairly substantial sum. Sue asks herself, "Shall I see him or fold? Does he have a Jack in the hole or is he bluffing? I detect a certain subtle nervousness in Hank's manner. Of course, he could be pretending to be worried so as to lure me into betting, but I've played with him a number of times and don't recall his having tried that sort of pretence before, and he is generally such an open book that I doubt very much he could pull it off." So she decides to dismiss that possibility, to read Hank as being anxious about bluffing; she decides to believe that he does not have a jack in the hole and meets his raise while beginning to think about what she will do with the winnings. She is greatly surprised when Hank reveals that he does have the fourth jack. 3. Before Sam left for his office this morning, Sue asked him to bring from his office, when he comes back, a particular book that she needs to use in preparing for her lecture the next day. Later Sue wonders whether Sam will remember to bring the book. She recalls that he has sometimes, though not often, forgotten such things, but, given the inconvenience of getting in touch with him and interrupting his work and the thought that her continuing to wonder whether he'll remember it will make her anxious all day, she decides to stop fretting and believe that he will remember to bring it. 4. We have started on a trip by car, and 50 miles from home my wife asks me if I locked the front door. I seem to remember that I did, but I don't have a clear, detailed, confident memory impression of locking that door (and I am aware that my unclear, unconfident memory impressions have sometimes been mistaken). But, given the great inconvenience of turning back to make sure and the undesirability of worrying about it while continuing on, I decide to continue on and believe that I did lock it.

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In these examples, the subject S decided to believe a certain proposition p. S did this in deciding to act, or not to act, in a certain way. In deciding to vote for acquittal, Sam decided to believe the statement of the witness. In deciding to meet Hank's raise, Sue decides to believe that Hank is bluffing. In deciding not to remind Sam to bring the book she needed, Sally decided to believe that he would remember to bring it. In deciding to continue on down the road without worrying about it, I decided to believe that I'd locked the door. What makes true a statement of the form "In deciding to A, S decided to believe that/?"? One thing required is surely this: In deciding to A, S staked something on its being the case that p. What is it to do that? I suggest the following explication: In deciding to A, S staked something on its being the case that p iff when deciding to A, S believed that A-ing was (all things considered) at least as good as other options open to her iff p (equivalently: that no other option open to her was preferable to A-ing iff p; or, for short, that A-ing was optimal iff p). On this definition, staking something on its being the case that/? is not sufficient for believing that/?: The definiens says only that S had a certain belief about A-ing when she decided to A, and the content of that belief does not entail that p.3 This is as it should be, of course. When I bet on a coin-flip landing heads, I stake something on the coin's landing heads; and in doing this, though I may hope that it will land heads, I need not believe that it will. What more would I need to do to believe this? I would, I think, need to count on its being the case that the coin will land heads. To count on its being the case that p is, in addition to staking something on p, to adopt a dismissive or complacent attitude toward the possibility of losing what one has staked on p because of its turning out that not-/), an attitude of a sort that the mere gambler on p does not adopt. It is to not prepare oneself for the possibility of not-/?. (Obviously, whether one prepares oneself for the possibility of losing what one has staked on p should it turn out that not-/? is a question that arises only if one has staked something on/?.) If I merely staked something on the coin's landing heads but did not count on it, then I was prepared for the possibility of its not landing heads (whether or not I was concerned or anxious about that possibility, which would depend on how much I valued what I staked on its not happening). But if I counted on its landing heads (perhaps I thought the coin was biased, or perhaps T committed the gambler's fallacy after a string of tails), then I did not prepare myself for that possibility, at any rate not as much as I otherwise would have. To count on p is to stake something on p with this sort of dismissive or unconcerned or unready attitude toward the possibility of not-/?. In example 1, Sam might, of course, have still decided to vote for acquittal, even if he had not decided to believe the witness's exonerating testimony, on grounds that the fact that there was such testimony gives him some reason to withhold belief in the guilt of the accused; but in doing that, he would have had to prepare himself for the possibility that the exonerating testimony was false—for example, to take the attitude that he will have no regrets should it turn out that the witness was lying and the accused was guilty—whereas in deciding to count on the truth of the witness's testimony, he chose not to take up any such protective attitude toward the possibility

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of its falsity. In example 2, Sue might not have decided to believe that Hank was bluffing—she might have withheld belief on that question—and yet still decided to risk a further bet; if she had done that, she would have been more ready than she was to find that Hank was not bluffing. In example 3, Sue might have decided not to remind Sam about the book but also not to count on his remembering it and to think about what to do should he forget it. In example 4,1 might have decided to continue on without believing that I locked the door (only hoping that I did), but that would mean that I would continue to worry about the possibility that I did not lock it or at least be prepared to find it unlocked when I returned. To not prepare oneself for dealing with the possibility of not-/? is to not think about the possibility of not-/? or at least not to give any consideration of what to do if notp. And in fact, since to not prepare for the possibility of not-/? is itself to stake something on p (assuming that one believes that not preparing for the possibility of not-/? is optimal iff/?), choosing to not prepare oneself for the possibility of not-/?, resisting an impulse to do so, can be the choice such that it is in making it that one decides to count on p. In the right circumstances, it can take effort to avoid preparing oneself for the possibility that not-/?. Such efforts, to suppress considering that possibility and what to do if it is realized, are what make it apt sometimes to describe oneself as making oneself believe (or trying to make oneself believe) something. S receives a telephone call from the police saying that his wife has been involved in a car accident and that she wishes him to come to the scene. The police caller says that she believes there are no serious injuries. While S hastens to the scene, S is, as it seems natural to put it, making himself believe that his wife has not been seriously injured. Part of what S does that seems to deserve that description is to suppress all impulse to imagine what his wife's injuries might be or to consider how he will handle it if he does find her seriously injured. (Another part is his repeatedly reminding himself of the evidence he has that she had not been seriously injured, namely, that the police caller would very likely have known and told him if there had been serious injuries.) Counting on/? typically leads to feeling surprise on learning that not-/?. It is a symptom of Sue's having not prepared herself for the possibility that Hank was not bluffing that she felt surprise on learning that he was not. But it is implausible to suppose that not preparing oneself for the possibility of not-/? entails that one will have & feeling of surprise if it turns out that not-/?. A very experienced and cool poker player might suffer no emotional reaction at all at having such a belief falsified. Of course, there is a sense of "S was surprised that not-/?," which means nothing more than that S learned that not-/? when she had believed that/? and does not imply any feeling or emotional reaction on S's part to learning that not-/?. Counting on/? does entail being surprised in that sense should one learn that not-/), since it entails believing that /?. If counting on /? is what F ve said it is, then it is possible in the right circumstances to decide to count on /? and thus to decide to believe that /?. Of course, it can also happen, and very frequently does, that one comes to count on (believe) something without having decided to do so. Often one's perceptual experience or memory or beliefs about the evidence simply compel one's counting on/?. But where, as occasionally happens, such things do not compel belief that p but do provide some evidence of the truth of/?, the opportunity may open for the subject to decide whether to

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believe p. (In such cases, the subject's decision may be influenced by reasons she has for wanting it to be the case that/?, as is illustrated in examples 3 and 4 above and of which I'll say more later.) So the explication of "In deciding to A, S decided to believe that p" that I am suggesting is the following: In deciding to A, S decided to believe that p iff in deciding to A, S decided to count on its being the case that p. where the notion of counting on its being the case that p is understood, as I've explained. II

Belief is commonly thought to be a dispositional state. How do dispositions get into the picture in cases of deciding to believe like those illustrated in my examples? Well, in such cases, the subject S, in deciding to believe that/?, simultaneously adopts and manifests the following disposition: To count on/? in deciding to act in a certain way when presented with an opportunity to do so relevantly like the one she was presented with.4 (What is meant by "relevantly like" is that S has a similar menu of options and S's other beliefs, desires, preferences, evaluations, and so on that bear on the question of which option will seem to her the best one to choose are similar.) What comes into being as a result of S's deciding in a particular situation to count on p is a disposition to count on p in closely similar situations. That disposition is a dispositional belief and S decided to adopt the disposition in the very decision that first manifested it. (If one already has such a dispositional belief that p, then when one encounters a relevantly similar choice-situation and chooses to act in a way that is optimal iff p, one does not therein decide anew to believe that p; rather, one already regards the action's being optimal iff p as a reason for choosing it.) The notion of coming to have a disposition (to act in certain ways in certain sorts of situations, perhaps with a certain sort of attitude) by deciding to have it should not be problematic. This is something we often do, in deciding to have a standing policy for action, in adopting a general conditional intention to act in such-and-such a way in such-and-such circumstances. The dispositional belief that one both manifests and decides to have, in deciding on a particular occasion to count on/?, could be very short-lived; but normally it will last awhile, without having to be readopted by a new decision or brought about anew in some other way, though eventually something may happen to change S's mind (typically by providing her with a reason to decide to change it), or S may lose the belief through forgetting it. It is possible, of course, to decide to adopt a belief-disposition, to decide to count on the truth of a certain proposition when in a certain sort of situation, in the absence of that sort situation, that is, without at the same time manifesting the disposition. That would be a case of deciding to believe that p that would not be a case of deciding to believe that p in deciding to act in a certain way.

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The disposition we've talked about so far is rather specific: to count onp in choosing a particular sort of action in a particular sort of situation. And it could be that the subject never has any more general disposition to count on p. Typically, though, a disposition acquired in certain specific circumstances will generalize at least to some extent—it will be a disposition to count on p in choosing other sorts of actions in other sorts of situations. If belief that/? is the sort of disposition I've been talking about, then it may exhibit a certain sort of context-relativity. Thus, for example, Sue might be disposed to count on its being the case (i.e., believe) that Hank is bluffing when the issue is whether to meet his raise of $20, but not disposed to count on it when the issue is whether to bet the farm. I might be disposed to count on its being the case that the temperature won't go below freezing during the next week, when the issue is whether to leave all those potted plants outside while we're away, but not disposed to count on it, when the issue is whether to leave the furnace on (with the thermostat turned down). I might be disposed to count on its being the case that this large dog won't bite someone approaching it closely when the issue is whether to assert that it won't (and thereby stake my reputation for veracity on that's being the case), but not disposed to count on the dog's not biting when the issue is whether to approach it closely myself. That is, one might be disposed to count on p in choosing some sorts of actions in some sorts of situations but not disposed to count on p in choosing other sorts of actions in those or other sorts of situations where the value staked onp in so choosing would be different and greater. This is to believe that;? relative to some contexts and not to believe it relative to other contexts. We should not insist that believing that/? requires being disposed to count on p in every sort of situation. There is, to be sure, something we can call "acceptance" that is not belief. For example, it could have been that Sue merely staked something on the proposition that Hank is bluffing without counting on it: She merely took that proposition as her "betting hypothesis." But if the subject does not merely stake something on p but also counts on p in making the decision she does, then she therein manifests belief that/?. In the examples given in the paragraph before last, what was at stake for the subject in the context where the subject was disposed to count on p was less than what was at stake in the context where the subject was not disposed to count on p. This permits us to say that the subject believes that/? only at a certain level of confidence (only to a certain degree) and not at a higher level (not to a greater degree), provided that the same relation holds between every pair of contexts such that the subject is disposed to count onp in one and not disposed to count onp in the other. And it may be that only when that relation holds is it fully rational to count on p relative to one context and not to count on it relative to another. But it surely can happen that a subject is disposed to count on p in one context but not count on it in another where what would be at stake in counting on it in the latter is not greater than what would be at stake in counting on it in the former. George, let us suppose, is disposed to count on the rickety old footbridge's holding the weight of a large man if the issue were whether to cross the bridge himself (when he wants to get to the other side of the ravine in a hurry) but not disposed to count on it if the issue were whether to agree with his father's assertion that it will hold such a weight while discussing whether his father should have the bridge re-

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built (where no one's bodily safety would be staked on his act of asserting agreement). In having the first disposition while lacking the second, George may be less than fully rational, but that is not a good reason to deny that George does believe the bridge will hold his weight relative to the first context and does not believe it relative to the second context. Here we can't say that George believes the proposition to a certain degree and not to any greater degree. We can say only that he believes it relative to one context and not relative to another or that "in a way" he believes it and in a way he doesn't.5'6 L. J. Cohen has offered the following account of belief: belief that p is a disposition, when one is attending to issues raised, or items referred to, by the proposition that p, normally to feel it true that p and false that non-p, whether or not one is willing to act, speak, or reason accordingly. . . . The standard way to discover whether you yourself believe that p is by introspecting whether you are normally disposed to feel that p when you consider the issue.7 This, if I understand it right, entails that belief is not relative to context, to types of choice situation, in the way I've described. But I find it implausible to suppose that one has a special feeling, literally so called, toward a proposition one believes whenever one considers it. (The attitude toward p of counting on it, of not taking seriously the possibility that not-;?, on which I place so much weight, is not a feeling, and it is possible only when one has staked something on p.) Cohen's theory seems prompted, at least partly, by the fact that we are quite good at distinguishing among the propositions we entertain between those we currently believe and those we do not currently believe, plus the thought that this cannot be explained if belief is the kind of disposition to action that a pragmatic account says it is. But we need not accept this latter thought: Insofar as we have direct knowledge of what our beliefs are, when we are not manifesting them, it is of the same sort as we have of our conditional intentions. I have a kind of privileged access to my own conditional intentions—to the fact that, unless my intentions were to change, I would act in such-and-such ways in such-and-such circumstances. I have the same kind of privileged access to at least some of my beliefs, to at least some of the facts about me of the form "Unless my beliefs were to change, I would count on/? in such-and-such circumstances." Of course, we are not infallible about facts of this sort about ourselves. I might be aware of the fact that I would count on this dog's being harmless in circumstances where, by asserting that this dog is harmless, I would be staking my testimonial veracity on its being harmless, but unaware of the fact that I would not count on its being harmless in other circumstances where, by approaching the dog closely, I would be staking my bodily safety on its being harmless. Though one can come to have a belief, a disposition to count on the truth of a proposition, by deciding to have it, one can, of course, and often does, come to have such a disposition in other ways, involuntarily. For instance, in the normal case, one's perceptual beliefs—one's beliefs as to what one is now seeing, hearing, feeling, and so on (at least insofar as the content has to do with the more superficial, perceivable features of what one perceives)—will be involuntary. When I see a tree or a dog before me, a car coming down the street, snow on the ground, and the like, and as a result

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come to believe that I see such a thing, I do not (usually) experience the coming to be of that belief as something I have a choice about and decide to make happen. There could, however, be an atypical situation where I have some reason, though not a conclusive reason, to think that my senses might currently be deceiving me; then I might be in a position to decide whether to believe what my senses deliver. Similarly, most of my beliefs based on memory, where I believe something because it seems to me I remember witnessing it or learning it, are not voluntary. Unlike my example where I decide to trust my memory impression that I did lock the door, I do not decide to trust my memory impression that I ate breakfast at home this morning, that I had lunch with S yesterday, that I have been in New Zealand, and so on. In most cases where I believe because I remember, my memory does not leave me free to decide whether to trust it. It is fairly clear that in the large mass of beliefs held by any normal person at a given time, the overwhelmingly major part will have come about involuntarily and only a small portion will have been adopted voluntarily (by decision). Coming to believe by deciding to believe (or seeming to do so) is undoubtedly a rare phenomenon in that sense. But it is nevertheless a phenomenon that we are familiar with—it may happen every day in the lives of some of us—and that is why we find it intelligible, when judging whether a particular belief was justified, to think of ourselves as judging whether the believer ought to have chosen to adopt the belief or ought to have done so if she could have done otherwise. I do not wish to claim that every dispositional belief must consist of the sort of disposition that I have specified. I claim only that having such a disposition with respect to a certain proposition suffices for believing that proposition. There may be phenomena that we are happy to call beliefs that do not fit this analysis. For example, there can be belief in a proposition p such that there could be for the believer no such thing as its turning out that not-/? (no such thing, that is, as her coming to have conclusive or overwhelming evidence that not-p) and thus no such thing as her preparing herself for that possibility or her staking something on its being the case that p. That there is life elsewhere in our galaxy might, for instance, be such a proposition. (I'm inclined to think that such propositions can be believed only in an attenuated sense.) Ill

Where believing that p is the sort of disposition I have been talking about, a reason for believing that/? will be a reason for being disposed to act in such a way that in so acting, one counts on its being the case that p. The reasons one can have for doing this fall into two mutually exclusive classes: the interested and the disinterested. An interested reason is a reason for wanting it to be the case that/?. Thus I had interested reasons for believing that I locked the door, and S for believing that his wife was not seriously injured in the car accident. A disinterested reason is one that is not interested. Disinterested reasons will include having evidence that/? or having perceptual experience whose content entails that/? (while having no reason to mistrust one's senses in that instance). How can there be an interested reason for believing that/?? How can wanting it to be the case that p be a reason for believing that /?? Can wanting it to be the case that

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p be a reason for staking something on pi Clearly not when one believes that not-/?. But suppose one has no belief either way. Then I think a desire that p can motivate, further, one's staking something on p: It can motivate one's not preparing oneself for the possibility of not-p, that is, one's counting on p. (To not prepare oneself for the possibility of not-/?, to count on p, can itself be to stake something on p; that is, it can be that one's counting on p is optimal iff/?.) For example, suppose that S's husband was scheduled to be on a flight that, S has learned, has crashed; but he telephoned S an hour before the flight was to leave to say that he thought he would probably not make that flight and would come on a later one. S's desire that her husband was not on the ill-fated flight is about as strong as any desire she's ever had. In the circumstances, it would not be surprising if, because of it, she began to count on its being the case that he was not on that flight, began to believe that he was not; and her doing so would not even be, all things considered, irrational. Or suppose a subject S has decided to stake on the truth of a certain proposition p something other than not being prepared for the possibility of not-/? (e.g., a large sum of money). Then S's having done this gives S a reason for wanting it to be the case that/?, and it is intelligible that this desire might motivate S to take the further step involved in counting on (and thus believing) p, viz., to not prepare herself for the possibility of not-/?, to not contemplate the costs should it turn out that not-/?. One would expect this desire actually to lead a normally rational person to count on p only when the stake is rather significant and the person has some evidence that/7 and no compelling evidence that not-/?. Suppose, for example, that S has a life-threatening disease. There are two treatments available, for each of which there is some reason to think it might bring about a cure in S's case: Each has worked in some cases and failed to work in some. But the treatments are mutually exclusive: Pursuing either makes it impossible to pursue the other. S decides to pursue treatment A. Now S has reason for wanting it to be the case that treatment A is the better cure for her case or at least that treatment A is as likely to cure her as treatment B would have been. It would not be surprising if this desire led S to believe this, to count on its being so, to avoid the psychic cost of taking seriously the possibility that it is not so. Coming to believe that p by deciding to do so seems more psychologically possible, and less irrational (all things considered), when the subject has some evidence that p (but it is not compelling evidence, or she also has some noncompelling evidence that not /?) and also has significant reason for wanting it to be the case that /?. IV

But some philosophers have thought that deciding to believe is not so much as conceptually possible, let alone psychologically possible. According to Bernard Williams, "it is not a contingent fact that I cannot bring it about, just like that, that I believe something . . ." He offers two reasons for this claim: One reason is connected with the characteristic of beliefs that they aim at truth. If I could acquire a belief at will, I could acquire it whether it was true or not; moreover I would know that I could acquire it whether it was true or not. If in full consciousness I could will to acquire a 'belief irrespective of its truth, it is unclear that before the

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Carl Ginet event I could seriously think of it as a belief, i.e., as something purporting to represent reality. At the very least, there must be a restriction on what is the case after the event; since I could not then, in full consciousness, regard this as a belief of mine, i.e., something I take to be true, and also know that I acquired it at will. (1973, p. 148)

Williams says that it is a characteristic of beliefs, presumably a characteristic that is essential to their nature, that they aim at truth. And he asserts that, if I could acquire a belief at will, I could acquire it whether it was true or not, which would be contrary to the nature of belief. What does Williams mean by "I could acquire it whether it was true or not"? (He can't mean that I could acquire a belief that is not true. Entailing that possibility would be nothing against acquiring beliefs at will, since we do actually acquire beliefs that are not true.) What does he mean by "beliefs aim at truth"? One might naturally take this to mean that, necessarily, one wants one's beliefs to be true, and thus "I could acquire it whether it was true or not" would mean that I could acquire it without caring at all whether it was true or not, without having any desire that it be true. If its consequent is construed this way, then there is no reason to accept Williams' conditional, "if I could acquire a belief at will, I could acquire it whether it was true or not." - Suppose it is conceptually true that one cannot come to believe something while lacking any desire that one's belief be true. This is quite compatible with its being the case that one's reason for deciding to believe that;? is a desire that;? be true—a desire had independently of having evidence that/) is true. Suppose that S has some evidence that her husband was on the plane that recently crashed and some evidence that he was not; but instead of withholding belief, S believes that her husband was not on the plane, because she wants it very much to be true that he wasn't. This desire is no sort of evidence that he wasn't on the plane, but it does have to do with the truth of that proposition. It is precisely because she does want so much that the proposition be true that she is motivated to believe it. So it is obviously not the case that deciding to believe, for an interested reason, entails not caring whether one's belief is true or not. There is another way of construing "beliefs aim at truth." One might say that one cannot believe that/? unless one's counting on;? is motivated by a desire to have true beliefs (a desire to count on a proposition's being true only when it is true) that is independent of any desire one has regarding any particular proposition that it be true,8 or, in other words, unless one has disinterested reason for believing it. This is perhaps the most plausible construal of Williams' meaning and of the meaning of other writers who have invoked this dictum about belief. (Given that we must have a desire for true beliefs in general that is independent of the content of any particular belief, there can arise cases where one has a belief that, qua belief, one of course wants to be true, but that, qua having the particular content it does, one wants to be false. If the wife in our recent example, after acquiring compelling new evidence, came to believe that her husband was on the plane that crashed, then she would be in such a position.) If "beliefs aim at truth" is construed in this way, then, although I see no reason to think that it captures a conceptual truth about belief as such, it may well express a conceptual truth about rational belief. And we may grant further that it is psychologically impossible to believe a proposition, to count on its truth, without having some disinterested reason for doing so. But from its being psychologically impos-

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sible to believe without disinterested reasons, it does not follow that it is psychologically impossible to decide to believe for such reasons. And from its being conceptually impossible to believe rationally without disinterested reasons, it does not follow that it is conceptually impossible to decide to believe for such reasons. It may be that cases where some of S's reasons for deciding to believe that/? are interested ones should be said to exhibit a degree of epistemic irrationality, by which we would mean simply that some of S's reasons are nonevidential, are not such as to increase the probability that/) is true. But cases of deciding to believe need not all be cases where interested reasons are involved; some cases where none are involved might be cases where the decision to believe that/7 is, even epistemically, fully rational, where the subject's disinterested reasons do justify counting on/7 in the context. In example 1 above, Sam's disinterested reasons might be good enough to justify his counting on the truth of the exonerating witness's testimony, even though they do not compel him to do so: Whether having certain evidence compels a belief is not the criterion of whether having that evidence justifies the belief. Another reason Williams offers (1973, pp. 148-49), for his claim that it is noncontingently true that I cannot come to believe just by deciding to do so, stems from our considerations about perceptual belief: a very central idea with regard to empirical belief is that of coming to believe that p because it is so, that is, the relation between a man's perceptual environment, his perceptions, and the beliefs that result. Unless a concept satisfies the demands of that notion, namely, that we can understand the idea that he comes to believe that p because it is so and because his perceptual organs are working, it will not be the concept of empirical belief . . . But a state that could be produced at will would not satisfy these demands, because there would be no regular connexion between the environment, the perceptions and what the man came out with, which is a necessary condition of a belief. . . .

Williams here seems to claim that, from the proposition that S's belief that p is a correct perceptual belief, it follows that S's belief was caused by the fact that/7 in a way that is incompatible with the supposition that S came to believe that p by deciding to believe it. I am unable to understand how this is so. Suppose that S's eyes are directed toward a square red patch on a white wall. The light is good and S's visual system is in good working order, so she is caused to have a visual experience as if seeing a square red patch on a white surface, and in fact she sees a square red patch on a white surface. Suppose, however, that she hesitates for a moment to believe that she sees such a thing because she has some slight reason to think that she might be hallucinating the red patch; but then she decides to cast doubt aside and trust her vision: She decides to believe that (R) there is before her a red patch on a white surface. Here we can certainly say that she came to her belief that R because it was a fact that R and her vision was in good working order: Had these things not been the case, she would not have had the visual experience, she had, and had she not had that experience she would not have believed that R. We cannot, it is true, say that the fact that R together with the fact that her vision was working properly causally necessitated her believing that R. But we should not, in any case, want to say that. Some-

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times people do mistrust their senses when they are in fact working properly. So I see no reason to accept Williams' claim that, if a person with properly working perceptual organs perceives a certain external scene and as a result has a perceptual belief that corresponds to her perceptual experience, then it could not be that she decided whether to adopt that belief.9 V

William P. Alston (1988) attacks the thesis that it is psychologically possible for one to "take up at will whatever propositional attitude one chooses" (p. 122). This is not a thesis I have asserted or wish to assert. Obviously, there are a great many propositions I do not now believe that I cannot come to believe just by deciding to believe them. For example, it is not in my power now to decide to believe that I am now playing squash or that I'm now immersed in water. Obviously, there are also a great many propositions I now believe that I cannot cease to believe just by deciding to do so. For example, I cannot now decide not to believe that the current year is 1999 or that I was born in Wyoming. (But note that it is also not in my power now to acquire, just by deciding, the intention to run over pedestrians with my car at the next opportunity and not in my power to abandon my intention always to avoid driving my car into the path of onrushing vehicles; and intention is unquestionably a sort of mental state that a subject sometimes comes to have just by deciding to do so.) But in the course of arguing against this obviously false thesis, Alston makes plain that he also rejects a weaker thesis that I do wish to assert, namely, that it is psychologically possible, in the right circumstances, for a subject to come to believe something just by deciding to believe it, where the subject has it open to her also to not come to believe it. He is convinced that, in any actual case that anyone might be tempted to describe by saying that a person came to believe that p just by deciding to do so, what really happened must be something else. It must be either that its seeming to the subject that it is highly likely that/) compelled the subject's belief (leaving her no choice in the matter) or that what the subject decided to do was, not to believe that p, but to proceed on the assumption that p. It is certainly true that there are various cases properly described as deciding to proceed on the assumption that/? that are not cases of deciding to believe that/?. One of them is the case of staking something on its being the case that/) without counting on it (in my sense)—as in ordinary gambling or in Alston's example (1998, p. 126) of the military commander who says, "I don't know what the disposition of enemy forces is; I don't even have enough information to make an educated guess. But I have to proceed on some basis or other, so I'll just assume that it is H and make my plans accordingly." Another is the case of assuming that p as a hypothesis for the purpose of testing it or of reducing it to absurdity, where one does not even stake anything on the truth of the hypothesis. But the cases I want to describe as deciding to believe are not of those sorts. In deciding to believe the exonerating witness's testimony and vote for acquittal, Sam decided not merely to proceed on the assumption that the witness's testimony was

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true, but to count on its truth. When the question arose as to whether I locked the door, I might have decided merely to stake something on the hypothesis that I did, merely to proceed on that assumption, but I decided to do more, to believe that I locked it, to adopt an attitude toward that proposition that is not implied by my merely staking something on its truth. If they are not cases of merely proceeding on the assumption that p, must they then be cases of the other sort Alston allows, where the subject did come to believe that p but, despite the subject's impression of deciding to do so, she actually had no choice about the matter and was compelled to believe (by, say, her probability estimate)? I suppose that it is possible that I and others are always victims of a kind of illusion about what is going on in our minds here—I do not want to claim that would be conceptually or psychologically impossible—but we have not been offered any good reason to think it is so. Until we are offered such a reason, we are entitled to continue taking our occasional impressions, that we come to believe something just by deciding to do so, at face value. And that means, concerning the concept of epistemic justification, that we can continue, in good conscience, to understand it in a deontic way: We can continue to take the judgment that a belief is not justified as implying that the subject ought not to have adopted the belief or ought not to have done so if she could have avoided it.10 Notes 1. See, for instance, Hampshire (1971) and Williams (1973). 2. See Alston (1988). 3. But the definiens, in ascribing the belief that A-ing is optimal iff p, does entail that the subject understands the proposition that p. 4. The idea that belief is a disposition to act in certain ways is commonly labeled the "pragmatic" account of belief. See, for example, Braithwaite (1932) and Stalnaker (1984). 5. I think that Michael Bratman is not disagreeing with what I say here when he says: Reasonable belief is, in an important way, context independent: at any one time a reasonable agent normally either believes something (to degree n) or does not believe it (to that degree). She does not at the same time believe that p relative to one context but not relative to another. (Bratman 1992, 3) The last sentence here does not disagree with what I've said if it means that a fully rational person does not at the same time believe that p to a certain degree relative to one context but does not believe it to that same degree relative to another. 6. Robert Stalnaker (1984) holds that belief is a species of a broader genus he calls acceptance and suggests that context-relativity is unproblematic only for acceptance that is not belief. He says (p. 81), "A person may accept something in one context, while rejecting it or suspending judgment in another. There need be no conflict that must be resolved when the difference is noticed, and he need not change his mind when he moves from one context to the other. But something is wrong if I have separate incompatible sets of beliefs for different circumstances." This last assertion seems right only if "incompatible beliefs" means (as I trust Stalnaker does mean) beliefs with incompatible contents. I don't see that there is anything wrong or irrational about believing something relative to one context and not believing it (as distinct from believing it false) relative to another. 7. Cohen (1992), 4. 8. Something like this construal of "beliefs aim at truth" is suggested by David Velleman in "On the Aim of Belief" (unpublished ms.).

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9. For a very different, but very interesting, critique of Williams's argument, see Bennett (1990). 10. I am grateful to Matthias Steup for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. References Alston, William P. 1988. The Deontological Conception of Justification. Vol. 2 of Philosophical Perspectives, edited by James Tomberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview. . 1989. Epistemic Justification. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Bennett, Jonathan. 1990. "Why Is Belief Involuntary?," Analysis 50: 87-107. Braithwaite, R. B. 1932. "The Nature of Believing," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 33: 129-46. Bratman, Michael. 1992. "Practical Reasoning and Acceptance in a Context." Mind (101): 1-15. Cohen, L. Jonathan. 1992. An Essay on Belief and Acceptance. Oxford, U.K. Clarendon. Griffiths, A. P., ed. 1967. Knowledge and Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hampshire, Stuart. 1971. "Freedom of Mind." In Freedom of Mind and Other Essays. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Kiefer, H. and Munitz, M., eds. 1970. Language, Belief, and Metaphysics. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Stalnaker, Robert. 1984. Inquiry. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Williams, Bernard. 1970. "Deciding to Believe," in Language, Belief, and Metaphysics, edited by H. Kiefer and M. Munitz. . 1973. Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5

Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation RICHARD FELDMAN

I. Introduction Our talk about epistemic matters parallels our talk about ethical matters in noteworthy ways. Among the ethical judgments we make are judgments that a person ought to perform a certain action, that someone should not do a certain thing, that people have obligations to act in some ways, that they are permitted or required to do certain things, that they have a right to do one thing and a duty to do another, and that sometimes they deserve praise or blame for what they have done. We make seemingly analogous judgments about beliefs and believers. We say that a typical well-informed contemporary American ought to believe that the Earth revolves around the Sun and should not believe that the Earth is flat. A person wrongly accused of a crime might say his accusers have no right to believe that he's guilty, since no evidence of his wrongdoing has been brought forth. In such a case, we might say that believing the person is not guilty is permitted or perhaps even required. We sometimes praise those who believe the things they should, and we criticize those who fail in their believings. We can describe all these judgments as deontological judgments about beliefs. Much work in recent epistemology has been about epistemic justification. As William Alston says, it is "natural" to understand epistemic justification in a "deontological" way. By this he means that it is to be understood in terms of "obligation, permission, requirement, blame, and the like."1 Apparent examples of deontological analyses include one derived from A. J. Ayer' s proposal that one has knowledge when one has a true belief and one has a "right to be sure."2 On this view, one is justified in believing a proposition when one has a right to be sure that it is true. Carl Ginet has proposed that 77

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One is justified in being confident thatp if and only if it is not the case that one ought not be confident thatp; one could not be justly reproached for being confident that p.3 Roderick Chisholm appeals to the notion of an "intellectual requirement" in an effort to clarify the key concepts of epistemological theory.4 Analyses of epistemic justification in deontological terms are common.5 Recently, Alvin Plantinga and Alvin Goldman have independently argued that the viability of a deontological conception of epistemic justification is crucial to the debate between internalists and externalists about epistemic justification. Goldman thinks that a central, but mistaken, line of support for internalist theories begins with the assumption of a deontological account of justification.6 Plantinga also argues that internalism derives much of its support from a deontological view of justification.7 Whether deontological judgments about beliefs are ever true thus is of considerable epistemological significance. A central problem that both Plantinga and Alston find with deontological judgments about beliefs is that they presuppose that we have voluntary control over what we believe. Yet, reflection on our mental lives suggests that we have no such control. Alston says: this conception of epistemic justification is viable only if beliefs are sufficiently under voluntary control to render such concepts as requirement, permission, obligation, reproach, and blame applicable to them. By the time honored principle that "Ought implies can," one can be obliged to do A only if one has an effective choice as to whether to do A.8 He goes on to argue that we don't have an effective choice over what we believe. In the process of objecting to Chisholm's views about justification, Plantinga says of a particular proposition that "whether or not I accept it is simply not up to me; but then accepting this proposition cannot be a way in which I can fulfill my obligation to the truth, or, indeed, any obligation. . . ."9 Thus, according to Plantinga, our lack of control over beliefs implies that they are not the sort of thing that can be a matter of obligation, and this undermines Chisholm's deontological conception of epistemic justification. Matthias Steup presents a similar argument, though he goes on to defend the deontological conception on the grounds that belief is voluntary.10 For the purposes of the discussion that follows, it will be helpful to distinguish two steps of the arguments just presented. Their target is a deontological conception of epistemic justification, a conception according to which epistemic justification is to be understood or analyzed in terms of the deontological concepts of obligation, requirement, and the like. This conception is "viable," in Alston's terms, only if belief is sufficiently under our voluntary control. Presumably, the deontological conception is viable only if it can be true that we are required to believe things, that we ought not believe other things, and so on. That is, the deontological conception of epistemic justification is "viable" only if deontological judgments about beliefs are sometimes true. Thus, the argument against epistemic deontologism begins with the claim that believing is not a voluntary activity. This is used to support the proposition that deontological judgments about beliefs cannot be true. And from this it is inferred that the deontological conception of epistemic justification is not viable. My concern in this essay will be primarily with the first inference, the move from invol-

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untarism about belief to the falsity of all deontological judgments about beliefs. My goal in what follows is to argue that deontological judgments about beliefs can be true even if beliefs are involuntary. I will not be defending deontological analyses of epistemic justification. We can formulate the issue in terms of the following argument: The Voluntarism Argument 1. People do not have voluntary control over their beliefs. 2. If deontological judgments about beliefs are sometimes true, then people have voluntary control over their beliefs. 3. Deontological judgments about beliefs are not sometimes true. Epistemologists have three kinds of response to this argument open to them: (i) They can argue that we do have the requisite sort of control over our beliefs, thereby rejecting premise (1); (ii) they can argue that the deontological judgments do not have voluntarist implications, thereby rejecting premise (2); or (iii) they can accept the argument and admit that the familiar deontological terms of epistemic appraisal really are inapplicable.11 This in itself is a surprising conclusion, whatever the merits of deontological analyses of epistemic justification. I will discuss response (i) in section II and response (ii) in section III. I will not discuss response (iii) except in passing and by implication. II. Voluntarism About Belief In this section, I will discuss premise (1) of The Voluntarism Argument. I will eventually argue that we do have voluntary control over some of our beliefs, but I will also argue that this fact is of absolutely no epistemological significance and that it does nothing to help resolve the real puzzle concerning voluntarism and deontological judgments about beliefs. Arguments for the Conceptual Impossibility of Voluntary Belief The philosophical literature contains two quite different kinds of defenses of the claim that people do not have voluntary control over their beliefs. One defense relies on the idea that voluntarily formed beliefs are a conceptual impossibility, and the other claims merely that it is a contingent fact that we are unable to believe voluntarily. I will discuss each sort of defense, but most of my attention will be directed on the second one. The Conceptual Impossibility Thesis According to the conceptual impossibility thesis, the nature of belief somehow rules out the possibility that it is a state voluntarily entered into. Arguments for this surprising thesis have found their supporters, notably Bernard Williams12 and more recently, Dion Scott-Kakures.13 Jonathan Bennett

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has also expressed support for the thesis, though, in a thoroughly admirable confession he admits that the arguments for it are all no good.14 The heart of the argument is that belief is by its nature directed at the truth. If beliefs could be acquired at will, they could be acquired independently of all truth considerations. But any state entered into independently of truth considerations is by definition not a belief. The argument is far more complex than the sketch just given. However, I won't pursue it here. I think Williams's argument has been effectively criticized by a number of writers, as has the more recent variation offered by Scott-Kakures.15 Alston remarks that he "cannot see any sufficient reason for the" conceptual impossibility claim.16 Neither can I. It seems to me that someone, or something, could in principle will himself or herself into a state that would share many features of beliefs, including the state of affirming the truth of the proposition. Obviously, if we don't typically just will our beliefs, then willed beliefs would not be caused in the same way our beliefs typically are. So much the worse for the idea that to be a belief, a state has to be caused in the way our beliefs typically are. Furthermore, I will argue below that we do have voluntary control over at least some of our beliefs. Since we in fact have control over some beliefs, it is possible to have control. So, the conceptual impossibility thesis is false. The Contingent Inability Thesis Alston has given the most thorough defense of the contingent inability thesis, the thesis that as a contingent matter of fact, people are not able to acquire beliefs voluntarily. Alston's paper includes an excellent survey of a variety of notions of voluntary control. For each type except one, he argues that we lack that sort of control over beliefs. Alston admits that there is one very weak notion of control that does apply to belief. But he contends that this sort of control does not provide the basis for a good response to the Voluntarism Argument. Alston begins by discussing basic voluntary control^1 We have basic voluntary control over those actions that we can "just do." Simple bodily motions are the prime examples. I can just raise my hand, close my eyes, and bend my knee. Some people, but not I, can wriggle their ears and curl their tongue. Alston correctly says that forming a belief is not like that. We can't just do it at will. When we have decisive evidence for a proposition, we typically can't help but believe it. When we have decisive evidence against a proposition, we typically can't believe it. When our evidence is not conclusive, we typically can't help but believe what our evidence seems to support. I think that Alston is entirely right about this. Of course, we don't always follow our evidence in the way just described. Sometimes our hopes or our fears get the best of us and we believe contrary to our evidence. But we don't believe at will in these cases either. The contrast between simple actions and beliefs is striking. In my current, relatively normal circumstances, if I want to raise my hand, I can just do it. In contrast, if I want to believe that it will start raining shortly, I cannot just do it. The same is true of other potential beliefs. I assume that I am not unusual in this respect. We don't have basic voluntary control over what we believe. Alston turns next to nonbasic immediate voluntary control}* One has this sort of control over the things one can do right away by doing something else, typically something over which one has basic voluntary control. Standard examples are open-

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ing doors and turning on lights. We can, in typical circumstances, do these things simply by moving our bodies in the appropriate ways. There's vagueness here concerning what counts as "right away" but that vagueness is in no way problematic. This is because the boundary between nonbasic immediate voluntary control and the next weaker kind of control, long-range voluntary control, is acceptably imprecise.19 The sorts of things over which we have long range voluntary control are the sorts of things we can do over time by doing other things. Perhaps painting my house is an example. Or, more precisely, I have long range voluntary control over what color my house is because I can do things like paint it. Finally, there is indirect voluntary influence.20 This is the kind of control we have when we can undertake a course of action that may affect some condition over the long term. Perhaps a person has indirect voluntary influence over the condition of her heart, since diet and exercise, courses of action she can more directly control, can affect it. Consider my belief that the Earth is not flat. Suppose that there were some reason why I'd prefer not to have this belief. There's nothing I can do to rid myself of this belief right away. It's not like moving my hand or turning out the lights. I don't have basic or nonbasic immediate voluntary control over whether I have this belief. And there's nothing much I can do long range to control it either. Changing my belief is not relevantly like painting my house. I can't simply set out on a course of action that will almost surely result in my belief being changed. I might enroll in the Flat Earth Society, read conspiracy literature asserting that satellite photos are all phony, and so on. Perhaps this will help rid me of my belief. Alston would agree that it might. But this gets us, at most, indirect voluntary influence, and this is not the sort of effective voluntary control required to refute The Voluntarism Argument.21 I believe that, for most part, what Alston says is right. However, I will argue that we have considerably more control over some of our beliefs than Alston acknowledges. Still, this control does not undermine the basic idea behind The Voluntarism Argument, although it may show that the argument needs reformulation. An Argument for Voluntarism About Belief My argument for voluntarism begins with the assumption that there are states of the world over which people have nonbasic voluntary control. For example, I have nonbasic voluntary control over whether the lights in my office are on or off. All I have to do is move in a certain way to get the lights to be on or off. And I can do this. I assume that the proposition that I have control is not refuted either by the fact that the power could fail so that the lights don't come on when I turn the switch or by the fact that the switch could fail keeping them on no matter what I do. These mere possibilities don't undermine control, though if they were actualities perhaps they would. The next step of the argument notes that my belief about whether the lights are on tracks the actual state of the lights almost perfectly, As a result, I have control over whether I believe that the lights are on. All I have to do is move a certain way, and then I'll have the relevant belief. More generally, when I have control over a state of the world and my beliefs about that state track that state, then I have just as much control over my belief about the state as I have over the state itself. Thus, we have

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nonbasic immediate voluntary control over our beliefs about states of the world over which we have control, provided our beliefs are responsive to those states. Here's the argument spelled out in detail as it applies to a single case. An Argument for Voluntarism About Belief 1. You can causally determine whether the lights are on by moving or failing to move your hand in a certain way. 2. You can similarly causally determine whether you believe that the lights are on by moving or failing to move your hand in that same way. 3. If the truth of (1) is sufficient for you to have nonbasic voluntary control over whether the lights are on, then the truth of (2) is sufficient for you to have nonbasic voluntary control over whether you believe that the lights are on. 4. The truth of (1) is sufficient for you to have nonbasic voluntary control over whether the lights are on. 5. The truth of (2) is sufficient for you to have nonbasic voluntary control over whether you believe that the lights are on. (3), (4) 6. You have nonbasic voluntary control over whether you believe that the lights are on. (2), (5)22 I think that this is a sound argument. I also think that similar arguments establish that each person has voluntary control over lots of beliefs. Roughly, we have nonbasic immediate voluntary control over our beliefs about states of the world over which we have control, provided our beliefs are responsive to those states. Furthermore, if we know that we will respond in some mistaken way to some state of the world over which we have control, we also have control over the resulting (erroneous) belief. So, voluntarism is true after all. I believe that the existence of nonbasic voluntary control over beliefs can have prudential and moral significance. If the department chair announces that she'll give a raise to all and only those members of the department who in 30 seconds believe that the lights in their office are on, then it is prudent for me to head for the light switch to make sure I have the desired belief. If the chair perversely announces that the graduate students will be mercilessly tortured—say, by being forced to take additional prelims—unless in 30 seconds I believe that my lights are on, then I'd better make sure I have that belief. Excuses about the involuntariness of belief would fail here. I'm in control. Thus, we do have control over many of our beliefs. Premise (1) is false. The Voluntarism Argument Revised The existence of the sort of voluntary control over our beliefs described here does nothing to alleviate the worries about the viability of deontological epistemic judgments. There are many beliefs that are not about states of the world that we can control, so no argument like mine can support the conclusion that we have control over them. Yet we make deontological epistemic judgments about beliefs that we can't

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control, and these judgments are as routine and commonplace as are judgments about beliefs that we can control. Thus, our ability to control what we believe in the way described here is epistemically insignificant. We can take this point into account by reformulating The Voluntarism Argument: The Voluntarism Argument (Revised) \. People do not have voluntary control over beliefs concerning states of the world they can't control. 2. If deontological epistemic judgments about those beliefs are true, then people have voluntary control over those beliefs. 3. Deontological epistemic judgments about those beliefs concerning are not true. This revised argument is equally troubling. It implies that an enormous number of the deontological epistemic judgments we routinely make cannot be true. Furthermore, the argument might be extended to beliefs that we can control but have not formed in this voluntary way. Thus, I don't think that the fact that we have nonbasic immediate voluntary control over some beliefs provides the basis for an effective defense of epistemic deontologism. There's another reason that anyone who is troubled by The Voluntarism Argument is unlikely to think that the control we have over our beliefs is sufficient to make sense of deontological epistemic judgments about the beliefs that we can control. In other words, if (3) of the revised argument is true, then deontological epistemic judgments about beliefs we can control are not true either. This is because the control that we do have comes at the wrong point in the belief-forming process. Favorable epistemic judgments are made when a person believes the right thing given the evidence the person has, and unfavorable judgments are made when a person believes something not supported by the person's evidence. What my argument shows is that we can control our evidence and thereby control our beliefs. The argument does not contest the proposition that we are at the mercy of our evidence (or perhaps our evidence combined with whatever other nonevidential facts cause beliefs). But it is this fact that is, I think, the real heart of the worry about epistemic deontologism. The worry isn't simply that we can't voluntarily control our beliefs. We can voluntarily control them, at least in some cases. The real worry is that epistemic evaluations have to do with how we respond to evidence, and we don't have voluntary control over that.231 turn next to a defense of voluntarism about belief that addresses this point. A More Robust Form of Voluntarism Compatibilists in the free will debate contend that we voluntarily perform an action when the action has the right sort of cause. A defender of voluntarism about belief can argue that, analogously, we believe voluntarily when we believe as a result of the right sort of causal process. Roughly, the idea is that when an unconstrained consideration of evidence leads to belief, we believe voluntarily.24 Matthias Steup has presented the most fully developed version of this interesting line of thought. It

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will be difficult to come to any definite conclusion about its merits because we lack a fully adequate understanding of what counts as the right sort of causal process. Still, I think that there are good grounds to reject the idea that the deliberative process that leads to belief is one that makes it appropriate to conclude that we believe things voluntarily. There are indeed a number of parallels between acting and believing. In particular, various conditionals seem to be true: If I had evaluated my evidence differently (or if I had different evidence), then I would have believed differently. This is analogous to what is true in the case of action: If I had evaluated my alternatives differently (or if I had different preferences), then I would have acted differently. Thus, those who say that our beliefs are not voluntarily formed are faced with a challenge. What is the relevant difference between the process that leads to action and the process that leads to belief in virtue of which we count actions as voluntary and beliefs as involuntary? For compatibilists, that the belief-forming process is deterministic can't be the answer. Compatibilists about action need not say that it is the truth of conditionals such as the ones just mentioned that makes actions voluntary. Instead, they can say that an action is voluntary when it is caused by the appropriate sort of internal process. In a paradigm case of voluntary action (ordering from a menu), people deliberate about their options and then select one. In this case, deliberation is a key aspect of the process that leads to voluntary action. Some cases of forming a belief are at least superficially similar. People weigh their evidence and come to a conclusion as a result. Steup describes this sort of process as a "doxastic decision": the decision to believe or not believe something. His suggestion is that beliefs are voluntary when they result from this sort of process. It is true that we can think about what our evidence supports and form a belief as a result. And it is true that this is something like making a decision about what to believe. But I think that it is a mistake to conclude that the existence of this sort of process shows that we have voluntary control over our beliefs. An example will bring out the reason for this. Steup describes a case in which the author Vincent Bugliosi struggled with what to believe about OJ Simpson's guilt.25 Steup says that for a long time, Bugliosi was baffled by the case and suspended judgment. But eventually the evidence became stronger and: 1. Bugliosi decided to believe that Simpson was guilty. Now, you might think that he didn't really decide to believe this, and argue that (1) is just an imprecise way of saying that 2. Bugliosi decided that OJ is guilty. Steup responds that it's not up to Bugliosi whether OJ is guilty. That's not something he can decide. So (2) isn't true. While that's correct, I think that what's actually true in a case like this is best expressed by: 3. Bugliosi came to the conclusion that OJ is guilty.

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If we are to speak carefully, it would be best to say that (3) is the sort of thing that is true in this sort of case. Either (1) isn't strictly true, or it just means something like (3). We come to a conclusion as a result of weighing evidence. We don't decide what to believe on the basis of that evidence, and we don't decide what that evidence supports. What is involved in genuine and paradigmatic decision making is the formation of an intention. The most central use of the concept of a decision occurs in sentences such as: 4. Bugliosi decided to write a book arguing that OJ is guilty. And this implies: 5. Bugliosi formed an intention to write a book arguing that OJ is guilty. Now, when (5) is true and he does write the intended book as a result, and perhaps some other things are true, then Bugliosi voluntarily wrote the book. That is, on the compatibilist view, to be a voluntary action, an action must be caused by an appropriate intention to perform that action. We typically don't form intentions to form beliefs and form them as a result.26 After weighing the evidence, Bugliosi did come to his conclusion. But he didn't intend to come to that conclusion and then come to it as a result. This can be made more obvious by considering again the examples I gave earlier to illustrate the possibility of voluntarily believing something. In those cases I do form just such an intention to believe something. I do act with the purpose of bringing it about that I have a particular belief. The absence of this intention in all typical cases of deliberating about what to believe is what makes the process one that does not give us voluntary control over what we believe. We do control what we believe, in much the way we control other processes in us. That is, we, or processes in us, control such things as blood pressure and temperature. But this is not voluntary control. Epistemic deliberation does not result in effective intentions to believe. Except in rare cases, we don't form intentions to believe. But such intentions are essential to voluntary control. The cases of voluntary belief formation that I described earlier make it easy to see what it would be like to decide to believe something and then to believe it as a result. Consider again the case in which the department chair says that the fate of graduate students depends on what I believe about the conditions of my lights in 30 seconds. I might briefly consider the matter, weigh the plight of the students against the inconvenience of getting up and flipping the switch, and decide to believe what is in their best interests. I could make such a decision, carry it out, voluntarily believe the right thing, and thereby win the loyal support of the students. That's what deciding to believe, and voluntarily believing, would be like. Furthermore, if the fact that belief is the outcome of deliberation were sufficient to make belief voluntary, then many other plainly involuntary behaviors would be voluntary. Deliberating about something can result in states other than belief. It can result in desires or in panic. Thus, for example, I might think for a while about various flavors of ice cream and end up with a desire for a scoop of mocha chip. Or, I

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might think about the financial costs associated with retirement and end up in a panic. Deliberation results in these outcomes. Had the deliberation gone differently in certain respects, then there would have been different outcomes. If we say that belief is voluntary simply because it is the outcome of deliberation about evidence, then it is hard to see why we shouldn't say that these other outcomes of deliberation are also voluntary. Yet it is clear that they are not. Again, what seems clearly missing is the right sort of intention. I never intend to desire mocha chip ice cream nor do I intend to panic about retirement costs.27 Similarly, I don't (except in odd cases like those presented above) intend to form a belief and then form one as a result. Believing may be the consequence of a deliberative process, but it is not voluntary behavior. Thus, I reject the more robust form of voluntarism for which Steup argues. There is good reason to say that the deterministic processes that typically lead to action render those actions voluntary. The process leads to effective intentions to act. Deliberating about evidence does lead to belief, but not via such intentions. Such deliberation does not make belief voluntary. We need a better response to The Voluntarism Argument. III.

Ought and Can

The second main sort of response to the voluntarism puzzle denies that the predicates in deontological claims about beliefs imply that those beliefs are voluntarily adopted. It denies premise (2) of both versions of The Voluntarism Argument. It may be that there are differences among the various assertions that I've described as "deontological." I'll focus first on judgments about what one is obligated to believe and what one ought to believe and then discuss other judgments later in the section. One way to defend deontological epistemic judgments in the light of involuntarism is to argue that we can have epistemic obligations even though we can't fulfill them (or even if we can help but fulfill them). This is to deny that "epistemically obligated to" or "epistemically ought to" implies "can," no matter what the time-honored principles imply. One way to make this denial plausible is to show that there are other kinds of ought statements that don't imply voluntary control. I will consider several candidates for this other kind of ought. Contractual Obligations You can have an obligation to pay your mortgage even if you don't have the money to do so. Perhaps students in a class have an obligation to do the course work even if they are incapable Of doing it. Other examples of this sort are rather easy to construct. Perhaps epistemic obligations are analogous to these financial and academic obligations, as I once suggested.28 I now think that it is an implausible to think that epistemic obligations are similar to the obligations just described. The obligation to pay one's mortgage and the obligation to do one's course work are contractual obligations, although in the latter case the contract is in some sense implicit. It's difficult to see any basis for saying that we all have a contractual obligation to believe things. Surely no such contract is explicit,

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and nothing analogous to enrolling in a course establishes an implicit contract. Furthermore, these contractual obligations are obligations to someone else, but it is difficult to see to whom one could have an epistemic obligation. Paradigm Obligations In a recent paper, Nicholas Wolterstorff says that there are two kinds of obligations, paradigm obligations and responsibility obligations.29 Only obligations of the latter sort are associated with voluntariness. As examples of paradigm obligations, he presents: 1. "You ought to be walking on it in two weeks"—said by a physician as he finishes binding up a person's sprained ankle. 2. "That's strange; you ought to be seeing double"—said by a psychologist to his subject while conducting an experiment in perception. Wolterstorff suggests that epistemic obligations are similar to the obligations described by these sentences. They lack any implication of voluntary control. No friend of epistemic deontologism should be comforted by the idea that epistemic obligations are like the obligations described by (1) and (2). This is because there are no obligations described by (1) and (2). Sentences (1) and (2) are "ought" sentences; they are not obligation sentences, and they cannot be paraphrased in any straightforward way into obligation sentences. Your ankle has no obligation of any sort to heal; you have no "perceptual obligation" to see double. So, if there are epistemic obligations, they are not like the obligations described here, since there are no obligations described here. If there is a difference between sentences describing what we ought to do and sentences describing what we are obligated to do, then perhaps Wolterstorff is guilty only of failing to take note of this distinction. Perhaps he has given a good account of epistemic oughts: they are "paradigm oughts," describing paradigmatic behavior. (1) and (2) describe normal behavior, or at least normal behavior when there is no interference. Thus, for example, (1) says that barring unforeseen and unlikely developments, your ankle will heal in two weeks. But epistemic oughts do not describe normal function. Some researchers report that people typically make various unjustified inferences and predictably form unreasonable or erroneous beliefs.30 A researcher might say, while awaiting the subject's reply to a question that nearly everyone misses, "He ought to make the wrong inference here." This use of "ought" is Wolterstorff s paradigm ought; it is perfectly analogous to the use of "ought" in (2). But to describe the inference as "wrong" is to say that the person epistemically ought not do what the researcher expects him to do. It may be, then, that we epistemically ought not do what we normally do. Epistemic oughts are not paradigm oughts. Role Oughts There are oughts that result from one's playing a certain role or having a certain position. Teachers ought to explain things clearly. Parents ought to take care of their kids. Cyclists ought to move in various ways. Incompetent teachers, incapable par-

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ents, and untrained cyclists may be unable to do what they ought to do. Similarly, I'd say, forming beliefs is something people do. That is, we form beliefs in response to our experiences in the world. Anyone engaged in this activity ought to do it right. In my view, what they ought to do is to follow their evidence (rather than their wishes or fears). I suggest that epistemic oughts are of this sort—they describe the right way to play a certain role. Unlike Wolterstorff s paradigm oughts, these oughts are not based on what's normal or expected. They are based on what's good performance. Furthermore, it is plausible to say that the role of a believer is not one that we have any real choice about taking on. It differs in this way from the other roles mentioned. It is our plight to be believers. We ought to do it right. It doesn't matter that in some cases we are unable to do so. Thus, I reject the second premise of both versions of The Voluntarism Argument. Even in cases in which a believer has no control at all, it makes sense to speak of what he ought to believe and ought not to believe. What counts as good performance in a role, and thus determines how a role ought to be carried out, may be dependent in certain ways on what people are generally able to do. Consider, for example, the claim that teachers ought to explain things clearly. Arguably, what counts as a clear explanation is dependent at least in part on what people are able to say and what people are able to understand. One could imagine standards for a clear explanation that are so demanding that no one could ever meet them. It is not true that teachers ought to explain things that clearly. Similarly, the standards of good parenting or good cycling that apply to us are not at superhuman levels. It's not true that parents or cyclists ought to do things that would require them to exceed the sorts of capacities people have. It is consistent with this, however, that an individual ought to do things that he or she is not able to do. An inarticulate teacher may simply be unable to explain things as clearly as he ought, and he may not have the capability of learning to explain things clearly. Thus, even if the standards for good performance in a role are in some way limited by the capacities of those who fill the role, it is not the case that the existence of those standards implies that individuals must have basic or nonbasic voluntary control over that behavior that is judged by those standards. This reply to The Voluntarism Argument does not depend on any specific view about what we ought to believe or what counts as the relevant kind of good performance as a believer. However, a brief description of one view about the substance of our epistemic requirements may help make the reply more plausible. In my view, the right way to carry out one's role as a believer is to form beliefs that are supported by one's current evidence. That is, if one is considering a proposition, then one ought to believe it if one's evidence supports it, ought to disbelieve it if one's evidence goes against it, and ought to suspend judgment if one's evidence is neutral.31 It's consistent with it being the case that one ought to believe a particular proposition that one is unable to believe it, perhaps because it is psychologically too troubling or for other reasons unrelated to the merits of one's evidence. In other cases, the possession of good evidence for a proposition may make believing that proposition unavoidable. Nevertheless, it is true that one ought to believe it. Epistemic oughts don't imply voluntarism about beliefs. I think that most, possibly all, of the deontological terms we ordinarily use to evaluate beliefs can be explained in similar evidential terms. Whenever one's evi-

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dence on balance supports a proposition, then one has an epistemic right to believe that proposition. Believing it is permitted. Believing anything for which one lacks good reasons is epistemically prohibited. If there are cases in which one's evidence supports either of two attitudes equally well, then it will be true that one has a right to either of those attitudes, and that either of them is permitted.32 It seems to me reasonable to say that when only one attitude toward a proposition is permitted, then one has an epistemic obligation to have that attitude, if one has any attitude toward the proposition at all. It may be, of course, that one has no obligation to take any attitude at all toward the proposition. None of these assertions implies voluntarism about beliefs. It is less clear what to make of judgments in which people are praised or blamed for their beliefs. It may be that these terms are reserved for voluntary behavior. Even here, the case is less than perfectly clear. Consider again Ginet's proposal that one is justified in being confident that p if and only if one could not be justly reproached for being confident that p. I think that to be reproached is to be blamed, yet it is not clear that people can be justly reproached only for what they have done voluntarily. Whatever the verdict on praise and blame, the case for the other deontological claims is clear. I conclude that deontological epistemic judgments can be true even if people lack effective voluntary control over their beliefs. The Voluntarism Argument fails. IV. Is This Epistemic Deontologism? In his influential paper on epistemic deontologism, Alston begins by saying that it is "natural" to understand epistemological terms in a "deontological" way, having to do with "obligation, permission, requirement, blame, and the like."33 Alston objects to views of this sort on the grounds the properties expressed by the deontological terms apply only if beliefs are voluntarily adopted. My discussion has been focused on this argument, and I've argued that the various deontological terms can apply even if believing is not voluntary behavior. By the end of his paper, Alston seems to be directing his attack more narrowly. In his concluding paragraph, he characterizes epistemic deontologism as the view that analyzes "epistemic justification in terms of freedom from blame for believing."34 I haven't attempted to defend this sort of deontologism here. Moreover, I don't think that this more narrowly defined sort of deontologism is so natural or common. What is natural and common, I think, is to make claims like those with which Alston began his paper, claims that imply that people have epistemic rights, duties, and permissions, and that they ought to believe one thing rather than another. They can, no matter what the truth about doxastic voluntarism is. It will be instructive to conclude by examining one passage from John Locke that Plantinga cites in his discussion of epistemic deontologism: Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind: which if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything, but upon good reason; and so cannot be opposite to it. He that believes, without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies; but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due his maker, who

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Richard Feldman would have him use those discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. He that does not do this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights on truth, is in the right but by chance; and I know not whether the luckiness of the accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into: whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth, by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. F^or he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him. He that does otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those faculties, which were given him.35

There are two lines of thought interwoven in this passage from Locke. One line of thought is thoroughly evidentialist, and it expresses what I take to be the central epistemological claims in the passage. These are the claims that it is our duty to assent to things only on the basis of good reason, that to believe without good reason is not to believe as one ought, and that one who places one's assent right "believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him." These assertions make use of terms such as those that appear on Alston's initial list of deontological terms. This alone provides grounds for regarding Locke as endorsing a version of deontologism about epistemology or, at the very least, as holding that deontological judgments about beliefs can be true. No doubt there is a second strand to the passage from Locke, a strand that clearly displays a voluntarist tone. It may well be that Locke did ascribe to some version of voluntarism about belief. He does speak of seeking the truth "to the best of one's power," for example. But a striking thing about the passage is that the central epistemological claims make good sense without the assumption of voluntarism. One can, if one likes, insist that to be an epistemic deontologist, one must endorse the voluntarist strand in Locke's thought as well as the first. Nevertheless, it remains true that the deontological judgments about belief with which we began do not imply that belief is voluntary.36 Notes This essay is an expanded version of section I of my paper, "The Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000): 667-95. 1. "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988): 257-99. The quotation is from p. 258. This paper is reprinted in William Alston, Epistemic Justification (New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), 115-52. 2. A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1956), 35. 3. Carl Ginet, Knowledge, Perception, and Memory (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1975), 28. 4. Roderick M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1977), 14. 5. For additional references, see "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," footnote 5. 6. Alvin Goldman, "Internalism Exposed," Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999): 271-93. 7. Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chap. 1.

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8. "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," 259. 9. Platinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, 38. 10. Matthias Steup, "The Concept of Epistemic Justification," An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996), chap. 4. 11. This last alternative implies that either epistemic justification is not to be analyzed in deontological terms or else that epistemic justification is itself inapplicable to our beliefs, just like the other deontological epistemic terms. 12. Bernard Williams, "Deciding to Believe," Problems of the 5e//(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 13. Dion Scott-Kakures, "On Belief and the Captivity of the Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993). 14. Jonathan Bennett, "Why Is Belief Involuntary?," Analysis 50 (1990). 15. For a discussion of Scott-Kakures's article, see Dana Radcliffe, "Scott-Kakures on Believing at Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57, no. 1 (1997). For discussion of Williams, see Barbara Winters, "Believing at Will," Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979). 16. Alston, "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," 263. 17. Ibid., section III, 263-68. 18. Ibid., section IV, 268-74. 19. Ibid., section V, 274-77. 20. Ibid., section VI, 277-83. 21. Perhaps this point suggests that both (1) and the consequent of (2) should be about effective voluntary control. 22. You can read premise (3) of this argument as asserting the following conditional: If (if (1) then you have voluntary control over whether the lights are on) then (if (2) then you have voluntary control over whether you believe that the lights are on). Premise (4) asserts the truth of the antecedent of (3). Strictly speaking, (1) isn't needed in the argument. (2) is needed, and (1) serves the role of warming up the reader to (2). 23. The argument of this paragraph relies on an evidentialist view about epistemic evaluations. But it is likely that the same argument could be made using a different view about the basis of epistemic evaluations. 24. For a defense of this view, see Matthias Steup, "Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology," Acta Analytica 15 (2000): 25-56. Steup defends a similar view in chap. 4 of An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology. For a similar view, see James Montmarquet, "The Voluntariness of Belief," Analysis 46 (1986). Bruce Russell endorses Steup's view in "Epistemic and Moral Duty" this volume, 34^48. 25. Steup, "Doxastic Voluntarism and Epistemic Deontology," 7-10. 26. Perhaps the process in which by which formulate intentions and act on their basis can become automated in certain ways, so that voluntary actions need not involve explicit conscious formulations of intentions. Belief formation is not like that either. It does not typically involve the formation of intentions to believe at all. 27. One could imagine cases in which one does have these intentions. But they would be as odd as the intentions in my examples of voluntary belief. 28. "Epistemic Obligations," Philosophical Perspectives 2 (1988), 240-43. 29. Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Obligations of Belief: Two Concepts," in The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm, ed. Lewis E. Hahn, (LaSalle, 111.: Open Court, 1997). 30. For a discussion of many of the examples allegedly showing that people are irrational and an examination of their philosophical implications, see Edward Stein, Without Good Reason: The Rationality Debate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). 31.1 expand upon this idea in section II of "The Ethics of Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60 (2000). 32. In "The Ethics of Belief I argue that there are no cases in which each of two attitudes toward one proposition are epistemically permissible. 33. "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," p. 257.

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34. Ibid., p. 294. 35. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, A. C. Fraser, ed. (New York: Dover, 1959), IV, xvii, 24, pp. 413-414. This passage is quoted by Plantinga in Warrant: The Current Debate, p. 13. 36. In working on this essay I've benefited greatly from numerous discussions with Earl Conee, John Bennett, Stewart Cohen, Jonathan Vogel, and all the students in my fall 1998 epistemology seminar. I'm also grateful to John Greco and Matthias Steup for helpful comments. Earlier versions of the essay have been presented at the University of Rochester and at Rutgers University. I'm grateful to the audiences on both occasions for helpful discussion and to Keith DeRose for his provocative comments on the latter occasion.

6

Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of Belief ROBERT AUDI

Belief is profoundly analogous to action. Both are commonly grounded in reasons; both are a basis for praising or blaming the subject; both are sensitive to changes in one's environment; both can appropriately be described as objects of decision and deliberation, and beliefs can appear quite action-like when conceived as formed by assent or by acceptance. These similarities can make it plausible to think of belief as sometimes (directly) voluntary in the sense that, like raising our hands, believing is sometimes done "at will." This voluntarist idea has received considerable scrutiny,1 but there remains a need to evaluate it from a theoretical perspective rather different from any so far brought to bear on it. Indeed, I believe that unless we appreciate the bearing of a new theoretical perspective on the issue we cannot properly appraise the question of the voluntariness of belief and, correspondingly, the connection between justified beliefs and what are called epistemic duties cannot be properly appraised. I begin with some of the crucial data favoring voluntarism, then proceed to an analysis of some representative cases. In the light of that analysis, the theoretical perspective I want to develop can be articulated and applied. Finally, with that perspective in view, we can see how best to conceive the ethics of belief. I. The Case for Doxastic Voluntarism There are many forms of doxastic voluntarism, some much stronger than others. For my purposes, the view may be taken to be the thesis that belief is sometimes under direct voluntary control. (That it is sometimes, in some way, under indirect voluntary control is uncontroversial.) Even this formulation admits of stronger and weaker 93

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interpretations. On a strong interpretation, it expresses the view that believing itself is an action-type having some tokens that are directly voluntary. On a weaker interpretation, it expresses the view that forming a belief is sometimes such an actiontype. Call the first view the behavioral version of doxastic voluntarism and the second the genetic version. The similarities between belief and action would probably not sustain the stronger, behavioral version of (doxastic) voluntarism if there were not a number of locutions that seem best understood on the assumption of its truth. To the question "What did she do that so upset you?", the reply, "She believed her lying husband's fabrication" is an admissible answer. In the same context, another person might say, "For my part, I can't decide whether to believe him or not; I'm still deliberating about whether his story is true." Still another might say, "I rejected his testimony as fast as she accepted it." And Descartes famously spoke of assenting to a proposition as a kind of thing we do (presumably at will) that entails coming to believe the proposition in question.2 There is no need here to do a full-scale appraisal of behavioral voluntarism, even for these special cases that seem to support it. It is enough to indicate an alternative account of them that accommodates what is sound in voluntarism but also paves the way for an overall conception of belief and action that yields better results in both philosophy of mind and epistemology. I want to start with a distinction between positive and negative (direct) control over beliefs: between the ability to believe, or at least to form beliefs, at will and the ability to prevent their formation at will. The two kinds of control might seem to be on a par, each equally supporting voluntarism. They are surely not: That one can bring something about at will is at least some reason to consider it an action,3 but the capacity to prevent something at will need not be such a reason. Negative control does not imply positive control. Consider sneezing, twitching, or even breathing, in the sense in which breathing is nonvoluntary and automatic. One might learn to suppress these at will. But they are clearly not actions.4 Suppressibility, even at will, is not unique to actions. To be sure, suppressing an event such as a sneeze or a twitch or a breath is action. Abstaining from such suppression is also action. But these events themselves are not action, and the first two are surely the wrong kinds of events to be even candidates for action. We can, however, bring about belief formation by abstaining from suppressing it, as in cases in which, as a child gives us implausible excuses, we let our defenses down. But this is only a case of indirectly voluntary belief formation: It is by doing something else (e.g., putting out of mind our thoughts of the child's past falsified excuses), that we make way for, and thereby complete the sufficient conditions for, belief formation. Similarly, that we can sometimes prevent belief formation in what seems a directly voluntary way—as where we withhold belief of A's testimony until we hear B's—does not imply that believing is under direct positive voluntary control when we finally do come to believe A's testimony, or even that it is under direct negative voluntary control. One might think that even countenancing, for certain cases, indirect positive voluntary control of belief grants too much to voluntarism. But the existence of such indirect control does not imply that believing is action and certainly does not require

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us to go on to countenance direct voluntary control of belief. A parallel case is prevention of various nonactional events indirectly, say, preventing a twitch by tying down the offending arm. Here, too, the corresponding direct negative control is not implied, though in this case I have acknowledged that it apparently exists in some instances. It may also seem that we should not grant voluntarists that there is even direct negative control of belief. Perhaps what appears to be direct withholding of belief is really accomplished by doing something as a means, such as issuing inner commands, and hence is really indirect. I doubt that instrumental action is always necessary here. Granted, there may be a sense in which one says "no" to the impending event, such as belief formation; but this may be a description of the exercise of one's direct negative control over the event. It need be no more a means to its prevention than "willing" to raise one's arm is to the action of raising it.5 If negative direct voluntary control of belief does not imply the corresponding positive control, there may yet be such positive control. Let us consider our putative examples, beginning with the first, in which our agent's believing her husband's story is said to be what she "did" that upset someone. Perhaps the genuine action here is her not withholding belief. In that case, her belief formation is only indirectly voluntary: produced by her abstention from withholding belief. In any event, one could be equally upset by someone's sneezing during the final prayer at a funeral. This might be described as an unfortunate thing to have done; but "do" is a very wide term, and the admissibility of such a description is not sufficient to imply that sneezing is an action. It certainly does not imply that sneezing is directly (positively) voluntary; indeed, presumably only actions are even candidates to be directly voluntary. The case of "deciding to believe" is more difficult to deal with. Why should we say we can't decide whether to believe someone or are deliberating about whether a proposition is true unless we take it that when we do decide, we will be (voluntarily) acting in fulfillment of our decision or deliberation and thereby believing, or at least coming to believe, the proposition in question? And don't we weigh reasons pro and con or scrutinize a speaker for signs of credibility or deceitfulness, just as we might do where our concern is (say) whether to make a statement? There is no question that we weigh and respond to reasons in both doxastic and behavioral cases. But it is a further step to say that our cognitive response to the reasons for belief is an action and still another step to maintain that it is (directly) voluntary. Saying that, after considering the reasons pro and con, I decided to believe him, could embody a use of "decide" in which it designates not the voluntary production of belief or any kind of "act of believing," but a manifestation of belief formation in response to the preponderance of the reasons.6 Perhaps in an instant I notice his eyes watering and hear a quaver in his voice; he is not acting, but genuinely hurt to be doubted and sad in reporting what he does. Here "deciding to believe him" indicates my cognitive resolution of the matter, as "deciding to try the left fork in the road first" can indicate simply that I took that route and not that I experienced a separate volitive thrust favoring it. The attractiveness of one route may simply have become greater than that of the other as I looked at their vegetation, without my engaging in any separate voluntary process of deciding on the route. Anthropomorphists that we sometimes are, perhaps we homuncularize a bit: Picturing ourselves as judges

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hearing evidence, we imagine belief formation as giving or at least arising from a verdict. And it does sometimes represent our coming down on one side of an issue rather than the other. The question is whether we take that side at will or are instead drawn to it by a nonvoluntary process of rising conviction.7 In support of their answer to this question, voluntarists can note that in forming a belief of what someone says, we are taking a stance, which is surely doing something. Granted, if the matter is worth deliberating about or even calls for making a decision, the idea of taking a stance can apply. But although "taking a stance" can designate a directly voluntary action, it may also refer to coming to occupy the relevant position as a result of belief formation that is plainly not due to decision. Thus, "What is your stance on his competence to refuse life support?" may elicit a detailed answer that simply lays out beliefs one formed about his illness the moment one read a medical history. There need have been no question of what to believe; the apparent truth may have been obvious. A voluntarist might reply that this is only a case of coming to occupy a stance without taking one. I grant the distinction, but it is not sharp. It is easy to imagine cases in which a person is properly said to take a stance against life support, yet doing so is simply a spontaneous and inevitable result of the interaction of standing biases with the new information that the person immediately casts into an awaiting mold. The naturalness of using decision-talk and deliberation-talk in relation to belief must be granted. But it may well have more to do with a stance (or a cognitive position something like it) resulting as a response to reasons than with the way it results from them. Perhaps we speak of deliberating about what to believe because we take it that our belief should be supported by reasons, rather as a deliberate action should be, and not because the belief will be action or, as it were, enacted. These considerations about belief formation are suggestive concerning the analysis of acceptance. To be sure, when acceptance is contrasted with rejection, it typically is a case of action. But we can describe someone, especially a child, as having accepted a person's story lock, stock, and barrel where there is no question of any action: Beliefs were formed as fast as the child heard the testimony and with no consideration of alternatives, much less any thought of rejection.8 Moreover, what we have accepted when hearing it we may continue to accept when our attention turns elsewhere. There are, then, states of acceptance as well as events of acceptance. The states need not result from any action properly so called, and the events need not be actions. Suppose, however, that there is an event of acceptance of a proposition. Is it an action of, or entailing, belief formation and under voluntary control? Imagine that someone I respect makes a claim I know is controversial and that, before accepting it, I think about it a moment. What have I "done"? One thing I may have done is abstain from withholding belief formation, something I would have done if the claim did not seem so plausible. The formative role of this withholding would not entail that belief formation is positively voluntary or even an action. Recall sneezing; what is withholdable at will need not be action. Moreover, suppose it is by not withholding belief of p that we come to believe it; this would be a case of indirect voluntariness of belief formation, which is not controversial in such cases. Perhaps we use "acceptance" here to designate passing from consideration of the proposition

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to believing it. This change of state need not be or represent an action; "acceptance" may designate manifestation, rather than production, of belief formation, or perhaps the nonvoluntarily formed belief itself: the product as opposed to the process, one might say. Calling such events acceptance is at least as plausibly accounted for on the hypothesis that a state of acceptance is a nonbehavioral product of the events that occur in considering evidence as it is on the hypothesis that acceptance is a directly voluntary action of belief formation. Indeed, is there anything one can do at will that entails the formation of a belief? This is what "acceptance" conceived as an act of belief formation should do.9 But if we note that one can accept a proposition for the sake of argument without believing it, and that, at least through self-deception,10 people can (sincerely) verbally accept a proposition without believing it, there is room for acts of acceptance whose performance does not entail belief formation and hence does not support doxastic voluntarism in the way it may be claimed to. With propositions, as with people, acceptance is possible without embrace, and embrace is possible without prior acceptance. But if acceptance does not entail embrace, its occurrence does not significantly support voluntarism. Granted, in accepting a proposition for the sake of argument or a hypothesis for the sake of seeing what one learns from testing it, we pass into a state of resolution to do certain things, such as to draw inferences, that also characterize believing. But drawing inferences in this way does not entail believing, and it is a mistake to attribute beliefs on the basis of the results of acceptance where this is the kind of action we can perform at will. If assent (to) is contrasted with dissent (from), some similar points hold. But assent differs from acceptance. There is no dispositional state of assenting, whereas there is such a state of accepting: The term "assent" designates a kind of action—or at least a kind of event. Perhaps, then, assenting to a proposition is a candidate for voluntarily—and directly—forming a belief. By contrast with accepting, however, assenting is more behavioral, more a matter of something like saying "yes" than of changing in cognitive condition, though it may immediately cause such change. If that is so, there is no difficulty in regarding assent as action under voluntary control; but there is also little plausibility in taking it to entail belief formation. There may be cases in which withholding assent suffices to prevent belief formation, and these are significant for such Cartesian purposes as preventing the formation of false beliefs. But that is a different matter, and the point lends no support to a conception of assent that can sustain voluntarism. There may be times, as where one is deliberating about evidence, when one is in a withholding mode and will not believe the proposition in question unless one does assent to it; here, assenting is necessary for belief formation. But it does follow (and seems false) that its occurrence entails belief formation. Opening a gate need not bring anything in; and if it does, the entry is not accomplished at will but as a result of the forces that move the entrant. If we think of positive cases, such as those in which, having considered the evidence, we find ourselves convinced that a proposition is true, the naturalness of calling these instances of assenting—for instance, of deciding that p is, after all, true— is readily explained as a manifestation of passing into a state that has as one of its main characteristics a tendency to assent to p if the question whether/) is true comes

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up. We perhaps picture ourselves as agents of belief formation when what we have really done is to create (or enter) circumstances in which it occurs as a nonvoluntary response to a pattern of evidence. We have accepted />, but not because we assented to it or performed an act of acceptance. Rather, the pattern of evidence produced the belief; the belief is more like a response to external grounds than a result of an internal volitive thrust. The belief formation is like the conviction that underlies a competent judge's verdict; it is not like the giving of the verdict: The latter is volitional, the conviction is prevolitional. If what I have said is correct, there is reason to think that although belief formation is in some instances under indirect voluntary control, both positive and negative, and may be in special cases under direct negative control, it is not under direct positive control. I make no claim for conclusiveness in the nonvoluntarist (partial) account of belief formation presented in this section to deal with the kinds of cases that best support doxastic voluntarism. Indeed, I grant that despite all I have said there is still a tendency to think that in the context of our willfully concentrating on evidence, particularly when it seems to us equally divided, the cognitive upshot of the process, namely belief formation, looks much like an action we might take on the basis of practical reasoning.11 Why not say that for certain cases, especially those in which the reasons leave us free to act or not and to believe or not, it is by an exercise of will that we act or believe, and here believing is voluntary in much the same way as action?12 At this point, we can best progress by framing some guiding theory. II. Intellect and Will, Belief and Action Recall the very old idea that the function of the intellect is to pursue truth, and the function of the will is to pursue the good.13 In parts of Plato and Aristotle and later in Aquinas, intellect and will may at times have been conceived, in somewhat homuncular fashion, as faculties capable of a kind of action (pursuit of their proper ends), but the basic idea does not require hypostatization and can be preserved by simply thinking of different aspects of our intellectual and behavioral capacities and of differing standards appropriate to each.14 There have been many versions of this idea, and there are numerous views about how intellect and will are related, including the famous Socratic doctrine that (baldly stated) knowledge of the good implies willing its realization.15 In contemporary philosophy, the idea seems to have appeared (somewhat attenuated) in the notion that belief and desire (and more generally the theoretical and practical attitudes) have different directions of fit to the world.16 Roughly, beliefs and other theoretical attitudes (those with truth-valued objects) succeed (objectively speaking) when they fit the world; desires and other practical attitudes (those with the kinds of objects intentions have) succeed when the world, chiefly the future world, fits them. This contrast between the two directions of fit is not equivalent to the related view that belief "aims" at truth or that desire "aims" at the good. The point is that different standards of appraisal are appropriate. The point does not commit us to attributing any sort of content to either kind of attitude, nor even to believers' ascribing truth to every proposition they believe, though it must be granted that the metaphorical con-

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ception of the truth of a belief as a kind of success invites the idea that belief aims at truth in the first place.17 To be sure, true but unjustified beliefs, and similarly, realized but irrational desires, are not unqualifiedly successful; one might call them internally unsuccessful insofar as one thinks that despite their positive status considered from the agent's perspective, they violate standards that the person accepts or would, if sufficiently rational and adequately reflective, accept. Still, we may at least say that being false is clearly a kind of defect in beliefs, whereas being unrealized (and thereby arguably having a counterpart of falsehood) is not a defect in desires. Far from it: An unrealized desire is often a spur that plays a major role in one's realization of its object. What has generally not been noticed is that there is apparently a connection between the kinds of contents (or objects, in a different terminology) appropriate to the theoretical and practical attitudes and, on the other hand, their different directions of fit and, more broadly, their different functions as basic elements of intellect and will, respectively. Despite these differences between beliefs and desires in function and directions of fit, a number of philosophers have taken them to have the same kinds of contents—truth-valued ones—and many other philosophers have been at least casual about distinguishing these kinds of contents.18 Perhaps it need not be argued that (de dicto) beliefs have prepositional contents, in the sense of items that are true or false (we can leave open whether some kind of linguistic entity could serve here). But something must be said about contents of desires, intentions, and other practical attitudes.19 The first thing to be stressed here is that truth value may always be sensibly ascribed to beliefs, but never to desires. Connected with this, we express the content of desires using (primarily) infinitives or subjunctives, not indicatives: I can want to talk with you, or that we talk, but I cannot want that I am talking with you, that I will talk with you, or even that it is true that I am talking with you. Similarly for intending (though here the content is arguably always first-personal): I intend to talk with you (myself); and if I intend that we talk, this is apparently a matter of intending to do things (myself) such as invite you to talk. There is a parallel set of data regarding theoretical and practical reasons, roughly reasons for believing and reasons for action (or at least for desire). A reason for action is always expressible in a phrase of the form of "in order to A," where "A" ranges over action-types, though a reason for action may also be expressed in other ways.20 A reason for believing is never so expressible. A reason why one believes might be claimed to be expressible in that way; a voluntarist might say, for instance, that it was in order to save his life that James believed he could jump across a precipice. But this apparently makes good sense only where we think of the "in order to" as expressing a reason to cause or sustain the belief. That is a reason for action. The positive side of reasons for believing is more complex. If a reason for believing is conceived strictly, as expressible in a sentence of the form of "My reason for believing that p is that q," then such a reason is always a proposition (or similar entity, such as, on one conception, a fact). This is because q must express something believed by the speaker (assuming the overall statement is true). Moreover, if what is cited as a reason for believing p really is a reason for believing it, one can at least sensibly ask whether it supports (e.g., entails, explains, or probabilistically implies)

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p. There are, however, grounds for believing that are not reasons in the strict sense (though I do not mean to overstress this distinction, since the proposition that a ground obtains is a reason). Simply seeing a tornado is a ground, not (I think) strictly a reason, for believing there really is one. We can call seeing it a reason, particularly if we are thinking of the point that once we believe we see it, we do have a reason, in the strict sense, for believing there is a tornado: namely, the proposition that we see it.21 In fact, we would not normally cite just our seeing a tornado as a reason for believing there is one, but rather that we see it. Nonpropositional grounds do not seem to serve as reasons for believing (except in the sense of reasons why it is that one believes) until they are believed to obtain. They are evidences; reasons for believing are prepositional expressions of evidence. In any event, we may say of both reasons proper and of grounds that when they figure as reasons for believing, it is as true or false or, in the case of nonpropositional grounds, as obtaining states of affairs of the kind a true proposition expresses. Reasons for believing (and for other theoretical attitudes) are in this way unlike practical reasons, which are not truth-valued though they express a content—for instance that one's friend receive an honor—that may be said to be realized or unrealized. III.

Practical and Theoretical Reasons

With this much theory in view, we can see something important about voluntarism. But I must approach the point gradually, first by concentrating on the will and then by a parallel consideration of the intellect. Suppose we think of the will as functioning to change the world in the direction of either some good (whether objective or subjective does not matter at this level of generality) or at least some desired state of affairs. And suppose we also conceive of the will as guided in exercising this function by practical reasons and as successful when its functioning (by its acts, we might say) produces the changes. If the guiding reasons are practical, they must point to acts. This is exactly what practical reasons do. In the case of intention, and equally for action-desires, the content of practical reasons is expressible by an infinitive clause designating an action-type, say "to signal my vote." This clause expresses my reason for raising my hand, my will produces that action, and the action changes the world. By contrast, think of the intellect as functioning to provide a true representation of the world, or the part of it relevant to the subject, at least to the subject's survival. The intellect is properly guided by theoretical reasons and is (externally and objectively) successful insofar as it represents the world correctly. If the guiding reasons are theoretical, they must point to true propositions. (Whether the pointing must be conceived in terms of epistemically internalist or externalist standards may be left open here.) If their content is propositional, they can do this; if it is not (at least in the indirect way a ground is, since it also serves as evidence for a proposition)—if, for example, it is practical, as where "to make life bearable" expresses a presumptive reason for believing one's friend is honest—they cannot. Thus, suppose my reason for believing there is a tornado nearby is that a siren has sounded. This clause expresses a proposition that constitutes a reason for my belief; my coming to believe

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that evidential proposition produces, and my believing it causally grounds, my believing that there is a tornado; and my intellectual state changes to reflect the world. The first thing that may come to mind in the comparison is the different directions of causation: from the will to the world in the first case, and from the world to the intellect in the second. This is as it should be: If the will succeeds when it changes the world, it must produce a causal condition sufficient for the change; and if the intellect succeeds when it truly represents the world, it must surely achieve such a representation through a causal connection running from the world to it.22 If, however, the broad perspective on intellect and will so far presented is correct, there is something more. It bears on the causal contrast just drawn but has more to do with the ontology of intentional attitudes themselves. Actions are events, in the ordinary sense in which the occurrence of an event entails that of a change. Beliefs are not events (though their formation is). To believe is not to do something or to change anything; nor does having a belief over time entail changing over the time in question in any way related to the belief. Beliefs, then, are not actions. If not, then they are not actions of will, as volitions (on the most common conception) are, nor are beliefs even basic actions of any sort, as elementary bodily actions are. One form of voluntarism, then—behavioral voluntarism—is a clear failure: It treats believing as action, when believing is not even of the right category to be action. There is a further implication of this contrast between action and belief, on the plausible (though controversial) assumption that causes of events are themselves events.23 If this assumption is true, and if the "acts" of the will are practical interventions in the world that can change it in the desired direction, then believing is again the wrong sort of thing to be an act of will or even a basic action performed "at will." Not being an event or change, believing is not a candidate to change the world.24 To see the force of this, suppose the will could produce nothing but beliefs. It would have no impact on the external world and could at best pursue only cognitive goods, dispositional states that, by themselves, apart from events that activate them, do not produce actions or other events. It might provide one with an excellent map of the world; but a map, however well it may guide action, cannot produce it. A voluntarist might grant that beliefs themselves cannot be acts of will or basic acts, but go on to point out that in connection with voluntarism, we have spoken of the formation of belief as well as of believing. Despite all the references to deciding to believe and similar phenomena, perhaps the voluntarist's main idea might be said to be that only formation of belief need be possible at will, and this is an action. This idea is central for genetic voluntarism, which we must explore more closely. Let us first disambiguate: There is causing oneself to believe something, and there is simply coming to believe, in the sense of a belief's forming, as where one sees the approaching tornado. Neither of these is an action of belief formation. Causing oneself to believe is a type of action that entails belief formation, but the belief formation is not a further action, any more than the rising of one's arm is an action beyond one's raising it. Here the belief formation is the result of an action, not, as the voluntarist would have it, something done at will. Moreover, whereas the arm's rising is the result of something done at will, the belief formation is at least normally the result only of something done by doing something else, say of inclining oneself to

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believe the proposition by turning one's attention to a proponent of it. Tn other cases, there may seem to be an action of forming the belief that p; for just as one can, as it were, say "Arm, rise!" and raise one's arm at will, it may seem that one can (in favorable circumstances) say to oneself, or to one's "intellect," "Believe/?!" and thereby believe/) at will. But if believing is neither action nor event, this description does not have a clear sense; using the phrase "form a belief may disguise this point, but we must not be misled by the phrase. If forming a belief comes to no more than a belief s forming, there is no reason to consider it an action. If it does come to more, the only clear behavioral addition plausible in the light of the data invites us to take it as equivalent to causing oneself to believe. We can understand a number of kinds of actions of causing oneself to form a belief, and we understand the event of a belief s forming; but the idea of an action of forming a belief, construed as distinct from both of these cases, invites confusion as to what belief is. Here is a different way to see the point. If this supposed action of belief formation at will is distinct from causing oneself to believe p, there should be a distinction analogous to that between directly raising one's arm (raising it at will) and indirectly causing its rising, as with a pulley. Might we say that the difference is between simply forming a belief at will and, for example, causing its formation by exposing oneself to a hypnotist who will induce it? There is a significant disanalogy: In the first (behavioral) case, we have a distinction between directly willed action, the arm raising, and indirectly willed nonaction, namely the arm's rising; but in the second (doxastic) case, there is only a difference in how the same kind of event—belief formation—is produced by the will. The kind of production in question is causing oneself to believe. The result is not action in either instance. Again, in thinking of believing as directly voluntary, the voluntarist is apparently imagining belief, or at least its formation, as an action, perhaps of intellect, in the way that a volition (or even a basic movement) may be an act of will. This either puts belief in the wrong category, that of action, or simply begs the question as to whether its formation can be an action, a question I want now to pursue in another dimension. The difference between intellect and will (and more broadly, between theoretical and practical reason) bears on the issue in another way. If belief formation, as distinct from causing oneself to believe, is an action, what would be the form of a practical reason for it? (I assume that, for any action, there at least can be a sensible expression of a practical reason.) The form could not be that of "to believe q" where q is some proposition the person conceives as somehow related to (perhaps supported by).p; for this is neither an act-description nor even an event-reporting phrase. It could not be something like "to cause oneself to be more confident of jumping a precipice"; for although this expresses a reason for causing oneself to believe p, it does not in any clear sense express a reason for forming the belief that p if that is any different (e.g., it does not indicate support for the truth of p). The form could not be "that/? seems true" (or, say, "that/? is well evidenced"); for this does not express an appropriate content for a practical reason. Given a desire to believe truths, the point that p seems true would imply that there is a reason to cause oneself to believe p if one does not already believe it; but then we are back to what no one doubts to be a kind of action. If, as it appears, there is no plausible candidate for a practical reason

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for forming a belief, as distinct from causing oneself to believe, then we have good ground for concluding that there is no distinct act of forming a belief at will. There is one further support for voluntarism that must be addressed here. How are we to explain the parallel between freedom to act and freedom to believe? I am free to go to the library and also to work in my study instead; and, after hearing a student's plausible account of apparent plagiarism, I may be free to believe the student or not. Should we not say that in the second case, as in the first, I may do something—namely, form a belief?251 have two points here, one concerning reasons for action in contrast with reasons for belief, the other concerning reasons for not withholding belief, as opposed to reasons for believing. I take these in turn. First, the freedom in the case of alternative actions between which one has a genuine choice is a broadly causal matter—there is no compelling cause operating on one toward the first action or toward the second (we may leave open whether there must be a compulsion if determinism is true); by contrast, the freedom in the second case is evidential—there is no compelling reason for one to believe the proposition or its negation. It is not behavioral freedom, but a normative kind, determined by the quality of the evidence. This is not to deny that there is a kind of normative freedom for actions; but the relevant comparison is with behavioral freedom (the kind realizable by exercises of will), and the point is that there is no clear doxastic analog of this. (I can imagine a case in which, after I have had neurologists inducing beliefs in me, I am told that I am now free to believe what I will; but here "free to believe" indicates removal of an abnormal cause, not recovery of a volitional ability.) The contrast I am drawing between freedom to act and to believe is not merely verbal. It is what we should expect if, as I have argued, action and belief formation are responses to different kinds of reasons: Those appropriate to belief are not reasons for action at all, and this point concerns their evidential support of a proposition one might believe, not the absence of a causal power on the part of evidence. Indeed, it is perfectly acceptable to be causally compelled by evidence, in a way it is not acceptable to be causally compelled by factors (e.g., threats) producing action. Doxastic compulsion by evidence conduces to a true representation of the world; behavioral compulsion does not in general conduce to realizing anything good. Secondly, insofar as the evidential ground for my freedom with respect to believing the student is indirectly a ground for, as opposed to a cause of, action, the action may be one of not withholding belief of the proposition I am inclined toward after hearing the story. If the evidence on both sides is equally good (and not too meager), I may have reason to cease withholding the belief I prefer, say that there is no plagiarism. There is, however, no good reason to think the action I might take here is either believing or directly forming a belief; it is at best one that causes a belief to form from my antecedent inclinations toward it. The data in question, then, are readily (and I think best) explained without assimilating the relevant intellectual freedom to practical freedom or endorsing any direct version of voluntarism. In criticizing voluntarism in both its behavioral and its genetic forms, I may have appeared to deny too much. It should help in concluding this section to indicate some important points that I grant voluntarism. I recognize the possibility that an act of

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doxastic command, analogous to willing to raise one's arm, can cause belief formation. This is a contingent matter. I also accept (and have elsewhere explored in detail26) a profound parallel between belief and (intentional) action: Both action and belief formation are normally responses to reasons or grounds—a point crucial in understanding how we can be responsible for (and sometimes criticizable for) both. This is not a contingent matter. I would grant, too, that just as there can be weakness of will, there can be weakness of intellect, in the sense that one can consider the evidence for p conclusive and still fail to believe p. Indeed, it may be that just as, when one fears suffering weakness of will, it is appropriate to will to do the deed favored by one's practical judgment, so when one fears weakness of intellect, it is appropriate to "will to believe" the proposition favored by the evidence. This analogy, however, supports at most a kind of indirect voluntarism: the view that one can sometimes cause belief formation by a mental directive. It is noteworthy that it is in cases in which one, as it were, needs help in doing a deed or in believing a proposition that it is most natural to speak of volition or some similar act of will. For various theoretical reasons, however, the volitionalist tradition in the theory of action posits volition or trying or some such act of will in the genesis of every intentional action. Philosophers in this tradition who quite reasonably take seriously the analogy between action and belief as responses to reasons will naturally believe the analogy extends to volitional production and control. If, as I maintain, volitionalism is mistaken in the theory of action, there is no prima facie case for positing volitional phenomena as needed to account for how reasons for believing a proposition yield actual belief of it.27 If reasons for action can yield action without a specific volitive thrust, then the analogy between action and belief should not lead to a search for a counterpart role for volition in belief formation. In special cases, as where one is deeply resistant to believing ill of someone despite powerful evidence of wrongdoing, volitional elements may play a role, as they do in resisting shameful actions. But there is still no reason to consider believing, or even belief formation, to be an action. That believing is not an action, and that the kinds of reasons that support beliefs (theoretical reasons) are different from practical reasons, is not a contingent matter. To be sure, the possibility of causing oneself to form beliefs is important, and there is no need to deny that there can be good reasons to cause oneself to believe something. Perhaps in special cases this can even be done at will. But then there will be some basic action, such as contemplating the relevant proposition in a certain positive way, that produces the desired state of affairs: believing it. This action will cause belief formation but is not an act of belief formation. It is not, then, what doxastic voluntarists have wanted. They have wanted, minimally, that forming beliefs, if not believing itself, be under direct voluntary control.28 But what is under direct voluntary control must be an action and as such should admit of practical reasons for its performance. Belief, which is not even an event, is not an action; belief formation is an event but, as distinct from causing oneself to belief, is not an action. It remains true that there are major similarities between practical and theoretical reasoning; but the kinds of reasons appropriate to each, and to action and belief, are different. They have different kinds of content and go with different aspects of our rational constitution.

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IV. The Ethics of Belief It might seem that if I have been right, and neither believing nor forming beliefs is a case of action, then there is little or no place for an ethics of belief. That is not so. If we conceive ethics as concerned with proper standards of conduct, and if we allow that conducting one's intellectual life sloppily may be in a broad sense morally objectionable, we can speak of an ethics of belief. (Perhaps there can be an "ethics" of belief even if the sense of "ought" in which we ought to regulate our beliefs is not strictly moral.) In any case, the results of this paper do not prevent our sustaining a deontic version of an ethics of belief, specifically, an epistemic deontologism conceived as the view that to be justified in believing that p is for believing p to be (epistemically) permissible for one. We can say, for instance, that when a proposition meets certain standards of evidence, we may believe it without violating any epistemic duties, that is (roughly), without liability to epistemic criticism, and that there are certain standards of evidence such that unless a proposition meets them, then, on pain of liability to epistemic criticism, one should not believe it. On this view, withholding belief at will might sometimes be possible; doing that does not imply that believing is an action. There can, moreover, be practical reasons for withholding a proposition. We can also say that when a proposition is supported by certain kinds of grounds or meets certain standards, one should try to cause oneself to believe it if one does not believe it and try to retain belief of it if one does. These are among the sorts of things one can say in developing an ethics of belief.29 It is important to see, however, that an ethics of belief is possible even for those who reject epistemic deontologism. One need not think that justification for believing is any kind of deontic status to hold that there are ethical standards applicable to regulating both what we believe and how strongly we believe it. One may also hold (as I am inclined to) that even if a deep and illuminating analysis of justification in terms of duty is not possible, there may be an instructive equivalence between the notion of justification for believing and that of epistemic permissibility. It could turn out, for instance, that our epistemic obligations are (in broad terms) to be properly attentive both to logic (broadly conceived) and to the evidences of our senses, memory, consciousness, and reflection, and that what constitutes justification is a kind of conformity to these sources. This attentiveness conception of epistemic obligation suggests that we may also speak of an ethics of inquiry as well as of appropriate—and significantly overlapping—rational standards determining when belief is acceptable. One demand of both ethics and rationality would be to seek cogent evidence for (and even sometimes against) certain of one's beliefs and to try to achieve and maintain confidence levels appropriate to the evidence one has. A confidence level regarding p may be unjustified (say, unwarrantedly high) even if there is ample justification for guarded belief (or some strength of belief) of p. We can thus accommodate degrees of conviction (and can posit "partial" as well as "full" belief), and a person can be criticizable for having an inappropriate degree of confidence, say, for high confidence where the relevant probability is low as well as for unqualifiedly believing something unsupported by grounds or for not believing something supported by excellent undefeated evidence. None of these standards requires a commitment to voluntarism.30

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Given what has emerged in this paper, at least three basic points about the ethics of belief are appropriate. First, such cognitive regulation as the ethics of belief requires is normally not possible by mere acts of will aimed at producing belief; normally we achieve it by actions, or (especially) activities, that indirectly affect belief. For instance, we properly attend to relevant evidence, to which we then respond in the ways appropriate to rational persons considering grounds for or against various propositions of concern to them in the context.31 Second, normally, a sound ethics of belief requires that we try (1) to develop dispositions that lead us to seek (evidential) grounds in certain matters (say, questions on which people's welfare turns), (2) to form beliefs when and only when our grounds adequately support them,32 and (3) to avoid having a degree of conviction at variance with the strength of our grounds. Third, for many of our beliefs we do not need to seek grounds. Some beliefs are, for instance, obviously true, and some not obviously true are plainly unimportant. If we are rational beings, then some of the principles appropriate to a plausible ethics of belief may correspond to our natural tendencies. Here is a hypothesis about reasons for believing that seems at once to have normative implications and to be psychologically plausible: Where I have a (supporting) reason for believing p, then, as a rational person, if I become aware of its supporting p (say rendering p highly probable), (1) I will have some tendency to believe/?; (2) if I come to believe/? while (occurrently) aware of this supporting reason so conceived, I will tend to believe it on the basis of the reason, even if I also believe it on the basis of some other reason; and (3) the more rational I am, the stronger these tendencies are. Call this (and its counterpart for action and for the other propositional attitudes) the responsiveness presumption: It says in effect that (under certain common conditions) rational persons tend, in proportion to their rationality, to respond both in action and in attitude (and again in a roughly proportional fashion) to reasons they have for these actions or attitudes. The tendency can be weak—and a tendency generated by one set of reasons can, of course, be overridden by one generated by another set. But even a weak tendency can be unopposed and can be significant even when it is overridden. As applied to belief, this presumption seems to be one of the truths underlying the overstated idea (expressed by W. K. Clifford and other proponents of the ethics of belief) that one should proportion one's conviction to the evidence.33 This is not to imply that the normative standard associated with the presumption, a standard on which one is criticizable as insufficiently rational when one's response to one's reasons is inadequate in the indicated way, is itself ethical. The point is rather that the ethics of belief can express a prima facie moral obligation to abide by a rational standard. Unlike the idea associated with Clifford, however, the standard in question does not invite either the view that one has direct voluntary control of one's beliefs or the assumption that the cogency of evidence is quantifiable in the relevant way or even that one has direct voluntary control of the degree of conviction one has regarding propositions one does believe. It does imply, however, that if one fails to tend to believe p for a reason one (sincerely) offers in support of/?, there should be an explanation for this, such as a momentary lapse in reasoning or the influence of a prejudice. A conscientious person aware of this anomaly should be disposed to wonder why it obtains, for instance, whether it is because one is self-deceived in offering the reason as such or is merely offering it as a rationalization, or both.34

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If the ethics of belief concerns the morality of actions, and if beliefs are not actions, then a proponent of the relevant ethical standards need not even posit moral or immoral beliefs, much less construe justified and unjustified beliefs as morally justified or unjustified. An ethics of belief may, however, countenance, in special cases, a moral obligation to induce in oneself certain false or unjustified beliefs or to unseat certain true or justified ones. The precipice example (from William James) is a case in point: Even if the evidence is against one's being able to jump across a precipice, it could be both morally obligatory and behaviorally rational to cause oneself to believe one can do so. Many people's lives might depend on one's doing it, and believing one can do it might make the achievement much more likely. The rationality of such self-manipulation is clearest where one would be justified in the belief when coming to hold it, as where the resulting confidence adds enough strength to one grounds for the belief to justify holding it. But even if the optimistic belief is not justified for one before or after one holds it, the action of causing oneself to hold it may still be rational. It is important not to catapult the practical justification for inducing a belief into a sufficient condition for theoretical ("epistemic") justification. Even where one is obligated to induce a belief in oneself and rationally does so, it does not follow that the belief itself is justified, and it surely need not be, on the normal presupposition that what justifies a belief supports its truth (in some way). One could reply that holding the belief is justified, but this is ambiguous between saying that the belief is justified, which is false, and saying that causing oneself to hold it is justified, which is true. Supposing, then, that one could form a belief at will, the reasons for doing so would not transfer to supporting the belief itself. Practical reasons would not here double as theoretical ones. A practical reason for inducing a belief is not a supporting reason for holding that belief. If my points about the ethics of belief are sound, they can help to clarify the notion of an epistemically responsible agent. On one plausible approach, such an agent is roughly equivalent to one who adheres, in an appropriately scrupulous way, to a sound ethics of belief. If enough is built into the notion of a sound ethics of belief, one might go on to argue, on analogy with a strong version of virtue ethics, that a justified belief is one appropriate to an epistemically rational agent, much as a morally permissible action is one appropriate to a morally virtuous person. My position in this essay leaves room for an equivalence here. But it would be a mistake to think we have a notion of a sound ethics of belief, or of an epistemically responsible agent, that is independent of more basic standards for justified belief, standards tied to a conception of theoretical reasons for belief, such as those we find in the domain of sense experience or conceptual reflection or inductive reasoning. Epistemic responsibility depends on, and does not create, standards for justified belief. I take this point to be neutral among different approaches to analyzing justified belief, say, foundationalist, coherentist, internalist, externalist, or Bayesian.35 The profound analogies between intellect and will and between theoretical and practical reason are left intact by the work of this paper. But doxastic voluntarism, in the sense in which it implies that believing is sometimes an act of will, or even that forming beliefs is sometimes such an act distinct from causing oneself to believe, is not. There is a significant role played by the will in much belief formation, and there

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are broadly ethical standards, or certainly standards of rationality, appropriate to that role. When this is understood, we can see why we need not be passive in our intellectual lives: We sometimes ought to believe something we do not or ought not to believe something we do, and living up to the standards in question may require much belief-related activity. But intellect and will are very different in their functions and in the criteria for their successful operation. If the intellect, and with it theoretical reasons, were not independent of the will, and even of practical reasons, in the way they are, we as rational agents could not do as well as we do. To change the world in pursuit of our ends, we need a realistic map of it, and as a guide to practical reason that map cannot be drawn at our pleasure.36 Notes 1. For valuable discussions of the voluntariness of belief, see Bernard Williams, "Deciding to Believe," Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 3651; Louis P. Pojman, Religious Belief and the Will (London: Routledge, 1986); William P. Alston, "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification," Epistemic Justification (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 115-52; James Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993); Alvin Plantinga's treatment of the deontological concept of justification in Warrant: the Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Matthias Steup, "Epistemic Deontology and the Voluntariness of Belief," Acta Analytica 15 (2000): 25-56. 2. His overall conception seems to be one on which the will may in certain cases directly bring about—or withhold—belief. In Meditation I, he says, "I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly to be false," and "I ought not the less carefully to refrain from giving credence to these opinions than to that which is manifestly false," where, for him, "giving credence" seems roughly equivalent to "assenting" (trans. Haldane and Ross). In Meditation IV, we find him concluding that "as often as I so restrain my will within the limits of my knowledge that it forms no judgment except on matters which are clearly and distinctly represented to it by the understanding, I can never be deceived." It is interesting that here he seems to conceive the will as needing to produce assent (or credence) even where there is a clear and distinct representation. That is not a commitment of doxastic voluntarism in general, if indeed it represents even Descartes's overall view, which, for the most part, attributes to the will only negative control over belief formation. 3. When I raise my hand at will, do I also bring about its rising at will? I am inclined to say no, on the ground that I bring it about by doing something, whereas that does not apply to my raising my hand when I do so at will. If a negative answer is correct here, then that one can bring about an event at will is at least a very good reason to consider it an action. 4. To be sure, it may be by tightening muscles that one does such things, but once the control becomes automatic it is like many other basic action-types: It conies to be basic when one no longer needs to do the deed by way of doing something else. The muscles tighten when one wants to stop breathing directly on the latter volitive "command." 5. Supporting arguments are given in my "Volition and Agency," Action, Intention, and Reason (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), which shows how basic action is possible without distinct internal actions of volition or other such executive thrusts. 6. There are uses of "decide" in which deciding to believe is a way of coming to believe that is at least close to the way sketched here. In describing a traditional view in the philosophy of science, for instance, Bas C. van Fraassen speaks of "what we may rationally decide or come to believe." See "Belief and the Will," Journal of Philosophy 81, no. 5 (1984): 23556, 255 (italics added). Given how he uses the terminology of deciding to believe and that his reason for calling his view in the paper voluntarist is that "it makes judgment in general and subjective probability in particular, a matter of cognitive commitment, intention, engagement"

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(p. 256), I doubt that his conception of deciding to believe (or of belief) requires (direct) voluntarism. The relevant kind of engagement is accommodated by a number of points in section IV. 7. Here it may be instructive to note that just as the reasons for a decision to do something are characteristically (and perhaps necessarily) the reasons for doing it and not reasons for the higher order act of deciding, reasons for deciding to believe, in the standard cases commonly so-called, are reasons supporting the proposition believed and not—unless perhaps this trivially follows—for an action of deciding to believe that proposition. The former point about decision is argued by Thomas Pink in "Reason and Agency," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1997): 263-80. Related points are made in sections II and III. 8. Where the testimony is by someone sufficiently trusted, this is common even for mature adults, but my case does not depend on that point. It is defended in my "The Place of Testimony in the Fabric of Knowledge and Justification," American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997): 405-22. For a different view on the kind of scrutiny appropriate to believing on testimony, see Elizabeth Fricker, "Against Gullibility," in Knowing from Words, B. K. Matilal and A. Chakrabarti, eds. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1994). 9. For an account of acceptance apparently intended to fill this bill, see William P. Alston, "Belief, Acceptance, and Religious Faith," in Faith, Freedom, and Rationality, Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Synder, eds. (Lanham, Md.: Rownian and Littlefield, 1996). Another useful discussion is provided by Raimo Tuomela, "A Note on Acceptance and Belief" (forthcoming). 10. An account of self-deception that supports this is given in my "Self-Deception and Practical Reasoning," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (1989): 246-66. 11. Carl Ginet, for example, notes the apparent voluntariness of belief where conflicting evidence or one's own uncertainty. "Suppose that, as I am deliberating about whether to trust Sally's memory or mine or neither regarding the population of Syracuse, she offers to bring me breakfast in bed if I decide to trust her memory . . . Might that not help me to decide to believe the figure she remembers?" See "Contra Reliabilism," The Monist 65, no. 2 (1985): 156-87. 12. Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility, is among those who have stressed this kind of analogy. 13. As Aquinas puts it at one point, "The object of the reason is the true . . . the object of the appetitive power is the appetitive good." Summa Theologiae, question 60, article 1. 14. One pertinent thing Aquinas held is that "An act is voluntary when it is an operation of reason" (Summa Theologiae la 2ae q6 a3, p. 56). To be sure "act" may here designate an exercise of the proper function of reason and need not be equivalent to "action" in the sense relevant to voluntarism, but here I leave open matters of detailed Thomistic interpretation. 15. This kind of view survives in ethical theory under the name "motivational internalism." For a detailed appraisal and many references to relevant literature, see my "Moral Judgment and Reasons for Action," Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 16. This version of the contrast is apparently due to Elizabeth Anscombe. See Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956). 17. Williams, "Deciding to Believe," Problems of the Self, is among many who treat belief as aiming at truth. He says that "belief aims at truth" (p. 136) and adds that this is in part to say that "to believe p is to believe p is true" (p. 137). I make a case against the latter claim in chap. 3 of Moral Knowledge. For a useful discussion of voluntarism that both criticizes and draws on Williams' treatment, see Dion Scott-Kakures, "On Belief and the Captivity of the Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 77-103; and for a valuable critique of this paper, see Dana Radcliffe, "Scott-Kakures on Believing at Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1997): 145-51. 18. Donald Davidson, for example, has taken intending to be a kind of belief. See "Intending," Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). Others have supposed there are attitudes (sometimes called fesires) with the function of both belief and desire.

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19. In Thinking and Doing (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1975) Hector-Neri Castafieda construed the objects of the practical attitudes as "practitions," which he contrasted with propositions as objects of the theoretical attitudes. Although 1 do not adopt his terminology (or his specific views on this issue), I have benefited from his far-reaching work on the ontology of the intentional attitudes. 20. We sometimes say, in answering "What was your reason for doing that?," "I believed . . ." or (especially) "I wanted . . .", I call these attitudes reason states and think it wise to distinguish them from reasons proper, which are their contents. A partial account of this distinction is given in my "Acting for Reasons," Philosophical Review (1986). That paper also deals with the special case of things we do for their own sake, for which "in order to" is perhaps not entirely appropriate in giving an explanation. In any event, I suggest that where a belief provides a reason for acting, it does so at least in part because there is a suitably related want or a reason for having such a want, as where one's reason for telephoning is given by citing a belief that one has too little time for e-mail. 21. One epistemologist who uses "reason" to encompass grounds is Marshall Swain, Reasons and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981). A sorting out of different uses of "reason" is given in my "Reasons for Believing," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998). 22. We cannot say "causing it"; beliefs about the future are not caused by future events. But there is still a causal connection: from causes of the relevant events, such as my decision to do something tomorrow, to the belief representing them. 23. The main implicit contrast is between causes of events and causal sustainers of nonevents, such as beliefs or desires. Causal sustainers need not be events. That causes of events must be events has been widely defended. One defense and a number of references are given in my Practical Reasoning (London: Routledge, 1989). For a recent defense of agent causation, see Randolph Clarke, "Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will," Nous 27 (1993). Supposing there is agent causation, however, it would still seem that the acts of will caused by the agent must be events to affect the future in the relevant ways. 24. To be sure, if a belief is added to my cognitive inventory, the world is changed; but / (or some event) would produce this change, not the belief. The belief cannot even change the world in the direction of one's believing more truths (though it can, given other factors, guide action). 25. Matthias Steup has emphasized such analogies. See, for example "A Defense of Internalism," in Theory of Knowledge, 2d ed., Louis P. Pojman, ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1997). 26. In, for example, chap. 3 of Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 27. In "Volition and Agency," in my Action, Intention, and Reason, I have explicated and criticized various forms of volitionalism in detail. 28. This is does not apply to Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue, at least if I am correct in thinking that his weak version of voluntarism is at least largely consistent with the position of this paper. See chap. 5 on doxastic voluntariness, especially p. 83. 29. Despite Descartes's sometimes appearing to hold a direct doxastic voluntarism, I do not believe that internalization of any of his Rules for the Direction of the Mind is precluded by the critique of voluntarism given in this paper. 30. I am indebted to Isaac Levi for urging me to accommodate distinctions of cognitive degree and standards for inquiry as well as for appraisal of standing beliefs. I should add that my approach is neutral with respect to another distinction he emphasizes: between treating belief itself as a focus of appraisal and treating change of belief as a focus. For a partial statement of his theory on these matters, see The Fixation of Belief and Its Undoing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). The distinction between commitment and performance (6-9) and among types of belief change (esp. pp. 64-70) are pertinent here. 31. For instructive discussion of difficulties with construing belief as under voluntary control see Alston, "Deontological Conception," Epistemic Justification. For a partial reply and contrasting view, see Matthias Steup, "A Defense of Internalism" and "The Deontic Con-

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ception of Epistemic Justification," Philosophical Studies 53 (1988): 65-84. By contrast with my treatment of doxastic voluntarism, especially as a position in the philosophy of mind, Alston's concentrates on empirical and apparently contingent difficulties with it. 32. Condition (b) is hedged because in certain trivial matters, or in certain cases where one is scrutinizing one's beliefs and ready to revise one's view, one may not need to have adequate grounds (as opposed to the absence of negative grounds). As to why the condition does not give a sufficient as well as a necessary condition, the point is that it is not reasonable to form all the beliefs one can that are adequately supported by one's grounds, say that there are fewer than a million chairs in the room, fewer than two million, fewer than three million, and so forth. 33. W. K. Clifford's view is set forth in his famous essay on the ethics of belief in his Lectures and Essays (1879), reprinted in The Theory of Knowledge, Louis P. Pojman, ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993). For discussion of some specific principles one might adopt in living up to a broadly Cliffordian ethic, see van Fraassen, "Belief and the Will," Journal of Philosophy, and his sequel, "Belief and the Problem of Ulysses and the Sirens," Philosophical Studies 77 (1995), 7-37. 34. I have discussed the ethics of belief, in connection with both self-deception and rationalization, in chap. 6 of Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character, and the preceding two paragraphs draw on some of the points made there. 35. I omit consideration of knowledge here. Insofar as it is an external notion, the concept of epistemic responsibility is less likely to provide a basis for understanding it than in the case of justification; if knowing entails being justified, then the points suggested in the text may be applied to knowledge insofar justification is an essential element in it. 36. This essay was originally written for this volume but appeared earlier in Facta Philosophica 1.1 (1996), 87-109, and I thank the editors for permission to reprint it. Earlier versions were presented at Dartmouth College, the University of Helsinki, and the University of New Mexico, and I thank the audiences for many helpful responses. For comments on one or another draft I thank Elizabeth Fricker, Bernard Gert, Isaac Levi, and, especially, Matthias Steup.

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Part III EPISTEMIC DEONTOLOGY AND THE INTERNALITY OF JUSTIFICATION

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7

Internalism Exposed ALVIN GOLDMAN

In recent decades, epistemology has witnessed the development and growth of externalist theories of knowledge and justification.1 Critics of externalism have focused a bright spotlight on this approach and judged it unsuitable for realizing the true and original goals of epistemology. Their own favored approach, internalism, is defended as a preferable approach to the traditional concept of epistemic justification.2 In this essay, I turn the spotlight toward internalism and its most prominent rationale. Fundamental problems that lie at the core of internalism will be revealed and the viability of its most popular rationale will be challenged. Although particular internalist theories such as (internalist) foundationalism and coherentism will occasionally be discussed, those specific theories are not my primary concern. The principal concern is the general architecture of internalism, and the attempt to justify this architecture by appeal to a certain conception of what justification consists in. I. Deontology, Access, and Internalism I begin with a certain rationale for internalism that has widespread support. It can be reconstructed in three steps: 1. The guidance-deontological conception of justification is posited. 2. A certain constraint on the determiners of justification is derived from the guidancedeontological conception, that is, the constraint that all justification-determiners must be accessible to, or knowable by, the epistemic agent. 3. The accessibility or knowability constraint is taken to imply that only internal conditions qualify as legitimate determiners of justification. So justification must be a purely internal affair.3 115

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What motivates or underlies this rationale for internalism? Historically, one central aim of epistemology is to guide or direct our intellectual conduct, an aim expressed in Descartes's title, "Rules for the Direction of the Mind." Among contemporary writers, John Pollock expresses the idea this way: I have taken the fundamental problem of epistemology to be that of deciding what to believe. Epistemic justification, as I use the term, is concerned with this problem. Considerations of epistemic justification guide us in determining what to believe. We might call this the "belief-guiding" or "reason-guiding" sense of "justification." (Pollock 1986, p. 10)

The guidance conception of justification is commonly paired with the deontological conception of justification. Locke wrote of a person's "duty as a rational creature,"4 and the theme of epistemic duty or responsibility has been echoed by many contemporary epistemologists, including Laurence BonJour, Roderick Chisholm, Richard Feldman, Carl Ginet, Hilary Kornblith, Paul Moser, and Matthias Steup.5 Chisholm defines cousins of the concept of justification in terms of the relation "more reasonable than," and he reexpresses the relation "p is more reasonable than q for S at f by saying: "S is so situated at t that his intellectual requirement, his responsibility as an intellectual being, is better fulfilled by p than by q."6 Similarly, Feldman says that one's epistemic duty is to "believe what is supported or justified by one's evidence and to avoid believing what is not supported by one's evidence" (Chisholm 1989, 254). The guidance and deontological conceptions of justification are intimately related because the deontological conception, at least when paired with the guidance conception, considers it a person's epistemic duty to guide his doxastic attitudes by his evidence or by whatever factors determine the justificational status of a proposition at a given time. Epistemic deontologists commonly maintain that being justified in believing a proposition p consists in being (intellectually) required or permitted to believe p; and being unjustified in believing/) consists in not being permitted, or being forbidden, to believe/?. When a person is unjustified in believing a proposition, it is his duty not to believe it. It is possible to separate the deontological conception from the guidance idea. In ethical theory, a distinction has been drawn between accounts of moral duty that aim to specify what makes actions right and accounts of moral duty that aim to provide practical decision procedures for what to do.7 If an account simply aims at the first desideratum, it need not aspire to be usable as a decision guide. Similarly, accounts of epistemic duty need not necessarily be intended as decision guides. However, when the deontological conception is used as a rationale for epistemic internalism of the sort I am sketching, it does incorporate the guidance conception. Only if the guidance conception is incorporated can the argument proceed along the intended lines to the accessibility constraint and from there to internalism. This is why I shall henceforth speak of the "guidance-deontological" (GD) conception of justification. I turn now to the second step of the argument for internalism. Following William Alston, I shall use the term "justifiers" for facts or states of affairs that determine the justificational status of a belief or the epistemic status a proposition has for an epistemic agent.8 In other words, justifiers determine whether or not a proposition

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is justified for an epistemic agent at a given time. It seems to follow naturally from the GD conception of justification that a certain constraint must be placed on the sorts of facts or states of affairs that qualify as justifiers. If a person is going to avoid violating his epistemic duty, he must know, or be able to find out, what his duty requires. By "know," in this context, I only mean to have an accurate, or true, belief. I do not mean to have a justified true belief (or whatever else is entailed by the richer concept of knowledge). Admittedly, it might be possible to avoid violating one's duties by chance, without knowing (having true beliefs about) what one's duties are. As a practical matter, however, it is not feasible to conform to duty on a regular and consistent basis without knowing what items of conduct constitute those duties. Thus, if you are going to choose your beliefs and abstentions from belief in accordance with your justificational requirements, the facts that make you justified or unjustified in believing a certain proposition at a given time must be facts that you are capable of knowing, at that time, to hold or not to hold. There is an intimate connection, then, between the GD conception of justification and the requirement that justifiers must be accessible to, or knowable by, the agent at the time of belief. If you cannot accurately ascertain your epistemic duty at a given time, how can you be expected to execute that duty, and how can you reasonably be held responsible for executing that duty?9 The knowability constraint on justifiers that flows from the GD conception may be formulated as follows: KJ The only facts that qualify as justifiers of an agent's believing p at time t are facts that the agent can readily know, at t, to obtain or not to obtain. How can an agent readily know whether candidate justifiers obtain or do not obtain? Presumably, the agent must have a way of determining, for any candidate class of justifiers, whether or not they obtain. Such a way of knowing must be reliable, that is, it must generate beliefs about the presence or absence of justifiers that are usually (invariably?) correct. Otherwise, the agent will often be mistaken about what his epistemic duty requires. The way of knowing must also be "powerful," in the sense that when justifiers obtain, it is likely (certain?) that the agent will believe that they obtain; at least he will believe this if he reflects on the matter or otherwise inquires into it.10 As we shall soon see, internalists typically impose additional restrictions on how justifiers may be known. But the minimal, generic version of KJ simply requires justifiers to be the sorts of facts that agents have some way of knowing. In other words, justification-conferring facts must be the sorts of facts whose presence or absence is "accessible" to agents." Given the KJ constraint on justifiers, it becomes fairly obvious why internalism about justification is so attractive. Whereas external facts are facts that a cognitive agent might not be in a position to know about, internal facts are presumably the sorts of conditions that a cognitive agent can readily determine. So internal facts seem to be the right sorts of candidates for justifiers. This consideration leads to the third step of our rationale for internalism. Only internal facts qualify as justifiers because they are the only ones that satisfy the KJ constraint—at least so internalists suppose. One possible way to criticize this rationale for internalism is to challenge the GD conception directly. This could be done, for example, by arguing that the GD con-

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ception of justification presupposes the dubious thesis of doxastic voluntarism, the thesis that doxastic attitudes can be "guided" by deliberate choices or acts of will. This criticism is developed by William Alston,12 and I have sympathy with many of his points. However, the voluntarism argument against the GD conception is disputed by Feldman and John Heil, among others.13 Feldman, for example, argues that epistemic deontologism is not wedded to the assumption of doxastic voluntarism. Many obligations remain in force, he points out, even when an agent lacks the ability to discharge them. A person is still legally obligated to repay a debt even when his financial situation makes him unable to repay it. Perhaps epistemic obligations have analogous properties.14 Since the complex topic of doxastic voluntarism would require article-length treatment in its own right, I set this issue aside and confine my attention to other issues. Although I do not accept the GD conception of justification, I take it as given for purposes of the present discussion and explore where it leads. In any case, what is ultimately crucial for internalism is the accessibility requirement that the GD conception hopes to rationalize. Even if the GD conception fails to provide a good rationale, internalism would be viable if some other rationale could be provided for a suitable accessibility requirement. II. Direct Knowability and Strong Internalism The initial KJ constraint was formulated in terms of knowability plain and simple, but proponents of internalism often add the further qualification that determinants of justification must be directly knowable by the cognitive agent. Ginet, for example, writes as follows: Every one of every set of facts about S's position that minimally suffices to make S, at a given time, justified in being confident that p must be directly recognizable to S at that time. (p. 34)

Similarly, Chisholm writes: The concept of epistemic justification is ... internal and immediate in that one can find out directly, by reflection, what one is justified in believing at any time.ls

Thus, Ginet and Chisholm do not endorse just the minimal KJ constraint as earlier formulated, but a more-restrictive version, which might be written as follows: KJdir The only facts that qualify as justifiers of an agent's believing p at time t are facts that the agent can readily know directly, at t, to obtain or not to obtain. An initial problem arising from KJdir is this: What warrants the imposition of KJdir as opposed to the looser constraint, KJ? KJ was derived from the GD conception on the grounds that one cannot reasonably be expected to comply with epistemic duties unless one knows what those duties are. How does such an argument warrant the further conclusion that direct knowledge of justification must be available? Even indirect knowledge (whatever that is) would enable an agent to comply with his

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epistemic duties. So the second step of the argument for internalism cannot properly be revised to feature KJdir in place of KJ. Proponents of KJdir might reply that direct forms of knowledge are more powerful than indirect knowledge, but this reply is unconvincing. The power requirement was already built into the original version of KJ, and it is unclear how directness adds anything of significance on that score. Whether KJdir can be derived from GD is a serious problem, because the argument for internalism rests on something like the directness qualification; I shall say more about this later. For now I set this point aside to explore where KJdir leads. What modes of knowledge count as direct? At least one form of direct knowledge is introspection. A reason for thinking that introspection is what Chisholm means by direct knowledge is that he restricts all determiners of justification to conscious states: A consequence of our "internalistic" theory of knowledge is that, if one is subject to an epistemic requirement at any time, then this requirement is imposed by the conscious state in which one happens to find oneself at that time.16

Since he restricts justifiers to conscious states, it is plausible to assume that direct knowledge, for Chisholm, means introspective knowledge, and knowledge by "reflection" coincides with knowledge by introspection.17 At least in the case of Chisholm, then, KJdir might be replaced by KJim: KJint The only facts that qualify as justifiers of an agent's believing p at time t are facts that the agent can readily know by introspection, at t, to obtain or not to obtain. Now the only facts that an agent can know by introspection are facts concerning what conscious states he is (or is not) currently in, so these are the only sorts of facts that qualify as justifiers under KJint. This form of internalism may be called strong internalism: SI Only facts concerning what conscious states an agent is in at time t are justifiers of the agent's beliefs at t. Strong internalism, however, is an unacceptable approach to justification, for it has serious, skepticism-breeding, consequences. This is demonstrated by the problem of stored beliefs. At any given time, the vast majority of one's beliefs are stored in memory rather than are occurrent or active. Beliefs about personal data (e.g., one's social security number), world history, geography, or the institutional affiliations of one's professional colleagues are almost all stored rather than occurrent at a given moment. Furthermore, for almost any of these beliefs, one's conscious state at the time includes nothing that justifies it. No perceptual experience, no conscious memory event, and no premises consciously entertained at the selected moment will be justificationally sufficient for such a belief. According to strong internalism, then, none of these beliefs is justified at that moment. Strong internalism threatens a drastic diminution in the stock of beliefs ordinarily deemed justified, and hence in the stock of knowledge, assuming that justification is necessary for knowledge. This is a major count against this type of theory.

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Richard Feldman anticipates this problem because his own account of having evidence also implies that only consciously entertained factors have evidential force.18 Feldman tries to meet the threat by distinguishing between occurrent and dispositional senses of epistemic terms. (Feldman actually discusses knowledge rather than justification, but I shall address the issue in terms of justification because that is the target of our investigation.) Feldman is not simply restating the familiar point that "belief" has occurrent and dispositional senses. He is proposing that the term "justified" is ambiguous between an occurrent and a dispositional sense. Feldman apparently claims that in the case of stored beliefs, people at most have dispositional justification, not occurrent justification. There are two problems with this proposal. First, if having a disposition to generate conscious evidential states qualifies as a justifier of a belief, why wouldn't this extend from memorial to perceptual dispositions? Suppose a train passenger awakes from a nap but has not yet opened his eyes. Is he justified in believing propositions about the details of the neighboring landscape? Surely not. Yet he is disposed, merely by opening his eyes, to generate conscious evidential states that would occurrently justify such beliefs. So the dispositional approach is far too permissive to yield an acceptable sense of "justified."19 Second, can an internalist, especially a strong internalist, live with the idea that certain dispositions count as justifiers? Having or not having a disposition (of the requisite type) is not the sort of fact or condition that can be known by introspection. Thus, the proposal to supplement the occurrent sense of "justified" with a dispositional sense of "justified" is simply the abandonment of strong internalism. III.

Indirect Know/ability and Weak Internalism

The obvious solution to the problem of stored beliefs is to relax the KJ constraint: Allow justifiers to be merely indirectly knowable. This yields KJind: KJ jnd The only facts that qualify as justifiers of an agent's believing/? at time t are facts that the agent can readily know at t, either directly or indirectly, to obtain or not to obtain. The danger here is that indirect knowledge might let in too much from an internalist perspective. How are externalist forms of knowledge to be excluded, for example, perceptual knowledge? Clearly, internalism must propose specific forms of knowledge that conform with its spirit. It is fairly clear how internalism should deal with the problem of stored beliefs. Simply allow knowledge of justifiers to include memory retrieval. Stored evidence beliefs can qualify as justifiers because the agent can know that they obtain by the compound route of first retrieving them from memory and then introspecting their conscious contents. This yields the following variant of the KJ constraint: KJjnt+ret

The only facts that qualify as justifiers of an agent's believing p at time t are facts that the agent can readily know, at t, fo obtain or not to obtain, by introspection and/or memory retrieval.

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This KJ constraint allows for a more-viable form of internalism than strong internalism. We may call it weak internalism, and initially articulate it through the following principle: WI Only facts concerning what conscious and/or stored mental states an agent is in at time t are justifiers of the agent's beliefs at t. WI will certify the justification of many stored beliefs, because agents often have other stored beliefs that evidentially support them. A person who believes that Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States may have a stored belief to the effect that a map of the United States he recently consulted showed Washington as the capital. The latter stored belief is what justifies the former one. So weak internalism is not plagued with the problem of stored justified beliefs. Weak internalism seems to be a legitimate form of internalism because even stored beliefs qualify, intuitively, as internal states. Although weak internalism is better than strong internalism, it too faces severe problems. First is the problem of forgotten evidence.70 Many justified beliefs are ones for which an agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot. At the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer possesses adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory. Last year, Sally read about the health benefits of broccoli in a New York Times science section story. She then justifiably formed a belief in broccoli's beneficial effects. She still retains this belief but no longer recalls her original evidential source (and has never encountered either corroborating or undermining sources). Nonetheless, her broccoli belief is still justified, and, if true, qualifies as a case of knowledge. Presumably, this is because her past acquisition of the belief was epistemically proper. But past acquisition is irrelevant by the lights of internalism (including weak internalism) because only her current mental states are justifiers relevant to her current belief. All past events are "external" and therefore irrelevant according to internalism. It might be replied that Sally does currently possess evidence in support of her broccoli belief. One of her background beliefs, we may suppose, is that most of what she remembers was learned in an epistemically proper manner. So doesn't she, after all, now have grounds for the target belief? Admittedly, she has some evidence, but is this evidence sufficient for justification? Surely not. In a variant case, suppose that Sally still has the same background belief—viz., that most of what she remembers was learned in an epistemically proper manner—but she in fact acquired her broccoli belief from the National Inquirer rather than the New York Times. So her broccoli belief was never acquired, or corroborated, in an epistemically sound manner. Then even with the indicated current background belief, Sally cannot be credited with justifiably believing that broccoli is healthful. Her past acquisition is still relevant— and decisive. At least it is relevant as long as we are considering the "epistemizing" sense of justification, in which justification carries a true belief a good distance toward knowledge. Sally's belief in the healthfulness of broccoli is not justified in that sense, for surely she does not know that broccoli is healthful, given that the National Inquirer was her sole source of information. The category of forgotten evidence is a problem for weak internalism because, like the problem of stored beliefs facing strong internalism, it threatens skeptical

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outcomes. A large sector of what is ordinarily counted as knowledge are beliefs for which people have forgotten their original evidence. In reply to the problem of forgotten evidence, Matthias Steup offers the following solution.21 An additional requirement for memorial states to justify a belief that p, says Steup, is that the agent have adequate evidence for believing the following counterfactual: "If she had encountered p in a questionable source, she would not have formed the belief that p." Steup's suggestion is that in the National Inquirer variant, Sally fails to have adequate evidence for this counterfactual, and that is why her broccoli belief is not justified. My response to this proposal is twofold. First, the proposed requirement is too strong to impose on memoriaHy justified belief. It is quite difficult to get adequate evidence for the indicated counterfactual. Second, the proposed requirement seems too weak as well. Sally might have adequate evidence for the counterfactual but still be unjustified in holding her broccoli belief. She might have adequate evidence for the counterfactual without it being true; but if it is not true and the rest of the story is as I told it, her broccoli belief is not justified. So Steup's internalist-style solution does not work. A second problem confronting weak internalism is what I call the problem of concurrent retrieval. Principle WI says that only conscious and stored mental states are justifiers, but it does not say that all sets or conjunctions of such states qualify as justifiers.22 Presumably, which sets of such states qualify is a matter to be decided by reference to KJint+rel. If a certain set of stored beliefs can all be concurrently retrieved at time t and concurrently introspected, then they would pass the test of KJim+ret and could qualify as justifiers under the principle of indirect knowability. But if they cannot all be concurrently retrieved and introspected at t, they would fail the test. Now it is clear that the totality of an agent's stored credal corpus at a time cannot be concurrently retrieved from memory. So that set of stored beliefs does not qualify as a justifier for purposes of weak internalism. Unfortunately, this sort of belief-set is precisely what certain types of internalist theories require by way of a justifier. Consider holistic coherentism, which says that a proposition p is justified for person S at time t if and only if p coheres with S's entire corpus of beliefs at t (including, of course, the stored beliefs). A cognitive agent could ascertain, at t, whether/? coheres with her entire corpus only by concurrently retrieving all of her stored beliefs. But such concurrent retrieval is psychologically impossible.23 Thus, the critically relevant justificational fact under holistic coherentism does not meet even the indirect knowability constraint, much less the direct knowability constraint. Here is a clash, then, between a standard internalist theory of justification and the knowability rationale under scrutiny. Either that rationale is indefensible, or a familiar type of internalism must be abandoned at the outset. Nor is the problem confined to coherentism. Internalist foundationalism might also require concurrent retrieval of more basic (or low-level) beliefs than is psychologically feasible to retrieve. IV. Logical and Probabilistic Relations As these last examples remind us, every traditional form of internalism involves some appeal to logical relations, probabilistic relations, or their ilk. Foundationalism re-

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quires that nonbasically justified beliefs stand in suitable logical or probabilistic relations to basic beliefs; coherentism requires that one's system of beliefs be logically consistent, probabilistically coherent, or the like. None of these logical or probabilistic relations is itself a mental state, either a conscious state or a stored state. So these relations do not qualify as justifiers according to either SI or WI. The point may be illustrated more concretely within a foundationalist perspective. Suppose that Jones possesses a set of basic beliefs at t whose contents logically or probabilistically support proposition p. This property of Jones's basic beliefs, the property of supporting proposition p, is not a justifier under WI, for the property itself is neither a conscious nor a stored mental state. Nor is the possession of this property by these mental states another mental state. So WI has no way of authorizing or permitting Jones to believe/>. Unless WI is liberalized, no nonbasic belief will be justified, which would again threaten a serious form of skepticism. Can this problem be remedied by simply adding the proviso that all properties of conscious or stored mental states also qualify as justifiers?24 This proviso is unacceptably permissive for internalism. One property of many conscious and stored mental states is the property of being caused by a reliable process, yet surely internalism cannot admit this archetypically externalist type of property into the class of justifiers. How should the class of properties be restricted? An obvious suggestion is to include only formal properties of mental states, that is, logical and mathematical properties of their contents. But should all formal properties be admitted? This approach would fly in the face of the knowability or accessibility constraint, which is the guiding theme of internalism. Only formal properties that are knowable by the agent at the time of doxastic decision should be countenanced as legitimate justifiers under internalism. Such properties, however, cannot be detected by introspection and/ or memory retrieval. So some knowing operations suitable for formal properties must be added, yielding a liberalized version of the KJ constraint. How should a liberalized KJ constraint be designed? The natural move is to add some selected computational operations or algorithms, procedures that would enable an agent to ascertain whether a targeted proposition p has appropriate logical or probabilistic relations to the contents of other belief states he is in. Precisely which computational operations are admissible? Again, problems arise. The first is the problem of the doxastic decision interval. The traditional idea behind internalism is that an agent is justified in believing p at time t if the evidential beliefs (and perhaps other, nondoxastic states) possessed at t have an appropriate logical or probabilistic relation to p. In short, justification is conferred simultaneously with evidence possession. Feldman makes this explicit: "For any person S and proposition p and time t, S epistemically ought to believe p at t if and only if p is supported by the evidence S has at t."25 Once the knowability constraint is introduced, however, simultaneous justification looks problematic. If justification is contingent on the agent's ability to know what justifiers obtain, the agent should not be permitted to believe a proposition p at t unless she can know by t whether the relevant justifiers obtain. Since it necessarily takes some time to compute logical or probabilistic relations, the simultaneity model of justification needs to be revised so that an agent's mental states at t only justify her in believing p at t + e, for some suitable e. The value of e cannot be too large, of course, lest the agent's mental states

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change so as to affect the justificational status of p. But emust be large enough to allow the agent time to determine the relevant formal relations. These two conditions—(1) avoid mental change but (2) allow enough time to compute formal relations—may well be jointly unsatisfiable, which would pose a severe problem for internalism. Mental states, including perceptual states that generate new evidence, change very rapidly, and they could easily change before required computations could be executed. On the other hand, although mental states do change rapidly, the agent's belief system might not be epistemically required to reflect or respond to each change until interval e has elapsed. Some doxastic decision interval, then, might be feasible. Is there a short-enough decision interval during which justificationally pertinent formal properties can be computed? Coherentism says that S is justified in believing proposition p only iip coheres with the rest of S' s belief system held at the time. Assume that coherence implies logical consistency. Then coherentism requires that the logical consistency or inconsistency of any proposition p with S's belief system must qualify as a justifier. But how quickly can consistency or inconsistency be ascertained by mental computation? As Christopher Cherniak points out, determination of even tautological consistency is a computationally complex task in the general case.26 Using the truthtable method to check for the consistency of a belief system with 138 independent atomic propositions, even an ideal computer working at "top speed" (checking each row of a truth table in the time it takes a light ray to traverse the diameter of a proton) would take 20 billion years, the estimated time from the "big-bang" dawn of the universe to the present. Presumably, 20 billion years is not an acceptable doxastic decision interval! Any reasonable interval, then, is too constraining for garden-variety coherentism. The knowability constraint again clashes with one of the stock brands of internalism.27 Dyed-in-the-wool internalists might be prepared to live with this result. "So much the worse for traditional coherentism," they might say, "we can live with its demise." But this does not get internalism entirely off the hook. There threaten to be many logical and probabilistic facts that do not qualify as justifiers because they require too long a doxastic interval to compute. Furthermore, it is unclear what is a principled basis for deciding what is too long. This quandary confronting internalism has apparently escaped its proponents' attention. A second problem for logical and probabilistic justifiers is the availability problem. Suppose that a particular set of computational operations—call it "COMP"—is provisionally selected for inclusion alongside introspection and memory retrieval. COMP might include, for example, a restricted (and hence noneffective) use of the truth-table method, restricted so as to keep its use within the chosen doxastic decision interval.28 This yields a new version of the KJ constraint: KJjnt+ret+coMP The only facts that qualify as justifiers of an agent's believing p at time t are facts that the agent can readily know within a suitable doxastic decision interval via introspection, memory retrieval, and/or COMP. Now the KJ constraint is presumably intended to apply not only to the cleverest or best trained epistemic agents but to all epistemic agents, including the most naive

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and uneducated persons on the street. After all, the point of the knowability constraint is that justifiers should be facts within the purview of every epistemic agent. Under the GD conception, compliance with epistemic duty or responsibility is not intended to be the private preserve of the logical or mathematical elite. It is something that ought to be attained—and should therefore be attainable—by any human agent. The truth-table method, however, does not seem to be in the intellectual repertoire of naive agents, so it is illegitimate to include COMP operations within a KJ constraint. Unlike introspection and memory retrieval, it is not available to all cognitive agents. It may be replied that computational operations of the contemplated sort would be within the capacity of normal human agents. No superhuman computational powers are required. Computing power, however, is not the issue. A relevant sequence of operations must also be available in the agent's intellectual repertoire; that is, she must know which operations are appropriate to obtain an answer to the relevant (formal) question.29 Since truth-table methods and other such algorithms are probably not in the repertoire of ordinary cognitive agents, they cannot properly be included in a KJ constraint. A third problem concerns the proper methodology that should be used in selecting a KJ constraint that incorporates computational operations. As we see from the first two problems, a KJ constraint that conforms to the spirit of the GD rationale must reflect the basic cognitive skills or repertoires of actual human beings. What these basic repertoires consist in, however, cannot be determined a priori. It can only be determined with the help of empirical science. This fact fundamentally undermines the methodological posture of internalism, a subject to which I shall return in section VII. Until now I have assumed a universal accessibility constraint, one that holds for all cognitive agents. But perhaps potential justifiers for one agent need not be potential justifiers for another. Justifiers might be allowed to vary from agent to agent, depending on what is knowable by the particular agent. If two agents have different logical or probabilistic skills, then some properties that do not qualify as justifiers for one might yet qualify as justifiers for the other. Indeed, the constraint KJint+ret+COMP might be read in precisely this agent-relativized way. The subscripts may be interpreted as indicating knowledge routes that are available to the agent in question, not necessarily to all agents. If KJ constraints are agent relativized as a function of differences in knowledge skills, this means that two people in precisely the same evidential state (in terms of perceptual situation, background beliefs, etc.) might have different epistemic entitlements. But if the two agents are to comply with their respective epistemic duties, each must know which knowledge skills she has. This simply parallels the second step of the internalist's original three-step argument. If one's epistemic duties or entitlements depend on one's knowledge skills (e.g., on one's computational skills), then compliance with one's duties requires knowledge of which skills one possesses. There are two problems with this approach. First, it is unlikely that many people— especially ordinary people on the street—have this sort of knowledge, and this again threatens large-scale skepticism. Second, what is now required to be known by the agent is something about the truth-getting power of her cognitive skills—that is, the

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power of her skills in detecting justifiers. This seems to be precisely the sort of external property that internalists regard as anathema. How can they accept this solution while remaining faithful to the spirit of internalism?30

V. Epistemic Principles When the KJ constraint speaks of justifiers, it is not clear exactly what these comprehend. Specifically, do justifiers include epistemic principles themselves? I believe that principles should be included, because epistemic principles are among the items that determine whether an agent is justified in believing a proposition, which is just how "justifiers" was defined. Furthermore, true epistemic principles are items an agent must know if she is going to determine her epistemic duties correctly. Knowledge of her current states of mind and their properties will not instruct her about her epistemic duties and entitlements unless she also knows true epistemic principles. How are epistemic principles to be known, according to internalism? Chisholm says that central epistemic principles are normative supervenience principles, which (when true) are necessarily true.31 Since they are necessary truths, they can be known a priori, in particular, they can be known "by reflection." The internalist assumes that, merely by reflecting upon his own conscious state, he can formulate a set of epistemic principles that will enable him to find out, with respect to any possible belief he has, whether he is justified in having that belief.32 This passage is ambiguous as to whether (correct) epistemic principles are accessible on reflection just to epistemologists or are accessible to naive epistemic agents as well. The latter, however, must be required by internalism, because justifiers are supposed to be determinable by all epistemic agents. Are ordinary or naive agents really capable of formulating and recognizing correct epistemic principles? This seems highly dubious. Even many career-long epistemologists have failed to articulate and appreciate correct epistemic principles. Since different epistemologists offer disparate and mutually conflicting candidates for epistemic principles, at most, a fraction of these epistemologists can be right. Perhaps none of the principles thus far tendered by epistemologists is correct! In light of this shaky and possibly dismal record by professional epistemologists, how can we expect ordinary people, who are entirely ignorant of epistemology and its multiple pitfalls, to succeed at this task?33 Nor is it plausible that they should succeed at this task purely "by reflection" on their conscious states, since among the matters that epistemic principles must resolve is what computational skills are within the competence of ordinary cognizers. I do not see how this can be answered a priori, "by reflection." A crippling problem emerges for internalism. If epistemic principles are not knowable by all naive agents, no such principles can qualify as justifiers under the KJ constraint. If no epistemic principles so qualify, no proposition can be justifiably believed by any agent. Wholesale skepticism follows.

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VI. The Core Dilemma for the Three-Step Argument In this section, I raise doubts about whether there is any cogent inferential route from the GD conception to internalism via an acceptable KJ constraint. Here is the core dilemma. The minimal, unvarnished version of the KJ constraint does not rationalize internalism. That simple constraint merely says that justifiers must be readily knowable, and some readily knowable facts might be external rather than internal. If all routes to knowledge of justifiers are allowed, then knowledge by perception must be allowed. If knowledge by perception is allowed, then facts of an external sort could qualify for the status of justifiers. Of course, no epistemologist claims that purely external facts should serve as justifiers. But partly external facts are nominated by externalists for the rank of justifiers. Consider properties of the form: being a reliable perceptual indicator of a certain environmental fact. This sort of property is at least partly external because reliability involves truth, and truth (on the usual assumption) is external. Now suppose that a certain auditory perceptual state has the property of being a reliable indicator of the presence of a mourning dove in one's environment. Might the possession of this reliable indicatorship property qualify as a justifer on the grounds that it is indeed readily knowable? If every route to knowledge is legitimate, I do not see how this possibility can be excluded. After all, one could use past perceptions of mourning doves and their songs to determine that the designated auditory state is a reliable indicator of a mourning dove's presence. So if unrestricted knowledge is allowed, the (partly) external fact in question might be perfectly knowable. Thus, the unvarnished version of the KJ constraint does not exclude external facts from the ranks of the justifiers. The simple version of the KJ constraint, then, does not support internalism. Tacit recognition of this is what undoubtedly leads internalists to favor a "direct" knowability constraint. Unfortunately, this extra rider is not rationalized by the GD conception. The GD conception at best implies that cognitive agents must know what justifiers are present or absent. No particular types of knowledge, or paths to knowledge, are intimated. So the GD conception cannot rationalize a restrictive version of the KJ constraint that unambiguously yields internalism. Let me put the point another way. The GD conception implies that justifiers must be readily knowable, but are internal facts always more readily knowable than external facts? As discussed earlier, probabilistic relations presumably qualify as internal, but they do not seem to be readily knowable by human beings. An entire tradition of psychological research on "biases and heuristics" suggests that naive agents commonly commit probabilistic fallacies such as the "conjunction fallacy" and use formally incorrect judgmental heuristics, for example, the representativeness heuristic and the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic.34 If this is right, people's abilities at detecting probabilistic relationships are actually rather weak. People's perceptual capacities to detect external facts seem, by contrast, far superior. The unqualified version of the KJ constraint, therefore, holds little promise for restricting all justifiers to internal conditions in preference to external conditions, as internalism requires.35

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VII. The Methodology of Epistemology: Empirical or a Priori? Internalism standardly incorporates the doctrine that epistemology is a purely a priori or armchair enterprise rather than one that needs help from empirical science. Chisholm puts the point this way: The episteraic principles that [the epistemologist] formulates are principles that one may come upon and apply merely by sitting in one's armchair, so to speak, and without calling for any outside assistance. In a word, one need only consider one's own state of mind.36

Previous sections already raised doubts about the merits of apriorism in epistemology, even in the context of the theoretical architecture presented here. In this final section, I want to challenge the viability of apriorism in greater depth. Assume that, despite my earlier reservations, an internalist restriction on justifiers has somehow been derived, one that allows only conscious states and certain of their nonexternal properties to serve as justifiers. How should the epistemologist identify particular conscious states and properties as justifers for specific propositions (or types of propositions)? In other words, how should specific epistemic principles be crafted? Should the task be executed purely a priori, or can scientific psychology help? For concreteness, consider justifiers for memory beliefs. Suppose an adult consciously remembers seeing, as a teenager, a certain matinee idol. This ostensible memory could have arisen from imagination, since he frequently fantasized about this matinee idol and imagined seeing her in person. What clues are present in the current memory impression by which he can tell whether or not the recollection is veridical? This is precisely the kind of issue that internalist epistemic principles should address. If there are no differences in features of memory states that stem from perceptions of real occurrences versus features of states that stem from mere imagination, doesn't this raise a specter of skepticism over the domain of memory? If there are no indications by which to distinguish veridical from nonveridical memory impressions, can we be justified in trusting our memory impressions? Skepticism aside, epistemologists should surely be interested in identifying the features of conscious memory impressions by which people are made more or less justified (orprima facie justified) in believing things about the past. Epistemologists have said very little on this subject. Their discussions tend to be exhausted by characterizations of memory impressions as "vivid" or "nonvivid." There is, I suspect, a straightforward reason for the paucity of detail. It is extremely difficult, using purely armchair methods, to dissect the microfeatures of memory experiences so as to identify telltale differences between trustworthy and questionable memories. On the other hand, empirical methods have produced some interesting findings, which might properly be infused into epistemic principles in a way entirely congenial to internalism. Important research in this area has been done by Marcia Johnson and her colleagues.371 shall illustrate my points by brief reference to their research. Johnson calls the subject of some of her research "reality monitoring." She tries to characterize the detectable differences between (conscious) memory traces derived from

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veridical perception of events versus memory traces generated by mere imaginations of events.38 Johnson and Raye (1981) propose four dimensions along which memory cues will typically differ depending on whether their origin was perceptual or imaginative. Compared with memories that originate from imagination, memories originating from perception tend to have (1) more perceptual information (e.g., color and sound), (2) more contextual information about time and place, and (3) more meaningful detail. When a memory trace is rich along these three dimensions, this is evidence of its having originated through perception. Memories originating from imagination or thought, by contrast, tend to be rich on another dimension: They contain more information about the cognitive operations involved in the original thinkings or imaginings (e.g., effortful attention, image creation, or search). Perception is more automatic than imagination, so a memory trace that originates from perception will tend to lack attributes concerning effortful operations. Johnson and Raye therefore suggest that differences in average value along these types of dimensions can form the basis for deciding whether the origin of a memory is perceptual or nonperceptual. A memory with a great deal of visual and spatial detail and without records of intentional constructive and organizational processes should be judged to have been perceptually derived.39 Epistemologists would be well advised to borrow these sorts of ideas and incorporate them into their epistemic principles. A person is (prima facie) justified in believing in the real occurrence of an ostensibly recalled event if the memory trace is strong on the first three dimensions and weak on the fourth dimension. Conversely, an agent is unjustified in believing in the real occurrence of the recalled event if the memory trace is strong on the fourth dimension but weak on the first three dimensions. All of these dimensions, of course, concern features of conscious experience. For this reason, internalist epistemologists should be happy to incorporate these kinds of features into their epistemic principles. Let me distinguish two categories of epistemologically significant facts about memory experience that empirical psychology might provide. First, as we have seen, it might identify types of representational materials that are generally available in people's memory experiences. Second, it might indicate which of these representational materials are either reliable or counterreliable indicators of the veridicality of the ostensibly recalled events. Is the reliability of a memory cue a legitimate issue from an internalist perspective? It might be thought not, since reliability is usually classed as an external property. However, epistemologists might use reliability considerations to decide which memory characteristics should be featured in epistemic principles. They need not insert reliability per se into the principles. There is nothing in our present formulation of internalism, at any rate, that bars the latter approach. Any KJ constraint provides only a necessary condition for being a justifier; it leaves open the possibility that additional necessary conditions, such as reliable indication, must also be met. Indeed, many internalists do use reliability as a (partial) basis for their choice of justifiers. BonJour (1985, 7) says that the basic role of justification is that of a means to truth, and he defends coherence as a justifier on the ground that a coherent system of beliefs is likely to correspond to reality. This point need not be settled definitively, however. There are already adequate grounds for claiming that internalism cannot be optimally pursued without help from empirical psychology, whether or not reliability is a relevant consideration.

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VIII. Conclusion Let us review the parade of problems infecting internalism that we have witnessed, though not in their order of presentation. (1) The argument from the GD conception of justification to internalism does not work. Internalism can only be derived from a suitably qualified version of the KJ constraint because the unqualified version threatens to allow external facts to count as justifiers. No suitably qualified version of the KJ constraint is derivable from the GD conception. (2) A variety of qualified KJ constraints are possible, each leading to a different version of internalism. None of these versions is intuitively acceptable. Strong internalism, which restricts justifiers to conscious states, is stuck with the problem of stored beliefs. Weak internalism, which allows stored as well as conscious beliefs to count as justifiers, faces the problem of forgotten evidence and the problem of concurrent retrieval. (3) The question of how logical and probabilistic facts are to be included in the class of justifiers is plagued by puzzles, especially the puzzle of the doxastic decision interval and the issue of availability. (4) Epistemic principles must be among the class of justifiers, but such principles fail internalism's knowability requirement. (5) The favored methodology of internalism—the armchair method—cannot be sustained, even if we grant the assumption that justifiers must be conscious states. Internalism is rife with problems. Are they all traceable to the GD rationale? Could internalism be salvaged by switching to a different rationale? A different rationale might help, but most of the problems raised here arise from the knowability constraint. It is unclear exactly which knowability constraint should be associated with internalism, and all of the available candidates generate problematic theories. So I see no hope for internalism; it does not survive the glare of the spotlight.40 Notes 1. Prominent statements of externalism include D. M. Armstrong, Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Fred Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981); Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986); Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); and Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 2. Major statements of internalism include Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989); Richard Foley, The Theory of Epistemic Rationality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990); and John Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986). In addition to relatively pure versions of externalism and internalism, there are also mixtures of the two approaches, as found in William Alston, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Robert Audi, The Structure of Justification (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Ernest Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 3. Alvin Plantinga also traces internalism to the deontological conception: "If we go back to the source of the internalist tradition, . . . we can see that internalism arises out of deontology; a deontological conception of warrant. . . leads directly to internalism." Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 24-25. William Alston (Epistemic Justification, 236) proposes a slightly different rationale for internalism,

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although his rationale also proceeds via the knowability constraint. Alston suggests that the concept of justification derives from the interpersonal practice of criticizing one another's beliefs and asking for their credentials. A person can appropriately respond to other people's demands for credentials only if he knows what those credentials are. So it is quite understandable, says Alston, that justifiers must meet the requirement of being accessible to the agent. Clearly, this is one way to derive the accessibility constraint without appeal to the deontological conception. But Alston is the only one I know of who advances this ground for the accessibility constraint. In any case, most of the problems I shall identify pertain to the accessibility constraint itself, which Alston's rationale shares with the deontological rationale. 4. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, vol. II, A. C. Fraser, ed. (New York: Dover, 1959), 413. 5. BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge', Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge', Feldman, "Epistemic Obligations," in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. II, J. Tomberlin, ed. (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1988); Ginet, Knowledge, Perception, and Memory (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1975); Moser, Empirical Justification (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1985); Steup, "The Deontic Conception of Epistemic Justification," Philosophical Studies 53 (1988): 65-84. 6. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1977), 14; emphasis added. 7. For example, R. Eugene Bales distinguishes between two possible aims of act-utilitarianism: as a specifier of a right-making characteristic or as a decision-making procedure. See "ActUtilitarianism: Account of Right-Making Characteristics or Decision-Making Procedure," American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971): 257-65. He defends utilitarianism against certain critics by saying that it does not have to perform the latter function. 8. See "Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology," reprinted in Alston, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 189. 9. Some internalists explicitly reject externalism on the grounds that it cannot be used as a decision guide. For example, Pollock says: "fl]t is in principle impossible for us to actually employ externalist norms. I take this to be a conclusive refutation of belief externalism" (Contemporary Theories, 134). Pollock would not subscribe to the full argument for internalism I am discussing, however, because it is committed to the "intellectualist model" of epistemology, which he disparages. 10. For the distinction between reliability and power (phrased slightly differently), see Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, chap. 6. 11. Jack Lyons points out that to comply with one's epistemic duty it suffices to know that one has (undefeated) j ustifiers for proposition p; one does not have to know which justifiers these are. So the argument is not entitled to conclude that knowledge of particular justifiers is required by epistemic duty. Practically speaking, however, it is difficult to see how a cognitive agent could know that relevant justifiers exist without knowing which particular ones exist. So I shall pass over this objection to the internalist line of argument. 12. See "The Deontological Conception of Justification," reprinted in Alston, Epistemic Justification. 13. Feldman, "Epistemic Obligations"; Heil, "Doxastic Agency," Philosophical Studies 40 (1983): 355-64. 14. Feldman's response, however, undercuts the step from the GD conception of justification to the knowability constraint. If epistemic duty does not require that the agent be able to discharge this duty, there is no longer a rationale for the knowability constraint. A different line of response to the voluntarism worry is taken by Lehrer, who suggests that epistemological analysis should focus not on belief but on acceptance, where acceptance is some sort of action that is subject to the will. See Lehrer, "A Self-Profile," in Keith Lehrer, R. Bogdan, ed. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, 1981). 15. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed., 7; emphasis added and original emphasis deleted. 16. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed., 59-60.

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17. Other epistemologists who restrict justifiers to conscious states or discuss access in terms of introspection include Moser, Empirical Justification, 174; Feldman, "Having Evidence," in Philosophical Analysis, D. Austin, ed. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1988); and Robert Audi, "Causalist Internalism," American Philosophical Quarterly 26, no. 4 (1989): 309-20. 18. Feldman, "Having Evidence," 98-99. 19. Feldman might reply that there is an important distinction between memorial and perceptual dispositions; but it isn't clear on what basis a principled distinction can be drawn. 20. This sort of problem is discussed by Gilbert Harman, Change in View (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986); Thomas Senor, "Internalist Foundationalism and the Justification of Memory Belief," Synthese 94 (1993): 453-76; and Robert Audi, "Memorial Justification," Philosophical Topics 23 (1995): 31-45. 21. Steup's proposal occurred in a commentary on an earlier version of this paper, presented at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 25, 1997. 22. Obviously one would need to reject the principle that the knowability of fact A and the knowability of fact B entail the knowability of the conjunctive fact, A & B. 23. The "doxastic presumption" invoked by BonJour (The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, 101-106) seems to assume that this is possible, but this is simply an undefended assumption. Pollock (Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 136) also raises the problem identified here, though in slightly different terms. 24. More precisely, the contemplated proviso should say that the possession of any property by a mental state (or set of mental states) qualifies as a justifier. This reading will be understood wherever the text talks loosely of "properties." 25. Feldman, "Epistemic Obligations," 254. 26. "Computational Complexity and the Universal Acceptance of Logic," The Journal of Philosophy, 81, no. 12 (1984): 739-58. 27. This computational difficulty for coherentism is identified by Hilary Kornblith, "The Unattainability of Coherence," in The Current State of the Coherence Theory, J. Bender, ed. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1989). 28. Because of the contemplated restriction, there will be many questions about formal facts to which COMP cannot deliver answers. Thus, formal facts that might otherwise qualify as justifiers will not so qualify under the version of the KJ constraint that incorporates COMP. 29. Propositional (or "declarative") knowledge of the appropriate sequence of operations is, perhaps, an unduly restrictive requirement. It would suffice for the agent to have "procedural" skills of the right sort. But even such skills will be lacking in naive cognitive agents. 30. It might be argued that internalism's spirit leads to a similar requirement even for universal versions of a KJ constraint, not just for agent-relativized versions. Perhaps so; but so much the worse for the general form of internalism. 31. Chisholm, "The Status of Epistemic Principles," Nous 24 (1990): 209-15. 32. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed., 76; emphasis omitted. 33. A similar worry is expressed by Alston in "Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology," 221-22. 34. See Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," in Judgment under Uncertainty, D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Extensional versus Intuitive Reasoning: The Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgment," Psychological Review 91 (1983): 293-315. 35. It is not really clear, moreover, why logical or probabilistic facts intuitively count as "internal" facts. They certainly are not internal in the same sense in which mental states are internal. This is an additional problem about the contours of internalism. 36. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed., 76. 37. See Marcia Johnson and Carol Raye, "Reality Monitoring," Psychological Review 88 (1981): 67-85; and Marcia Johnson, Mary Foley, Aurora Suengas, and Carol Raye, "Phe-

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nomenal Characteristics of Memories for Perceived and Imagined Autobiographical Events," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 117 (1988): 371-76. 38. Memory errors are not confined, of course, to confusions of actual with imagined events. There are also errors that arise from confusing, or blending, two actual events. But this research of Johnson's focuses on the actual/nonactual (or perceived versus imagined) problem. 39. They also recognize that people can compare a target memory with memories of contextually related events to assess the target's veridicality. This kind of "coherence" factor is a stock-in-trade of epistemology, however, and hence not a good example of the distinctive contributions psychology can make to this subject. I therefore pass over it. 40. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pittsburgh, Penn. April 25, 1997. My commentator on that occasion was Matthias Steup, and I am much indebted to him for valuable correspondence on this topic. I am also grateful to Tim Bayne and Holly Smith for very useful suggestions.

8

Epistemic Duty, Evidence, and Internality MATTHIAS STEUP

In his essay, "Internalism Exposed" (essay 7), Alvin Goldman has issued a tough challenge to those who think of themselves as internalists.1 I think of myself as an internalist, and thus I attempt in this essay to rebut what I take to be the most important of Goldman's objections.2 In the first section, I explain what I take to be the proper epistemological context in which the issue over the internality of justification arises. In the second section, I state what I take to be the rationale that supports internalism. In the remaining sections, I will discuss Goldman's objections. Internalism, Externalism, and the Conditions of Knowledge What turns true belief into knowledge? Let us say that what accomplishes this is epistemization. According to externalists, epistemization is accomplished by one single property.3 Some externalists refer to it as "justification," others as "warrant."4 Since what epistemizes would have to "degettier" true belief, it cannot be the internal property internalists have in mind when they talk about justification. For the sort of thing that degettierizes true belief is certainly not internal to the subject in the way internalists require justifiers to be internal.5 It is thus only to be expected that what externalists call "justification" or "warrant" is not the same thing as that which internalists call "justification." Internalists do not think that there is one single property that turns true belief into knowledge. Rather, they think that it is two distinct things that accomplish the epistemization of true belief: internal justification and degettierization. Both are necessary conditions of knowledge. Since I favor a deontological and evidentialist understanding 134

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of justification, the reason why I take justification to be a necessary condition of knowledge is that, as it seems to me, you do not know that/? unless you are in possession of evidence that makes it epistemically responsible of you to believe that p. But, of course, I do not take belief that is true and justified in this way to be sufficient for knowledge. Rather, justified true belief amounts to knowledge only if it meets the fourth condition of knowledge, that is, if it is degettiered. Internalists need not deny the epistemological significance of reliability. Since reliability is an external matter, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for internal justification. But this is not to say that reliability is not necessary for knowledge. And in fact, although I cannot argue the point here, I am inclined to think that it is.

Giving Internalists What They Want The internalism/externalism debate is about the things that determine whether a belief is justified. I will follow Goldman in referring to these things as "justifiers."6 Internalists insist that justifiers must be internal, and that, consequently, an external thing such as the reliability of a cognitive process cannot be a justifier. Why, however, do internalists think that justifiers must be internal? According to Goldman, the standard rationale in support of internalism goes as follows (see p. 115). First, internalists take epistemic justification to be a deontological concept.7 I will refer to this first step as "deontology." Deontology S is justified in believing that p at £ if and only if it is epistemically responsible of (or permissible for) S to believe that p at t. Second, internalists derive from deontology what we may call the accessibility constraint: If something is to play the role of a justifier, it must be readily accessible to the subject. Third, from the accessibility constraint, they derive the conclusion that justifiers are internal in such a way that reliability is precluded from entering the club of justifiers. Goldman argues that this rationale does not work, for internalists face the following dilemma. What deontology rationalizes is the accessibility constraint. But this constraint does not give internalists what they want: the kind of internality that is strong enough to preclude an external factor, such as the property of being produced by a reliable cognitive process, from playing the role of a justifier (the first horn). So they need a more stringent constraint. However, epistemic deontology does not rationalize a more-stringent constraint (the second horn). Hence internalism is left without a justifying rationale (p. 127). I agree with Goldman's claim that, if the rationale for internalism moves from deontology to internality via the accessibility constraint, it does not give internalists what they want. The accessibility constraint does not preclude reliable belief production from functioning as a justifier. However, I do think that deontology supplies internalists with the desired result if the rationale for internalism proceeds from deontology to internality via evidentialism, the view that only items in a person's evi-

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dence can play the role of justifiers. 8 1 will get back to this point at the end of this section. Next, I will address the following two questions. First, why is the accessibility constraint not strong enough to give internalists what they want? Second, how do we get from evidentialism to internality and from deontology to evidentialism? Given deontology as a starting point, we must think of justifiers as things that make it epistemically responsible of a person to believe a proposition. If we do so, then, as Goldman points out, justifiers are subject to the accessibility constraint. This is so, roughly, because what is not accessible to me cannot be the sort of thing that makes me responsible (or, depending on the situation, irresponsible) in believing something. However, if we consider carefully what the accessibility constraint, if properly put, tells us, it looks initially as though it does give internalists what they want. The Accessibility Constraint If S is justified in believing thatp at t, then S has at t cognitive access to the justifier (justifiers) that justifies (justify) S's belief. Consider basic, unrefined reliabilism: Reliabilism S is justified in believing that p if and only if S' s belief that p is produced by a reliable cognitive process. The accessibility constraint is inconsistent with reliabilism thus defined. Recall BonJour's Norman, who is endowed with the reliable faculty of clairvoyance.9 This is something Norman has no way of knowing. Suppose Norman believes that p at t, and his belief is produced by his faculty of clairvoyance. According to reliabilism, Norman's belief is justified because it is produced by a reliable cognitive process. Its being produced by a reliable cognitive process is a justifier for it. However, if we endorse the accessibility constraint, then we cannot consider Norman's clairvoyance, despite the fact that it is reliable, a justifier for his belief, for its reliability is not, as we have stipulated, at t cognitively accessible to him. It would appear, therefore, that the accessibility constraint does give internalists what they want: a conception of internality that precludes the property of being produced by a reliable process from being a justifier.10 However, we must distinguish between two different questions here. One question is: Is reliabilism correct? Another question is: Can a reliable cognitive process play the role of a justifier? Suppose we answer the second question thus: It can play the role of a justifier at t if the reliability of the process is accessible to me at t. You can reject reliabilism as defined above and still answer the second question in the way I just indicated. In fact, you can accept the accessibility constraint and still give that answer. To see why, consider the following example. Suppose Norman has been a reliable clairvoyant for a while. He has a positive track record, which is something he could easily access through memory retrieval. Suppose further Norman believes that/7 at t, and his belief is produced by his faculty of clairvoyance. In this case, the accessibility constraint is met. So if we define internality in terms of the accessibility

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constraint, a reliable cognitive process, provided its reliability is at the relevant time accessible, is permitted into the club of justifiers. Should internalists be bothered by this outcome? It seems to me that internalists who are evidentialists should be. For what they should say about the case we just considered is this: What justifies Norman's belief is not that his belief has the property of being produced by a reliable cognitive process; rather, what justifies it is the evidence Norman has for believing that his belief was produced by such a process. So, since I identify internalism with evidentialism, I agree with Goldman. The accessibility constraint does not give internalists what they want. However, if we replace the rationale for internalism that Goldman has identified with the alternative one I have proposed, internalists do get a constraint that precludes the property of being produced by a reliable cognitive process from being a justifier even if it is accessible. For, according to evidentialism, if something is to function as a justifier— that is, if it is a thing that can make it epistemically responsible of a person to believe that/?—then it must be an item in a person's evidence. A person's evidence consists of her evidential states: mental states that have their source in sense experience, introspection, memory, and (broadly) logical intuition." Evidentialism, then, imposes what we might call the evidential states constraint: Only evidential states can play the role of justifiers. Reliability—accessible or not—is not an evidential state and thus does not, if we impose the evidential states constraint, qualify as a justifier. So if internalists define internality in terms of the evidential states constraint, they secure the desired notion of internality. From Deontology to Evidentialism But can evidentialism (as I have construed it here) be derived from deontology? It seems to me it can. The derivation is a complex one, and an adequate account and defense of it would go beyond the confines of this essay. I will therefore merely outline how it would go. It involves three arguments. The first is an ingredient of BonJour's well-known counterexamples to reliabilism.12 If some item x is to make it epistemically responsible of a person S to believe that p, then x must be in S 's cognitive possession. The second argument would have to establish that there is one and only one way in which x can come into S's cognitive possession: S must be in an evidential state that constitutes evidence for x and thus enables x to justify S in believing that/7. The job of the third argument would be to show that, if this condition is met, then x is either an evidential state itself or a mere fifth wheel: an item that plays no role as a justifier for S's belief that p since all the needed justificatory work is be done by S's evidence for x. It will be instructive to apply this line of reasoning to the view we considered above, the view that a reliable cognitive process is a justifier for a belief at t, provided its reliability is accessible at t. Suppose Norman believes that/?. Suppose further his belief is produced by a reliable process whose reliability is accessible to Norman because he has an R-meter: a device that, if its electrodes are affixed to Norman's skull, will tell him whether his belief was reliably produced. However, Norman has not yet consulted his R-meter and thus is not in any evidential state that supplies him with a

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reason to ascribe reliability to the process in question. Is he, in the deontological sense, justified in believing that pi It would seem he is not. He would first have to get an R-meter reading into his cognitive possession. If he gets such a reading into his cognitive possession, he will then be in a requisite evidential state. He will then have acquired evidence for ascribing reliability to the process in question, and his belief will be justified. But at that point the reliability of the process does not do any justificatory work for Norman's belief. What justifies Norman's belief is his evidence for ascribing reliability to the process. Indeed, this evidence would justify his belief even if the process were in fact not reliable.13 Let me sum up. My starting point is deontology. Deontology mandates (along the lines indicated in the previous two paragraphs) that justifiers be evidential states and thus leads to evidentialism. Evidentialism, however, is full-fledged internalism, for it does not allow for reliability (accessible or not) to play the role of a justifier. This conclusion does not undermine the epistemic significance of reliability, but rather shifts it into the context of degettierization instead of justification. Before proceeding, I will clarify one further point. Evidentialism as I conceive of it is construed by giving it a twist that is taken from the externalist textbook. According to reliabilist externalism, reliable belief production is sufficient for justified belief. No further conditions need be met. Likewise, according to evidentialism, having (undefeated) evidence for p is sufficient for being justified in believing that p. No further conditions must be met. It might be objected that, actually, further conditions do have to be met. How can a subject meet her duty without knowing what her duty is? And how can a subject know what her duty is without knowing what determines her duty? My reply to this objection is that we must distinguish—in both ethics and epistemology—between meeting one's duty, and knowing oneself to meet one's duty. Knowing that one meets one's duty might require knowing what one's duty is and what it is that determines one's duty. However, for the bare fact of duty fulfillment, such knowledge is not necessary.14 For example, somebody who tells the truth in a certain situation meets her duty to tell the truth in that situation even if she does not know that she ought to tell the truth in that situation and what sort of thing determines whether a person ought to tell the truth. However, it is not without plausibility to argue that, if one is to know that one ought to tell the truth in a given situation, one must know what sort of thing determines whether one ought to tell the truth in a given situation. Likewise, somebody whose belief that p is supported by undefeated evidence is justified in believing thatp even if she does not know that she is justified in believing thatp, and what it is that determines a person's epistemic duty. However, if she is to know that in a given situation she is justified in believing that/?, then, so we might plausibly claim, she needs to know what sort of thing determines what a person's epistemic duty is.15 My point, then, is that we must distinguish between the conditions of first-order and second-order justification. First-order justification, even if deontologically construed, is easier to come by than second-order justification is. For a subject to be justified in believing that p, she need not believe that she has undefeated evidence for p. Nor must she form a belief about what justifiers justify her belief that p, let alone a belief about what logical or probabilistic support relations obtain between these justifiers and her belief that p. Nor need she have any concurrent beliefs in

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epistemic principles. Meeting some of the conditions I just mentioned might be necessary for the recognition of justification, for justifiably believing oneself to be justified in believing that/?. But there is no reason why deontologists need to consider them necessary for first-order justification. As we will see, this point will play a large role in the subsequent discussion. Forgotten Evidence Goldman begins his exposure of internalism by objecting to the sort of internalism that results from restricting justifiers to conscious states. He argues that strong internalism cannot handle what he calls stored beliefs: beliefs about one's birth date, social security number, or telephone number. For almost any of such beliefs, according to Goldman, "one's conscious state at the time includes nothing that justifies it" (p. 119). But why should internalists restrict justifiers to conscious states? Goldman anticipates that at least some internalists would not want to endorse such a severe restriction and thus considers what he calls "weak internalism," which restricts justifiers to conscious and/or stored mental states (see p. 121). Weak internalism is roughly equivalent to evidentialism as I understand it. An evidentialist solution to the problem of stored beliefs would go thus. Your telephone number is something you remember. When you consider your own telephone number, you can experience a certain phenomenological quality, a quality that is missing when you consider a telephone number that isn't yours. Let us call what you experience when you consider your own telephone number, as opposed to someone else's number, a memorial seeming: You clearly seem to remember that the number is yours.16 This memorial seeming qualifies as an evidential state; it is evidence you have for taking your belief to be true. According to evidentialism (or weak internalism), then, stored beliefs are justified by evidential states that have their source in memory. Goldman argues, however, that weak internalism is still too restrictive. To make his point stick—the point that some beliefs are justified by things other than one's evidential states and thus are not internally justified—he construes a case for which he claims the appeal to retrievable memorial states does not work. This is how he describes the case. Last year Sally read about the health benefits of broccoli in a New York Times sciencesection story. She then justifiably formed a belief in broccoli's beneficial effects. She still retains this belief but no longer recalls her original evidential source (and has never encountered either corroborating or undermining sources). Nonetheless, her broccoli belief is still justified, and, if true, qualifies as a case of knowledge, (p. 121)

In this case, Sally has forgotten where she picked up the information that broccoli is healthy, and thus it appears as though there is nothing in her present evidence that justifies her belief. And if that were true, this would certainly be bad news for the kind of evidentialism that I am advocating. As one would expect, the evidentialist will reply that there is in Sally's present evidence an item that justifies her belief: a memorial seeming. She clearly seems to remember that broccoli is healthy. Add to this the justified background belief that

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what she clearly remembers is usually true, and we have what looks like a pretty good justification for the belief in question. Goldman argues, however, that the kind of justification the internalist can in this way secure is not the kind of justification we need to find. What we need to find is the kind of justification that can supply Sally with knowledge. What the internalist can come up with falls short of this. For the purpose of illustration, let us consider the following example, which is a somewhat embellished version of the modified Sally case Goldman describes (p. 121). Sally is an epistemically responsible person, and thus, while she tends to accept what she reads in the science section of the New York Times, she would not believe anything printed in the National Inquirer, at least not without further corroboration. If she were at all to lay eyes on this publication, it would be merely for the purpose of amusing herself. However, it was indeed in the National Inquirer where she read that eating broccoli is healthy. Normally she would not have formed this belief without further corroboration, but on this particular occasion an unusual and atypical accident occurred: she did form the belief that broccoli is healthy solely because she read it in the National Inquirer. She retains this belief, but she does not subsequently remember from where she got it.

As far as this variation of the case is concerned, Goldman seems prepared to agree that Sally's belief enjoys internal justification. For the point of this case is not that her belief is internally unjustified, but rather that the justification her belief enjoys is not the kind of justification that is epistemologically significant: the kind of justification that can turn true belief into knowledge.17 For clearly, Sally does not know that broccoli is healthy given that she got this information from the National Inquirer. Goldman's point, then, is that whatever internal justification Sally's belief might enjoy is not epistemizing; it is not the sort of justification that can turn a true belief into knowledge. In reply to this argument, I claim indeed that Sally's belief is internally justified, and that the justification it enjoys is epistemologically significant because it is necessary for knowledge. But, and this is the main point, I reject the suggestion that saying this commits me to the verdict that Sally's belief amounts to knowledge.18 It does not although it is justified and (let us suppose) true. Sally's belief, then, is a justified true belief that is not knowledge, which is to say that Sally's belief is the sort of belief that figures in Gettier cases. Consider a well-known Gettier case. Henry is in an area in which what to the unsuspecting observer appear to be barns are merely barn facades.[9 But this is something Henry does not know. He happens to look at the only real barn in this region, and so believes not only justifiably but also truly that there is a barn over there. Does he know that there is a barn over there? Clearly he does not. The reason for denying him knowledge is that the truth of his belief is, in a way that is not easy to pin down, just an accident. Compare the barn case with the second broccoli case. Sally's belief is, as we are supposing, true and also justified because (i) she has a strong memorial seeming that broccoli is healthy, and (ii) she has the justified background belief that what she clearly seems to remember is usually true. Yet her belief does not amount to knowledge because its truth is, in a way that is not easy to pin down, just an accident.

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Recall that internalists, as I already mentioned in the first section, consider internal justification to be a necessary condition of knowledge but not sufficient to epistemize true belief. The sort of thing that turns true belief into knowledge is internal justification plus degettierization. The latter, however, is an external matter and cannot be built into a conception of justification that is evidentialist and deontological. My reply to Goldman's objection, then, is that the second broccoli case does not refute the claim that internal justification is necessary for knowledge. What it does refute is the claim that internal justification is sufficient for turning true belief into knowledge. But this is a claim I do not think internalists should make. Logical and Probabilistic Relations What Goldman refers to as "weak internalism" restricts justifiers to conscious and/ or stored mental states. With regard to logical and probabilistic relations, this constraint has the same effect as the evidential states constraint: It precludes such relations from playing the role of justifiers. This, according to Goldman, has an undesirable consequence. To explain what the problem is, Goldman considers internalist foundationalism. Suppose Jones' s belief that p is justified by his belief that q, where the latter is a basic belief. Let us further suppose that q functions as a justifier for p by virtue of a logical relation R that obtains between p and q. Since R is not an evidential state, it does not qualify as a justifier. Consequently, so Goldman argues, weak internalism (WI) "has no way of authorizing or permitting Jones to believe/?. Unless WI is liberalized, no nonbasic belief will be justified, which would again threaten a serious form of skepticism" (p. 123). Is the sort of internalism that results from imposing the evidential states constraint threatened by skepticism in the way Goldman suggests? Let us examine this question using entailment as an example. Suppose p entails q, Jones sees that this entailment obtains, justifiably believes that p, and justifiably believes that q. The question is whether the kind of internalism I have construed can issue authorization for Jones' s belief that q. Goldman would say that it cannot because it does not count the entailment relation as a justifier. Given that it does not, how can evidentialist internalism authorize Jones's justified belief that ql Here is how. There are two justifiers that justify Jones's belief that q: (i) his belief that p, and (ii) his state of seeing that p entails q. According to evidentialism, these two justifiers suffice to justify Jones in believing that q. No further justifier is necessary. It is not the case, therefore, that evidentialist internalism is faced with embarrassment because it cannot explain what justifies us in believing propositions that are entailed by other propositions.20 It might be objected that Jones would not be justified in believing that q if p did not in fact entail q (for, as we may suppose, if/? did not entail q, it would not support q in any other way). The entailment relation between p and q, then, is necessary for the justification of Jones's belief that q. It is, therefore, a justifier for it. However, it is erroneous to think that anything that is necessary for justification is a justifier. For

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example, for Jones to be justified in believing that q, Jones must understand that q. But surely Jones's understanding of q is not a justifier for his belief that q.21 Parallel reasoning applies to Goldman's example regarding foundationalist internalism. The justifier for Jones's nonbasic belief is his basic belief. The latter is a justifier for the former because a suitable support relation obtains between the two beliefs. There is no need, however, to count the support relation itself as a justifier. If Jones were to become justified in believing that his nonbasic belief is justified, then it might be that he would have to grasp thatp supports q. But, in that case, what generates second-order justification would be his grasp of the support relation, not the support relation itself. There is no need, then, for evidentialists to count logical and probabilistic relations as justifiers. As far as first-order justification is concerned, S's belief that p suffices, provided a suitable support relation obtains between p and q, to justify S in believing that q. And as far as second-order justification is concerned, it is not logical and probabilistic relations themselves, but rather justified belief in, or the grasp of, such relations that play the role of justifiers. The Epistemic Decision Interval Suppose you sit on a bench in a park and notice a dog on the lawn before you. You ask yourself: In believing that there is a dog over there, am I meeting my epistemic duty? According to Goldman, if internalism is to enable ordinary subjects to meet their epistemic duty, it must incorporate suitable procedures for identifying justifiers and checking whether they support the target belief (p. 123f). I will follow Goldman's terminology and let COMP be a candidate for such a procedure. What Goldman worries about is the problem of the epistemic interval. To ensure that you can answer your question, the application of COMP must deliver a result in a timely fashion. Suppose the dog is there for three minutes, but the application of COMP delivers a result only after two hours. In the meantime, the dog went elsewhere, you ceased to believe in its presence, and long gone is the opportunity to check on your epistemic performance while you were having the belief the justification of which you meant to ascertain. What is the significance of this problem? It poses, according to Goldman, first of all a problem for holistic coherentism, for checking on one's entire belief system might take an awfully long time (see p. 124).22 But then, not all internalists are coherentists. However, Goldman argues that those who are not also need to worry about the interval problem for the following reason: "There threaten to be many logical and probabilistic facts that do not qualify as justifiers because they require too long a doxastic interval to compute. Furthermore, it is unclear what is a principled basis for deciding what is too long" (p. 124). The length of the epistemic decision interval and the availability of procedures to recognize logical and probabilistic support relations strike me as interesting problems. I do not see, however, that they pose a threat to internalism as I have construed it. I think it is indeed a necessary condition of a beliefs justification that it stand in a suitable logical or probabilistic support relation to its evidence. However, such a relation

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is not an evidential state itself and thus cannot play the role of a justifier. Hence a subject's failure, or even inability, to ascertain such facts does not have the consequence of leaving her without the justifiers she needs if her beliefs are to be justified. Moreover, as I have already indicated, I do not think it is a necessary condition of justified belief—even if construed deontologically—that the subject form a raetabelief about what justifiers justify her belief. What is necessary is merely that there be suitable justifiers, that is, that the subject be in the requisite evidential states. Consequently, as far as first-order justification is concerned, it does not matter whether we can recognize justifiers in a timely fashion. This matters only as far as second-order justification is concerned. If I cannot recognize what justifies me in believing that/? as long as I am believing that p, then it is not possible for me to form the justified metabelief that I am now justified in believing that p. I could then determine only later that when I believed that p I was justified in believing that p. Now, I am inclined to accept that it may on occasion be quite difficult to ascertain whether what we believe about a certain subject matter is justified. On such occasions, it may be that we can determine only ex post facto that our belief was justified (or unjustified). Why, however, suppose that the possibility of such situations is a problem for internalism? The Availability Problem It would seem that Goldman saddles internalism with a view about justification that I reject; that to have justified beliefs, subjects must form beliefs about where the justification for their beliefs comes from. On the assumption that this view is indeed an ingredient of internalism, a problem arises with regard to the cognitive processes through which agents can recognize which justifiers justify their beliefs. Let us assume the internalist suggest that COMP is the cognitive process through which justifiers and justificatory relations can be recognized. If so, the internalist constraint I have proposed reads thus: Justifiers must be evidential states of which the subject can become aware through COMP. Such a constraint, Goldman writes, "is presumably intended to apply not only to the cleverest or best-trained agents but to all epistemic agents, including the most naive and uneducated persons on the street" (p. 124f). I agree with Goldman that the constraint that defines internality should be an equitable constraint; it should apply to all subjects equally. However, as Goldman points out, equal opportunity to having justified beliefs is threatened by the qualification that the cognitive accessibility of the justifiers must be guaranteed by COMP. What about those agents who are not sophisticated enough to master COMP? It would seem they will be unable to acquire knowledge of justifiers and thus will be left without the resources to meet their epistemic duty. The main problem with this argument is the premise on which it rests: that according to internalism, for S to be justified in believing that p (to meet her epistemic duty with regard to p), S must form a concurrent belief about which justifiers justify her in believing that p—a belief that would have to be the result of using COMP or some other procedure. Once again, my reply is that internalism should not be saddled with any such condition. Certainly a deontological-evidentialist construal of internalism does not require imposing it.

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As mentioned before, I am not unsympathetic to the alternative premise that, to recognize that one is justified in believing that/?, one must recognize which justifiers justify one in believing that p. The problem Goldman has raised, then, concerns the procedures through which agents can come to recognize second-order justification. With regard to this problem, my reply is that I see no reason why internalists should feel obliged to constrain the procedures through which agents can become aware of the logical relations between the justifiers and justifiees in their belief systems. Why place restrictions on these procedures? It is not necessary that a given justifier be such that everybody (or n-number of other people) can recognize it. Rather, what is necessary is merely that, if I am justified in taking myself to be justified in believing that p, then there is some procedure available to me through which I can recognize the justifiers that justify me in believing that p. Goldman refers to this move as agent-relativization and objects to it on the ground that it implies the following consequence: "Two people in precisely the same evidential state might have different epistemic entitlements" (p. 125). From the evidentialist point of view, this scenario cannot arise. If the two subjects are in typeidentical evidential states, they will not differ in their ability to recognize logical and probabilistic relations. If they so differ, then they will not be in type-identical evidential states. Furthermore, as far as their ability to recognize justifiers is concerned, we must distinguish between first-order and second-order evidential states. If they are in type-identical first-order evidential states, their epistemic entitlements will be the same at the first level but might differ at the second. The second subject might recognize justifiers that the first subject cannot recognize. If so, then even if the two subjects are in type-identical first-order evidential states, the second subject will at the second level have entitlements that the first subject does not have. For Goldman's objection to stick, however, it would have to be possible for two agents, while being in type-identical evidential states at a given level, to have different epistemic entitlements at that level. This, however, is not possible. At least, Goldman has not established the possibility of it. I conclude, therefore, that if we wish to make second-order justification available to all agents, then agent-relativization is the right move. Epistemic Principles According to Goldman, one reason why internalism is burdened with skeptical consequences is that we must include epistemic principles among the set of justifiers. However, ordinary agents cannot know what the correct epistemic principles are. (Not even professional epistemologists have succeeded in the task of identifying them.) Let us call this claim the "bleak diagnosis." If the bleak diagnosis is true, then ordinary agents cannot know which beliefs are licensed by the correct epistemic principles, which means that they cannot have justified beliefs. Goldman concludes: "Wholesale skepticism follows" (p. 126). It seems to me that there are three problems with this argument. First, it imposes a condition on first-order justification that is too stringent. Second, there are good reasons to reject the premise that epistemic principles are justifiers. Third, the bleak

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diagnosis is actually quite doubtful. Let me begin with the first problem. Goldman's argument rests on the following implicit premise: (P) If S is justified in believing that p at t, then S knows a relevant epistemic principle that permits her to believe that p at t. There is no reason why internalists, even if they endorse deontology, should accept (P). As I mentioned before, to meet one's duty, one needs to know neither what one's duty is nor what determines one's duty. (P) might be correct if its antecedent were about second-order justification. But in that case, supposing the bleak diagnosis is correct, we would merely get the conclusion that ordinary agents could not know which of their beliefs are justified. This would certainly not be wholesale skepticism, though it would in my opinion be an unfortunate outcome. The second problem concerns the status of epistemic principles. Are they justifiers? Goldman thinks they are, for two reasons. The first is that justifiers are the "determiners" of justification, and epistemic principles are among the things that determine justification (see p. 126). I find this reason unconvincing. Epistemic principles "determine" justification only in the sense that they tell us which conditions are sufficient— or necessary—to justify beliefs. Clearly, however, that doesn't mean that these principles themselves are among the things that justify beliefs. Consider an example of an epistemic principle: If S has undefeated sensory evidence for p, then S is justified in believing that p. This principle tells us that sensory evidence for p is a justifier and succeeds in justifying the belief that p if it is undefeated. But surely this principle itself does not function as a justifier for beliefs that are justified by undefeated sensory evidence. And this point, it seems to me, applies to all epistemic principles: They tell us what sorts of things justify beliefs, but they do not themselves play the role of justifiers. Consider moral principles. Are moral principles the sort of thing that makes acts right or wrong? I think not. Let us call the things that make acts right "right-making" characteristics. The correct moral principles tell us what the right-making characteristics are. But that doesn't mean that they themselves are right-making characteristics. Similarly, we can conceive of justifiers as justification-conferring characteristics. The correct epistemic principles tell us what these characteristics are. But they themselves are not such characteristics. Goldman's second reason is the following: "True epistemic principles are items an agent must know if she is going to determine her epistemic duties correctly. Knowledge of her current states of mind and their properties will not instruct her about her epistemic duties .. . unless she also knows true epistemic principles" (p. 126). However, what follows from this premise is merely that knowledge of epistemic principles is a justifier. It does not follow from it that epistemic principles themselves are justifiers. Third, let us consider Goldman's bleak diagnosis. I am not convinced that it is true. Compare the situation with regard to moral principles. There is vast disagreement among professional ethicists on which moral principles are correct. Yet who would want to conclude from this that ordinary agents cannot tell their moral duty or that they do not know basic moral principles? It could, of course, be that epistemology and ethics are different in this respect, but I would argue that they are not. It seems to me that ordinary people can grasp, and typically do grasp, basic epistemic

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principles such as that one should base one's beliefs on one's evidence, and that one should not believe what one's evidence undermines. Common Ground Reading the literature on the internalism/externalism debate gives rise to the impression that internalists and externalists are engaged in a fundamental, irreconcilable controversy. I'd like to conclude this paper by putting this controversy in a more benevolent perspective. As already mentioned in the first section, although I favor internalism about justification and Goldman rejects it, I agree with Goldman about the epistemological relevance of reliability and the importance of a belief's causal history. However, whereas he subsumes these issues under the heading of justification, I prefer to think of them as belonging into the context of degettierization: of capturing the fourth condition of knowledge. I also agree with Goldman that internalist justification does not epistemize. Of course, with regard to such justification, we also disagree. I take it to be necessary for knowledge; Goldman (I suppose) does not. But how deep does this disagreement go? Perhaps we are simply engaged in different projects. Goldman, it seems to me, wants to analyze a concept of knowledge that extends to both humans and animals. I do not. I think that there is a difference between the kind of knowledge we attribute to the mouse who knows where the cheese is and the kind of knowledge we ordinarily attribute to humans. What I take to be the difference is this: Unlike animals, humans can come to know that they know. This is not to say that humans never know in the way animals know. When they acquire knowledge on the basis of reliable cognitive processes the reliability of which they cannot detect, then for the sake of consistency we must attribute to them the same kind of knowledge we attribute to animals. But when humans acquire knowledge through processes that they can recognize as reliable (i.e., when they acquire knowledge that they can recognize as knowledge), then they enjoy a higher kind of knowledge, a kind of knowledge that animals cannot acquire.23 This kind of knowledge—the kind one has only if one is in a position to know that one knows—is what I am concerned with. It seems to me, however, that what is required for knowing that one knows that p at t is to have in one's cognitive possession at / evidence for p. And, as I have argued, evidence that is in one's cognitive possession consists of evidential states. What I claim, then, is that internal justification is necessary, not for knowledge in the broad sense in which externalists understand this concept, but only for knowledge in the narrow sense that I just explained. Further discussion will show whether Goldman thinks that these considerations narrow the gulf between internalism and externalism.24 Notes 1. See The Journal of Philosophy, 96, no. 6 (June 1999): 739-58, reprinted in this volume, pp. 115-133. (Page numbers in parentheses refer to this volume.) 2. I will discuss most of Goldman's objections, but within the confines of this essay, I cannot address the arguments in section VII of his essay, which concern the methodology of epistemology.

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3. It could be objected that at least according to some versions of externalism, what epistemizes true belief are two things: justification (or perhaps warrant), and degettierization. But this move makes it hard to understand why justification (or warrant) should be necessary in the first place. Moreover, if justification (or warrant) is taken to be external, why not build degettierization right into it by adding a suitable clause? It seems to me, therefore, that externalism is best construed as a theory according to which what turns true belief into knowledge is one single thing, and thus as a theory according to which knowledge has three necessary conditions. 4. In Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), Goldman refers to this property as "justifiedness." Plantinga refers to it as "warrant." See Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 5. See my "In Defense of Internalism," in The Theory of Knowledge. Classical and Contemporary Readings, L. Pojman, ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1999). 6. I do so somewhat reluctantly. In addition to justifiers, there are things that diminish or even destroy a belief s justification. Internalists take these to be internal as well. However, as long as this point is kept in mind, use of the term "justifier" should be unproblematic. 7. I do not think that epistemology should offer guidance to its practitioners, nor, for that matter, to anybody else. It is a theoretical discipline concerned with questions such as, What is knowledge? and What is justified true belief? According to Goldman, however, "only if the guidance conception is incorporated can the argument proceed along the intended lines to the accessibility constraint, and from there to internalism." (See 273f.) Unfortunately, Goldman does not explain what he takes to be the argument in support of this claim. Moreover, I think it is unclear to begin with what exactly the guidance-aspect adds to epistemic deontology as it is usually understood. In any case, an appeal to a guidance role of epistemology plays no role in the way I derive evidentialism—and thus internalism— from deontology. 8. For a defense of evidentialism, see E. Conee and R. Feldman, "Evidentialism," Philosophical Studies 48 (1985). 9. See Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 41. 10. The title of this section should not be misunderstood. Internalists do not start out with the desire to prevent the property of being produced by a reliable cognitive process from being a justifier and then doctor their view accordingly. Rather, they start out with an intuitive understanding of justification, an understanding that, on the basis of many intuitive cases, disqualifies reliable belief production from playing the role of a justifier. But then the question arises of precisely what aspect of justification has this effect. The answer would appear to be: its internality. Thus the litmus test for any account of internality is this: Does it yield the intended result of implying that reliability does not qualify as a justifier? For effective counterexamples to reliabilism that motivate an internalist understanding of justification, see L. BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge; C. Ginet, "Contra Reliabilism," The Monist 68 (1985) 175-87, and K. Lehrer, Knowledge (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990). 11. This account of evidence applies to ordinary human beings. Idiot savants and Alpha Centaurians might possess additional cognitive faculties, and thus be able to base their beliefs on evidential states not available to ordinary humans. 12. See BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, chap. 3. 13. Bear in mind that this argument rests on the starting point of thinking of justification deontologically. It does not bear plausibility if we expect justification to epistemize. 14. However, it seems to me that the possibility of such knowledge is required for duty fulfillment. Beings who are cognitively not equipped to understand, and come to know, that they have duties—such as nonhuman animals—cannot have duties. 15.1 am saying that second-order justification might require these further conditions because I actually doubt that it does. According to Chisholm, being justified in believing that one is justified in believing that p requires no more than considering the evidence one has in support of p. If this is correct, then second-order justification is not so hard to come by. See

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R. Chisholm, "Knowing That One Knows," in The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 50-58. 16. For a recent defense of the view that we can think of justifiers as seemings, see William Tollhurst, "Seemings," American Philosophical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1998), 293-302. 17. Actually, Goldman is somewhat cautious here. He identifies the relevant kind of justification as the kind of justification that "carries a true belief a good distance toward knowledge." (281) But if this is taken literally, what is the relevance of pointing out that Sally doesn't know that broccoli is healthy? 18. In "Internalism Exposed," Goldman discusses a different reply of mine to the problem of forgotten evidence. This reply, however, was directed against a different kind of case, a case that, as I now think, is not the sort of case Goldman has in mind. 19. See A. Goldman, "Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge," The Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 771-91. 20. I'm indebted to Michael Bergman for an objection that prompted me to change this argument from the way I made it in a previous version of this essay. 21. If this doesn't strike you as obvious, consider what is implied by taking understanding of p to be a justifier for believing that p. What is implied is that you are justified (at least to a certain degree) in believing every proposition you understand, supposing that you do not have a defeater for it. This certainly strikes me as an unacceptable consequence. 22. It seems to me, though, coherentists can reply to this objection along the lines I am suggesting. Why should a coherentist accept the premise that, to enjoy first-order justification for believing that/?, S needs to identify the totality of justifiers that justify her belief that /?? Of course, if according to coherentism a grasp of one's entire belief system were necessary for the recognition of justification, coherentism would make second-order justification rather hard to come by. 23. Ernest Sosa also employs a distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, but his way of drawing the distinction differs from mine. See "Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles," The Journal of Philosophy 94. 8 (Aug. 1997), 410-30, reprinted in this volume, pp. 187-203. 24. Ancestors of this paper were presented at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 1997, in Pittsburgh (as a commentary on an earlier version of Goldman's paper "Internalism Exposed)," and at the 1999 Epistemology conference in Bled, Slovenia. I am indebted to Alvin Goldman for helpful e-mail correspondence on these issues and to the participants in the Bled conference for valuable discussion.

Part IV JUSTIFICATION AND TRUTH

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Truth as the Epistemic Goal MARIAN DAVID

Epistemologists of all persuasions tend to invoke the goal of obtaining truth and avoiding error. This goal seems to be of special importance to epistemology. No other goal is invoked as frequently as this one. No other goal is given as much weight or is treated with as much respect as this one. Here I want to explore some aspects of this theme: the theme of truth as an epistemic goal. In particular, I am interested in what role invocation of the truth-goal plays in epistemology and in the prospects for the idea that truth is the only epistemic goal.

I I trust the reader will already have a fairly good sense of how popular the goal of truth is among epistemologists. Still, I want to provide some passages that indicate to what purpose the truth-goal is usually invoked. William Alston and Laurence BonJour have been especially explicit on this: [Epistemic justification] has to do with a specifically epistemic dimension of evaluation. Beliefs can be evaluated in different ways. One may be more or less prudent, fortunate, or faithful in holding a certain belief. Epistemic justification is different from all that. Epistemic evaluation is undertaken from what we might call "the epistemic point of view." That point of view is defined by the aim at maximizing truth and minimizing falsity in a large body of beliefs. . . . For a belief to be justified is for it, somehow, to be awarded high marks relative to that aim. . . . Any concept of epistemic justification is a concept of some condition that is desirable or commendable from the standpoint of the aim at maximizing truth and minimizing falsity . . . (Alston 1985, 83-84)

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What makes us cognitive beings at all is our capacity for belief, and the goal of our distinctively cognitive endeavors is truth: We want our beliefs to correctly and accurately depict the world.. . . The basic role of justification is that of a means to truth, a more directly attainable mediating link between our subjective starting point and our objective goal. . . . If epistemic justification were not conducive to truth in this way, if finding epistemically justified beliefs did not substantially increase the likelihood of finding true ones, then epistemic justification would be irrelevant to our main cognitive goal and of dubious worth. . . . The distinguishing characteristic of epistemic justification is thus its essential or internal relation to the cognitive goal of truth. It follows that one's cognitive endeavors are justified only if and to the extent that they are aimed at this goal, which means very roughly that one accepts all and only those beliefs that one has good reason to think are true. (BonJour 1985, 7-8)

Descartes sums up his Fourth Meditation with the claim that attending to what he understands clearly and distinctly will allow him "to avoid ever going wrong" and "to arrive at the truth." Chisholm says, at one point, that believing what is justified and not believing what is not justified is the most reasonable thing to do "if I want to believe what is true and not to believe what is false." Paul Moser characterizes epistemic justification as "essentially related to the so-called cognitive goal of truth, insofar as an individual belief is epistemically justified only if it is appropriately directed toward the goal of truth." Richard Foley identifies the goal "of now believing those propositions that are true and now not believing those propositions that are false" as a "purely epistemic goal." Keith Lehrer, who holds that accepting something for the purpose of attaining truth and avoiding error is a requisite to knowledge, maintains that "a concern for truth and nothing but the truth drives the engine of justification." Talking about our desire for truth acquisition, Alvin Goldman says that "true belief is a prime determinant of intellectual value, and in particular, a critical value for justifiedness." Ernest Sosa, who holds that knowledge requires true belief arising from intellectual virtue, characterizes an intellectual virtue as "a quality bound to help maximize one's surplus of truth over error"; he assumes "a Ideological conception of intellectual virtue, the relevant end being a proper relation to the truth." Finally, Alvin Plantinga holds that positive epistemic status (warrant) is conferred "by one's cognitive faculties working properly, or working according to the design plan insofar that segment of the design plan is aimed at producing true beliefs."1 These passages come from advocates of various approaches to epistemology— foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, virtue epistemology, and proper-function epistemology are all represented. No doubt there are significant difference in emphasis and detail. But our theme is clearly discernible in all of them. Truth is either explicitly referred to as a goal or aim, or it is implicitly treated as such. Moreover, it is noteworthy that most of our authors invoke the truth-goal in connection with the epistemic concept that is central to their account of knowledge: justification, clear and distinct understanding, intellectual virtue, and warrant.2 II

Let us characterize the truth-goal, somewhat loosely, as the goal of believing truths and not believing falsehoods. Using '/?' as an objectual variable ranging over propo-

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sitions, we can abbreviate this, again somewhat loosely, as the goal of believing p if and only ifp is true. Note that the goal has two parts, a positive part (believing truths) and a negative part (not believing falsehoods). The label "truth-goal" is less than ideal because it deemphasizes the negative part; nevertheless, I will use it for the sake of convenience.3 The truth-goal has just been characterized in terms of belief. This is worth emphasizing because most ordinary formulations expressing a desire for truth are in fact ambiguous. Consider "I want the truth and nothing but the truth" and "I want to obtain truth and avoid error." Although their negative parts clearly refer to not having false beliefs, their positive parts can be interpreted as saying, "I want to believe the truth" or as saying "I want to know the truth"—the latter may even be the more natural interpretation. Commonplaces like "the search for truth" and "the pursuit of truth" are afflicted with the same ambiguity. In general, any undifferentiated "desire for truth" could refer to a desire for mere true belief or to a desire for true belief that is knowledge. So we should be careful to distinguish the truth-goal from a moreinclusive knowledge-goal, which might be characterized like this: It is the goal of knowing truths and not believing falsehoods. (Note that this goal differs from the truth-goal only with respect to its positive part. A negative knowledge-goal would be uninteresting; it would be the goal of not knowing falsehoods, which is trivially satisfied.) When contemporary epistemologists refer to truth as a goal or aim, they usually make it quite clear that they are referring to the truth-goal rather than to the knowledge-goal. As far as I can tell, this unambiguous preference for the truth-goal over the knowledge-goal is a relatively recent phenomenon. Earlier epistemologists, including Descartes, tended to be systematically ambiguous on this matter.4 The contemporary emphasis on the truth-goal raises a simple question: What about the goal of having knowledge? Isn't epistemology the theory of knowledge? Given this, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that the knowledge-goal be at least as prominent in epistemology as is the goal of having true belief, maybe even more prominent? Yet, the knowledge-goal is hardly ever brought up in epistemology nowadays. Unlike invocations of the truth-goal, invocations of knowledge as a goal are pretty much absent from contemporary epistemological theorizing. Isn't this a bit puzzling? I think the answer, in a nutshell, is this: Invocation of the truth-goal serves primarily a theoretical need, a need that arises from the overall structure of epistemology. The knowledge-goal would not serve this need. As far as epistemology is concerned, the knowledge-goal is theoretically impotent. Knowledge, the epistemic concept par excellence, is usually defined in terms of belief, truth, and some other epistemic concept, say, justification: S knows p iff p is true, S believes p, and S is justified in believing p in a manner that meets a suitable anti-Gettier condition.5 Belief and truth, although fundamental to epistemology, are not themselves epistemic concepts. They are the nonepistemic ingredients in knowledge. This means that epistemology is not responsible for them; that is, as far as epistemology is concerned, belief and truth are given and can be invoked to account for epistemic concepts. The distinctly epistemic ingredient in knowledge is justification: the concept of S's being justified in believing p (or alternatively, the concept of a belief's being justified for S). Epistemology is certainly responsible for this concept. Indeed, once an account of knowledge is at hand, the task of epistemology

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pretty much reduces to the task of giving a theory of justification. Eventually, such a theory should do two things: (1) It should give some account of the nature of justification, of what it is for a belief to be justified; and (2) it should offer principles of justification, principles that specify the conditions under which beliefs of one sort or another are justified. Such a theory may to some extent relate justification to other epistemic concepts. However, it is usually held that, at some point, the theory of justification has to "break out of the circle" of epistemic concepts and provide a nonepistemic "anchor" for justification by connecting it in some significant manner with nonepistemic concepts. It is not hard to see how the truth-goal fits into this picture. It promises to provide a connection between the concept of justification and the concept of true belief, tying together the different ingredients of knowledge. Most of the passages quoted earlier seem designed to do just that; they invoke the truth-goal as a way of connecting justification (or some other epistemic concept that plays a similar role in the author's preferred account of knowledge) to the nonepistemic concept of truth. Why is truth typically cast as a goal when this connection is made? Alston provides the reason. It is generally agreed that being justified is an evaluative concept of some sort: To say that believing p is justified or unjustified is to evaluate believing p, in some sense, as a good thing or as bad thing, as having some positive status or some negative status. The suggestion is that this type of evaluation, epistemic evaluation, is most naturally understood along broadly teleological lines, as evaluating beliefs relative to the standard, or goal, of believing truth and avoiding error. This may not be a huge step toward a theory of justification—the very schematic idea of a belief's being a "good" thing "relative" to the truth-goal has to be filled in—still, it may be an important step. Although knowledge is certainly no less desirable than true belief, the knowledgegoal is at a disadvantage here because it does not fit into this picture in any helpful manner. Invoking the knowledge-goal would insert the concept of knowledge right into the specification of the goal, which would then no longer provide an independent anchor for understanding epistemic concepts. In particular, any attempt to understand justification relative to the knowledge-goal would invert the explanatory direction and would make the whole approach circular and entirely unilluminating. After all, knowledge was supposed to be explained in terms of justification and not the other way round. This does not mean that it is wrong in general to talk of knowledge as a goal, nor does it mean that epistemologists do not desire to have knowledge. However, it does mean that it is bad epistemology to invoke the knowledgegoal as part of the theory of knowledge because it is quite useless for theoretical purposes: The knowledge-goal has no theoretical role to play within the theory of knowledge. It is tempting to describe the resulting picture of epistemology by drawing an analogy to ethics. Epistemology treats justified belief somewhat like ethics treats right action: Holding a justified belief is like holding a belief in the right kind of way. Truth is treated in analogy to the good—truth is, as it were, the good as far as epistemology is concerned. Note that knowledge does not show up as a goal here at all. Knowledge is just the state of having reached the truth-goal in the right kind of way. This picture presents the truth-goal as the epistemic goal, meaning that, for the purposes

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of epistemological theorizing, the truth-goal is to be treated as an ultimate goal and as the only ultimate goal. Justification is to be explained somehow by relating it to the truth goal; hence, it is not an ultimate epistemic goal. Knowledge is not a goal at all as far as epistemology is concerned; it is not an epistemic goal.6 This picture, the picture of truth as the epistemic goal, reflects the intuition that epistemic concerns are, at the bottom, all about truth. Whether it is a good picture of epistemology would seem to depend in large part on whether the truth-goal can really play the part assigned to it. Ill

Do we have the truth-goal? Do we desire to believe truths and not to believe falsehoods? A worry that might arise here is that we desire knowledge rather than mere true belief. In response, one can point out that the truth-goal is contained in the knowledge-goal and that having the truth-goal in this sense is sufficient for the theoretical purposes for which the truth-goal is needed in epistemology.7 Another worry might be that we do not usually desire truth for its own sake; rather, we usually desire it because we think that having true beliefs will increase our chances of satisfying our other desires. This seems plausible enough. However, the view that truth is the epistemic goal does not say that we desire truth for its own sake. It says that any further goals for the sake of which we might desire truth must fall outside the domain of epistemology. Such further goals will be practical goals or ethical goals—goals that do not contribute anything of theoretical relevance to epistemology as such. But there is a more serious worry. Consider again the goal-oriented approach to justification, that is, the idea, roughly expressed in (G) below, that the concept of justification is to be understood as involving an evaluation of beliefs relative to the truth-goal. Is this approach committed to the desire-thesis (D)? (G) S's being justified/unjustified in believing p somehow amounts to S's believing p being a good/bad thing relative to the truth-goal; (D) S cannot be justified/unjustified in believing anything at any time, unless S desires believing truths and not believing falsehoods at that time.8 Note first, if the relevant desire is construed as a conscious desire, (D) is obviously absurd. Although most of us probably do have conscious desires for truth at some times (much like we sometimes have conscious desires for ripe bananas) such desires come and go. Yet, our beliefs are surely justified/unjustified even at times when we are not conscious of any desire for truth. So the relevant desire has to be a standing desire, one that we have even when we are not aware of it, maybe a subconscious desire. Taken this way, (D) is not obviously absurd. But it is still worrisome. The claim that all of "us" (all those capable of having knowledge) have such a standing desire for truth appears to be a somewhat daring empirical claim about human psychology—a claim not well supported by empirical evidence. Relevant evidence may become available some day. When scientists finally decode magnetic resonance

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images from peoples' brains, will they find that everyone has I WANT TRUTH; I DON'T WANT FALSEHOOD in their "desire box"? Or is the desire for truth supposed to be an "implicit" desire? What would be evidence for the claim that everyone has such an implicit desire? Moreover, it seems there could in principle be a person who never had a standing or even an implicit desire for truth (or who lost it for a time). Wouldn't the beliefs of such a person (at that time) still be justified/unjustified? By my lights, the answer to this is yes. I think we can at least agree to this: If the goal-oriented approach to justification, (G), is committed to the desire-thesis, (D), then the picture of truth as the epistemic goal is in a certain amount of trouble. Can the approach get by without committing itself to this thesis? One option here is to hold that we ought to have truth as a goal, that we ought to desire having true beliefs, or maybe better, that we ought to aim at having true beliefs; and just as a person's actions can be morally right or wrong relative to a good she ought to desire or aim at, even if she does not actually desire it, so a person's believings can be epistemically good or bad relative to a goal she ought to have, even if she does not actually have it.9 Of course, something will have to be said about the sense in which we ought to have it as a goal to have true beliefs. This could be taken as a moral "ought" or as a pragmatic "ought." It might be tempting to take it as a rational "ought." But one has to stay away from the claim that we ought to desire having true beliefs because it is rational, or reasonable, to believe that having true beliefs will help secure our other goals. These concepts of rational belief and reasonable belief appear to be epistemic concepts. But the truth-goal is supposed to help anchor epistemic concepts in nonepistemic concepts, so epistemic concepts should not be allowed to enter into the very claims that are supposed to do the anchoring. If we did construe the "ought" in terms of reasonability, then (G) would boil down to: S's being justified in believing/? somehow amounts to S's believing p being a good thing relative to its being reasonable for S to believe that having true beliefs will help secure S's desires. A similar problem arises when it is said that we have the goal of having true beliefs qua rational beings or qua intellectual beings. Given the present context, "rational" and "intellectual" must not be spelled out in epistemic terms. An alternative option is to hold that having true beliefs and lacking false beliefs is simply good, ethically good.10 Being justified can then be said to be a good thing relative to the truth-goal in the sense that it is a good thing relative to the good of having true beliefs, which again allows for the possibility that we have justified beliefs even though we might not desire this good. A rather more low-key proposal is that having true beliefs is a goal for all of us in the subjunctive sense that we all would desire having true beliefs were we to reflect carefully on such matters. This is again an empirical, or quasiempirical, claim, and one might wonder whether it gets our psychology right. There are some influential versions of the goal-oriented approach that do take (G) to be committed to the thesis that we have to have the truth-goal in order to be justified, but only in the very extended sense that our cognitive faculties or virtues must be aimed at the truth. On Plantinga's (1988) view, for example, justification (he prefers "warrant") is a good thing relative to the state of having true beliefs in the sense that a belief's being justified is a matter of its being produced by faculties that are aimed at the truth, that is, are designed to provide us with true beliefs, and are functioning properly, that is, functioning in the way they were designed to function (in

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the environment for which they were designed). Since our faculties do not have desires, the difficulties arising from (D) never come up here. However, the view has to address the intuition that our beliefs could be justified (warranted), even if the relevant faculties were not designed to aim at the truth. Moreover, if evolution designed our belief-forming faculties, then it is unlikely that they were designed to provide us with true beliefs. It is more likely that they were designed to provide our genes with instruments for successful reproduction; and our having false beliefs may often serve our genes' purposes just as well as our having true beliefs. If one believes that our faculties were designed by God, one might still worry that they were designed to let us cope with our environment rather than to provide us with access to the truth.11 Let us consider a different take on the question whether (G) is committed to the desire-thesis (D). It is far from obvious that a person's beliefs cannot be epistemically evaluated relative to a goal the person does not actually have. For epistemic evaluation to make sense, it may well be sufficient that there be "enough" people who actually have the truth-goal, enough to sustain a general practice of using concepts like justification for evaluative purposes. After all, there are various types of evaluations that evaluate objects relative to a standard but don't require that the evaluated object have the desire to satisfy the relevant standard, and, in case the object has an "owner" of some sort, don't require that its owner desires the object to satisfy the relevant standard. This is a plausible point. But where does it lead? Here is one reaction: The point leads nowhere, for it is too concerned with evaluation in the sense of an activity or practice. The primary issue under discussion is whether, on the goal-oriented approach, S's beliefs canfoejustified or unjustified even if S lacks any desire for truth—the issue is not whether there can then be a practice of evaluating S's beliefs as being justified or unjustified. This can be brought out by strengthening the original worry. It could have been that all humans lacked the desire for truth. In that case, there would have been no practice of evaluating beliefs as good or bad relative to the truth-goal, for such a practice requires that there be at least some people who think that having truth is desirable. But wouldn't our beliefs still be justified/unjustified? What is needed is an objective account of how S's believings can be good or bad relative to the truth-goal, an account that does not make being justified and being unjustified depend on there being a practice of evaluating beliefs as good or bad. Each of the proposals mentioned earlier can be seen as presenting such an objective account. Here is a naturalistic reaction to the point about evaluative practices: It has more going for it than meets the eye. Distinguish the (nonnatural) evaluative concept of justification from the natural (nonevaluative) property, F, that the concept refers to, or picks out, or supervenes on. The concept of justification as an evaluative concept exists only because we, or enough of us, engage in the practice of evaluating beliefs in epistemic terms. So (G) is indeed committed to (D), with the consequence that our belief s wouldn't be justified, that is, wouldn't fall under the concept of justification, if no one desired having true beliefs, because there would then be no such evaluative concept for beliefs to fall under. But this consequence is not disturbing, for it does not mean that we wouldn't have knowledge in that case. Knowledge is true belief having natural property F. Knowledge also happens to be true belief falling under the concept of justification. This is because we, or many of us, happen to have the truth-goal; and since

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beliefs having F tend to be true, we happen to desire beliefs having F, which is why we often refer to F with the goal-oriented evaluative concept of justification: The goaloriented approach, (G), has latched on to an "accidental" feature of knowledge. On a view like this, a view that would seem to sit well with strongly naturalistic theories of knowledge, principle (G) is far less central than the picture of truth as the epistemic goal would like it to be; it governs our evaluative epistemic concepts (the concept of justification and its relatives) but does not get at the nature of knowledge. IV

Let us take a closer look at the truth-goal itself. It is the two-part goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false. It is said sometimes that the goal has to have both parts because taken separately they could be "trivialized": Believing everything would trivially satisfy the positive part; believing nothing would trivially satisfy the negative part. This strikes me as a curious consideration. Surely, believing everything is humanly impossible; it may even be impossible tout court, for it involves believing explicitly contradictory propositions. Moreover, I find even believing three things very hard, when one of them is, say, the proposition that I have no head. Although believing nothing is not quite as impossible as believing everything, those of us who are actually able to have beliefs (those of us who are not braindead, who are not fetuses, who are not trees) will not find it much easier. In any case, it is not clear what the consideration is supposed to show. It could be meant to show that we have, or are more likely to have, the two-part goal rather than just one of the subgoals, say, the goal of believing what is true, because we realize (implicitly?) that the latter goal is best pursued by a strategy that would make things "too easy" on us, thereby devaluing the goal. Since it is so obvious that the "strategy" to believe everything is extremely hard to implement, this reasoning seems rather farfetched; it assumes that we are wildly confused about which things are easy for us to do. Maybe the idea is that we do not have just the goal of believing what is true because we (implicitly) realize that the strategy that would guarantee reaching that goal (the strategy to believe everything) would, if we could implement it, lead us toward a state we do not want to be in. However, this presupposes that we already have the goal of not having false beliefs. It is hard to find much merit in the point about trivialization. The goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false is rather indefinite. An advocate of the idea that truth is the epistemic goal may want to be a bit more precise about what the truth-goal looks like, especially with respect to the question of how much truth and how little falsehood is being aimed at here. The most straightforward proposal for making the goal more precise is to interpret the content of the goal as a universal generalization: (T) For all propositions p, Up is true then S believes p, and S believes p only if p is true. Competitors to (T) are typically advanced on the grounds that they are more plausibly ascribed to us than a goal with (T) as content. Such plausibility considerations

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are, of course, relevant. However, in the present context, the first question to ask is whether the competing goal can play the part assigned to the epistemic goal, that is, whether it can serve the need of the goal-oriented approach to justification characterized by principle (G) from the previous section. If not, plausibility considerations become irrelevant. One might object to (T) on the grounds that its positive part is easily seen to be crazy because there are infinitely many truths. Let us restrict p in (T) to propositions that can in principle be grasped by S—no harm can come from that, and it assuages worries about infinity. One might still think that the positive part makes for too ambitious a goal. Adapting a suggestion from Chisholm (1977, 14), let us try to restrict (T) to those propositions that S considers. But the resulting goal would be too narrow to serve in (G): Issues of justification reach beyond what we consider. We can have justification for propositions we do not believe and have never considered. More important, we have acquired many of our beliefs willy-nilly, without ever considering the propositions involved. Surely, our willy-nilly acquired beliefs can be justified or unjustified. The restriction would unhinge the idea that being justified can be understood as a good thing relative to the truth-goal. Maybe it will improve matters to go subjunctive—to formulate the goal as the goal to be such that, for every p, if one were to consider p, one would believe p if and only if p is true. This is more promising, but it may still be too narrow. You may be justified in holding beliefs which, on consideration, you would reject on bad grounds, say, because considering things tends to bring out the raving skeptic in you. It would then be a bad thing, relative to the subjunctivized goal, for you to hold such beliefs, even though intuitively you are justified in holding them. It is suggested sometimes that (T) is implausible because we simply are not interested in all those truths; that it should be restricted to propositions that are at least to some extent important to S.12 It is easy to see that the resulting goal will not do at all for (G). The goal of having all and only important true beliefs is, again, too narrow because even our most unimportant beliefs can be justified or unjustified. Alston (1985, 83-84) proposes the goal of maximizing truth and minimizing falsehood in a large body of beliefs. This, too, may have a flaw. Take the admittedly unlikely case of someone who has a large body of true beliefs without having any false beliefs. Given Alston' s goal, one may wonder how a person could posses justification for an additional truth that she does not believe. After all, adding a further truth to her body of beliefs will not improve the already perfect truth-ratio. The first Chisholmian goal and the goal of believing important truths are clearly too narrow to play the role the truth-goal is supposed to play on the goal-oriented approach to justification. The other two candidates, Alston's goal and the subjunctive Chisholmian goal, are much more suitable, but they are somewhat problematic. Moreover, once (T) is restricted to propositions that S can grasp in principle, the resulting truth-goal is not subject to the worry that, given our finite nature, it is absolutely impossible for us to reach. No doubt, it is extremely unlikely that anyone of us could ever reach the state described by (T). But then, the states described by the suggested alternatives are also incredibly hard to reach.131 would say that the discussed alternatives should not keep an advocate of the view that truth is the epistemic goal from holding out for (T) as the content of the truth-goal, if he feels the need for a precise characterization of the goal.

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Of course, there is still the issue whether the goal of believing all and only graspable truths can plausibly be attributed to us. For one thing, the goal seems too precise. It seems more plausible to think that people have an indefinite goal, like having true beliefs. On the other hand, those of us who have the indefinite goal may be said to "implicitly" have the precise goal too. Maybe quite a few of us are implicitly committed to high ideals, to goals we realize, or could easily come to realize, are practically impossible to reach. There may also be something to the thought that we would like to be omniscient, that we would like to know all that can be known and not make any mistakes. A desire for omniscience could be said to carry with it the goal of believing all and only (graspable) truths. Many of us may have some such goal, but it is daring to claim that all of us have at least one such goal. Of course, as I pointed out in the previous section, the goal-oriented approach to justification may get by without the thesis that we actually desire truth. There is no need to rehearse the available options. One additional point deserves mention though. The important-truthgoal could be called on for help along the following lines (cf. Foley 1993, 17): We have the goal of believing all and only truths that are important to us. We realize (implicitly, on reflection) that pretty much any truth could become at least a bit important to us and might be needed without there being time for engaging in research. This leads us (would lead us on reflection) to adopt the goal of believing all and only graspable truths—or if not quite that, then at least some more indefinite goal in the neighborhood. This kind of consideration will also be of help to the view that, although we do not have the goal of believing all and only graspable truths, we ought to have it, pragmatically speaking. V

According to (G), the truth-goal-oriented approach to justification, having a justified belief amounts, somehow, to a good thing with respect to the truth-goal. Justification applies to beliefs one by one. The truth-goal, on the other hand, is a global goal: It is the goal of having beliefs that are true and not having beliefs that are false. How are we to understand the idea that being justified in holding a particular belief p is a good thing relative to this global goal? The most natural answer to this question is that having a justified belief promotes the truth-goal, that it is a means for reaching the global goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false.14 Note that having a justified belief cannot be a causal means for reaching the truthgoal. A person can be justified in believing p even if believing p will cause her to hold a massive amount of false beliefs later on, even if all later beliefs to which her present belief causally contributes will be false. Similarly, a person can be unjustified in believing p even if believing p will cause her to hold a massive amount of true beliefs later on, even if all later beliefs to which her present belief causally contributes will be true. Being justified in believing p has nothing at all to do with the causal consequences of believing p. More generally, it seems that being justified in believing p has nothing to do with what beliefs you are going to hold in the future. The truth-goal cannot be a diachronic goal if it is to play the role assigned to it in the goal-oriented approach to justification; it cannot be the goal of having beliefs that

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are true and not having beliefs that are false in the long run—if it were, the causal consequences of our beliefs would be relevant to their epistemic status. Instead, it must be a synchronic goal: It must be the goal of now having beliefs that are true and now not having beliefs that are false. One can see how having a true belief is a "means," in a broad sense, to "reaching" the synchronic truth-goal; it is what Foley (1993, 19-20) calls a constitutive means. Having a true belief is part of what is involved in now having beliefs that are true and now not having beliefs that are false. But given the truth-goal-oriented approach to justification with (1) justification understood as a means to the goal and (2) the assumption that the synchronic truth-goal is the goal for justification to promote, it is now hard to see how justification could be anything but a constitutive means to the goal, which will make justification collapse into truth. The reason is, roughly, that with a synchronic goal only constitutive means count, and a constituent of the goal must always be a better constitutive means than a nonconstituent. (i) Assume you have a true belief p that is (intuitively) unjustified. The goal-oriented approach must nevertheless count believing p as a good thing relative to the goal—certainly as better than not believing p and as better than believing the negation of p, both of which conflict with the goal, (ii) Assume you have a false belief p that is (intuitively) justified. The goal-oriented approach must count believing p as a bad thing relative to the goal— certainly as worse than believing the negation of/?, which would be a constitutive means to the goal. The upshot is that the goal-oriented approach will count all true beliefs as justified and will not allow justified beliefs that are false: Justification collapses into truth. Let us refer to this argument as the reductio argument.15 Stephen Maitzen (1995) gives an argument to the same conclusion but he makes a problematic transition from one set of issues to another. The truth-goal can be invoked at two different levels: first, to characterize the nature of justification in broadly Ideological terms—this is the home of principle (G); second, to explain why we value justification, why we care whether our beliefs are justified—the presently relevant idea being that we care only because justification is a path to the truth.16 Maitzen describes the view that truth is the epistemic goal primarily as a monistic view about why we value justification. His argument then moves from why we value justification, on the monistic view, to what justification is, on that view: "If the nominal aim [the truth-goal] is the reason for having, or pursuing justification, then it ought to follow that beliefs are justified insofar as they serve the nominal aim and unjustified insofar as they do not" (Maitzen 1995, 870). But this transition is worrisome. I might value one thing merely as a means to getting another; it does not follow that the nature of the one reduces to the other: I might value my dog merely to keep away the neighbors, but the nature of my dog does not reduce to keeping away the neighbors. In my version, the argument does not make such a transition. It proceeds entirely in terms of considerations pertaining to what justification is according to the goaloriented approach. The reductio argument should be seen as a reductio of at least one of the premises entering into it. The consequence that all true beliefs are justified is absurd. The consequence that a belief cannot be justified unless it is true is very unpalatable—contemporary epistemology assumes that knowledge requires only fallible justification. I take the point of the argument to be a diagnostic one: Thinking about how a theory

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of justification would block it should tell us something about the role it assigns to the truth-goal. Let us look at some of the options in broad outline. I. A theory of justification might block the reductio argument by disconnecting the concept of justification from the concept of truth. This option completely abandons the idea that truth is an epistemic goal in the substantive sense that we are concerned with here. It holds that the truth-goal has no serious theoretical role to play in the theory of knowledge because it has no role whatsoever to play in the theory of justification—frequent invocations of the truth-goal notwithstanding. Of course, truth still plays a role in the definition of knowledge; it is still an epistemic goal in the meek sense in that reaching the truth is required for the possession of knowledge, but that is all there is to it. Knowledge is merely a conjunctive state combining two independent goods: truth and justification. There cannot be any account of what ties these goods together because there is no explanatory connection between them: Possessing justification cannot be understood as being a good thing relative to the goal of having true beliefs. The position is unsatisfying and hard to sustain for any length of time. Having characterized justification without any reference to truth, we will feel the urge to add: "We hope . . . that the marks of evidence will also be marks of truth" (Chisholm 1957, 38), and soon we will find ourselves asking: "What is it about evidence, or justification, that makes us cling to this hope?" II. A theory of justification might want to block the reductio argument by setting up a second goal for justification to promote. This option abandons the view that the truth-goal is the epistemic goal but retains the idea that the goal plays an essential role in the theory of justification. As on the original picture, having a justified true belief is interpreted as the state of having reached the truth-goal in the right sort of way. But believing in the right sort of way is now regarded as an autonomous part of the overall epistemic goal whose other part is the truth-goal. Possessing justification is understood as a good thing relative to two goals, neither one being merely a means to the other.17 Such a double-goal view is vulnerable to the objection that it addresses only half of the reductio argument. It does block the absurd result that all true beliefs are justified, which was the conclusion of part (i) of the argument: holding a true belief may now fail to be a good thing relative to the overall epistemic goal because a belief that has reached the truth may be wanting with respect to the other subgoal. But part (ii) of the argument still goes through because justification is still required to promote the truth-goal: Holding a false belief must be a bad thing relative to the overall goal because it conflicts with one of its subgoals. So the unpalatable consequence that there is no fallible justification is still with us. This is not the last word, however. So far, I have paid little attention to the point that an adequate definition of knowledge requires not only that S have a justified true belief, but also that S's justification meet a suitable anti-Gettier condition—a condition that makes the definition immune to the sort of examples originally produced by Gettier (1963). Let us refer to justification that meets such a condition as justification-1-: Justification+ is whatever turns true belief into knowledge. Now, it may be that none of the anti-Gettier conditions that have been proposed is fully successful. Still, the work that has been done in this area strongly suggests that any successful condition will have the following feature: A belief cannot meet the condition unless the belief is true.18 Assuming this to be correct, it follows trivially that justification+

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will not allow for fallibly justified* belief. One might then try to defend position (II) in the following way: The "unpalatable consequence" is not so unpalatable after all; on the contrary, part (ii) of the reductio argument merely shows that the concept of justification under consideration is the concept of justification*, the concept that turns true belief into knowledge, which had better be infallible. Fair enough. However, the defense has an unpalatable consequence of its own. Remember that any epistemic concept one might want to employ in the theory of knowledge was supposed to be anchored in the truth-goal. Consider now the second goal that justification, or rather, justification*, is supposed to promote. Surely, it must be specified in epistemic terms: "Believing in the right sort of way" must amount to something along the lines of believing in accordance with the evidence, believing reasonably, and so on. But as soon as we connect, say, the concept of evidence to the truth-goal, and be it only partially, we can run the reductio argument on this concept, with the unpalatable consequence that beliefs that are in accordance with the evidence cannot be false. What now? The response that this merely proves evidence to be evidence*, the concept that turns true belief into knowledge, would seem to imply that the concept of evidence, which was supposed to specify the subgoal to be served by justification*, already coincides with the concept of justification*. (Alternatively, it will send us off in search for the next epistemic concept, the one that specifies the second goal that is supposed to be served by evidence*; and off we go.) The upshot is that a theory of the second goal of justification* (say, the theory of evidence) cannot anchor evidence in the truth-goal. It cannot say that believing in accordance with the evidence is a good thing with respect to the goal of having true beliefs. The justification* defense merely turns position (II) into a notational variant of position (I). III. A theory of justification might want to reconceive the relation between justification and the truth-goal. The idea is to give an account of "being justified i s a good thing relative to the truth-goal" that applies to individual beliefs but does not boil down to the claim that being justified is a constitutive means to reaching the truthgoal. The hope is to block the reductio argument, without discarding the view that the truth-goal plays a crucial role in the theory of justification and without setting up an independent epistemic goal. Those who favor "internalist" approaches to the theory of justification may want to follow Chisholm and construe the connection between justification and truth as a "rational" connection: If I want to believe what is true and not to believe what is false, then the most reasonable thing for me to do is to believe what is justified and not to believe what is not justified. (Chisholm 1982, 4)19

But in what sense of "reasonable" is this the reasonable thing to dol Certainly not in the sense that (1) it is the best means to reaching the truth-goal, for this answer would take us back to the reductio argument. The concept of reasonableness that Chisholm uses here to connect justification with truth is a bit like the concept of reasonable action and a bit like the concept of reasonable belief, but not quite like either one. Let us try to spell out this concept in terms of the ordinary epistemic concept "it is reasonable to believe that . . .". This yields a second answer to the question raised above: If one has the truth-goal, then having a justified belief is the reasonable thing

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to do in the sense that (2) it is epistemically reasonable to believe that having a justified belief is the best means to reaching the truth-goal. Note first that this answer has a curious feature. If the reductio argument is successful, then the answer is certainly correct. Sure enough, it is reasonable to believe that having a true belief is the best means to reaching the truth-goal—it is a constitutive means. However, the answer is supposed to block the argument by not construing justification merely as a means to truth. Assuming the answer is successful in thus blocking the argument: Why is it then still reasonable to believe that having a justified belief is the best means to reaching the truth-goal? This question, I think, can have no answer. One should also worry about the epistemic concept of reasonable belief that is used in answer (2) to connect justification with the truth-goal. If this concept is not itself connected with the truth-goal, then the present position abandons the view that truth is the epistemic goal with respect to the "connecting" concept of reasonable belief. If, on the other hand, one connects this concept with the truth-goal by replacing the word "justified" with the word "reasonable" in Chisholm's principle (quoted above), the result appears to be trivial. However, the deepest worry about (2) seems to me to be this: (2) is supposed to tell us in what sense having a justified belief is a good thing relative to the truth-goal; yet, I find it difficult to see how it manages to convey more than that it is reasonable to believe that having a justified belief is a good thing relative to the truth-goal. An alternative rendering of Chisholm's principle in terms of the epistemic concept of reasonable belief would go like this: (3) If I have the truthgoal, then, for every/?, it is reasonable for me to believe/?, if I am justified in believing/?, and it is reasonable for me not to believe/), if I am not justified in believing/). But the consequent of this conditional is trivially true—it is true even if it is my goal to believe all and only falsehoods. Maybe there simply is no answer to the question in what sense believing what is justified and not believing what is unjustified is "the reasonable thing to do" if one has the truth-goal. Say the concept that forges the rational connection between epistemic concepts and the truth-goal cannot be circumscribed in terms of (other) epistemic concepts. If this is the view, then one has to decide whether the connecting rationality-concept is nevertheless supposed to be an epistemic concept of sorts. If it is, then the resulting position would seem to abandon the idea that truth is the epistemic goal, for the concept that forges the rational connection between the truth-goal and all other epistemic concepts will not itself be anchored in the truth-goal (self-anchoring principles will end up in trivialities to the effect that it is rational to have rational beliefs—adding an invocation of the truth-goal to such a principle merely adds an idle wheel). If, on the other hand, the connecting rationality-concept is regarded as a nonepistemic concept, then one can indeed block the reductio argument without abandoning the view that truth is the epistemic goal, but at the price that the "rational" connection between justification and the truth-goal becomes rather mysterious. Let us take a look at how an "externalist" approach to the theory of justification will block the reductio argument. I will focus on a simple form of process reliabilism. It is natural to expect that a reliabilist will be disinclined to abandon the idea that the truth-goal plays a crucial role in the theory of justification, and that he will be equally disinclined to set up another epistemic goal besides truth. Indeed, reliabilism blocks the reductio argument with its account of epistemic goodness: Being justified in

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believing p is a good thing relative to the truth-goal because a justified belief is one that is reliably produced, that is, produced by a belief-forming process, or mechanism, that produces mostly true beliefs.20 Not surprisingly, this looks like a promising way of handling the truth-goal. It seems to avoid construing the epistemic goodness of an individual justified belief merely as a constitutive means to the truth-goal; and it seems to take seriously the idea that truth is the epistemic goal. However, as Maitzen (1995, 873-74) points out, it is not obvious that reliabilism really is faithful to the truth-goal. Isn't it, rather, that the truth-goal is being replaced by the goal of having reliably produced beliefs? After all, reliabilism counts a true belief that is not reliably produced as one that is bad relative to the goal, and it counts a false belief that is reliably produced as one that is good relative to the goal. It seems to follow that "the goal" referred to here cannot be the goal of having true beliefs; it must be the goal of having beliefs that are reliably produced. If so, then the reliabilist way of blocking the reductio argument abandons the view that the truth-goal is the epistemic goal. The conclusion of this line of reasoning is a bit surprising. One would have thought that, if the truth-goal plays a serious role anywhere in epistemology, then it does in reliabilism. I take it that the natural response to this charge, the charge that reliabilism has traded the truth-goal for the goal of having reliably produced beliefs, is this: No such trade has taken place because "having reliably produced beliefs" does not refer to a goal other than the truth-goal; it is just another name for (part of) the truth-goal. Let us see whether this response is successful. Read "G" as an operator saying something like "it is my goal that," or "I want it to be the case that." We should distinguish between the following (1) (2)

G[(Yp)