We blame people for lots of things, such as stealing from others, forgetting our birthday, and voting for our political opponents. But it also seems that we sometimes blame people for their beliefs, and the way they respond to evidence. Holding inconsistent beliefs, applying epistemic standards unfairly, or being prone to conspiracy theorizing in the absence of any strong evidence (which was hidden by the conspirators, you see) are some examples you\u2019ve probably come across. And in political discourse, there an increasing emphasis on what people believe over what they will do.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an easy way to explain why this is: our beliefs often have moral consequences. Consider, for instance, the conspiracy theory that the Democrats had a child sex-trafficking ring at a pizzeria. Many adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theories ended up sending death threats to the store\u2019s owners, and one person ended up shooting off a lock with a rifle to try and free the (non-existent) children.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear these kinds of cases fully explain why beliefs can be blameworthy. We sometimes blame even when there aren\u2019t any moral considerations lurking in the background. We blame people for violating purely epistemic norms: norms which have truth, evidence and justification (etc.) as their aim. And even if there can be some moral considerations found, this isn\u2019t our<\/em> reason for blaming. When you blame your uncle for finding some parts of the QAnon conspiracy theory \u2018interesting to think about\u2019, your blame isn\u2019t based on the possibility that this kind of thing might one day lead him to shoot into a pizzeria to save some non-existent children. It\u2019s for believing this<\/em> particular thing now<\/em>, given the lack of evidence he has now, even if this belief ends up being purely inconsequential in the record of his moral behaviours. In short, it seem that sometimes people are epistemically blameworthy, which suggests there might be a distinct form of epistemic blame.<\/p>\n If this is the case, we need to make sure it counts as blame<\/em>. Blame is typically thought to be unpleasant, to carry a \u2018sting\u2019 or some opprobrium, in a way that merely being thought by others as silly or bad at cooking, while unpleasant, doesn\u2019t. If you judge that I have big, unattractive ears, my feelings may be hurt, but this doesn\u2019t communicate anything about me as an agent \u2013 as someone who exercises themselves in response to reasons.<\/p>\n The difficulty is that if there is such a thing as epistemic blame, it seems to be much more stripped back than its full-blown moral cousin. Though anger, resentment, indignation, are all commonplace when responding to moral slights, heated emotions seem out of place when responding to purely epistemic faults. But if these are out of place, then there may be little remaining to do the work of making epistemic blame a genuine form of blame.<\/p>\n One way to overcome this challenge is to think about blame\u2019s effects. Blame has two primary effects: first, it signals our commitment to norms. When we blame, we communicate a lot of information: that we care about the norm, that we won\u2019t tolerate violations, that we expect everyone else to act similarly, and that you are willing to take on costs to ensure the norm is upheld.<\/p>\n Second, blame motivates us to act in ways that sanction the target. Many paradigm examples of blaming behaviours are unpleasant for the target because it treats them negatively: we withdraw good will, we tell everyone what they did which diminishes their reputation, and we\u2019re less likely to help them out.<\/p>\n These two features provide a way of understanding epistemic blame, and how it is both distinct from and similar to moral blame. First, epistemic blame signals our commitment to epistemic norms. In blaming, we are communicating that we care about the norm the person has just violated, and generally will not accept such behavior. Forming one\u2019s beliefs in accordance with the evidence, noticing inconsistencies, and avoiding motivated reasoning are all important standards that we want to uphold.<\/p>\n What makes epistemic blame distinct, however, is the way that we don\u2019t tolerate people\u2019s behavior. Moral anger motivates us to get back at the person who wronged us, to express outrage to get people on our site, all of which increases the costs of violating moral norms significantly, but the costs of epistemic blame are much more minor. Disappointment, criticism, and a withdrawal of epistemic trust can be unpleasant, and reflect on you as an epistemic agent, but there is an upper limit to how unpleasant they can be. There is typically no victim in cases of epistemic faults, nor any need to atone or reconcile with someone who has been wronged.<\/p>\n These effects, in conjunction, are valuable because they help make people into skilled epistemic agents. Since being blamed is unpleasant, and we want to conform to the norms of our community, the threat of blame in response to violations motivates us to become better epistemic agents. This is something that is distinctly valuable: being the kind of agent who can form their beliefs in response to the evidence (instead of, say, what best signals one\u2019s tribal identity) is an achievement that we should collectively be interested in fostering.<\/p>\n It may seem that having a second kind of blame on the table would exacerbate our (already overactive) blaming tendencies, particularly in political discourse. But it is actually possible that this may decrease the amount of blame flying by preventing our tendency to over-moralize. When we find ourselves blaming someone for their beliefs, it is tempting to put a moral spin on their behaviour and trump up reasons why they ought to be blamed even if there aren\u2019t any. They haven\u2019t just responded badly to evidence, they\u2019ve done something which wrongs this entire group of people and contributes to a system of unjust practices. They haven\u2019t just got a different opinion, they are undermining the social fabric that our nation needs to function (etc.) This is no doubt sometimes the case. But sometimes a bad belief is bad just in virtue of how it was formed, and this can be grounds for blame without moral interrogation.<\/p>\n This post is based on: Piovarchy, Adam (2021). What do We Want from a Theory of Epistemic Blame? Australasian Journal of Philosophy <\/em>99 (4):791-805.<\/p>\n Image<\/a> by Public Domain Pictures<\/a>\u00a0 on Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We blame people for lots of things, such as stealing from others, forgetting our birthday, and voting for our political opponents. But it also seems that we sometimes blame people […]","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":1679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Adam Piovarchy \"Can People Be Epistemically Blameworthy?\" on Open for Debate","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[184,384],"custom_author":[385],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-for-debate","tag-belief","tag-epistemic-blame","custom_author-piovarchy-adam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8KPlM-r3","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1581,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/red-pills-and-rallying-lies-conspiracy-theories-skepticism-and-collective-action\/","url_meta":{"origin":1677,"position":0},"title":"Red Pills and Rallying Lies: Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Collective Action","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"December 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cMost of the things that we take to be a fact in our lives are told to us through our stories, or the news that we hear. So, my question would be: if they were deceiving you with the stories they tell you, would you be able to recognize that?\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Open for Debate"","block_context":{"text":"Open for Debate","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/category\/open-for-debate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2022\/12\/Image-Red-Pills-and-Rallying-Lies--scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2022\/12\/Image-Red-Pills-and-Rallying-Lies--scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2022\/12\/Image-Red-Pills-and-Rallying-Lies--scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2022\/12\/Image-Red-Pills-and-Rallying-Lies--scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2022\/12\/Image-Red-Pills-and-Rallying-Lies--scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2022\/12\/Image-Red-Pills-and-Rallying-Lies--scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1287,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/prejudiced-belief-epistemic-and-moral-perspectives\/","url_meta":{"origin":1677,"position":1},"title":"Prejudiced Belief: Epistemic and Moral Perspectives","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"September 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Prejudice seems like a paradigmatic case of bad belief. But in what sense bad? Suppose we could agree that prejudiced beliefs tend to be false. 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A simple recipe. Sometimes, it even works. Frequently, though, it fails. And this can be an intensely frustrating experience. 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