Oliveira, Luis R. G.

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(2015) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93(2): 389-394Non-Agential Permissibility in Epistemology∗Luis R.G. OliveiraAbstract: Paul Silva has recently argued that doxastic justification does not have abasing requirement. An important part of his argument depends on the assumptionthat doxastic and moral permissibility have a parallel structure. I here reply to Silva’sargument by challenging this assumption. I claim that moral permissibility is anagential notion, while doxastic permissibility is not. I then briefly explore the natureof these notions and briefly consider their implications for praise and blame.Keywords: Justification, Basing Relation, Permissibility, Praise and Blame.IntroductionThere is a sense in which you are justified in believing a certain proposition p bysimply having reasons that support it. Call this propositional justification. Thereis another sense in which you are justified in believing that p only if you base yourbelief that p on those very reasons you have that support it. Call this doxasticjustification. So you can be propositionally justified in believing that the defendantis guilty after hearing all of the evidence, for example, while at the same time failingto be doxastically justified: perhaps you simply have not formed that belief in thefirst place; perhaps you have formed it on the basis of reasons that do not supportit after all. Call all of this the received wisdom.Some have recently disagreed. Specifically, some have claimed that the require-ments for doxastic justification are not as strong as the received wisdom seems tosuggest. I here argue that at least one instance of such disagreement is based onfaulty grounds. Close examination of these grounds and faults, however, illuminatesthe nature of permissibility in epistemology.Consider Paul Silva’s argument against the received wisdom.1 He begins with aplausible guiding assumption:∗I am grateful to Hilary Kornblith, Christopher Meacham, Tricia Magalotti, Daniel McGloin,and two anonymous referees, for discussion and comments on previous drafts.1Silva’s argument has a positive and a negative stage. The positive stage consists in an argumentagainst the received wisdom, while the negative stage consists in criticisms of alternative motivationsfor it. I here focus exclusively on the positive stage of his argument, and I take my criticisms asfurther motivation for the received wisdom.1A: Doxastic justification and moral justification are, essentially, the notions ofdoxastic permissibility and moral permissibility.To judge that some act or doxastic attitude is justified, according to Silva (2014,4), “is to judge that that act or attitude is permissible.” I here accept this guidingassumption (cf. Goldman 2009 and Wedgwood 2012). But talk of justification is ingeneral ambiguous between what we can call a bare and a rich conception:Bare Moral Justification (MJb): S is morally justified iff S does the rightthing.Rich Moral Justification (MJr): S is morally justified iff S does the rightthing for the right moral reasons.Bare Doxastic Justification (DJb): S is doxastically justified iff S believesthe right thing.Rich Doxastic Justification (DJr): S is doxastically justified iff S believesthe right thing for the right doxastic reasons.Each of these conceptions associates the notion of justification with a certain posi-tive evaluative feature. Given (A), however, deciding between DJb and DJr requiresdetermining which of the relevant features maps onto the specific notion of dox-astic permissibility. Similarly, given (A), deciding between MJb and MJr requiresdetermining which of the relevant features maps onto the specific notion of moralpermissibility. The remaining features, those not associated with permissibility ofeither kind, should be conceptualized some other way.Given (A) and a grasp of the alternative conceptions, we can state Silva’s argu-ment against the received wisdom in this way:Silva Against Wisdom (SAW):1. MJb captures the notion of moral permissibility.2. If MJb captures the notion of moral permissibility, then DJb captures thenotion of doxastic permissibility.3. So DJb captures the notion of doxastic permissibility.Two defensive strategies come to mind almost immediately. One can reject premise2 by denying (A), claiming that justification, in one or either case, is not essentiallya notion of permissibility. Perhaps it is instead essentially the notion of requirement,or responsibility, or fittingness, or goodness, or something else. Alternatively, one2can reject premise 1 by denying that MJb captures the notion of moral permissibility,claiming instead that doing the right thing for the wrong moral reasons is alwaysimpermissible. SAW is defective if either of these defensive strategies works, thoughI here leave their details and plausibility to the side.In what follows, I argue that premise 2 of SAW must be rejected for a differentreason. First, I argue for a fundamental difference between moral and doxasticpermissibility. Next, I argue that the corresponding notions of moral and doxasticjustification reflect this difference in a way favorable to the received wisdom. Lastly,I argue that one of Silva’s key maneuvers in making plausible the rejection of thereceived wisdom falls apart.1. Non-Agential PermissibilitySupport for premise 2 comes from what I will call the strong parity principle (cf.Silva 2014, 6):Strong Parity Principle: What is true of the structure of moral permissibilityis true of the structure of doxastic permissibility.If there is strong parity between the two notions of permissibility, then we have agood reason to accept that ‘MJb iff DJb’ and ‘MJr iff DJr’: if it is true that themoral notion has no basing requirement, then strong parity implies that the doxas-tic notion has no basing requirement either; conversely, if the doxastic notion has abasing requirement, then strong parity implies that the moral has a basing require-ment as well. The strong parity principle is thus silent on what is characteristicof permissibility (on what makes an act or belief permissible), simply allowing usto infer the structure of one notion when having insight into the structure of theother—hence the need for premise 1.But strong parity should be rejected. There is in fact a fundamental differencebetween the notions of moral and doxastic permissibility that removes our warrantfor taking it that whatever goes for the moral notion also goes for the doxastic notion,and vice versa. The difference is this: one is a notion of agential permissibility, whilethe other is a notion of non-agential permissibility. We are agents with respect toour actions; that means that our actions are under our voluntary control. To saythat certain actions are permitted, then, is to say that certain deployments of ouragency do not violate the norms guiding our choice of available options. But we arenot similarly agents with respect to our beliefs. That is, our beliefs are not similarly3under our voluntary control. To say that certain beliefs are permitted, then, cannotbe to say that certain deployments of our agency do not violate the norms guidingour choice of available options: we have no relevant agency in the doxastic case, andthere are no corresponding available choices to be made.2This fundamental difference between moral and doxastic permissibility—betweenagential and non-agential permissibility—is in fact a reflection of the deeper distinc-tion between the prescriptive and the evaluative senses of the English ‘ought’.3 Inits prescriptive sense, the claim that ‘S ought to φ’ expresses a requirement-relationbetween an agent and a course of action. This is the sense of ‘ought’ common frommoral and prudential normativity. In its evaluative sense, however, the claim that‘S ought to φ’ expresses simply that, according to a relevant standard, the state ofaffairs of ‘S φ-ing’ is ideal. This is the sense of ‘ought’ familiar from claims such as‘the world ought to be just’, where no agent and no action is involved. The agentialnotion of permissibility, then, is the notion of consistency with some relevant pre-scriptive ‘ought’: there is a requirement-relation between an agent and a course ofaction, and φ-ing does not violate that requirement-relation. A bit differently, thenon-agential notion of permissibility is the notion of consistency with some relevantevaluative ‘ought’: there is a state of affairs that is ideal, according to a relevantstandard, and ‘S φ-ing’ does not prevent that state of affairs from coming about.The notion of moral permissibility is thus fundamentally different from the notionof doxastic permissibility. While the former is an agential notion, the latter is anon-agential notion; while the former is a claim about consistency with a certainrequirement-relation, the latter is a claim about consistency with a relevant ideal.This is good reason to reject the strong parity principle: what is true of an agentialnotion about requirements may well differ from what is true about a non-agentialnotion about ideals.2We must be careful to distinguish between having control over the kind of believer one isand having control over a particular token belief. The orthodoxy since Alston (1989) is that wesometimes have the former but never the latter, and that the former by itself is not enough foragency with respect to a particular token belief. Recently, however, some have suggested that (insome sense or another) we sometimes have the latter kind of control (cf. Weatherson (2008) andPeels (2014)). I do not have space to address these challenges here. My view, at any rate, is thatthe empirical facts about the extent of our reflective agency are bleaker than even what is supposedby the Alstonian orthodoxy (cf. Kornblith (2012, 73-107).3See Schroeder (2011) for detailed discussion and defense of this distinction, and see Chrisman(2008) for the view where ‘ought to believe’ always deploys the evaluative sense of the English‘ought’.42. Praise and BlameMost will agree that ‘doing the right thing for the right reason’ is more ideal thansimply ‘doing the right thing’. Both are positive evaluative features, but the for-mer has an added good-making element. This suggests that the notion of doxasticpermissibility, an evaluative notion about consistency with what is ideal, is bestcaptured by DJr. At the same time, it seems plausible that what is required of usas agents often falls short of what is ideal. This suggests that the notion of moralpermissibility, a prescriptive notion about consistency with a requirement-relation,is best captured by MJb. So we not only have reasons for rejecting the strong parityprinciple, we also have reasons for believing that something specific that is true ofmoral permissibility—no basing requirement—is not true of doxastic permissibility.This is just what the received wisdom would have us say.In fact, the received wisdom gains even further support when we recognize thatone of Silva’s (2014, 8-9) key maneuvers in making its rejection plausible falls apart.Since Silva accepts both MJb and DJb, and since he does not wish to deny that ‘doingthe right thing for the right reason’ is a positive evaluative feature of some sort, heneeds to tell a plausible story about which concept that happens to be. In the moralcase, some such story seems readily available: cases of right actions based on badmoral reasons are naturally taken as cases of blameworthy yet permissible actions.Suppose you believe that pressing a certain button will cause incredible undeservedpain to thousands of people, when in fact it will only cause incredible deservedpleasure to them; suppose you press the button for that nasty reason; then it seemsintuitive that you are blameworthy for so doing, while doing it was a permissibleaction nonetheless (cf. Haji 1997). So MJr, we can say, fails to distinguish betweenthe concepts of permissibility and praiseworthiness, running them together as if twonecessary features of the former. Isn’t there a similarly plausible doxastic story tobe told? Just as in the moral case, perhaps cases of believing the right thing forthe wrong doxastic reasons can be naturally taken as blameworthy yet permissiblebelieving. Perhaps DJr also fails to distinguish between the concepts of permissibilityand praiseworthiness, running them together as if two necessary features of theformer.Whatever we say about the plausibility of the moral story, clarity on the doxasticnotion of permissibility reveals that the doxastic story is not at all forthcoming.This is because talk of praise and blame is appropriate only in the context of agents5and requirement-relations. If S is an agent who is required to φ, then S can bepraiseworthy and blameworthy for φ-ing or not. There was a certain requirement,after all, a requirement which S’s action could flaunt or satisfy, and we rightly praiseor blame S according to her voluntary choice. But if S is not an agent with respectto φ-ing, and if, consequently, ‘S φ-ing’ is simply an ideal state of affairs instead ofa requirement, then there is no sense in which S can be praised or blamed: thereare no requirements in this context, after all, no alternative actions that can flauntor satisfy them, and no agent to voluntarily choose between them.4 A clock oughtto strike every hour on the hour, but there is no sense in claiming that a clock isblameworthy for being fast.So while the notions of praise and blame may provide us a plausible story regard-ing the concept associated with the positive evaluative feature of ‘doing the rightthing for the right moral reasons’, there is no correlative plausible story regarding‘believing the right thing for the right doxastic reasons’. Silva’s key maneuver insupport of DJb thus falls apart. But we have already undermined his positive rea-sons for accepting DJb over DJr anyway. And if we take DJr over DJb instead, asreflection on the non-agential nature of doxastic permissibility suggests we do, thenwe simply have no need for an alternative story mirroring the role of praise andblame in the moral case. This is also what the received wisdom would have us say.54Fischer (2006, 24-25), for example, uses precisely this principle—that S is blameworthy forφ-ing only if S prescriptively ought to φ—to argue from Frankfurt-style cases to a rejection of theought-implies-can principle.5The fact that we are not agents with respect to our beliefs has direct and indirect implicationsfor several alternative notions of doxastic justification. Notions of justification as praiseworthinessor blamelessness are most directly affected. But notions of doxastic justification as responsiblebelief may be indirectly affected as well. I cannot pursue those implications here.6ReferencesAlston, William (1989). “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,”in Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge: 115-152. Ithaca:Cornell University Press.Chrisman, Matthew (2008). “Ought to Believe,” Journal of Philosophy 105(7): 346-370.Fischer, John Martin (2006). “Introduction: A Framework for Moral Responsibility,”in My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility : 1-37. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.Goldman, Alvin (2009). “Internalism, Externalism, and the Architecture of Justifi-cation,” Journal of Philosophy 106(6): 309-338.Haji, Ishtiyaque (1997). “An Epistemic Dimension of Praiseworthiness,” Philosophyand Phenomenological Research 57(3): 523-544.Kornblith, Hilary (2012). On Reflection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Peels, Rik (2014). “Believing at Will is Possible,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy93(3): 1-18.Schroeder, Mark (2011). “Ought, Agents, and Actions,” Philosophical Review 120(1):1-41.Silva, Paul (2014). “Does Doxastic Justification Have a Basing Requirement?,” Aus-tralasian Journal of Philosophy 93(2): 371-387.Weatherson, Brian (2008). “Deontology and Descartes’s Demon,” Journal of Philos-ophy 105(9): 540-569.Wedgwood, Ralph (2012). “Justified Inference,” Synthese 189(2): 1-23.7

Non-Agential Permissibility In Epistemology

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