Abstract
What is the relation of epistemic to ethical appraisal? Possible answers include:
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(1)
that epistemic appraisal is a sub- species of ethical appraisal— henceforth, for short, the special-case thesis;
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(2)
thatpositive/negative epistemic appraisal is distinct from, but invariably associated with, positive/negative ethical appraisal—the correlation thesis;
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(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;
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(4)
that ethical appraisal is inapplicable where epistemological appraisal is relevant—the independence thesis;
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(5)
that epistemic appraisal is distinct from, but analogous to, ethical appraisal—the analogy thesis.
* Since writing this essay I have returned to the topic of intellectual integrity in several papers: see ‘Confessions of an Old-Fashioned Prig’ in S. Haack (1998), Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 7–30; (2008 [2005]) ‘The Ideal of Intellectual Integrity, in Life and Literature’ in S. Haack, Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), pp. 195–208; and (2007) ‘Engaging with the Engaged Inquirer: Response to Mark Migotti’ in C. de Waal (ed.) Susan Haack: A Lady of Distinctions (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), pp. 277–80.
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Notes
R. M. Chisholm (1991) ‘Firth and the Ethics of Belief’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LI. 1, pp. 119–28 (the quotation is from p. 119).
See also R. M. Chisholm (1956) ‘Epistemic Statements and the Ethics of Belief’, Since writing this essay I have returned to the topic of intellectual integrity in several papers: see ‘Confessions of an Old- Fashioned Prig’ in S. Haack (1998), Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 7–30; (2008 [2005]) ‘The Ideal of Intellectual Integrity, in Life and Literature’ in S. Haack, Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), pp. 195–208; and (2007) ‘Engaging with the Engaged Inquirer: Response to Mark Migotti’ in C. de Waal (ed.) Susan Haack: A Lady of Distinctions (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), pp. 277–80. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XVI, pp. 447–60;
R. M. Chisholm (1957) Perceiving: A Philosophical Study ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press);
R. Firth (1959) ‘Chisholm and the Ethics of Belief’, Philosophical Review, 68, pp. 493–506;
R. M. Chisholm (1956) ‘“Appear,” “Take,” and “Evident”’, Journal of Philosophy, LIII. 23, pp. 722–31;
R. Firth (1956) ‘Ultimate Evidence’, Journal of Philosophy, LIII.23, pp. 732–9;
R. M. Chisholm (1961) ‘Evidence as Justification’, Journal of Philosophy, 58, pp. 739–48;
R. M. Chisholm (1966) Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall), 2nd edn, 1977, 3rd edn, 1989;
R. M. Chisholm (1968) ‘Lewis’s Ethics of Belief’ in P. A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis ( La Salle, IL: Open Court ), pp. 223–42;
R. Firth (1978) ‘Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?’ in A. I. Goldman andJ. Kim (eds.) Values and Morals ( Dordrecht: Reidel ), pp. 215–30;
R. M. Chisholm (1986) ‘Self-Profile’ in R. J. Bogdan (ed.) Roderick M. Chisholm (Dordrecht: Reidel), pp. 3–77.From time to time Chisholm writes of ‘analogies’ between ethics and epistemology: see, e.g., Chisholm, Perceiving, pp. 12, 13, 18, 30; Chisholm, ‘“Appear,” “Take,” and “Evident”’, pp. 723ff.; Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, p. 1 of the 1st, 1966, edn and pp. 57–8 of the 3rd, 1989 edn;
R. M. Chisholm (1980) ‘Epistemic Reasoning and the Logic of Epistemic Concepts’ in G. H. Von Wright (ed.) Logic and Philosophy (The Hague: Nijhoff), pp. 71–8. If, as it seems, his point is that there are structural analogies between the overriding of a one moral requirement by another, and the inductive overriding of a certain body of evidence by further evidence, this is quite compatible with his commitment to the special- case thesis.On p. 54 of his ‘Self-Profile’ Chisholm writes that ‘epistemic concepts are not moral concepts’; by the final sentence of the section, however (p. 56), he writes that the concepts of epistemology are reducible to the concepts of ethics.
A phrase of which F. C. S. Schiller reminds us in his commentary on James’ ‘The Will to Believe’. F. C. S. Schiller (n.d.) Problems of Belief (London: Hodder and Stoughton), p. 111. See, besides Chisholm’s discussion of the quasi-voluntary nature of belief referred to above, H. H. Price (1954) ‘Belief and the Will’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement, 28, pp. 1–27.
This comports with the attractive conjecture (proposed by J. Shelton (1983), ‘Contextualism: A Right Answer to the Wrong Question’, Southwest Philosophical Studies, 9.2, pp. 117–24), that the appeal of contextualist theories of epistemic justification may arise in part from 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 (1988), ‘Strong and Weak Justification’, in J. Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives, 2: Epistemology (Ridgeview, Atascadero, CA), pp. 51–70.
W. K. Clifford ( 1947 [1877]) ‘The Ethics of Belief’ in The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays ( London: Watts and Co. ), pp. 70–96.
W. James ( 1956 [1896]) ‘The Will to Believe’ in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy ( New York: Dover ), pp. 1–31.
Cf. J. W. Meiland (1980) ‘What Ought we to Believe? or, the Ethics of Belief Revisited’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 17.1, pp. 15–24, which precisely, but more explicitly, follows James in this regard.
The distinction is articulated in more detail in S. Haack (1993) Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell; 2nd edn, 2009, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), chapter 10.
Chisholm, Perceiving, pp. 9, 11, 100; Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 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, e.g., L. Pojman (1983) ‘The Ethics of Belief’, Southwest Philosophical Studies, 9.2, pp. 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 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.
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, chapter 4. My comprehensiveness requirement is motivated in part by an analogy between the structure of empirical justification and a crossword puzzle; as the reason ableness 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 thesisJ 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 Firth’s papers referred to above) R. B. Brandt (1967) ‘Epistemology and Ethics, Parallels Between’ in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Collier Macmillan);
R. B. Brandt (1985) ‘The Concept of Rational Belief’, The Monist, 68.1, pp. 3–23;
and W. P. Alston (1978) ‘ Meta- Ethics and Meta-Epistemology’ in Goldman and Kim (eds.), Values and Morals, pp. 275–98.
C. I. Lewis (1955) The Ground and Nature of the Right (New York: Columbia University Press) p. 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 thesis J 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.
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Haack, S. (2013). ‘The Ethics of Belief’ Reconsidered. In: Rydenfelt, H., Pihlström, S. (eds) William James on Religion. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317353_6
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