“Locating all responsibility for belief at the level of character is problematic. First, our tendency to blame people with whom we have little experience casts doubt on the character-centered view. It seems like we are able to make justified general claims about what adult believers should or should not believe, and we blame them for particular beliefs, regardless of what their general doxastic tendencies are. Consider someone who does, for example, possess the epistemic virtue of wisdom, who as Owens puts it, “knows to whom credit is due, at what point to form a view, when to open his mind and when to close it,” and most of the time believes in such a way that manifests this virtue. If, one time, perhaps when overcome with jealousy, he forms the false belief that his wife is unfaithful on insufficient evidence, would it really make sense for us to say, “Shame on you, you are lacking merit as a person as you clearly have not cultivated the virtue of wisdom”? Can we really even assess whether someone possesses a particular virtue based on one instance? It seems not, but blame still seems appropriate in this one instance. He is blameworthy because he has a belief he ought not to have, and, I will argue, at least a part of our blame does indicate we think he has failed to exercise a kind of control.”
―
Believing Against the Evidence: Agency and the Ethics of Belief
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Believing Against the Evidence: Agency and the Ethics of Belief
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Miriam McCormick2 ratings, average rating, 1 review
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